Stumbling Toward God?

This weekend I was ill. First of all, my sincerest apologies to any of the bowling party who finds themselves incapacitatingly sick this week. At one point, I was lying on my bathroom floor, not because I felt like I might vomit, but merely because I lacked any capacity to move myself to a more convenient location. I thought to myself, “What if die here? Wouldn’t that just suck?” It would probably be a good three or four days before anyone even noticed I was missing. Could be a week before anyone made any serious effort to find me. Sad that. Yet, whenever I am ill, I am always confident that I will get better. There are a lot of people who do not have that luxury. Sadder that.

Yesterday I realized that I had not been tired or hungry for days. I do sleep, and I do eat, but only because these seem like things I should be doing. I am reminded of The Sixth Sense. “Walking around like regular people. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know that they’re dead.” So what if I did die? I still seem perfectly capable of such worldly activities as operating a motor vehicle and logging on to the internet. Going to school would be a waste of time I imagine. In particular, last night I spent almost six hours on what I propose to be the single most difficult assignment ever in a lower-division math course. Sort of like doing POV-Ray by hand. I must say, I was expecting more.

Yesterday, I was six minutes late to my biology class. After class, I told the instructor that I had been late and asked if there had been any handouts. He looked right at me, very bluntly said, “No,” and went about what he had been doing. Well, I’m pretty sure that he was lying. If I couldn’t be bothered to show up on time, then I just didn’t deserve them. I was profoundly disturbed by this exchange for the rest of the day. Obviously he was on some kind of power trip, but really, it was my fault. If I had actually been there on time like I was supposed to be, there never would have been an issue. I didn’t even apologize for being late, or attempt to offer any excuse, I merely stated the fact that I had been late, as if it was was perfectly acceptable to come in at any time and be entitled to everything that the other students were getting. What arrogance. Yet here I am, incensed that he did not have the common decency to overlook my disrespectfulness, and just do what he is paid for.

After that I went to the first meeting of the Round Earth Society, a brand new club for Atheists and Agnostics. This was not nearly as interesting as I had hoped. Being the first meeting, they basically just stated what they plan to do in the future and why they felt the need for unity and such. Then they started going around the room letting people introduce themselves with name, major, and their world view, (i.e. “atheist”, “agnostic”, “free-thinker”, “naturalist”, etc.) and why. What should I say, “I became a born-again Christian a year and half ago because I realized that agnosticism is bullshit”? A crude interpretation, but accurate enough as far as it goes. However, there was only enough time to get halfway around the room with introductions. Perhaps this was fortunate for me, perhaps not. At least there was free pizza.

At the end of each year radio stations like to have a countdown of the best songs of that year. Since obviously no one knows more about music than I*, I traditionally like to choose my own best song of the year. Of course, I have been out of the popular music loop for awhile, so I realized that I could only offer the best Christian rock song of 2004. Which I decided was… huh. Well there was… hmm.

I rather liked “Blessed Be Your Name” by Tree63, but it was played so often on the radio that I began to change the station every time I heard it. “Never Alone” by Barlow Girl was quite catchy but I don’t know that it deserves “Best Song of the Year.” Incidentally, my favorite Christian radio station named these as songs 1 and 2 of 2004, which somewhat defeats the purpose of my exercise.

So I’m faced with the idea that I’ve been listening to Christian music for a year and a half and I’m not even sure I like it. I miss Radiohead. So hell wit it… I’m listening to “I Might Be Wrong Live Recordings” right now (for you who wanted to know, and you know who you are.)

Back to the narrative, it occurred to me, “How about something off the new U2 album?” Umm… no. The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” is nice, but my sources indicate it to be 2002 vintage. There’s an obscure little band called Cool Hand Luke with the intriguing number, “Cinematic,” which I almost choose, but no, on careful reflection I’m going with “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional. They just don’t write ’em like that anymore…

*I actually had to search online to figure out if “I,” “me,” or “myself” was correct here. There was a long description involving “who/whom” and “predicate nominative,” which, being a product of public education, I naturally didn’t understand. I was all ready to go with “me,” because it seemed like it was the indirect object of the sentence, but then I found another site that spoke more to my specific situation, and it stated that it really hinges on whether “than” is considered a conjunction or a preposition, which grammarians are apparently arguing over even as we speak. So I’m going with “I,” even against the advice of an English major friend, because I think it sounds better, and it’s really a lot of concern for a statement that wasn’t all that funny to begin with. So if anyone knows for sure, I would love to hear it. “Yes, but what about all of the other grammatical mistakes,” you ask? Well… I don’t care about thems.

There are many things I have been thinking about lately. Things that might provoke people even. But I have not the time to properly develop any of these ideas right now.

I also started a new blog today. No, you can’t read it… not yet. This one is for me, for a specific purpose, kept private to keep me honest.

The first electric guitar amps did not work very well. They distorted awfully when turned up. I understand that the ever-so-popular Vox AC30 has a bit of a reputation for catching on fire. Technology has come a long way. Guitar amps potentially could work quite well now. However, somewhere along the line guitar players got it into their heads that an amp was supposed to sound distorted. Most guitar players will add extra distortion via a little box the guitar plugs into before it even gets to the amp. There is quite an industry for these little boxes if you care to look for it. These days, it is becoming increasingly popular to not use an amp at all, but just plug a guitar straight into a computer, then through the wonders of “acoustic modeling,” there are software programs that can digitally reproduce the sound of a vintage guitar amp, that did not work very well.

But we are not here to talk about guitar amps.

I was more than a little surprised last October to discover that my church actually sponsors a Halloween carnival. Halloween being, as it were, the “paganist” of pagan holidays. This year someone offered the explanation that over time Halloween has lost all of its meaning and therefore it is perfectly acceptable for Christians to celebrate it in anyway they choose.

I occasionally wonder at the first knucklehead who lopped down an evergreen and dragged it into his living room. I am told it was a Norwegian, although for what purpose I can not imagine. I should not be surprised if someone were to offer an explanation that was not remotely related to Christmas, but that this is merely another ritual that Christians have adopted as their own.

At this time of year, I can not help but think of modern pagans celebrating a Christmas which has lost all its original meaning, just as modern Christians celebrate Halloween. And when I look at my parents ornately decorated plastic Wal-Mart tree, I can not help but think of our old friends and their guitar amps.

I think insanely long travel times are good for jet lag. By the time you get there, you have no idea what time it’s supposed to be anymore, and are perfectly willing to accept whatever time they tell you. Especially if they say it’s about 9:00 at night and almost bedtime.

I spent seven hours in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. I avoided the redlight section. I thought about buying some absinthe, just because it was right there and I couldn’t find any when I was in South Africa, but what would I do with it now? Those were different times.

Apparently this was the first time in 12 days that the sun made it through the fog. I’m sure my mother was happy to hear that I had the A/C on in my car the day before I left.

I still get a few hits everyday despite the infrequency of my posts. Lately I tend to suddenly realize how long it has been since I posted anything new and throw up some poorly thought out, hastily written, badly grammatical bit of triteness that I wouldn’t even want to read myself.

The trouble stems from the fact that, what weighs most heavily on my mind is not of such nature that I feel like sharing with the world, and to talk about anything else feels hollow.

What then, one must ask, is the purpose of a blog, if not to share your thoughts?

Hey… who wants to know what CD I’m listening to RIGHT NOW!

Last weekend I worked at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at a mall in Temecula. (Yeah, I know, it’s November.) As we were tearing down, many folks felt no particular need to avoid walking through an area where people were tearing stuff down, and frequently asked what had the event had been. I was never actually questioned by one, by I became filled with what I can only describe as the sick and twisted desire to explain to a poor child exactly what was going on here.

You see, this mall put on quite an elaborate production climaxing with the arrival of Santa Claus, so that parents would come to the mall and spend money in all the lovely businesses that were good enough to host this event. Someone even told me once that Santa Claus himself is an invention of the Coca-Cola company (a claim which I personally think is nonsense, but I never looked into it.) Regardless, the children do get the opportunity to tell Santa whatever they want for Christmas with the expectation that they will magically receive it, promoting consumerism as early as kids are old enough to understand it.

Why do we do this? As it turns out, this is all in celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Ah, but there’s more. Back in Roman times, Christianity was not the only game in town offering a savior god. When a certain Roman Emperor (Constantine?) converted to Christianity, it is my understanding that entrepreneuring Christians simply decided that December 25th, the birthday of his favorite savior-god Mithras, was actually the birthday of Jesus.

So, when was Jesus born? Well, I would be suspicious of any answer to this question other than “The Bible doesn’t say.” Is this important? I don’t know, do you think it would bother Martin Luther King that we always celebrate his birthday on a Monday, regardless of when it actually occurs? Or would he be honored that we celebrate it at all?

This week kinda sucked. But it was short.

So, I haven’t posted for awhile and I owe emails to several people. Either nothing interesting is going on or so much interesting stuff is happening that I don’t have the time to talk about it. Which do you think?

A student died of an “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” in the engineering building last week. That’s not the most significant bit news I could be sharing right now. In fact, it hardly affects me at all. I mean he was a mechanical engineering major, I’m in electrical engineering. Never even met the guy. Don’t even go to that wing of the building. Doesn’t effect my schedule any. Wouldn’t even have known about if I hadn’t just happened to check my school email account, which I rarely do anyway. La merde se produit, n’est pas?

Does something seem a little off here?