"Sort of god"

ihatethemedia.com's tagline is "If we didn't laugh, we'd cry." How true it is. One recent post shows a video clip from MSNBC'S "Hardball" featuring a discussion of the America image that Obama is projecting to the world, ultimately leading to this statement by Evan Thomas of Newsweek: "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of God."

Obama is sort of god? Ha! Now that's funny.

But true to the tagline, a deeper reflection upon this statement can lead to sadness. The office of President was never intended by the founding fathers to become a seal of nobility, let alone divinity. More saddening, however, is realizing that attributing divinity to leaders--especially if it's the leaders attributing divinity to themselves--is a recipe for personal and/or national disaster. Consider these passages from the Bible:

Acts 12:21-23 (REB)

On an appointed day, Herod, attired in his royal robes and seated on the rostrom, addressed the populace; they responded 'It is a god speaking, not a man!' Instantly an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he had usurped the honour due to God; he was eaten up by worms and so died.

Daniel 4:28-33 (REB)

All this befell King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of twelve months the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace at Babylon, and he exclaimed, 'Is not this the Babylon which I have built as a royal residence by my mighty power and for the honour of my own majesty?' The words were still on his lips when there came a voice from heaven: 'To you, King Nebuchadnezzar, the word is spoken: the kingdom has passed from you. You are banished from human society; you are to live with the wild beasts and feed on grass like oxen. Seven times will pass over you until you have acknowledged that the Most High is sovereign over the realm of humanity and gives it to whom he will.

Ezekiel 28:2,6-8 (REB)

In your arrogance you say 'I am a god; I sit enthroned like a god on the high seas.' Though you are man and no god, you give yourself godlike airs...Because you give yourself godlike airs, I am about to bring foreigners against you, the most ruthless of nations; they will draw their swords against your fine wisdom and defile your splendor, they will thrust you down to destruction...

Why are these things still around?

Here's a list of things that should not exist but still do:

• Pagers - this is self-explanatory.
• Blockbuster - between Netflix, $1 kiosks, and Wal Mart bargain bins, there's really no good reason to rent movies from Blockbuster in my opinion.
• Phonebook - two places I have seen phonebooks recently: sitting outside of apartments, in dumpsters.

Presidential Proverbs

So we have a new president, and I'm by no means thrilled. My biggest problem, though, isn't the incoming president, but rather the shameful treatment of our outgoing president by our citizens. I don't have the emotional fortitude to re-hash in detail the insults he received by the inaugural crowd, lambasting articles and websites, or even the various disparaging remarks made by my so-called Christian friends.

As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool, so wisdom is for a man of understanding. - Proverbs 10:23

I also don't have the time to defend President Bush and point out all the virtuous aspects of his presidency because it honestly wouldn't make a difference.

A fool does not delight in understanding, but only wants to show off his opinions. - Proverbs 18:2

Instead, I'm just going to pray. Firstly, I pray that our new president will accomplish the will of God for our nation and this world, that he'll be given the wisdom and strength necessary for completing his task, and that he'll be protected from attacks by the enemy. And secondly, I pray that those who were and continue to be disrespectful towards our former president will earn back twice as much disrespect from their children and peers during their lifetimes.

But in order to end this entry on a positive note, here's a proverb I find particularly comforting at a time such as this:

A king's heart is a water channel in the LORD's hand: He directs it wherever He chooses. - Proverbs 21:1

I've Been Tagged

I might was well use this blog for something, so I'll respond to a tag received by my friend Dan User.

8 TV Shows I Watch

Since I can't name 8 shows that I currently watch, I'll name shows that I have remotely followed within the past five years in no particular order. That's somewhat strange for me to say, since I feel like I've watched tons of TV growing up.

1. The Office
2. Arrested Development - this show is too hard to follow on TV (especially now that it's canceled), so we've experienced it through DVD. We made it through the first two seasons, the boys came, and now we've inched partially through the last season at a 2 episode a year pace.
3. Hannah Montana - the strength of a Disney sitcom lies in the strength of its supporting cast.
4. The Wizards of Waverly Place - essentially Hannah Montana except that the star's secret isn't music stardom, it's wizardry. Another strong supporting cast.
5. The O'Reilly Factor
6. WWE Raw - I can't remember the last full episode I watched; I catch fragments of the show every now and then. I mainly keep up with the happenings of the wrestling industry via the IWC (that's the Intenet Wrestling Community for you non-marks out there).
7. Everybody Loves Raymond - back before the boys arrived, Katie and I enjoyed many a'evening watching this show while enjoying a good take-out meal from Primo Family Restaurant.
8. Corner Gas - I catch episodes when I go visit my parents. It's pretty good for a Canadian show.

8 Favorite Restaurants

1. Old Country Buffet - more affectionately referred to as "Old Country" or sometimes "OCB." I tend to use the latter as a verb, as in "Katie, do you want to OCB tonight?"
2. Ill Me Buffet - it's much better than the name implies. Korean food. Caleb puts it best: "Want Gogi?"
3. Roy Rogers - the Fixins Bar is like a mini buffet. Buffet!
4. Chipotle - I may alternate between chicken and barbacoa, and I'll vary my salsas on occasion, but I always get fajita veggies...always.
5. Chick-Fil-A - so delicious we've braved 95 South to Woodbridge on a Saturday just for a chicken sandwich.
6. Panera - it may be overpriced and pretentious, but I can get Wi-Fi and free coffee refills, so, that's enough to warrant it spot number 6 on my list.
7. Taco Bell - this wouldn't have made my list a couple years ago, but when I took a grad school class in Falls Church, I frequented the nearby TB and rekindled my passion thanks to the value menu featuring the Cheesy Double Beef Burrito and the Big Taste Taco.
8. Subway - almost as tasty as McDonalds but sans the guilt and fat calories.

Things That Happened To Me or That I Did Today

1. Woke up in the boys' bed, moved to the couch to wait for our next door neighbor's daughter to come over (I watch her until the school bus comes), and fell back asleep when she never arrived.
2. Woke up on the couch and brewed some sweet, sweet coffee.
3. Read a couple chapters of Nehemiah during a light breakfast.
4. Drove an excellent commute to work while listening to the latest episode of the 1 Year Daily Audio Bible podcast.
5. Did a little work. That's an accurate statement, sadly.
6. Achieved "inbox zero" in GMail and Google Reader (which isn't a huge deal since I do that pretty much every day).
7. Went to Old Country for dinner.
8. Stayed up too late filling out this list.

8 Things That I'm Looking Forward To

1. Baby Moses
2. Plentiful sources of revenue for my company
3. Sleeping in tomorrow morning and eating a home-cooked breakfast with the family
4. Driving the trusty Prizm for another 100K+ miles
5. Being able to teach the boys math
6. Starting our own business
7. Owning our own home
8. The next visit to Old Country

8 Things I Wish For

1. A better prayer life
2. Godly children
3. A more Godly nation
4. A better of understanding of how, when, and where to invest money
5. Growth for our church
6. Success for our company
7. Wisdom
8. Motivation to better my guitar playing and programming skills
9. Better blood circulation in my hands

8 People I Tag To Do This Too!

Eight whole people? Gorsh...

Free Music

I don't spend money on music anymore. It's not that I don't have the money, it's just that between Pandora and my CDs from High School and college, combined with a declining urge to invest time in music collecting, I haven't felt compelled to spend money on music; I'd rather spend it on more important things like coffee.

This past Christmas, however, I received a $5 MP3 download credit from Amazon.com, and my parents gave me AC/DC's Black Ice for Christmas (I have pretty cool parents) which came with one free music download from walmart.com. So in total, I had six free downloads to use, and I'm proud to say, as of today, I managed to decide what to spend my hard earned free credits on. I was a tough three weeks of deliberation, but now that I've used them, I'm proud of my choices.

Samiam - "Mud Hill"

I came across this song on Pandora. While I work I'll typically let the music fade into the background of my consciousness, but this song was cool enough to grab my attention. Bonus: I checked out the video and the lead singer is balding. I like bald guys who rock. Double bonus: turns out that my brother had the exact same experience with this song. We must both have good taste in music, and similar Pandora stations.

The Darkness - "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", "Love is Only a Feeling"

I don't need to explain myself with these two. If you haven't heard The Darkness, then you're missing out. It's a shame Youtube cut the audio out of video for the first song...you can at least still enjoy a live version.

Revis - "Caught in the Rain"

This is one of those catchy post-grunge numbers that also caught my attention on Pandora.

Nine Inch Nails - "The Perfect Drug"

This has been around a while, and I always enjoyed it. Apparently Trent Reznor put out a whole album of remixes. If I had more free credits at the time, I may have just downloaded that bad boy.

Neil Young - "Cortez the Killer"

I like value. This song is 7+ minutes so I definitely get my free credit's worth out of it. It's just three chords, over and over, but it's frickin' awesome. I need to adapt the lyrics so we can do it in church sometime.

Album Covers

It seems like music albums are slowly becoming irrelevant in the high speed internet era. Even still, I like the concept of an album of songs, even if it is primarily a music industry plot to suck more dollars from the consumer. Songs seem stronger when they're listened to in context of the album, Pink Floyd especially. Admittedly, not all artists weave an album's songs together or use a musical or lyrical thread like Pink Floyd did, but at least the songs typically share the same producer, engineering, and time frame in which they were composed.

Another great part of having an album is the album cover. The band Yes had albums that featured some cool art, and Led Zeppelin IV's cover is instantly recognizable.

During one summer of boredom, I wrote some techno-like music using this MIDI application called MusikTyme and put mini-albums on my Geocities page, consisting of three musically-connected MIDI songs and a custom-made album cover. I could have put more than three songs per album, of course, but then I wouldn't have been able to make as many album covers (which I enjoyed as much as writing the songs).



The songs on each album would fit the cover. For example Old School Fool featured a song reminiscent of the Theme from Shaft, Return to India contained faux Eastern-sounding melodies, Back From Helk's songs had a lot of dissonant sounds, and so on. Man, I wish I still had those MIDI files--not that it's great music, but just so I can appreciate the effort and thought I put into the songs.

Some equally boring summer later I felt compelled to do some more Squaz material. Rather than waste my time writing more songs, though, I decided to just make album covers. As you can tell, I got a lot of inspiration from images on my family's computer.



The whole reason I bring up my album cover making past is because I recently stumbled upon a link to some guy's collection of worst album covers (warning: they're hilarious at first, but then they get creepy and eventually disturbing). I was talking with my brother about these horrific things today when he mentioned how some of Squaz's album covers could qualify as "worst." At first I was indignant, but now that I look at my album covers more, I'm beginning to think he was right (not Squazimoto or Killing Killer Whales, though--those covers rock!)

Joe's Popcorn Eating Axiom

Whenever you eat popcorn, no matter how little, you'll inevitably get a little piece of hull stuck in between teeth and gums.