Reason #8 to live in Upstate NY

Yeah, baby. The Cronks have (had) a plethora of less-than-beautiful apples in their backyard from the old apple tree. First we grabbed a handy tennis racket and taught them the meaning of...tennis raquet; then we got ol' Bertha out and really put the fear of God in those apples. That's not apple you see exploding off the head of that driver.

That's fear.

word.

and Happy Birthday Nathan. I'm taking my car off the road.
--


and for the record, Chuckles, NO! Dear God no! I do not work for Houghton Custodial. Oh. You said Maintenance. No. Not yet. That would be cool though. I landscape with Creekside Landscaping, a.k.a. Allan Yanda. And pick up odd ambulance shifts in nearby Springville. And cut down trees with Glen Falkhe. And do odd jobs for pretty much anyone who will pay. And maybe in a few weeks, I will wear the grey of the faithful Houghton Safety and Security. We shall see. I'm becoming a bona fide community member. See also: bona fide day laborer. Yeah!

more thoughts (no bills!)

Hmmmm....

Watched "Failure to Launch" last night. It's ridiculously awesome if you re-watch portions with the French language overdubs. Especially the "Nekkid Room." My house is totally going to have a naked/library room. With a reading hammock. And a minibar. Terry Bradshaw's in pretty good shape for an old man...good call, Jeff. I'd move downstreet in a heartbeat. Find me a job.

As for dragons, I'm all for slaying them, and I'm all for the Shire. I think I'm game for going out and slaying them in groups. Not groups of dragons--groups of dragon slayers. In other dragon-slaying news, I'm nine pages into the uber-project. Maybe another seven to go. It's lookin' good. The secret, I've found, is Oreos and good Pollywogg Holler berry wine. And late nights.

I had a good discussion with a beautiful woman yesterday. Is sin action, or an attitude of the heart? The seven deadlies are all attitudes of the heart--Rage, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Greed. (thanks to little Wetherby for the help on the last three...not my specialties :) If the sin comes out, it evidences the heart infested with death--and in need of salvation. Following that line, sometimes a little active sin is a good thing. Like a nasty case of stomach cramps, it evidences the need for healing--salvation. Our salvation is not gained or lost--it is a series of losses and gains. We lose our lives, we get them back.

"As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last." -Godric

And I wasn't cutting a line between my friends in the world captivated by lies, and myself outside and redeemed. I am struggling not with necessarily straight-out lies, but influences, values, the ideas that drive my generation. They're mine as much as they are theirs, and they are my cultural context--both struggle and joy. I like being a twenty-first century American twenty-something...but like any other place or time, it's got questions to be answered and difficulties to be overcome. Got a need for the wind and wisdom of God, just like every generation.

Well said, Katrina. Reminds me of a few shiningly great of examples of artists who escape the status quo and give a little time to those not single teens or twentysomethings, who I shall celebrate here.

Cheers go out to the artists of Iron & Wine, for love songs like "Naked As We Came" celebrating the romance of those married with children. And the writers of Firefly and Serenity for integrating Zoe and Wash and the various and sundry stresses of married life into the tale of life on a starfaring freighter. And, of course, The Flaming Lips and Death Cab For Cutie for making the theme of love in the face of death O-So-Trendy right now with "What Sarah Said" ("Love is watching someone die/Who's gonna watch you die?") and "Do You Realize" ("we're floating in space...that happiness/makes you cry...that everyone you know/one day/will die?")

And, right back atcha Jeff, you should watch "Friends with Money," a really awesome and very NPR (so trendy right now) film about the lives of three married well-to-do couples and their unmarried and not-so-well-to-do friend. Which includes the coolest married couple I can remember being portrayed on film, with the chipper husband blissfully unaware that all of his friends thinks he's gay. Good flick.

So. Dr. Tawfiq Hamid is here, advocating peaceful Islam, and I am off to pretend to be a prospective student in class because it's too cold and wet to cut lawns today. I think it's becoming a trend. I shall call it, "winter." Just signed up for a few shifts driving the old ambulance. Good bye, lawnmowing, I shall miss the paychecks.

thoughts after bills

so bills are obnoxious--glad all I have to worry about is the phone and the student loans. elsewise I might go mad.

a quick thought before I head back out into the un-wired-world.

I have a lot of friends (guys and gals, but more guys than gals) who are late twenty-something, single, living at home or on their own, Playstation and X-Box owners who simply don't want to grow up.

I don't mean that in a derogatory way--it's just that my generation of guys has no real desire to marry, settle down, have a career, become a grown-up. I think that's why one of my friends just got a divorce and a new girlfriend.

We're the type who have mid-life crises at twenty-five. We get divorced and start hitting the bars again at thirty. Maybe because we grew up being told that grown-up life is boring, and hence grown-up's lives are over. Life, if it was to be lived, was to be lived in that hedonistic aura of high school and college individualistic excitement. At least, that's what every marketing image we've ever seen has told us.

And now they're telling us that we can be youthful and accumulate toys and have adventures and never settle down or accumulate responsibilities. Because once you have responsibilities and commitments you are no longer free. life is over.

Of course, without responsiblities and/or commitments, life is pretty much meaningless. But we haven't realized this yet. We keep wondering where we've been sold wrong--why we feel disappointed with our marriages, jobs, where the excitement and feelings of significance and importance went. Maybe they're over there, around the corner, if I could be free I would be able to live it up, to taste the excitement again...

huh. It's not a clear idea so much as a feeling I had yesterday while moving dirt from point A to point B and thinking about why one of my childhood youth group friends is getting a divorce. But I have work to do, so I don't have time to pound out something really incisive and profound. Just found it interesting to think about twenty-something angst and flailing in terms of the mid-life crisis.

When you're raised in a materialistic paradise where everyone is told everyday by image-based advertising that glamour and excitement and wealth and sensuality are your birthright, and the good life is there for anyone who can go out there and buy it, and you don't feel it, feeling left out can be really devastating. You could be happy and fulfilled and instead you're feeling cheated and held back.

You were meant to be larger than life; treating yourself to good things, being on the cutting edge of teachnology or music of something significant, being someone impressive, suave, exciting and hip and involved, oh yeah--these are the stuff of the good life, real life. Think about MTV's The Real World: the hijinks and instensity of high school and college are real life. Dating isn't a preparation or precursor to real adult life--it is real life, the only life exciting enough to warrant attention. Exploring your identity through new musical, emotional, sexual, stylistic or ideological experiences isn't a stage in growing up to a stable adult--it's all there is to life.

If it isn't epic, it isn't living. If you're settled, you're boring. If you aren't mobile, you're dead. Growing up is the act of becoming irrelevant, too consumed in commitments to be free and wild. We have nothing to look forward to because being young and free was supposed to be the best time of our lives, and we particularly blessed for being born American in the golden age of Living It Up For Me.

There's no glamour to growing up--nothing to look forward to, no really exciting prospects to something like marriage or commitments. Sure, it's a lie once you think about it--but how can you stop and think about it when it's so widely assumed? And who is proclaiming any sort of desireable alternatives? Smug, boring evangelicals?

well. brain vomit. I wish I had time to edit. oh well. cheers!

Road Trip! (lette)

Took a few days off to play a coffeeshop with Hiram in Lancaster and visit Timmie and Mollie in Philly! (I only regret that we did not see Dave Lilley...)

And, since the boss is out of town this week, I'm out of work. Hooray for Lost Season Two (holy crap stressful ending batman!) We missed the Season Three premier by an hour because we broke for dinner before watching the Season Two finale...bummer. You can't watch a season premier when you're totally excited about the last season's season finale. Have to see if we can catch it on rerun or iTunes or something.

so. I have to go do office work. but for your enjoyment (if blogger doesn't mess with me): pictures!


"Dance the spears with me, dark one!" If you look close you can see Mollie's not-quite-bemused disbelief in the background.


So this is the museum of art where Rocky runs up and down the stairs while getting in shape to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger", and they put this statue of him up in the middle of the steps, and then everybody said, dude, Rocky isn't art, so they took the statue down, and then all the tourists complained, so they put it back, but this time in a discrete corner so that the artsy fartsy types wouldn't be insulted and the tourist types could get their pictures. but that's unimportant. important: I'm rockin' awesome. A frickin' tank. Rock Out Me!



Ummnm. Hi? She likes to dance. And I have a cool hat.



And, hey why not pay a little homage to karate kid, too...you can't see Timmie doing the same thing next to me, while people are trying to take their wedding pictures with us in the background. Yes. Wedding pictures. Four separate weddings rolled up to take pictures in front of the museum. And with Rocky. What can you say? It's Philly...