when wife hands you lemons, make lemonade.
UKELELE BULLDOG (Taken with instagram)
My buddy, Pete, posts these gems every day and I’m kinda pissed they haven’t gone viral yet.
Brad Paisley (w/ Band Perry and Mad Magazine Boy), Mandalay Bay Events Center, 1/28/12
I’ve always felt a great concert shouldn’t have peaks and valleys, only a constant climb towards life-affirming, transcendent, awesome ass shit. I’ve never seen this concept executed more perfectly than Brad Paisley Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
Brad Paisley is the only person who’s ever made me want to quit playing guitar. He plays at a hopelessly fantastic level. Every minute of last night was a bonafide highlight and it was actually the most high tech show I’ve ever seen. At one point the place went absolutely bonkers when it appeared Carrie Underwood was sashaying onstage for “Remind Me.” It was a 3-D holographic image of Carrie but it got the job done (read: SO HOT). No one could tell it was fake, she even started clapping on cue at the end of Brad’s solo.
If there’s one thing country music is about, it’s reality. It’s not about art or struggle or some deeper metaphor to excavate, country music is about reality. Brad said as much last night and it’s exemplified in his songs - plainspoken, self-deprecating, and simply, beautifully honest. I love that. He introduced his band by way of a star trek/wars -themed animation set in motion by a code red! interruption from William Shatner calling for warp speed. Brad breaks into Nervous Breakdown and the animation takes care of the whole “introducing the band” part. It’s just silly. It’s perfect. Brad signs autographs and gives away acoustic guitars after using them for the intro (This is Country Music). He walks out to a platform in the back and sings Letter to Me and Mud on the Tires for the cheap seats. He opens the show with a silhouette of himself beamed in purple lasers. It’s just silly and it’s perfect. DId I mention he took time out to hand his mic to a guy on the floor so dude could propose to his girlfriend? She said yes and Brad breaks into an epic version of She’s Everything with a 3 minute solo on his strat that would make Eric Johnson cream his pants. It’s just silly and it’s perfect. American Saturday Night was perfect for Vegas on a Saturday night and Welcome to the Future had a pretty incredible videoscape of america-humanity-pacman. I’m still in sensory overload 24 hours later. Incredible show by an incredible musician.
I love Brad Paisley.
[video]
“One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden. On it are each of their names. Some may be Democrats. Some may be Republicans. But that doesn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that day in the Situation Room, when I sat next to Bob Gates – a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.
All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves. One of the young men involved in the raid later told me that he didn’t deserve credit for the mission. It only succeeded, he said, because every single member of that unit did their job – the pilot who landed the helicopter that spun out of control; the translator who kept others from entering the compound; the troops who separated the women and children from the fight; the SEALs who charged up the stairs. More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other – because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s someone behind you, watching your back.
So it is with America. Each time I look at that flag, I’m reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those fifty stars and those thirteen stripes. No one built this country on their own. This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”
—
Obama (via kateoplis)
I got all yall’s back. For real.
This shit is bananas.
(Art by Keisuke Yamada)
Christianity, and other collective mythologies founded on faith in a mystical deity are flawed. (<- Early contender for the most obvious sentence of 2012 award) The highest form of faith is believing in something that can ultimately be disproved. The more impossible the belief, the stronger the required faith. This is irrational and certainly not a virtue. For the purposes of this screed Faith = faith in a god.
Faith is not a virtue - simply having it doesn’t make one a better person. For many, their morality is steered by faith and religious doctrine, but in no way is faith a prerequisite to moral living. Faith, however, does make one more hopeful. Faith spurs a hope that something bigger and smarter and better is in control or has the power to change our present or future reality. Faith may lead to hope that we’ll all somehow get what we deserve after death. In that hope, people find comfort, but it is not truth. Faith enables hope (good) but it also requires us to believe that which may or may not be true (bad). The Apostle Paul affirms this in Hebrews 11:1: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Hope can be a positive life force when we strive towards the improbable (e.g. beating illness, trying hard at anything worthwhile, etc…), and it can show itself in many forms, but it is certainly not exclusive to faith (in god) or spiritualism.
For the past several years, I’ve been struggling with this question of why I still attend church and participate in my religious community despite my apostasy. I don’t believe in the Christian teaching of God or soteriology. And while I’m open to the possibility of anything and everything existing in the unseen realms of energy and death, I certainly don’t have much belief in a heaven or a hell or reincarnation or all of us returning to planet Melmac. Upon death, we may become worm food or wormholes, I really have no idea.
But the church is what I know and what I love. It’s where I’ve met some of the best people in the world (and some of the worst). It’s where I’m comfortable and accepted. It’s a place that makes me feel needed and useful. It’s somewhere I can ponder bigger things in life and establish deep, meaningful relationships with others. These are the reasons that keep me coming back, despite hearing things about “relationships with Jesus” and how “God is in control” that make me want to claw my eyes out.
So, imagine if churches, in their current structure, were to acknowledge that faith was flawed and our own mythologies were no more “truthful” than anything else. How do things change? What does a church look like without the doctrines of our collective mythology? What if we kept all the undeniably positive aspects of religion and threw out the mysticism? Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a community like that?
The 5 C’s: Things I love about church now.
Constancy: knowing who will be there, the routine and order of service, steady location, consistency of environment and atmosphere, knowing what I’m getting into
Comfort: comfortable surroundings, old friends, welcoming, non-judgmental environment where I can be and express myself, a place to be away from burdens of the workweek - a place to unplug
Connection: seeing familiar friends, meeting new ones, a perfect level of interaction for “acquaintances,” eating together, familial support, collective joy/grief, a place where it’s not weird (rather encouraged) to make a “deeper” connection with people - generally unavailable in the workplace, a safe place to bring children and meet like-minded parents, sharing/venting concerns and helping find solutions for them, having the sense of a shared, collective purpose/cause
Creativity: opportunity to hear and play live music, learning through lectures/talks/stories/sermons, hearing new ideas and reaffirming old ones, high-tech showmanship (sound systems, computers, projectors, etc…), artistic expression/interpretation of shared values/beliefs, challenging intellectual discourse,
Collaboration: working on projects as a group to tackle a problem or organize an event for the common good, having an elected, hierarchical leadership structure that leverages individual talents/passions, sports/games/activities bonding through conflict/adversity
If we were to build a formal community that cultivated the 5 C’s I’d be all in. I already am, we just have that whole “Jesus is God” thing that irritates me. A community like this would not be immune to all the negative characteristics of any group: discrimination, gossip, conflict, etc…, but with the right alchemy and leadership it could evolve into a community that seeks the common good. I wouldn’t call it a church either, I’d call it the Common Community. Imagine attending a TED conference every Saturday. TED is the first thing that comes to mind when visualizing the Common Community. Someone like Chris Anderson would be the “Pastor.” The cultivator and leader. The facilitator. The Pastor is integral to the success of the community, but he is not the sole source of knowledge. He curates more than he creates. A true communal learning experience. Ok, I’m getting excited now.
Elements of the Common Community:
Let’s do it!!!
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Update (1/17/12): So I wrote all of that ^ while suffering a bout of insomnia last week. Today, TED (speak of the devil), released a brilliant talk by Alain de Botton who is making way more sense than I am. Atheism 2.0. So brilliant.
[video]
People are understandably upset after video emerged of what appears to be U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. If they’re surprised, however, they need to pick up a history book. Soldiers piss on corpses in every war. On both sides. Soldiers rape civilians, as a rule, in every war that has ever taken place since time immemorial. Rape is a weapon of war. Piss, some people are now learning, is a weapon of war. Some fucked-up, disgusting combination of the two, plus shit and dismemberment, is a weapon of war. Bad guys do it. “Good” guys do it. When a country’s government decides to wage war, they are deciding to sanction piss, rape, and the torture and murder of women and children who had the colossally bad fortune to be in the midst of the war. When the U.S. decided to enter into Afghanistan and then Iraq, they (i.e. Congress and the president, and the myriad companies that profit from war) knew this. I’m not singling out the U.S. here; while we’re as good at implementing the more horrific, soul-erasing weapons as anyone, we’re not alone. Does your country have a military? In times of war, they kill people, and sometimes they piss on them.
If it isn’t clear why I’m detailing this, it is because I want to express an old thought: war is the very worst thing there is. And if you command an army, you better the fuck understand, in your probably cowardly, definitely privileged, likely draft-dodging bones, that when you send soldiers out to fight and die, they are going to do some unconscionable, irreversible things. And they are doing it in your name. Because you told them to. And pissing on a corpse is a FUCKING POEM compared to issuing an order for beautiful young people to go and kill other beautiful young people in a land far away, because you, in essence, “felt like it.”
Previously - On Hating Gay People
You know when someone nails it? This is what it looks like.
“A career is not something that you put on like a coat. It is something that grows organically around you, step by step, choice by choice, experience by experience. Everything adds up. No work is beneath you. Nothing is a waste of time unless you make it so.”
Never have a job. Always work.
Life is too short to be unoriginal.
[video]
[video]
This is my family. We wandered along the beach to watch the sunset for Christmas. We then got korean food takeout and watched sunday night football at home. It was perfect.
so, this is christmas