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colmillo
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Name: Jared
Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Metro: Lawton
Birthday: 9/12/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: God, Christianity, the Internet, Spanish, writing music, singing, acappella music, barbershop quartets, wolves, werewolves, Star Wars, the Miami Dolphins.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Colmillo912
Member Since:
7/27/2005
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| Normally, I hate it when people just post lyrics on their Xangas/Facebooks. Seriously, I despise that. Instead of coming up with your own thoughts, you just steal thoughts from others and claim them as your own. That's annoying. No offense, of course. However, despite my personal convictions regarding this matter, I feel compelled to post some lyrics. This song is called "Turkey Dance," and it is sung by one of my favorite bands called Moosebutter. I figured the song was appropriate with Turkey Day approaching. Here they are:
I found a turkey in my shoe
Doing a turkey-kind of exotic dance
That
some other turkey might find attractive
But I don't really find it
attractive
Actually it makes me feel strange.
Hey, don't do that in my shoe
Or I might have to call MisterBugEyesTM
Have him come look at you with his bug eyes
I don't think I like MisterBugEyesTM
Makes me think of a bug with big eyes
Makes me feel kind of strange.
MisterTurkeyTM ... oh, I'm sorry ...
I'm not sure what is your gender ... turkey tender
Do you wanna dancing turkey©?
Don't provoke the dancing turkey©.
Play charades with dancing turkey©.
Came from Russia: dancing turkey©.
Not salami: dancing turkey©.
Captain KirkTM loves dancing turkey©!
Arctic bird dance? Dancing turkey©.
Shiny adverb... dancing turkey©.
Touch... the lightbulb.... dancing turkey©...
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| I should be doing homework right now, but for some rare reason I'd rather write something on this strange thing they call Xanga.
I've been meaning to get some stuff off my chest for a while, but I can't really remember what all that was at the moment. Maybe it'll come to me.
I'm working at Wal-Mart right now. That's interesting. I work in the dairy department, and it's kept at 30 or 32 degrees at all times, so it's pretty cold. They keep screwing up my schedule, so I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get fired for not coming in to work at the times they failed to tell me I was supposed to work. It's kinda a mess. But the whole ordeal is beneficial in two ways: first, money. I get paid some amount per hour—I'm actually not quite sure how much—and with that money I can buy stuff and go on online shopping binges like I've been doing way too much lately. Secondly, the job is rather humbling. I never saw myself as a person who would work at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart was always beneath me somehow. Wal-Mart was always for high school students and old retired people in my mind, but no, I guess I can ascend from on high to work with the mere mortals. It hadn't occurred to me that I look down on people who work at such places until I was one of those people. I always try to be nice to cashiers and the people in the cafeteria because, man, I would hate to have that job, and they need cheering up or something. They must be desperate to work there, so I'd better smile at them—maybe that'll give their lives enough meaning not to kill themselves tonight. I was always ready with the "Have a nice day" that would rescue someone from the depths of depression behind the checkout counter. Now I'm one of those people stuck in the depths of depression—and really, it's not all that bad. Sure, the work is boring and numbingly meaningless, but it's honest work, and hey, without Wal-Mart the world's economy would crumble, so the world owes it to us Wal-Mart associates to keep spinning on its axis. You're welcome, world.
And yet again, I somehow turn my admitting a feeling of humility into self-agrandizement. Kind of pitiful. However, one thing that has stuck in my mind is a quote from the 66th chapter of the Tao Te Ching that I flipped through the other day. It said that seas are lower than everything else, and yet the water flows toward it. It said humility was the path to power. The author of the Tao Te Ching said it much more eloquently than I, and I much too lazy to look up the exact quote, but you get the idea. So I'm working on being humble.
I'm also working on actually doing homework. By God's grace alone, I have an A in all of my classes but one, in which I have a B. Not reflected in these cute little letter grades is the fact that I put off everything till the very last minute or don't do it at all. Take reading, for example. I've been playing catch-up with reading books for my classes for weeks, it seems. What, you ask, is the reason for my lack of motivation and work ethic? Two words: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since the summer, I have been viewing each episode of this marvelous show sequentially beginning with the first season. I just finished the sixth, and I watched about almost two whole seasons of Lost in between seasons four and five of Buffy. TV has taken over my life. I'm getting better, but it used to be that my every waking thought was about that charming blonde girl who saves the world from vampires, demons, and hell gods trapped in the bodies of attractive male doctors. Luckily, I have one season left to view, and then maybe I can get back to living a semi-normal life. Maybe. I'm presently trying to stay away from Grey's Anatomy, because people tell me it's addictive, and heaven knows I don't need another addiction.
In other news, I changed my major the other day. I'm now a TEFL (pronounced "teffle") major, which stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I'd always hated literature but loved grammar, and I love foreign languages, so I decided I should be a TEFL major, and I'm actually excited about it. I'm taking a literature class—two words that in high school would have sent shivers down my spine—about Chaucer, and I'm looking forward to it. Weird what this academic atmosphere of college will do to you. So when I graduate, I may go to Latin America or Japan or China or something like that. We'll see.
Halloween was the other day. Halloween is my favorite holiday ever. I dressed as a werewolf again, so that was fun. I had intended on making a fursuit to wear with my mask, but finding matching fur was impossible, and faux fur is outrageously expensive anyway. Less than the real thing, I'm sure, but thirty bucks a yard? Ouch. Yeah, but, Halloween night, some friends and I went to a cemetary and watched The Skeleton Key in a mausoleum. It was kinda creepy, though not nearly as much as I expected. Plus we didn't get arrested, so that's good.
Christmas is coming up. I like Christmas, too. At work today when I was on break, I saw a stand of Christmas CDs, so I investigated and stumbled upon a Larry the Cable Guy Christmas CD, and one of the tracks was called "Oh Holy Crap," and that really made me laugh. Holy Toledo, that's funny. Don't care who you are, that's funny. "Crap" is such a funny word anyway, though. I don't like saying it, but when you use it in a comical setting, it's quite the knee-slapper. It's similar to "friggin'." I generally try to refrain from using "friggin'" in everyday language, but sometimes, it's funny. Like you could say Buffy the Friggin' Vampire Slayer, and that's funny. In fact, I was going to say that earlier, but I forgot. Which is why I said it now.
In Greek tomorrow, we will crack open our Greek New Testaments for the first time. I'm way excited.
Hm. "Way excited." That's a very Meagan Armstrong thing to say. I miss her and Melissa and Jed. I hope y'all're having fun in Europe. I intended to write y'all letters, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. However, I did have a dream Sunday night in which the Vienna group came home for Halloween, and Meagan was crying because I never sent her a letter. So, just in case the dream portends a dark future, I think I will get to writing that letter. But not tonight. I have homework still.
There's oh so much I could talk about. I didn't even go into the religious topics I have in the back of my head, but there's always time for that another time. That is, there's always time until time ends. Which is a redundant sentence. Anyway, have a good evening, all, and I will see/eat/talk to you later. Chao.
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| Yes, I'm still alive.
Man, I haven't updated in forever. And today was the first day since forever ago I actually the subscriptions that arrive in my inbox. Maybe it was the first day ever. I dunno.
I'm back at OC now, staying in the University House, room 102A. I was going to be staying in Wilson East with a guy named Johnnie, but when my family and I arrived, we found a room full of crickets (dead and alive), candy wrappers, and all-around ickiness. The furniture was beat up and old, and the dorm was just plain ungood. So I suggested to my mother that we go check and see if there are any rooms elsewhere, and we headed off to housing and got me changed over to the UH. Which is extremely nice. It's like a 5-star hotel. Except they don't give you towels. Or leave chocolate on your pillow. Or have room service. The cable in my room doesn't work as of yet, but I'm hoping to get that fixed pretty soon here. It works in the common area, so I'll live.
Plus, having lived at home or camp all summer sans cable, I missed out on quite a few episodes of The Colbert Report, so I'm catching up on those on Comedy Central's website. Great stuff, that.
My roommate moved in yesterday night. He seems nice. He's one of those—what do you call them?—oh, yeah: "social types." As soon as he got here, he went to hang out with his friends. I tagged along for a little bit, but he seemed to know everybody, and I seemed to know only Keisha, so I felt awkward. But my roommate likes Creed and Alter Bridge (which are basically the same band), so that's cool.
Pretty soon, I'll have a long post about my thoughts on religion of late. Maybe you'll want to tune in to that. I don't know.
Over the summer, I spent five weeks at Camp Lu-Jo, which was great 80% of the time. The other 20% was Peak Week, which I didn't like at all, but I don't feel the need to go into detail in a public forum like this. Ask me if you want to know why I hated it, and I'll tell you. But, yes, I enjoyed the other four weeks, especially the last one. Rodger is such a great guy, and he and his staff put a lot of work into that week, and it showed. I can't wait for next year.
So why the poop did I spend five long weeks at camp, you ask? I was the Ropes Course Director. Lu-Jo has a low ropes course that is the rival of any in the great state of Oklahoma, and I had the privilege of running it. It was weird and hectic at first, but later on, when I got to work with groups personally, it was really fun. We had this element called the Meuse where the group had to get from one island to another using boards and the other islands in between. The problem was that none of the in-between islands reached to the final island. They could get to every island but the last one—that is, until they used their heads and made a T across two islands and stretched the long part of the T to the final one. It was really cool. I would sit the group down and pull back the long part of the T to make a cross, and I told the group, "The cross is the way to get there. Always the cross." That was my favorite element.
Have you heard about Dell recalling a ton of their computers? I'm typing on my laptop now, hoping the battery doesn't explode. Wouldn't that be a bummer. Maybe I'll get my battery replaced today. I need to buy books, too. I guess that's my to-do list for the day. Yay.
Okay, well, I'm gonna go take a shower. If you read all of this, you have my thanks, because that's more courtesy I showed to you during the summer, me having cut myself off from Xanga and all. So I apologize for my lack of Xanganess, and for not reading all of y'all's entries. Maybe I'll do some catching up while I have nothing to do. Anyway, chao.
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| Okay, this should be a short and quick entry. I'm reading a book by one Marva Dawn called Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for This Urgent Time. In this book, Dawn quotes from a couple people who actually made me laugh out loud. Enjoy:
Modern technology and media have proved to be Valium for our leisure time. They have turned the United States into a nation of spectators, more eager to watch life than to participate in it. We want out art, for instance, to provide distraction rather than require concentration, asking it for either escape or knee-jerk political messages. We want shock or sleep. Period. . . .
Perhaps Jean Baudrillard is close to the truth after all when he characterizes ours as the age of simulation. For just as shopping malls simulate the outdoors, replacing sun and trees with flourescent lights and green plastic "plants," we simulate danger with amusement parks, friends or enemies with talk-radio hosts, rebellion with torn jeans and black boots, sex with lewd phone conversations, revolution with improved fabric softeners, and freedom with the newest panty liner. We simulate real life by eliminating risk and commitment, and end up mistaking what is real for what is artificial. We exist, that is, encased in a giant cultural condom. (Horstman, Joey Earl. "Channel Too: The Postmodern Yawn." The Other Side 29.3 [May-June 1993]: 35.)
Daily flossing and Right Guard, it seems, rather than truth or justice, are the weapons necessary to defeat Satan and his decidedly unsanitary and uncouth army. We decorate Sunday school rooms to resemble the cozy artificiality of morning talk-show sets. We adopt the sound-bite techniques of political advertising to avoid offending or even challenging our constituency, and we evaluate our ministers on their ability to convincingly imitate network news anchors. "And now over to brother Jim in the choir loft for an update on 'The Old Rugged Cross.'"
And then we wonder where our youth get the idea that worship and entertainment are inseparable. (Alexander, John. "Jobs against the Church." The Other Side 29.4 [July-Aug. 1993]: 53.)
Of course, the subject matter mentioned is very grave, but the manner the authors presented it is rather humorous, methinks. Perhaps I'll rant about worship some other time, but I'm kinda tired right now. Plus I need a shower; I need to get sanitary again. Gotta use that floss and Right Guard to fend off Satan's army, doncha know. Chao.
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| I just got through looking at a magazine called Children's Ministry, and it was really interesting. There were quite a few ads for VBS programs, featuring hip action heroes and fun activities to instill biblical values in kids. I kinda miss those days. You know the ones I'm talking about—the ones where you accepted what you were told without any hesitation because you trusted people, the ones where there was no doubt in your mind about God, the ones where all of life was reduced to a simple black-and-white decision without any grey area. The days before strife, conflict, doubt, pain, and hormonal fluctuations. The days when you could sing "I'm in the Lord's Army" and not feel silly. The days where you had all of life ahead of you, and all you wanted to do was grow up and get your driver's license. The days when God was allowed in school (which, granted, God was banned from school before I was born [the 70s, wasn't it?], but at my elementary school, we had a Baptist principal who wouldn't hear of not having prayer in school). The days with playgrounds and books with colorful pictures. I miss those days. Why can't we all have the faith of a child? I think that's a great thing to desire.
Oh, I know, don't tell me. A child's faith is a blind faith that resides not in logic but in trust, not in empirical evidence but in hearsay. And in this day in age, we should take everything we hear with a grain of salt—we should always test the spirits. But a child's faith is based on truth. If you tell a child that Jesus came and healed people and fed people and made everybody happy, then he'll believe that. For a while. But in that child's life, there is a center, a truth, a focal point that he go cling to. A anchor against the winds (and whims) of society. Roots that hold him fast against the ebb and tide of atheism. I wish we today had that same center. It seems that everything now is subjective—if a religion fits you, go with it. Until something new and better arrives. It's like computers: You can buy either a Mac (which only sinners and graphic designers use) or a PC, so you have a choice right there, and neither selection is the right one. There's no correct computer to buy. It's subjective. And then, in five minutes, they'll have another computer, a better one, one that can kick your computer's tail. So you go buy the next model, and your cyberlife is always changing, fleeing from one form of obsolescence to another one. There's nothing in computers we can anchor ourselves to. Nothing that works regardless of what platform you use, what browser you use, what peripherals you own, or how many gigs you have. We can cling to calculators as the ultimate truth because they're outdated and obsolete in the light of computers. Faith is like that. People use to be content to be Christian or pagan, but then they wanted combine the two religions, and they came up with Catholicism. And after a couple of centuries, people became unhappy again, so they invented Islam. Then Lutheranism. Then Calvinism and Presbyterianism. Then Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, Church of Blah Blah Blah, Blahism, and so on. It seems there's no real, true religion to cling to. No truth in the face of all these opposing viewpoints and beliefs. You might say, "You can always cling to the Bible," but there's even more than one of those. Catholics include the Apocrypha, Jehovah's Witnesses have their ridiculous New World Translation, Mormons have their Book of Mormon, Episcopalians have their Book of Common Prayer, and, more inclusively, there's the Qur'an and every other religion's "holy" book. And, excluding all of those examples, we can't even agree on a Bible to use. Some hold the KJV as inspired ("If the KJV was good enough for Peter, it's good enough for me."), some say the NIV is more like a New International Perversion, some pronounce anathema on the TNIV for its gender-inclusive wording, and there's The Message which rewords everything God already said. The times are filled with subjectivism—if ABC book/religion/political party/computer/hooker/cabbage/toothbrush/(insert anything here) isn't right for you, try XYZ etc./etc./etc. Let me say now that if you get to choose your religion, that invalidates it right then and there. You can't choose what's objective for you. Objective truth is objective for everyone everywhere at all times. And because people don't want to accept this, our society is riddled with subjectivity. I want to return to the days of childhood where the Bible was the Bible, the church was the church, and God was God. I want the faith of a child that clings to Truth unquestioningly.
On different yet similar note, I'm kinda tired of watching religious TV. Here at OC, we get TBN and DayStar, and they're both a disappointment. TBN is full of crazies—hands waving, "amens" and "hallelujahs" flying everywhere, miracles, female preachers, you name it. DayStar is a little less scary, but no better. I'm tired of Joel O'Steen's ridiculous "wealth gospel" (if you follow God, you'll get riches and power and fame and hookers or something), I'm tired of people thinking they can do miracles and fooling others into thinking the same (I don't deny that miracles don't happen today; I deny that they happen through laying on of hands and other similar means—that power died with the apostles), I'm tired of allegedly religious people being so physically minded (some seem to preach that the only thing God is good for is a cure for arthritis—how 'bout we preach spiritual healing first, and then physical healing?), I'm tired of stuff about our "Jewish brothers" (some seem to think that God will still save the nation of Israel), I'm tired of watered-down theology (by this I mean that some seem to preach only happiness, fluffy clouds, and pink bunnies, as if sadness is an emotion Christians don't experience), and I'm tired of people just plain skipping over the truth (as in denying that baptism saves, teaching the unbiblical "sinner's prayer," and so on). On Sunday mornings on channel 9, a show called The Gospel of Christ comes on, and it's clear, plain, simple biblical truth. I like that. 'Tis a good show. I want religious TV that's worth watching—not necessarily something that will make me feel good, but something worth my time.
While I'm on the subject, let's discuss these physically-minded "spiritual" folk. I am not saying that we shouldn't pray to God for physical healing, because we most definitely should. After all, He's kinda in charge of the universe; if you want to talk to anybody, He's the Man. But some shows are all about physical healing. "Miracle" services, "victory campaigns," prayer cloths, prayer . . . I don't know, prayer cabbage probably. I saw this one show last summer, and they wanted people to take a piece of cloth about a foot long and mail that cloth to Such-and-Such Ministries. All the cloths they received would then be placed in a few piles on the front of the stage, and some woman, during their healing service, would pray over the cloths. Then Such-and-Such Ministries would mail them back to their owners, and the owners would place them under the pillows so they can be healed overnight. What a bunch of bull-honky. Ree. Donk. You. Lus. They treat God like He's a good-luck charm, as if having a cloth blessed by some "holy" person will heal your infirmities. God is not your Vending Machine in the Sky, your Cosmic Coke Machine. With a vending machine, you insert some coins and receive a beverage. With God, if you insert a cloth, you get a cloth back! Not a miracle. God owes us absolutely nothing, so when we expect God to give us something, why don't we go by biblical expectation? Insert faith, receive an eternal home in heaven.
Sorry, I just had to get all that off my chest. I didn't intend on being so deep in this post, but there it is. In other news, we had a Japanese Night at OC tonight. It was pretty fun. I got to eat some Japanese food (prettty tasty, I must say), and a girl wrote my name in Japanese: じゃれっど. For some reason, she wrote it in Hiragana, but it's really pretty nonetheless. Thanks, Japanese girl, whoever you are. Oh, by the way, what that actually says is "jah-reh-(pause)-doh" for you non-speakers-of-Japanese. Don't ask why the "doh" is there. It just is.
My Psalms teacher Niccum is in Germany right now. I really like that class, so I'm kinda sad. Oh, well. Hey, I should start working on that paper that I have to do for that class. All right, well, here are my Video Picks for the Week:
America’s
Funniest Videos: Slides
Tango
Commercial
Star
Wars: The Empire Brokeback
Top
Gun 2: Brokeback Squadron
Brokeback
to the Future
The
Brokeback Samurai
Okay, yeah, I know, that's very hypocritical of me to talk about Christianity and then post mock trailers about gay people/driods. But I thought they were funny. Chao. | | |
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