Pragmatism... not Idealism

If you want to read a blog that's being updated, go to http://xamagix.blogspot.com . My family is into the blogging thing and so I started anew with a blog that's more family friendly.

Life is just coming straight at me. I need to buy a car. I need a new insurance carrier. I just had a job evaluation. I'm getting buried in work.

It's still better than college though. Way less depressing than spending my day worrying and working on things that I didn't want to have anything to do with.

I want more money. I never thought of myself as a guy who's all about the money, you know? I get paid by the hour, which is odd. However it does mean that I get paid time and half for overtime. Every hour I work overtime adds to my disposable income, after the government gets through with it at least. It's just money in the bank, because my expenses are fixed.

Car shopping blows. I'd rather get in a fight with Chuck Norris and have my world destroyed. Chuck Norris is almost as cool as Fabio... Where's Celebrity Death Match when you need it?

New York sucks. They are the most over-regulated state in this country. They have the most convoluted rules to doing business there. Most states all use the same WC bureau. This makes since because many businesses operate in multiple states. Not NY, PA, NJ, and DE. The NY Workers' Comp Bureau has waay overstaffed. They try to get creative with their rules because what else are they going to do with their time? Something productive? Bah! I have a specific issue in mind but I don't feel like explaining it and no one who happens across this blog wants to read it.

to follow up on the "interesting" day, my boss has been moved out of her position. I don't what this implies for me, if anything. I got a raise though. Whooo.

My morning jacket has a really interesting song called Gideon.

Gideon. What Have You Told Us At All?
Make A Sound, Come Down Off The Wall.
Religion - Should Appeal To The Hearts Of The Young.
Who Are You? What Have You Become?
You Animal. Come On.What Does This Remind You Of?

Truly.
Truly We Have Become.
Hated And Feared For Something We Don't Want.
Listen. Listen. Most Of Us Believe That This Is Wrong.


I don't know Jim James' background, but i think this song is stongly rooted in his sunday school experiences as a child.

When I was a kid in Sunday school, the teacher would tell bible stories. They were pretty exciting, believe it or not. This one in particular. I'll get to that later.

SS teachers (somewhat fitting) would illustrate their stories using felt bible figures on a felt board. They'd stick to the board and could be moved around. --"Make a sound, come down off the wall"--

The story of Gideon is pretty sweet, especially to kids (Religion should appeal to the hearts of the young). It's about oppression, faith and just being balls out. In the story, Gideon questions God, destroys the neighborhoods altar to Baal pissing everyone off and leads an insurrection against an occupying force. -- "What does this remind you of" --

So Gideon gathers up volunteers. To demonstrate that the victory to come could only be attributed to God, God instructs Gideon to put the men through a series of tests. This reduced the force size from 32,000 to 300. With 300 men he went up against an army of 135,000. He equiped every man with a trumpet, a torch and a clay pitcher. they stuck the torches in the clay pitcher so they could sneak up on the enemy (this was around 3am). Gideon gave a signal and they all broke their clay pitchers (revealing the light), blew their trumpets and shouted "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."

This is when all the sunday school kids shout "The sword of the lord...."

The Midianites look up, see a bunch of torches and hear trumpets blazing and people shouting, get scared and run away.

Today was interesting. I'm reticent to say how interesting it was because I'm afraid someone from work would read it, and that would be bad. hmmm.

Nevermind then.

I saw end of the spear tonight. All in all it wasn't a bad movie, for being Christian themed. I could understand why most people would find it a horrible nausea-inducing experience, but given my background I enjoyed it.

So why does Christian media suck so hard?

My theory is that there is something about typical Christianity that sucks away creativity. There's so many boundaries set up in the belief system, and you're held accountable for every action and piece of work. There's no room for experimentation. You can't push boundaries because the ultimate concern is the message, not the aesthetic. The aesthetic is in the long term meaningless.

I'm in New Jersey living one boring ass life for the most part. It's really not that boring, but it's not the kind of thing you like to tell people about. "Today I had to issue five policies before the end of this month's booking. the pressure, blah blah." It's important to me and not to everyone else. But who comes to blogs for the mundane details of life? The only reason I ever read other people's blogs is if they told interesting stories or were funny. Maybe that's the form this one should take.


So I saw part of a McGee and Me movie today. That stuff was like crack for me and thousands of other kids growing up. It was addictive and you couldn't ever get enough. It was funny though. McGee gets enticed into going into this big tower of babel type thing that just spits him out after kicking his ass. That's the world, children. They want to destroy you. They want to destroy you. They, they they. It's brain washing through and through. And it's constant.

I remember a time when my mother and I were having a discussion. I was 3 or 4. She was explaining Heaven and Hell to me. "if you get saved, you'll go to heaven. if not, you'll go to hell."

My reply? "if i have to do something to get to heaven, i'd rather go to hell"

"No, because then you'll be burned forever in a lake of fire, and be seperated from God and your family for ever and ever."

my reply: "I want to go to heaven"

And that was that. Out of sheer fear I became a Christian.

Jesus said suffer the children. at the age of 4 (when i got saved) I'm fairly certain I wasn't capable of objective thought at that age. I guess that's why they have those statistics that if a person doesn't become a christian before the age of 13, there's practically no chance they'll come to the faith. you got to get them while their gullible

Ok, so I only posted once last year. Some of you my have figured this blog was dead. Maybe it is. We'll find out. I know the majority of humankind has no interest whatsoever in the mundane details of my job, so i'm going to have to leave that part out. Since that's what I spend the majority of my day doing, that doesn't leave much fodder for da' blog.

I think the new version of the blog is going to have a lot more spelling and grammar errors, since i don't want to spend too much time doing this. So deal with it.

Carl Lewis is one of the greatest olympic atheletes ever. But is he an even greater singer? I submit that he in fact is. About 3/4 of the way through the video he shows his womanizing skills. I was taking notes.

And if that was enough for you, check out his acting skillz:

Clip1
Clip2 - favorite line- If I was to shoot you in the armpit, would you still hit me with it?
Clip3

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

Speaking of which, have any of you seen Judgement at Nuremberg? Excellent movie. For me, the performance of the German lawyer was one of the most memorable I've ever seen.