It's My Anniversary!

I have had my own website for exactly one year!!! How thrilling! I have gone from setting up my own personal and business sites to maiking sites for others. How cool is that? I remember when I first started doing this, it was like I stumbled onto some new drug. I could put up whatever I wanted, and within seconds, the whole world could see it. Wicked!

I haven't written in a bit, but with good cause. I've been both sick, and busy. But I think I am recovering from both, and so, here I am, killing a few minutes before I have to pick up my baby from school. What have I been up to? Well, for starters, I've been developing a great affection for Visual Basic.NET. I never thought I would ever want to be a programmer ("Too meticulous and detail oriented!" I often protested, which makes sense for a guy who is constantly losing his cell phone, his wallet, his keys, his laptop, his mind...), but I am actually very comfortable with it now. Comfortable (?!) This is my 5th or sixth language now, let me see. I learned Basic and Pascal back in the day (10 Print "YOU RULE"; 20 GOTO 10 ) but I can't count those, since they have no practical use these days. So let's begin again: Java, C/C++, PHP, Visual Basic.NET, and some of the lesser languages like SQL, PL/SQL, HTML, XML, Javascript, and Perl. I CAN DO THIS!! When I graduate this summer, should I jump back into corporate America, I feel capable of stepping into any IT modality with ease!! Woo hoo!

Aside from enjoying coding (and setting my inner geek free) I have been writing more new music. I have written some original pieces (where I play every instrument) as well as sampling older stuff and combining it with other elements and turning it into something modern and funky. -Hey, Puffy has made millions doing it. Matter of fact, I need to put together a list of songs that need to be reduxed. I has listening to the SOS band the other day, and I can't believe no one has messed with "Weekend Girl". That song is tight, even after all these years. Of course, Mariah Carey sampled "Tell Me (If You Still Care)" from them for the remix of "Always Be My Baby", which I loved, and Jay-Z and Foxy Brown ripped "Just Be Good to Me" for some lame song, which I hated. My latest sampled piece is not very old at all. It is taken from Amerie's first single, "Why Do We Fall In Love", which came out in 2002, but I must have missed. I heard her latest song, "1 Thing" and liked both her vocals and the totally un-formulaic music behind it, so I decided to see what else the child had done. "Why Don't We" uses a sample of a song I can't place, speeds it up and adds some funky drums. What I have done is add some really nice little touches to what is already a nice piece, and VOILA! I'm in love. I'm playing it all the time to the point that my wife is sick of hearing it. Oh, it's time to bounce. Funny... I have the feeling I was just getting started. I need to write a little more often.

Always Will

Neither of us
seems inclined to change

Neither of us
is likely to bend

Both of us
are stubborn old fools

Neither of us
will let it end

I guess I can live with that.

Too many people nowadays
are quick to throw in the towel

Too many people
are more concerned
with their happiness and not their vows

Things done in haste
Cannot easily be undone.

That's what I love about us -
We'd rather be miserable together
Than happy alone.

That's not quite right, of course
But after an argument
and harsh words and raised voices,
and over a drink or two
in a reflective mood
in a quiet house,
it seems almost fitting.

We love each other,
through thick and thin
for better and worse
for rich and for poor

And we always will.


--Written 1/22/06 after an argument over my infuriating deficiencies as a husband.

On Fire

Ever since I bought Sony Acid Music Studio, my creative output has surged. I have been writing new material like the glory days in my old group Hosanna had returned. This new music can be placed into 3 categories: original music where I create every sound (drums, keys, guitars, bass, horns, strings, etc.), remixes of songs others have made, some being mixed and spliced with other songs, and then there are the concoctions made using an eclectic approach and some of the sound libraries Acid provides. These sound libraries are astonishing for their breadth and variety. Being a lover of nearly all styles of music, I really appreciate the ability to mix jazz with country, or folk with hip hop. It is so wonderfully liberating to just enjoy creating music again. I went through years of drought, producing nothing, because inspiration had forsaken me. Now though, the muse has returned. I'm feeling positively prolific!

To Compromise a Principle is to Abandon It

I am becoming increasingly sensitive to a lot of incorrect doctrine and dogma that is a part of modern American Christianity. Instead of blogging about my toothache or my bills, I would like to get some things out in the open.

I keep hearing variations on a theme that I might have accepted a few years ago without question, but now, as a more mature and discerning man, I blanch at immediately. Here it goes: “America is a Christian nation” or “America was founded on Christian principles” or something to that effect.

After pondering this in solitude for a while, and doing some research for a while after that, I have to say that I don’t believe this to be true. My inner Black man says, “Duh!!” -after all, if America started out as a Christian nation, and all these fools are looking backward to the glory days of the past, then hey, I should just find the nearest landowning Southerner and offer to be his slave. Slavery was legal and encouraged at America’s founding. And for the squeamish, you don’t even want to know the intimate details of what it took to turn free peoples into slaves. My inner Black man says that simply on the fact of the most brutal form of slavery the planet has ever known, America was not a Christian nation circa 1776. But apologetics will excuse the barbaric behavior of church attending, Father Son and Holy Ghost worshipping, slave raping and murdering Christians, and say that they were an anomaly. But what about old Thomas Jefferson, who had Sally Hemmings (and who knows how many more like her)? No, if I am going to make my case, I have to take it off racial grounds, because the good Christian Americans of the day can’t be faulted for their treatment of the Africans and Indians, after all, these nonwhites had no souls. So let me change my approach.

What are Christian principles? I’ve been a Christian for about 25 years, and this is something I actually had to think about. I would say that the fundamental Christian principle is to love one’s neighbor as you would love yourself. Other Christian principles are turning the other cheek, being honest, loving nothing more than God, taking care of those less fortunate. Anybody disagree with that?

Okay, so I’m looking at American history, and I am struggling to see cohesive and consistent application of these supposedly obvious Christian principles. I see land grabbing and greed, I see exploitation, I see genocide and slavery. I see oppression and arrogance. I see hypocrisy and hate. I see the name of God used to justify killing women and children like this was the Old Testament. I don’t recall God anointing America the new Israel. I am looking through a few of my history books, and I don’t see how anyone could honestly claim that America started out on Christian principles unless they are either ignorant, or propagandists. I’d prefer to think they were merely ignorant, rather than willfully distorting facts to push an agenda. I need someone to name a Christian principle that America has not been in violation of since its inception –because I can’t think of any. I think of the Compromises of 1820 and 1850, Dred Scott, Reconstruction, and … it’s quite distasteful. If America was founded on Christian principles, then Christianity has different meanings to different people, and all the meanings can’t be correct. I can’t believe this is something people are debating. What is there to debate? Invoking God’s name here and there makes neither man nor nation state righteous or holy. But you shall know them by their fruits.

Sick, For Real

I'm in an unusually irritable state. I am cranky, crabby, mean, surly -whatever you want to call it. In other words, this is a perfect writing mentality, in the same way people look out the window on say, "This is a perfect day for gardening!"

I favor writing in bad moods over happy moods because only in bad moods can you really surprise yourself. Bad moods draw on deeply buried, often primal impulses and feelings, and because our primitive mind can be so feral, we try to dissociate ourselves from it. But try as we might, we cannot completely suppress it.

Writing in bad moods also has the virtue of being therapeutic and cleansing. Sometimes you can write yourself out of a bad mood, even if your writing doesn't address the feelings or circumstances that brought you to that mindstate. That's not bad at all. You can't keep stuff inside for too long, it'll kill you.

So what has me in this mood? I can't really say. I can say that the fact that I've had a cold for going on 5 weeks isn't helping. Oh, and did I mention my in-laws are still here? I actually love them very much and get along with them very well. But they are people, and all people have issues. I am witnessing their issues play out in addition to my own and those of my wife and kids. Yes, even kids can have issues. My two year old's issue right now is taking unscheduled "bulk dumps" [a old IT phrase usually referring to memory, but also applicable here] instead of going to the bathroom like a big boy. I knew coming in that boys were slower and more difficult to train, but jeesh! But see, I have written about it, and now, don't I feel better about it?

No, not really.

I still need to change his stinky behind.

You Haven't Heard/Seen/Experienced Nothing Yet

Happy New Year to all. Yes, I know my post's title is grammatically incorrect, but who cares. All who know me (or think they know me) are about to be blown away by what I do this year. I am going to set this piece on fire. I am in a zone, a groove, a rhythm, a mindset, a mentality, an abstract place that overflows into the concrete and material. 2006, Year of the Fox.

I feel so
blissfully blessed,
ecstatically elated,
joyously jubliant,
to be alive,
to be free,
to be me!