Thursday, July 22, 2004

Just a quick note...

I think spitting on Lance Armstrong is a really cruddy thing to do.

No, I'm not accusing you directly of actually spitting on Lance Armstrong (though shame on you if you have), I'm referring to a bit of news I heard this morning. The report said that many native French attenders of the Tour de France have spit on Mr. Armstrong as he climbs the treacherous sixth leg through the French Alps. The report said that the small pathways are packed with fans who are, at times, only a couple of feet away from the athletes, and that Lance had taken quite a few good dollops of French saliva to the cheek during this leg. (Lance Armstrong is, by the way, leading the Tour de France at the time of this blog entry).

Now, I'm not a super political guy. I tend to think George Bush is a bit of a dimwit (by world leader standards), and something about John Kerry makes me feel like I need to take a shower. I must concede, however, that I am wholly underinformed on each, and I'm one of those jerks that tends to rely on my "gut feeling." So, this isn't a political tirade against the French.

There is, however, something inherently nasty about spitting on a person simply because they're from another country. I wouldn't do it to a Frenchman, a Turk, an Iraqi, a Canadian or a Swede. This makes me mad at French people, and now I start to get political. I get mad because a few French morons spit on a five-time-in-a-row Tour de France winner...then I get mad because I remember a lot of people I know telling me that France bails out of every war worth fighting. Then I get really mad when I hear people tell me that the French have tried to exhume the bodies of American soldiers buried in France WHILE FIGHTING TO KEEP IT FREE, because they don't want Americans on their soil. That may not be true, but I've seen enough desecratioin of American graves in American miliatry cemetaries in France to make me believe it might be. Then I get really really mad when I think of Celine Dion who, given, isn't French but French Canadian, which puts her in league with Alex Trebek, and isn't that worse?

So, all this to say, I'm mad at the French today. I hope I don't stay that way...it's certainly ironic that I would call THEM racists for spitting on my bike rider, and then get mad a whole country full of people. But I thought a little self-disclosure was in order.

--

Also, we had a wicked storm in Cincy last night. I've never seen CONTINUOUS lightning. I'm not kidding, and I'm barely exaggerating. It went for more than an hour CONTINUOUSLY...no waiting between flashes....it was like staring down the runway at the latest fashion debut while the shutters around you snapped continuously. Very bizarre. Scary, really. I almost went to the basement.

Peace,
Justin

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Who knew Neil Diamond could draw such a crowd?
 
I had the good fortune of attending the bar debut of Cincinnati's shining musical precious, Forever Diamond...as far as I know, the only Neil Diamond tribute band currently wowing Cincy.  Alright, let's be honest...it's a little hard to admit to a room full of co-workers that you plan to spend your Saturday night watching a Neil Diamond cover band, but the truth is, it rocked.  Seriously, it was a fantastic show...Top Cat's was packed, and by the end of it the crowd was shouting "One more song!  One more song!"  Who knew Neil wrote so much fun music?  It's all four chords and cheesy lyrics...but the spirit of Neil was in the room that night (not the ghost of Neil...just his rockin'-out spirit.  Neil's not dead...he's just in Vegas), and his music got a couple hundred people dancing for a solid three hours.
 
--
 
I think it's easy to spend a lot of time waiting for that next thing.  Now, like every other blog entry of mine, I'm just mulling over a bit of dime-store self-examination, but bear with me.  Stacy and I spent the bulk of this afternoon running to various home stores to buy that next perfect item for the new digs.  We found a tiny picture of a Calla Lilly inside of an oversized white frame...ding.  We found candles that happen to perfectly match the dining room walls...ding.  We found brushed nickel toilet paper holders for 50% off...ding.  And, at the end of the evening, as I sat on my front porch and watched the rest of Norwood just sort of sit there and watch me from their porches, I actually thought, "Man...if only I had those last few pieces to assemble the dining room table.  Then this thing would really come together."  After an entire day of terrific finds, unbelievable bargains and more than a few Home Depot receipts wedged between my palm pilot and my still-warm credit cards, I had lack of perspective enough to believe that a few pieces of metal would really make me happy.
 
I am blessed beyond my ability to comprehend it.  I live in a wealth that five out of the six billion people on this planet will never even see, much less experience first hand.  I eat without concern for my supply, I sleep without concern for my safety and I love Stacy recklessly.  My water is clean, my clothes are laundered, and my bank account always has enough to cover my gas money.  I eat out, I change my guitar strings regularly and I saw Spider-Man 2 without wondering for a moment how I would cover the ticket.  I have no idea what it is to truly want for resources, support or companionship.  I have more than I will ever understand, and I know that.
 
So what is it about being human that makes me so ridiculously ungrateful?  Why is it considered human to ignore all the amazing stuff in your life and focus on the negative, be they trite or profound?  Did the Author create us as short-sighted, ungrateful beings...or did we pick that one out on our own?  My true pain was a high-school heartbreak...my true pain was a friend's betrayal... ..have I experienced true pain?  I can't help but feel like, some day, unless I learn to know what it is to be content with what I have, that God will subject me to true pain to help me know what I have lost.  I feel like, some day, the BIG ONE is going to come, and it is going to test the limits of my endurance...that the only way I can circumvent this impending trial is to first learn to love what I have while I have it, and preclude my need for such an experience.
 
Maybe God doesn't work that way any more.  I hope He does...but I hope I can beat Him to it.
 
Peace,
Justin

Friday, July 16, 2004

Andy, I hope you can get some sleep... :)

At the risk of sounding a bit like a crabby old man, get this:

The good folks at Cincinnati Gas and Electric gave me a four hour window in which they would be showing up at my old apartment to read the meter, that I might no longer be paying for electricity at a dwelling in which I no longer reside. So...four hours, fair enough. The CG&E guy calls me at the tail end of that four hours, and tells me to be at my old apartment in twenty minutes, or he was leaving. So, I got in the car, and raced over to the old apartment. When I got there, a man who was bearded, surly and a little long in the tooth told me that he had been waiting patiently for three minutes, and was not allowed to wait more than five. "Good," I reassured him, "because I am here, so that should end any anxiety about having to wait for me to come." I got to the front door of my old apartment, and perused my key ring to find entrance to ol' place. Oops...I don't have that key anymore...I gave it back to my landlord when I moved out of the apartment. I told the service technician to hang on for a moment, dialed my landlord (who lives right down the street from the old apartment) and asked him to please bring the key over. My landlord said he would be there in two minutes.

...this is where the story gets interesting.

I hung up the phone (an antiquated expression, I suppose...I really hit "off" and shoved it back in my front pocket) and told the service technician that our relief would come in two minutes, and that my landlord would admit us into the building, that the service tech might spend the good four-and-a-half seconds it takes to read my meter.

"Sorry," ol' Beardo said, "can't wait that long." He started to move towards his truck.

"You're kidding," I told him, polite as ever. "I mean, you're seriously joking, right? He'll be here in two minutes."

"Nope, sorry. Can't wait any longer."

"But you drove all the way out here...you sat outside for that [grueling] three minutes before I got here...we walked to my front door...you can't wait two minutes for my landlord to bring the key?"

"Sorry. That's the rules." He shuffled away and got into his truck, as I unleashed the first profanity I've spoken above 20 dB in many years. I didn't curse at him...I just cursed at the air. At God, perhaps..."what kind of God allows such injustices to go on," I wondered as I stood on my posh American ex-apartment lawn with my fat American belly hanging over my white guy American chinos.

I ran over to his truck. "Wait," I said, "it took us a minute just now...one more minute and he'll be here...you don't have to race off, do you? I mean, I waited four hours, and I'll have to set another appointment and wait for more hours, not to mention all the electricty costs I'll incur in the meantime. Where do you have to race off to?"

"I've got to do one across the street," he replied, as if this wasn't the most absurd thing he was going to have said all week. The scary thing was, perhaps it wasn't.

"ACROSS THE STREET?" I replied. "Great! Then you can just pop over when you're done...I will have had the door unlocked for a good five minutes by then...no waiting...no waiting at all! Just walk in, read, and walk out!"

"Sorry," he said, with a straight face. "Can't do it. I already put you down in our computer as a no-show."

"Well, can you un-put it?" I wasn't sure this was a word, but I think Beardo and I were speaking the same language.

"Sorry," he said. He uttered that word with the practiced recitation of a master. "It's already down at Central." With that, Beardo put his car into reverse, backed into the driveway across the street, and went to work.

..I'm certain the guy across the street had his key ready.



Peace,
Justin

Friday, July 09, 2004

I've had a bit of blogger's block lately...

..it's interesting, I've felt the collective weight of you, my .07 adoring fans, before writing...and I've wanted to write stuff that's interesting to you.

But in lieu of anything you might be interested in, let me tell you where my interests have been lying:

1. I saw "Big Fish." Please go see it...see it on a big TV. If you don't have a big TV, go to Circuit City and ask if you can put it in one of their DVD players attached to a big TV. They're cool like that. "Big Fish" is Tim Burton's magnum opus...a beautiful and at times surreal movie about one man's life and the stories he told about it. Stacy and I talked about it quite a bit afterward...I'm not sure...but I think it's about storytelling. More specifically, I think it's about trying to balance the facts of one's life (not the Blaire and Tootie kind...the "what actually happened" kind) with the emotions that one experienced. It's a strange paradox that I think every person goes through. If I were to tell you the story of how Stacy and I met and what that first year was like...and someday I might...I would be recounting to you the facts, with the best descriptive words I can muster. But the truth is, even if I had John Updike and Flannery O'Connor co-write the story of when Stacy and I met, and they told you the real God's-honest truth of what happened, what you would feel would be, at best, 5% of what I felt and what she felt. It's not because we're more equipped to understand true love than anybody else, but it rather highlights that paradoxical disparity: the way YOU feel about what you experienced and the way OTHERS feel about what you experienced will never be the same. I couldn't possibly describe the indescribable magic that occured when Stacy and I would sit on front porch of Emerson hall or dance in the rain that first night...it would sound, well...sweet at best, mundane at worst. But I KNOW what I felt, I just can't pass that along to you.

That's why we embellish. That's why we tell tall tales. That's why we have "fish stories." They're not lies...they're just descriptions of what it FELT like when reality happened, not a description of the events which comprised it. That's what I think Tim Burton was trying to say with "Big Fish." If you look at his films...they're all tall tales...a young boy and his giant peach, a nerd and his magic bicycle, a man and his scissor hands, two kids and a witch in a candy house, a surly spirit tries to get two ghosts to call him back from Hell...and on and on. Mr. Burton is a storyteller who specializes in tall tales...in fish stories...and this movie was, I think, his chance to defend the ancient practice of embellishment...not as a form of trickery or falsification, but as a means of expressing the very real but intangible that happens in each life.


2. I also saw Spiderman 2, and it's got me pondering. I've been trying to understand how we're supposed to deal with the various "absolutes" that our culture tells us we must live and die for. I agree that it is quite possible that there is an absolute in the world which, by any means and to any end, each person must uncompromisingly seek. Those are the heroes in our fairy tales, our movies, our literature, our poems and our songs...those who are true to their absolute. For William Wallace, it was freedom; for Forrest Gump, it was Jenny; for Wallace and Gromit, it was those tricky mechanical trousers. For Peter Parker, it's Mary Jane, but for Spider-Man, it's justice. That's where the tricky part comes up. What ARE we supposed to live and die for?
Bear in mind, I'm not exactly asking for the meaning of life here. (You'll mostly find that on Randy Bohlender's blog, and he's probably right). I'm asking, what is it that we're supposed to never compromise, now matter how much is offered us, how high the pain level gets, or how much we wish to exchange it for something else. Do we believe those who say:
"Love is all there is?"
"In the end, only Kindness matters?"
"Never sacrifice your Dreams?"
"To thine own Self, be true?"
"Love the Lord your God?"
"Never compromise your Integrity?"
"Follow your Heart?"
"Country first...semper fidelis."

What is my hard-line, never compromise, plumb-line for my life? Should I never sacrifice anything at the expense of my love for Stacy? Or should I even sacrifice that for my love for God? What if I am drafted, should I go to jail because my love for God means I refuse to follow his commandment to not kill, thereby superceding my love for Country? What if my love for my Country means I will have to bomb a suppposed "safe-house" which I know contains children...should I then sacrifice my Integrity? What if my Integrity supercedes my desire to show Kindness when a female friend who calls with a desparate need to talk...not romantically, but merely because I'm the best friend she has? What if my heart for Kindness overrules my love for Stacy, and I choose to stay on that phone and help her?

I'd love to believe that the Bible has a very clean and clear explanation on how, if you love God, you will also be following all of these other things. But I don't think that's true. Please prove me wrong. I think these things are, for the most part, mutually exclusive...what the Bible DOES say is that "you cannot serve two masters;" and so my question remains: which master am I to serve? The Bible says it should be God...does that mean, once again, that I may sacrifice all of the other things at any and all times if I think it serves God? That may cause some serious trouble in my marriage...between the rampant 90% tithe and the six days a week I spend fasting at the church and serving the poor, I may not love my wife very effectively.

I'm stuck on this one...anybody got any help?

Thanks for reading.

Peace,
Justin