Welcome to New Blogistan

It 7:32, no music, just apple cider. I must admit I don’t normally drink cider but since I have been trying to cut back on caffeine I have taken to it more. I have a special name for it, I like to call it Mormon whiskey, and it seems appropriate. This entry will consist of a bunch of quick hits.

I think 2006 should be considered for all intents and purposes, the year I died, or at least nearly went insane. I haven’t gone much of anywhere or done anything, I haven’t been in church or hung out with friends or kept up with people like I should. I have pretty much stayed at home and laid low while my mind got worse and worse. Anyways, not much good seems to have come out of it, it seems like this year could have not existed and I would have been fine.

I did move back home to try and get my mind back in order. So I have gotten on new meds and back into counseling. I haven’t been entirely satisfied with the results so I am now trying this Chiropractic/Holistic medicine specialist. So far it seems pretty to help.

My last blog inspired me to start my own phone ring tone service for people into rap and hip-hop. You would send in rap, hip hop, R&B etc to play on your phone. It would be called Bling Tones. I’m sure it has already been done.

The other day I was thinking about how ironic it is that Lou Gehrig, the famous baseball player, died from a disease with the same name as himself, namely Lou Gehrig’s disease. I mean, what are the odds? I could see the probability of somebody named Malaria dying from Malaria, but something as specific as Lou Gehrig? Talk about irony.

On the religious front, it has come to my attention (via a work friend) that the Catholic church is now allowing people to pay 150$ a year to have a nun pray for their salvation. Of course the plan was originally done to allow priests to pay nuns to pray for their salvation. Call it over-indulgences.

Anyways, that’s about it for now. I’ll catch you later.

Christian Culture Strikes Again.

It is 7:30 P.M. and I am listening to a group of high school kids pretend to study in a group. No parent should let their high school kid go study with a group of friends because studying is not at all what happens. Anyways, faintly in the background Radio Head is playing so it is all good. Now let’s jump right into some fun:

Ringing in the Sheaves:

Christian ring tones, that is the subject of today’s topic. My friend Matt, sent me this link, www.ringspirations.com it is for a company that is collecting Christian rings tones for people to pay and download. The catch is they have this big mission statement and purpose and what-knot. Here is their motto: “Every time your cell phone rings, let it magnify the king,” I think it should be “Every time your cell phone rings, it makes it harder for Jeff to admit he is a Christian.” Or “every time your cell phone rings, an angel gets its wings.”

This is, of course, a revolutionary new method of evangelism that allows you to do so without having to actually love anybody. In fact, God himself has made a deal with Ringspirations to have the seven trumpets sound through your ring tones when the rapture happens.

I mean what can reach out to somebody more then 8-bit digital recordings of “Where there is faith” by 4 Him or “Friends” by Michael W. Smith? These phones also offer language filters to keep your conversations clean.

Their jingle could go something like “Hear the phones ringing their singing that you can be born again…” Or however that song goes.

Not only that, but I think there is a lot more potential for money, I mean ministry here. How about a Christian phone service as well? The service, tentatively called Nexthell offers unlimited God minutes and free calls to any Christians on the same plan. Remember, they have the largest prayer chain in the world to back it. (It’s the network} Now you can imagine and talk to an entire nation waving their hands and phones in heaven together.

Instead of Katherine Zeta Jones, they have signed Rebecca St. James to be their spokesperson. I really think I’m on to something here.

An Update from My Last Entry.

So my good friend Nicole mentioned in my last blog entry that I wrote “I poured soup into my open wound.” She thought perhaps soap would have been better. This is not the case. It was the all new “Chicken Noodle Soup for the Open Wound.” It immediately brought a soothing yet shallow and temporary relief to my aches and pains. It turns out this serious is more vast then I had known. Here are some other titles.

- Chicken Noodle Soup for the Confederates Soldiers Soul

- Chicken Noodle Soup for the Coward’s Soul

- Just Noodle Soup for the Anorexics Soul.

- Chicken Noodle Soup for the Pokemon’s Soul

- Chicken Noodle Soup for the Carpet Stain

- Chicken Noodle Soup for Hillary Clinton’s Soul–wait, never mind, she doesn’t have a soul.

Well that’s about it for now. I’ll catch you next time.

I Am Trying to Break You Heart

I went to see Wilco last Thursday night. It was, to put it simply, the best show I’ve ever seen. There are two types of bands, those that merely entertain you, and there are those who are artists, creating an auditory Van Gogh or Rembrandt (or in this case maybe Picasso?) while you watch. Wilco is the latter. They are simply brilliant in concert, and anyone who is a music fan should make it a point to see them. They are the kind of musicians who make a crusty white boy like me want to dance and sing along with everyone else.

Now it’s time to bring back a lost segment of our show. That’s right, it’s time for more…

Great Moments in OCD history:

So the other day I was helping my dad move some stuff from storage and in the process received a little sliver on my finger. Not a serious one, but the kind that’s an annoying little bugger, like a paper cut, that hurts whenever you touch something with it. This really wasn’t problematic until work the next day. Mind you I receive money from people’s purses and wallets etc and let’s face it, money can be a dirty thing. No problem I was wearing band-aids. Now through the course of mandatory hand washing at work the band-aid naturally fell off. So I am careful with it, no biggie. However, I drink a lot of coffee at work (of course) which then makes me pee like a racehorse. (Or as one employee claims…a walnut bladder) So on break I run to the men’s room. Being in a hurry I open the door, step in and reach up to grab the inside handle to pull the door close. At that point I felt a dull pain in my finger as the cut pressed against the door handle. I looked at my hand and to my horror realized there was no band-aid on my hand. Time froze, my stomach churned, panic set it. I had pressed my open wound against the nasty doorknob of the men’s restroom! (Everyone knows how dirty these doorknobs can be when people don’t wash their hands) I, for all intents and purposes, had pretty much pulled my wound open and poured a vial of virus’s into my bloodstream, mashing them in further to insure they were injected! I could feel them circulating through me already. I was surely now going to die of Ebola or something equally horrible. Fortunately, due to a past similar experience, I had a contingence plan. I ran over to the sink, poured soup into the wound and made like a surgeon, scrubbing for the very first time. Then I went to the dish sink and ran sanitizer over my hand for a minute, and finally to be sure I had ended all threat of malaria or worse, I went to grab a little alcohol scrub cleaning pack, the kind they use to clean skin before injections, and delicately cleansed my poor finger. After that I figured there was nothing else I could do. I now wait patiently to see if I die of scurvy, AIDS, the Black Death or consumption. If I die please send flowers.

From the News Desk:

In international news President Mamoud Ahmadinejad of Iran appeared before the U.N last week in support of Iran’s nuclear program stating, “Right now, who can call the United States into account? Who has the power to hold them responsible for their actions?” He then went on to add, “Unfortunately, it is to late to hold them accountable for the release of Paris Hilton’s new album.”

Well guys and gals, it’s been fun. I’ll catch you later.

Climbing Jacob's Ladder

I reluctantly walk into the building before me. I hate the place. It smells of over-sterilization and fading urine. Bodies twitch uncontrollably and mouths make incidental groans. Withered faces and hollow stares greet me. Seeing but not recognizing, watching but not comprehending. Artifacts in storage waiting to die. I am loath to go there, which I know means all the more reason I should go, to the nursing home.

She's dying. Has been for sometime, but now she really is. She has entered that last downward spiral and she knows it. We all do. I can't do much for her. Coffee and ice cream are perennial favorites, so I bring those with me. It's the least I can do. She looks like a wraith, rickety and gaunt. The image of God reduced to a fragile nothing. Flesh and blood scraped bare. I feel so helpless.

We were never very close. How could we be? But when I see her sitting there, lost in the fantasies of her mind, hands quivering from illness, pain plaguing her body, I am filled with emotion. She can't hear anymore and she can hardly talk at all. I am still reluctant to go. All I can really do is sit with her, but when I walk in and she sees me, her face lights up in a rare and genuine smile and a bit of life returns to those eyes, if only for a second, and in that moment I know I did the right thing. She is, after all, my grandmother.

More to come.

More Fun To Be Had

It is 9:05 and I am listening to Jon Mayer’s new album, and I must admit, it rocks. Now for those of you who know me, you may know that traditionally I have hated John Mayer. While in the past he has had some cute, catchy songs, for the most part I have disliked him. I disliked the fact every time he sang he sounded like he was trying to seduce a girl and I have always hated his teenybopper, sorority crowd. In fact he was on the enemy of New Prussia list. That has all changed. I guess now that he has had success he has gotten away from his normal scene. His newest album is very soulful, bluesy and mellow. It has some incredibly deep and wry lyrics and I think it is funny because this album will be completely lost on his normal fans. Anyways, I recommend it.

So I wrote a serious blog and received a lot of criticism. The truth is, maybe this worship is wrong in some regards and right in others. Just because somebody is sincere still doesn’t make something right. You can still be sincerely wrong. Just because God uses something for some good doesn’t mean it is still good. The people buying doves in the temple were there to worship the Lord, yet Jesus still kicked out the moneychangers. Christian arts need to be open to criticism. The problem is, once again, you can’t really criticize anything in Christianity. In Lisa’s response on the last entry, she claims many people’s heart are in the right place so how could this be wrong? I would ask how could we just accept anything and everything and not allow it to open to criticism? Who am I to say something is wrong but who is anyone else to say its right? Anyways to conclude this debate, it still doesn’t sit well with me or many other people and I think that means there is something behind this issue we should be aware of. I do think we need to redefine worship however.

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In other news:

Scientist Discover Wild Horses Really Could Drag Mick Jagger Away.

It has long been believed that the Rolling Stones song Wild Horses was true. The famous song states “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” and has been considered by many to be scientifically true. That belief came crashing down last Thursday in a series of scientific experiments in which an aging Mick Jagger was hitched to several teams of wild horses and told to hold to a mannequin while they attempted to pull him away. The first team of four horses quickly pulled Mr. Jagger through the mud and dirt with no problem as did the second team. Then teams of two horses also had success. Finally only one wild horse was hitched to Mick Jagger and it too was able to drag him away, disproving the song all together. Not only that but to add even more humiliation an old gray mare was then tested and it pulled him away as well. In a final disgrace of the scientific method, a Shetland pony was tied to Mick Jagger and it to quickly overpowered him.

“Well, not so much now that I am 62,” said Mr. Jagger in response, “but when I was younger there was no way in hell they could drag me away.”

The claim is, unfortunately, unverifiable. In further testing on Mr. Jagger it was proven that the song “A Golden Retriever Couldn’t Drag Me Away" would be much more accurate.

Well folks that’s about it. Later.