The end of an era

Last night two things of sorrow note took place. If you don't like long political rhetoric, you might as well skip on to the second thing, it's down a little ways and the paragraph is started out bold. The first, and more widely known, was that America elected it's first black president. The sorrow of this situation is not that he's black, but that his election was due largely to the fact that he was black. I can think of no greater racism than to vote for someone based on the color of their skin, regardless of how that swings your vote. What makes this even more sad is that Obama is not particularly impressive as an individual. The things he was saying and the stances he was making would not have won him the democrat ticket let alone the presidency had he been white.

About a month ago I made two speculations. The first was that I was quiet convinced that Obama would only loose if the democrat vote was split by a surge of write ins for Hilary. The second was that the greatest support for Obama would come not from higher age groups (indeed those are split more or less 50-50 with most of Senator Obama's votes coming from minority or African-American based populaces), but rather from those who are in the 18-21 age range. Those people who 4 years ago were 14-17 and have for the past four years seen nothing but South Park, Family Guy, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart representations of President Bush. For four years this age demographic's mind has been utterly poisoned with the presentation of a man (and by extension political party) that is impossibly dumb. So it is no surprise that this age range DID vote overwhelming in favor of Obama. To be perfelect blunt, the democrat party could have nominated a block of cheese and gotten an equally strong turn out.

I now make three suppositions.
1) Obama on the whole is a political pansy. (That's not the supposition part, that's a statement of fact based on looking at his political career, a completely lackluster record until his campaign for presidency when people suddenly began to sing his praise despite any evidence to support such praise.) Therefore I will be so bold to venture that the true power of the next 4-8 years will not be the president but rather the party leader in Congress.
2) Due largely to the efforts of the current administration to control the weak economy left by Clinton and the his foolish law that made it illegal for a bank to not give a loan based on credit history, Obama's term in office will be fondly remembered as a good time for America, but the person who inherits the Presidency from him will be faced with a second even more disastrous economic crisis than we are currently in.
3) For the next several elections it will be impossible for a non-minority to gain Presidency. Now, I must stress again that I have no issue with an African-American, Latino, or Asian being President, my qualm lies in them becoming President because of their ethnicity, furthermore I am equally opposed to a Caucasian becoming President only because his opponent was not Caucasian.

However, none of this is why it is the end of an era for me. For the second thing of sorrow that occurred last night was the death of Michael Crichton known for such books as "Jurassic Park, Lost World, Sphere, Prey, Congo, et el" and movies by the same title as well as "Twister". Michael Crichton has been a long time favored author of mine whose works I have long read and collected.

While it is certainly sorrowful that his life (of 66 years) came to an end last night due to cancer. The truly sad thing for me is his undeniably hostile (or at best indifferent) view of God. Indeed, it's hard to find a science fiction write who believes in God. It's almost a statement of pure contradiction in fact! After all, every sci fi writer believes on some level that man is inherently good and has the power within himself for self-improvement; that the notion of a high (non-alien) being is completely ludicrous. So it was that last night, to my sorrow, Michael Crichton joined the ranks of my other adored sci fi writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov in coming to know the pure horror of the wrath of God poured out on those who reject Christ's purifying work on our behalf.

The end of an era

The interesting month of November

First of all, I have not forgotten about following up the music post. I just have not had sufficient time to sit down and coherently write out my reasoning as it is based on Biblical fact (that's worth taking time for). I assure you, it is forthcoming.

I find it interesting how events in our lives seem to gravitate towards a specific month. Almost as if every year, around the same time, we decide to get back into trouble. Of course, the simple fact of the matter is that since there are only 12 months, if something is going to go wrong in a year, there's an 8.3% chance it will land in any given month. And since usually more than one thing of noteworthiness happens in any given year, the act of reflecting back on specific months gives the illusion of any one month being, "a bad-luck month".

Regardless, November, while not being a bad-luck month, is certainly a month of happenings in my life. So it is, with my birthday rapidly approaching, that I find myself looking back over my Novembers.

As I just mentioned, November is my birth month, but disregarding that, the first thing of noteworthiness (for today at any rate) that occurred in November took place 6 years ago. I had a very good friend of the time who I admittedly held some romantic interest in. Well, not really, but I certainly interpreted them as such. It was a time of darkness in my life when I despaired of living. My friend moved off to college and I kept in regular contact with her. One night she mentioned how it seemed I lived each day simply to make it to the next. I was struck by this truth and could not deny the only reason I woke up in the mornings was because I had not yet died. I spent the whole night contemplating how I was living my life in relation to how the bible instructed I should be living it and came to the conclusion that it was time for a change.

I also realized at this time that the only feelings I had for her were strictly friendly, but having shut out everyone so firmly since Mark's death I called it love. Freed from the burden of this false label, I decided to take a trip up to her school to tell her how a simple statement had turned my life around. She was thrilled I was coming to her college and expressed a hope that I would attend school there so we could hang out more, she further went on to mention how I always seemed to called at just the right time to cheer her up.

When I got there, however, things took a sudden sour turn. While playing a game of 8 ball, with a man no one knew, he calmly told me my friend was dating this guy, and left. When I asked her about it, she told me it was none of my business, and that we were no longer friends. It is perhaps the single greatest regret of my life that our friendship was lost over a simple lack of communication.

November was also the month my cousin committed suicide. An event that reminded me how to cry and kept me from visiting another friend over Thanksgiving; a fact that I was never really forgiven for.

November was the time that I had to leave Countryside for a while a couple years back as a member of the church began spreading lies about me to her friends and family to cover her own sin. She never did come clean about it although all was forgiven long ago.

Though it was not in November, I started dating Amy very close to November, and though it will embarrass her greatly for me to say so, it was in November when I first kissed her ;)

And while it was also not in November, I would like to mention (while being reflective and what-not) that it was not too long ago that the 1 year anniversary of my grandfather's death rolled by. I will forever lament that my children will never get to know their great-grandfather and see all the amazing things he built for us while they were fresh and taken care of.

It was also the 1 year anniversary of learning my dad has cancer. It has been an amazing year of learning for my parents and myself as we come to help one another out and learn how to live with this disease. My stance has not changed one bit from the first moment I learned the news. I still wholly believe that God will push the cancer into remission and even if He does not, cancer is not what will end my father's life. My dad getting cancer did not catch God by surprise, it did not shorten the numbers of his days. From the very beginning, God and God alone was going to be the One to call my father home. It may be a little morbid to talk about how I think my dad is going to die (especially when I word it like that), but as I already stated, I have complete faith that God has control my father's body, and while it may be hard for the moment, there is a point to the suffering, the least of which was allowing me to serve their needs this summer time.

Yes, November is quite the interesting month.

The interesting month of November

2 years!

Though I do not have time to fully list how wonderful my girlfriend Amy is, and all the various things she has done for me over the past two years, I must take a moment to write a simple happy 2 years of dating (it was on Saturday)! And get right back to studying Chinese for my midterm tomorrow!

2 years!

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