tHOUGhtS WhilE sTAring at A Wall

so i'm on my way back from my music lesson today and of course i always keep my wits about myself because there are plenty of people driving that just shouldn't be...
on that note, there are laws in place that are supposed to prevent extra stupidity. in california, our laws of not using our cellular conventionally (without a hand-free device, and no texting) while driving is one such law meant to keep people's attention on the many happenings around them. and just like any good law, people will always think that they are immune from it, or that they won't get caught this time, etc. i'm not here to preach a holier-than-thou speech, because i'm not sure of all the facets of the laws, and i know that i've broken my fair share. (however, this one is common sense to me...) but, regardless, i stepped into the realm of "what if..."

ethics aside (of course), if i were to swerve a little into the lane of a person i just passed next to me that i noticed was on their phone, with my indicator on of course, would that person be more likely to be cited as at fault if they hit me? could i get a new car this way? i really would like a new car... well not new persay, but one that's reliable. unitl then---

THOuGHtS whILE StaRIng At A WaLL

the other day i saw an ad while waiting at a car wash that donned this very famous symbol:

if you live in the US and you see this on a persons car, an advert, etc., you definitely see it and think: "by golly, that must be a christian in the vehicle/christian business!" but is this a case of using the ichthus sell stuff? and in turn, using Christ to sell stuff? isn't that explicitly stated as wrong to do in the bible? not only that, i think that it leads into people feeling badly if we do not support fellow christians even if their work is shoddy, etc.
even farther into the problem is the ichthus itself! is it a symbol? an idol? maybe noone worships it directly, but people "respect" it in some odd manner (and even disrespect it as though it has some power, i.e. Darwin ichthus look-alikes).
all i know for sure is that i find myself shying away from that sort of thing... it's one thing to wear your faith on your sleeve (even clothing yourself in it as you should) but i think this sort of thing is terrible exploitation of the faith showing some of the same things noticed by Martin Luther and why he wrote the 95 Theses on the Catholic church. until then---

friday morning, i saw a headline on the front page of the New York Times (telling me that it was on a middle page somewhere) that dealt with an important basic right in the United states: or first amendment stating, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." apparently there were/are protesters in Pittsburgh that were speaking out against an assembly of world leaders similar to the one about implementing the WTO in 1999 that became a huge debacle on the side of the Seattle government (where the '99 assembly was held). a very good film was made documenting the event with a fictional story tying everything together called Battle in Seattle. please check it out. but here's the article as i found it on the internet at the Huffington Post:

G20 Protesters Ordered To Stop March By Pittsburgh Police
DANIEL LOVERING and MICHAEL RUBINKAM | 09/24/09 11:23 PM |

PITTSBURGH — Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke and rubber bullets at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins, throwing rocks and breaking windows.
Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper said 17 to 19 protesters were arrested, and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said swift police decisions resulted in minimal property damage. Officials said there were no reports of injuries.
The afternoon march turned chaotic at just about the time that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived for a meeting with leaders of the world's major economies.
The clashes began after several hundred protesters, many advocating against capitalism, tried to march from an outlying neighborhood toward the convention center where the summit is being held.
The protesters clogged streets, banged on drums and chanted "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people don't stop."
The marchers included small groups of self-described anarchists, some wearing dark clothes and bandanas and carrying black flags. Others wore helmets and safety goggles.
One banner read, "No borders, no banks," another, "No hope in capitalism." A few minutes into the march, protesters unfurled a large banner reading "NO BAILOUT NO CAPITALISM" with an encircled "A," a recognized sign of anarchists.
The marchers did not have a permit and, after a few blocks, police declared it an unlawful assembly. They played an announcement over a loudspeaker ordering people to leave and then police in riot gear moved in to break it up. Authorities also used a crowd-control device that emits a deafening siren-like noise, making it uncomfortable for protesters to remain in the streets.
Protesters split into smaller groups. Some rolled large metal trash bins toward police, and a man in a black hooded sweat shirt threw rocks at a police car, breaking the front windshield. Protesters broke 10 windows in a few businesses, including a bank branch, a Boston Market restaurant and a BMW dealership, police said.
Officers fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke at the protesters, set off a flash-bang grenade and fired rubber bullets. Some of those exposed to the pepper spray coughed and complained that their eyes were watering and stinging.
About an hour after the clashes started, the police and protesters were at a standoff. Police sealed off main thoroughfares to downtown.
Twenty-one-year-old Stephon Boatwright, of Syracuse, N.Y., wore a mask of English anarchist Guy Fawkes and yelled at a line of riot police. He then sat cross-legged near the officers, telling them to let the protesters through and to join their cause.
"You're actively suppressing us. I know you want to move," Boatwright yelled, to applause from the protesters gathered around him.
Protesters complained that the march had been peaceful and that police were trampling on their right to assemble.
"We were barely even protesting," said T.J. Amick, 22, of Pittsburgh. "Then all of a sudden, they come up and tell us we're gathered illegally and start using force, start banging their shields, start telling us we're going to be arrested and tear gassed. ... We haven't broken any laws."
Bret Hatch, 26, of Green Bay, Wis., was carrying an American flag and a "Don't Tread on Me" flag.
"This is ridiculous. We have constitutional rights to free speech," he said.
The National Lawyers Guild, a liberal legal-aid group, said one of its observers, a second year law student, was among those arrested. Its representatives were stationed among the protesters, wearing green hats.
"I think he was totally acting according to the law. I don't think he was provoking anyone at all," said Joel Kupferman, a member of the guild. "It's really upsetting because he's here to serve, to make sure everyone else can be protected. ... It's a sign that they are out of control."
The march had begun at a city park, where an activist from New York City, dressed in a white suit with a preacher's collar, started it off with a speech through a bullhorn.
"They are not operating on Earth time. ... They are accommodating the devil," he said. "To love democracy and to love the earth is to be a radical now."
The activist, Billy Talen, travels the country preaching against consumerism. He initially identified himself as "the Rev. Billy from the Church of Life After Shopping."
Such street demonstrations have become the norm at world economic gatherings, including a G-20 meeting in London in April. The protesters here appeared to number fewer than a 1,000, a fraction of the 50,000 that took to the streets of Seattle a decade ago at a World Trade Organization event.
Later Thursday, hundreds of protesters, including a handful of anarchists, massed near the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden where the G-20 summit was beginning with a welcome ceremony.
"Tell me what a police state looks like. This is what a police state looks like!" the protesters chanted as several hundred riot police blocked them from getting any closer.
Police fired smoke canisters on a crowd at night in the city's Oakland section, home to the University of Pittsburgh, after calling for people to disperse, calling it an illegal assembly.
Police had let the crowd, a mix of protesters and students, remain for several hours before issuing the dispersal order. Police appeared to arrest a few people.
Dignitaries arrived in waves throughout the day, entering a city under heavy security. Police and National Guard troops guarded many downtown intersections, and a maze of tall metal fences and concrete barriers shunted cars and pedestrians.
The G-20 ends late Friday afternoon after a day of meetings at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.
___

Associated Press writers Vicki Smith, Mark Scolforo and Ramit Plushnick-Masti contributed to this report.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/24/g20-protesters-ordered-to_n_298675.html.
there's something that needs to be done. can anybody please tell me how we can allow our basic rights to be taken away from us so freely? they will continue to do so until we stand up for them. it takes knowing what our rights are. educate! if you know, tell your friends! have intelligent conversation. it's our responsibility (stop passing blame!) to ourselves and our polis. for those of us that are God-fearing, this all the more true. until then---

this past weekend saw the culmination of some serious work put out by one of the upa's youngest club teams, OCD. this team, of which i am a very proud member, had a decent showing this weekend at sectionals held at CSULB, doing just enough to qualify for regionals which will be held in Scottsdale, AZ. this being our second year, we had our eyes set on making it to regionals this year as we had unexpectedly done last year, so we reached our goal.
our trip to AZ will be in less than two weeks (over the weekend of October 3 & 4) and will demand a much more rigorous style of play from this lesser-experienced team. it's a crazy endeavor, but if we do indeed intend to be contenders in the years to come, we will need to see first-hand how some much more experienced teams can play. (making it to nationals would be quite an amazing feat as it is entirely unexpected, and a bit out of most our price range (it's in Sarasota, FL every year...), but hey, it could happen!)
i love playing this game of ultimate so much and i feel so lucky to be able to take part with a team the enjoys playing it, first, because it's fun. it's great to play something that you can be evaluated by peers and not a coach that is playing politics (as is what has ruined a lot of other organized sports i've played in the past). better yet, a sport that you get rewarded simply for playing hard. you play hard/do your best/RUN, you earn the respect of your teammates. it's as simple at that. i love OCD especially because through all of the loses we accrued, we still played hard; and on top of that, partied afterward! can't wait for regionals! until then---

this is a post responding (or corresponding) with my dear friend's recent post at 50fifty.

i definitely agree with the statement that it seems that Penn is writing about the large subset of Christianity that is rather close-minded and scared of anything outside the box. i think as a Christian, if you haven't asked yourself, "what if there isn't a God" and proved it to yourself in some way, then you may be lacking a large part in your belief in God. if you don't question, you can never learn... it's like being in a relationship with someone and not ever having doubts that the person is the one. but maybe that's the problem with marriage, as evident by the ever-rising divorce rate...

but as an example, i know that some talk of Christians that are "babies of the faith" as in they came to believe at a later time in their lives. i take part in a bible study with people that are ALL older than me by quite a bit (5-10 years at least) and long-time Christians yet last night ran across thoughts from around the room that were like those of said "babies." we were finishing up the epistle to the church of Phillipi that Paul wrote to them from jail. the last chapter is full of great verses (i won't quote them all, read it sometime!) that are often quoted on Christian merchandise or in the church by pastors. we joked that it was a "Paul's Greatest Hits" collection and all i could think of was Boston's first album and greatest hits being one in the same...
basically, what happens is that these lovely gems are taken out of context (as evident by all of them knowing the quotable verses) and people don't understand the purpose for Paul having written them. it's like reading the back cover of a novel and then the last page and deciding you know the whole story. (i actually refrained from even reading Paul's epistles for about 3 years because this happens so often with his writings, and i think that it gave me better perspective as to the purpose of Paul's writings in the bible; the gospel can sustain itself but he's supplemental reading.) what happens is quite evident in the church today: the division, the discrimination, the lack of godly vision, etc., etc. simply because people skim the jewels off the top that they can use immediately and fail to look at the whole picture. no big picture leaves you rather close-minded and the cycle continues...

i also struggle with the idea that people are too focused on heaven (or not wanting to go to hell). i think that i can definitely agree with Penn here, as his point seems to be that Christians don't often enjoy the life that they have here right now. and for this same part of the Christian culture that doesn't look at the big picture, it is usually true. so, i'm going to approach the idea of God wanting more for humanity in a different light: from what i can see, Penn is again looking at this large subset that you mentioned that do indeed "beg the invisible for more." being content with where/who we are now is definitely a large part of being faithful to Christ's teaching (again Paul puts this in the same letter mentioned earlier). "God wanting us to have more" is just the teaching that God has a plan for us. but as i see it, this plan is simply a relationship with him, nothing more nothing less; but with any relationship comes some shedding of some habits and gaining of new ones. this leads to us having "more" since, if you believe in the "God of Abraham," our creator will know how to best use the card dealt to each of us. to me, this is worth more than a ticket to heaven and i think better points to the shortcomings in Penn's argument; due to him picking this subset - and honestly not really doing his homework on the God-fearing faiths as evident in his delineation through forgiveness, acceptance, and suffering, although largely what Christianity is seen as today, to be his basis for there being "no God."

so basically, like Grant, i can agree that it's refreshing to hear someone start their debate in the search for truth with the idea that there simply is no sentient being that may lord over our very lives. however, the full arguments Penn uses only look at a part of the community of believers and not the basis of the faith itself as he should have. but to reiterate Grant's last statements, it's a better conversation. until then---

i've decided that Disneyland is one of the greatest anomalies in our system. i mean, excuse the fact that it's the self-proclaimed "happiest place on earth" but it defies many things that a lot of amusement parks fall into.
i had the pleasure of enjoying this magical world while on the job earlier this week. my boss wanted to make a trip of it with some other friends (those of which i can call friends as well). i'm just going to say it: five straight guys visiting Disneyland on their own and not to pick up on traveling girls is a bit odd. the fact that it was totally fun and not awkward (as one should expected it to be) seems to be part of the contradiction. i mean where else can a hetero, young man be excited about taking this photo and not be temporarily excommunicated from his friends:


yeah. what up, Stitch. this may have been the highlight of one of the guys' days (i won't mention any names... carlos...), but these characters have made an impression on our childhood that won't go away. (i personally haven't even seen Lilo & Stitch so i have no attachment to this character, but oh, here are others...) the Disney brand has been able to leave an impression on children and adults alike for generations now. whether it's positive or negative, i leave that to the individual, but no matter what there are somethings that seem to get set into our consciousness and subconscious that contradict our reality. the idea of the princess finding her prince is forever embedded into the mind of most women in a world where the majority of Disney-goers don't live where they can even find a prince, let alone true royalty at all. in the US we have people wealthy enough that can be considered an equivalent, but usually there is a lack of prince-like mentality from those born into it.

in creating this resort atmosphere in a city/town (Anaheim) with an economy entirely based on entertainment (Baseball Stadium, Convention Center, Honda Center (home of the Ducks), the Grove, and Disneyland) should be pretty common place with those places in mind. for most people from out of town, this may not be very noticeable as the freeways usher you to straight to this magical world, but for those of us locals, outside of the couple of blocks around Disney is not the palm tree-laden resort that Disney (and Hollywood) has portrayed southern California to be. not that it's ghetto, but...
in short the place is a section of orange county all its own. the fact that there is a "downtown" Disney, even plays into that quite well.

it just may be the equivalent of the Vatican to Rome.

oh and one of my favorite things to find at Disney:


the happiest place on earth: a place where you can find your prince, be gay (and i mean HAPPY :P) with your bros, shake hands with cartoon characters, and know that it's still your choice to recycle or waste... politely (may your conscience be your guide). until then---

in a random search for a picture of the tiger known as Hobbes (made famous by Bill Watterson's comics), i came across a plethora of images, mainly fan-fic comics and art, that seemed to focus on a future Calvin: teenager, college, or even grown up with kids of his own. i came across one in particular that struck me. it led me to think of problems that we seem to have in raising our kids nowadays and where our focus lies as we get older. here's the comic below:

the loss of imagination is huge, but the real thing that stuck was why Calvin ignores Hobbes. "mom says the pills must be working"? the kid that i remember being so much like a no-holds-barred, adventurous youth that i could identify with, and yet, quite pensive and intelligent in the way that he viewed life around him has need for pills? i can only assume he was diagnosed as A.D.D. or something because he didn't have the drive to focus on the menial tasks of homework assigned to him by his teacher, Ms. Wormwood. sure, he always came up with excuses, did what ever he could to get out of doing the work, or did what he thought would be acceptable (like giving the honest answer, "i don't know," to an entire set of questions assigned), but his sense of what was important to him always appeared intact.
this comic, obviously trying to make a statement, got me thinking about all the people that i know, including me, that may have have had a drive for something when young that was put to the wayside because of the ambitions forced upon you by a system that seems to want to create us all in the same image.
so what happens to the Calvin in us? why have the vast majority of us decided to take the pills handed to us? better yet, why are we being handed pills in the first place? i feel that the last one is easiest to answer, but then someone will start spouting conspiracy theories (probably me!).
but in all seriousness, seeing a comic like this disturbs me. (well, maybe a little less because someone else out there notices this problem and is using Calvin to make a point. i see it as a negative, but i don't know the authors purpose so i might have jumped the gun on my little bit of congruency with someone out there :P ) either way you look at it, there is something inhibiting the normal function of humanity: to follow your innate dreams and desires. i can only recall Calvin hurting one person following his ambitions, and that is Suzie but usually he got his just deserts! (learning consequences through failure... no babying there!) regardless, kids should play and there are too many things out there trying to stop them. grownups need to play, too. i strongly believe that growing up is learning to play responsibly... mom and dad shouldn't have to be there to tell you when to come in for dinner/bedtime/homework. you're on your own, take responsibility, not a pill. until then---