I hate to say "I told you so," so, welcome to Miami!

Random post at 11:54PM: 30 Rock and Community are great shows. The Office is past its prime but is still decently funny. Outsourced is not really standing out but i'll watch for a little while longer.

Sometimes I wonder

Sometimes I wonder if people are stupid or if they just were poorly educated. In our modern day, "there," "their," and "they're" have become nearly synonymous outside of academic circles. I can just go on Facebook and scroll through just a few people's status updates and see complete disregard for punctuation and spelling. I realize we live in a fast paced world but I feel like we're moving more towards "hide yo kids hide yo wife" then we are towards an intellectual society. That's not to say I want to live in a society of stuck up snobs who flaunt their brain cells like bling around their neck, but our society has got to pass time with something deeper than that stupid double rainbow video.

Also, I know this makes me sound like a complete jerk, so if you're reading this and you don't know me very well, just know that I just kinda like to rant about dumb things in life and aside from being a somewhat critical and sarcastic person, I'm actually somewhat nice. That very well may be a run-on sentence but I'm not that much of a grammar nazi to care about it. I would just like to see an apostrophe between I and m, it and s, and you and re. I mean, come on!

Something I was just thinking about

I like to think through ideas and express thoughts by writing "lyrics." Mostly it's loads of crap that I just do for fun but again, writing things like that helps me think through stuff. Anyway, instead of studying for my History of Ideas midterm, which is tomorrow, I just wrote this interpretation of John 8 out:

I caught the cheating whore and now I’m picking up a stone.

But then I heard Him say, “By him who’s sinless let the first be thrown.”

At this I was confounded, and I went upon my way.

But in my defeated exit, to the woman I heard Him say,

“Go, and sin no more. Go, and leave that life behind.

No more an empty vessel, no more a condemned mind.”

An excerpt from "The Flower" by George Herbert

     "And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
       I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only light,
                  It cannot be
                 That I am he
       On whom thy tempests fell all night.

      These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide*       *(slip silently away)
      Which when we once can find and prove,*      *(experience)
Thou hast a garden for us where to hide;
                     Who would be more,
                      Swelling through store,
       Forfeit their Paradise by their pride."

"I don't have a line of prospects that can give some kind of peace"

Summer is officially over. Daaaaang, time moves so fast. Looking back over the summer (as well as the first couple weeks of school), I come up with a few thoughts. First off, I truly am a screwed up sinner in complete need of a Redeemer. No matter how I may appear on the outside, I am twisted and sinful on the inside. I am a sinful man only a forgiving, merciful God could love.
Second (off?), people come and go throughout our lives but it's the relationships we build that truly count, not the amount of Facebook friends we have or the number of people who wish you happy birthday. I for one can very easily get caught up in a mindset of possession when it comes to people. "Oh, this friend chose this person over me" and "they didn't want to do what I wanted to do" become awfully nagging thoughts in one's mind. But even though we all can get possessive about people and into a mindset of "I deserve...," God continues to offer reminders that all we have is truly by grace. Friends, possessions, gifts, beauty, lifestyles, opportunities, and most importantly salvation are all given to us by grace. God holds back his wrath through his mercy and gives us an overflow of goodness through his grace. Living in America, it's so easy to gain an "I deserve..." mindset. We live in such a materialistic society that tells us that we ought to be paid for our wages, yet this same society seems much less talkative when we look from the good wages to the bad wages. What we all really deserve is to be dropped into a pitch black pit where nothing good can ever reach us; a pit where we are completely separated from God and all the good things that flow from him. Hell. To quote Marlon Brando from Apocalypse Now, "The horror. The horror." But solely by the Grace of Almighty God, we live in our kingdoms of comfort where we are given so much that we don't deserve and are spared of the true horror we do deserve.
Thirdly, life moves too fast to get bogged down in heartbreak and sorrow. I've liked many girls over my short 18 years of life and I've had my share of "heartache" as well. At times this summer I went through minor trials of emotion but I found that the more I got entangled in my own self-pity, the worse I felt. Drowning in a pool of self-pity may seem like a good thing on some warped level but when it comes down to it, you're still drowning. So what if that "special someone" sees you as just "that other whoever?" In the grand scheme of life, these things don't even compare to ripples in a pond. This ain't no place for the weary kind.

Well, I could put a lot more stuff down but I am worn out and I wanted to be in bed about an hour ago :/ Oh well.

By the way, the title of this post is a line from Jars of Clay's song "Work." It's a song I highly recommend listening to, and the lyrics are my favorite part.

"We both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter."

Whitewater rafting is pretty cool. I went with a group from Open Door's college ministry to a place called French Broad River near the border or Tennessee and North Carolina. Although driving 5 or so hours both ways was less than ideal, the rafting was fun as was hanging out with friends. I'm pretty tired though.

Both my fantasy teams are getting slaughtered, thank you Joe Flacco and Maurice Jones-Drew for having awful games. Oh well, Napoleon Dynamite was on to ease my pain.

Who's seen Jezebel?

I'm sitting in a little room on the third floor of Patterson sort of studying for an exam. It's an exam for my British Literature class that covers Beowulf, the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, and William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. According to my professor, there will be six questions on the exam, two regarding each work, and I am supposed to answer two of them in essay form. I honestly don't know how else I can study. I've looked over a PowerPoint he gave us about Shakespearean romantic comedies, I've looked over my notes, and I've browsed some of the two books for which I plan to answer questions, Beowulf and Twelfth Night. How on earth does one prepare for an essay question? It's not like a true/false or multiple choice exam where I have to know specific names and facts; I just have to argue a specific answer with a thesis and a conclusion, preferably close to one page or more in length each. Oh well, I'll just hope and pray it goes well.

Side note: last week whilst (look mom, a fancy word!) reading Twelfth Night, I found a video from 1996 film version of Feste, the "Clown" of the play and probably my favorite character, singing the song that he sings at the end of the play and the film. Who knew Ben Kingsley had such a good voice? Here it is: The Rain It Raineth Every Day

Other side note: the title of this post comes from "Jezebel" by Iron&Wine. I'd heard it a bunch of times when Daniel Moore would play it at the Coffee Company but I listened to the original for the first time yesterday. Good song.

"I'll learn to get by on the little victories"

It's the little things in life that I really love, things that everyone ought to appreciate more. For me, it's driving down the road on a beautiful fall day with the windows down and U2's "Beautiful Day" blasting out my speakers. It's also getting to eat lunch outside of Patterson Hall in between classes when the sky is blue, the temperature is mid 70s, and there's a nice breeze. Life is a gift we take for granted every single day and it is full of these "little victories" (phrase borrowed from Matt Nathanson's song) that can sometimes turn a bad day good or a good day great. We all ought to appreciate life more and we should thank God each day for the breath in our lungs, the blood in our veins, and the Grace to live life.

To quote the title character of one of my all-time favorite movies, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Apocalypse Now.

What a film. Act 1 felt like a typical war film, albeit a little darker and less driving. Act 2, however, took the cake. I'm disappointed that Marlon Brando was only in about 30-45 minutes of the film because his performance is one of the best acting performances I've ever seen; easily top 5. Everything his character said brimmed with profundity, philosophy, and just a bit of insanity. This is a film I need to rewatch sometime, especially Act 2.
Honestly, it was much less disturbing and dark than I was expecting, based on what I had heard from others. I mean, it is a war movie (in a sense), so there'll be no daffodils or daisies. And it's also a film exploring the nature of man through a story about a soldier seeking out an insane general in order to assassinate him. Maybe the dead bodies being hung all over the village or the severed heads scattered throughout the front hill have yet to really seep into my mind and show how truly mad Colonel Kurtz (Brando) was. Again, this is a film I need to watch at least once more.
The rest of the performances were good too, though none as good as Brando's. Martin Sheen carried his role well throughout the film, despite some characters who I feel were unnecessary to the plot (Lance, the acid tripping soldier, and Clean, the foul-mouthed chatter box who, although played by Laurence "Larry" Fishbourne, was more annoying than relevant to the plot).
Aside from 100 or so f-words and some other R-rated language, the film wasn't a very hard R rating. The violence was somewhat tame in comparison to such films as First Blood (Rambo) and The Godfather, which I have yet to see but will hopefully watch the entire trilogy very soon. Yes, there were some violent scenes throughout the movie. One major one being at the end when the villagers kill a real water buffalo with machetes.

Overall, a good movie that is elevated to greatness once Marlon Brando, aka Colonel Kurtz, enters the picture. Definitely a movie I want to watch again.

I'm watching Apocalypse Now. Will post my thoughts after I finish.

"There's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature.'"

that long thought I just mentioned

The word “love” is used so much throughout our culture. It’s frequently mentioned in music, movies, books, and on television, yet it’s almost always treated very flippantly. In music, it’s usually very near-sighted and shallow; in movies it’s usually based on filling a person’s needs and wants; in books it’s usually an unrealistic and fantastical cure-all; and in television it’s either something to connect plot points or an excuse for laughs and/or sex. I mean, it's no wonder that there are so many unmarried couples living together and that the divorce rate is so high. Sure, the main reason is because we're all sinners with selfish hearts and motives, but all the lies and false realities around us in the entertainment industry have done their share of adding to the messes we call "relationships." 

My favorite non-Bible description of (romantic) love comes from my favorite band, Thrice. On the latest album they have a song called "The Weight." The name comes from one of the lyrics, "a ring don't mean nothin' if you can't haul the weight." The main line of the song that really sticks out to me is found in the chorus, 

"And come what may, I won’t abandon you or leave you behind,
Because love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.
Come what may, I will be standing right here by your side,
I won’t run away, though the storm’s getting worse and there’s no end in sight."

I think that in our culture, the definition of (romantic) love has become "a burning for a moment." So often people take the passion of the moment and think they've found "the one" (not Keanu Reeves) without any thought of the weighty stuff that goes hand-in-hand with "love." Not to say that passion isn't important, 'cause it is and I hope to have passion in any future relationship I'm in, but it's hardly a base. Basing a relationship and an idea of "love" on passion and "all the fluffy things" is like trying to make stilts out of toothpicks; it may seem plausible on some level of thought but sooner or later, you come crashing down. 

Enough ranting, I've got class at 9am and I've spent too much time on this already. I'll depart with a thought provoking lyric from Ray LaMontagne, who I'm listening to at the moment: 

"I never learned to count my blessings.
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters."

Does this make me a sell out? Or am I just egotistic?

I think I tried to make a blog a while back but then got bored during the process so I quit. However, I was just thinking of a really long thought to post as a Facebook status and I figured that it might just be better to get a blog. I'll probably just use this to post random thoughts or rants I have in order to keep my Facebook and Twitters from getting really clogged up with my narcissism. Putting my thoughts down somewhere is the main reason I'm doing this. To quote Eminem, " I did it for me. Admittedly I probably did it subliminally for you." I know that he's talking about getting clean from addictions and I'm just talking about why I got a blog, but I'm too lazy to care about the semantics of it all.

Anyway, if you, whoever you are, want to read this, cool. If you don't want to, cool. I'll still think my thoughts and say dumb things to entertain myself whether or not I have an audience. I feel like that last sentence sounds sort of jerk-ish. Oh well.