Your Inner European

Thanks, Dan, for the info. I never would have picked this from a list. Danger? Allure? Give me a break!

A fun little toy that ultimately means nothing...

Your Inner European is Russian!

Mysterious and exotic. You've got a great balance of danger and allure.

Who's Your Inner European?

What About the Children

My heart has been broken many times over in the past couple of weeks. All the horrible things that have been happening to children, babies even.

• A 20-month-old boy was abused to death. The doctors/coroner said they had never seen such a skull fracture. They also discovered tons of scar tissue on the bones and mini-fractures all over the boys arms and legs, as well as scars all over his body. In his short time here, he had been passed around to five different people to take care of him. His birth mother granted custody on a legal pad (notarized, of course) to the woman who wound up killing him.
• Another 18-month old died from a drive-by shooting. He had gone with his dad and two(?) sisters to get ice cream. Some guy started following their car and opened fire, possibly in a case of mistaken identity.
• Then there's the mom with two kids whom she prostituted out to make money so they could survive.

And this is all I can recall at this moment, but there are many more stories. I hope I never am in the position of having to do anything about something like this, but if it's going on, I'd rather know about it and take some kind of action to protect the child than to find out I missed what was going on and allowed a child to suffer.

The 20-month old boy I mentioned in particular has just caused me all kinds of anguish. I started a poem even, but I'm not sure I'll ever finish it. It feels incomplete to me, but I think I've said all I wanted to. I'm struck by the selfishness of all of these people that used this little boy to vent their frustration and anger, and their unwillingness to do anything of particular importance to help this little boy. I can't help but feel that God took this little boy because he had gone to the point where he would never really recover properly. Or it was just the stupid woman smashing his head against the bathtub or wall or whatever she did when she was totally drunk, and who knows what else.

How can this happen? I don't understand. I know evil exists, but come on—this is a baby. How can anyone even conceive of such a horrible thing? :::sigh:::

What a Day!

Saturday. What a long day, but man, what a day it was!

I woke up at 5:45 to the call of nature. I was going to go back to sleep until I had to wake up at 7, but I started thinking about work, and I realized my heart was pounding hard. I asked God to help me put work out of my mind. He did. Since I can't go back to sleep, I look at some of my 600 emails (no exaggeration there).

7:40 I realize I need to be at church at 8:00 for this thing I call the "prayer loop". It's kind of like a prayer walk, but we drive around the loop. I wasn't sure anyone besides me was going to show up, but there were two others. We got going about 8:20. We started with a prayer of safety once we got on the loop, then read from Luke 19, where Jesus prays over Jerusalem. And then we let the Holy Spirit guide us in how we should pray.

>From the beginning, I felt the Spirit filling us, almost to the point where we were completely insulated from everything around us. And suddenly we were around the loop, and over an hour had passed. I was totally blown away by what we prayed for and how we were lead, but even more blown away by the sense that we had somehow stepped into the presence of God at work, that this little thing we did called prayer truly connected us to the heart and mind of God and empowered us to speak as needed. I think the three of us were awestruck at the end. I could hardly contain myself.

Then I watched the balance of The Bicycle Thief. It's an Italian film released in 1948 about a man searching for his bicycle that was stolen in Italy. Excellent movie.

A bad thing was passing on the art day I had set up with some friends. We weren't going to get started until 1, and there was a concert I was going to tonight; we were leaving immediately after church to go downtown to the little coffee house where Mute Math was to perform. Anyway, that would have only been 3 hours I would have been able to spend doing any art with the extended travel times here in Houston (especially with the construction closure in the name of progress).

So, I went to Saturday night church for the first time in several months. Again, I was totally blown away. I truly felt the presence of God. The worship was such an incredible time for me. I realized tonight that because of the vile contempt with which I have been holding against myself, that I was separated from God from all that self-hatred. God has been working on that in me this week, to the point where I can separate how I view myself from how God views me and step away from that negative self-talk (sorry for the psychological mumbo-jumbo). My connection with God was so much closer tonight, maybe closer than I've ever been or felt. I was moved to tears, but they didn't quite make it out. That emotional response in recognition of God's working in me was something I hadn't expected. Dr. Brooks then preached a fantastic sermon from John 10:10ff about the abundant life Jesus came to bring.

And then, Mute Math. The opening band blew me away: a tight set, good vocals, and good lyrics for the little bit I could make out. Mute Math, though, how can I describe them? This might possibly be one of the best concerts I've ever seen. [Though I think there was too much distortion in the sound; my ears were almost bleeding.] These guys played aggressively, in particular the drummer. Before they played, he had his ear-piece on [monitor stuff?]. Then he took the black duct tape out, unrolled some, and started wrapping it over the ear-piece under his chin and connecting back to the top, almost like having a bonnet on or having his head in a sling from a bad tooth [remember those old, old TV shows?] We figured we were in for something wild. And they did not disappoint. Simply stinking amazing. The drummer was soaked 20 minutes into the set, and the lead singer wasn't far behind. The two guitarists were less animated, but I don't think the crowd could have handled more spectacle, and besides, there was no more room for more animation -- there was barely enough room as it was for what went on.

Thank You, God, for an utterly fantastic, awe-inspiring, humbling, powerful day!

Creativity

The other day, I was trying to think of some stuff for work, and I was at a complete block. Then I recalled an exercise I did in a training class, and the instructor told us to do this exercise anytime before a creative endeavor and our brains would be prepared to "think different" (please don't sue me, Apple).

The exercise is essentially comparing two items that are not normally associated with each other. The two items he mentioned at that time are a cat and a refrigerator. There were 60-70 people in the class, and altogether we came up with roughly 50 ways a cat and a refrigerator are alike. In redoing this exercise the other day, I could only come up with 20, among them

• They run
• can be fuzzy
• leave puddles on the floor
• like to be under things (refrig. under cabinets; cats under chair/couch/table/etc.)
• have an appendage extending from the rear
• have motors
• hum/purr
• both will be running and then just conk out
• can contain mice
• can contain milk
• come in a variety of colors
• can be finicky

I'll have to get my list and update it with the other things I wrote down but can't recall right now. I'll take suggestions...

I came up with a list of other things to compare (which was quite an exercise in and of itself). (Easy) a car and a plane; (not so easy) a cat and a plane; (hard) a cat and a piece of glass; a cat and a piece of carpet; (ludicrously hard) an orange and a piece of glass. I'll fill in these later (and take suggestions from the peanut gallery when I get around to actually thinking about these.

Terry Schiavo

Originally, I was under the impression that she was a vegetable and on
life support, and I felt it was humane to allow her to die. Keeping
someone "alive" at all costs is an abuse of our technology and robs them
of their dignity as a human being.

I have changed my mind on this case. First, she has not been on life
support. She breathes on her own; she can hold herself up if propped up;
and she reacts to people around her, even if minutely. The feeding tube
in question is used because she physically cannot eat.

Withdrawing food and water from her is the cruelest form of execution,
and she has not committed any crime (except for being in her husband's
way). Now that the tube has been withdrawn, the doctors say she will die
in TEN days to TWO WEEKS. Of course, I'm no doctor, but this length of
time indicates to me that she is still functional. Other than physically
not being able to eat, she is not dependent upon machines to keep her
alive. And I don't believe this is a "painless" way to die.

Why is her husband, Michael, so damned intent on killing his wife? He's
moved on to another woman with whom he has had TWO children. The only
person who says she wouldn't want to be kept alive is Michael. And why
only mention this after she has been in this condition for EIGHT years?
If her parents are willing to take on her care; why not let them? They
have even filed divorce papers on her behalf so he doesn't have to keep
the responsibility, and he has refused to allow it. He's determined that
she must die.

An Interesting Thought

Tonight, I went to dinner with my upstairs neighbor, Karen, whom I've known about as long as she's been in Houston (I beat her here by two years). I had mentioned something about my previous job, that when I started, I could see five years, then blackness for a while, then an unknown period (which, you would think blackness is unknown, but it had a totally different quality, this unknown period, like it was being masked from me because it was too early to see, that it would be too much information for me to handle at the time -- this I've just realized now, not then).

I remarked to her that I did indeed work at my previous job for five years (actually, 5-½ years, but five years from the point of seeing), and that I now perceive that I'm in blackness in my life, with nothing seeming to go right, I can't make heads or tails of my life, I don't like my job a whole lot (that's why they call it work, right, because otherwise you'd do it for free), and I can't see any future beyond this present bleakness.

She asked if I considered myself a prophet, and if I had visions like that often. I thought for a second, and then realized I've had lots of prophetic things in my life, so I said simply, "yes", but I hadn't had but a handful of visions. Further, I told her that on a recent spiritual gifts survey, prophecy came out as my top gift, followed by teaching and wisdom, and that being in a Southern Baptist church really helps me put that prophetic gift to work.

I then told her about a friend of mine, Larry, who told me it was no wonder satan was camped at my doorstep telling me all these horrible things about myself. When Larry told me this, I told him that I didn't know how much of it was satan and how much of it was just me recognizing who I am. This thought passed through my mind tonight when I was telling the rest to Karen (but I didn't share this particular thought with her), that I still don't know how much of it is satan and how much of it is just me. And I asked this question internally, "Is this really from satan?" For the first time, I heard an answer, "yes," and then the afterthought, "no one thinks any of these horrible things of you; no one!"

I might not yet have won or succeeded in all I would like to do, and I have made many, many bad decisions, but I'm not a loser, a failure, or a waste of oxygen/carbon dioxide processing because of these things. I think I can have hope for my life (almost as much hope as I have for everyone else) that it will be more than just living out the consequences of my sinful decisions. I think there can be God bringing about good things in others' lives through me despite myself. That is my greatest desire, that people will see not just what a difference God can make in their lives, but what a difference He has made in their lives. And I'd like to be in on it, not so they will know it was me and think highly of me, but so I can make sure they know it was God Who has done for them. [This still isn't quite the right nuance of it, but it escapes me at the moment. This is close enough for now.]

I truly want to believe this, and I at least have some hope of actually believing it now.

Writing

I wrote five pages yesterday. Wahoo!

Can I keep it up? I'm not saying, because I don't know.

Chill Factor

A tiny movie review of Chill Factor, starring Skeet Ulrich and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Remember the movie Speed was pretty successful, and its sequel, Speed 2, was wildly unsuccessful? Well, Chill Factor is touted as Speed, but it channels Speed 2 in every conceivable way, especially the bad parts. It's still better than About Last Night and Random Hearts.

What I Liked

• There were several beautiful scenery shots. Gorgeous stuff.
• In an attempt to liberate an unlocked pickup truck, one needs keys, correct? The standard cliche is that the keys are (conveniently) in the visor. This time, the would-be thief searches there, but finds nothing.
• Skeet Ulrich mostly played a realistic (non-)action star
  
• It ended.

What I Didn't Like

• Everything else.

As non-cliche as the truck key scene was, the rest of the movie was full of cliches and just plain rotten. For me to notice something like that, it must be pretty bad. Most of my movies rated at Netflix are four and five stars, so I'm pretty darn forgiving of movies, or at the least I'm looking at something different even in standard fare.

Other than Ulrich's character, Mason, doing the right thing out of loyalty to a friend and because it's the right thing to do, there's not much to like about the movie. This theme of doing right is not explored nearly enough in either capacity. I'm not that picky a person as far as movies are concerned, but this was just awful, painful even. Bad editing, bad sound, bad continuity. Just bad all the way around.

For instance, at one point they talk about how hot it is otuside (because the "stuff" needs to stay below 50°F in order to remain inert). Then everyone is wearing jackets and long sleeves throughout the movie. Or, there's a perfectly good ice chest holding the stuff, but Mason takes off his long sleeve shirt and puts the vials of "stuff" in it and covers it in ice. Why? The ice chest will fit through the hole he has to carry it through. No, the sole purpose of this is so the vial can be broken on the ground during the final fight with the bad guy and have the heat activate the vial.

Sorry if you think that's a spoiler, but the whole movie is a spoiler, a perfect waste of a good sick day!

Lunch Today

After church today, we went to Jason's Deli. I had a "Pollo Mexicano Lite" with no cheese. The "Lite" version uses fat-free butter, cheese, and sour cream. Cheese beyond a bite or two just doesn't agree with me, that whole lactose-intolerance thing (but not nearly as bad as milk).

There were probably 20 people in our party. I'm one of those middle conversation people, the ones who get in the middle of the conversations on either side but aren't really participating too much. When I sat down, however, I was toward the end of the table, but we added more tables to my end, so I was in the middle yet again. It turns out the young lady across from me is also a middle conversation person, and one of the women that sat next to me is also one. And we all originally sat on the end to avoid that going on. We did manage to hold our own conversation, but it was quite difficult.

One of the questions posed — you know, one of those questions you ask everyone you don't know really well in order to get to know them better? — was, "If you could do anything with no consequences, what would you do?" And my answer was movies. I didn't get to explain that I'd like my friends to be there to watch with me and then discuss afterward. But movies really are my life, however sad that might sound. There's probably the element of escapism involved, but movies really work for me.

I also learned a great deal about how much guys suck in the way they treat women. Not so much in trying to be mean or bad (though that does exist), but just in being unthinking about the way women perceive things. But it works the other way, too, that all of the things guy say to girls, girls say to guys, too, just in their own unique way.

All in all, a fun lunch.

Ice Cream

So, I took advantage of Yahoo!'s free ice cream cone today. If you missed out on your free ice cream cone, you didn't need the calories anyway. Five of us went to Quizno's for lunch (well, four, and one came in later), then we went next door to Baskin Robbins. The creamista (like the barrista for Starbucks, except this is for ice cream) got us our ice cream and, bless his heart, he seemed clueless as to what was going on.

Anyway, the five of use were standing around in the store, as this Baskin Robbins had no chairs. Someone asked the question, "Have any of you ever dropped an ice cream cone?" (Now, this might not be the exact wording of the question he asked, but it captures the essence and intent of his question quite adequately. And, according to my memory, this is what he asked, word for word. But I congress.) Three of us had dropped an ice cream cone before, leaving two who said they had never dropped an ice cream cone before. Within five minutes of the posing of the question (though it's not a model, paper, economic, or runway), the number shifted from three to four who had dropped an ice cream cone. It was as though an improbability-drive ship engaged nearby, and rather than dropping whale bits or petunias, an ice cream leaped in vain attempt at flight.

P.S. a whole post without self-assassination or self-loathing; that improbability-drive ship must be hovering nearby!