An atheist is putting his church attendance up for bid on ebay. He promises to go to church for one day for each $10 of the winning bid.

This brings up many intriguing possibilities. For example, how much would you pay to see Andy Whitman sing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" at a karaoke bar or see Jeff Cannell ride a unicycle down the aisle at church?

Blame Beethoven

Mike wanted to play at Panda this Saturday. This was his week for chemo. Every 3 weeks he goes into the hospital on Tuesday and, if he's lucky, gets released on Friday night or Saturday morning. I've been letting him play at Panda as much as he wants- given the circumstances, it seems like the only decent thing to do. And he really wanted to play yesterday, even though he knew he would have just gotten out of the hospital.

But he didn't. Unfortunately he just wasn't up to it.

So he missed the opportunity to play Chinese New Year. I have to admit that this holiday caught me totally by surprise. I walked in at 5 minutes till 7 and the place was just packed. And, annoyingly, my last sub walked off with all my music just before he got canned. And I don't have his current phone number. I don't miss any of the music except for a bunch of Chinese songs that the previous owner copied for me. I get a kick out of playing them, because invariably when I launch into one of these tunes, some Chinese person will strain their neck verifying that the pianist is, indeed, not a Chinese person. The manager of the restaurant once told me I'd have no trouble learning to speak Chinese because I could play Chinese music so well. Anyway I still have a few Chinese songs memorized so I wasn't caught with my pants completely down. I still hesitate to play them because once a Chinese woman said to me, "Oh I recognize that tune! What's the name of it?" Of course, I had no idea because the titles and lyrics of all my Chinese music was written in Chinese. I showed her the music and she figured it out, because, unlike me, she can read the language.

But if anybody were to ask me now, I couldn't help them.

At any rate, I don't like to read written music in the restaurant. One thing I found out very quickly is that in the popular mind, if you read music it means that you are not a real musician. Real musicians play by ear and only by ear. I have a cousin who is a very fine professional country bass player. She once told my father that yes, she reads music just fine and no, she will never ever tell anyone in her professional circles. It would ruin her career. And I experience that same prejudice at Panda. A sure fire way to cut your tips by more than half is to put written music up in front of you.

I blame Beethoven for this gap between the readers and play-by-ear crowd. Beethoven was the first composer who insisted that his music be played exactly as written. And he was such a damn good composer that he influenced our beliefs about certain things up until the present day.

Up until Beethoven's time, it was normal for musical training to include something like what we would call improvisation. Mozart said that playing music exactly as written was "tasteless," and expected that his students would add a little bit of themselves into the music. All this disappeared in the 19th century with the massive influence of Beethoven. I'm happy to hear, though, that classical piano instruction is starting to include some instruction on the "lost" art of playing by ear.

Too late for me. Of course, I can and do play by ear- quite easily. And I read- with some difficulty. But it's not supposed to be this way. They were never supposed to be two different disciplines, but something integrated together in a natural way.

So I'm kinda happy that Mozart's birthday seems to be more and more celebrated while Beethoven's usually passes with hardly a mention.

But I suspect that it has more to do with timing than musical sensibility. Mozart after all only has to compete with Chinese New Year and MLK day. Beethoven's birthday falls a few scant days before December 25.

Dreamy Music

First of all, I do not think that John McCollum is a smartass, nor an ass of any kind. He will, like any of us, make the occasional smartass comment. Even if he makes twice as many smartass comments as a given person, this is only because he talks at least twice as much as a given person.

I deeply regret any pain I may have caused John or his immediate family by any of my own smartass comments that may have been misconstrued to mean that I think John is a smartass.

So today I was wondering why there are still places in the world where they drive on the left side of the road. People tell me that the British are deeply offended when told that they drive on the wrong side of the road. And yet it is abundantly clear that it is just that: wrong! The vast majority of people are left-eye dominant, thus ongoing traffic should be on the left, not the right. How hard is it to understand that? I wonder why it is that these countries ever started such an absurd practice. Are the kings of England genetically predisposed to be right-eye dominant?

Speaking of eyes, I keep a close eye on my dreams because they often tell me something significant about what is going on in what I like to think of as my mind. It distresses me sometimes that I don't dream about God very much. And I wish that I dreamt about my wife more. I ease my pain by considering that perhaps my dreaming is mostly about situations that I find threatening. For example- I dream about my work a lot. Perhaps this is because I don't want to screw things up there and get fired. So this (I tell myself) is my mind dealing with a potentially hazardous situation. This being the case- maybe my not dreaming about God very much only means that I don't find God threatening.

It also bothers me that I dream about work a lot more than I dream about music. So I was overjoyed that I've dreamed about music two nights in a row. I can't remember the dream I had last night, but I do remember the one from the night before. I dreamed I was an OSU piano professor. In this dream (as in life) I was ridiculously underqualified to be a piano professor, but I seemed to be comfortable with this fact. The students in my dream were all graduate students and they also were aware that they were way better pianists than I was- but they were only mildly annoyed with this fact.

After having conferences with two students, a young man with blonde hair came it. I knew right away that it was Claude Debussy in his youth. Like the first two students, he was rather annoyed with having to waste his time with a professor who couldn't possibly advance his piano skills. I asked him what he was working on, and he showed me an assignment another professor had given him. He pulled some sheet music out of his briefcase and it was a piece by Schumann that I didn't recognize (probably because it doesn't actually exist.) Debussy was telling me that his assignment was to write an ostinato part for the left hand at the same time I was realizing that even though the piece looked complex, it could all be played with the right hand. Debussy looked bored as I asked him how fast this piece was supposed to go. He answered, "I don't know" and the tone of his voice said clearly he didn't care either. Then I noticed that there was a metronome marking of 72 on the piece and suggested that he could find some inspiration from some of the romantic composers. He then pulled the Bb prelude by Chopin out of his briefcase and said, "Like this piece? It's really bad music."

Then I woke up and found myself feeling annoyed. I really like the Bb prelude.

When Play becomes Work

Nancy thinks I should write more about my personal experiences on my blog than philosophical stuff- and she is usually right. And the fact is that I make blogging far more work than it needs to be. Blogging should be fun. Work should be work, and play should be play- right? Right.

It is my natural tendency to make far more of my hobbies than is necessary. Take my new fascination with vinyl, for example. Of course, the project of getting the turntable has been far more work than I ever expected that it would be. But that is to be taken for granted. I read somewhere that the time it actually takes to do something is typically 2 1/2 times the time one estimates that it will take. Although I doubt that this has actually been the subject of a scientific study, it sounds about right to me.

It is possible to spend an endless amount of time and money on turntable stuff. People that do so as a hobby are called "vinyl junkies." But if you make money at catering to such people, you are a respectable professional.

How many of us have professions that are really not "necessary," but support people at play? They say that primitive people have far more leisure time than we do. But of course that is just a question of how you define "leisure." What has really happened is that most of what we consider work is really play in God's eyes.

This, in and of itself is not a bad thing. It can become bad when our work (or our play) become our God.

My brother Andy once told me that whatever we run to when we are feeling depressed is our God. While I don't consider this an absolute litmus test, I do think that there is a lot of truth to it.

The term "vinyl junkie" is pretty interesting. If I'm remembering my history correctly, the term "junkie" originally meant someone hooked on heroine- "junk" being a slang term for heroine. The "junkie" uses "junk" to fill a void in his/her life; or dull a hurt. But the "junk" ends up being the very thing that destroys the soul of the "junkie." This is an important thing for vinyl junkies (and other kinds of junkies) to remember.

(end philosophical portion of blog---- begin personal portion of blog):

After putting together various bits of this and that, I finally got a turntable set up that doesn't have a speed problem. But it doesn't take much listening to realize that something is not right. So I decide that maybe the cord I have going to the amplifier is too long. (I'm using a 15' extention on the existing phono lines from the turntable, which in themselves are at least 6'). So I fix this- and notice no change.

So now I decide that maybe I need a new phono preamp. I am using the one that comes with my cheapo Radio Shack receiver. The "junkie" part of my personality tells me that I need something pretty special in order to be sure that my records sound really great. So I hop on the magic internet to shop and come to the conclusion that I can make do with a certain preamp from needledoctor.com that costs $120. Since I've have to have this particular preamp, I might as well order a better phono cartridge from the same site, because I know from experience that a small cartridge upgrade can make a huge difference in the sound. I decide I can settle for this certain $110 cartridge, although I really want a certain $180 cartridge.

I spend way too much time being pissed off about the fact that I have to spend $230 at minimum to accomplish what I need to do before I realize I'm being ridiculous. So on the way home yesterday I stop by The Audiowright Shop and get a preamp that works just fine for $30.

Nuttin' to say- I'm bloggin' anyway

Nancy and I had a great time yesterday, but she pretty much covered it in her blog. I felt very much at peace yesterday, which is unusual for me. I enjoyed church very much. Its been quite a while it seems since I've heard Michael Gallaugher worship and Jeff Cannell preachment together in the same service. I am somewhat disthressed that Dan's blog isn't coming up, but on the other hand I'm happy 'cause I fixed the frett buzz on my bass. The nice thing about pianos is that you don't have to maintain them. (Actually they do have to be maintained, but you don't feel like a moron hiring someone to do it for you. There are actually people that pay others to change the strings on their guitars and do other such maintenance, but such people are alway looked at askance in music shops.)

For years now I've been saying that i'm going to buy a guitar. I have one, actually- it's a Yamaha APX- the kind with the thin plastic body. It doesn't sound so bad if you plug it into a sound system, but it isn't very satisfying to play in the open air. As Nancy and I were walking to Lost Weekend last night, I noticed that a new guitar shop is coming to High St.- Swamp Dog's Music: guitars, banjos, harps, and strings (that's what the sign says.)

So I'll definitely have to check it out when it opens.

2 prayers

how i would like to pray:

"Creator of us all who sits in the highest place- may all revere and honor your name and reputation. We look forward to the doing away of all earthly powers and dominions (whether political, religious, or economic) and their replacement with Your sovereign rule. We ask for just enough food to feed us all in the next 24 hour period. And forgive all of us for the times we do violence to the person and rights of others, because we forgive all who do violence against any one of us or all of us. Please don't give me riches or power lest I become obliged to worship the evil one."

how i usually pray:

"My father who art in heaven, hallowed be our name and reputation (yours and mine.) My will is so in tune with your will that I know that my will is being done in heaven. It only remains that you convince the morons on earth that disagree with me to change their minds or destroy them for your kingdom to be fully established. Give me in the next 24 hours far more than I could possibly consume in a day, or even a year. And should this process cause me to deliberately or inadvertently violate the person or rights of anybody (or everybody) please overlook this- despite the fact that I squeal like a stuck pig if the least of my rights are violated. Don't let me get caught doing anything bad- but if I do, deliver me from any accountability for my actions."

tUrntAble aNgsT

So quite a while ago I got this Technics SL-23 turntable from eBay. It didn't take too long to figure out that it was "challenged" i.e. it had a slight speed problem. This is one of those problems that isn't too bad at first, but as soon as you know that it is there it becomes more and more infuriating. I ended up chucking the thing in the trash (after retaining the cartridge), but before I did, I had aquired a fair number of albums. This was infuriating, of course: to have these albums sitting around but no way to play them. Even worse, I was prohibited from buying a new turntable- it was too close to Christmas and my wife told me, "You've got to stop buying stuff- someone might want to get you that for Christmas!"

So I patiently wait until after Christmas. No turntable is forthcoming. So I go on the hunt. A wonderful man who is an eBay seller and who lives on my route offered a turntable he had picked up over the summer but had yet to sell. He was going to give me a double discount- both the "mailman" and the "fred" discount (our first names are both fred.) I eagerly get the thing home and hook it up. I find this turntable also to be challenged. Asking the folks on the turntable forum I'm on brings forth the info that it is probably not worth fixing up.

So, after checking with Kyle at Lost Weekend, Needle in a Haystack, and Stereo Lab repair (none of whom had any turntables at that time), I decide I'm stuck with getting one from the antique store on the corner of W Como and High. They always have a few turntables in there- but I've never been very impressed with the price/quality ratio of their turntable inventory. After doing some poking and prodding on the internet I decide the best buy would be the one with the Ortofon cartridge.

So yesterday I go back there and try to fire it up. Only it doesn't turn. For those that don't know- that's a bad sign for a turntable.

So I decide I will take a chance and plunk down 20 bucks for a turntable marked, "works- as is." Seems like a contradiction to me. But the thing turns when plugged in. I decide that the reason that it is "as is" is because it's missing a needle. This isn't a big problem, because I've wisely retained the cartridge from the turntable I tossed in the trash.

But when I get the thing home, I find that the counterweight on the tonearm has broken off. This, of course, is extremely annoying, but fortunately the counterweight was still there with the turntable. I still haven't figured out how I managed to buy this thing and not notice such an obvious flaw.

After fussing and fuming for a few minutes, it occurs to me that it might not be too difficult to fix. Obviously superglue isn't going to work, but something more brutal might. So I take a screw and screw it into the end of the tonearm, cut the end off the screw, and screw the counterweight into this. It's not even horribly crooked. If I hadn't told you I did this, you might not even notice.

So that evening my wife asks me, "So, how did you fix it?" I proudly tell her. And she responds, "Hmmmmm... Why can't you be so creative and persistent in fixing stuff up around the house?"

There is no good answer to this question.

The Patriot's Dream

The songs of the wars are as old as the hills
They cling like the rust on the cold steel that kills
They tell of the boys who went down to the tracks
In a patriotic manner with the cold steel on their backs

The patriot's dream is as old as the sky
It lives in the lust of a cold callous lie
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills

The train pulled away on that glorious night
The drummer got drunk and the bugler got tight
While the boys in the back sang a song of good cheer
While riding off to glory in the spring of their years

The patriot's dream still lives on today
It makes mothers weep and it makes lovers pray
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills

Well there was a sad, sad lady, weeping all night long
She received a sad, sad message from a voice on the telephone
Her children were all sleeping as she waited out the dawn
How could she tell those children that their father was shot down
So she took them to her side that day and she told them one by one
Your father was a good man ten thousand miles from home
He tried to do his duty and it took him straight to hell
He might be in some prison, I hope he's treated well

Well there was a young girl watching in the early afternoon
When she heard the name of someone who said he'd be home soon
And she wondered how they got him, but the papers did not tell
There would be no sweet reunion, there would be no wedding bells
So she took herself into her room and she turned the bed sheets down
And she cried into the silken folds of her new wedding gown
He tried to do his duty and it took him straight to hell
He might be in some prison, I hope he's treated well

Well there was an old man sitting in his mansion on the hill
And he thought of his good fortune and the time he'd yet to kill
Well he called to his wife one day, "Come sit with me awhile"
Then turning toward the sunset, he smiled a wicked smile
"Well I'd like to say I'm sorry for the sinful deeds I've done
But let me first remind you, I'm a patriotic son"
They tried to do their duty and it took 'em straight to hell
They might be in some prison, I hope they're treated well

The songs of the wars are as old as the hills
They cling like the rust on the cold steel that kills
They tell of the boys who went down to the tracks
In a patriotic manner with the cold steel on their backs

The train pulled away on that glorious night
The drummer got drunk and the bugler got tight
While the boys in the back sang a song of good cheer
While riding off to glory in the spring of their years

The patriot's dream still lives on today
It makes mothers weep and it makes lovers pray
Let's drink to the men who got caught by the chill
Of the patriotic fever and the cold steel that kills

Gordon Lightfoot, 1972

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

James W. Johnson 1899

Lord Mammon

A rich man's land was very productive. He thought to himself, "What should I do, since I don't have anywhere to store my crops? I will do this," he said. "I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and my goods there. Then I'll say to myself, 'You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.' " But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared--whose will they be?" That's how it is with the one who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

I have been reading with interest what others have said about Mammon in the light of Rom's sermon (which I unfortunately missed and also unfortunately seems to not have been recorded). My take on Mammon is that we always assume that He is our servant. We easily assume that we can tell Him what He will do for us. In the case of the parable of the rich fool, the fool assumes that Mammon will make his life easy for many years.

Has anyone else found what I have, that we often end up serving the things that we own more than they serve us?

What is most chilling about this parable is that a more literal translation of the Greek is, "You fool! This very night your soul they demand of you. Then these things... whose will they be?" In other words, it is the things that have become the Master of this man's soul, although he imagined that he was their master.

I wish that I had read Walter Wink's "Naming the Powers" before this discussion. It seems reasonable to assume that Mammon is one of "the powers," the fallen demonic entities which imagine they now rule the world with Satan as their head.

What is significant about this is Jesus' words: "Don't rejoice that the demons are subject to you." Even if we can reach the state where we are no longer serving Mammon- this is not the reason we should be rejoicing. Instead, we should rejoice in that our names are written in the book of life (to borrow yet another phrase from Jesus.)

Anyone interested in learning more about Mammon can read Ellul's Money and Power, courtesy of the efforts of Jesus Radicals.

Damn Sodomites!

This is the sin of Sodom; she and her suburbs had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help or encourage the poor and needy. They were arrogant and this was abominable in God's eyes.

Ezekiel 16:49

Friends

So, I'm getting re-excited about my blog site again, thanks to my excursion into GoDaddy land and back to hypermart. GoDaddy hosting really sucked bigtime and made my current provider look not-so-bad. I'm not-so-stupid as to think that they are the best out there, but given the fact that I have been with them for all these years (and some people actually link to this site) I'll keep them around for a little while longer.

Thanks to a google search, I got some good tips for keeping comment spam off of this site- the main one being just keeping it from being indexed by google and other major search engines via the robots.txt file. If the spammers don't know the site is here, they ain't gonna spam it- or so the theory goes. We'll see.

That of course means that "the world" won't know about my site. Is this a bad thing? Can you imagine- relying only on word of mouth to advertise a website? :O

Bottom line: "only" my friends will know I'm here. :D

I'm in the process of updating my list of friends on the left side of my page. This is not an exhaustive list! If I left you out, that does not mean that you are not my friend! Unfortunately I had to delete Joy Coleman from the list. Not because she is not my friend, but because she deleted her blog page. A sad thing, really, but I understand.

Livin' the Mammon lifestyle

so, one of the guilty pleasures I have that didn't quite make my top 5 is reading Andy Whitman's blog. The pleasure part is obvious, but the guilty part is that everytime I read it I think, "Damn, I wish I could write like that guy!" He did a great post on mammon, possibly because he heard the great sermon last Sunday which I missed because I was lying in bed because I worked both Friday and Saturday at my second job getting extra mammon for stuff I covet. But anyway...

Coincindentally I'd been thinking about the mammon thing recently anyway- especially how it is a theme in the book of Revelation. Not only in the buying and selling mark of the beast thingie but also in the "all the merchants of the earth will mourn when they see the smoke of her burning" thingie. Wow. All the merchants.

I had to leave the church I went to before central vineyard because I just couldn't stand the way they talked about money. I particularly remember a sermon where the pastor said that God had a special heart for businessmen because they had a special talent for making money for the kingdom. (Takes a lot of money to run a kingdom I guess- even a heavenly one.) He went on to say that Jesus chose Peter because Peter was such a great businessman- owning his own fishing business and all.

Call me crazy, but I think this is all wrong.

In the premillenialist system, we don't have to worry about the whole Revelation/mark of the beast "buying and selling" issue, because that is up in the future somewhere. At the point that somebody tells us we gotta put a barcode on our foreheads, we should worry. Up until then, we should have at it!

I gave up premillenialism a long time ago, but it does have some parallels to what I believe. In premillenialism, during the tribulation:

1. The political system will be totally corrupt and Satanic
2. The religious system will be totally corrupt and Satanic
3. The economic system will be totally corrupt and Satanic

Therefore (they say), during this future period Christians will have, indeed must have, nothing to do with the dominant political, religious, and economic systems. Nobody knows for sure exactly how this is possible.

The problem with this whole theory is that the Revelation beast is based heavily upon the 4 beasts in the book of Daniel. If you look at the hero of the book of Daniel (who, coincidentally, is named Daniel) you find that not only does he participate in the political system, he is a high ranking official- and all during the reign of the prototypical beast of his time (Babylon).

This complicates things.

But if we believe that the Revelation beast is reigning now (and I think it is) we can take heart in Daniel's example, as well as learn a few things from him. Although he was forced to live under the reign of a beast, he was able to do so and make an impact on people. Sure, there was the whole fiery furnace and lion's den thing, but this kind of thing is to be expected under the reign of a beast if one is living righteously.

false alarm

ok so I'm back to using this page as my blog. GoDaddy just ain't working out and I don't expect that it will- although I will futilely try to make it work. I did a google search and got some tips as to how to minimize comment spam in Greymatter (the blogging program that I use.) There's even one guy that hacked into Greymatter and got it to use those cute little anti-spam images of words and numbers- and I suspect that the Greymatter people will likely incorporate something like that into their software soon.

tryin' something new

OK so for now I'm trying out a new website host and my blog will be here. Here will likely change as I try out new blogging software and the like. Hopefully this will work out and this blog will get deleted, but don't change links just yet!

duuuuhhhh!

So yesterday I saw this headline: Ovarian cancer treatment may extend lives

This is news? :ffs:

Amazingly, if you have ovarian cancer, you should have it treated.

Shoulda made a resolution

So I am no longer allowed to drink wine after 7:00 P. M.

I will explain further when the headache goes away.

Could be...

From Revelation 13:

He deceives those who live on the earth... telling those who live on the earth to make an image... He was permitted to give a spirit to the image... so that the image could both speak and cause whoever would not worship the image to be killed.

Hey, is it my imagination, or does this sound like television? :)

I'll take "life" for $1000, Alex.

So while I was at the bank today cashing a check I saw a sign that said, "Annuities are the answer."

Which led me to wonder: what's the question?

happy new year!

What if Socrates had chewed tobacco? Or what if a martini was mostly ginger ale?

Some see the world the way it is and ask "why?" But I imagine things that never were and ask "why not?"