Inappropriate Christmas

One of my and my brother's favourite Christmas traditions is arranging the creche scene (the figurines were handmade by my Grandma and given as a Christmas present long ago).



As you can see, we decided to depict the scene shortly after the shepherds arrived. As the biblical account states, Mary and Joseph didn't consumate their marriage until after Jesus was born (that's a long time to wait on top of the whole waiting 'til marriage thing ;) and here they have commandeered the shepherds as emergency babysittters.

Meanwhile, the wise men have entered the scene. Being quite far-sighted fellows, they're actually able to spot the angel and (at least initially) they pay more attention to it than that spitty poopy thing. (Meanwhile the sheep are all like 'get out of the way of my food!). One of wise men is partiuclarly prescient however, and spots the ghost of Christmas future looming over the whole scene — the giant spirit that will soon overshadow this whole 'babe in a manger' scene.

...

A little later in the night, the angel and the sheep started playing poker while drinking. The results can still be seen here. (Mary and Joseph took their time getting back to that stinky burping creature; the formerly prescient wise man starts wondering what they're up too — 'hey we have some important gifts to give here!)'.

Merry Christmas!

Here's the least merry of Christmas carols!
Hey... It's not my fault my favourite Christmas carol (I think the most beautiful one, with all due respect to Silent Night) just so happens to be in a minor key and have lyrics full of longing.

So that's my beautiful new ukulele. During the Blessing Tree tour, my old cheapie got broke trying to fix the intonation on it; an anonymous donor gave us money for this beautiful Kala tenor ukulele. $115 US, and I would definitely recommend it. (As 'kittenmildew' put it: "Get a uke! it will change your life for the better.")

The song is based on a medieval chant (Veni, Veni Emmanuel) that dates back as far as the 9th century. 19th century priest and hymn-writer John Mason Neale was the first to translate the text into English and use it as a carol.

There's six or seven verses (more if you count translation variants). I sing the following three (if you can't make out my mutter-y words):

O come, o come Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the son of God appears.

Rejoice, rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, of Israel.

O come thou day-spring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death's dark shadow's put to flight

O come, desire of nations bind
all people in one heart and mind.
Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;
fill the world with heaven's peace

For those who care...
I tuned the ukelele down a half-step to try and bring the melody closer to my vocal range (I need all the help I can get and it probably still isn't enough). If you're interested in learning it, the chords are
Verse - Em Am G Em, G Am D Em, Am G D D7, Em Am D G
Refrain - D Bm Am D Em, G Am Em
(I got them out of internet guitar chord database and modified them a bit).

Photo Album

We interrupt the boredrom of your regularly-scheduled-text-based musings for a (probably equally boring) spasm of Facebook-like photo posting. (Of course if you have yet to join FaceBorg you do this where you can).

So... this is a few of the places I've been to as we've gone down the West Coast on this tour. Some have been mentioned in the newsy e-mails I've sent out to friends and family. 

Here are the wackos I've been touring with.

Here is some shots from the camp at Bowen Island (off the coast of Vancouver), where we held 'band camp' (pre-tour practice) and rolled and dragged logs through hills so they coud become firewood.

This is the ferry ride to Vancouver.

Crossing the mountains into eastern Washington looked like this.

This is right before we dropped into the Columbia River valley (i.e. heading back to the coast in Oregon).

We got visit ranch in (very) northern California, (just across the border from Oregon, near Yreka CA and Mount Shasta). If you went for a walk, you would see things like this.

As the walk continued, Ben got trapped in a Western movie.

We met a horse.

Alex and the horse went for a picnic.

I climbed a big rock and looked around.

Ashton got in touch with an other side... of Bob Dylan.

(Unwittingly, for she's never seen the album cover.)

Crystal (daughter of James Shepherd who co-owns the ranch) and I found some treasures.


All of these photos were taken by Alex. Except for this one, which was taken by a girl name Julie Furbush.

I'm not trying to break your heart

"Awww. I thought you guys were coming to live here."
-Kid from a housing project in Santa Barbara

Just stole this from my friend Rachelle's blog.

"We just find it easier to hate a rich man than to love a poor person with our actual resources and energy. Most people who rail against how the mega-corps are exploiting human life try to put a stick in the spokes of the mega-corps rather than trying to meet the urgent needs of the poor that made them willing to exploit themselves as cheap laborers. The "machine" may need to be dismantled, but it needs to be done with caution, because its moving parts are human lives."
-from The Apparent Project; "Haiti Wants Some Sweatshops"

Your songs aren't spiritual enough

Oh, you wrote a new one? Well the theology is incorrect. (C'mon, don't corrupt this innocent song about Noah and the animals by actually quoting the bible).

Well, it couldn't all be good, I suppose. Now I have personal experience with some of the reasons why so many of my teenage heroes hated living within the world of Christian music.

There are so many of you!

Dance 'til it hurts!

Though this doesn't occur in a simplistic or one-to-one ways, musical structure really does reflect social structure — and vice versa. We participated in a concert at an "anti-profit" coffee/community house in Portland last week, and the way the radical/anarchist-y people did music there actually gave me some hope for that movement. At least, in that it confirmed their ability to create some sort of collective way of life that follows a genuinely different logic from our mass-market (post-?) industrialized society. Simply put, they did music a lot like the people on the old field recordings I love, from societies before they get electricity and industrialism. That is, with little separation between "performer" and "audience," people spontaneously jumping onto their instruments to accompany whatever's going on, dancing, and feeling free to join in stomping and clapping and singing and humming, not in perfect unison with the 'leader' but notes and rhythms they pull from the air and from their heads, voices overlapping and interlocking in a diverse unity free from uniformity.

Oh but my poor words and over-intellectualized thoughts fall down and gasp feebly, not able to catch even the barest twinkle of the magic that was the best musical experience of which I've ever been part.

Thanks to all the people at Muddy Waters Community House Nonprofit who will never read this. Thanks for everything, but especially for all the hugs.

New eyes

I love how playing cardboard drums (and assorted paraphenalia) changes the way I see the world. These days I walk around wondering what things sound like if I hit them, and how they could be used musically. I value — treasure even — things like paper bags and egg cartons, which other people have too many of, and see as only fit for garbage or recycling.

Of course, destroying my "drums" during a performance and throwing the pieces into the crowd is pretty fun too ;)

The Blessing Tree

We have a new myspace site.

Ego-Deflating

There's nothing like recording to show you how badly you actually play your songs. It's just plain embarassing how long it can take to just get one full take where all three people don't make a mistake — nevermind play it the way truly great.

The great thing about playing live is that mistakes are always in the past, not haunting you forever. (Plus you can act like a goofball and people love it).

Adding some mulitmedia content

Pretty sure my main job in this song is just to look ridiculous and a little awkward, but here's a taste of the sort of thing I do these days.


Blessing Tree - Psalm 107

The Beatitudes | MySpace Video

Ashton couldn't join us for the first couple of weeks, so I got to play the toy drum, which is pretty much the best thing ever.

Also, there's a couple of videos on youtube under 'The Blessing Tree' where you can watch me play inaudible bass (the little camera does great at picking up the cardboard drums, but doesn't handle the low-end portion of the sonic spectrum too well). Oh, and also one with an overlong flute solo. (One day when I'm a real boy there will be videos of me on youtube that I don't find embarassing).

Summing up your life in two lines is fun!

Also a little disquieting.

[Somehow this post never made it out of my drafts folder, back when I wrote it about a month ago.]

A week from now I'll be playing the beatitudes out in BC. One of the performances will be at my friend Ben's home church, and they asked for little two line bios that they could print up in the bulletin.

I wrote out a few, just so I wouldn't get stuck on crafting the 'perfect one.' But then I couldn't decide, and just sent them all to Ben to pick the one he thought was best.

Apparently, I am incapable to describing my life seriously. (My life is a joke!) I present them here for other's amusement.

"Tim studies culture and music at Carleton University in Ottawa, and contemplates becoming a professional student. A few years back, he discovered that once you've learnt enough to play a few instruments poorly, it's not hard to just keep adding more."

"Tim reads too much for his own good, to the point where he has concluded that becoming a professional student might be the only positive contribution he can make to society. He once tried to escape from his pastor's kid upbringing by running away to a Christian commune. "

"Tim studies culture and music at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is still trying to figure out 'this Jesus guy.' " OR "He is still trying to figure out how to wrap his head and heart around Jesus."

"Tim studies culture and music at Carleton University in Ottawa, and plans on being a student forever. He listens to music and reads too much."

[He chose the last one. Not the funniest one, but probably the most 'appropriate' one.]

Inappropriate typos

(Setting up shows via e-mail can be dangerous).

"We'd love to come perform on your penisula."
"It's wonderful to see all these ideas pooping up."

This is what you look like after rolling logs down the hills of BC

Attractive, isn't it?

The most noticeable difference about the forests of BC (at least on Bowen Island, and as compared to Ontario) is that there are ferns everywhere. It's kind of like being in Jurassic Park.

Wearing two sweaters and a tuque to bed is adventuresome, but I have to admit I appreciate being back in the 'civilized' world, with central heating.

Riding the train across the country and spending a couple of weeks at a camp whose builings were (mostly) unheated, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the hunter-gatherers — and even European homesteaders — who once lived here. It's kind of amazing they even were able to survive. There is still so much empty space in our country; it's weird how as our population has grown, the countryside has emptied out.

Cd covers

This is what the Beatitudes cd covers/packaging look like so far. I came up with the folding/cutting 'design' after spending way too much time on youtube looking at impossible cd cover origami. (You can't really see it from the picture, but the back opens up like an envelope). Yayy no plastic! (And only two small tabs of paper waste).

Credits: the lion is by my friend Janet (thanks again). The abstract fire is by Franny and Theo, two twin toddlers Katie (another friend) babysits. The rest are from these notebooks that get handed out at the church I semi-regularly attend, Ecclesiax.

I created a black and white template (of the liner notes, correctly positioned on a standard 8 by 11 sheet of paper), and then pretty pictures can be photocopied or drawn onto it. So we're hoping to continue to come up with new ones, as we come across more adapt-able art. (And a drawn cover is one thing we're always happy to trade a cd for).

Real life conversation, VI

"I'm so fat, I can't even put on my shoes!"

(Not actually... he'd just eaten a really big meal).

"Canadian Spiritual Activist Summit"

Being around a bunch of fresh-faced, optimistic, religiously-commited youth is... odd. Disquieting? A little wistful, perhaps.

Rockies through a train

snow-wrinkled mountains
with black pines inched upon them

So...

I'm running away to join the circus. Well, actually, I'm running away to BC to meet up with a couple of friends. We're then going to go on a bit of a musical tour, playing the previously-advertised Beatitudes, travelling down the West Coast from BC to California.

Crazy, eh?

So, I might not update this blog very much between now and Christmas. But who knows? If I do, I might even talk about how the 'tour' is going. Though to be honest, this blog has never really been about chronicling what I'm doing, so much as it is a semi-random window into the constant flow of thoughts that run through my head. And I kind of it that way.

If you want to read an ongoing blog about the tour from a completely different perspective than I would ever have, you can head over to my friend Alex's site. (Alex is a lovely person and he helped us record the Beatitudes. He also has his own music; we'll be travelling together and helping each other out, musically and otherwise).

Why men should be free to wear kilts and other kilt-like clothing.

"We are an international band of men who enjoy the freedom, comfort, pleasure, and masculine appearance of kilts or other male unbifurcated (skirt-like) garments, and who reject the absurd notion that males must always be confined to trousers. We are men in kilts, Utilikilts, and other kilt-like clothing. Our purpose is to liberate men from the "tyranny of trousers" that has been imposed upon us by Western society. We encourage and promote the wearing, acceptance, and availability of kilts and other unbifurcated garments for men.

Unbifurcated garments - including kilts, robes, caftans, sarongs, tunics, and other skirt-like garments - are traditionally male clothing that have been worn by men throughout history. They are far more comfortable and suitable to the male anatomy than trousers, because they don't confine the legs or cramp the male genitals the way that trousers do."

So sayeth Kiltmen.com, and of course you can visit them to read more. Somewhere amidst the silliness, they... have a point.

Real life conversation V

"The closer you get to a real girl, the less pretty she is. (That's how the fashion industry works)."
-A model

Best thing I ever said?

I am proud to say this line rolled off my tongue a few years ago:
"Pink Floyd did drugs so you don't have to!"

After a nice conversation with Mike Ryan, I can now bear witness to the fact you can say:
"[Insert techno band here] did drugs so you don't have to!"

Also, in the words of his thesis supervisor, "There is no such thing as good writing. There is only good re-writing."

Something I can bear witness to via the agony that went into my 1-page 'Statement of Interest' for grad school applications. Well, I don't know if the final result is good. But it's better.

Real Life Conversation IV

"They'll probably just say it's good writing, but I think it's kind of understood in the academy that good writing equals good bullshit."

[After spending hours and hours obsessing over one page of a scholarship application.]

I have no idea what this means but it's awesome

" WHAT A GLASS SMASHER! LOve it.. gimme the tunes and i'l feed them to the racoons, and they'll be dancing in environmental freindly moonlights." (And the copy-paste picked up her photo without me even trying. Bonus.)
It came from here.
Whoever DOQTRESS is, I am a little too frightened to visit her myspace page.

Introduction to enchantment

dream fragments like slivers of glass:
getting sucked into my mirrors,
fighting the consequences of capture,
it was like i was the rope holding her and she was untying me

does your hearbeat ever keep you up at night?
i stumble through old wounds
rubbed raw by my tongue, undone by my hope
please still my shaking, runing in tremolos of regret
silence my mind chatter, introduce me to myself
and untie my hobbled heart
leave me
washed fresh, with true-love tears.

haven't you ever been in a fairy tale before?

"sin like you mean it!"
sing like you've seen it
dream like you want it
fall like you can't.
(i am a weak vessel for love
but i promise to leave the candlelight of common sense behind
if you'll venture into the shadows with me
greeting solitude but passing it by
dismissing small fears and insecurities
persisting in these days of incredulity
struggling to live lives bound by love).

you know, Cupid dips his arrows in your eyes
and as i listen to the colours in your voice
the words i say no longer belong to me.
and it's easy to tell who's a friend:
you know your name is safe in their mouth.

Real-Life Quotations III

"Blue is confident enough to be a dark colour — not like black, which feels like it has something to prove."

Word Games

Here's one I just made up. Try to make the longest possible sentence by combining band names. No added words allowed, or at least as few as possible.

You're allowed to drop the prefix 'The' from a band name if that will help. Here's my best attempt so far, though I cheated and added the words 'yet' and 'could' to make it work.

"They might be giants at the gates," the obsessed Emperor decided, "but if — as I lay dying among thorns, earth against me, stars in flames — if evil farm children possessed deep purple throbbing gristle, then I could die happy, mayhem overcome.

If you care, here it is with punctuation so you can see the individual band names. I capitalized the beginning of each new band name, and put the added words in caps:

"They might be giants At the gates, " The obsessed Emperor Decided, "BUT If — As i lay dying Among thorns, Earth Against me, Stars In flames — If Evil farm children Possessed Deep purple Throbbing gristle I COULD Die happy, Mayhem Overcome."

You could of course do the same thing with song, album, movie, or book titles. Or thoroughbred horse names! Man, have you watched the Kentucky Derby anytime in the past decade? There are some weirdly named horses out there.

(Speaking of weird, yes, I am aware of what a strange person I am. (Fortunately, the chances of my genes being passed onto the next generation are slim. (Yes, unfortunately, I have yet to meet a lady that accepts compulsive music-dork word games (and I mean compulsive, this definitely stopped me from sleeping one night (not that that takes much)) as some sort of mating ritual. (Though if on the off-chance you happen to be reading this, (oh dream of mine) would you like to get married? (Good, well, then, consider your ability to parse these nested parentheses as something of a litmus test (i.e. please e-mail me if you can actually get through this paragraph without getting a headache.(And if it actually makes you smile, let's just skip the ceremony and elope, eh?))))))).

Hey if you can't amuse yourself... I don't actually know how to finish that sentence. I'm going to bed.

Real-Life Quotations II

"I just kind of tried to hide, except I was just sitting there."

It's about rape. The play that I excerpted in that last post. If you didn't get it. (Sometimes I wonder how obvious it is).

No and other ambiguous words

Waiter: Would you like some coffee?
Woman: Yes, please.
Waiter: Just say when. (Starts to pour).
Woman: There. (He keeps pouring.) That's fine. (He still pours.) Stop! (She grabs the pot; there is coffee everywhere.) What are you doing? I said stop.
Waiter: Yes ma'am.
Woman: Well, why didn't you stop pouring?
Waiter: Oh, I wasn't sure you meant it.
Woman: Look, of course I meant it! I have coffee all over my lap! You nearly burned me!
Waiter: Forgive me, ma'am, but you certainly looked thirsty. I thought you wanted more.
Woman: But--
Waiter: And you must admit, you did let me start to pour.
Woman: Well, of course I did. I wanted some coffee.
Waiter: See there you go. A perfectly honest mistake.
_______________________________________
Excerpt from the play Until Someone Wakes Up, written by Carolyn Levy and a group of her students.

Oh, Existentialism!

A Fragment from Robert Bretall's "Introduction" to A Kierkegaard Anthology.

"It is impossible to reach an absolute beginning, and there is no such thing as 'presuppositionless thought.' The man who pretends that his view of life is determined by sheer reason is both tiresome and unperceptive (Kirkegaard found him essentially comic): he fails to grasp the elementary fact that he is not a pure thinker, but an existing individual.
To one who has chosen Christ, says Kirkegaard, "the only possible objection would be: but you might possibly have been saved in another way. To that he cannot answer. It is as though one were to say to some one in love, yes, but you might have fallen in love with another girl: to which he would have to answer: there is no answer to that, for I only know that she is my love."

[Please pardon all the male pronouns; it was a different time. The quote's from p. xx-xxi, and I read it in the 1946 Princeton University Press edition.]

All or nothing

In the youth group I grew up in, there was a lot of hand-wringing over that fact that so many teenagers grew up, went away to university, and 'lost their faith.'

Speaking as someone who's been through that, I'd like to point out that when we 'accepted Jesus into our hearts' as kids, we didn't just get Jesus. We were handed a whole huge set of cultural-ethical-religious-aesthetic-philosophic-doctrinal-'scientific' presuppositions. And each and every one was represented as somehow being 'God's Word,' and 'grounded in the inerrant Bible.' We were made to feel that you could not be a Christian without swallowing the whole thing. All the moral rules. All the theological/philosophic/'scientific'/etc. positions.

(Many of whom, frankly, are based on debatable interpretations of scripture. Look, almost every interpretation of scripture is debatable. It is just not possible to establish what 'God's word' says, definitively for all time).

The problem, then, is that if any part of that comes under attack — as it is almost bound to do in an environment like university — and we lose faith in that part, it's easy for it to become an 'all-or-nothing' thing. Because that's what we were taught! All or nothing.

So because some of us can no longer buy creationism, or innerrancy, or the idea that Christianity is 'the only way,' (etc.)... or because we don't see the harm in having safe sex with people we love, or gay marriage, or drinking or swearing, (etc.)... there are so many individual things that can go wrong, so many things we could reject... we walk away from the faith altogether, usually ignorant of the fact that there are other ways of being Christian, other ways of loving God.

That's sad. It's not sad that we walked away from a very narrow, particular interpretation of Christianity, grounded in the very specific moment in history, and very specific political and cultural movement. It's sad that we thought that was the only option where we could still call ourselves followers of Christ.

Strategic Ignorance (Being read by the Bible)

I was talking to an earnest young lady the other day who informed me that her church only does what's in the Bible. I didn't have the heart to argue with her. But there was so much I could have said. Really? Do you meet in people's homes instead of owning a church building? Do you have only lay unpaid leaders? Is your communion a full meal? Does every member that comes to service contribute something (a song, a 'word,' a verse)? Because if you don't, you're failing to do what they did in the New Testament.

Last post I talked about the need to not just pick and choose in a facile way which parts of the Bible to believe in, and which to ignore. Super-important. Yet I think us Christians need to be honest and recognize that we all do this, to a degree. No one believes in and puts the whole Bible into practice, certainly not in any kind of literal way. We all ignore parts of it.

We don't build railings around the edge of all our roofs, or weave tassels into the corners of our clothing. Most of us guys cut our sideburns and trim our beards, and most of us gals have worn 'man's clothing' at some point. We don't stone adulterers. Nor make a widow with no children marry her brother-in-law. We mix different materials together in the clothing we wear. We're not really into the whole 'slaves obey your masters' thing anymore. We don't gouge our eyes out or cut our hand off if they 'cause us to sin.' We rarely greet each other with a kiss. Few of us prohibit women from speaking in church, or force them to wear a head-covering when they do.

When it comes to the Bible, there is always picking and choosing, emphasizing, and de-emphasizing. There is always interpretation involved in the way we read the Bible. The question then, is not whether we do this, but how. This is what Brian McClaren meant when he said that we shouldn't just read the Bible, we should let the Bible read us, I think.

The way we read the Bible reveals a lot about our hearts.
What passages or themes do we see as key? ('Key' both in the sense of important, and something we use to unlock the meaning of parts we see as less central or more mysterious). What parts do we ignore, not talk about much, de-emphasize? Which parts make us uncomfortable or nervous, make us wish they weren't there? Which do we have a hard time explaining or understanding? Which ones do we strive to apply? Which do we metaphorize, and which do we tend to treat literally? Which ones do we relativize by talking about the differences in cultural context? Which do we cling to, are we unable to let go of, and call people 'unchristian' for not following?

And what does that say about us?

On the continued worth and relevance of the Bible (for Christians)

Further to the last post...

I do still think the Bible is important, and that a major part of Christian life should involve struggling with it deeply, not just picking and choosing in a facile way which parts to believe in, and which to reject. Religion shouldn't just be whatever we want it to be; we shouldn't make God in our image. If our beliefs are just 'all about me' what's the point? It's worth aligning oneself with a living tradition, and taking its ideas seriously — including some ideas that we might otherwise dismiss as crazy or just plain wrong without really thinking about it. (Assuming, that is, that some of the central ideas also really resonate with you — for me, that would be Christian ideas like 'love as the only law' and 'God becoming human in order to be with us'). I think doing so can be good for us in very deep ways. We're such a self-driven, radically individual culture (and then we wonder why we feel cut off, alienated, and lonely). We're so sure we're so much wiser than the people of the past — the idea that 'newer is better' is so ingrained in us. Engaging thoughtfully with a living tradition might just broaden us, and leave us a little less tightly bound to our culture and ego.

To step back for a second, one of the things that keeps with me obsessed with reading and learning in general is the fact that... no matter what I'm thinking or struggling with, there's people much smarter and better than me who have thought and struggled with it too... and written good books about it! Not to say that reading a book is a substitute for doing your own thinking and struggling, but it can help! It can help you in your own thinking and struggling. So in our struggles with idea of a living loving mysterious God — with the idea of ultimate Goodness as a personal being — and with the reality of living with and reflecting that God... there's worth in reading the writings of others who who have done the same. Especially those who were among the first to think and experience such things, and whose writings have even encouraged countless others who have come after them.

(The Bible's been beta-tested to death, my friends. This reminds me of the best explanation I've ever heard for why the four gospels are part of the canon, and not others that were also written in roughly the same period. Simply put, the early believers found that the Jesus they found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John corresponded best to the Jesus that had been preached to them and that they found at work in their own lives. The Jesus of the gospels was the Jesus who had changed them.)¹

You know, there's something powerful and unique about the origins. There's a life and energy to an original genre-launching artistic expression that is lost when that genre is established. Do something powerful and fresh and there's bound to be copyers. But you can never copy that originary power because part of made that origin powerful was that it was not a copy, that at the time, no one had done anything quite like it.

I think there's a difference between being a copyer... and being a follower, though. Real punks don't sound like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols. But they might still deserve the name 'punk.'

Being true to an origin means grasping it creatively, or perhaps being grasped creatively by that origin.

The letter kills, but the spirit brings life, as the good book says. Words on a page are dead, even in that good book, and imperfect — at the least, imperfect simply by virtue of being a manifestation of human language. (Language can't perfectly describe, capture, or represent... anything, much less God!) But the spirit can bring those black marks on paper alive,² so they do actually become the Word of God for us. So they become truth, or maybe even Truth, for us, for a little while. (The evidence of Truth is always that it changes our lives...)

But it doesn't just have to be the good book. It can also be a movie, a song (by a secular band even!), a conversation with a friend, a tree. This might sound bizarre, but when I was a teen and a friend of mine died, the movie The Crow 'ministered' to me a lot more than my youth group did.

I think the problem is that when it comes to the Bible it becomes such a 'all or nothing' kind of thing for so many Christians. More about that next time.

---

<sup>1. There's also the fact that the four gospels tend to be some of the earliest narratives of the life of Jesus. But a notable exception like the Gospel According to Thomas is a good example of the principle I'm explaining. While in agreement with a fair bit from Mark and Luke, that gospel also shows things like Jesus teaching that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, a woman must become a man. (How? Uh...spiritually, of course. Whatever that means. Don't ask questions!) That's not the Jesus I feel at work in my life, and I think even Christians living in the context of patriarchal Roman/Jewish culture felt the same way.
2. I offer a longwinded explanation of why 'spirit' and 'alive' are synonymous , or to set the background even more thoroughly, here.</sup>

Burn it down and start again

Alright, it's taken me five years to figure this out. No wait -- seven? Ten? A lifetime? Anyways, I think I finally figured it out. (But it wasn't even me... I just stole ideas from others, really -- see the footnotes at the bottom of this entry).¹

I think the Word of God is a person, not a book.² (As the book itself says). And to ascribe perfection to anything other than God is a form of idolatry.³ (Doctrine of innerrancy, I'm looking at you).

It seems to me that modern Christian theology of a conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist bent has elevated the Bible to the position of '4th member' of the Trinity, if that were possible . Their creed might as well be "I believe in the Father, Son, Holy Ghost... and Bible." (i.e. the Bible as the inerrant Word of God -- like I said, I think that position is already occupied by 2nd person of the Trinity).

More tomorrow.

---

1. If you display the following symptom -- an urge to insert footnotes into even your blog entries -- go see your doctor ASAP, because you have officially become infected with the spirit of academia. Generally fatal and incurable, this condition can at least be treated so as to reduce suffering. Whatever you do, do NOT keep typing.
2. I stole this idea from Karl Barth.
3. I stole this from some guy on youtube.

Badanistrax and the Zombies of the Four Winds

As you have picked up, I kind of like to make fun of D&D, (though I probably have no right, considering the incredibly dorky things I'm involved in). I've certainly teased my brother over his D&D obsession for a long time. But allow me to toot his horn a little -- that obsession finally paid off! A D&D adventure he has written is being published on-line. At this point, the adventure is free to download, they're soliciting feedback, and the plan is for it to eventually be collected in a book. Also, an article he's written on "Places of Myth and Magic" will be published in... some D&D magazine... um, I'll get back to you when I get more details from him. Anyways, I'm very proud of my little brother, and if you're the D&D playing type, you should check out his adventure!

While I'm promoting Kitz family members, I should really point out that my dad has his own website. He's got a novel, a kid's book, and a new book on the Psalms that has just came out. He also has does Bible-based dramas that are a nice alternative to your usual Sunday-morning fare. And of course you can find out about all of this stuff on his website.

Oh, what the heck. While I'm at it, you can now listen to some music I've played on-line. My friend Ben set the Beatitudes to music, and I and some other friends played along. It's a bit of a rough recording, and I'm selfish enough (and enough of a perfectionist) to wish some of the instruments I played would have found a better balance in the mix, but... Trust me, the songs are very tasty treats for your ears, and I am happy that we recorded the music the way we did (i.e. in live takes, gathered around one microphone). And you can listen to an instrumental piece I wrote for guitar here.

Best pick-up line ever!

"My mother and my psychologist both think I should ask you out."

Real-Life Quotations

"I decided the rice was okay since there was only two bugs. They were really little bugs!"

xkcd rocks

I Dare You! Christianity and Celibacy

There's an interesting thread on Christianity and Sexuality going on at Empire Remixed. (Here, here, and here). Basically, they're saying "hey guys and gals — i.e. other Christians — let's talk about sexuality in an open-minded way." They're very articulate, poetic, and heartfelt in saying this, but yes, that is what it boils down to. This message might sound pretty obvious, but really given Christianity's fraught relationship with sexuality... it's both necessary and worth applauding. (Though it's not like they are the only ones saying this kind of stuff these days — I'm just saying the more, the better).

But I'm going to be a little more aggressive, and throw down the gauntlet to evangelicals. (A Christian tradition I was raised in and identified with for most of my life, so I probably have a little aggression to get out my system here. Probably none of them actually read this blog — really, no one actually reads this blog — so I might as well be talking to myself. But, hey, it's soothing for me to post these ranting rambling on the Interconnect, and we should all support the admirable project of maintaining my sanity).

Dear evangelicals: Where in the Bible does it say not to have sex before marriage? Where exactly is that commandment? And no, vague references to 'sexual immorality' do not count. (One has to define what im/morality is first!). And neither do proscriptions against adultery, because, as anyone with a dictionary knows, adultery refers to people that are married banging people that they aren't married to.

Look, it's definitely possible to make a sound Biblical argument(s) for pre-marriage celibacy. Normally, evangelicals constantly quote chapter and verse in support of what they are saying, but strangely when it comes to sex before marriage... they don't. They don't make this argument. I was hit with a lot of 'chastity propaganda' growing up, and I never heard a good exposition of the relevant passages, in the light of the over-arching themes of the Bible.

Two reasons, I think.
1) There is no verse that says 'don't have sex before marriage.' I've read every word in the Bible, and it's just not there folks. There's implications, there's principles that could be applied to this situation based on other instructions regarding sex, but the Bible never clearly and un-ambiguously states 'don't have sex before marriage.'

2) If you tried to explain to teens why Christians shouldn't have sex before marriage, and back it up with a solid biblical reasoning... They might realize that this is an argument and that it involves a fair amount of interpretation. They might realize that you could also argue the opposite. (Yes, it's also definitely possible to make a sound Biblical argument — I think — for relaxing the proscription against sex before marriage that the Victorian Age saddled us with. I'm not saying this is a better argument or interpretation — I really don't know — I'm just saying it's possible). In other words, they would be thinking. And everyone knows that if teens actually start thinking and making their own decisions about whether God wants them to be celebate... well, clearly, we will be swept by a cascade of teen sex, abortions, pregnancies, our nation will descend into apostasy, be overcome by terrorists, run by liberals, and fall into the gaping maw of the very pit of hell.

Ok, I'm being silly. (I know you don't actually believe that. Right?) Please hear the teasing tone in my voice as I'm writing this.

And please pardon my inflamatory (ha! that's a pun!) tendencies — I do respect the viewpoint and commitment of those who are pursuing a celibate lifestyle before marriage. Going against the grain of our societal system and its unhealthy obsession with sex, and ways of dealing with it, is admirable in itself. And that's a far from easy path. But please. Let's be open about this stuff. Let's talk. Let's think. Let's not reflexively consign each other to the nether regions of 'sin,' 'heresy,' and 'un-Christian behaviour.'

I'm just stating the obvious here.

"Say, you guys fancy yourselves an 'indie band,' right? Well, why don't you put your song on the Internet and let people download it? That would be pretty indie right?"

Pet Peeve

Look, I like buying albums. Yes, real honest to goodness physical albums. Made with plastic and paper and sometimes even vinyl. I like supporting musicians. I like having something I can hold in my hand and look at, that doesn't have the same standardized feel and aesthetic (i.e. the way iTunes makes all music look and feel the same way, and subjects it to the same organization system -- not that I don't sometimes appreciate that system)

But if you're going to sell me your album can't you give me something a little value-added for my hard-earned cash, something I couldn't get by just downloading the album for free? Yes, pretty pictures are nice, but what I'm really talking about above all else is lyrics. It's nice to able to understand what you're singing about – they're not always easily discernable – if nothing else so I can sing along!

Are you embarrased by them? Think no one's interested? Too cheap? Please, I want to follow along!

All this said, Bruce Peninsula is absolutely amazing, and they put on one of the most brilliant shows I've ever witnessed, and you really should check them out. Choral indie pop, where the choral component is inspired by rough and passionate folk field recordings, not church choirs. If that makes sense. Epic and danceable and sacred and dirty and just plain fun!

Yeesh, can you tell I love them?

(And they are far from the only band guilty of this offence).

What I did instead of working on my Honours Essay

"Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different."
-Terry Pratchet (Interesting Times)

You know what artists are? Artists are people who say 'I can't fix my country, or my state, or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars of music, exactly what they ought to be.
-Kurt Vonnegut, (Time Quake)

"Whoever tells the stories creates the society."
-Alice Hoffman (some newspaper article)

And finally, proof that comics based on D&D can be quite funny (intentionally):
"We were madly in love! She killed all my friends and I killed all her friends, so we'd only have each other... like in a fairy-tale."
-Some evil character

Silly Dungeons and Dragons

"The terrifyingly inevitable, viscious and visceral onslaught of black midnight ebony shadow elves of darkest deathly doom!"

Alright, so D&D is a bit too easy a target for parody. And playing does involve personal creativity and in-person sociability. Much better than a lot of other things you could be doing with your time.

But the 'dark' melodramatic language can get a bit ridiculous. Of course it's not like I'm involved in anything that uses over-the-top 'dark' imagery, takes itself a little too seriously, and often comes off as ridiculous instead...

Retrospectively dated

we know not to murder after seeing a murder on the screen, but do we know not to love when we see two fulfilled?

Tidbits from Heidegger

"If faith does not continually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith, it is not faith but a convenience. It becomes an agreement with oneself to adhere in the future to a doctrine as something that has somehow been handed down." (p.8)

"Russian and America [i.e. communism and capitalism] seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man. When the farthest corner of the globe has been conquered technologically and can be exploited economically; when any incident you like, in any place you like, at any time you like, becomes accessible as fast as you like; when you can simultaneously 'experience' an assasination attempt against a king in France and symphony concert in Tokyo; when time is nothing but speed, instantaneity, and simultaneity, and time as history has vanished from all being of all peoples; when a boxer counts as the great man of th epeople; when the tallies of millions at mass meetings are a triumph, then yes then, there still looms like a specter over all this uproar the question: what for? -- where to? -- and what next?"
(And lets all keep in mind that this was originally a lecture delivered in 1935; to say this was prescient is putting it mildly, I think).

Both from philosopher Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics. (Nota Bene 2000).

Ouch

The triumph of advertising in the culture industry is that consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though they see through them.
-Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

Adventures in Open Software

I really like the attitude behind open software -- programs made on what amounts to the wikipedia model, (though open software came before wikipedia). The idea of making a program's code freely available so that people can not only download the program for free, but work and collaborate on improving it if they wish -- or even just customizing it for themselves -- is really refreshing. Especially when compared to monolithic corporations designing their program's code, keeping it a secret, and asserting ownership over it. It's the kind of networking and mutual empowerment that actually seems to fulfill the promise of the Internet -- as opposed to most of the stuff that actually goes on the Internet. (I'm still not sure how to react to the fact that Facebook has replaced pornography as the greatest use the Internet is put to).

I assume most of us are pretty familiar with Mozilla Firefox, an open-software program that's at least as good as Internet Explorer or Safari (I like it better than both, personally). A program I recently started using is OpenOffice, which is designed to be able to be an open-source substitue for Microsoft Office and related products. The nice thing is that it can read and save in a number of formats, including Microsoft's .doc extension, (as well as its own open format, .odt). So far I'm quite happy with it, though its endnotes function isn't quite as flexible as I'd like; certainly I prefer it to the latest version of Microsoft Word, which I just find confusing and annoying.

I've been less successful with trying to switch to using .ogg files instead of .mp3s. Apparently several companies have tried to assert ownership of the mp3 format, and the most successful one has managed to collect millions of dollars in royalties for a format people use for music files every day. (A little like charging radio stations and their listeners for using a certain Hz to encode and pick up their signal). I've tried downloading a couple of media players featuring .ogg files, but have been pretty dissatisfied with them. They won't display what album a song is from, have bad playlist functions, (an important organizational tool at least for me), etc. There are add-ons for iTunes that allow you to play .ogg files but then you can't burn them to cds. (You can't load cds in that format either, but there is freeware that will do it; what I couldn't find was anything that burned cds).

It's possible that there are solutions out there, but after downloading four or five programs to try and make the .ogg format work for me — all on dial-up — without any success, I threw up my hands and gave up. At least for now it's mp3's for me, even if I don't like it.

As far as I'm concerned, the onus is on Mac (and Windows, but I know less about that, and Mac does a reputation for being user-friendly and relatively progressive) to actually make a file format like ogg work in its player, what with it becoming an increasingly common format for savvy and freedom-loving computer users, as well as the format sites like wikipedia use. It's stupid and short-sighted that iTunes can't play and perform other normal functions with .ogg files to begin with, and that even after the add-ons many of the regular functions don't work in spite of the open programmers' best efforts. Purely from a selfish, capitalistic viewpoint, you'd think it would actually be in iTunes interest to use, if not push, an open format like ogg, instead of using a format that is owned by another company.

But what do I know...

Touché

"Remember, it's our common embrace of unknown groups that makes us so individual."
-"Tristan Lovecraft"

The whole article from Insta Goth Kit is pretty hilarious, but this was a particular gem.

And it reminds me of this comic from Nothing Nice to Say



]

Girls, women, and ladies

My girlfriend recently expanded on some thoughts from an earlier post. Ever a fan of concision, she actually prefers the shorter earlier version, but I definitely found the additional material interesting. Here it is:

I decided the other day that I would rather be called a woman than a girl. I think that calling adult women 'girls' infantilizes and disempowers us. A girl is a child, weak, impressionable, requiring paternal supervision and guidance, unable to look after herself. A woman, on the other hand, is an adult, strong, competent, independent. A girl is somebody that a man can control; a woman is someone who can stand up to him, doesn't need him, and won't take his crap. When was the last time you saw a sign at a strip club that said "Women!?" You didn't, because they all say "Girls!"
Our culture still tends to deny that women are women. Take the ideal of female beauty that is thrown at us every day ... how much body hair is a woman supposed to have? None! Who doesn't have body hair? Young girls. And how old, exactly, is a woman supposed to look? As young as possible. What is the problem with a woman who looks like her hormones are actually functioning properly? Really, what is the problem with that?
I recently took over at work for a middle-aged man, and I have encountered a certain amount of ... paternal bemusement from some of the men with whom I now have to interact. I'm certain that they didn't chuckle when my predecessor phoned to place an order. I'm certain that they didn't wag their fingers at him, admonishing him to be on time in the morning, because they would be waiting (I have yet to show up late). The fact is I am pretty, female, and look no more than my 24 years. Clearly I am no one to be taken seriously. Clearly I am not a woman ... I am a girl, to be patronized, tolerated, and completely out of place in a position of responsibility. I am the 'girl' behind the counter.

I am not going to apologize or pretend that I am not what I am. I am not going to go along with people who want to pretend I am anything other than that. I am a woman. I am intelligent, educated, competent, I'm completely capable of taking care of both myself and, if need be, others, and I even have body hair. I'm not going to be horribly offended when somebody calls me a girl, but I think a culture that hesitates to call women what they are is one that is still afraid of what they are. I think that kicking the 'girl' habit is a small way of erasing the persistent paternalism that, at this point, really shouldn't be informing us any more (not like it ever should have to begin with, but we can't change that).

Sidenote: What about 'lady'? Lady is a tricky one. I often call my friends 'ladies'. On the one side of things, a lady can be a really awesome person. She can be mature, intelligent, have character and self-possession. 'Lady' can definitely be used as a term of respect. On the other hand, I don't hold much truck with 'lady' when it has to do with being ladylike, or when it comes in the form 'young lady'. God knows being ladylike involves a lot of pretending to be what you are not. 'Ladylike' requires that one give up feeling comfortable, having a good time, and being interested in sex. And a young lady, of course, is little more than a girl.
I think in the end I am pretty ok with 'lady'. I do not appreciate the term 'young lady', and I certainly will never be ladylike, but when it connotes a mature woman with a full character, then I think it can be a very respectful or complimentary term. I don't mind being a certain type of lady ... but only that certain type.

Something to look forward to

In Praise of Amateurism

An amateur is someone who does something for the love of it (amator means 'lover' in Latin, which is why amour means 'love' in French).

Amateurs only care about the activity, enjoying it, and (sometimes) sharing it with others. There is no other motivation. They are not shaped by market forces, nor do they have to bother living up to some hierarchical set of 'professional standards.'

Roland Barthes has suggested that a 'completely de-alienated society' (something possible only in theory) would be a society of amateurs -- unlike our society, which is a society of consumers. (He said this in The Grain of the Voice).

It still sounds like an ideal worth working toward to me. So let's raise a glass to amateurs and lovers everywhere!

And let's stop using 'professional' as a synonym for 'good' -- 'conditioned wage-slave' might do as well, I think. (Though let's be gentle, and think -- not say -- that, and more with compassion than contempt... We all have to make a living somehow, now don't we?)

Form and Function (Doing things the right way)

"Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean tolet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of the corridor, in a grove fragant with leaves and moss. No words can describe the sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in mediatation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves.

As I have said there are certain prerequisites: a degree of dimness, absolute cleanliness, and a quiet so complete one can hear the hum of a mosquito. I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly falling rain, especially if it is a tiolet of the Kanto region, with its long narrow windows at floor level; there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops falling from the leaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the stepping stone. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the chirping of insects or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the seasons. Here, I suspect, is where haiku poets over the ages have come by a great many of their ideas. Indeed one could with some justice claim that of all the elements of Japanese architecture the toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making poetry of everything in their lives, transformed what by rights should be the most unsanitary room in the house into a place of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties of nature.
- Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, a twentieth century novelist, in his book In Praise of Shadows (Leete's Island Books, p. 3f)

Contemporary tea master Soestsu Yanagi says that "The Way of Tea is a way of salvation through beauty."

-quoted in Rand Castile's The Way of Tea (Weatherhill, 1971), p.82

Other ways of being, other ways of learning

Last year I had the pleasure of writing an essay on the Dene. The Dene are a group of aboriginals that live in the Canadian sub-arctic. They were one of the first native groups in the modern era to call for full self-government, autonomy, and de-colonization. (See the 1975 Dene Declaration). The struggle continues, of course.

The thing I was most struck by was the different attitude the Dene traditionally have towards learning. One thing that cropped up over and over again as I was reasearching them was the idea of 'experiential learning' -- the Dene think it's very important to learn things yourself, through experience, by trying and figuring them out yourself. Telling others what to do is considered very rude, if not downright immoral.

This means that didactic, passively-received, propositional learning (i.e. lectures, etc.) is just not an option when it comes to education, and the task of teaching young people what they need to know in order to live. Here's an excerpt from my essay:

"It is therefore easy to see why the Dene use stories to communicate more abstract lessons about values, morality, spirituality, etc. Stories communicate indirectly, in non-deterministic ways, leaving their hearers free to form their own conclusions. They allow elders to communicate truths without formulating these truths into absolute, propositional statements. Presenting such absolute, specific statements and declaring them to be true would be considered a form of pride among the Dene. More importantly, such statements would deny the listener the chance to learn; even if she accepted them, she would not actually 'know' them, since they would simply be a form of second-hand knowledge. For the Dene, "to explain too much is to steal a person's opportunity to learn." These stories are intended to provoke and provide the context for thought, for learning, for true knowledge acquisition through direct perception. As one Dene told one anthropologist that kept asking for explanations, "we tell you these stories for you to think with, as they were given to me for me to think with."

If any of this intrigues you, you can read my entire essay here.

Internet Searches Cost Energy

The Internet-ization of the world does have a pretty significant impact on the environment. For one thing, google's need to keep track of the Internet so it can search it results in huge energy-sucking server farms. It's a small thing, but you can switch to carbon-neutral google searches at znout.org.

There's quite a few enviro-friendly search engines out there these days. Forestle.org and Ecocho.org use ad revenue to save the rainforest and grow trees, respectively. (They both use yahoo search engines).

Almost all of them let you download add-ons to replace the google search toolbar now standard in a lot of web browsers.

Godisnowhere
God/is/now/here
God/is/nowhere
God is now here
God is nowhere
Godisnowhere

Atonement

At-one-ment.

Only Questions

Observe with me the following statement:

"I am disinterested in making moral judgements."

Is there an implicit moral judgement in this statement? (It seems to me that there might be one... it seems to imply that passing moral judgements is morally reprehensible).

Suppose I were to say the following, to try and avoid making a moral judgement, and to simply explain why I do not want to make them:
"I am disinterested in making moral judgements because...

1) I don't know anything

2) It is a waste of time (because I don't know anything, because it generally changes nothing)

3) It can be damaging to others (those being judged) and to myself (the one judging)."

Then would there still be an implicit moral judgment in saying this?

Is such a line of reasoning exactly what 'morality' involves? I'm not really a big fan of black and white words like 'good,' 'evil,' or 'moral' these days, but if I were to use them, it is exactly this sort of thing that I mean... i.e. Something is 'good' when it is healthy, useful, life-affirming, and perhaps even more impossible terms like 'as it should be', 'true', 'not bent' (as in, following Plato/Aristotle/Christian-y theology, 'evil' is bent, deformed, misplaced goodness).

But then, does this reduce 'good' to merely a matter of utility? That just reminds me of what Nietzsche says about utilitarianism. (Specifically, his point that life isn't will to self-preservation, it's will to power -- and self-preservation is one aspect of that, but sometimes will to power contradicts self-preservation, like when warriors put their lives on the line for glory). Similarly, utility seems like a subset of good, but isn't good bigger than that? If so, and how, I have no idea. It seems like doing what is 'good' or 'right' sometimes might not correspond with what is 'useful' but is that just because our understanding of 'useful' is 'not as deep as it should be?

-------
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
-Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes, as written by Bill Watterson)

we know not to murder after seeing a murder on the screen, but do we know not to love when we see two fulfilled?

nobody's left, and it's odd because the more you deny it, the funnier it gets.

(evil can be funny. righteouseness is a barrel of laught too. come on we all know! it's a new century, no sarcasm, kids.

they wrote the books to share with you what they assumed could be. they made the films to explore what you didn't get to do at work today. and they wrote the songs to fill in the gaps between being some place, and getting there.)

[the white stripes]

The poetry of burglar alarms

"Even the burglar alarms of medieval Japan were given a poetic art form. The corridors leading to the monk's dormitory in some temples were called nightingale walks, the heavy floorbeams being set on supports in such a manner as to give out thin musical notes or chirrups when trodden, thus compelling night intruders to give audible warning of their approach."

p. 99 of W. Scott Morton's Japan: Its History And Culture. (McGraw-Hill, 1994).

Why I love 'Emo'

[from Nothing Nice to Say]


Even I find hating on emo funny. Still, I love emo. Why?
-I am contrary. Emo isn't cool -- being called 'emo' is super-uncool. No band in the history of emo has actually been willinng to identify themselves as emo.
-Emo isn't about being a rockstar -- it's about communicating, and rather than glorifying the performers, it's about breaking down the walls between the audience and the performers. The best bands make you feel like they could be you, and you could be them.
-Sincerity= cool. Irony = lame
-Positivity is also cool
-It's not just about girls. There's plenty of self-criticism and stories about broken friendships.
-Mockers will scoff at the sometimes sirrupy/wimpy 'heaviness' -- products of emo's desire to blend melody and aggression musically --but emo music gives its performers (and by extension its fans) a chance to be powerful and vulnerable at the same time. (Alright, so I have to admit that quite frankly I scoff at the sirruppy 'heaviness' of some of the current screamo bands... this post isn't my attempt to say all emo music is good).
-Misogyny is lame. Emo doesn't depict females as sexual conquests.
-'Macho' is lame. It ruins a lot of the good parts of sports, punk, and metal.
-It's cool to find a genre of music where the fanbase is made up (rougly) equally of girls and guys.
-It's inclusive. Emo is for kids that know they don't want to listen to Top 40 radio (or radio rock) but that aren't cool enough to be punk (or macho enough to be metal).
-Emo is punk.
-Fuck you. Who made you the arbitrator of what punk is? The original generation of punk involved a bunch of bands that shared a (somewhat) common spirit, but no one sounded like anybody else -- just try to find the common sound between Television, the Ramones, and Patti Smith! British punk and then American hardcore narrowed punk to a one-dimensional sonic style. Just because you don't sound like The Sex Pistols or Black Flag doesn't mean you're not punk. (Though those are two awesome bands). The great thing about punk rock when it came out was that it sounded unlike anything anyone else had heard until then. (Unlike most of what masquerades under the name 'punk' today, which either sounds like it came from 1977, 1982 or like those two years filtered though 90's modern rock and pop-metal). The first generation of punk bands were brilliant, inventive, hard-edged, and progressive, (and not 'progressive' in a lame, dinosaur-rock kind of way). Any band with a DIY aesthetic, unprocessed sound, and subversive message and unfiltered expression is punk rock. Son House is punk rock. They Might Be Giants is punk. Good emo is punk.

A Meditation on Boundaries, (via quotes I've collected over the past few years)

"I like boundaries, as long as they are fluid."
-Christie May

We have to move beyond the outside–inside alternative; we have to be at the frontiers. Criticism indeed consists of analyzing and reflecting upon limits.
– Michel Foucault (‘What is Enlightenment?’)

A triviality is a statement whose opposite is false. However, a great truth is a statement whose opposite may well be another great truth.
-Niels Bohr

Belief in either radicalism or orthodoxy is too simplified a way of viewing things ... Evil is never all evil; goodness on the other hand is often tainted with selfishness.
-Chinua Achebe

Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity. To say that freedom is graven in the nature of man, is to say that man is free because he obeys his nature, or, to put it another way, because he is conditioned by his nature... We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is indeed determined, but that it is open to him to to overcome necessity, and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not a static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won.
-Jacques Ellul

Being seen and being heard by others derive their significance from the fact that everybody sees and hears from a different position.
-Hannah Arendt

Any proof of the syllogism would be absurd. The syllogism is, to put it briefly, nothing but a rule of language to avoid contradiction: at bottom the principle of non-contradiction is a principle of grammar.
-Simone Weil

"Liberty [i.e. the bourgeois conception], therefore is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself.... But the [bourgeois] right of man to liberty is based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of this separation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn into himself...
Precisely the slavery of civil society is in appearance the greatest freedom because it is in appearance the fully developed independence of the individual, who considers as his own freedom the uncurbed movement, no longer bound by a common bond or by man, of the estranged elements of his life, such as property, industry, religion, etc., whereas actually this is his fully developed slavery and inhumanity."
-Karl Marx

Rules were invented by elders so they could go to bed early. Men who harp on authority only prove they have none. Kings who make speeches about submission reveal they are afraid.
-Gene Edwards

The doctrine of the established Church, its organization, are both very good indeed. Oh, but then our lives: believe me, they are indeed wretched.
-Soren Kirgegaard

"I started skateboardinging the mid-70s and a lot of people thought 'Oh, it's a sport'. But it's not just a sport. Skateboarding was about redefinition. It was like putting on a pair of filtered glasses -- every curb, every sidewalk, every street, every wall had a new definition. I saw the world differently than other people. Everything had completely changed because I was a skateboarder. It really helped me understand the idea of redefining what's been given you. I've always been interested in saying, 'Here's what's been presented, now how does it work and how can it work?' Skateboarding was such an important part of that... "
-Ian MacKaye, (member of Fugazi, Minor Threat, reluctant founder of straight edge, owner/manager of Dischord Records, etc. etc).

"To view your life as blessed does not require you to deny your pain. It simply demands a more complicated vision…one in which a condition or event is not either good or bad but is, rather, both good and bad, not sequentially but simultaneously. In my experience, the more such ambivalences you can hold in your head, the better off you are, intellectually and emotionally. Categorical statements become meaningless. The saddest stories are shot through with humor. You come to tolerate people, ideas, and circumstances wholly at odds with your dreams and desires.”
- Nancy Mairs

We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing.
-Anon

My Goal For The Coming Year

(Refer specifically to the second panel for my New Year's Resolution; and don't forget to click on the image to see a more readable version; if you want to see the comic in it's original context click here).

Happy New Year! It looks like it's going to be a really busy term, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to be on here and writing as much as I'd like. But I'll try. And don't despair! Lord knows there's enough to of my writing in the past few months to keep any sane person satisfied for a long time.