The Beach Picayune

Perhaps the last update on The Beach Picayune...

2007-12-03T09:08:00.000-08:00

So I'm leaning towards not updating The Beach Picayune anymore.
Here's perhaps the last thing I'll post on here.

December's Brew is here. I just posted the 'Sacred' editorial on The Brew.

Get Divorced For The Kids on The Brew

2007-11-30T21:41:00.001-08:00

I just posted the last Divorce Brew tonight. Yet another new author Steve Konet wrote "When Not To Get A Divorce" on The Brew. It's a different take on when parents should get divorced.

Growing Up With Divorce on The Brew...

2007-11-29T07:13:00.001-08:00

I just posted another new author, Shaun Zempke's, article "Divorce II: Son of Schism" on The Brew. It's a look at youngsters growing up with divorced parents and the effects divorce can have on kids.

No More milkmanskid ?

2007-11-28T15:13:00.001-08:00

So I'm thinking not keeping up this blog anymore. I've got three others still and it's getting time consuming to keep up 4 blogs.

If anyone reads these regularly, let me know. Or start keeping up with me on Xanga, Myspace or Facebook.

Fearing Divorce on The Brew...

2007-11-28T12:21:00.000-08:00

I just posted new author Kacie Mann's "A Healthy Fear of Divorce" on The Brew. It's a good way to think about divorce, if you're married.

Another Specialty Brew...

2007-11-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

I just posted The Brew's Creative Editor Libby Parker's Specialty Brew "There Are Things."

New Specialty Brew,,,

2007-11-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

I just posted new author Kelley Thielen's Specialty Brew, "A Long Road, Bleak or Bright" on The Brew.

Be watching closely this week, as there will be a new piece posted every day. We had many submissions and not as much time to publish them all.

Thanks for reading.

That Lovin' Feelin' on The Brew

2007-11-20T07:42:00.000-08:00

I just posted Dan Burnham's article "When You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" on The Brew.

It's a great look at...feelings.

Headline News

2007-11-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

I like this format of giving just headlines of what's going on so I think I'll stick with it.

I went to both the counselor and the chiropractor this week. I'll let you all draw the spiritual applications from this.

I discovered how great SuperTargets are today. You can buy individual bottles of beer there, as well as frozen corn dogs and cheap six packs of Lever 2000 soap.

I'm constantly amazed at The Brew. I've already had two new writers referred to me this month(one by my brother and another by the biggest cheerleader The Brew has: Mishraile.) The Brew truly is a dream come true and perhaps the culmination of so many other life experiences that didn't necessarily make sense until now.

Had such an encouraging conversation with a grad school student who wanted to run by me how much to share about his life during a discipleship group that we're both in at my church.

My grocery shopping trip to SuperTarget made me love being a bachelor. Here's what I bought: three apples; a bottle of Pete's Wicked Ale; a bottle of Sol (a Mexican beer); baked potato chips flavored with chicken, thyme and lemon; a six-pack of frozen corn dogs; some healthy whey protein shake flavored like cappuccino; Cheerios and a can of soup.

Interpol is the perfect soundtrack for this moment of blogging.

For some reason, I found it funny to look hrough my shelf of the food pantry in my apartment. Here's what made me laugh (this being before my grocery trip): Foreman grill; coffee grinder; French press; 1/4 lb Arabian Mocha Sanani coffee beans; 1 pound of organic, Peruvian coffee beans; 1/2 jar of Jiff; 1/4 a bottle of Crown Royal.

What To Do After Divorce on The Brew

2007-11-12T08:50:00.000-08:00

I just published Lonnie Smith's article "What Do You Do After The End?" on The Brew.
It's heartbreaking but also offers a different take on what Paul has to say about divorcees in I Corinthians.

That Video..

2007-11-11T15:47:00.001-08:00

So I mentioned a SNL skit with Natalie Portman and Jamba Juice in my last post. YouTube had to get rid of it but it survives on MySpace Video.
Here it is.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=578939

Funny...

2007-11-10T09:38:00.001-08:00

So I went to get my hair cut at a Sports Clips chain. This is chain of stores meant for men, with TVs at every chair and all kinds of sports memorabilia around. I've gotten good haircuts here in the past. This is probably the middle of the road spot between Great Clips and Knockouts, another men's barber shop that transplants Hooters waitresses here and has them cut your hair instead of serve you wings.

So I go in to a newer location and a frumpy, middle-aged woman cuts my hair. I was a little worried at first because she had a lazy eye. Some could say this would be comparable to having a one-eye pirate cut your hair, but that seemed to me be a little much. The hair cut was great but during the process I was a little uncomfortable. Mainly because this hair stylist was...um...a...um...little...um...buxom. So whenever she had to reach up and over to cut different parts of my hair... um... her ...um ...buxomness was right in my face.

Something else that I found was another SNL clip where Natalie Portman works the counter at a Jamba Juice. All the jokes are so easily transferable to the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless. ...Well, I was going to but the vid got pulled off YouTube and it's not readily available at NBC.com either. If anyone can find it, let me know.

Single Guy and Divorce

2007-11-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

I just posted my article "My Generational, Somewhat Committed, Apathetical View on Divorce" on The Brew. It's what a Millennial, single male might think about divorce.

Camping

2007-11-06T08:20:00.002-08:00

So over the weekend, I took seven college students to work at a camp near Tyler, TX. We worked in the kitchen at the Bluffs camp at Pine Cove and did meal set up and tear down. It was pretty cool.

I hadn't been to a camp since high school, and the camps I remember back then don't leave a good taste in my mouth today. What I grew up with were more fundamentalistic/legalistic type camps that I might even blame for my own legalism in the past.

But naturally, this camp was different. Or at least it was different working there rather than being run through the programs. There were various women's groups (usually middle-aged) that we served this weekend. I probably made one too many comments about feeling like I'm still at The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless when some of the older ladies had annoying or involved requests ('Do you have cranberry juice?'). But I enjoyed the weekend, in spite of this small, piddly stuff.

Something I never thought I'd do again is sit around a campfire and sing worship songs. We had some S'mores and then I made some kind of transitional comment to lead into how everyone should use this weekend to reflect a little bit. I asked someone to bring a guitar for the weekend, knowing that this would be part of the camping trip experience. And there I was singing three worship songs around a campfire.

No one threw any rededicational sticks in any recommitmental fires or had any shattering revelations of how sinful they were. We just sang a couple songs. And I think this was good for me. I can look at it and see it as perhaps how worships songs at a campfire can be good. No drama or tears, just a little time to remember why we were serving that weekend. Maybe I've matured past all my cynicism to see the good in all that I think is bad about evangelicalism.

A highlight was getting to ride some horses on Saturday. I did a trail ride on 'Goliad,' a slow and steady horse who was pretty obedient. Later on, we did some trotting practice in an arena. For this, I rode 'Pistol,' a spunky, stubborn horse who would stop moving altogether just to try to show me who's boss. I did a lot of kicking and squeezing to get Pistol to trot a few times and had to turn him in circles just to try to show him who's boss.

November Brew - Divorce

2007-11-06T08:20:00.001-08:00

I just posted November's editorial on The Brew.

Headline News

2007-10-31T20:27:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while but here's the long and short of it:

I began going to counseling again this week. It knocks the wind out of me (luckily I'll only be going twice a month).

I'm taking seven of the college group members from my church to a camp to serve in the kitchen this weekend.

I made a peanut butter and jelly frappuccinno at work tonight (minus the bread). Good stuff.

I went to a wedding this past weekend but I couldn't stop thinking about divorce (only because I have to write about it this month on The Brew, not because of any opinions I have about the couple getting married).

I had three shots mixed with a little eggnog before starting work today (beginning tomorrow you can too). Good stuff.

Had a conversation with one of my roommates that ended up with us both saying how we had told our friends what a blessing it was to be living with the other one.

I flipped the bird to Dallas and it's 'Must Drive Everywhere Mentality/City Setup' when I walked to Wendy's one night for a burger that kind of sizzled.

I 'bought' Radiohead's new album off their website, which lets you pay whatever you want for the album. 'Reckoner' is an amazing track.

Last Election on The Brew

2007-10-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

I just posted new author Scott Duplisea's article, "Mudslinging and Straw Polls in Junior High" on The Brew.
It's great stuff.

Old Brew is New Again!

2007-10-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

I reposted the May and April Brews over the weekend.
It's great to read back over what makes The Brew so good.

For example: Dan Morgan's "From Love To Lust" article from April's Two by 4 issue. Or Jon Reisinger's "The MySpace-ination of Community" from May's Space issue.

Single Guy Adjusts, Becomes Token Person

2007-10-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

I went back to the chiropractor today after getting rid of one intern at the chiropractic school who was messing up my back rather than fixing it. The new intern (gives adjustments for about $25 a pop) was great. She took the wind out of me with the first crack of my back. The other adjustments were just as shocking but also soothing after the initial pain of the adjustment went away.

I came out of the office feeling a little euphoric. There was one adjustment (somewhere in the neck region) that's famous for making people feel high. "We'll ease into that one," the intern said. They also want to do some test to find out if I'm diabetic. This would mean me fasting for 12-14 hours, sucking down some glucose and then testing my blood six times over three hours to see what happens.

Yeah, I'm bring a book for that one.

Over the weekend, one of the small groups from my church asked me to be the emcee for a "Newlyweds Game." I felt honored until I realized that they had already asked my roommate (one of only a few single 20something guys in my church) already. But I already knew half of the couples in the group well so I went for it. And as usual, the token single guy comes home with half of the desserts from whatever meal they had (though I'm not complaining).

The Oldest Election on The Brew

2007-10-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

I just posted Kevin Schwartz's "The Oldest Election" on The Brew. It's a not so obvious look at the idea of election in the Old Testament.

Thanks for reading and being patient as we continue to work out the kinks on The Brew.

A Tour of Texas

2007-10-16T17:28:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty extensive tour of Texas on Saturday.

It began when I met up with a buddy of mine at a farmer’s market in Coppell, TX (a NW suburb of Dallas) that morning. We met there to go to on our road trip to see where Dr. Pepper first began.

But while I was there, I chewed the cud with an organic coffee roaster, or more accurately, tasted the brew. After a great conversation that would surely amaze or bore someone not so into coffee, I bought about a pound and a half of some Peruvian coffee. It was great stuff: strong, natural cinnamon, chocolate and caramel flavors in the coffee. The variety of flavors blew away the beans from the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless because the beans I sell on a daily basis are roasted to fit one specific taste profile. The beans I bought at the market are roasted with the flavor profile left up in the air, like the sweet smells and smoke of roasted coffee. It’s a little more adventurous.

So anyway, two other guys and I drove a couple hours to Hico, TX (just next door to our final destination in Texas terms). Our destination: The Koffee Kup Family Restaurant. They had pies with mile-high meringue and tasty chicken fried steak, but the main reason we went there was the infamy this café used to have. The retired title of restaurant was: Koffee Kup Kafe. The infamy comes from the alliterated title and what the first letter of each of those words mean when lined up next to each other (KKK). No joke. This is Texas, mind you.

Then we set off to Dublin, TX, where Dr. Pepper was invented and is still bottled to this day. What makes this plant (more accurately a small building on a corner in a town of 3,000) unique is that the Dr. Pepper made here still uses the original recipe of Imperial cane sugar, rather than corn syrup. This gives the pop a much crisper taste and is just plain awesome. I took a tour of the ancient glass bottling machine that is only used once a month, due to the lack of bottles and the ancient nature of the parts in the machine.

In the soda fountain shop next door, I had an old fashioned Dr. Pepper, made by adding carbonated water to syrup. Ooooooohhhh yeeeeaaaahhhhh. Then I bought 8 six packs to savor for a while.

And a couple days later, back in Dallas, TX, I hit up a happy hour at a local microbrewery and tasted their ‘chili’ beer, made with jalapeños. Let me just say: jalapeno beer = awesomeness.

Badgers and my influence

2007-10-11T16:12:00.001-07:00

One of my roommates showed me some pretty good car insurance commercials. They involve badgers and that's all you need to know.

via videosift.com

On a different note, I'm realizing how much influence I can have one people. The college kids from my church went out and bought a coffee grinder and a French press. And some of them are now quoting The Big Lebowski.

Morals and Election on The Brew

2007-10-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

October's first Election article was posted on The Brew. Daniel Burnham wrote on "Why Morals Can Be Dangerous During Elections." It's a powder keg of an article and very worth reading.

Flashback: Take some time to check out Ian North's "Christploitation!" article from June's Film Brew. It's great look at lesser-known, more obscure genre of film.

Ocotober Brew

2007-10-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

I just posted October's editorial on Election on The Brew.
This is the beginning of a challenging month, but also the end of the first year of The Brew.

It's crazy to think that it's been going for a year already.

Company Values

2007-10-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

So I heard about a "Blend Off" contest at work this week, where employees of The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless can create their own blend of coffee.

This event was in the works for a while, though my store manager felt like it was one too many things to make working for the company 'fun.' I heard about the event an hour before it took place and tried to get something low-key together.

So I put together a blend of coffees, which consisted of 60% Guatemalan and 40% Kenyan beans. Both coffees have really distinct flavors that work well together and pair well with orange and chocolate. I used dark chocolate orange-flavored Hershey Kisses to go with the blend.

At the meeting, I snickered at the elaborate presentations others made of their blends, though this was to create enthusiasm for our livelihood and a passion for coffee. Some had pencil-drawn logos for their blend and a brief description of the coffee, it's name and it's purpose. I had merely a French Press of my blend, along with a description and a name I pulled out of the air.

My store manager and I snickered to ourselves when one guy took ten minutes just to explain the name of his blend; it consisted of some Italian music terms, references to Shakespeare and the word 'gestalt'. Then he had a medium-sized paste board to feature his logo: a large, abstract painting where it seemed every swatch of color meant something. With all coffee shop stereotypes aside, it's still easy to pick out the art school grads or dropouts.

This guy also had a tray with an elaborate spread of pound cakes and chocolates to go with his blend, which was so many parts this coffee, two parts this other coffee and still more parts of another coffee.

I laughed at this guy because he was enthusiastic and he was taking himself seriously. I saw this meeting as a way to get out of my store for a bit and to be a little creative with coffee. It made me think about how I viewed the company I work for: as a means to an end.

I love coffee as much as the next person but I can't say that it's my life and or that I can't picture myself doing anything else. The uber presenter won the district taste test and is going on to the regional contest on Friday. I guess I'm happy for him but I don't think I could see myself doing the same.

My Education in Chicago on The Brew; Crickets

2007-09-30T14:35:00.000-07:00

I just posted my article "Where Education and Experience Blur" on The Brew.
It's just a little anecdotal piece about journalism, Chicago and experience.

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I felt like I was in some bad horror movie the other night when I went to Kohl's around 9:30 p.m.

I parked my car and got out and saw hundreds of little black things all over the pavement. I took a few steps in my flip flops, trying to avoid the black things, which I figured out were crickets.

Once I realized that they were crickets, the black things jumping all around made more sense. I felt many of them bump into my legs and one almost fell in between my foot and my flip flops.

I got into the store without feeling anything squish or crunch underfoot. But it was just weird. I'd never seen so many of them in one spot before, let alone on a cement parking lot. Trippy.

Education Debate on The Brew; MilkyWay Greenbacks

2007-09-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

So...yeah. It's been a while. And I didn't blog. Sorry.

But a debate has begun on The Brew on traditional vs. non-traditional education. The first article by Luke Raad, was posted earlier this week. The second article, by Trent Starnes, was posted today. Each author will also be writing a rebuttal to the other's article. Watch for it and for my 'education' article.

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So I'm part of a writing group at my church. I wrote a little short story for it that turned out like this:

“Hey, Rob. What’s going on?” John asked as one the store’s star employees walked in.

“Not much,” Rob said, taking a nostalgic look around the coffee shop, like he would never see it again. “Who’s working this morning?”

“You, me, Jose and Toni,” John said.

“Awesome,” Rob said, relieved. Neither of the managers were working this morning. He dropped his stuff off in the back and put on his brown apron that featured their company’s logo at chest level. He clocked in and walked behind the counter.

“Hey, could I just work the bar this morning?” Rob asked.

John thought silently for a minute and said, “Sure. Why not?”

“Sweet, thanks a bunch.” Rob thought for a moment. “I kinda just feel like making drinks this morning.”

“Sure, no prob. Hey, so what are you going to do with that new inheritance you just got?”

“Well, I’m not too sure, yet,” Rob said. “I might take some time off to figure it all out. Maybe travel a little.” He paused. “I might just make it up as I go.”

The next hour passed as the other employees came into work and took their spots at the registers. The morning rush customers began to flow in, looking like zombies out of some bad ‘50s horror movie.

The employees at the registers began calling drinks to Rob, who wrote drinks down and prepared the syrups for John, who also had taken a spot at the espresso bar.

Rob saw one customer whom he particularly could not stand walk into the store and get in line. She was more than a little overweight and made a large fuss to insure that her drink was made with skim milk but also insisted that there was extra whip cream on top. This customer soon reached the register.

“Welcome to MilkyWayGreenbacks’s Coffee,” the person at the register greete the woman. “How are you today?”

“Fine,” the woman said impatiently.

“Could I interest you in a delicious chocolate peanut butter almond muffin this morning?”

“No,” the woman said curtly.

“Okay,” the employee said, trained to be unfazed by any amount of unpleasantness. “Well how about a pound of our new Palpitations Roas..?”

“No,” the woman said, cutting him off. She turned to Rob and said, “Large, skim, caramel, almond white mocha with a dome lid and extra, extra whipped cream.”

“Large, Who-Am-I-Kidding’ White Mocha,” Rob called back to confirm that he had received the order.

Time didn’t stop when Rob called out this nickname for the drink because time doesn’t stop for coffee-hungry customers during the morning rush hour and a half. A slight pause was felt by everyone in the small store. Some customers in the back of the line snickered to themselves or chuckled with their associates who were in line with them.

John chuckled, but then shot Rob a look between steaming milk and topping cups with whipped cream and lids.

“Excuse me?!” the woman belted out to Rob.

“I’m sorry, maam,” Rob said. “But you’re not kidding anyone when you get that drink. You might was well shove a couple Snickers down your throat.”

“Well, I never!” she responded.

“Well, maam, it looks like you do pretty often.”

“Hey, you know better than that,” John said. “I know I don’t have to tell you about customer service.”

“You don’t,” Rob said. “I’m being truthful in my customer service. I care about this woman so I don’t want her to go on thinking that her drink is anywhere near healthy.”

A young man in a nice business suit was next. “Medium skim, sugar-free vanilla latte,” was called out.

“Medium Soccer Mom,” Rob called back.

“What?!” the man yelled out.

“This drink must be for your wife, right?” Rob responded. “Next?”

The line kept moving because people didn’t have time to stop and talk to this punk kid who was probably taking grad classes at some art institute. Time waited for no man, especially at a coffee shop. All the customers had to get to work on time and their coffee was the one thing that would help them do so. And besides, there were plenty of other MilkyWayGreenbacks around the city. There was no reason to come back to this one, especially if that non-conformist lackey worked here.

“Are you crazy?” John said. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“You guys couldn’t survive this rush without a fourth person here,” Rob retorted.

“Why are you doing this?” John asked.

They were interrupted with another drink: “Large, half-soy, half skim, two pump almond, three pump mocha with organic whipped cream latte.”

“Large schizo-tree-hugger latte,” Rob called back.

“I think people should appreciate the people who help them through their days,” Rob said to John. “Anyone in the service industry is taken for granted so often these days. I mean, what would happen if coffee chain employees weren’t paid to act like they care about customers?”

The normal coffee shop din continued as the effeminate man who wanted the organic whipped cream stood dumbstruck at Rob’s audacity. Cash drawers opened and closed; milk swished and splattered in the steaming pitchers; whipped cream canisters sputtered as they spat out creamy goodness. The shocked customer was passive aggressively shoved out of the way by the next customer in line, who was already barking out a drink order. There wasn’t time for customers to respond.

Another drink was called out: “Large seven shot latte.”

“Large crackhead latte,” Rob called back.

Audible gasps could be heard in the café, namely that of the slender woman who ordered the drink. “What did you call me?” the woman shouted at Rob.

But the next drink was already called out and other customers were pressing in from behind the woman, forcing her away from the registers and Rob.

“Now that’s it,” said John. “No more drink calling for you. You’re doing the milk and drink hand off station. Now!”

Rob obeyed with a smile, satisfied with himself.

Brew Reconstruction; Quick Recovery; Soul Coughing

2007-09-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

So The Brew is under construction. We're working out some technological kinks I'll be reposting August and July this month, and hopefully two more months in October.

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So I had pretty stressful day today at the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless. Afterwards, I wanted to get some booze, go home, and take a nap. I had overslept and was late to work that morning. So many other things happened to make the day trying: someone not showing up for work; more crazy yuppies wanting their coffee earlier on a Saturday morning; people wanting lots of boxes and 2.5 gallon cambros of coffee; etc.

I was able to manage everything pretty well. People didn't have to wait a ridiculous amount of time for coffee or their cambros. Trouble employees weren't as much trouble during the day. We avoided major blunders and still had our wits about us. The store was still standing when I left in the early afternoon.

And I was okay. I didn't have as much of a need to drink half a six-pack and then doze off on the couch when I got back to my apartment. So instead, I got a couple shots of Crown Royal on the rocks and finished watching Collateral. When the movie ended, I was pleasingly calm and somewhat refreshed.

This seemed to be one of the quickest recoveries from a stressful day I've ever had. I didn't want to lounge around anymore or even have more Crown Royal. One of the first thoughts I had was to do some more writing. Maybe finish that short story about a barista enjoying his last day working at a coffee chain named MilkyWayGreenbacks. I could write another scene in that novel. I could work on another piece for the writing group at my church.

It's cool to realize that you can recover better than you thought. It makes you feel more mature and well-adjusted.

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I've been discovering Soul Coughing, a now defunct alt band from the 90s, though frontman Mike Doughty is still doing solo work. They've got some great, random, obscure songs, like the Coffee Song and Buddha Rhubarb Butter. Tried to find vids on YouTube but with no luck. They're still worth listening too.

Why Teach? on The Brew; Scary liquor stores; Seraphim Falls

2007-09-10T20:23:00.001-07:00

I just posted September's first article, "Why I'm Still A Teacher" by new author Gayle Amato. It's a great look at what education really is and where The Brew fits in in the educational process.

There are still a few kinks to get worked out, as you may notice when you look for September's editorial, which has disappeared. Such is the joy of Internet publishing. But fear not, for my editorial writing prowess will be able to be viewed once again (and will make look Gayle's article look all the better) when this one of many hiccups is fed a good spoonful of peanut butter.

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I've come to love scary-looking liquor stores. I went to one in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood in Dallas where two black men were sitting outside and asking for money and beer. An Asian and a Phillipino man manned the counter inside. When I walked in, looking as white as can be in cargo shorts and a polo, I think I did my part to celebrate racial diversity. Or is it unity? All races are brought together through a liquor store?

To make it even more ethnic, I was on a mission for Gallo beer, which is made in Guatemala. I found this beer at a store similar to the one mentioned above while living in Chicago. I knew that my only hope would be to check out random, ramshackle stores which might carry it.

I was let down when I didn't see Gallo. But instead I found Tona (there should be an 'enye' in that name but this blog couldn't translate that symbol), a beer from Nicaragua.

Oh, man. I almost forgot about Gallo when I downed this smooth but somehow crisp delight. My curiosity was rewarded and now I'm not so sure if Gallo is the best Latin American beer I've had.

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I watched Seraphim Falls this weekend and was wowed as James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) was chased through the southwest by Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson). Both played ex-Civil War generals who had some unfinished business. Great cat and mouse film with some very surprising moments.

Brosnan should get an award for best use of a horse as a cloaking device in this film. That's all I'm gonna say about that, otherwise, I'll spoil the best surprise of the movie.

Continuous Learning On The Brew; Talledega what?!

2007-09-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

I posted September's editorial on The Brew. Read it and feel more educated.

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I watched Talladega Nights last night. I guess I was expecting more laughs. I laughed at the intro of Will Ferrel's character but then didn't laugh until the commercial interruption of the longest crash ever.

I was amazed at what a huge production the movie was. But then I realized that every second of film time was prime time for product placement. And boy, did they ever place products. Now the elaborate crash sequences and numerous cameos began to make more financial sense. Even Fig Newtons got in on the action (I chuckled at that joke).

Another Round of The Brew; Jogging the Mind and Useless Knowledge

2007-09-04T17:37:00.000-07:00

So The Brew is finally back up! We'll be working to repost all past articles over the next few months as well as move into September's Education Issue.

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So I was running today around my expansive apartment complex when running towards me was a guy I was an RA with while at Moody in Chicago. Now, being a Bible school graduate and still running in Christian circles, it's a reality that I'll always run into people who will jog my memory of college. So this was no surprise for me.

This may have been a surprise for this guy, who noticed me but may not have recognized me. Perhaps his mind had been sprinting through his workout and didn't have time to stop for a breather to remember way back when. I didn't become short of breath when I realized that he wouldn't say 'Hey' so I said, "How's it going?" as he ran by.

No response.
No biggie. I wasn't on any marathon to get every person I ever went to school with to remember me.

On a different note, I had some boosts and edits when it comes to my useless movie knowledge.

I went to a midnight showing of Pulp Fiction at a sort of artsy theater near my new store. I figured most of my friends wouldn't have been able to handle going to a midnight movie, much less Pulp Fiction at midnight, so I went with some friends from the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless.

Before the film, which didn't get over till 2:45 a.m., they had some trivia for free movie passes and for a collector's edition DVD of the movie. While I was debating if I wanted a copy of the film that made Quentin Tarantino famous, they started the trivia.

"Which three Tarantino films feature characters eating Big Kahuna burgers?" People started raising their hands and belting out all of the movies. Four people got the answer wrong and, by this time, seeing that Tarantino only has around six or seven major films out there, someone else figured it out pretty quickly.

I was lost on this, and the next question. "Vincent Vega's character in Pulp Fiction is related to which character in Reservoir Dogs?" I've yet to see Dogs so I had to let someone else get the DVD.

But the next day, I was playing Scene It with the college group from my church and am a little ashamed to say that I dominated there. I picked out a picture of Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters and picked the movie Silence of The Lambs from these three clues: Size 16 dress, fava beans, and Clarice.

And now I'm also in a race against two other guys from my college group on Facebook's Never-Ending Movie Quiz.

All this makes me wonder what I would do if I didn't have all this useless movie knowledge.

Call PR!; The King

2007-08-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

So I had a legendary moment while working at the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless today.

The new Fall promotion began today, and so did the push for employees to sell more whole bean coffee. All the machines were also marked down to closeout prices. I happened to be wearing my newly re-acquired Coffee Master apron, which if I were writing a PR piece, would be a symbol of my hard work and dedication to the Coffee Chain's values and beliefs.

Throughout my morning shift, I sold three pounds of coffee to various customers. Now I could attribute this to my looking like I knew something about coffee with the aforementioned apron, which is fancier than normal aprons and black. And I could write how I was setting the example of coffee excellence by not only wearing the Coffee Master Apron, but also selling more than my fair share of beans in one day. Or I could attribute it to being at the right place at the right time, namely behind a register.

Later on in the day, a customer called asking if my store had a pricey espresso machine (normally $1,400 but marked down to $449). I happily said, "Well, yes, I think we do. I can put it aside for you..."

That was very good news to my ears and to the customer's. Apparently, she had to call around to four different stores to find the machine. She and others had chipped in to buy the machine as a wedding present for some happy newlywed couple that would be so happy to have the machine. I helped the customer out to her car with the machine (it's probably 20 lbs or so) and she told me how happy she was to find this. After I put the machine in her car.

She was elated and then gave me a hug before she drove away. Now if this were some puff piece, I might say that I was proud to wear that black apron today. I could say that this was all in a day's work for a Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless Coffee Master. Maybe I could speculate as to how my would not have been as good if I had not worn that apron.

But luckily, for you, this isn't a PR fluff article, and this is the end of the story.

______________________________

I watched The King over the weekend.

Very disturbing. I guess it was a very accurate portrayal of evil? I'm not sure how to take this film. Don't know if there's anything here besides good acting and style that's redeemable.

A Real Blog Update; Interesting News

2007-08-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

Since The Brew is still down, I've some extra time on my hands. And so I thought, why not produce a real blog update? So here's some of the banal stuff I never put up on here when I have more important things to post.

The Brew is still down.

My new running shoes (bought before the car sucked all my money away) are working great. Ran about a mile and a half this afternoon around White Rock Lake (a beautiful lake and park in east Dallas) and loved it. I didn't do more because it was 95 degrees while I ran.

My two new roommates are both teachers at a small Christian school and are back to an early to bed, early to rise schedule. Whenever I close at The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless, I get up too late to see them (7:30 a.m.) and come home too late to see them (9:30-10 p.m.). It's like I've got a two bedroom all to myself.

I tried the new blueberries and cream 'beverage' with shots of espresso blended in. I woulda thought it'd be nasty, but I'm hooked now. It's really good.

I'm reading through The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton for the classics club at my church. It's great. When The Brew gets back to normal, I'll refer you to a great article about this book in the January issue by my bud Kevin.

I ate black beans and rice for dinner tonight. I'll probably eat the same thing tomorrow night again, since I have a new, my-car-sucked-all-my-money-away budget.

I can't go see Muse when they come to Dallas in September (again, the budget). But, MuteMath will be back here in November at the smoke-free House Of Blues. Hoorah.

My family decided to host another exchange student this year. So when I go home for Thanksgiving, I'll have a 16-year-old brother from China named Teng.

-----------------------------------------------------

Here's some interesting news stories I found this last week:

Aquafina bottled water comes straight from the tap.

Some messiness where TV journalism crosses the line into invasion of privacy and why NBC's Dateline program is in hot water because of their 'To Catch a Predator' series.

Tears of Joy

2007-08-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

So I nearly cried during church this morning. I think it was for a couple of reasons.
There was a lot of stuff happening that had built to a climax and it just came together during one of the most refreshing worship services I’ve been to in a long time.

That service was at my church but was different than usual because the associate pastor, who was recently put in charge of structuring the worship service, preached today. In all honesty, this associate pastor is one of the main reasons that I stayed at my church. It was great to worship in the service he put together and then also hear him preach. And that last sentence might be the first time I’ve used ‘worship’ to describe something that I’ve done, rather than some nebulous concept.

What made this moment so encouraging and humbling was my past week. Earlier in the week, some hackers broke into the server that hosts The Brew, my online magazine, and did some royal technical damage (Here is what it looks like now). My friend, who takes care of the technical side of The Brew, told me that we might have to restart the magazine. This could mean that I would have to repost and re-enter all the articles and author profiles from the last ten months. We’d be pretty much starting over.

About the same time, my ’99 Hyundai Elantra decided to start overheating. I had some people from church check it out and we tried some small solutions to fix it, though they ultimately didn’t work. So I took my car, which has survived three 1,000-mile, cross country drives, in to the shop to get fixed. They told me that I needed a new water pump and thermostat. They also needed to replace my timing belt, which they said they had to replace after removing it (in order to replace the water pump). The boss at the Meineke store I took my car to told me that he would eat the cost of the belt (including the labor, which was over $70/hr) because he had already had to call me once to add on more parts/charges.

More than $600 later, my car was working, but I had to adjust my plans for a ‘mystery outing’ for the college group that I help out with. I cancelled the dinner I had planned and instead planned to go to a coffee house that had bad coffee but good live music. And for a while, I wasn’t sure anyone would come, because I hadn’t heard any response. I was almost ready to have no one show up and be ready to do something else that night.
But lo and behold, at the set time, they show up and we have a very cool night.

I got to thinking about all the problems that came up this week and the some of the wrong thoughts that came up. A good friend of mine kept calling throughout the week to see how I was doing because he knew of my past with depression. And then I realized how all the strife of this week could have crippled me or sent me into a depressive state. I could have thought that I was overwhelmed with all that was going wrong. I could have thought that I was stuck and helpless to do anything.

But what happened instead: people from my church were very willing to help me with my car. Guys from a church-less Bible study I go to kept checking on me to see how I was doing and offer encouragement. I saw how community works. I saw how the church should work. And I saw how car troubles or magazine glitches didn’t set me off like they could have.

So I guess that is rolling with the punches. Or maturing. Or getting even further down the road from things that could bring back depression.

And that is definitely something that warrants tears of joy.

Brouhaha on The Brew; Texas Heat

2007-08-16T09:10:00.000-07:00

So someone hacked into the server that hosts The Brew, which is currently unable to be viewed. Our large technical staff of 1 is working to move The Brew onto a different server and fix whatever problems happened when the hacks hacked in. We should have it all back together pretty soon.

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The full force of a Texas summer is here. So far, most of this summer has been cooler, due to almost constant rain showers. But the showers have cleared up and let in the heat, bringing the temps back to normal, with highs of 104 and 105 (without the heat index).

So I'm getting used to sweating through most of my clothes and having to wash them all the more.

The heat is also taking it's toll on my car, conditioned in the icy winters of Illinois. This week my '99 Hyundai decided to start overheating. I'm pretty sure it's something with the engine coolant system because I keep shoving water and coolant into my car, with no visible effects.

Luckily, I mass texted people I knew down here and found out someone from church knows cars (and also bought a new Hyundai recently). The guy is coming by today to check it out. I'm hoping it's not a big thing like a water pump or compressor. But time will tell.

The Living Conflict; Soup Kitchen; Fellowship Church

2007-08-13T09:06:00.001-07:00

I just posted new author Daniel Burnham's "The Living Conflict" on The Brew. It's a look at the continuous conflict for anyone who believes in Christ.

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There’s nothing like serving in a run-down, grimy soup kitchen to get your mind off your own depressed, narcissistic self.

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Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX

Saturday night I went to this church with my friend Trent and his wife, Sarah. We do this periodically to see what all is out in the DFW area. We both have our own smaller churches that we’re committed to but enjoy experiencing other churches and then discussing them.

So we thought we’d tackle the mega-churches, which is why we went to Fellowship, perhaps the largest mega-church in DFW, or possibly Texas. Ed Young is the pastor, but he was on vacation this week. We’re all naturally cynical, having gone to Bible school and having experienced what we would consider to be ‘real’ church at our smaller congregations. We tried to be fair, but we couldn’t get away from being skeptics.

The best way to describe it may be to just write about some glimpses.

I visited the restroom and was treated to “Now is The Time” by Delirious? playing through speakers. I thought, it’d been a while since I heard them.

There were five Grapevine cops in and around the church, watching the crowds or directing traffic.

The kid’s wing of the church was a friggin’ amusement park, with a Sea World-lookin walkway, classrooms entrances that looked like rollercoaster waiting lines. There was a fifty-foot tall enchanted castle with a waterfall flowing down the middle. There was enough sensory overload to hook a kid, and drive them to bug their parents until the parents brought the kid back.

The worship service used only one familiar song, while the others seemed to be just ways for the worship team to perform. And did they ever. It was a slick production and impressive. At the beginning of the set, the worship leader, who looked like a mix between Prince and Seal, said, “Look around you at the beautiful people all around you.” This was the lead in to have everyone greet each other.

The spookiest part was as we were leaving, and had Silversun Pickups playing was we left the parking lot. A song played and the lyrics started off like this:

“So much for the light show
pissing on while pissing off
sucking in a smokescreen
selling of a loose knit dream”

It was hard to not compare the lyrics to what we had just experienced. That was trippy.

African Conflicts on The Brew; No News

2007-08-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

I just posted Kevin Schwartz's "An African Conflict Even Witch Doctors Stay Away From" on The Brew. It's a humbling look at church conflicts in Africa and how it is resolved.

---------------

I've been thinking of what to blog about. I had a similar problem while talking to someone on the phone today. They asked what's up. I had to think for a while. Most everything has been going pretty well. Church is good. The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless is good. The Brew is exceeding my expectations. My roommates are cool.

I guess no news is good news.

Blog-fighting on The Brew; Kierkegaard on Adventure

2007-08-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

I just posted new author Dale Harris' "Theology, The Internet and Conflict-Loving Conservatives" article, which is a great example of the dark side of online community.

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I read Kierkegaard again and was very encouraged by his ideas about venturing out in faith. I thought about these quotes and how they made so much sense when I thought of well The Brew is doing.

"We delude ourselves into thinking that to refrain from venturing is modesty, and that it must please God as humility. No,no! Not to venture means to make a fool of God--because all he is waiting for is that you go forth."

"A person can distress the spirit by venturing too much. Yet there is comfort in knowing that discipline will surely come and will help him if he honestly humbles himself under it. But a person can also distress the spirit by venturing too little. Alas, but this comes home to him only after a long time, perhaps after many years when he is living in the security he sought by avoiding danger. Now he must experience the truth that he was untrue to himself. Perhaps it does not come until old age, perhaps not until eternity. In any case, the thing to do about venturing too little is to admit humbly before God that you are coddling yourself.

Unless you do this, you will begin to imagine that what you are doing is mighty clever--alas, for then you are lost forever. At that very moment the eternal flickers out, our relationship with God closes up, the truth in you dies, and you become untrue. If, on the other hand, you make the humble admission--perhaps you are sick and therefore despondent, perhaps you are too hard in judging yourself--you at least preserve your relationship to God. Your admission will keep you awake and alert, and will not permit you to become happy in a clearly purchased security, distanced from danger. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a year, faith and confident boldness will rise up in you and you will once again be able to venture."

August's Brew

2007-08-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

August's Brew has begun. I posted this month's editorial on conflict on The Brew today.

New Brews; Film Faux Pauxs

2007-07-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend and today, I posted Jane Does'"When SHE Struggles"and Lonnie Smith's "Talk To Your Kids About Sex, Dammit!".

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So I went to two movies on Sunday. And each time, I made some kind of mistake that was pretty stinking funny.

The first happened when I purchased a ticket at a automated kiosk. I went through the process of picking which movie (You Kill Me at 4 p.m.) but then I came to the type of ticket I wanted. I wasn’t watching too closely and got a senior citizens discount ticket.
And then all of sudden the ticket popped out of the machine with ‘senior’ printed under the movie title.

The ticket taker did a double-take at the ticket but didn’t say anything. I was more than willing to explain the mistake, but I guessed I passed for over 65.

At the next movie, I got another ticket from an automated kiosk. This time I picked the regular price and the right showtime (The Simpsons Movie at 7:10). But I didn’t realize the ticket taker standing a few feet from the kiosk. So I walked right on by the taker, not even noticing that I blew by her. I didn’t realize what I did till I sat down in my seat in the theater and saw that I had both halves of my ticket.

Both movies were great, by the way. You Kill Me was a great, dark, dry humor movie about a alcoholic hit man, Sir Ben Kingsley, who starts going to AA. And The Simpsons Movie was pretty funny throughout.

Why The Renaissance is Sexier, etc.; One Punk Under God

2007-07-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

I posted Georgie Lee Fledderjohn's "Why The Renaissance is Sexier" article on The Brew; it's a look at other fantastical ideas about sex and what is sexy.

Be watching through the end of the month for more articles. I won't be blogging about every single one, since there will be many over the next few days.
Next up is another Jane Doe article on female sexual struggles; then Lonnie Smith's "Talk to Your Kids About Sex, Dammit!". The last one is pretty self-explanatory.

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I love Jay Bakker. I empathize with him. But he is also my hero. He survived a religious catastrophe that never really stopped. He survived a faith that could have surely killed someone else. I could almost say that he survived the church, evangelicalism, the dark side of Christianity, etc.

I moved this DVD to the front of my Netflix queue when I heard that Jay’s mom, Tammy Faye Messner, died from cancer earlier this week. After watching the portions of the series with her in it, it truly is a miracle that she lasted so long. There weren’t many details of how bad the cancer was but what I saw of Tammy Faye disturbed me. Doctors said in the one of the episodes that any day that she keeps living is a miracle. The series was probably filmed last summer, so that could mean that Tammy Faye lasted another year on a who knows how many pills, a portable oxygen machine and Hospice care. And perhaps prayer and faith.

It’s hard to care about someone’s eccentricities when you literally see them dying before your eyes. And that is what you’ll see in One Punk Under God.

You’ll also see Jay do what he can to have a relationship with his dad. This was so hard to watch. The only way that either Bakker was able to communicate to the other was when they were preaching or doing a TV show. Now, naturally, Jay took a lot of initiative to foster a relationship with his famous father, Jim Bakker; but both were so similar in that they almost needed an audience in order to be genuine, open and honest.

I’m always fascinated by anyone’s struggle with their religious identity. I can relate to that. I empathize with that because I do the same. It’s easy for me to over dramatize my struggle for faith, my relationship with my parents or anything else that might be considered hard or traumatic. I’m surely no where near what someone like Jay Bakker has experienced.

But I was completely moved when his dad came to visit the new church Jay started after moving to New York City. I cried when I heard his father say that he was so proud of his son and that Jay was doing what Jim couldn’t do. That was just beautiful.

Homosexuality and The Church on The Brew; Expensive Coffee

2007-07-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

I posted part one of an anonymously written article entitled "Homosexuality and The Church" on The Brew. It's one woman's encounter with homosexuality and then the right and wrong ways to respond (Pt. 2 which will be posted tomorrow).

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So The Coffee Chain That Remains Nameless is raising it's prices for the second time in less than a year (the first was this past fall). Here's a short blurb on it. Coffee and barista-made drinks will go up by .09 on July 31.

The funny thing is that I heard this from regulars at my new store, rather than from someone inside the company.

A New View Of Purity on The Brew

2007-07-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

I just posted Dan Morgan's "Entering the Forbidden Garden: A New View Of Purity" on The Brew. It's a damn good article that shows the beauty of purity, without the puritanical downsides.

Enjoy.

Connections on The Brew; Exploration; Undertow

2007-07-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

I posted new author Jay Friesen's "Connection: Sex and Praise and Worship" on The Brew.
Jay looks at the longing for connection in music and in the desire for sex.

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I went to meet a good friend at a place called Tipperary Inn in Dallas' Lakewood neighborhood yesterday. I got there a little early so I walked around and explored a little was well rewarded.

I found a little hole in the wall coffee shop called Coffee Co. The entire store was about the size of my apartment living room but looked like a farmer's market/mercantile in the middle of a coffee shop. There were only about two tables in the small place, possibly due to the coffee roaster that took up the front part of the store.

When I walked in, the owner was roasting some Columbian beans and it smelled amazing and slightly nutty. My first thought was, 'How does this guy stay in business?' I looked at his list of coffee beans and saw the prices were slightly higher. But he did have Jamaican Blue Mountain beans (one of the most expensive beans, next to the Hawaian Kona beans and the silly Asian-monkey-digested coffee beans). I thought I'd support the little guy so I bought a 1/4 pound of the Jamaican beans ($13).

By that time, my buddy showed up to the Irish 'snug' for a beer or two. They apparently call it a 'snug' because, unlike the more open pubs, this place had partitions between seats to give privacy to the patrons. Two seats at the bar had partitions with stained glass on either side to separate them from the other bar stools.

I had a Boddingtons (really flavorful and complex) and a some other kind (can't remember the name) that had 1776 in the title.

Either I had an empty stomach before hand or the two beers I had were pretty potent. So I walked over to a used bookstore, Paperbacks Plus. I refrained from buying anything, mostly because I'd already bought two books last weekend at another used bookstore (Blue Blood, a memoir by a New York City cop, and Attack Upon Christendom by Kierkegaard). But it was great to smell that used book smell when I walked in the door. It was good to follow the maze of bookshelf hallways and find so many books that you think you might read.

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I watched Undertow last night. Great style; has a choppy, unfinished look that seems to imitate the look and feel of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre films (though Undertow is not a horror movie). Great Southern gothic tale. Not as dark and menacing as I thought it was going to be.

My Take on Tommy Nelson on The Brew; How To Become Outgoing

2007-07-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

I just posted my article "Sex? Well, Duh! (A Look at
Tommy Nelson)" on The Brew. It's
my 'sex columnist' look at Tommy Nelson and his Song
Of Solomon series.

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So I realized that I'm becoming more of an extrovert (or maybe just an introvert that's coming to process more of everything verbally). My journaling has dwindled to a month's time between each short entry.

And I've spent a lot more time on friends' front porches, plowing through a six pack of Pacifico or Bass while also plowing through talk about friends, church and everything else.

God has blessed me with some great drinking buddies (one is a good bud from Moody and another graduated from Pensacola, but has since experienced grace) who have become my support system down here in Texas. They've taken the place of all the other Moody alum who stick around Chicago and help their fellow grads figure out life after Moody.

And I think that this is the first time in a long time that I've actually used the phrase "Life After Moody." It's like there's no need to use Moody as some descriptor or designator of time anymore. It's like it's just "Life."

Tommy Nelson For Females on The Brew; Goodbye Mall Stores and New Milk

2007-07-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

I just posted Kennedy Lewis' article "Nelson Hits The Mark With Series On Sex", a female perspective on Tommy Nelson's Song of Solomon sermon series, on The Brew.

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I worked my last day at the mall store of The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless. There were some cool people working there and I prayed that my last day there would not leave me cursing North Park Mall; I prayed that somehow working at this store could be a good experience.

I lost hope of that when the person who was to open up the store that morning was 45 minutes late. Then plenty of other small things not finished the night before compounded the lateness, effectively destroying my hopes of this being a good day.

But then the day went on and a good crew of people came in to work. As the store got busier, the crew worked well together and I could direct people around to slide the rush through the drink process and erase the line out the door.

The last two hours of constant traffic were enjoyable, and turned the tables on my mood. So I left happy and satisfied. I guess that's an answer to prayer.

And the Coffee Chain found yet another way to improve efficiency yet again. A co-worker (who laughed long and hard about this discovery) blogged about a new way of labeling milk. Check it out.

SATC on The Brew; No Cable

2007-07-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

I just posted new author Georgia Lee Fledderjohn's "What Carried Bradshaw Did (And Did Not Do) For Us" on The Brew. It's G-Fled's funny review of the series Sex and the City.

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Life without cable TV is awesome, though I slightly miss being able to watch Law and Order any time of the day and also Dirty Jobs.

Cinematic Sex On The Brew; Hell At The Coffee Chain That. Shall Remain Nameless

2007-07-07T18:39:00.000-07:00

To kick off the sex issue of The Brew is Trent Starnes' article "Cinematic Sex: The Build Up And Let Down". It'll help ground your expectations of sex in the real rather than reel world.

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Helplessness, Hopelessness and Hell at The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless

So I’m working at a mall location of The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain for two weeks. I was spared working either the night of July 3rd or at all on the 4th. But today, Saturday, I worked the opening shift, which became a fill-in/afternoon shift.

This particular store is always understaffed, unstable and undesirable. Something about the store stinks and many partners (as this Coffee Chain communistically calls its employees) have sniffed that stench and stay away. The store has burned through three store managers in its less than 12-month run (with one walking out in the middle of a shift) and is currently being run by a guy hired from outside the company, whose resume includes being some sort of manager for Wal-Mart (probably the second-most demonized company in America).

Located in a semi-hidden corner of the mall behind the entrance to an AMC Movie Theater, the store is a place of refuge from the busyness of the mall, states the store’s district manager during his pitch to recruit me for this failing store. There is only one supervisor to run shifts during the day; the store manager, who really is a nice guy, also runs shifts but neither he nor the sole supervisor can cover all the shifts.

Such is the environment that I have to work in for two weeks (the reason why has to do with me working over the aforementioned district manager and the store being at a close, convenient location). Shifts during the week were easier than expected, with much of the normal work getting done. But weekends is where partners can experience Hell on earth.

Friday night was survivable. We had enough people to handle the rushes of people coming and going from the movies. But the store seemed sadly understaffed all day Saturday. From around 2:45 p.m. until I left at 5:15, there was a nearly constant stream of people into the store. All that transpired during these 2.5 hours was the stuff of a barista’s nightmare: people keep coming into the store; all sorts of products run out; the café area is trashed; half of the customers don’t know what they ordered and wanted something different from what you put in front of them, etc.

I stayed an extra hour and 15 minutes because the night crew wouldn’t be able to take lunch breaks if I didn’t. During uncontrolled chaos of those two hours, I became helpless to fix the problems all around me (‘You’re out of napkins and iced coffee’; ‘I ordered a drink before that person…’). The Coffee Chain’s idea of legendary service was trampled to death by the high volume and the five of us working during that rush couldn’t change that.

Anyone getting their drink quickly or made correctly was hopeless. The people working were hopeless to fix anything since no other warm bodies were coming to help. There wasn’t time to step away from the espresso machine to fix any of the problems. There wasn’t any way to make the customers happy or to keep many of them from stepping out of line in frustration and leaving the store.

You just stop caring and trying to rush around so much. It’s hopeless that things will let up and you’re helpless to do anything but continue trotting on, doing what you can to appease whichever customer makes the most immediate fuss (‘I asked for a glass of water ten minutes ago!’).

And then I realized that this kind of resignation is a powerful and accurate description of depression. I won’t make all the connections for ya but give this whole thing another read with that in mind. And if you have no idea what depression is about, this should give you a glimpse.

Sex on The Brew; Kierkegaard Always Amazes

2007-07-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

So begins the July issue of The Brew, where we talk about sex. I just posted July's editorial today.
And since most of this month's articles are on the serious side, I wanted to post something that wasn't as serious. So in keeping with July's topic, here's a song to keep things a little lighter. It's 'Business Time' by Flight of the Conchords.

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I'm still working through Provocations by Keirkegaard. The chapter on his collected works on 'Spiritual Trial' is just constantly amazing.

Here's two of the more challenging quotes that I couldn't get out of my head.

"In the case of temptation the right thing to do may be to fight it by avoiding it. In the case of spiritual trial, however, one must go through it. Temptation should be avoided? Temptation is best fought by running away? But this does not work with thoughts that try the spirit, for they pursue you. If it is spiritual trial, go straight toward it, trusting in God and Christ. When you are weak, he is strong."

And here's a great prayer for spiritual trial:
"From your hand, oh God, we are willing to receive everything. And even if it seems that your arm is shortened, increase our faith and our trust so that we might still hold on to you. And if at times it seems that you draw your hand away from us, oh, then we know it is only because you close it only to save the more abundant blessing in it, that you close it only to open it again and satisfy with blessing everything that lives."

Chick Fliks on The Brew

2007-06-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

I just posted Kennedy Lewis' article, "Are Chick Flicks = To Porn?" on The Brew.

Enjoy.

Oscar Critique Wraps up on The Brew; Depressed Music

2007-06-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

I just posted Keith Ever's second part of "And The Winner Is..." on The Brew.

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So I'm in a semi-depressed state after one of those unavoidable times in life. Here's what I've been listening to (though none of the songs accurately reflect that life experience. They just provide the right kind of mood to sail through that kind of time):

Radiohead's OK Computer album
"Hang Me Out To Dry", "Hospital Bed", and "Rubidoux" by The Cold War Kids
"Dekota", "Long Way Around", and "Nothing Compares To You" (Cover) by Stereophonics
"Underground", "Philosophy", "Song For The Dumped", and "Battle Of Who Could Care Less" by Ben Folds Five
The Black Holes and Revelations album by Muse

The Oscars On The Brew

2007-06-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

I posted the first part of Keith Ever's "And The Winner Is...", a critique of the Oscars, on The Brew.
Watch for Part 2 on Monday.

Cohen Brothers on The Brew

2007-06-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

I posted my short overview of Cohen Brothers' films on The Brew.
Enjoy.

Acting on The Brew; A Christian Will Ferrell; So Many Songs, So Many Issues

2007-06-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

I posted Shannon Neffendorf's critique of acting, "Acting To Shatter The Soul" on The Brew.

Watch for more this month. There's still plenty to come.

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I watched Winter Passing last night was amazed. Will Ferrel does another restrained turn (like in Stranger Than Fiction), this time playing a bassist from a Christian rock band, Punching Pilate. His character is so nuanced and subtle, but is the most accurate and sympathetic portrayal of a Christian I've ever seen.

The rest of the movie is a pretty good indie drama. There's some great literary one-liners and great acting. Though, some might be disturbed by a scene where a dying kitten is euthanized (nothing graphic).

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So I bought a subscription to a music service (and am quietly proud to not use I-Tunes) and am obtaining music more legally.

I'm amazed to find the most random tracks ("Super Bon Bon" by the defunct Soul Coughing and a spooky piano and distorted guitar track from the 28 Days Later SDTRK). I also can't believe the wealth of music that is out there. I can get just about anything I can think of (though I'm having some trouble finding some older Christian rock songs: Bleach, Silage, etc.).

I'm also reading through Ecclesiastes with some guys I'm in a Bible study with. I'm digesting the expected "Life if meaningless" and "Only God can provide meaning" ideas. And then I'm seeing those idea apply to my music downloading.

I can download all the music that my laptop can hold, but will it really make me happy? And if I do download all that I can think of, God can add meaning to it all and use it for good.

Oh, the joys of having such a dualistic and complicated faith. But I don't think I would have it be any less complicated.

Hope On The Brew

2007-06-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

I posted Lonnie Smith's article on Alphonso Cuaron's film Children of Men on The Brew.

Enjoy.

Christploitation On The Brew; MuteMath and Transformers

2007-06-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Yeah, there's such a word; and such a genre of film. New author Ian North explains it on The Brew.

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I found out MuteMath did the theme song for the new Transformers movie. Don't know what to think of it.

The Brew Goes Across The Pond; Freedom To Fellowship

2007-06-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

I posted new author David Wright's "Director Michael Apted's Look At Life, Every 7 Years" on The Brew.
The article explores British director Apted's look at a group of people every 7 years.

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I was journaling the other day (something I’ve started doing less and less).
I wrote a lot about freedom, independence and then on to community and fellowship.

It got me thinking in these big-concept kind of words that seemed like they would make a good one-word-a-line poem. So here is my first attempt at poetry in a long, long time.

Freedom
Independence
Individuality
Interaction
Commonality
Community
Submission
Similarities
Sharing
Fellowship

The Brew Goes To the Movies; Murder Mystery Dinner

2007-06-05T16:37:00.001-07:00

I posted the first film article "The State Of Film in America" by Keith Evers (new author) on The Brew.

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Murder Mystery Dinner

So I went to a murder mystery dinner at the Cattleman’s Steakhouse in Dallas for my birthday.

It was pretty cool and not too cheesy. A few actors were mixed in with the sixty or so other dinner guests and slowly died off during dinner.

The guests quickly became just as entertaining as the show throughout the night.
There was a drunk dad there with his two teenage boys. The dad would joke around, scream and yell, “He did it!” while pointing at someone at random. And then he got into an argument with an Indian guy and asked him to step outside with him (the emcees stopped anything from happening).

Then my date and I shared a table with a lesbian couple. They were celebrating their 5th anniversary in Dallas. An ex-husband of one of them was best friends with the other and that is apparently how they met.

During a short time where all the dinner guests were instructed to look around the room for clues to a murder that took place during our salads, some thought they might find a clue in my date’s purse (which she had left hanging on the back of her chair at the table).
She realized that she left it there two or three minutes into the search of the room. The purse was open and sitting on the floor when we got back to the table. Talk about truly frightening.

To make the night interactive, regular guests were made to stand up and be interrogated by the actor playing a detective (other actors mixed in with the crowd were the actual victims and murderers in the show). Because it was my birthday, someone gave the people in charge of the show some dirt on me.

Here’s how my interrogation went:

Detective: “So, I hear you used to be a criminal reporter in Chicago.”
Me: “Yes.”
D: “And you moved around a lot. Sounds like you’re a little shifty.”
E: “Uh, yeah.”
D: “So it seems like you might have a good means and background to be able to kill someone.”
E: “Sure (There was a gasp, some chuckles, and a “That’s a confession!” heard among the other dinner guests.).”

I met an older couple in their 50s who were missionaries in Romania with Christ for the Nations (which is headquartered in south Dallas). It was also the husband’s birthday and he was wearing a bow-tie.

So Many Brews: Clean Sopranos; A Real Post

2007-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

This week was busy at The Brew. I had three articles that I had to squeeze in in three days. The two I hadn't linked to yet are Lonnie Smith's "Space Between Teeth"; and then my own "4 Easy Steps To Putting Space Between Yourself and an Unhealthy Faith".

I also posted June's editorial on Film.

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If the PAX TV network ever aired The Sopranos, it would look something like this.

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I feel like I haven't been putting out any real posts (as in something with a real topic) and just filler. This last week was pretty busy but maybe next week I can put something together.

Another new Brew author...

2007-05-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

The first of three upcoming, quickly-posted articles is new author Shannon Neffendorf's "True Freedom Found In Eliminating Space." Check it out.

Specialty Brew; Weird News; Camp Songs and Anglicanism

2007-05-27T14:51:00.001-07:00

A new section of The Brew, Specialty Brews, will be featuring more creative pieces. I posted new author Travis Theiszen's poem "The Southern Inquisition" on The Brew.

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Burger wars and name calling: Hardee's upset over Jack In The Box accusation (or misspelling) that their burgers are made from 'anus' (rather than angus) meat.

An ice cream truck that got sold some herbal ice cream. I'm a little upset because I blogged about this years ago while living in Chicago. I'm suing for patent issues.

Massachusetts short, fat people to get more rights. For real.

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I visited Christ Church of Plano last night. I was moved and will probably go back to their Saturday night service again sometime.

The church recently broke away from it's Episcopal connections and runs like an independent Bible church, though they are Anglican (as far as a person who doesn't go there and has only heard secondhand about their history can know).

During the traditional liturgy service, they sang "Shine, Jesus Shine". This was a trip. That song brings back so many adolescent nights spent sitting on dirty logs around a campfire, watching sparks fly up into the air. "Shine" was always sung, sticks were always thrown into the fire in dedication.

But the use of "Shine" in a liturgy is illustrative of the unique character of the church, I hear. The officient made it all connect to Day of Pentecost (which is today, I think, in the church calendar) somehow and it worked into the liturgy pretty well.

Adjustments to Delirious? Interview; New Brew; Progress

2007-05-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

I had to take down the last two posts that featured my interview with Delirious? bassist John Thatcher, because the article won't be published until July in Veritasse magazine.
I'm a little used to more of the start-up mentality with it comes to publishing things, where you can publish about anything.
But come July, after I get permission to reprint the interview from the magazine editor, I'll re-post it here. So you can wait till then or go out and buy Veritasse at a Barnes and Noble or Borders.

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On those previous posts (which I had to delete), I linked to Dan Morgan's article. If you missed it, here it is again.

I also just posted Kevin Schwartz's article "Creating Space For Home," which runs a long a similar vein thematically as Dan's.

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Had an encouraging conversation with a friend of mine about progress. We had a common bond of both suffering from depression, either now or in the past. So the idea of progress means a lot.

While talking, I realized that I've made a lot of progress in dealing with depression. I've been able to deal with depression as it comes and still get on with my life. I can say that I have a healthier faith and am probably optimistic when it comes to thinking about faith (probably still not so much about humanity).

Some of the things that help me are: staying busy; not trying to do much when I am depressed; get a good night's sleep when I am depressed and start over the next day. Use films as an outlet of expression or let them be a healthy distraction (Film is the Brew's topic for June, also).

It's funny that I realized this now. Because I could probably say that I'm one of those people I used to look at and think, "Wow. I know that they struggled with depression. And look at them now. They're getting married. They have a good job. They're not holed up in some apartment somewhere, unable to do anything." Those people gave me hope.

New Brew; Crazy News; Christian Music

2007-05-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

I just posted new author Dave Fischer's article "Arrival, Departure and Places In-Between" on The Brew.

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More Crazy News:

A Japanese idea to deal with overpopulation.

How a little suburban Dallas town is dealing with illegal immigration.

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During the last week and half I immersed myself in everything Delirious? to get ready to interview them on Wednesday. I haven't been a big fan of worship music, and I usually gravitate toward most anything darker or edgier. But Delirious? grew on me, especially their most recent album The Mission Bell. There's plenty of edgier and darker songs on the album and a good friend of mine describe the album as probing the dark side of worship.

This made me realize that I recently had somehow been more willing to listen to Christian music. I even went to a LifeWay store and bought 4 of the clearance CDs: Glo by Delirious?; Drawing Black Lines by Project 86; the untitled debut album by The Benjamin Gate; and a remix cd of John Ruben hits.

Maybe I'm not outright dismissing Christian music as much as I used to. I'd always give lip service to the 'real' artists out there and how they're not becoming products of the record labels desperately trying to keep up with pop culture. But now I'm actually turning to the Christian rock station more often and keeping my radio there.

Maybe it was seeing MuteMath live. Maybe it was the Delirious? binge. Maybe it was Toby Mac's new over-produced-but-catchier-than-classic-Newsboys song "Boomin." If you haven't heard 'Boomin' yet, you've got to check it out for it's sheer audacity and attitude.

New Brew; Jesus Camp

2007-05-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

I posted Lonnie's article on Isaac Asimov's view of space on The Brew.

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I viewed one of the most disturbing and possibly enraging films of all times: Jesus Camp.

I had the college group from church over for a movie and discussion night to watch it. A friend said he felt sick after watching it. I was left perplexed, but for a different reason than you might think.

Now, naturally, people wanting to make a documentary about a fiery, flamboyant, and fundamentalist church camp don’t have to look too far for material. There is plenty of naturally disturbing footage that needs nothing added to shock.

But I was a little more distracted by the style and other technical details. The documentary follows three kids who attend camp leader Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp.” Though one of the three, a little girl who likes to dance to Christian hardcore music, disappears more as the film progresses. I wondered if she wasn’t vibrant or dramatic enough to merit further inclusion.

The last half of the film follows the other two kids as they listen to a sermon by Ted Haggard at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and then later protest in Washington, D.C. (The filmmakers surely had no idea how damning or ironic their footage of Haggard would become. There is a very interesting response here by the filmmakers to Haggard’s accusation that they had an agenda). At this point, the film seemed to be more about the fundamentalist movement rather than about the camp or Becky Fischer. The praying, singing and protesting in our capital seemed to be the climax rather than kids returning home from camp.

Other segments in the film also rubbed me the wrong way for how they seemed staged. (For an example of documentary staging, watch anything by Michael Moore). A radio talk show featured throughout the film seemed ultra-staged, especially when Fischer called in to try to defend herself.

The first half-hour of the film is sufficient to disturb everyone and also accomplishes what the filmmakers wanted to communicate. The remaining 50 minutes seems to take on a different purpose, or, dare I say, agenda.

I wondered more after watching Camp if any kind of documentary could truly be unbiased. Conceptually, a documentary’s aim is usually just to tape reality as it is, with no agenda. But then, you can’t show an entire fundamentalist church service and would have to do some editing. And it seems that in the editing, the temptation to stage some great shots that would so compliment the service would creep in. And then you get to thinking how you could add in some voice-overs from a different interview or some other clip that might realistically fit in with the original church service. And then you could re-shoot some altar call and tell some little girl to hold out letting go of those tears just a little longer.
Hmmmmmmmm. Stuff to think about.

New Brew; Movie Quickies; Disturbing 70s Evangelical Video

2007-05-09T17:54:00.001-07:00

I just posted part 2 of Kevin Davis' "The Truth in Words and Spaces" on The Brew.

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Here's some quick reviews on some movies I saw recently.

Spiderman 3 (as can be expected): Good effects. Nutin' else.

Zodiac: Great movie that's more about obsessive people following the case than about the serial killer.

Breach: The most thrilling movie with the least amount of action.

Hot Fuzz: Genius send-up of action movies by the Brits who made Shaun Of The Dead. A must see if only to see Timothy Dalton ( a former Bond) as a grocery store owner.

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Scary evangelical video from some 70s fundamentalist preacher. Be warned: It is disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1paYhEDFQIw

New Brew; MuteMath

2007-05-07T12:23:00.000-07:00

I posted two articles on The Brew today. The first is the newest article for May's Space issue: "The Truth in Words and Spaces" by new author Kevin Davis. The second is an article submitted for the April Issue which I somehow completely missed. But with the magic of the Internet and a time machine, I posted the article as it should be: classified under the April Issue with the rest of the 2 x 4 articles. (Or if you want the easy route, it's right here.) It's Lonnie's "Leadership At Work," perfect for anyone who has worked in a cubicle.

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I went to go see MuteMath on Friday so this is the post where I tell you how awesome they are (because they were). The energy the 4-person band han was indescribable.

Frenetic would be an understatement. The lead singer jumped, clapped, and mosched all over the stage. At one point, he did handstands on the piano he was pounding, and then began climbing on the wall of lights at the back of the stage.

The drummer was so animated that he had to duct-tap his headphones onto his head.

Here's a clip that was pretty equivalent to the show I saw (including the breaking of the light wall).

New Brew; E-news (without the celeberties)

2007-05-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

I just posted "The MySpace-ination of Community" on The Brew by new author Jon Reisinger.

Also posted was the May editorial, which I forgot to link to earlier. The Brew's new look will feature each month's editorial at the top of the page, making it (and the the month's theme) more easily accessible.

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I found some very interesting news on how crazy the new online world can be and how even the military is trying to keep up with it.

A Wired story about the military previewing all kinds of electronic transmissions from soldiers on the field.

The Obama campaign conquers a MySpace page originally designed to support the candidate.

The Last Of The Satire Brew (for now)...

2007-04-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

The Mystery of The Holy Trinity Revealed on The Brew.

New Brew; A Great Satirist

2007-04-27T10:11:00.001-07:00

The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless gets creative in where to place 20,000 more stores in the U.S. on The Brew.

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Since the month of satire on The Brew is coming to a close, I thought I'd post a little something by a great satirist that maybe not be as widely known: Kierkegaard.
Here's some great quips on preaching and proclamation.

"Pastor: You must die to the world -- that will be ten dollars.

Novice: Well, if I must die to the world, renounce all the things of this world, I certainly understand that I will have to put out more than ten dollars for the sake of the cause, but there is just one question: Who gets the ten dollars?

Pastor: I do, of course; it is my wages. After all, I and my family have to make a living you know. It is a very cheap price, and very soon much more will have to be charged. If you are fair, you yourself will understand that it takes a lot out of a man to proclaim that one must die to the world if the proclamation is made with earnestness and zeal. And that is also why it is very necessary for me and my family to spend the summer in the country in order to recuperate."

"The punishment I should like the clergy to have is a tenfold increase in salary. I am afraid that neither the world nor the clergy would understand this punishment."

"A speech expert is just a suitable for proclaiming Christianity as a deaf-mute for being a musician."

Stuff Worth Reading....

2007-04-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

I've found some interesting stuff in the news over the last few weeks.

This is an article suggesting, stock- and business-wise, why The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless should swallow up Caribou Coffee.

Here's an article looking into that Coffee Chain's current promotions and how it's founder wants to save the company's soul, all the while opening more stores and tripling the store's profits.

Then I found some other news about Christianity's messy relationship with the public, the legal system and prisons.

The Dallas Observer had an article this week about an evangelical prison, somewhat based on Chuck Colson's PFM,in Houston that may be in legal trouble if an Iowa lawsuit goes through.

I saw my roommate reading this article from last year about Dallas mega-church Watermark in legal trouble over a church discipline matter. Here is the most recent update I could find on it.

New Brew; Word Pictures

2007-04-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

A New Method Of Evangelism on The Brew.
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Word Pictures

So I had a pretty sweet road trip and men’s retreat with guys of all ages from my church.

The easiest way to describe it would be to paint some word pictures of the early morning trip to Graceland and then to the Shepherd of the Ozarks retreat center in Arkansas.

Graceland gift shops sold 100% organic, fair trade coffee: the ‘Silent Night’ Decaf blend and Evis’s House blend.

An entire exhibit displayed at least 50 of Elvis’ jumpsuits, ranging from the simple and white to the ‘Red Dragon’ be-jeweled.

A TV room in the Graceland mansion looked as if it was pulled out of the Thunderball or Diamonds Are Forever sets. A living room, entitled the ‘jungle room’, featured tiki chairs, couches and shag carpet on the ceiling.

I had BBQ nachos and a BBQ sandwich Memphis-style (with coleslaw on top) at a place called “Showboat Barbeque.” A chalk menu board in the store featured the daily specials; but all were below the words “Jesus is Lord” written in chalk on the top of the board.

I stayed in a lodge set deep in a valley of the Ozark Mountains, with high cliffs, bluffs and mountains surrounding the cabin. A family of mountain goats walked in and around the cliffs in the evening.

To end a great couple of hours of paintball during the retreat, two guys had an old-fashioned duel. They each took ten steps away from each other, turned and then let rip whatever paintballs they had left.

I went down in flames while trying to play “Heart-Shaped Box” on Guitar Hero for the PS2 during one night of the retreat. I did equally horrible while attempting “Crazy in Love” by Beyonce on Karaoke Hero. I almost redeemed myself while attempting “American Woman” but was booed off of the video game stage.

New Brew

2007-04-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

Obama's Face On A Tortilla! The Brew

New Brew; YouTube Finds; Lent Results

2007-04-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

NEW BREW

I just posted Dan Morgan's look at why people should change their vocabulary from Love to Lust on The Brew.

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YOUTUBE FINDS

Found some great stuff on YouTube last night.
Alanis Morrisette's cover of "My Humps." Hilarious.
MadTV skit of The Terminator meeting Jesus.
MadTV skit somehow putting Iraq together with Apple Computers. Pretty creative.
The best of Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons.

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LENT RESULTS

So here’s what happened after my ‘no TV’ Lent.

I finished six books: To Own a Dragon, and Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller; The Book Of The Dun Cow, and The Book Of Sorrows by Walter Wangerin, Jr.; Blessed Assurance by Randall Balmer; The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson.

I also got out of the habit of passively watching TV (spending most of a Sunday afternoon or a late night channel surfing). I watched the few shows I was truly into (Lost and The Office) but was left slightly wanting after each episode. Neither seemed as good as I remembered them being.

I might go so far as to say the desire to blow some time watching TV went away. Kind of like curing yourself of some bad habit or desire.

A friend told me he began reading Piper’s Future Grace. I read it back in college but was only looking for one certain thing during that time of life (some kind of relief from depression). But Piper’s idea of prizing the pleasure of God so much that you would loose the desire to cling to some lesser thing, say some sin or something, came back to me.

I feel like I kind of did this during the Lent season. It reminded me of how someone can take initiative to improve their faith, their spirituality or their relationship with God. I haven’t done that kind of thing in a while, though I now feel like I can.

So I’m going to re-read Grace and see what happens. Maybe it’ll be another step back into the faith that I’m re-entering.

New Brew

2007-04-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

You'll never believe it: Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, finished art school! The Brew

So Funny...

2007-04-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

A pretty good rant on the the Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless.

New Brew; The Funny Pages

2007-04-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

I posted a release about an upcoming Al Gore film on penguins baking in the sun on The Brew.
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Funny Pages

So there was just a lot of funny stuff happening to me lately.
So here’s some of it.

License plates I’ve seen at my church: XRAY MAN; GRUMPZ.

A solution to the Chick-fil-A problem: A friend’s Dad suggested this: Have those Moroccans start wearing turbans when they park in the lot. Have them take pictures of the restaurant when the employees come out. And then say, “Hey, I’ve got to run to the bank. But if my Land Rover starts smoking….Well, never mind.”

I went to check out The Village church in suburban DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) with a good buddy of mine and his wife. We went to a Mexican restaurant beforehand and ate; and we drank.
I had a Amaretto Meltdown. And I was a little melted afterwards. The drink was more potent than I thought. So I was pretty happy when I sat down in the double-wide chair in The Village sanctuary. The music seemed a little loud and pounding.

A Sonic ad board read: “Loosen your belts. We’ve got double patty melts.”

I saw plastic eggs in an Easter egg hunt painted camouflage and hidden in the grass and bushes.

My church had a dramatic reading of parts of the gospel of John on Good Friday. Naturally, those involved wore all black. A song popped into my head that I didn’t tell anyone about. The song was “Back in Black” by ACDC.

New Brew

2007-04-05T21:30:00.001-07:00

I just posted an saddening article on The Brew about how gangs are taking over our octogenarians in South Dallas. Read it a weep.

The Dump....

2007-04-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

So I always end up finding lots of interesting crap while I'm online. Here's some of the more stand-out stories.

A Caffeinated Donut.

Time magazine trying to be clever with Albert Mohler when he is diagnosed with cancer.

Rueters reports on a mental health bill working through congress that would make insurance companies add coverage for mental health issues.

Two clowns (no joke) shot dead at a circus in Columbia.

Borat a human rights victim?

The Worst of the Worst Movie Awards on Rotten Tomatoes.

Obama as Christ?

This last one brought back memories for me. A videographer from San Francisco is reportedly 'soon to be released' after being jailed for almost a year on charges of contempt for not releasing a video of a San Fran cop getting injured during an Anarchist Action rally. The video, though long, shows an anarchist's rally in San Fran. The section in question comes towards the end, when a cop has to subdue a protester and someone thrusts what looks like a pole at the officer.
The video brought back memories for me of when I covered a huge anti-war rally in Chicago. This video of the San Fran equivalent is interesting to watch if you've never experienced a protest rally.

Enjoy.

New Brew

2007-04-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

So I posted April's editorial on The Brew today. I don't want to say too much about it because it might take away from the experience. So have at it.

Depression Series # 9 - Re-Entering The Faith

2007-04-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

So this is the final article in my depression series ( got a little sidetracked this past weekend). But this article was originally published in the December issue of The Brew. This probably best describes where I'm at now.

Re-Entering The Faith (Dec. '06)

I recently began rereading a collection of Søren Kierkegaard’s spiritual writings, Provocations. To call it a breath of fresh air wouldn’t do justice to how much of a climax of sorts this has been for my faith.

I haven’t reached the top of some great mountain of affirmation in my faith or received from God an invigorating revelation that would plot out the rest of my life and service to him.

I’ve just realized that it’s probably safe to pick up my faith again after letting it go for a couple of years.

Like many others who struggle with some mental illness, I put my faith aside for a while in order to deal with the issues going on my life. I decided not to think through whether I was a pre-tribulation Calvinist or whether I was following God’s plan for my life. I was just going to exist for a while and see what happened.

After struggling with depression for years, I realized that my faith was part of the problem, and I took steps to fix the problem. Or, more accurately, I stopped taking steps forward in my faith.

There are a myriad of ways that a person’s faith plays a huge role in his or her struggles with depression, bi-polar and obsessive compulsive disorder, or any other of the hundreds of mental illness that exist. People can be imprisoned by an overactive sense of guilt or by a need to perform every task, sometimes repeatedly, perfectly. And some forms of faith only amplify these problems.

So for the last few years, I didn’t do anything to stand out or strive towards some new spiritual goal. I still attended church, but I pretty much sat in the back and didn’t attract too much attention. I didn’t talk to too many people about faith, Christ, spirituality, or, especially, theology. I avoided anything that would make me say or decide something definitive about my faith.

I’ve had many conversations with a professional counselor at a Christian college in Chicago about how he helped students, and employees of the college, to figure out how to fix their problems. In many cases, he suggested that maybe the people should leave the college. I couldn’t believe he suggested this until I realized how similar to the Church is to a Christian college, replete with all the same conflicts, sinners and issues. And then I saw the wisdom in that suggestion.

For some, letting go of their faith involves not attending church anywhere and stopping a relationship with God or even cutting all ties with Christianity. And why not? If someone’s faith is what is causing all the problems, then it would be masochistic to hold on to that which keeps hurting you.

I couldn’t do this, though. Even though my faith was a large part of my struggle with depression, I also knew that it was also, ironically, the solution to it. And the truly masochistic move would be to run away because I would always end in the same place, beaten down, broken and hurt. Nothing I would cling to could fix my depression or my disgust with American Christianity would ever really work or assuage my anger.

So years go by without any major actions or decisions in regards to my faith and things begin to get easier. Counseling helped me sort through issues and my church fed and nurtured me in spite of its apparent failures. The Bible began to make more sense to me; it guided and encouraged my faith. Prayer began to seem less like dropping a coin in a fountain.

My faith in the Church, and more importantly, in Christ’s power to heal and restore us, has grown more solid. I feel a little more comfortable talking about my faith, spirituality and even some theology because it has become more real during my time away from it.

So as I continue to read Kierkegaard, I can not only identify with the existential angst that he so eloquently put into words, but also the hope that faith can truly help fix my mental illness.

“Teach me, oh God, not to torture myself and not to make a martyr of myself in suffocating introspection, but to take a deep and wholesome breath of faith!”

- Søren Kierkegaard

Flummoxed....

2007-03-29T17:58:00.000-07:00

A friend of a friend of my little sister's called me tonight and started crying.
We had talked in the past because she struggled with depression and some other things.

She said she couldn't get a hold of someone else who she usually calls (She had been calling me throughout the week but I hadn't been able to return the call). She then told me she was thinking about killing herself.

I ended up talking to her for around a half hour and doing what I could. I told all these things she was thinking about doing might give her a high or numb her but they wouldn't really help her. I tried to reason with her about stuff that was stressing her out (like finals tomorrow) and how those things weren't as important as her mental health.

I gave her some healthy advice (Go to the emergency room) because I'm not a psychologist and I can only do so much for her. I told her this, but she even admitted to being stubborn and not listening to people trying to help her. (She'd been hospitalized before for some kind of mental illness and would 'never go back because being there made her go more crazy'.)

I told her that I didn't know what else I could do for her if she didn't listen to me. I can't help her like she needs. I told her to call me again if she needed to.

And here's where I'm at with it all: I don't know her well enough to know if this was for real or if it was just to get some attention. I tried not to get emotionally involved (something I'm guessing good counselors do) and stay calm and try to feel her out. I called my sister (someone she kind of knows and is in the geographical vicinity) to see if she knew of someone to check on this girl.

I'm thinking that maybe she wasn't for real. I did what I could to help her and then called others who might be able to help her better.

If you guys want to pray, her name is Shana and she's in Dayton, OH.

Anyone with counseling experience, what's you professional opinion?

Kierkegaard; Depression Series # 8 - Giving Up on Answers...

2007-03-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Kierkegaard on obedience:

"Oh God, teach me so deeply to understand myself that I may understand how utterly impossible it is to be satisfied with the mere fact that I am master of my own destiny, and that there is no satisfaction and joy and happiness for a person except obedience."

On Passion:

"Longing is the umbilical cord of the higher life."

"It is a great question whether those whom God cannot make mad have ever really existed for God."

"Authentic religion has to do with passion, with having passion. Sadly, there are thousands who take a little something out of religion, and then dispassionately "have religion."

- All quotes taken from Provocations ( a best of collection of Kierkegaard's spiritual writings.
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Depression Series # 8

Giving Up On Answers And Suspending Judgment

I finished God in the Dark by Os Guiness this week and was humbled and changed. Reading Guiness’ answer to the question of ‘Why, O Lord?’ put something into words that I had been struggling with for a while. It was an idea that helped me deal with the suicide of a friend a year and a half ago.

Clark Stacy killed himself in March of ’05 while I was still a crime reporter in Chicago. Two years prior at Moody, I was his resident assistant but kept up with him after I graduated. I was naturally shocked when I heard the news on my way to work the overnight shift.

During a lull around 2 a.m., I did what I could to corroborate the news. I found online the small newspaper in Tennessee that ran his obituary the day after the suicide. I instantly thought of what I could do to find out more. I could look up the local medical examiner, hospital, or sheriff’s office. A friend had called me to fill me in but any news story had to be corroborated. I had to get the facts myself.

An hour later, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get any info. Why would anyone from small-town Tennessee talk to some small newswire reporter from Chicago? And if this was a suicide, no one would be talking about it anyway. I considered all the other roadblocks to getting information. I also considered my need to direct a sole reporter to best cover the city for the next 7 hours.

I stopped trying to find answers through reportorial means. Instead, for about two months I turned to the community that he and I used to be part of: Moody Bible Institute. I went to a sort of memorial chapel, talked to his friends still there and then listened to some crazy drama involving professors at MBI and Clark’s parents.

The man who counseled Clark at MBI was just as dumbfounded. I didn’t ask, but the counselor gave me his professional opinion (which I wasn’t going to ask about for obvious reasons). I felt privileged that he told me what he did but I still couldn’t figure out why it all happened.

More months went by and I gave up trying to find answers. My anger burned out and I knew that I would never have the answer that I wanted. I was just going to have to accept that and somewhere in the back of my head, try to accept that God was all that I was taught he was.

And then comes Guiness to tell me this:
“It is difficult to hold an impersonal universe personally responsible, and nothing less than personal responsibility will do. The only remaining option is to call God to the bar and charge him with the injustice of suffering that is otherwise inexplicable. Through doubt we can get even with God.”

So where does that leave me? What am I to do? Believe that God is good?

Guiness told me that “To suspend judgement on why something is happening is not the same as denying that something is happening. The former is faith, the latter is repression, which should have no part in the Christian faith.”

His idea is that you don’t know why but you can know why you trust God who knows why. You suspend judgment of God who knows why.

Guiness concludes by stating that all doubts about the Father are silenced in the Son, to which no suffering can be compared.

There’s not much to say after that.

New Brew Link; Coffee Master Threatens Church

2007-03-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

I posted a YouTube video of Mark Driscoll speaking on the Emerging/Emergent movements for Desiring God Ministries (which Driscoll classifies as Emerging) on the Culture Tab of The Brew.
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Coffee Master Threatens Church

For the past three months, I have blessed the college class at my church with some potent nourishment to enhance their spiritual lives: a tasty brew from the coffee chain that shall remain nameless. The caffeine and taste of the coffee quickens their minds to better soak in the teachings each week.

However, two deacons from the church are unhappy that out of the many pots of Folgers made each week for the entire congregation’s coffee break, a different kind of coffee is made. When a certain Coffee Master enters the kitchen and asks if he can make a batch from coffee that he brought for the college class, looks of distrust and hissing are thrown his way. This sort of behavior baffles, especially since the lover of coffee leaves his Coffee Master black apron at home, so as not to brag.

In more recent times, other congregants, under the guise of introducing themselves to the Coffee Master (who is about to take his pot of Arabica-based bliss to his college class), have dipped into the blessings meant for the elect. That week, the Coffee Master (CM) had to brew another batch, for the college students were wringing and shaking the coffee pot to the last drop for nourishment.

Vexed CM was speechless another week when a deacon, who goes by the name “Lurch,” attempted to pull a bait and switch with two coffee pots. One contained the liquid that can truly quench the thirst and another contained merely stale, Folgers-smelling air. “Your coffee is ready,” stated Lurch, handing off the odorous coffee pot. CM, noticing the lightness of the pot, looked at Lurch, who, unable to hide his sin, confessed: “I’m just kidding. Here’s the ‘special’ stuff.”

The saga continued this week when CM brought a pound and a half of blessed beans to be used for the entire church. Lurch was in the kitchen when CM dropped off the ground beans. “I brought some beans so everybody can have the ‘special stuff.’

Lurch: (with an insulted and offended look) Starbucks?!

CM: (in the most gracious and forgiving spirit that overlooks any kind of brewing transgression) Yeah. You can use it if you want.

The conversation continued when CM returned to the kitchen during the coffee break between services.

Lurch: People don’t like your stuff.

CM: What are you talking about?

Lurch: I got complaints about your stuff. People say they can see all the way through the coffee. They say it’s like tea. They might as well be drinking tea.

CM: Really?

Lurch: It was just one person that complained. I put one Styrofoam cup full of your stuff in for a full batch (which equals around 15 cups of coffee) and it looks like tea. (Turning to someone currently taking from the wasted batch of flavored water) Do you get any taste out of that? It’s…Starbucks.

Unfortunate Congregate Duped Into Drinking The Dreadful Attempt At Coffee: It’s almost like tea.

CM: (Again, putting on the gracious, forgiving air and not saying how Lurch sabatoged the ‘special stuff’ on purpose because he doesn’t like some young punk kid with a wicked gotee trying to force some non-fair trade coffee into the mist of the chosen) Oh, okay.

Lurch: No one likes the ‘special stuff’ so I’m going back to the good stuff (pointing to the plastic gallon bucket holding the silly robusta-based Folgers).

CM: (Seeing that some indecipherable foreign mixture known as Breakfast Blend was too much of a change for Lurch) Is there a pot ready for me to make some for the college class?

New Brew

2007-03-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

I just posted new author Luke Raad's assessment of how Emergent's do theology: "How To Think Like An Emergent." The Brew.

Chick-fil-A Vol. 2; New Brew; Depression Series # 7

2007-03-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

Chick-fil-A Vol. 2
The aforementioned woman from the restaurant beside the coffee chain that shall remain nameless has been reported to have called the corporate office. The corporate office then called the local district manager of the coffee chain, who left an official sign stating that employees could no longer park in the next door lot.

This is the last fact that can be confirmed, though many rumors abound. Some say that the beef-less restaurant will refuse service to coffee chain employees (yet to be confirmed). Others have stated that woman/parking-lot-attendant has stickers/cards that she places on vehicles belonging to coffee employees or customers who park in the lot. The aforementioned Moroccans told said woman what they thought of her asking them to move their cars from the lot (it was said to have involved profanity). Coffee chain customers have been asked by woman while in coffee store or outside at the cafe tables to move their vehicles from the lot.
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New Brew
I posted Dan's unromantic look at the Emergent/ing movement on The Brew. It may be a little bawdy for some, but check it out nonetheless.
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Depression Series # 7
I wrote this essay recently after reading a great book by Os Guiness, God In The Dark. A great book for anyone who's dealt with doubt or depression.
Remembering

“In keep open lines to the past, the redeemed memory carries encouragement and conveys warnings and lessons to faith as faith is engaged in fighting at the front line of battle that is the present moment.”
-Os Guiness, God in the Dark.

This comes from the third chapter of Guiness’ book, entitled “Forgetting to Remember: Doubt from Ingratitude.” Reading this book has been revolutionary. What’s crazy is that I feel like (and sound like) I did almost eight years ago as I was starting my Bible school education. Every book was mind-shattering and life-altering.

I remember those days and look back fondly on them, though nowadays I’d say I’m very far from them. I don’t long for that pure milk of anything and gasp when some new truth is revealed to me. I more just long to continue on and not be dragged back into a depressed state that finds it’s cure in never-ending entertainment. God is still there and Christ has still saved me; I’m still redeemed and am being regenerated but I don’t quite feel like it. I’m accustoming myself to having feelings again and trying to sort them out after having turned them off.

I realized that my faith somehow keeps going, inspite of everything that I think would shatter it. My struggles with depression, although ongoing, aren’t as crippling as they once were. Five years after I began struggling with it, I see that life has gone on and I’v figured some things out. I’ve become one of those people I knew way back when who inspired me to keep going. I saw them in their darkest times but then later on, I also saw them able to get back to some kind of functioning faith. Somehow, they were able to deal with their depression or whatever other malady and move on. Time and their faith were able to help them grow.

I’ve more than survived the last five years and that’s something I try to remind myself of. I earned a bachelor’s degree and supported myself for going on three years. I was a freakin’ reporter for the Chicago Tribune for a year. Although I didn’t succeed at this and quit after a year, I didn’t let that send running home to Mom and Dad thinking that I couldn’t accomplish anything with my struggles with depression. And now I’ve up and moved to Texas to take a chance on starting a magazine. Who knows what’ll happen next.

Depression Series # 6 - Adaptation

2007-03-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

Here's something that is kind of about depression but is more about adaptation. I wrote this last winter while still in Chicago.

Adaptation

“The high for today will be about 42 degrees. It’s currently 41 and you’re listening to…” broadcast the radio station at around 4:15 a.m a few days ago. This was the beginning of January for Chicagoans; a mild streak of weather in what can often be the harshest season for this Midwest giant of a city. Business this week was back to booming at the coffee-chain-that-shall-remain nameless. More people were out and braving the Icelandic 40 degree temperatures and even buying frozen and iced drinks (much to the chagrin of my co-workers). People were enjoying the atypical weather.

But not two weeks earlier the city was crippled during the evening rush hour by a furious snow storm that unceremoniously dumped at least 8 inches of powder in about four hours. From about 4 p.m. on, blustery winds and blinding snow delayed commuters on their way home. Some driving home on the Eisenhower Expressway reported a four-hour commute that night. I drove downtown to pick up something from my store that night but ended up staying downtown because of the traffic and storm.

Like all who live in this great city, I had to adapt and change my plans for that night. I had planned on going back to my apartment on the northwest side and accomplishing some things that night. But an estimated three-hour tour home on Lake Shore Drive convinced me to stick it out where I was. So I decided to call some friends who were close by and catch a movie. It’s not like I would be going anywhere soon so I adapted to the situation.

Adaptation seems essential to anyone’s life, since nothing ever goes as planned (And even if it does, one must still adapt to things going better than planned). Your checking account is overdrawn; you have to adjust your spending and finagle a plan to correct your account. You figure out that the profession you studied in school is not necessarily what you can succeed at doing. God deals you some kind of malady that cripples your body, mind or confidence. So what do you do? You learn to adapt.

Why? I adapt because I’ve seen what happens to those who can’t. Some revert back to some remedial stage of life and take some dead end job that has no hint of challenging them. Or they give up on using the gifts that God has endowed them with and accept something lesser. Or sometimes they feel it better to take their own life. And while I can understand how someone could get to such a place in life, I am enraged when I see such a situation. I am enraged at God for letting such a thing happen and I am enraged for whatever other reason I can assign for a suicide. Even if I know that these reasons are nothing more than me grasping at straws to try understand something that is incomprehensible.

So many people I know get used to some kind of support system and rely completely on that system, whether they know it or not. And then when they graduate from that stage of life and move out of a certain environment, they feel like they’re drowning because they don’t know how to sustain themselves without that old environment. Sometimes the solution is to just keep treading water. Eventually, the person may be able to see their situation and learn a stroke that will help them to swim on to the next stage of life.

But sometimes the best adaptation to a situation is to stop treading water. Some people need to be brought to the end of their own ability and begin sinking down into the water. Getting to such a point leaves a person one option: hope that something outside of themselves can help save their life. As they sink further under the surface and the water seems to get darker, a person can look to God and pray for some miracle. And then the person begins to feel a strange sensation on the sides of their neck, much like Harry Potter while in an underwater game in the most current installment of that series.

Something begins growing out of their neck and they can’t help but suck in the water that is pressing all around them. Gills appear on their neck and then they open wide their mouths against all their instincts and fill their lungs with water. They slowly begin sucking in water and their lungs somehow grab the oxygen out of the water and keep it flowing through their veins.

An adaptation has occurred that enables a person to move on with their life to whatever new plans God has for them. They have survived what seemed an impossible situation and are amazed at the way God changed them for this new stage of life.

New Brew; Dallas Drama ( Not that old TV show that no one remembers)

2007-03-19T14:17:00.000-07:00

I posted Lonnie's article on Emergents getting away from Enlightenment-influenced faith. Check it out. The Brew.
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Thus begins the long saga known as "The Parking Wars Between Chick-fil-A and The Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless."

One employee of that coffee chain parked near a side door of his store, which happens to be in the side lot of an oft-smelled Chick-Fil-A restaurant. On some night last week, this employee was asked by a woman (who is most likely the wife of the owner/operator) to move his car out of the restaurant parking lot, which is for employees and customers of the restaurant. Said woman then described a violent and noisy exit by coffee chain employee into the coffee chain's parking lot two hundred feet away. (There is not signage in either parking lot that specifies any spot is reserved for either establishment.)

This same employee parked in this disputed spot again during his Saturday night shift. The aforementioned woman enters the coffee chain and then explains the previous incident to me. "I'll let it go this time," states said woman, who continues on into explaining why the parking spot (one of about ten) is for customers, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Another employee of the coffee chain overhears the conversation and proceeds to move his car next to the previous employee's car in the controversial parking lot during his meal break. Not being able to contain himself at his feat of defiance, the second employee tells me, the supervisor for this shift, of his ingenious move. Supervisor laughs hard, but then shakes his head.

Authoritative woman then talks to the Johnny-Come-Lately about moving his car into the parking lot. Employee, having purchased foodstuffs from the restaurant in the past, responds by saying, "I'm a paying customer." "Save your receipt," says woman.

Some regular customers (Native Moroccans who are associated with a Mediterranean restaurant across the street) come to the coffee shop for their nightly card game and also park in the prized lot.

Woman confronts me while I am outside washing down outdoor cafe tables. "Is that your Land Rover over there?" I, the most professional and mature supervisor, responds with: " No. I drive a Hyundai."
"Did you know that your other employee parked his car in the lot after I already talked to you about the first employee?"
Again, mature supervisor responds with a genuine, though put on, surprised look and words: "He did? Well..."
"I see how things are," woman interrupts me and then walks back to the restaurant with an aversion to beef.

About an hour later, a red truck (later discovered to be the owner/operator's) is parked directly behind the two vehicles driven by the coffee chain employees, effectively blocking them in (but also resting in a fire lane area which can be towed after a call to the city's non-emergency number).

No more interchanges occurred and the restaurant, not being the sinful night owls that us coffee employees are, could not wait for us to close; all employees, including the owner/driver-of-erroneously-parked-red-truck, had gone home by 11:30 p.m. leaving all of North Dallas the ability to park in the debatable lot.

Coffee supervisor conversed with store manager by phone after unfolding drama and was instructed to post a sign. It reads to this day: "Do not park in Chick-filla's (et.) lot anymore." - Store manager (except on Sundays)

Survey says...

2007-03-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

One thing they didn't cover in this survey is whether or not I'm narcissistic.

Personality Inventory

Emotional (56%)	[.........\|..........]	Logical (44%)
Concerned about self (45%)	[..........\|.........]	Concerned about others (55%)
Atheist (27%)	[..........\|\|\|\|\|.....]	Religious (73%)
Loner (50%)	[....................]	Dependent (50%)
Laid-back (52%)	[....................]	Driven (48%)
Traditional (63%)	[.......\|\|\|..........]	Rebel (37%)
Impetuous (100%)	[\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|..........]	Organized (0%)
Engineering mind (51%)	[....................]	Artistic mind (49%)
Cynical (56%)	[.........\|..........]	Idealist (44%)
Follower (46%)	[..........\|.........]	Leader (54%)
Introverted (43%)	[..........\|.........]	Extroverted (57%)
Conservative (69%)	[......\|\|\|\|..........]	Liberal (31%)
Logical (53%)	[.........\|..........]	Romantic (47%)
Uninterested (56%)	[.........\|..........]	Sexual (44%)
Insecure (42%)	[..........\|\|........]	Confident (58%)

Take the test! brought to you by thatsurveysite

New Brew

2007-03-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

I post the last part of Jamie's article on The Brew. Enjoy.

New Brew; Spam and Stats

2007-03-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

I posted part 2 of Jamie's Good, Bad and Ugly of The Emergents article on The Brew. Check it out.
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Good news. I've had to block three spam comment posts on The Brew, which means that the magazine is generating enough traffic for advertisers to want to spam us. For once, spam means something good.

Here's Feb.'s stats:
2,168 Unique Visitors
13,000 Page Views

New Brew link; Depression Series # 5: The Most Depressing CD You'll Ever Hear

2007-03-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

A friend (Mabul) gave me this revealing article from Salon.com on Mark Driscoll, one of the leaders of the Emerging Church. Check it out on The Brew's Culture Tab.
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Here's a more musical side of my Depression Series; an article about a depressing mix CD that I made for myself.

Depression Series # 5: The Most Depressing CD You'll Ever Hear (2004)

As the compact disc ceases spinning in my second-hand stereo, the fog that seemed to have settled over my brain has somehow lifted. The depression that plagued me as that hour-long CD began has dissipated after listening to this sanctifying music. Something in that music escorted me out of the maze of self-centered thoughts and enabled me to see that there is an entire world outside of my own small experience that I was created to participate in.

The self-created compilation CD is a grouping of some of the most depressing music I have ever heard. And I thank God for it. Somehow, by creating a playlist of downer-type music, I was able to give a form to my depression and express what I could not quite put into words.

Aimee Mann begins the mix with three tracks of her breathy and weary voice from the "Magnolia" soundtrack. "One," "Save Me," and "Wise Up" speak from the other side of some wrenching emotional turmoil with pessimism and honesty that shines a light on whatever sorrows that may exist in my own life. By being able to step back and see hurt, angst and a reason for both, I can start to understand the darker feelings that lurk underneath my radar; the feelings that I might try to hide or ignore.

More songs on the CD are merely for atmosphere and tone, but encourage the mellow state of mind needed to identify issues I may be having. Gary Jules' remake of "Mad, Mad World," Jeff Buckley's "Halleluiah," and a healthy dose of Radiohead each help me to cry out that something is wrong and then take steps to do something about it. And just in case I'm in the mood, U2's "Numb" reassures me that other people know what it's like to feel a certain way.

Yet, the point of the CD is not to make you so depressed you become paralyzed with self-absorbed thoughts. I listen to such a compilation to express what's wrong and then do something about it. That's why interspersed in the mix are songs to help turn my thoughts back to the world outside my own private prison. This world is where Christ's supernatural power can reach into my natural world and fix the self-destructive thoughts.

A large portion of these songs come from Waterdeep's "Everyone's Beautiful" album, a rare find in the mostly superficial world of contemporary Christian music. This rarely-heard band honestly addresses sin, doubt and anger in "Confessions of a Broken Down Man" and the title track from the CD. "He Will Come," which follows the other two songs, serves as a reminder of what I can look forward to in the midst of the daily battle against the small frustrations or unrealistic expectations that could drag a person down.

Also on the CD are more expressions of pain but in the context of crying out to God and asking for help. Tracks such as the driving, industrial "Chronic" by Sarah Jahn and the raw, lamenting "One Lonely Visitor" by Chevelle help with the complexities of sorting through emotions and what we think we know about God. And an obvious but much needed "Grace" by the now defunct Normals reminds me of the one supernatural gift that can trump any chemical imbalance I might have in my head.

To finish off the disc is a suite of songs from Sarah Groves' "All Right Here" album that specifically speaks about depression and God having a reason for letting some people suffer with this ailment. The last song of my compilation, being what will stay in your brain the longest after the music stops, is "You Cannot Loose My Love;" a song that admits to loosing everything from innocence to direction but never God's love.

This combination of music is what has helped so many times to express the unknown hurt that lingers some days. It is an hour-long therapy session that lets me travel into the darker regions of my psyche without getting lost. By making this CD, I could let the hurt be expressed by expert singer/songwriters and then end the compilation with a reminder of why I have so great a salvation: to let my thoughts be transformed by Christ's amazing Spirit. And whether or not I am cured of depression or end up living the rest of my life with it, this CD is a reminder that I will be a shinning example of how Christ's power is made perfect in mental weakness.

Borat; Depression Series # 4

2007-03-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Had a great night with a friend from Chicago who's now in Dallas. Had a six-course meal (all homemade except for some sushi); some double chocolate stout and big 'ole bottle of tasty cheap wine. This made watching Borat after dinner all the funnier.
Can't believe some people fell for Cohen's shtick, especially a local news station. I couldn't stop laughing while Cohen interrupted a local news weather segment. Genius.
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Depression Series # 4 (Contains violent content)

This is an essay I didn't do anything with, and you can probably figure out why. It started with a good idea but then turned into something else and got a little violent by the end. Not sure what kind of mood I was in at the time, but I'm sure I must have just watched Fight Club or something like that before writing this.

Fighting Against Fundamentalism (2004)

I didn't realize I was one until met people who weren't and people who were worse off than me. And as much as I try to fight it, somewhere in the tissues of my brain lurks the evil, growth-stunting, self-exalting, self-isolating principles of fundamentalism.

I grew up with it like an extra head sitting on my shoulders. As I grew, matured and began to shave, so it began to get acne and feel akward. My brain and it's brain began to think similarly as we grew up. "I don't smoke, drink or chew or go with girls who do." That was actually a line from my parent's version of fundamentalism but it echoes so closely what my own thought.

"I don't watch R-rated movies, break the rules or question what I'm told or hang out with anyone so bold."

This is what my second brain would transmit from it's slightly off-center spot on my shoulders to my real brain which was in the center of my body and being. So many other transmissions were relayed to my true head through the church I went to, how my parents saw the world and how I confused spirituality with a tortuous sort of self-discipline. They were all that made it into my moldable brain during the adolescent years.

My second head would always tell me of how everything was spiritual and that there was always s spiritual reason for something happening. I could do well at baseball, then there must be someone that I hadn't reconciled myself with. Other completely unrelated disappointments or failures would be instantly diagnosed as blinking billboard that said, "Something is really wrong. Pray now so God can show you what you've done wrong."

I'd soon begin to misdiagnose everything that hurt or confused me. If people said something that hinted of a truer understanding of God's grace, of the complexity of being human or of Scripture and theology, I would think, "You're almost right but not quite." They weren't as spiritual as I was and if they were, then they wouldn't say or do those kinds of things. They should be so much more discipline and do what I do or else they'll run into a lot of problems.

My two heads soon became one as the off-center brain latched onto my own and began to meld with the beautiful gray matter that God had given me. I now saw through it's eyes instead of my own and thought it's thoughts. I couldn't believe how many other people had it all wrong. No wonder everyone else in the world was having problems with life. They weren't doing what I was doing. If they could only do their daily devotions ( merely an exercise in writing down meaningless phrases that would never impact my life) and see how bad those movies were (when if fact they were the most accurate depiction of humanity, grace and redemption.

All of my life was easy to explain and understand and the rest of the world was too, if you only thought like me. Complexity and confusion were suppressed and not dealt with because it didn't fit with my own paradigm of how God worked. The Bible was the Bible and there was no question about how life was. If something was wrong in your life, there had to be some spiritual roots.

But thank God for depression and the results. A small, dull pain began as an ax was pushed into my bloated and confused head. An inch at a time, the ax began to cut through the skin, muscle and bone until it found the carnivorous fundamentalist head that attached onto my own. A little dramatic? Yeah, but everything was when you had a fundamentalist mindset.

When the depression ax had succeeded in splitting my head open, my judgmental eyes were plucked out. My sight was gone. I didn't know how to look at the world anymore.

With a gaping gash in my head and two bloody sockets, I realized that something was wrong. Maybe I was wrong. I started to see that there was this other way of thinking. Some better way of looking at others, at my faith, and at how God saw me.

The one thing my fundamentalist mindset was right about was that there was something wrong with me. I had deeper problems.

Guac-queso; New Brew; Chicago v. Dallas

2007-03-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Went to a tex-mex restaurant and had some queso made with quacamole. Holy mole! I can't believe I've never thought of doing this.
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I posted another new author on The Brew. Kennedy Lewis writes with some bite on Truth and Emergents.
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So I started comparing the churches I went to in Chicago and Dallas the other day.

Chicago: Holy Trinity Church(HTC). Dallas: Trinity Fellowship Church(TFC).

HTC: Weekly Texas Hold 'Em nights beginning at 10 p.m. with monthly take-all tournaments (and 10% of the winnings were given to HTC). I'm still in the hole for $5 there.
TFC: Bi-weekly Texas Hold 'Em nights beginning at 8 p.m. (has a more 'mature' crowd). When a pastor attends, no one worries about having to tithe if the pastor wins anything.

HTC: A reformed congregation began this church as a plant. Pastors are known for writing children's books, helping with the translation of the ESV, running the Chicago Marathon every year, carrying around a large cigars in their mouths in the church office (but not smoking them).
TFC: Sprang from a Brethren church but has a more evangelical bent. Pastor (the one I've gotten to know) known for brewing meade and other ales at home, taking many others to eat Ethiopian food and getting a celebratory allowance clause added to Dallas Theological Seminary's policy on drinking while on DTS's student council.

It's a pure coincidence that both celebrate the Trinity in their names. I don't always base my church decisions on their ranking of the Trinity, but hey, why knock a good thing?

Depression Series # 3

2007-03-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

So this next essay was one that I got published on Relevant Magazine's website (which isn't really that hard to do). I think by this time, I'd gotten used to being depressed and was semi-acceptant of it all. This one is a little lighter ( which is good, because it helps balance out the darker, more violent essay which I'll post next week).

1/24/2004
www.relevantmag.com
'Familiar With Depression'

The idea of a depressed Christian used to seem like an oxymoron to me. Why would anyone who is a Christian be sad? I wondered. If a person really were a Christian, they should be able to remember all Christ had done for them, I figured. We really have no reason to be sad, let alone wallow in depression or sink into some lethargic sadness. People like that just need a better relationship with God, I thought. They probably didn’t pray the right way or didn’t even try to get anything out of their Bibles.

There just was no reason to be depressed—Christ has all the hope, joy and peace any person could ever need. It was such a foreign concept for me to understand; yet little did I know, this very problem was fermenting in my own head.

I always heard stories of believers who were depressed. I didn’t understand them or know how to start talking to them. I got some coffee one night with a friend from Germany and learned he wasn’t going to finish his semester at college. His grades were terrible, and he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t fix them, so he was going to leave. Then he told me he was seeing a counselor for depression.

I was stumped. I told him I’d pray for him because I didn’t know what else to do.

Then there was another guy I knew on my floor at school who was in a similar situation. He hadn’t been doing well and was on academic probation. He told me he got behind because of depression.

Over my years at college, I would come to know many more people who dealt with depression. A statistic began to form as people left every semester either because depression killed their grades or they couldn’t recuperate from this disease while at school. The foreign concept didn’t seem so far away because people I knew and was friends with were suffering and introducing me to what depression really was.

As I became more familiar with depression, I saw how much it affects people and how much it can destroy a life. I saw how people lose all motivation for accomplishing anything or for trying to fix anything. I took notice of their outward symptoms, but was still clueless as to what the inner causes were. But I would soon know these inner causes, because they were slowly coming to a boil inside me.

I began feeling numb to more aspects of life. Small disappointments and unmet standards of spirituality started to accumulate in my daily life. Things just weren’t working, and I would constantly be frustrated with school, church or people. Soon, depression grew like a tumor in my brain, keeping me from functioning and even recognizing that I was slipping into an actual clinical depression that would last two years.

I didn’t know I was depressed; I had no idea what that was like. I just knew time seemed to move much slower and existing just took forever. I didn’t realize I was now one of those people whom I couldn’t comprehend. I was the person who I used to look down upon because I didn’t understand them.

I used to think that depressed people weren’t as spiritually strong because they might have given in too easily to their thoughts or because they didn’t trust enough in God. What I would soon realize is that depressed people are quite the opposite. Many are bastions of faith who have to struggle twice as hard to have any fellowship with God. They are often more reliant on God because they have nothing left to rely on; depression has stripped them of any crutch that would work as a substitute.

There’s no comfort in relationships, no consolation to be had from a good speech or sermon, and not much to believe in or hope for. Worship becomes no more than ink arranged on paper and empty, familiar words spoken with no emotion. There are the countless hours spent wondering what’s wrong with you and why you can’t just be like everyone else?

Depressed people also usually have a keen intellect and critical mind that detects counterfeit or superficial attempts at spirituality. They know this because they’ve tried just thinking positively or wishing they were a better warrior for God and have come up short. Their normally healthy mind can drive itself into despair, can let itself wallow in sadness and even produce thoughts of suicide.

After a year and a half of living as a depressed Christian, the unfathomable became poignantly clear. I was depressed.

I knew what it felt like to not know where God is and to not know how to fix anything in your life. I knew how it felt to be the recipient of the sometimes hollow and distant sympathy, “I’ll pray for you.” I knew what it was like to have no motivation to accomplish anything because I was so consumed with my own problems. I now knew what depression looked like because I could look in the mirror and truly see myself there.

Now I know how real depression is, and how real struggle is in the spiritual life. I can no longer pigeonhole people who are truly suffering as “just not that spiritual.” People who seem to be on the outside of what I think is spiritual are usually the ones who know better than to have such a category. And I can only pray that someday God will bless me enough to be like them.

Miller on The Brew; For Your Consideration

2007-03-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

I just posted my review of Donald Miller's two newest books on The Brew.
I also added the first resource on the Emergent Church Movement on The Brew's Culture tab. It's a history and description of the Emergent and Emerging movements by pretty much the leader of it all, Mark Driscol.
I'm going to use The Culture Tab, formerly used for movie reviews, as a resource for all things Emergent this month. If you have any other good articles I can post or link to, let me know and I'll add it.
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Watched For Your Consideration. Had only a couple of chuckles. Or chortles.

Depression Series # 2

2007-03-04T16:57:00.000-08:00

So here's the next in my depression series. This article I wrote for a counseling journal I put together for my senior print media project in school. I called the journal, "Issues", and it was pretty well received. I did a reprint a few years later when it became very relevant at my alma mater.
So this is what I was thinking about depression four years ago.

"Living With Depression"

Is this what Hell will be like?
To not have any connection with God
My memories of Him are all that’s left
But the past is gone
The future can’t be reached
And I’m just here

That’s what goes through my head when I’m depressed. God isn’t real and seems like merely a nice idea that a lot of people have. There’s not really a way to contact Him or see a response because you’re just here with all your thoughts to keep you company. And those thoughts are not usually kind.

Thoughts of regret, sadness and guilt were what consumed me for the longest time. I would drown in a tidal wave of guilt because I didn’t complete some small task on time or to the tee. Perfectionistic tendencies still set up shop in my brain despite my having studied Galatians in depth and marveled over 'grace' my freshman year. Forgetting to ‘do my devos’ was one of the largest initiators of guilt because if God was important, I’d make time for Him.

I’d regret not saying or doing something I ‘should’ have done or I’d just feel sad that I wasn’t connected to God. All of this would just create this cloud of sadness that would wrap around me for long stretches of time. I’d just sit and think about how I wasn’t right with God and how bad I felt about what I did 'wrong'.

I’d try to read my Bible and pray more but all these things were just physical acts that had no meaning. There was no God behind any of it. I could read for 24 hours straight and still not be right with God. Something major was wrong with me and I didn’t know what to do to get better.

I could try to do other spiritual things to fix it but my thoughts were still wrong. I could pray and God might have heard me but I was still consumed by wrong thoughts. These thought patterns had grown into me like ivy around a house and could not be cleared away without extensive work.

I was also numb to most everything. I didn’t really connect with people or to sad events that I heard about. Someone died of cancer, committed suicide, or was raped? “Life goes on,” I might think. It would take something extreme, movies like Magnolia or stories by Flannery O’Conner perhaps, to revive my senses to a low-level working order. Existential philosophers, like Søren Kierkegaard, also became geniuses to me.

I ache to be alive again
I ache to feel what feelings are
I yearn to know the experience of worship
I yearn to have the words truly affect me
Does what I’m singing really mean anything?
Can saying what’s true mean something
Even if it’s just an physical act?

I can’t remember when I first started to be depressed but I do remember when God reminded He was still there. Halfway through this past summer, I had a few thoughts that were pivotal in coping with depression: “This isn’t going to last forever. You won’t always be like this.”

I was pretty sure this was from God because my mind could never have produced this during that time. There were no romantic notions or spiritual revelations going through my mind. If the clouds in the sky spread apart and sunlight broke through to warm my numbed skin, it wouldn’t register. I’d see the scene above and think, “That’s kinda nice.” The two thoughts from God were awesome but they didn’t change how I thought.

I’m not sure how long it took, but I started to realize how huge a role my thoughts played. Even if I just finished some awesome time in the Word, the depressed thoughts could still take over and make me waste another two hours sitting and wallowing. I started to ask God to help me with my thoughts. I didn’t know what or how to do anything but I just needed help.

More time passed and I started to realize quicker when I would be depressed. I could almost figure out a specific time of the day when an episode started so I kept praying and asking for more help. I eventually was able to pin point what events triggered the thoughts of guilt, sadness or regret, but only after more time and stretches of depression had passed.

It was about then that I realized how much I truly needed God. I realized how idiotic was the Schuler-esque, American evangelical idea of changing your thinking through your own will power. A person’s thoughts are more powerful than we realize and any self-help fluff you can buy in a Christian bookstore can’t truly fix them. Only a genuine relationship with God, and perhaps some counseling, can really change negative thought patterns.

As much as I wanted to get help from a counselor, I never did, which was probably to my detriment. After almost a year of suffering, I finally was able to figure out my thought patterns and know what triggered a downward spiral of thoughts. Whenever I realized I was in that state, I could stop and ask God for help again with my thoughts.

Sometimes the episodes last a day, sometimes only a half-hour, but they haven’t gone away completely. I've come to realize that this is not just something you can cut out of your life. Overcoming depression would be awesome if all you had to do would be cut out part of your brain. But things aren't that easy. Depression is something you have to live with, but not give in to. It's almost like this sadness, guilt, or despair has to play with happiness, joy and contentment. Joy plays hopscotch with Sadness and cheers him on so he can figure out that he is Son of God. Despair is given an underdog on the swing set by Contentment and is made to laugh and smile.

Yet whenever I do get depressed, I see, yet again, how much I need God and turn to him. God won’t seem real and there won’t seem to be any reason to even consider getting better. But just asking for help, be it from counselors or God, is the only way anyone will ever get better.

Editorial; Evil Dead 2; A Nyquil Night

2007-03-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

I posted March's editorial on The Brew today.
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I watched the Evil Dead 2 tonight, as well. Easier to take than the first. Had a classic scene of Bruce Campbell fighting against his own hand, which had been infected with evil.
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I'm also fighting a wicked cold/flu/seasonal malady. Tally of everything I've taken today: 2 packets of Emergen-C; Thera-Flu, 2 Aleves. And I'm soon going to be very good friends with a bottle Nyquil. Oh, the sweetness of a Nyquil night and a good night's sleep.

Depression Series - #1

2007-02-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

So this is the first of nine articles I'll post on depression. I wanted to do this because I wanted to draw some attention to mental disorders. So many people out there struggle with all kinds of maladies of the mind. Besides struggling with depression myself, a friend of mine struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder, one of the possible reasons for him committing suicide two years ago. (For more on this friend, search for Clark Stacy on this blog to find all the posts that are flagged about him).

So this was probably the first essay I wrote on depression while I was in college. I put it together for the Jerry Jenkins Writing contest my alma mater held. So I had to think, "What would the author of the Left Behind books think would be a great essay on depression?" I almost didn't know how to answer that question but here's what I came up with.
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God Isn't Real When You're Depressed

God isn’t real when you’re depressed. He doesn’t reach into your naturalistic life and affect you in any way. All that is real is what you can see and touch and what crumbles in your hand when crushed.

For about half a year, these were the kind of thoughts that I had. Somehow, God became Someone who was extremely distant and didn’t have much to do with how I went to work or how I brushed my teeth in the mornings. Whatever connection that injected divine purpose, or any purpose for that matter, into my life seemed to have disappeared. There only seemed to be the methodic activities that I had to perform each day.

Shaving became a joy, or as much a joy as such an act can be. A Mach 3 triple razor skidded across my cheek, slowly ripping out the stubble that had grown through my skin during the night. The warm, burning sensation on my neck and cheeks from shaving were physical sensations that helped me to feel pain. I was happy for being able to feel anything at all; emotions and other sensations had withered away.

There was once a relationship with Christ that showered me with physical sensations and meaning from some otherworldly mystery. Before I went to bed each night, I could kneel down to pray and just by remembering the events of that day be overwhelmed with how God had worked in my life. I could hardly pray or think straight because I saw how much God loved me and how He had orchestrated what different people had said or done to show me this. I could only cry at knowing how much I was loved and how much I meant to God.

Yet for some reason, I didn’t have that anymore. Those snapshots of faith seemed to be a sort of photo album of the past and not much more than memories. The dynamic relationship with Christ from back then seemed too distant to have any effect on the depression of the here and now. Life was more existential and focused on the table and chair I was sitting at rather than the mystery of God speaking from above the clouds or wherever He truly was.

I knew that God was still there somewhere, yet that didn’t help me with my present situation. I had gradually become numb to anything spiritual and didn’t want to bother trying to figure out why. I was just here and knew that I needed to be somewhere else. My relationship with God had somehow become shredded, if not hacked to pieces, leaving me to merely wake up, exist for a few hours and then go to sleep again. There wasn’t really any reason for doing anything except that I was alive and had to do something.

During those months, one of the best distractions from thinking about how I wasn’t right with God was an online computer game called Super Bounce Out. I would spend hours rearranging colored balls on a screen so that when three of the same color were side by side, they would bounce out, making room for new ones. I made this a sort of priority and cherished the time spent scoring points on something that didn’t matter for anything. I reached a high score of 145,000 points on level 11, where you had to bounce out 175 balls in a short period of time. Somehow, this had meaning for me: I could always get to the next level and this was an accomplishment.

I didn’t know how or why I was like this. My life over the past year was a success story, like many others who get this way. I was editor-in-chief of the school paper and scared some of the administration with an article I wrote. I applied for and became an RA. I went to Africa over Spring Break and helped to proofread a translation of the Bible in a native language I didn’t know. I was a leader in the youth group at my church. I met a girl and started dating her during the spring semester and would spend the whole summer growing closer to her. I had absolutely no reason to be like I was.

These two thoughts did not become a romantic experience where I saw an opening in those clouds and was washed in a warming light that gave life to my cold, numb skin. As great as that would be to experience, I might not even have been able to receive that. My mind might have merely responded, “That’s kind of pretty.” Rather, the thoughts were simple and without flashy lights or sensuous smells to awaken me from my slumber.

“This isn’t going to last forever. You won’t always be like this.”

There was hope in those two sentences because I knew myself so well and knew where the thoughts must have come from. I knew where my state of mind presently was and what had been trickling out of it. A person who is depressed is not so likely to have hopeful thoughts because they are in the habit of dwelling on whatever is wrong. I couldn’t stop what I was doing, take a deep breath, and take a few moments to fix all the wrong thoughts that had been isolating me from God. My mind was still tightly fastened to the existential, natural world and couldn’t suddenly break the roots that held me there. So the idea that what I was suffering through wouldn’t last forever must have come from somewhere outside of me.

I soon began to realize that God was above all that existed around me and had the power to trump the natural laws He had made. He could dig into my grimy, dirt-under-your-fingernails-world to change things and perhaps even help me repair my shredded relationship. I slowly began to learn what ‘supernatural’ looked like in the numbing grind of daily life. A pitiful creature whose faith in himself and his reason to solve things would be shown how little meaning there was in himself and his reason. I saw this lack of meaning and began asking for help.

The hopeful thoughts became a new companion in the playground of my mind.

Unhappiness skipped over hopscotch squares as Hope of Changing cheered it on. Lack of Motivation swung harder on and higher on the playground swings as Hope of a Better Time pushed it. The depressing thoughts would remain like an unwelcome guest despite my knowledge that God had begun to supernaturally fix me.

I thought about reading the Bible and what better book to read when depressed than Ecclesiastes. Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, had gained everything his natural heart could want but, thanks to his wisdom from God, he saw it all as meaningless. All he could build or do was all in vain if meaning was not found in God. I discovered a phrase that Solomon repeated five times throughout the book: There is nothing better for a man to eat, drink, and enjoy his work, for that is the gift of God.

Solomon’s wisdom seemed to affirm my experience with depression. This life was just what it was and nothing else. Any meaning for all of my activities must come from God. In my natural world of tasks and tending to responsibilities, God would supernaturally provide meaning for it all.

This supernatural ability was more and more revealed to me as time went on. Small vignettes of people being put in the right place or circumstances working out to my favor didn’t always look like coincidences anymore. From an existential mindset, God working in our boring, everyday lives can be seen as nothing but chance. However, I can’t accept that anymore. God is supernatural and can rescue us from our naturalistic lives and prove His character through our struggles.

Jesus on Your Arm; What I Really Mean; American Splendor

2007-02-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

So a guy walks into my store yesterday with a tatoo of this painting on his forearm. So, thinking I'd be pretty with it, I asked him, "So you got a DiCianni on your arm?" (What I didn't know is that the painting merely looked like a Ron DiCianni painting).
The guy then began telling me about something about what the Bible said about the Gospel. Not wanting to admit my artistic faux pax of mixing up artists, I moved on. (The tat was something to see, though. It was in full color and looked like it took a while to finish).
I then asked him about his t-shirt, which said "Epic Surf Ministries". "Yeah," he said. "We're in California and we run surf summer camps and Bible clubs."
Wow. Didn't know there was such a thing.
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I posted the last ambiguous article on The Brew today, written by none other than yours truly.
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Watched American Splendor yesterday. Great movie about an odd file clerk who drew comics of every day stuff and became semi-famous for it. It's a great mix of film, interviews and comics to tell Harvey Pekar's story.

Caffeine-Free Can Wait; Trent; Books For Lent; My 9 Articles

2007-02-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

So I bought a pound of unroasted beans from White Rock Coffee at half the normal price. I got a pound of Ethiopia Harrar Makeda for only $7.50. A friend with a home roaster is going to hook me up so then I can enjoy the great blueberry flavor that comes from the coffee. Having done that, there's no way I can go caffeine-free during March like I had planned. So I'll have to wait till the Makeda runs out.
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I posted Trent's article on The Brew on ambiguous political allegiances.
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So far so good with no TV during Lent. Finished The Book Of The Dun Cow. Started slow but picked up quickly. Other books up for reading during Lent: The Devil In The White City; Blessed Assurance; Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference; Searching For God Knows What; The Book Against God; Cry, The Beloved County.
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I found that I had more on depression than I thought. So I'll start posting the 9 essays I've written over the years staring next week.