A Few Laffs

I haven't updated this in a while. Not much new going on. I'm still working on my technical writing class, and also revising some writings for my web site.

So here are a couple of samples of my weird sense of humor, that I did with image editing software.





And here are a few comic strips that I got a chuckle out of. Click on each one to see it full size.

SHOE

ZIPPY THE PINHEAD

ZIPPY THE PINHEAD

BREWSTER ROCKIT

CALVIN AND HOBBES

PEANUTS

OVER THE HEDGE

BREWSTER ROCKIT

THE ACADEMIA WALTZ

New Horizons

Back in the '90s I got a degree in computers from New England Institute of Technology. I've had a few computer jobs since then, but have never been able to break into programming, which is what I thought I wanted to do. Everywhere I went I was told that programmers are hired from within a company and they start out doing something else. I did get a temp job at one point where they allowed me to learn MS Access on my own, and then design a database for their parts.

After several years of various jobs (some not even computer related) I finally got hired at Carrols Corporation in Syracuse, where I stayed for six years. The job was as a Help Desk Analyst, but there was a possibility that I could move into programming at some point. I developed a few small applications in MS Access, and when they started having their own parts depot I worked on a database to keep track of inventory and shipment of parts. I worked on it, as a side project, for several months, and pretty much stretched the limits of Access. It really needed a standalone application. The company must have realized that too, and also that I was limited in my ability, so they gave the project to their IT department. Later I helped develop a few other small applications in Access, but never got the opportunity to do any "real" programming,even though I took a couple of classes in Visual Basic.

In the last couple of years at Carrols, I wasn't even sure if programming was what I wanted to do. As I have written previously, I thought I wanted to be a pastor and went to Atlanta Bible College in '07. I couldn't find work there and eventually ran out of money and ended up here in Seattle (previous blog entries explain all that). Since I've been in Seattle I have found that even Help Desk positions were looking for experience and skills in things that I didn't know or only dabbled in at Carrols. And I wasn't all that crazy about Help Desk anyway - I hate phones - although I enjoyed my time at Carrols for the most part.

I was looking at an article on Yahoo about the hot fields that are still growing in spite of the poor economy. One of them was Technical Writing. I'd heard about that because my sister does it. I have done a lot of writing on my own (mostly theological) and enjoyed it. And at Carrols I also wrote procedures as well as user guides for the Access applications I'd developed. So I had kind of done it a bit already. I began researching to find out how to get into the field and found a site with online training courses. It's called Online-Learning.com and is accredited by Ohio University. They have a course specifically in Technical Writing, which I started today.

I have always loved words and enjoyed manipulating them to say things in just the right way. And I have often been frustrated by technical manuals that weren't clear, so I recognize how important good tech writing is. I am looking forward to this course, and getting into a field that I really think I will enjoy. And having a job I enjoy is important to me. I've done my share of crappy jobs in the gotta-make-a-living-somehow field, and it will be great to actually enjoy something again. From what I've read the pay's not bad either, but honestly that has always been of secondary importance to doing something I like doing. There's nothing worse than having to drag yourself every day to a job you hate. Things are starting to look up.

Christmas Balance

I've been back and forth over the years on the issue of Christmas. I think I'm finally finding the balance.

As a child, it was a wonderful, magical time. Memories of Christmas trees and presents and holiday music and food make me wax nostalgic. I'll never forget Dad pulling us on sleds to church one year. I also have fond memories of picking out the tree each year, and of Mom working endlessly to decorate the house and prepare for the various festivities. And we would stretch the holiday out over a week or more by visiting different relatives and exchanging gifts each time.

As I got older the "magic" kind of wore off, but not long after, I began learning more about Jesus and what it really meant to be a Christian. The celebration of his birth gave the season a whole new meaning that was awe inspiring. We had a big lit-up nativity set on our lawn in those days (including a make-shift stable that I helped Dad build). I believed and proclaimed that Jesus was the Reason for the Season. But that was not to last.

When I got involved with The Way, I learned that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th. I was also taught that most of the traditions and customs of the holiday season were "pagan" in origin. Putting Christ back in Christmas was not possible, we said, because he was never there to begin with. Nevertheless, in The Way we allowed for celebrating the holidays as a time for family and togetherness.

Years passed, I moved to different areas and my siblings moved in different directions with their own families. And the "household" that had been The Way disintegrated. For a few years there was a small group of us in Rhode Island that were family-like, and it was our custom that anyone who had nothing else to do gathered at one house or another. It was fun, but I still saw Christmas largely as a worldly, secular custom that I just put up with every year.

After moving again and eventually getting kicked out of the group I was with in Syracuse, NY, I pretty much ignored Christmas. There seemed little reason for celebration, and there was now nothing to counterbalance the crass commercialism and drunken revelry that typified most of the world's holiday festivities.

While most scholars know that December 25th is almost certainly not the birth of Christ (for one thing the shepherds would not have had their flocks in the field at night in December), the consensus seems to be that we don't really know when he was born. (Dr. Ernest L. Martin made a good case for it having been on September 11, 3BC. They had adopted this idea in The Way, but I have since found the book where they got it from, The Star That Astonished the World. If you're interested, check out Dr. Martin's web site.)

But I learned something this year. It had been said that since we don't know when Jesus was born, December 25th is as good a time as any to celebrate it. But I still couldn't see going along with what I thought was the "white-washing" of pagan rituals. However I recently found out that many of the claims about the pagan origins of Christmas are not historically accurate.

While there are similarities between our Christmas customs and those the Romans had in celebrating Saturnalia, there is no evidence that one developed from the other. To be sure, many pagan customs have been mixed with the celebration of the birth of Christ. But there is evidence to show that Christmas was established on December 25th, not to "compromise" by adapting the pagan holiday to Christianity, but to present an alternative to the pagan holiday, so that Christians would have something to celebrate that wasn't idolatrous.

There are a couple of good online articles about this, by Dr. Richard P. Bucher. If you're interested, check out Christmas is Not Pagan, and The Origin and Meaning of the Christmas Tree.

Besides, even if Christmas customs did have pagan origins, they no longer hold that meaning today, for the most part. There isn't any Biblical reference to celebrating the birth of Christ, but there isn't anything forbidding it either. The Bible says that nothing is unclean of itself. It's what we do with it that makes it good or evil. If someone feels that it's pagan to decorate a tree, then they shouldn't do it. But if someone wants to celebrate Christ's birth with a pure heart, as many Christians have done for a few hundred years, there is certainly nothing wrong with it.

After several years of rethinking my beliefs, I have a renewed understanding and appreciation of Jesus Christ, whom I believe to be the promised Messiah, the coming King foretold by the Prophets. And after reading about the historic Christian symbolism of the Christmas tree in the above referenced articles, I can again enjoy Christmas, with the knowledge that those who say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" may not have been duped after all.

(P.S. - I wrote a little Grinch parody called, "How The Way Stole Christmas." It's posted on the Grease-Spot Cafe, a forum for ex-members of The Way.)

Louie

Louie lived a long and full life for a cat, and he will be greatly missed. We got him when he was a kitten, barely old enough to leave his mother. In fact the vet who gave him his first shots said he was probably younger than what they thought at the animal shelter where we got him. Because he was so young he thought Melodie was his mother and sometimes tried to suckle! He was Mama's Boy ever since. He even came when she called him, which is very unusual for a cat.

We named him Louie because his black and white markings reminded me of a Holstein cow, and the dairy connection made me think of Louis Pasteur. Only afterward did we notice the L-shaped marking on his nose, so he was a monogrammed kitty.

We first got him as a companion for our other cat, Emily. She was about three years older, and was sometimes annoyed by her new "little brother" who would pounce on her when she was just chilling out. They would then proceed to chase each other all over our apartment. It was like having kids, especially since we didn't have any of the human variety.

Emily died of kidney problems when she was about eight years old, and Louie has been our "only child" ever since. When we moved from Rhode Island to upstate New York, he rode in the truck with us, and hardly ever complained. While we were living with another couple in New York he got out somehow, and was missing for two or three days. We thought we'd lost him, but one night we heard a pitiful little meow from the back porch and there he was. A tearful reunion followed.

He was very affectionate and loved to snuggle on Melodie's or my shoulder. The combination of fur and purr was so soothing it was better than tranquilizers. And he had a regular ritual with Melodie, where he would sit on the bathroom counter and wait for her to get out of the shower. She would then lean down to him and he would tilt his head so she could give a him a little kiss on the head.

He was a brave hunter too. When the apartment next to ours was being renovated, a few mice showed up in ours. Louie would stalk them, and when he caught one he would toy with it just like in a cartoon. And more than once he presented us with the trophy from his hunt.

When we moved to Georgia, he again rode in the truck with us, but got overheated when we were in South Carolina (it was August). There was a tourist information center that let us bring him into the air conditioned building and gave him some water and let him cool off. He made friends wherever he went because he was so damn cute.

The long trip from Georgia to here was even more surprising. He just settled in the truck and rarely complained, and it was a week-long trip. He was content just knowing we were with him. And he was nice to have on those cold nights sleeping in the back of the truck. He put up with so much through the years.

Except for the one time he got out in New York, he was always an indoor cat, and was only sick once, when a cyst on his back ruptured and got infected. But other than that he lived a happy, healthy life for sixteen years. Recently he started losing weight and not eating, and when we took him to the vet, they discovered a mass in his belly, which they said was most likely cancer.

They could have done tests to confirm it and even surgery to remove it, but it would have only been buying him a short amount of time anyway. They tried giving him steroids to stimulate his appetite and make him feel better, but that only worked briefly. He continued to get worse, and rather than have him suffer we had him put to sleep.

By that time he was so thin and bony and weak that he wasn't the Louie we remembered. We will miss him terribly, but it's better to have the memories we have of him, than to watch him continue to deteriorate. But it's never an easy decision.

It will be a while before I can open a can without looking for him at my feet or expecting to hear him demand, "Give me some of that!" But he also demanded attention too, not just food. If I was reading or doing something on my laptop, he'd climb right in front of it and say, "Pet me NOW!" I never thought I'd miss that.

His whole life, his whole world, was in the midst of our home. It's not surprising that he would want to be the center of our world. There is nothing quite like being the object of his investigation, with the tickle of whiskers and an inquisitive nose. So long, Fuzz-Face! I'll miss you.

Change Has Come?

We have a new president. Or at least, president-elect. Victorious cries of "Yes we can!" and "Change has come to America" ring in the air. I for one am glad that the race is finally over. It's been going on for nearly TWO YEARS! Do we really need to spend half of a term to elect someone to public office? It didn't used to stretch out that long. Maybe a little over a year, but this has been ridiculously long. And the ever-present ads with everybody calling each other a liar got old long ago.

In any case, I think it's fantastic that a black man was elected president, considering the history of race relations in this country. I only hope the majority of people who voted for him did not do so just because he's black. Whether he will be a good president should have nothing to do with his race or color.

Will he be a good president? Only time will tell. He seems to be what so many people have been saying they wanted. So let them have their way this time. The Republicans had their way for 8 years, the Democrats for 8 years before that, and the Republicans had 12 years before that. The pendulum has swung back and forth for years and years, and guess what? It hasn't made that much of a difference!

No matter who got elected, the monetary system needs to be reformed or there will be no real lasting change in the economy. And neither candidate has any plans to reform the monetary system. So the economy will continue, getting temporary fixes at best. And the country as a whole will not change until the hearts of the people change, and that will not be affected by any politician.

The main thing is that as a Christian I am told to pray for government leaders.

I Timothy 2:
1 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,
2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

So regardless of what I may think of his politics, the system works, the people have spoken, and he is our president. But he is not the savior. One day Jesus Christ will return and rule the world in perfect righteousness. THEN change will come! Meanwhile God is still ultimately in charge, and He will see us through the good or the bad, whatever comes. Yes He can!

What Is Music?

I've always loved music. And I've always enjoyed stuff that was "off the beaten path." Not content to listen to the usual top 40 songs as a kid, I wandered up and down the dial and discovered foreign but intriguing sounds I'd never heard before. In this way I discovered classical, jazz, and big band music, as well as progressive rock in my teens. See my profile for an idea of the wide range of tastes I have in music.

But for many years I was still "programmed" in a way. Or should I say in THE Way. My time in that organization served to condition my ideas of what was "Godly" music and what was not. But in recent years I have found myself re-evaluating those ideas, in addition to re-evaluating my doctrinal beliefs. Many Christians (not just in The Way) are taught that your basic, straight-forward, Western music is the most Godly, while other forms are pagan or devilish. But strangely they never referred to any Scriptures that demonstrated this. As a matter of fact there is a verse that says that "nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean" (Rom. 14:14). The context is talking about food, but I believe it can be applied to many other things as well. In terms of music, there is none that is evil in itself - it depends on what you do with it in your head. If it influences you in a negative way, then it's not good for you, though it may not be bad for someone else.

I started realizing this when I began to learn a little about music theory and how Western music developed the system of 8 notes in a scale. But in other cultures the system was different, which accounts for why music from, say, India or China, sounds so "different." I used to be afraid of listening to such music, because I was taught that it was "devilish" - whatever that meant. Granted, some Indian music was used in the worship of other gods, but that doesn't mean I have to. Is God so limited that He can only be worshiped with Western Church music? In fact, there is much evidence that the music of the Psalms, and music of the middle east in general, in Biblical times probably sounded more like the Indian or Arab music we hear today than Western music.

Then I started to see the validity of 20th century composers who experimented with 12 tone technique, atonality, randomness, and other things that to some ears just sounds like "noise." As I recall, many adults in the '60s said the Beatles sounded like noise, yet they have since been recognized as musically talented and innovative. Modern composers like Edgard Varese, Arnold Schoenberg, and John Cage weren't just making noises to annoy people. They were experimenting with "breaking the rules" and so challenging people to think about what, in fact, is music. There is still some controversy about whether some of their compositions are music, but that's the whole point - thinking about it and reconsidering, and not limiting oneself to what's familiar.

Another composer that is often underestimated is Frank Zappa. For years I had only ever heard the few "novelty songs" he had done, like "Don't Eat Yellow Snow", "Dancing Fool", and the big radio hit "Valley Girl". But I recently discovered that he was highly influenced by Varese and others, and in fact was quite an accomplished musician. He wasn't a drug-addled hippy, as he is often thought of. In fact he didn't use drugs and thought the use of drugs was stupid. Also, he didn't just play rock music, although he was a hell of a guitarist. He included classical and jazz elements, as well as experimental things like musique concrete (a movement started in the late 1940s and 1950s in which pieces were produced by editing together natural and industrial sounds - think of the Beatles' "Revolution 9"). Many of his instrumental pieces had weird titles, and his songs frequently had sexually explicit lyrics, but musically he was innovative. A lot of his stuff can be seen on YouTube. Check out "Peaches En Regalia", "Watermelon in Easter Hay", "G-spot Tornado", "St. Etienne", and "Yellow Shark Overture" to name just a few.

A lot of this modern stuff may not be everybody's cup of tea, but I've always enjoyed "weird" stuff. That's not to say I don't enjoy more traditional music as well, but a lot of times I like going outside the "comfort zone" and being challenged. I think the avant garde recordings of John Lennon and Yoko Ono were good for that, and some of it is still hard to listen to, but I enjoy trips like that from time to time, if for no other reason than to rethink what music is.

Follow the Money

With everybody talking about how to fix the economy, why isn't anybody addressing the real problem? Changes in government spending will not help the economy very much, and could even make it worse. The root of the problem is that our entire monetary system is based on debt instead of anything with value. Fractional Reserve Banking enables banks to lend money it doesn't have and charge interest on it. When you or I or the government owes money on those loans, we are under the control of those banks.

A big part of the reason that political races are irrelevant is that no matter who is in office, much of this control of the government remains unchanged. There is a tendency to give whatever administration is in power the credit when the economy is good and the blame when it's bad. But does the government have that much control over the economy? Not when it doesn't even create its own money.

How many people know that the Federal Reserve System is not a government agency but a privately owned entity? How many know the same is true of the Bank of England? How many know that top government leaders as well as leading economic experts have long known of and spoken about the dangers of having one privately owned central bank, not to mention the dishonesty of Fractional Reserve Banking?

Below is a link to a video that is very eye-opening. It's called The Money Masters and it deals with the power that international banks have over nearly every aspect of the economy and the government, and how they got that power.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936

If the link doesn't work, copy and paste it into your browser's address bar. The video is three and a half hours but well worth your time.

Also, here's a link to a shorter, simpler presentation of the same basic ideas. It's called Money As Debt and it's only 47 minutes.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

The old saying holds true especially in this case: If you want to know who's really in charge, just follow the money.