Home of the jester in the court of the ragtag soldiers.
Archive for January, 2009
Meant To Live
Jan 31st
I wasn’t able to blog yesterday. A large part of this was due to, ironically, blogging; I was buried at the office working on installing a different blogging platform for the company’s Web site. That said, there was another reason.
It was my Dad’s birthday.
One of the elements factoring into this getting older thing is how even as you look at a calendar with sadness noting how today’s date marks an anniversary one would just as soon forget, the year invokes a confession of reality. You wouldn’t want to see certain loved ones at the age they’d now be. It’s painfully better to remember them at their best, thinking of them this way and, for those situations where faith lives on both sides of the love, believing we will again see them as they were.
But you still miss them.
Dear God, how you miss them.
Hope, Change, Etc.
Jan 29th
I was watching a national feed to the local news this morning about yesterday’s vote in the House for President Obama’s economic stimulus bill. Much was made of how the vote went almost straight down party lines with all Republicans voting against it and all but a dozen or so Democrats voting for it. Wouldn’t want to be them come committee assignment time. But I digress. Anyway, according to the news report each party have economic plans which goes thusly. First, the Republican plan:
And now the Obama plan:
Or something like that. This of course ties into one of the, if not the, key element of Obama’s campaign:
Okay, fun is fun, but let’s get serious.
The Obama i.e. Democratic stimulus plan and Republican reaction to same reflect the fundamental philosophical difference between the two parties when it comes to how the nation’s economy is best handled plus illustrating how government itself is approached. Obama’s approach is tax relief for individuals combined with deficit spending by the government on itself in the belief this will get the economy moving again with the government as caretaker/overseer/employer. Republicans expound slashing taxes on individuals and especially business in the belief this will reinvigorate the economy by prompting business and consumer spending, the former resulting in more jobs thus enabling the latter. Other than reducing taxes on individuals with the aim of encouraging consumer spending (if you’re genuine in believing this is important how about mandating the halving of interest rates on all credit cards and returning the federal income tax deduction on said interest, gang?), not a whole lot of space-sharing between the two.
The problem with both plans is neither embraces the whole of reality. Government spending on itself as it promotes itself as lord and master has never solved any economic downturn. It didn’t stop the Great Depression; World War Two took care of that. The directive of spending money on improving our national transportation infrastructure is welcome as anyone who travels on any given highway and freeway can attest. However, such projects take at minimum years and usually decades to formulate and execute. The economy needs relief in a far more immediate fashion.
That all said, believing business unfettered by regulation and enriched by lower taxes will solve everything is wishing on a fool star. Have we not repeatedly seen that when such an environment exists very few members of the business world make the welfare of their employees present and future a key element of their operational core? Profit is king, people are expendable.
It’d be nice if there was genuine bipartisanship in the approach to this matter, this as compared to what is being heralded by the new administration’s PR firm, otherwise known as the news media, as reaching out when in fact it’s reaching out just far enough to try and grab the other side so it can be yanked over the fence. Granted, it’s seen in Washington about as often as unicorns, but genuine bipartisanship where both sides come together over a clean sheet of paper and work toward either a common ground based on existing positions or creating a new solution to the task at hand would be most welcome given the dire straits we’re in. And not a sultan of swing in sight, although under the Obama plan money for nothing is the norm. Or at least money created out of nothing.
A Sentimental Song
Jan 28th
I started proofing the test copy of the book this evening. Haven’t gotten too far into it, but I’m happy with how few glitches I’ve found. Either I did a very good job during the first proofread or I’m not paying enough attention — hopefully the former!
As I’m reading it, even with the need to keep my proofreader’s editor hat on the joy of seeing it actually before me in printed form is starting to take root. It’s not so much a sense of “I did it” or “it’s done” but rather that it exists as tangible evidence of what put me on the road back Home. I pray it does the same for those who read it who, like me, need to hear the song calling them back to where they first believed. Not a nostalgia trip, but a reconnection with the living Christ.
Yes, there is a touch of sentimentality in all this. But sometimes, being sentimental is a good thing. Depends what you’re sentimental for.
P.S. I couldn’t find anything on YouTube for “A Sentimental Song” by the Choir, but I did run across this video someone put together for “Beautiful Scandalous Night.” Enjoy.
[video http://www.diecast-dude.com/gac/beautiful_scandalous_night_the_choir.flv nolink]
The Gap
Jan 27th
When you’re a new Christian, the world is a non-stop vibrant buzz of technicolor delights where every day brings bright shining promises of the new life to be lived and new souls to be saved. You want everyone to know what you now know; you tell anyone you encounter about the life-changing encounter that’s turned every fiber of your being inside out and then right again. Right for the first time, to be precise. You know — you know — that Jesus is the answer regardless of the question. How could you not know this? Your life was changed. You’ve heard the stories of fellow believers whose lives were changed. You are utterly, irrevocably convinced there’s no one, nothing, no situation or scenario beyond the reach of God’s hand. And you’re just the one to tell everyone about it. Personal experience with whatever the other person is facing? Not that important. You’ve got Jesus. And you’re sure that no matter what you can relate.
You’re sure that no matter what you can relate.
The seasons change and time passes. You begin to notice shadows creeping into your sunshine. It seems you may have miscalculated a little when you thought no experience was necessary. It would appear your well-meant words of understanding and comfort are beginning to be challenged. How can you know where I am, they say. You don’t know heartache and heartbreak. You don’t know divorce or being the child of divorce. You don’t know death. You don’t know drugs or alcohol. You don’t know abortion. You don’t know. Still you carry on, a tad more grim-faced perhaps but still at it. You’ve got Jesus. And you’re pretty sure that no matter what you can relate.
You’re pretty sure that no matter what you can relate.
Until one day when you look around at the remains of your efforts to make things right for others. You gave it your best… and it was a miserable failure. You didn’t understand when you said you understood. You didn’t know when you said you knew. You sailed blind into a sea battle which caught you off guard and unguarded. Now you’re an even bigger shipwreck than the ones you tried to help. You gave everything you had until you bled yourself dry and it didn’t make a lick of difference other than making you anemic. All your words are now bones scattered about and crushed underfoot by their own inability to do what they set out to do. You’re wounded. You’re scarred. You’re scared. You don’t see how you can ever help anyone. With anything. Oh, you still believe. But Jesus needs to find someone else to work through. You can’t do it.
You can’t do it.
So you don’t.
The seasons change and time passes. You’re still in full withdraw mode. But every now and then, you find yourself re-acquainting yourself with the things which you used to declare with such certainty. Not at anyone in particular; no, none of that “I have a Scripture for you” talk that used to dominate your conversation. Yet even within your hiding behind your own shadow, you find yourself thinking about and talking about stuff that hadn’t come to mind for years. Perhaps decades.
You find an understanding of how you blew it the first time through because even while you strove for humility you were thinking too much of yourself. You horribly underestimated the importance of been there, done that. You threw yourself into the picture when all you should have offered was Christ crucified and risen. Yes, there were times when you were part of the comfort and encouragement. Others? You should have removed yourself from the equation.
You find yourself reaching out once more to the hurting. When applicable you say you understand because you do understand, a living example of the truism that only the ones who have been through the fire can speak with authority to those still engulfed in flames. When it’s not applicable… well, you don’t. You do what you can, namely be loving and compassionate and caring. But this time, you acknowledge and respect the gap between you and the one you’re helping. You apply new terminology to the teaching of many parts forming one body which is the Church by networking and using the network to connect hurting people with the right helping people. Not that you’re in any fashion abdicating responsibility to care for others, but you’re being smart about it. Be it brother helping brother, sister helping sister, brother helping sister or vice versa; you understand your place.
And you love.
Always, you love.
And with that love, you learn the power of God is far greater than you imagined even in those heady first days of faith.
Love doesn’t always fill the gap. But without it, the gap is never filled.
Square Go
Jan 26th
Another Monday morning rears it’s ugly, hoary head. For whatever reason I’m quite the grouch at the moment. A night of disturbing dreams no doubt contributes to this; constantly waking from twisted visions as far removed from Gord the polar bear’s yesterday whispers as can be imagined.
Fortunately, there is little time for grousing about such things. The work week commences. Website updates and ad customization leave no time for brooding over a waking edge dulled by quasi-nightmares. Sufficient are the duties of today for that. Who needs foul dreams for a foul mood when you have department meetings? 
Anyway, a song that’s been rumbling through whatever portion of my brain isn’t in a state of trying to recover sans coffee from ill-tempered nocturnal theater is “Square Go,” Fish’s dark tale of a solo mercenary seeking, as he puts it, to fight back on his terms. A sentiment most of us have embraced at some point. At least on the inside.
For those of us possessing a conservative bent, these days it’s sorely tempting to want to go square go, a Scottish slang term for a fair fight with no outside interference. The problem is the other side has no intention of responding in like kind. Our President is making no effort to disguise his liberal theology, a wholehearted embrace of government trumping the private sector in knowing and directly determining what is best. His economic policy treats money like Jay Leno to Doritos (crunch all you want; we’ll make more) as it conjures hundreds of billions of dollars to pour into the feeding trough of assorted pet pig projects having nothing to do with genuine economic relief by stimulating business and everything to do with furthering government’s direct control over individuals via strengthening the welfare state. His definition of acceptable social mores has been demonstrated by his loosening the federal pursestrings when it comes to funding abortions overseas. All this is accompanied by the whoops of the left wing’s victory dance while they celebrate what they perceive as their triumph over the right.
It’s difficult to respond by taking the hit, yet in many respects this is what we must do for we are the main reason for our decrease even as the left luxuriates in increase. We are the ones contantly fighting each other; we are the ones who failed to move with sufficient speed or strength to weed out those who in the name of conservatism embraced corrution and greed. We are the ones seeking the grace of God’s good blessing while heralding words uttered by godless people such as Christopher Hitchens as validing our views. Can there be any cause of wondering why we are where we are?
Now is the time to re-evaluate, refresh, renew and reinvigorate. Now is the time to resist all tempation to respond in like kind to what we are hearing about ourselves from the outside, instead speaking the truth in love. We must be precise in articulating our views, but never hateful toward others who see things differently. Instead, we must always extend the open hand no matter how many times it is spat upon and slapped away. Now is the time to clean our own house before opening the door to others.
Going square go is not an option. Even on an ugly Monday morning. We must instead fight back with love.
Beautiful
Jan 25th
I can’t come up with anything to say tonight, so in lieu of a post here’s my favorite song by Marillion. It’s from their Afraid Of Sunlight record. Enjoy.
[video http://www.diecast-dude.com/gac/Marillion___Beautiful.flv nolink]
Am I Allowed To Own This?
Jan 24th
I am a geek. I admit it. I’ve been fascinated with computers since the ’70s. I remember my first (and only) computer class in high school, one featuring several terminals all hooked to the same massive machine which used real live computer tape. You know, the strips of paper with holes punched in them? Check out any movie from the ’60s or early ’70s featuring the menacing machines. You’ll see the stuff.
In the mid ’80s when personal computers entered my world, while the whole Apple mystique appealed to me I never bought one for the simple reason I couldn’t afford one of the things. An Apple II was a thousand dollars, more if you wanted, oh, a monitor. Macintosh? $2500. Ah well. TI 99/4A time, followed by a Commodore 64. Eventually, the first in a string of PC clones, thus introducing me to the wonderful world of Windows 3.1. Apple? BAH! Who needs ‘em?
A couple of decades and not a few computers later, I was forced into the land of Mac by an sordid incident at the workplace when yours truly, after overcoming the complaints of the printing company with which his employer had contracted to print its annual report and which desired nothing but Apples in its orchard, delivered said report to the printer just in time for it to be hastily committed to ink and paper for presentation to the board of directors… who were none too amused to discover the financials were in several places a single string of numbers. Given how the column this placed them in was the total amount of policies written for the year one would think they would have been delighted at this dramatic growth spurt, but no. Some people, I tell you. No pleasing.
Anyway, during the subsequent spate of accusations and recriminations I was of the firm opinion the printer was to blame (which they were), since everything was fine on my end when the files were sent their way. The printer blamed me for using (gak!) a Windows machine for all this, and worse yet Microsoft software to put together the report. My boss came down firmly of the side of… the printer. You’re getting a Mac and you’re using the software they want you to use and that’s that. So much for the customer always being right, what say?
Anyway, the Mac came. I hated it. Not so much for the computer itself, but rather having to learn the different ways of doing things that for me on a PC were second nature (“whaddyamean there’s no right button on the mouse?”). There was also the challenge of assimilating Photoshop and Illustrator and InDesign, otherwise known as Adobe Software’s obscenely overpriced cash cows that regrettably are industry standard for respectively digital imagery and graphics and desktop publishing, pretty much on my own. Actually, entirely on my own. Great fun.
That all said, as time progressed and I became at least semi-comfortable with the machine, I found myself expressing a begrudging appreciation for what Steve and Woz had wrought. Adobe, not so much; the stuff’s rather a pain to do much of anything with without jumping through multiple hoops. But as to the computer itself, it did run more efficiently than my PC at work. Considering it’s your typical company-supplied work station, i.e. a clunk bucket no matter how I utilize my full barrage of Windows tips and tricks learned over lo these many years to massage it toward something vaguely resembling usable, this isn’t saying much. Better to say it ran efficiently period. For a confirmed Microserf such as myself this was a bit of a revelation. All this time I had been under the impression the devotion to Apple was solely because it wasn’t Microsoft. Son of a gun if the fanboyz weren’t right. Not as much as they believe themselves to be, but still correct.
When the time came to contemplate buying my next computer, I seriously considered the Mac. Granted, it would be quite the investment, especially in new software. But the more I thought, the more I realized I wanted to move toward the computer that worked better. Also, should I ever desire to dabble in freelance graphics or such ‘twould be far better to attune myself with the rest of the known world. MacBook it is.
There’s one small problem, though. Besides the aforementioned obscenely priced Adobe software (and the computer ain’t cheap, either).
Am I allowed to one one?
Being the only Orange County Republican living in the San Francisco Bay Area, to say I go against the grain puts it rather mildly. Now, add to that the cult of Mac adhered to by its followers. To me it’s just a computer. A very nice one; easily the best I’ve ever owned. But still, it’s nothing more than a computer. Hardly a lifestyle.
Now, include as part of the picture how Apple is hardly shy about making its liberal political views known, devotees following suit. I strongly suspect my Palin in ‘12 persona would be about as welcome at an Apple club meeting as… oh, Sarah Palin herself, much to the Appleaholic’s loss.
But hey. I like the computer, and Apple obviously didn’t care whether the one who sent money for same adhered to its preferred views of things. Besides, the machine’s quite virus and worm and spyware resistant. Unless I wake up one morning to discover my home page has been switched to worshipobamaordie.com, I’m not all that concerned someone in Cupertino has taken umbrage to a user of one of its machines doing so in the cause of being not politically correct…
… but correct politically.
You Don’t Know How Beautiful You Are
Jan 23rd
I have a splitting headache this morning. Part of this is due to sinuses responding none too kindly to the rain currently dotting the Bay Area, micromanaging the micro-climates to where my current earthly home is doing its best impersonation of my other earthly home in Indiana. There, if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it’ll change. Here you travel five miles.
The main reason for my throbbing cranium is a lack of sleep last night courtesy of dreams that were anything but dreamy. They were haunted by the nocturnal twistings of what was already tangled: dealing with my aunt the previous evening when her dementia was running wild, paranoid utterances coming at a rapid clip even as she was forgetting what had been told her thirty seconds earlier. It’s strange how in the 3 AM playhouse items that are connected in some fashion to reality transform into bizarre worlds of the impossible while feeling perfectly normal. At least until you wake up and try to make sense of the performance’s last few flickers of light still screaming inside your head.
It’s hard watching a loved one fade away. I suspect most all reading this can nod their head in sad common knowledge, having been there and done that. It drains you, a different kind of drain than what takes place when the burdens of you living your life become oppressive. I’ve heard it said how it’s hard to raise your hands in praise when once you lower them they go into empty pockets. More directly put, when you’re unsettled financially as far as whether there’ll be a job for you tomorrow if in fact you have one today you get scared. Yes, consider the lilies of the field and all that. It’s still human to be nervous in troubled times. Sometimes you want to receive direct reassurance that it’ll be all right. When it comes to loved ones making a slow departure said reassurances, even should the person be a believer, can be scarce.
Worse yet, some believe themselves to be failures for feeling this way.
Somewhere along the line, we need to hear how the pursuit of holiness does not translate into beating ourselves up for being something other than the epitome of Supersaint Inc. We do hurt. We do bleed. We do get scared, and angry, and all the other emotions those who believe being a Christian translates into being a Spirit-filled Mr. Spock say we shouldn’t be experiencing.
We need to huddle close together and help each other as best we can, for we are all we have on this earth. We need to spend less time wearing “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose” as an umbrella and more time remembering Solomon’s words “no one can comprehend what goes on under the sun.” Perhaps then we can be the witness we are called to be, not as the all-conquering and all-knowing but as the one who’s unafraid to admit they don’t know everything but this one thing is known: Jesus is real and alive, and even though you still get smacked around love wins in the end. There is healing from the hurt. There is life beyond what we know.
Which is a good thing.
In the meanwhile, let’s admit we’re human. When we do so, we allow ourselves the privilege of interacting with other humans based on the common experiences of life. And when despite your humanity you stubbornly cling to the nail-pierced hand, reflecting both Christ’s love and pain, you immediately become far more beautiful to Him than you’ve ever believed possible.
