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I prattle when I write...

"I'd show them the stars
And the meaning of life
They'd shut me away
But I'd be alright
Alright...

I'm just uptight..." -Radiohead

"...and I showed the clouds how to cover
up a clear, blue sky." -Johnny Cash

"I know we're all insane when there's no one else around.
I don't want to go outside. I would rather hide." -Joseph Arthur


Some people are just hard to love.
My naturally sunny disposition probably makes my above list a little longer than average. It also probably puts me on a lot of other peoples' lists.
But this weekend it was never more apparent how imperative it is that I love them anyway. There were three specific instances that reminded me, and it was funny how I reacted differently to all three.
I'll get specific on one: Saturday night in Kalamazoo, there was this ~10~ year old kid in front of us at the NOD. He was chatty and excitable to the point of being obnoxious. And boy, did he ever love me and Brian. At every opportunity, he would turn to describe, at length, the cars he liked and why he liked them. Or to interject in our conversation to inform us that slow and steady, in fact, does not win the race. Or to ask us if the onslaught of driving rain was, "getting us very wet?"
It was funny at first, bewildering at second, and by the time third rolled around, we were contemplating the trouble we would be in for stabbing him with our umbrella.
But cooler heads and little bit of Grace prevailed and I not only avoided infanticide, but ended up engaging the kid more and more. By the end of the night I found him almost tolerable. It just amazed me that God works completely counter-intuitively...by doing the one thing I didn't want to do, namely, talk to the kid more, I found him far easier to deal with and far easier to love.

The second and third involved people with no social wherewithall. Nothing gets on my nerves more than people who don't have a social speech censor. I suppose its partially because I spend way too much energy picking my words and my moments. What's funny is that my best efforts don't make me any more of a social firecracker than these people that bug me so much, they instead make me boring and standoffish. Whoops.
Anyway, at one point while in a social situation, one of said spectacularly unmuted persons was on a roll, really firing on all eye-roll-inspiring cylinders. I glanced over at a friend who gave me a wide-eyed white flag of disbelief. I was at my breaking point. In the past, I've been known at this point to say something really snide and cutting to shame the offender into silence, but again Grace intervened. I just burst out laughing. I put my head in my hands and laughed until it hurt. No one really understood why, but after that, I didn't find he/she so annoying, just amusing. And being able to put myself in their shoes, their social helplessness became kind of endearing. I even made some stupid jokes to help them out. And by the time I left, Grace really allowed me to LOVE them, not just put up with them. And that was an amazing feeling.

The third time was a similar situation, but reasons I won't get into made it a little harder just to laugh it off. I actually started off poorly. I got fed up and was my sarcastic and belittling self for a while. But at some point, again, God stepped in and I was able to grit my teeth, take some deep breaths and just let it go. There are some things you will never change about people, and getting upset about it certainly won't help me love them. And realizing that was the important part.

So basically all this is pointing towards is just some serious praise that God stepped in this weekend and gave me strength that I didn't have. And made me realize again that it's God's love that we use to love others, and without first being full of God's love, we will fail and fail again on our own. Kind of an obvious lesson, but I suppose we all need to be reminded of just difficult simple things can be.

PS. I find it fascinating, psychologically speaking, that some people start to prattle when they get insecure, because I react exactly the opposite way. So if you ignore them, they talk even more because you're making them more insecure! And then it follows that if you validate their prattling with a genuine response, it actually makes them calm down instead of prattling more. That just blows my mind! You're all WEIRDOS!! ALL OF YOU!!

Music

wow... right now I am watching Roy Orbison play alongside Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello on PBS (circa 1987). And it's just the best damn thing I've ever seen. I am on the verge of tears. This is what music should be like. They are playing with a ten or so piece band and I've never seen such a formidable group of musicians play together so seamlessly. There is no bandstanding, no showing off, no "look at me" moments. They just respect and admire each other and are playing for no other reason than to make good music. And it's just beautiful.

Not to mention Orbison's voice, at age 51, hadn't lost a ounce of potency. He could still nail 4 octaves and slide from octave 1 to 4 without a hiccup. I would almost buy a 45 just to play his vinyls and listen to it in its original glory. That man just transcended rock in so many ways, and people still don't quite get it. It's tragic that he will be remembered for "pretty woman" and his dark sunglasses and nothing else. Although those sunglasses were pimp.

You watch Springsteen, already a rock god at this point, playing not just backup guitar, but second backup, to Orbison, and being genuinely excited during every single song just to be there. He had begun his slide into "too big for his britches" stage, but this moment, this slice of the sublime, just totally humbled him. Amazing stuff.

Orbison would die a year later.

Here is some other stuff I'm listening to at the moment. Download it if you like music.

Pete Yorn - For Us (see what emotion and some real singing chops can do to a rather pedestrian song)

Phantom Planet- By the Bed (as close as you'll find to lyrical genius in pop rock. Not only is it a sick song, but every line is instantly relatable and it says so much in so few words. We can all learn something about picking our words carefully.)

Radiohead- Subterranean Homesick Alien (this is the song where they perfect the soft/loud dichotemy)

Calexico- All Systems Red (Emo kids, take note: Let the music scream instead of you.) (yes, this blog is named after this song)

Cat Power- The Greatest

Drive-By Truckers - Daylight (nothing like an amazing hook to fix that broken heart)

The Frames - In the Deep Shade

M. Ward - Sad, Sad Song

Modest Mouse- Long Distance Drunk (what a freakin beat. seriously.)

Guster - One Man Wrecking Machine (I could listen to the part where he says "...maybe get in her pants. Whatever." about a jillion times. That's GOLD I tell you!)

Autumn, and that which comes with it

There has never been such a thing as a slow transition into fall. One day you are prancing around unawares in your shorts and sandals and all of a sudden there is that snap of crisp air (if it made a sound, it would be like cracking open a peapod), and the next day you are wearing jeans!

For some of us, this transition signals more than just the last beach day of the year. You either look at the change from summer vacation to the fall semester as going back to reality...or leaving it. As more of us have real-ish, full-time employment during the summers and live with our schools out of sight and out of mind for three months, it can feel more like a return to surreality.
As I approach turn 1 of my Calvin victory lap, I definitely feel the latter. In fact, I feel like I'm stuck in some awful 20-something purgatory, wallowing with a foot in the real world and another still in school. And I hate it. The last four years of my life have transmogrified--rather grotesquely-- into one small embossed piece of paper that I need in order to get out of purgatory and move on! (as a side note, my English major is appalled that this WYSIWYG editor doesn't support the em-dash, and my syntaxical flair is reduced to four ugly hyphens)

I went to a Calvin soccer game this weekend, and I definitely felt like I didn't belong anymore. And I don't.
I don't really know what this means for me or my future...just that I want out, and I want out now. But I can't get there. I have to finish school. Duh. But I need to keep this job, one for the money, and two, for the opportunity for the future. So instead of getting out fast, I have to just keep wallowing here, taking a few credits, working, and praying for May. So if you happen to pray for me, pray for May, too. (Some people tell me May is inevitable. But it doesn't feel like it at the moment)

Just some thoughts...

"When the color goes out of my eyes, she usually does too." - Ryan Adams

I do not understand the Lord. Whatever books I may read, whatever expositions I claim, whatever theology I internalize, none of these suffer a pretense of insight or perception, sensory or otherwise. More likely is that the words, images, ideas, even the voice that I currently assign to the manifestation of the Almighty, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, Yahweh, etc. only serve to further estrange whatever understanding we may share.

No, I do not claim to know the Lord very well, either (I feel more comfortable calling him by a title—The Lord—than a name. I feel at least this is not some binding, limiting classification we assigned him, but instead sort of an honorary expression of our awe that he can append like an M.D. to whatever he calls himself.). I know the voice when I hear it, but who wouldn’t recognize the irreproducible?

I’m not arrogant enough to claim this would be impossible, nor even that difficult. I’m quite sure there are many people who know the Lord well, at least as far as he reveals himself. And certainly scores of humanity know the heart of the Lord, and perhaps I have at least briefly communed in it before. But I’m afraid I have failed to take much initiative on that front; rarely do I seek, so how shall I find? I do not know if I would even know how to look.

But I do know the hand of the Lord. I can see where it pushes me, where it restrains me, where it shields me. And I know enough to know that my life is incalculably better when the Lord is part of it. And that is enough for me to believe and to bow down.

...That's all I've got today, sometimes I feel like that is really all I have, period.

Here is my prayer for today:

My poor heart suffers a most unfortunate affliction: near-sightedness. For the life of me I can’t make it see beyond my own skin.

Lord, give me bifocals that see only others.

Free my heart from the shackles of my selfish prison
Perch it on my sleeve where it can see three hundred and sixty degrees; everywhere but at me.
Let it sit freely, open to be torn apart by what it sees.
Let my heart hurt. Let it be ravaged.
For once let my heart cry out not for its own sake.
For once let me ache someone else’s pain.

Phil 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
(most people focus on the second half, but the first part really gets me more. We still have work to do here! To LIVE is Christ!!!)

Fantasession addendum

Funny story, after writing about fantasy football closely resembling gambling, I find this wonderfully long and obtuse blog from a lawyer about the legality of fantasy sports as a gambling-type game. Apparently some guy is actually bringing a lawsuit against many Internet sites, claiming they are abetting illegal online gambling. Humm. And you thought fantasy football owners had too much free time!
http://deadlyhippos.com/columns/fantasy_leg.htm

Extreme Fantasession

"I tried to follow you out, but I did not know that you'd be leading on...
and you might think that people don't live through being dead wrong...
I guess your parents must have raised themselves a strictly pious daughter,
because you move through this crowd just like parting water.
Oh, you dress so nice, you dress to kill. They drop like flies, but who's the funeral for?"


Fantasy football is one of those things I feel girls have just relegated to "pick your battles" status. I imagine when they hear those two words, they smile politely and leave the room until the conversation no longer contains key phrases like, "late-round sleeper," "red zone touches," and "points per reception."
Whatever little sense our temporary obsession makes to them, they don't complain, at least not out loud. They shake their heads, pat us on the head when we don't make the "playoffs", and focus on improving us in other areas. Like chivalry. And hygeine.
Whenever girls decided to adopt this attitude, I don't know, but it happened a relatively short time after the onset of fantasession. Girls seemed to easily pick up on the fact that this was life or death for most males who chose to become involved. I bet it has something to do with scent. I picture guys with fantasession emitting some completely pungent pheremone that says "Better back off, dear, or I might accidentally slay you as I wave this giant posterboard draft chart back and forth like a crazy person, lamenting how stupid I was to pick Larry Johnson first overall when it was clear LaDanian Tomlinson had more upside!"
Of course, we have no idea we smell like this. Remember how hard we struggle with hygeine?

Anyway, however you figured it out, ladies, I applaud you. Honestly, good work. Maybe this was a battle you could have won. But it would have been bloody.

What brought all this to mind was that on this very Sunday evening, 11 of my friends (now mortal enemies) participated in our very own fantasy football draft. For those of you ladies (or cave-dwelling men) who don't know, the draft is what all the guys you know have been locking themselves away in their rooms for 4 hours every day to prepare for. It is why the most visited page on your Firefox browser is Yahoo! Sports and not Jessica Simpson's MySpace page.

And what a draft it was! Two hours of frantic clicking, cursing, complaining, and scrapping your recently developed ulta-secret infallible draft strategy because QBs were flying off the board in round 3.
When the dust had settled, bench spots had been filled, and other people's picks had been belittled, how do you think we celebrated? By talking about how it went for another hour!

So after quietly congratulating myself for picking Lawrence Maroney in round 13 because I, as an astute fantasy owner, found out he would be splitting carries with Corey Dillon this year, I got to thinking...why?
Why is this so important to guys? What is so fun about owning a pretend team of pretend players who play other people's pretend teams? Doesn't this eerily resemble an attempt to play Dungeons and Dragons in the upstairs living room instead of hiding in the basement? Why do we spend 7 months out of the year trying to impress girls, only to waste it all on 5 months of complete, utter female-repulsing behavior?
Almost all male behavior is motivated by one or more of three certain things, so I figured we should start there.

Those three things are:
1) sex (or for the more modest of us, female attention).

2) the opportunity to live vicariously through someone who was introduced to HGH earlier than us. Which lets us pretend that we are getting a lot more of #1 than we really are.

3) the opportunity to assert dominance over other males. Which in our minds, may directly result in more of #1.

Right off the bat, #1 is out as a motivating factor. I don't see the need to explain myself further on this one.

#2 is also out. We primarily use Madden '07 to accomplish this, and fantasy football is a poor substitute for uber-realistic 3-d button-mashing.

#3 seems to be the most plausible motivation for fantasession. What could be better than stomping your good friend's head into the ground through the magic of the internet? Won't your girlfriend be impressed by the shiny gold-spray-painted trophy you won in your keeper league this year?

But then again...
I think all guys realize that girls don't view this as a legitimate accomplishment. No matter how badly your dynamic running back duo crunched the skulls of the inferior Team BigStud (yes ladies, we're that clever. Team BigStud. No one saw that one coming), we somehow inherently realize our female counterparts won't be impressed. And we also know, somewhere deep inside, that it doesn't matter in terms of long term male-to-male bragging rights, either. Win a game of fantasy football and you are way too likely to be written off as "lucky" or "having way too much time on your hands," instead of being given the credit and glory your victory deserves.

So I admit, I was stumped. I just couldn't understand the attraction of this fake internet sport. It was only when I compared fantasy football to another wildly successful Internet game, namely Internet poker, that I made the connection.
Fantasy Football is just another form of gambling. A cheap way to get the thrills of high-stakes Vegas without the risk of losing money (or dignity).
Think about it. You're basically placing your bets on players, like a roulette wheel. Red Seven (Drew Bledsoe), Black 13 (Chester Taylor), these are the slots on the wheel you are guessing will turn up gold.

Not only is it just like gambling, but it's gambling where you believe you've completely elimanated luck from the equation. You believe in your bets because you did your homework and spent 40 hours on rotoworld.com, memorizing the mock draft of someone more qualified than you. These bets are even more satisfying because it is your own sweat, brains and decisions that will win you the chips, not the luck of the draw.
You get double the satisfaction; the adrenaline rush of gambling, plus the knowledge that it was by your own volition that you won, not that of Lady Luck.

Fantasession began not with football, but with baseball. As far back as 60 years ago, stats geeks pored over endless sheets of .OPS, .SLG, and .WHIP (stats they invented) to pick the best possible teams to win them a meaningless trophy. In other words, this game was invented by nerds without the cajones to get their gambling fix at an actual casino.

This is what draws millions of men to huddle over their computers all week and watch 6 hours of football every Sunday. This is what estranges husbands from their families. This is what gets over-zealous employees fired for taking three-hour lunches to battle on the waiver wire.
This attraction to fantasy football is visceral, carnal, seemingly almost preternatural. A vice to be sure, an addiction even. But one that brings untold satisfaction for very little cost.

So, after many long minutes of pondering, surmising, what have you; what I discovered is that, in essence, fantasy football is exactly and completely as pathetic as I imagined.

Yessss.

"Well, I wasn't ready for what she said next
She said, "There is nothing else that you can do
No, you can't understand what I'm going through
And if the world has changed, well, I'll be damned
Oh, 'cause I'm no good at being brave
Not even on the better days
And there are things we cannot save
No matter how hard we try
There is nothing else that you can do
No, you can't understand what I'm going through
And if the world has changed, well, you'll do fine..."
Oh, I tried, but no, I could not stand
I touched her with a trembling hand
I choked
I could not say goodbye
No matter how hard I tried"

yeeeeeesh

"If you weren't real, I'd make you up..."

About a year ago, I promised myself that I would never do two things again:
a.) watch TV news
b.) blog

As we can see, I've clearly gone back on one; so while we're at it, let's toss out the whole schbang.

Thursday night, I watched about 5 minutes of Nightline. Just for kicks. And as foolish as my original promise of a year ago was, I now want to try again as of Thursday night. The feature story was the AIDS crisis in Black America. "Gee, this could be enlightening. Maybe I'll learn something," said the hopelessly optimistic part of me.

*note: this part of me is very, very small. We're talking the Pluto of human optimism. Scientists contend it doesn't actually exist.*

And as we all expected, a medium sized comet of cold reality smashed poor Pluto into oblivion.


I only ask a few things of journalism. Mainly that you do some research and don't publish stories based on heresay and the opinions of people in suits. But instead, the story opens, narrated by a very somber-looking whitebread 30-something news personality wearing a nice suit and very expensive shoes that had clearly never seen the "streets of Black America." This man had also obviously never ventured anywhere within 5 miles of the syringes whose dangers he espoused, nor seen, let alone interviewed or at least observed the black, drug-addicted AIDS victims he so compassionately Anderson Cooper-ed, or the prison inmates whose ignorant behavior he vehemently decried.

Instead, he showed stock footage of a prison, and interviewed "concerned black activists" who were likewise dressed in nice suits and expensive shoes and pronounced the word "ghetto" with the sort of detached disgust one has for a place one has never seen and can only paint with the broad strokes of rash generalization.


He cited a study without a name or attachment to any reputable scientific organization to make a point. Figuring he had used enough "fact" to assume credibility, he then proceded to make statement after unjustified statement pointing blame at everyone within a 100,000 mile radius, and then summed up his opus by making the bold, hard-hitting statement that the real problem here was "ignorance."


Tell me, oh television man, what ignorance are you referring to? Could you mean the ignorance of the American people to this problem because the media refuses to acknowledge it exists, or, in the rare moment where we admit Africa isn't the only continent ravaged by internal problems not inflicted by George Bush, pretend like it is something that can be solved with a little bit of heart and an episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"?


Huh, the one part of America that Mr. Cornell School of Journalism forgot to blame. Himself.


Turning AIDS into a human interest story with a few tears, zero facts, some warm hearts, and a lot of bodily-fluid-free hugs is a humongous disservice to everyone involved and the main reason why I have a journalism minor that I plan on forgetting. Now I know why Edward Murrow's heroic fight against McCarthyism is now available as a black and white George Clooney film. Because the only place journalistic integrity like that has today is buried in a fictional movie script. Based on a real story, indeed.

*for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you should probably watch "Good Night, and Good Luck"*

On a positive note, this piece did bring back a wonderful piece of footage from the last vice-presidential debate that is worth repeating...

Moderator: "I would like to bring up a problem not related to the budget at this time. I'm talking about AIDS. I'm NOT talking about AIDS in Africa, I'm NOT talking about AIDS in China. I'm talking about AIDS in America, where black women are 30 times more likely to get AIDS than their white counterparts. Mr. Edwards, any reaction?"

Edwards: "Well first, let me say this about the terrible epidemic of AIDS in Africa and AIDS in China that are killing millions of people every day. Truly a tragedy."

Moderator: *shakes head*



It is now 3:45am. Have I ever mentioned I have trouble sleeping?

It is so bad lately, I have tried to invent remedies. I tried watching TV until I got tired. Nothing.

I tried reading until I fell asleep. Instead, I just end up finishing a whole lot of books.

I just made the best, hour-long "put you to sleep" iTunes playlist, EVER!! And I've played it 15 times since I made it three days ago....

I have literally begun to pray every night that the Lord will put my mind to rest and help me sleep. Occassionally it has worked. Although I am finding out I can pray longer than I ever imagined possible.

So, if praying to get me to sleep proves fruitless, the least I can offer is a prayer for when I awake:

Deo, da mihi nunc hodie perfecte incipere.

That's probably not exactly correct, but it translates to something like "Lord, let me now, having not yet failed today, make a good beginning."

So here's to mornings =)

Zeph 3:5 The LORD within her is righteous; he does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice, and every new day he does not fail, yet the unrighteous know no shame.