Who should you trust?

So many depressing stories out there these days. Chances are, your local politician is a crook. At least one of them. Between the governor, the mayor, senators, representatives--somebody is skimming money, paying off a prostitute, selling out their district's interests for cash. Not the kind of thing you want to hear when waking up in the morning.

Guess what, there's a chance your religious leaders are doing something terrible too! And possibly working with those corrupt politicians. When this guy is getting arrested, there's something really bizarre going on. Luckily, no matter what your affliation may be, chances are somebody of the faith has been arrested lately. Rabbis, Ministers, and of course...this guy.

Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher who built a multimillion-dollar ministry and became an outfitter of the stars, was convicted Friday of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex.

Alamo stood silently as the verdict was read, a contrast to his occasional mutterings during testimony. His five victims sat looking forward in the gallery. One, a woman he "married" at age 8, wiped away a tear.

"I'm just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel," Alamo called to reporters afterward as he was escorted to a waiting U.S. marshal's vehicle.

Must have missed the part about having sex with nine-year olds in my Bible...oops.

Now, your spiritual leader is probably not this guy. I would hope. But it does reinforce the need to know that the people who lead you in worship of whatever God you believe in and the people who you feel can "change things in Washington" are flawed and human. They will make mistakes. Sometimes, they turn out to be cretins, but that's rare--it's best not to think about it. But they will fail. Like you will. Think about things when they say them, because you need to be careful accepting somebody else's word as gospel.

Tweet This

I still can't come up with an opinion on twitter. I'm not sure if I love it, or hate it, or lovate it (horray for making up words). With all these people selling out and joining the site, I was one of few to go the opposite way a little while back and delete my account.

I kind of miss it though. But I kind of don't. Here is what I said about it in February...

I just don’t see the point. The most misused feature of Facebook is the status update, which allows you to say how you’re feeling at one particular moment. The problem is that it sometimes becomes an outlet for frustration and not a true indicator of your mental state. Twitter basically is this status update, except more geared towards what you are doing rather than how you are feeling.

In general, this is still true. However, I've seen a shift in the past few months. People are using twitter either a) instead of facebook, which is being ignored by and large as a place to update statuses and b) on facebook, by simply sending their twitter updates to facebook. As a result, there are things you can get on twitter that aren't on facebook (some people's updates, and celebrity stuff, from bands, athletes, etc.)

Not sure if that's enough to make me rejoin. One of the major reasons I stopped using it was that I felt as if it was becoming a place for people to talk about all the great things they were doing, which is a pain in the ass. A place to gloat. I don't need to hear about that, and me being a naturally jealous person, it became frustrating. I'm doing better with that now, so possibly in the future I'll rejoin (especially as more people keep joining). We'll see. I never said I was off twitter forever, I would have prefered to 'deactivate' like you can do with facebook. May come back soon, or never. You never know.

Novel Writing

If you ever feel like needlessly torturing yourself, write a novel. It's far more effective in bringing about frustration than eating glass or shoving a fork in your eye.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some great reasons to write a novel, and it's incredibly rewarding to see your words on the page. However, it's an incredibly annoying endeavor for several reasons.

It's hard to know if what you're writing is actually any good. Have you ever tried to get friends to read a novel? It's not easy. A blog? Sure. That takes all of fifteen seconds. But longer form is a little trickier--people are busy, and they have better things to do than reading your novel.

Also, it takes a ton of discipline and patience, two character traits I wasn't exactly blessed with. It's not too difficult to be intrigued (or annoyed) with something and complain about it online. That doesn't take long. I've been writing this for like five minutes. But to develop characters, and continue to be interested in them page after page? Not easy.

This is coming from somebody all of 50 pages into his novel. I'm not sure what I'll be saying 180 pages into it. I may be shoving a fork into my eye.

In Enemy Territory

I've written (on my old blog, of course) about going back to church. I'm happy there, and I'm glad to be going after about four years of not going. Luckily, I go somewhere that doesn't rub it in my face that, in general, I'm out of my element.

Not because I worship Satan, and I'm a spy. Although that would be pretty cool. No, it is being a liberal in a conservative setting. It's like being a conservative at a Habitat for Humanity meeting. You're welcomed, of course, but you know that you're going to a minority.

I love being a minority, in general--fitting in has never been something I've strived for except for in my weakest moments. But...it leads to so many questions. I don't hate conservative people, I just can't understand them in any way. Conservative thinking is so blatantly flawed and has been proven so many times to not work, but people still follow it. God bless em I guess.

Once in a while, somebody says something crazy, though. Hateful, or uncaring, or borderline insane. And in those cases, it's hard to be the minority. Because you're not going to win any arguments if you're one against six. Unless you're really, really good at arguments. Which I'm not.

It is also fairly disconcerting when you think about it too much. Realizing, wait a minute, conservative ideas completely oppose Jesus ideas...he welcomed outsiders, believed in love for everyone, believed in peace, treated the 'least of these' with compassion. Or, as conservatives would call it, 'socialism.' (How the Republican party would try to destroy Jesus if he came back today is a whole different blog, sorry to say!). So, suffice to say, I'm not disavowing my vote for Barack Obama anytime soon, no matter how deep I may get into church affairs.

What I wonder about, however, is whether I even want to know. I've tried on numerous occasions to have people attempt to explain conservative ideas to me, to no avail. And by 'avail' I don't mean making it appealing, just understandable. So I'm not quite sure if that would be a positive development, to know more about what my conservative brothers and sisters believe--whether it will help me to understand them, or will make me lose respect for them because their ideas are crazy. It's hard to know, and I am not going to say I do.

Best music of the first half of '09

I usually wait until the end of the year to do any 'best of' lists, so I won't order this...just the best music I've heard so far this year.

In alphabetical order...

Better Than Ezra--Paper Empire
DL--"One More Day"
Surprised that they still are pretty good. Hadn't really heard much of them in...several years, but my dad likes them so he lent this to me. Some catchy numbers here. May see them next week at Alive @ 5, although last year's experience made me wary (basically, it's an excuse for 17 year olds to get drunk. You could put a mannequin with a boombox on the stage and it wouldn't make any difference to 97% of the people there.)

Neko Case--Middle Cyclone
DL--"People Gotta Lot of Nerve"
I've always been a fan of Neko, because nobody else has a voice like hers. And she writes really great songs. Shockingly, people are starting to notice, as the album debuted at #3 on the charts. Five years ago, that would have never, ever happened. A good sign for once in music.

Camera Obscura--My Maudlin Career
DL--"French Navy"
There are far too few female-fronted bands that actually have some pop sensibilities, but CO fits the bill completely. They can go from ballads to mid-tempo to all-out-pop without missing a beat.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band--Outer South
DL--"Roosevelt Room"
Far more of a band effort than any Bright Eyes release, Outer South contains two all-out rockers from Oberst, a number of great ballads, and SEVEN tracks sung by the rest of the band, the majority of which are pretty damn good. Couldn't recommend this more.

Eels--Hombre Lobo
DL--"Beginners Luck"
It's a new eels album. So it's good. Much more lo-fi than usual, it has a little bit of everything.

Green Day--21st Century Breakdown
DL--"Last of the American Girls"
Took a little while to grow on me, but there is more than enough here to make a solid record. A few great tracks, a few good ones, some that are a little bland...but overall, it's certainly worth buying anywhere but Wal-Mart. Not quite as good as American Idiot, but that's a very hard standard to hold yourself to.

mewithoutYou--It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright
DL--"Every Thought a Thought of You"
Quite possibly the greatest Christian album ever made (I know that isn't saying THAT much, but still...), mwY has reinvented themselves yet again, slowing down the tempo, with Aaron Weiss actually kind of singing, writing catchy, unique, brilliant songs far better than anything they've done in the past. Great lyrics, as always.

Metric--Fantasies
DL--"Gimme Sympathy"
Never was a huge fan of the band before this album, but hearing the way they have evolved has been really impressive.

A.C. Newman--Get Guilty
DL--"The Heartbreak Rides"
The second member of the supergroup New Pornographers on the list (with Neko Case), Newman's second solo record is a 60s pop masterpiece.

Ben Nichols--The Last Pale Light in the West
DL--"The Kid"
Great EP from the Lucero frontman, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. All-acoustic.

And also:
Dark was the Night: A Red Hot Compilation.
DL--Yeasayer, "Tightrope"
Great 2-CD indie compilation with songs from Sufjan Stevens, The Decemberists (who didn't make this list because I really don't love it, as much as I tried to), My Morning Jacket, Spoon and others.

PS--no Wilco either because I don't have it yet. I don't work in the industry, it takes time!