Digital, Digital, Digital

7,000 songs, 40 hours of video, 15,000 + applications. Ipod. In the fields of a distant country, the natives will mistake and Ipod for some sort of vegetable.

I hate public transportation. Don't get me wrong, i don't mind the transportation, its the "public" part. The aluminum twinky slugging at speeds of a drunk horse houses some of the rudest genes of humanity. Oddly, the steering wheel to public buses has a largeness that is cousin to the gears in medievil draw bridges. In my particular neighborhood, the bus has become the exhaust pipe for all the combustable frustration of the week. Work, relationships, mis-matched socks, whatever it is.

So what do I do? 7,000 songs, 40 hours of video, 15,000+ applications. A weeks worth of distraction can be compressed into a device the size of a spleen. Amazing. Or is it.

Now that my life alternates between the experiences i love and want to enjoy. I digital block out the ones that gives me rashes, give me headaches, or make me envy the dead. And as any artist, fashionista, or cook knows, its all about contrast. If my current queue of week events consist of doing things i like, and then with remaining time trying to recapture evaporated happiness, I make sameness.

Vanilla. Ice cream is only good because of the hideous weed, the broccoli is so vile. The hero is only so brave and strong as the situations are rough. The trip to the east is only magical because of our hours in the west. So what do we do?

7000 songs, 40 hours of video, 15000+ applications, enough for you to always be happy, or to be remembering a happy's silouette. But love ye the bland, for by it, ye shall remember the beauty.

Am I over?

Alright, there is no picture.

More proof that life is monotonous. I am not hero enough to transform the banal into spectular, the regular extrordinary, and the human supernatural.

And such is my life. Though my emotions float along the seas of digital music, and my eyes will try to convince my body I am actually at the grand canyon, still I believe I am lonely. I have two rooms to myself. The walls are plain and stoic. I've successfully liqudated all my brain stock through video games. When the monitor has shut down and the computer's peppy humming has stopped, I wonder at the life I've constructed.

In today's life, the wood and nails are digital. The rooms have no walls, but are sites with accounts and passwords. There is a site for the odd curiousities one has in late night insomnia. There is a site for conversing with friends. And there are jungle like shopping sights, pitting your electronic indiana jones skillset against site after site of advertisements and loopholes. But when all the voltage dries from the socket, what is left?

Are the corporations right? Are we merely just consumers?

With so much technology at our fingers, with so many tools at our disposal, why has not creativity exploded also? True, there are many more outlets, and show boards to display the arts, but where is the next generation of story tellers, artists? Where are this generation's lighthouses, and north stars to inspire and guide a new brigade of pencil warriors, and guitar smiths?

We have asked for the world on a plate, we have asked for bumpers in life's bowling game. Now that we rarely get a gutter ball, i wonder if life is even worth playing anymore.

Focus

The last couple of weeks have been blurry. Each morning my feet rest on an invisible staircase which has become my life. I gamble with my thoughts dedicate my fingers to find hobbies, tasks, and payments to keep the title of diligent.

When the window smudges, and the future is not clear, and the pebble blends with grass, where will my feet land? Will my heels find the lava of guilt? Will my toes bleed along the glass of ignorance or brashness? Fear snakes courage, statistics bullies hope, and doubt rains on my brain parade.

What will I do?

When my view fogs, I, just like the beggar must come to Christ again and again, and clear my eyes, so that I may see. The first time I see men as trees walking, then again, clearer and again and again clearer still. How much more have i missed with my eyes and with my ears lord. Let me slow down and know thee lord. What am I missing?

I love evil

After 4 years of scraping sandwiches, burning eggs, over salting foods, I've taken to the kitchen to slice and sear out a better life. No more filling stomach vacancy with processed oreos, or finishing every dish with 3 dollar gyoza. Cooking. Ingredients. Well.

As for many chefs I have my mother to thank for the goodness at the table, and thus the goodness in my mouth. At every visit home, I am mystifyed at the amount of food consumed versus the notches in my waistline. It's a bubble in the natural laws of physics. In a yellow stucco house, tortilla soups, meat and potatoes, hash browns, homemade egg rolls are all consumed with such joy; such enthusiasm, yet my body displays none of the baggage. Another testament to eating cooked food instead of frozen crammed pre-dinners.

Being a confessed believer, one of my guilty pleasures is reading memoirs of chefs. Are all cooks unbelievers? Hardly, but I've noticed that all great chefs have some common endearing qualities, battle scars, a great sense of pride, and mouth profane as a sailor. I probably shouldn't savor his words or his writing... but i do. It's reading

One of my current inspirations, Anthony Bourdain has done me two great favors in this endeavor.
1. Never be a cook
2. Hard Work pays off

Never be a cook - cooking is fun. it's a lot of fun. A professional chef, cook all the time right? Wrong. You work late nights, you haul out a lot of meals, farm little thanks, and often do menial tasks day in and day out. I imagine I would be crying after a week of washing dishes, and then suicidal after breaking down chickens for 2 years. I will stick to my minor experiments in the kitchen, and bow in humility at professional chefs that live a decidedly very different lifestyle.

Hard Work pays off - Some of the greatest chefs, the leaders of food with heart and soul are those that labored from janitor to assistant chef, to line cook, ot head chef. Their knowledge was rarely confined to a single location. Often their mental library was written crooked page by crooked page though a twisted journey through small kitchens, fast food shacks, hotels, mom and pop shops. And this journey unlike frodo baggins, took years to get started, and even once the success started to stick together, it took more years.

It is such a hope. Such a image of what much of the christian life is! Hard work, hard work, hard work. Chefs specifically place hotshot chefs in lower stations to teach them discipline, and to check their egos. As anthony bourdain has said:

I can teach skill. I can't teach character.

In a similar fashion, anyone can read the bible, anyone can skim and teach the bible. But who is there that has the bible character. Close the trap, and when the endless chatter stops, what story with a person's actions tell?

And what of the menial and grueling bible reading and meditations on God? weeks and years may pass before a whisper of gold will be spun, but that gold thread will be twice the strength of hypocrisy, or shallow character.

How weak, how simple i am right now. To struggle with the basics. how shall i assemble a full view of God, when i do not know all the parts of his word? How will i stand tall in adversity if i do not reflex in scripture? And how will I not serve if my actions and my temperment is not hammered and discipled in Godliness? And how shall I pour forth rich fountains of knowledge, and the vibrant life of Christ if my tongue has not been scolded by the fruits of the spirit.

Oh wretched man am I.

Wrapping up: In the same way that many chefs have become great by paying my dues, I hope to attain the holiness, or the vision of God by paying mine, even if I may be on the level of spiritual dishwashing. I guess some good does come from reading evil.

I'm not crying

In my younger years, I hoped for an adulthood with better food, a clean bathroom at every intersection, and yes, to be free of crying. Ah those frightful moments that cause us to leak brain lubricant from our eyes. My first painful memory was lunging for fruit snakcs and receiving a foot in the crotch. Later tears flowed because an older bully brother threatened to mince my body, and eat my innards. 

My maturity yard stick used to be measurements of sobbing. If you drop one tear, then you are an adult. If you have a 15 min episode, you might be a teen. If you are known more for your crying than for your words, you might be a baby. So naturally, by the age of 30 I hope to abolish all weeping, sniffling, and sobbing.  Looking around at society, those are pipe dreams.

Sure, go into your average office building or unionized workforce and you will be hard pressed to find sorrow. People will instead find other avenues to cry. Gunnish video games are the avenues for the angry mourners, food a welcome friend, running a mobile refuge. I had hoped with advances in genetics, surgery, and drug treatments, that there might be an end to sorrow. 

Guess not.

Writing Frustration

Again my writing leaves me speechless. My brain watches as my fingers patter away. My eyes read the words that worm their way on the screen. Often times I find myself chuckling as I set up and deliver my own jokes. My writing sounds great.

Sometime later, I open the same entry to find strange writing on my blog. I can't understand it. It is as if a toddler took random words from the thesaurus and tried to make a word picture. Again, it is MY writing. Is there any reason why I shouldn't understand it? Do i have a magic encoder but not the matching decoder?

My initial guess is that it's television. I'm not sure why or how, but TV has served as a good scapegoat so far, so lets keep blaming it. I was probably good at reading and writing when it was black and white, and when TV switched to color, it was all game over, time to write cryptic hieroglyphs.

On a related note : I hope this isn't blasphemous, but I now can understand how the writers of the bible might have had divine inspiration. Perhaps they too, sat down one day, wrote all that they could, and in the following years, looked back and wondered, "I sure use 'like' a lot" or " man, i'm terrible with run on sentences".

Resolve: I am going to keep writing till I get this down. BLargh

Relating to Family

Nephews and nieces are like alien clones. They act similar to you, they have similar features, yet as my friend puts it "they look all funky". The weirdest part about clones is not the science, or
the 90% chance they are made from frog DNA; the weirdest part is that they act like, well, you.

How do they act like you? It's either the yelling, or saying "boofay" instead of "buffay" (buffet). It's the evil eye scowl that you saved for demolishing egos. It's the sweet charm of a smile and happy eyes to get ice cream. Yes, all your best weapons have been stolen. They are now wielded indescriminately by tiny big headed people whose sole desire is ice cream and pooping. Ah, the chaos that is children.

I suppose it is God's curse against man to watch his own mini clone reflect all his worst strategies. I watched one of my nephews do one of these numbers-

"I want ice cream"
"But you didn't eat your dinner"
"I did, I did, I did," *strong nods*
"No I remember, you didn't"
*Cry* "I hate you"

This brilliant ploy in adult terms would be something like:

"I want a raise"
"But you don't show up to work; you don't do your work; and ...you smell like a walrus in heat."
"I did to show up. Remember in 1994? I came for a whole week!"
"Your time card says otherwise"
*Cry* "I'm going to kill you"

So the apple falls right next to the tree. Nephew used the "yelling to make it true" strategy, as well as the "threaten the peace" strategy. No wonder the bible says "do unto others as you would be done to". I'm going to give everyone lots of money. LOTS OF MONEY.

Summary: Joy fills my heart at the thought of children, but fear floods my mind at the thought of the evil I would bring to the world.

Sidenote: Why is it that the people you seem to get along with the least are your family? Isn't that just strange? How the same pool of DNA can make incompatible people? I mean really, how does that work?