Music For the Multitudes

Kevin Gilbert is one of those artists who somehow manages to hit all of my buttons at the same time... great melodic hooks, astoundingly well written songs, lyrics that are in turn wickedly intelligent, darkly humorous, and achingly lonely.

My old friend Big Doofus told me about his then-band Toy Matinee back in the early 90s (in addition to telling me about They Might Be Giants and The Rembrandts and The Swirling Eddies and The Choir and, um, have I left any out?). I won't go into Kevin's biography now except to say that he's taken the last plane out. Enjoy the music and the major-studio videos. Beware the hairstyles and limpy wristed bass players!

Boss Out Sick Today

I'm fairly certain I haven't posted this and because it's been a while since I talked about music (all of three seconds) here's a stinky video for a band I really like. Stinky because they made it themselves and it's very choppy. It's a good thing they're musicians first.



O.S.I. is the guitarist from Fates Warning, the drummer from Dream Theater, and the keyboardist/studio guru who used to be in Dream Theater until he got sick of the whole progressive music thing. So he went off on his own and started creating more melodic yet equally challenging music. YEAH FOR SCHOOL!

Gushing News

Hey kids, we've got OIL but the liberal/progressive environmentalist wackos will file lawsuit after lawsuit to stop us from drilling for it.

Amish Blueberries

I only meant to pick up some L brackets and thin gauge wire at Lowe's but when I saw the seeds and fruit plants, well, I guess I have too much of my dad in my and couldn't resist. Since the temperature here is a balmy 46 and the blueberry plant I bought is hardy to -20 I figured that it was a perfect day to get it into the ground. Ten minutes of tempering Indiana clay into rich loamy soil later and the job was done.

But while doing that it appears our daughters, after reading some Amish books, decided to play Amish and give each other a whoopin' with a belt. Never before has such a wail pierced our house! Needless to say only one of them got their turn at bat.

Media Aidem

A great contrast from Newsbusters.org on how the media tries to portray a protest as a peaceful versus the freakshow that it really was. Beware... some of these "peaceful normal" protesters love to use the F-bomb on their signs and in their speech.

Oh, and my novel is up to 14188 words (I've been a slackin'!) and my music library via WinAmp is down to a mere 32 hours of unlistened songs. This just in... I'm easily amused but highly interested in tracking meaningless numbers.

He's Baaaaack

Years ago the brilliant mind of Doug Tennapel added the duties of blogging to his already overloaded plate. You know, the guy who created Earthworm Jim, Cat Scratch, the amazing Sockbaby and The Neverhood? His blog was unabashedly conservative, a definite risk when you are constantly pitching ideas to liberal Hollywood folk. He eventually met his goal (I think it was a certain number of hits) and stopped. Since then I forgot about him and only recently saw his book Flink at the library - a quick read.

Today on a whim I checked his site and he's blogging again!

The Land of Imagination

Let's all put on our imagination caps and wonder...

What would happen if John McCain went to a church for decades where the pastor said things like blacks where the problem with our society and blacks had killed a white Jesus? Or what if McCain said something bad about a black person and then tried to clarify his comment by saying that this person was just a "typical black person" who had a fear of whites bred into them.

Am I hearing cries of "Crucify! Crucify!"? Does anyone think that the media wouldn't be demanding his resignation from the Senate?

Now let's wonder what would happen to me if I plagiarized an idea from Glenn Beck for my own blog...

It's a Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma

They recently did a massive study on ocean temperatures to determine just how much global warming has warmed the waters. The results? Oh, maybe it's cooled down a bit. But that doesn't stop the media from spinning the data.

Grab a bucket of popcorn (made with coconut oil that was horribly bad for you... oh, wait, it's not) and a few scrambled eggs (they'll kill you in a minute... except that they turned out to be okay after all) and enjoy the chuckles.
Don't Let The Facts Get In The Way Of Your Eco-Religion

Thank God It’s Good Friday!

As you might expect from the very same curmudgeon who brought you “Daylight Savings Time Burns My Buns” comes the latest diatribe, “Thank God It’s Good Friday!” Yes, another pointless missive from my collection of Pet Peeves.

Let’s begin, shall we?

In college I had a highly respected professor talk once about how Jesus wasn’t crucified on a Friday. I was only half paying attention, which was typical of my entire schooling as I learn best by reading, and so the details of his position floated from my brain. Years later I read a chapter on the subject by excellent expositor James Montgomery Boice and gol-dang if’n it didn’t all make sense! Plus it appeals to my love of being contrary to general public opinion.

Reason One

Matthew 12:40. Yep, my first and most powerful punch comes from Jesus himself where he said “"For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” I don’t think He was mistaken or misquoted.

The Jewish day began at sunset and concluded on the following sunset. Christ was entombed at the end of some day before the sunset starting of Sabbath and in any case, this day counts as a day… it’s a Jewish thing but the modern world also uses it in saying things like “I spent the day with an axe murderer” when, although you didn’t spend 24 hours or even every daylight hour with said axe wielder, you spent a number of hours with such a person. Thus for Christ to have died and been buried on a Friday would be: Friday day, Friday night, Saturday day, Saturday night… two nights and two days! This is assuming He returned to life during the night, which is the most plausible since Mary & co. came to his tomb first thing Sunday morning (break –o- dawn, as it were) to add their own zesty blend of spices. No matter how you try to twist the math, it can’t come up to three days and three nights.

Now let’s plug a Thursday into our equation, shall we? Thursday day, Thursday night, Friday day, Friday night, Saturday day, Saturday night… three days and three nights. WHAMO!

Reason Two

How about another Biblical text? How about John 19:31: “Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath.” A special Sabbath? Throughout the Jewish year there were special, or high, Sabbaths. The Greek makes this clear that the day in discussion is not your weekly Saturday Sabbath. This time around there were two, two, two Sabbaths in a row, the high/special Sabbath (most likely the Feast of Unleavened Bread) and the regular ol’ Sabbath. Matthew 28:1 also states that Mary came to the tomb at "the end of the Sabbaths.” The day before the Feast of Unleaved Bread is Passover. WHAT?! Christ, the sacrificial Lamb for our sins sacrificed on the actual day of Passover?!?!? Coincidence? I think not. So if there were two Sabbaths in a row and Saturday was the regular Sabbath that would make (punching in numbers on a calculator) Thurday be Passover (followed by Sabbath #1- Feast of Unleavened Bread and Sabbath #2- your standard weekly Saturday Sabbath).

Reason Three

With what we know about the Jewish calendar (thanks to our archeologist pals) and through cross referencing the gospels it becomes clear that Friday just doesn’t fit in with the data. It don’t jive, turkey! Such a lengthy discussion is beyond this blog entry but a very detailed examination on the final week of Jesus can be found here. Be sure not to miss the handy-dandy chart on the last page which lays it all out.

Conclusion

So what does all this mean? Ummm…. Nuthin’. Good Friday is a celebration created by the Roman Catholic church some time after 325 A.D., possibly based on the Jewish festival of Pascha. While there’s nothing in the Bible that prescribes such a celebration there isn’t anything that condemns it either. Thursday, Friday… in the end it doesn’t matter unless you’re an A-retentive dork like me. What matters is the death and resurrection of Jesus celebrated at Easter… and no, I’m not going to go into which day of the week Easter should fall on. That, as Alton Brown says, is another show.

One More For The Road

I hereby declare today Caffeine Overindulgence Day!

Melynda thinks I'm too wacko on this whole Daylight Savings Time thing and maybe I am. However this weekend it occur ed to me WHY I might be overly wacko on the whole subject: in an era when sleazy politicians control our lives from special interest funded ivory towers this is a very real, very concrete, very personal, very invasive attack on our freedoms, when someone other than your employer dictates when you must go to work. Imagine if one day you receive you receive an e-mail from your state government telling you that you must go to bed at 10:30. Or even more likely that you must turn off lights and reduce your electricity usage at 10:30. I may be tired, I may be paranoid, I may be writing long rambling sentences with little coherence and bad spelling but at least I have a nice fuzzy hat.

Recent Study Confirms Common Sense

According to a recent study by the University of California has determined, beyond a shadow of a kilowatt, that daylight savings time doesn't work, unless you count making people grumpy from lack of sleep. In fact it was found that daylight savings time actually COST Indiana residents an extra $8.6 million in electricity bills due to more air conditioning in the evening and more heaters on cool mornings. Per Professor Matthew Kotchen, who pioneered the study, "I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this."

Also in the article was mention of a study in 1976, three years after most of the nation began DST, which found "no significant energy savings after the switch."

But by all means, let's ignore the goals of DST, goals that this study has shown are actually thwarted, and continue this trend. Why? Because like a liberal, excuse me, progressive policies, they just make you feel good. Kids, as long as you feel like you're doing a good thing it doesn't really matter if you are in actuality doing harm. That's our lesson for today.

A Few Thoughts On Daylight Savings Time

Next week at this time it will be an hour earlier.


As a nation we play mind games with ourselves via Daylight Savings Time. Everyone gets together and collectively pretends that it is an hour earlier and ALLAH-PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES... it's an hour earlier. Except that it isn't. I think I remember something from my childhood about "what if everyone in my class jumped off a cliff..."

How indicative of post-modern thinking that even time is relative (my apologies to Einstein). "What may be true for you isn't necessarily true for everyone." POPPYCOCK! Truth is truth even if you choose to ignore or not believe it. It's 8:00 A.M. because it JUST IS even if everyone decided that it was midnight! Water is made of one oxygen atom and two hydrogran atoms even if you believe with every cell (and atom) of your being that it is made of helium... IT JUST IS! Mind games.

*SIGH* It's not as if time isn't an arbitrary invention to measure the fourth dimension that will one day pass away but I just like complaining about idiotic legislation and being able to wake up when there's light outside and go to bed when there isn't. The one good thing is that there will be less crime.

"Dude, I was going to rob that convenience store but I just noticed that it's like way past my bedtime."