The answer to my little music poll!

The answer, to be concise, is that neither of them are Christian songs. Now, to be fair, both of these songs play on Christian radio stations. The first one (How to save a life) plays on just about every Christian station I've heard. The second one plays on a local Christian Rock station solely. So why aren't the Christian? To be blunt, the first song being played on Christians stations is a mere perversion of the Lyrics. They say that they "pray to God" but it's not an actual acknowledgment of God or of His authority of the hearts of man. When they use that phrase, it has as much to do with actually praying to God as the phrase "Heaven forbid" has to do with heaven. The artist who sings it is unquestionably secular, it's not a Christian song.

The second song is by an indie (Christian) band. After some searching I discovered that the band claims the song is about ending spiritual stagnancy. Wow... just wow, that's some mighty fine between the lines reading. It a purely nonsensical song with a bunch of teens screaming into a microphone. That hardly classifies as Christian.

The reason I posted the little music test is because I've been having some real difficulties with (so-called) Christian music for about... 2 years now (hey that's how long I've been going to DBU... the little coincidences of life). My problem with Christian music has recently resurfaced as the local Christian Rock station, which used to be an amazing station with genuine Christ centered music ranging from Larry Norman's "Why should the devil have all the good music?" (yes, I file that under Christian music) to Nailed Promise's "Stand Tall" (Nailed Promise is a heavy metal band).

If, however, you were to listen to the station today, you would find yourself wondering if you had somehow landed on a really mediocre rock station.

Since I was young, I have contended that it is not the music that makes a song Christian or not. A popular TV show actually pokes fun of this in one of their episodes.

Ned : “Where’s your backing band?”

Girl : “They left the Christian music scene and went mainstream - you just use the word ‘baby’ instead of Jesus”

(yeah, that's a Simpson's quote for you, and that's the sound of my mom dying of shame that I would both know a Simpson's quote and that I would actually use a Simpson's quote). But that's not a problem. The division of secular and Christianity is CHRIST, so of course that will be the difference in who we sing our songs about! After all, the Hymns we sing today were done to the same style as the secular songs of their time period. The problem is with modern Christian bands, the quote becomes

Girl : “They left the Christian music scene and went mainstream - you just imply a girl instead of imply Jesus"

We've done away with actually ascribing anything to God and made simply clip off a wink under our hats in God's direction when no one is looking.

Now just for the record, I have nothing wrong with listen to secular music (provided of course it's not a song that is just slapping the face of Jesus with its every word). Neither do I have a problem with Christian bands singing fun, random, or silly songs. The problem I wish to address is that our "Christian" songs have become dominated with these types of songs and Christ is no longer anywhere to be found (with some small exception).

Sadly, on the other end of the spectrum are the Christian praise and worship songs that the DBU chapel loves so much that is mindless repetition and man centered manipulation.

So, in the next little bit here, I'm gonna take a look at what the Bible has to say about Christian Music and it's place in our lives.

The answer to my little music poll!

Christian Music Test

Here's a little test that I'd like for y'all to take. Of the two videos below, can anyone tell me which one is the Christian one?



Lyrics:

Step one you say we need to talk
He walks you say sit down it's just a talk
He smiles politely back at you
You stare politely right on through
Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right
Between the lines of fear and blame
You begin to wonder why you came

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you
And pray to God he hears you

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

As he begins to raise his voice
You lower yours and grant him one last choice
Drive until you lose the road
Or break with the ones you've followed
He will do one of two things
He will admit to everything
Or he'll say he's just not the same
And you'll begin to wonder why you came

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life
How to save a life

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

CHORUS:
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
How to save a life



Lyrics:

Sing, sing
Oh so sucker for the sugar substitute and artificial flavoring
Small wonder I felt so safe inside nothing more than a smoke screen and masquerade
But outside a car bomb's ticking
Inside a car bomb's ticking

The words I wrote are a broken chain
Holding me from the criminally insane
But its gone and there's no stopping
All my balloons are popping

But the tree was not yet down as she lifted the flag from the bloody
ground, whispering:
'Gallons of gas and a makeshift cast and I'm still no further from nowhere
fast'
Listen! Downstairs the doorbell's ringing
We've been waiting
I've been waiting

The words I wrote are a broken chain
Holding me from the criminally insane
But its gone and there's no stopping
All my balloons are popping

The words I wrote are a broken chain
Keeping me from the criminally insane
But it's gone and there's no stopping

The words I wrote and the songs I sang
Kept this ship from sinking to its grave
But it's gone and there's no stopping
All my balloons are popping

leave comments on which one you think is Christian (remember, I'm a sneaky guy, they might both be Christian or they might both be secular)

Christian Music Test

The Bathroom Project Part 3 - Getting up to half a bathroom

Following the last picture, mom grouted the floor and we let everything set for a week while everyone was out of town. This weekend, we were rearing and reading to get a usable bathroom at this end of the hall. We started Friday night hoping to quickly set the toilet before it was bed time. If you look at the last picture of the previous post, you may notice a white circular object sticking up out of the floor. This is called the flange, it's the part that connects the toilet to the drainage pipe. Or in plainer terms: it is the bridge that keeps your waste from leaking on it's way to the sewer.

Though I forgot to mention it, the previous flange that was in there, was cracked and had to be replaced. If the previous person had installed it correctly, this would have been no problem, but instead of screwing the flange to the floor, they glued it into the pipe. Meaning I had to take a hammer and chisel to that... nasty, nasty bridge and break it out piece. by. piece. I was, therefore, committed to installing it correctly and screwed it down nice and tight. See?



Only one problem. See those nice straight lines in the tile going from the bottom left to the top right? They needed to be touching the end of that bolt hole, not the middle. If you ever look under a flange, you'll see how there's a little plastic ridge that goes to just before the end of that bolt hole. It's purpose is to catch the bolt so that it does not twist as you try to tighten the nuts on top of the toilet. Oops. We press on. Long and very frustrating story short, the bolt turned sideways as we were attempting to secure the toilet and popped right out of the hole. Furthermore, for some reason the wax ring that sit on top of the flange to further insure no leakage was not smushed at all meaning that the toilet was not resting on the flange like it's supposed to. It was then that mom realized that the flange was supposed to be at floor height, not sunken in as you see it.

Though we called it quits for the night, we did, quiet fortunately, already have the solution for this, back when we were doing the backer boards almost 3 weeks ago, we had the foresight to buy an extension kit for just such an outcome. So it was that first thing Saturday morning, we installed the flange kit, and seated the toilet. Things were looking up until we found that after all that hard work, the toilet tank was cracked. Though we were at first worried that this meant we were going to have to buy a whole new toilet, a nice employee at Lowe's helped us find a replacement for just the toilet tank! Replacing the old, cracked tank for the new (shorter) tank was a simple job and we finally had a working toilet... albeit no sink or door at this point.


The installation of the vanity bottom went well. We decided to caulk behind it so water wouldn't be able to seep into the walls and discovered that we only had gray caulk. Fortunately this area is completely covered by the vanity so we caulked it gray and pressed on. At this point mom left to go see my 3 day old niece, Alyssa Faith Bennett, and left me to install the sink and vanity top.

It was a largely easy affair. The only hold up was on of the water lines that went from the pipe to the faucet could no longer reach since the new vanity is about 4-6 inches higher than the old one. This also meant that the drain pipe from the sink did not reach to the drain pipe going into the wall. One last quick Lowe's run (it's an exit from our house) allowed me to purchase the solutions to both these problems, and once mom got back we were able to silicone glue the vanity top to the bottom. Here's the result:



I was also able to replace the light, but I didn't bother taking a picture of that. So what's left you ask?

1) Caulk the tub
2) Caulk the space where the wall meets the floor
3) Put on base boards
4) Put up shower curtain
5) Put up towel holders
6) Any other little things my sister wants to do that I am unaware of.

We've done a really nice job so far. The one and only draw back I'm seeing right now is that it's a much louder bathroom now. That make things a little embarrassing for the people trying to use it!

The Bathroom Project Part 3 - Getting up to half a bathroom

The Bathroom Project Part 2 - Flooring woes

I learned an important lesson about measuring tapes while working on the floor. Any increment greater than 1/32 is not only an unneeded amount of accuracy, but also exponentially increases the likelihood of measuring the area incorrectly. I also learned that a jigsaw blade that can cut backer board is worth 100 backer board cutting knives. On my first attempt, I opened the knife I had purchased (with my parents money of course, I'm just helping on the manual labor) and proceeded to war against the backer board. The directions claim that two swipes of the knife was more than sufficient to cut the board. I assure you it is not. But I struggled and toiled with that knife for an hour. And having finally cut the board I bent over to pick it up, only I failed to notice that the tip of my foot was over the board and as I lifted, I broke that board right down the middle.

That, however, was not the end of the woes! For we were willing to have the broken board be the base. It's not like a single piece was going to cover that area anyway, one extra split wasn't going to hurt anything. That's when I learned that a mark ever 1/64 of an inch of a tape measure was just too many marks. I was anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch off my cuts. Now, the way the floor in that bathroom is makes the length of the board extremely important. The floor slants up from the door to about 2 feet into the room, then from that point back down to the tub. Any backer board or tile lain over this crest would quickly crack. So it was that I went back to Lowe's, purchased another backer board to replace the one that was now worthless as well as this little beauty.


It's a carbide jig saw blade. I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but rather than have teeth like most saws, it's blade is covered in... well carbide I guess. And it makes quick work of that backer board. So it was that armed with this blade, and a better tape measure, I was able to quickly measure and cut the three backer board pieces to cover the bathroom floor. It was perfect.

Of course, I had yet to secure them to the floor. Which is where we hit our next major snag. The concrete screw heads where square. That's right, they were not flat head nor philip's head screws but square heads. After a lot of searching, my mom and I were able to find a screw for the power dill that would mostly fit the square heads. It started out well enough, but for those who don't know, turns out screwing through concrete is hard work. Hard work made even harder by a dill head that kept wanting to come loose and make my square holes circular. But we did manage to get them all screwed down and the floor started looking pretty nice.


Here you can see the three pieces I used with a hole cut out for the toilet flange. You can also see how we cut them to follow that crest I was talking about. With the backer board down, we were able to apply the final coat brown coco paint and prepare to lay down the tile.

Later, as we were inspecting the floor one last time before laying down the tile, we realized that a lot of the heads were not flush with the backer board. Without the heads being all the way flush, it was very likely the tile would shift and crack as people walked on them. The problem was further exacerbated as we could not find the square bit we had been using. Finally, I decided that it would be better just to run over to Lowe's and buy the right sized bit to do the job right. It was as I read the box of screws to see what size I should get that I noticed the following


No, no, look closer


Yes, there in rather plain, "hey I'm just part of the bar code or quantity " text were the unimpressive words "Free square drive bit" All the time I was drilling in those screws wishing I had the right bit, it had been in that box, hidden down underneath all those screws. Fortunately, after replacing about 1/3 of the screws I had down, it was a relatively simple process for mom to lay down the tile such that my back board went from what you saw above to


that. And finally to

The Bathroom Project Part 2 - Flooring woes

The Bathroom Project Part 1 - Introduction

Merriam Webster defines project as "a specific plan or design" and that's a pretty okay way of defining it, but over the course of the bathroom project, I have my own definition of project. "Project: a related series of snafus that result in a (hopefully) desirable outcome". A year ago, a bad hail storm came through my area. As a result our insurance company paid for a new roof and paint job. Additionally, it was discovered that the damage to the roof caused by said hail storm the "kids' bathroom" ceiling, wall, and tub was damaged and the insurance company was going to cover the replacement costs.

So it was that at the beginning of summer my mom decided to make good on a promise she gave Emily years and years ago that she could redo the bathroom however she wanted to (within reason). Together the two of them began to conspire over the details of this new bathroom. The two of them finally decided on what tile to use about half way through the summer, and about a month and a half ago, the bathroom project officially began with a construction crew removing the tub, fixing the ceiling, installing the new tub, and installing the new tile. With their work completed, it now fell to us to finish the job. After all, we could never afford a new bathroom if they did all the work, but if we did it all a shiny new bathroom would be ours!

It began with the loss of the toilet. It was a heavy loss for me. Literally, I had to carry that sucker out of there and porcelain is quiet weighty. It was quickly followed by the removing of the vanity, tile, and wallpaper in rapid succession. Usually when someone talks about a house having 1 and 1/2 bathrooms they mean one bathroom only has a toilet and sink, ours only had a shower. This bathroom remained in this state of limbo for a couple weeks while Emily deliberated over what color paint to use. Two coats of killz and one coat of brown coco later, my mom and I realized that before applying the final coat of brown coco, we should lay down the concrete backer board that was necessary for the tile to adhere to or else we were going to rip up her nice paint as we wedge these concrete board in to the room. And just like that, the snafus came marching in two by two!

The Bathroom Project Part 1 - Introduction

Why am I up at 1 AM?

A couple weeks ago, maybe a month, I woke in the morning to an odd clicking noise. Now, when I say morning I actually mean about 4 AM. I try to ignore it at first, but as the clicking continues I wake up enough to realize that there is something bug-like in my room. Needless to say, this distressed me. I have enough trouble waking up almost nightly thinking there's some giant bug crawling down my wall without there actually being any bugs in my room. But I do muster up the courage to hunt down this bug that will undoubtedly rush my face when I find it only to find it is in this stationary holder I have. It's kinda like....


...that only less sissy... and full of calculators, earphones, and hands-free sets. I dump it out and squish it dead, then promptly sleep until a decent time to wake up say... 9:00 AM.

Regardless, my bug woes continued tonight as this huge bug flies out of nowhere (literally, it just popped up out of nowhere on my ceiling) and lands on the ceiling. The time is 11:45-ish, I was about to climb into bed. Well I grab a shoe with which to strike it down and begin my advance only to realize that I had grab the shoe for my left foot but I wanted to put it on my right hand, it just wasn't gonna work. So I turned around, swapped out shoes, and in the 4 seconds it took me to accomplish this task the thing disappears.

But it's not like I can just go to sleep, ya know? There's a huge bug somewhere in my room. I know I'm gonna wake up with that sucker on my face and I'll never sleep again. So instead of doing what a rational person would do (just go to sleep), I turn out the light in my room, turn on the light in the hall and sit down with a book on my bug stake out. I'm just waiting for this bug to become attracted by the light and wonder out of my room. Now, in all honesty, I don't care if I actually succeed in killing it once it is out of my room. I count it as a full victory if I merely get it out of my room!

Sadly, it was resolute in staying concealed in my room and after... an hour and 15 minutes, several different attempts to change the conditions in the room to get it out of its hiding spot and back onto the ceiling (fan on, fan off, lights on, lights off) I'm beginning to consider just calling it quits and sleeping in the hallway... or my sister's room, why didn't that occur to me until just now? (my sister is not here tonight, for the record which is why her room would have been an option) Regardless, just as I'm about to pack it up I hear an all too familiar, "click". Yes, that giant ol' bug that had rushed me had been another click beetle. And while I did consider it extremely odd that two click beetles would invade my room so close to one another (and leave the rest of the house completely alone?) what was truly perplexing to me is that I once again found it in



that.

Why am I up at 1 AM?

Fan Project Part 3

If you didn't see Part 2, I posted it just before this one, so go check it out.

With the wires now successfully in place. It was time for the easy part: hanging the fan itself. It was an extremely simple task as anyone who has done it before can tell you. I had a little interesting time since I had three feet of extra electrical wire sticking down the ceiling, but after stuffing the spare wire back up into the attic, it was just a couple of quick twist to get the power hooked up to the fan wires

Hide the wires


Attach the blades


And install the lights (hey look, someone is looking at blogger on that computer monitor)

And voila! A completed fan project. It was much to my joy that when we switch power back onto the rooms, that the light switch on the wall controlled the lights on the fan, but not the fan blades themselves (which was what I was trying to do). This way we can turn the lights off at night and leave the fan running. Total project time: about 12-15 hours. It was a lot of fun, but I'm not going back into the attic any time soon!

Here's a picture of the view of mine and Emily's room with the fan's running (not that you can tell since my flash drowns out the light and fan motion) ... and the mess that I call my work space.

Fan Project Part 3