I'm Colored (Sort of a Atomic Tangerine)

Just the Usual

My dog died today. Yeah, boy, was it depressing. I had to dig a hole to put him in. Dirt is pretty sad stuff. It smells funny and makes my clothes dirty. I don't even know how I can go on being so sad and depressing all the time. *sigh.*

Prisoner of Love

My friend keeps her boyfriend in a pink box. I've seen it. Its a small box, it fits right in the palm of her hand. I don't know how she got him to fit in such a small space, but she is just that kind of girl. I think he must have done something very wrong to end up in the small pink package, but he sounds happy. I got to see his face once. She showed me, he was peering out of the small window in the box, smiling back at me. Then he turned off the light and I couldn't see him anymore. My friend seems happiest when she is with her pink box. She holds it, pressed to her ear. She has a big smile and giggles sometimes, with a little snort at the end, if its really funny. The boyfriend must also have a radio in there, because sometimes he plays music, and sometimes he must have company, because he isn't the only voice I've heard from the box. But most of the time, its just him and her. And sometimes he wants to talk to her so bad, he shakes that box so hard it makes the whole table vibrate. But sometimes I see my friend and she has tears in her eyes. I think its because she wants her boyfriend to get out of the box, but neither of them remember how he got in, in the first place. But I know they'll remember one day, and they'll be able to hold hands again or kiss, and she'll never need that pink box ever again. Lets hope so.

For Patric

This is a public apology.
Patric, I'm sorry for my actions, they were acted out in arrogance and ignorance. I can only state that they were drawn from a heart that genuinely cares about you and seeks your well being. You know where I draw my world view and how this puts us at odds. I can't change this, only attempt to explain its relevancy and necessity. That is what I attempted to do with our last talk. I'm not sure, actually I am, this is not how you took it. I love you, just because, though it may seem otherwise. I can only attempt to live out that point. I'm going to give you your space and if you decide I deserve another chance, I wait.

Please, everybody else, don't leave comments. Thank you.

Still Hungry?

A quick addendum to my yesterday. I didn't really say anything about the part that stated, oh, this is back to Hebrews 9:14, if you'll turn with me in your bibles, "...who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God...". I think its crazy, most of us recognize the work done by Christ, but most of us never knew that it was done through the Holy Spirit. What does that mean to me? If Christ, who was perfect and could do whatever he wanted, because he was God, had to offer himself to God through the Spirit, or didn't have to, but it was orchestrated that way. It infers a model to how we are to offer ourselves to God. Now, how to make this applicable? I don't know, its just a thought, probably a "duh" to most of you. I like looking for the secrets. The Bible says there are mysteries of God and that they are revealed to us through the Holy Spirit, which searches the mind of God. That's mad cool! I want that. So this Holy Spirit Dude has definitely got something to offer. In other verses it mentions his teaching abilities and his ability to bring comfort. So how do we interact with him? I guess I need to find an answer.

Its What I Know

I have nothing to really report so I'm just going to riff off of some random idea.
I've decided to form my reality to perceive the literal more metaphorically, and the metaphorically more literal. I hope I don't lose my mind in the process, but hey there is always the off chance I'll find it again. Anyways back to the point, let me illustrate. In a literal sense, America is very uncaring of its youth. Now to replace with a metaphor. America feeds her children to the flames to fuel the machine. I'm drawing this from the biblical accounts of the child sacrifices to Moloch. I'm intending later to work it into a project w/ this concept forming the basis for one of the planets within the entire theme. The machine is power and success, affluence. We do it in the name of the future and prosperity, much like the people in the Bible did, to bring the rains, supposedly. I find it so ironic we destroy our future to secure it, and its becoming painstakingly obvious to even non-believers. Though the solution is much debated. Broken homes, drug use, absent fathers, and drug use to enforce obedience and complacency, are the charred remains of our children. These are the steps we've taken to provide luxury and prosperity to ourselves. We live in pleasure at the cost of our children. It is just that simple. Now to take a metaphor and bring it to a more literal sense. I find myself struggling in some stronghold that will remain unspoken, its nothing new, its just gained new urgency in the passing days. While seeking answers to overcome this stranglehold, I stumbled across these words. "
They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony..."
Revelations 12:11a
The blood is a recurring theme in my faith, but one that is not very well understood by me. I decided that a key to my victory was in this blood. But everything I come across seem to just be some hocus pocus, voodoo who do something no one can explain. So I don't like not understanding things and set my mind to the task. Blood in the Bible is atonement, which is a big word for amends. It makes up for, easy enough. So Christ blood makes up for our sins. End of story, right? It is, in a sense, the work of the blood is done, but its got to sink into our brains. We have to grasp that its done. This is broke down in Hebrews 9:14, which goes something like this:
"...the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, [will] cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death/useless rituals, so that we may serve the living God!"
So more victory, good stuff. Christ's blood is God's forgiveness and as we grasp this, grasp this amend that has been made it will wash our brains from hating God and following stupid rules to actually doing what God wants. Forgiving is a huge part of God's economy, so much so that he states that if we don't forgive others, God won't forgive us. But don't fear, Christ's blood is at work cleanse our minds, helping us to give up those lethal acts. So I guess to wrap it up, my goal is to seek a better understanding of God's forgiveness and loyal love, that is what being cleansed is all about. Its pretty easy, every sin and shortcoming I have creates an opportunity for God to pour in His forgiveness and love, and every Scripture helps to deepen the depth of those moments. I'm sorry Patric for talking religion, its just where I'm at today. To everybody else. Please feel free to criticize me and to raise questions about my understanding and interpretation. I want to know the whole Truth and not just my understanding of it. I hope this leaves you encouraged and maybe a touch refreshed, but mostly I pray it creates a curiosity towards God.

I AM, the Church

I would like everybody to check these out and tell me what you think.
I haven't spent a lot of time looking in to it but what I saw was very moving.
smallfire.org
alternativeworship.org
emergingchurch.info

What I Think is the End of My Dream (I Don't Know, I Was Awakened by the Alarm Clock

Tim cried himself dry. He went hoarse. The only sound he could make were small grunts and sighs, sounds that didn't require the use of badly damaged vocal chords. He writhed in his small room, like an animal in a snare, his caught leg half chewed through, trapped by his own thoughtlessness. He was grieving. The change was dramatic, the fire had been extinguished. His eyes had become milky and carried a hundred yard stare. His once rigid frame was now made more gaunt by drooping shoulders, and a deliberate walk replaced by a somnambulistic shuffle. He was placed on suicide watch and beside the omnipresent video surveillance, a guard checked in on him every hour. He didn't move from his bed, but instead turned, one side, the other, back and forth, for three days, then he stopped. He rose uncertainly from the bed took two stumbling strides and fell prostrate on the floor. He clenched his hands white above his head and tucked his knees up to his chest, face down, buried in the floor. He began to rock, forwards and backward to a steady inaudible rhythm. The guard decided to make his round a little early, goaded by his growing curiosity. He strode his confident cop walk to the door of the cell and opened the small slot where the food tray was usually passed through. A small hoarse croak grated its way through the slit.
"I'm sorry, Lord, so sorry, forgive me, you will always forgive me"
The officer felt the blood and bile rise in his throat, a well of repressed hatred and disgust. All these criminals, this scum crying out for forgiveness for their atrocities. The door of the cell flew open. Tim raised his head from the floor a moment before it was driven back by the force of the officer's immaculate, black polished boot.
"There is no forgiveness for you, for any of you, you sick fuck! You killed a whole family, beautiful little girls, beautiful wife! There is no forgiveness for that!"
The boot continued to fall without remorse, until there was little left that could even be recognized as human. The whole of Tim's face was a mess, destroyed by the force of the officer's hatred. The only thing recognizable was his mouth, amidst the broken teeth and blood was his dieing expression, it was his giant smile.

A Wrinkle in Time

Wrinkles are a record of life. They are a timeline of events and how they were taken. The tears run rivulets down the cheeks. The eyes draw lines out like a seed giving bloom into branches creating a permanent expression. They match the lines around the mouth, a dead give away pressed into a permanent smile or scowl. The forehead folds into a look of deep thought, a look of wisdom. I find it almost unfathomable why you would want to erase them, to return it to its youthful inexperience. The shallow and vain are ashamed they have lived so much life and yet are so little the better for it. Their faux-youth is a disguise, it is an attempt to reconcile their mind to their appearance, to create an excuse for their immaturity. True wisdom and perspective wear wrinkles as an honor and a witness to lessons learned and character forged in the kiln of adversity. Hardship is worn like a scar across the chest of a heart patient, a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome and thrive. The rich and vain erase this record, ashamed that they have no right to wear such a badge.

Joy to the World

So I officially have one week of school and its maddening. I swore I would never get sucked into the maelstrom of finals, but when I caught myself pondering the best spot to jump from our school's clocktower, I knew I had lost. So you might be happy to hear I didn't carry out my desperate plot and instead spent a little extra time in shop attempting to catch up. I am now in "the know." Through the grace of God (emphasis on that part), I have lived through yet another crisis, I feel ready to face the world, or at least the holiday season. They call it Christmas break, its anything but. They just had to lighten the load somehow and you can't stop a freight train like Christmas, so in a last ditch effort to reduce the pressure, all other systems are put on hold and the power is rerouted to the Christmas Drive. This lets the holiday gain a fevered pitch that accumulates into a one day orgy of covetousness, gluttony, and greed. This is the best way we could think to celebrate the birth of the Messiah. I love it, and you should love it to.

Short Christmas Rant

I feel like I should talk about something Christmas-y and festive. I've already being overexposed to bad Christmas song remakes and I had to go on a Christmas light run to WalMart so my friends could destroy any appeal their room had. So maybe its a better idea to keep my "bah, humbug" to myself. There is probably somebody out there who still in love with the holiday season. Good for you. Tis the season.

What Do You Think of That?

This is a question for the readers. Do you find you have to disagree w/ almost everything your mind says? You know all them Pentecostal told me, when I pray I need to also listen to God. I don't buy it. God is not the voice in my head, and now I feel a whole lot better. That voice is out to kill me. It makes a whole lot more sense that God be on the outside. It is another pentecostal lie that says that Jesus lives in your heart. The Word is in our heart, which is Christ in a way, in the way of his mindset, not his actual being. Their is no person on the inside you should be listening to. Due to my previous history of drug use, a gate has been opened and not a ot of good things got through. I sincerely believe that drugs open the mind to the spiritual world, but both sides get in. If you don't believe me, go find some truly burnt out hippies. They have some pretty strange ideas and some satranger behavior. Where do you think that influence comes from? I watched a program on the CNN Book Channel or whatever its called. The man that was speaking had just had a book published called "The God Delusion". He blames the idea of God for a lot of things. I watched his program and find myself disappointed. All his arguments were at best trite. I realized that in myself I'm looking for something, some solid argument, so I could be, "Aha God, yeah he showed you." I don't want to believe in God. I don't want to believe this is the Truth. But nothing else even comes close. In this I realized that God is terrible. This was so refreshing! I don't meant the terrible that is more closely related to awful. I mean the terrible that means great w/ a touch of exciting terror and awe. The kind of terrible that is so jealous and wild that He will destroy your life, your world, just to force you to your knees, to force you to His Breast. A big and determined lover that pursues harder than any Jason or Freddy Krueger, and for some reason that makes me happy.

How Bored Must the Readers Be?

See the whole point I was trying to make yesterday was..... oh, nevermind. You win. I will continue to try to place a few words every few days to appease the masses. I attend an adult youth group. Its the best way to describe it. Those who haven't caved yet to the Sunday Morning Christianity can come Tuesday nights to a relaxed informal atmosphere w/ coffee and movie clips. Its filled with mostly twenty-somethings and its jut as common to hear Stevie Wonder as Mercyme, or as I call them Mercyplz, as in please turn them off. So we just started a teaching on how the world views the church, good, bad, and funny. It is pretty eye opening and I feels like this could lead to something deeper. Last week we looked at the dangers of conforming vs. isolating, and tried to figure out how to balance in the middle. This is the exact sort of struggle I'm having right now in my own life. Where is the line? The best I can say right now is it moves, so follow the Spirit and you'll always be on the right side.

Vacancy

Somewhere in the last two months I climbed back in my head. I was out for about two years, I learned alot, but now I need to mull it over, "overanalyze" it, and I might come out again after that. I sit down to think my great prophetic insights and find I have none. Therefore I feel to write anything is to simply waste your time. My life is not exciting enough to write about, I don't pay close enough attention to the outside world to find anything interesting there, and as aforementioned the brain is on drain. I can make you a pretty nice dovetail joint though. I'm really still struggling to define myself in my new enviroment, I find myself drawn to some of my old habits (cigarettes and video games) and still trying to break the grip of others. I also find myself drifting from others, writing. I finding myself with a stronger desire for God and desire to find something to do for Him, otherwise just treading water, and learning about varnish.

Somewhere in Space

Sorry everybody, I know I just sort of dropped off the face of the earth. My computer has an unregistered version of Windows, so I can't log in, and nothing worth writing about has happened, and I'm just really going through a dark time. I could use prayer, if you do that sort of thing, just that my faith gets strengthened. How is that for vague? Otherwise call me and we can talk about it, maybe. I'm doing better and plan on improving more, its just an uphill battle and I was feeling pretty alone for awhile. Things are getting better, or getting worse before they get better, but they always get better.

Hey, That's My Answer

An unidentified teen was expelled from Thaddeus Stevens today on account of plagiarism. It appeared the student had been taking very detailed notes from the teacher's lectures and from the textbooks provided for the class. The teen had then been studying these notes and using them to answer test and homework assignments, without giving the proper citations to the source material. The student was quoted as saying, "I guess I saw everybody else doing it and thought it was okay. The people who didn't take notes really seemed to be struggling, and I knew I didn't want to be one of them. This was the only thing I could think to do." It would be comforting if this were an isolated case, but across the United States and even in other countries, a pandemic of note taking is undermining the educational system. Many teachers are fighting back and are requiring a no pencil policy in their classrooms. But even here the students have begun to use cell phones to dictate key points.
"I don't want students thinking they can use the information I provide to answer complicated questions. I worked hard to arrive at these conclusions and I don't appreciate some slacker coming along, copying the information, and thinking he has the right to use it." This quote of a local High School Math teacher is the common sentiment felt around the world, a world that is tired of being taken for granted for being smart.

Breaking News

There was an assasination attempt on our president today, our student president. She had become very vocal recently about affirmitaive action in grades. Under the new initiative a certain percentage of the A's would have to be allocated to ethnic minorities. This initiative faced strong opposition from the Math Club lobbies and the Honor Society lobby. This tension exploded today, when the president, en route between addressing the student congress and a luncheon with the ambassador to UPenn, was gunned down by an unknown assailant. As of the hour, the police are investigating the list of potential valedictorians to see if they kind find a suspect to link to the crime. The President is recovering in her Presidential Dorm Room under the watchful eye of Wackenhut Secret Security.
p.s. Penny here is your link to the The Hug Poem.

A Can of Lies

I was first introduced to Half-Caff today. Its created by Folger's and is advertised as the same full taste with only half the caffeine. To be quite frank, I don't trust it. The Half-Caff is spelled with two f's, which is the exact same amount of f's in the regular caffeinated version. If it has half the caffeine, shouldn't it have half the f's? Yeah it should, and Folger's knows that, so it makes me wonder, "Why the two f's?" The answer is obvious, because its actually slightly more than half the caffeine. Oh Folger's, you thought you could fool the regular joe, but I have caught you in your own lies, so for that I'm sticking to the regular joe.

Venn Zen

You all need to check this out at least once, or if you're like me it will go into your growing list of blogs to keep tabs on. Its a pretty funny take on life brought to you in easy (usually) to understand chart form. The dots that are connected in this artist's mind are hilarious and off-kilter, one of my favorite combinations. So don't take my word for it, get to it.

Movies That Move the Masses

This is a list I found. It is a good list, a down-home list. This isn't some elitist, artsy-fartsy, so I look so cultured, list. This is the list of the masses. So check it out, watch them, enjoy them, and see what you think.
p.s. I got the link working now. Sorry.