four things about stuff.

I got tagged by the futon.

Four jobs I've had:

• Graphic Designer


• Communications Director


• Production Artist (Web)


• Ad Design (Newspaper)

Four Movies I can watch over and over:

• Ferris Bueller's Day Off


• The Royal Tenenbaums


• The Shawshank Redemption


• Almost Famous

Four places I've lived:

• Turlock, CA


• Grover Beach, CA


• Shell Beach, CA


• Freeport, IL

Four TV shows I love:

• Freaks & Geeks


• Ed


• Arrested Development


• LOST

Four places I have vacationed:

• Minnesota/Iowa (Many, many times. Most of my extended family is there.)


• Vancouver, BC (The boys from Death Cab aren't the only ones that went to Expo '86!)


• Disneyland


• Tijuana (A goat ate my hat. I don't want to talk about it.)

Four of my favorite dishes:

• Burritos (Preferably from Silva's Taco Truck or La Morenita.)


• Smoothies (Not sure if that invalidates my Man Club membership.)


• My wife's family's potato salad


• Totino's Pizza (So ghetto, yet so fabulous.)

Four sites I visit daily:

• Glorious Noise


• Newsvine


• AllMusic


• Ceive (well, sorta, not really, but y'know...)

Four places I would rather be right now:

• Disneyland


• Monterey


• Seattle


• In Steve Jobs' Shoes

Four bloggers I am tagging to fill out this meme and do something productive with their life:

• No one reads my blog, so I don't have anyone to pass it to.


• Wanna prove me wrong? Comment and I'll pass this on to you.

Gentle Jesus, Aren't You Every Hour Here?

To avoid being a broken record, I'm simply going to post the lyrics to The Innocence Mission's "Every Hour Here" and tell you that I am trying my best not to forget the ticket-half in the pocket of my old leaf raking coat.

We ride our bikes
around the circle in the cemetery,
weaving.
I wave up to You on the Cross.
Am I to come upon You suddenly like this forever?
Happy, relieved that You are here
and I can see You, I can feel You?

You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of
my old leaf-raking coat.
There all the time, all the while,
forgotten.
I so often seem to leave You
in churches
and other islands.
And on my beads
where I can see You, I can feel You.

I take the ticket-half
and put it on the table, saying,
This is God
and He's here through my comings
and my goings.
But I walk past the ticket-half,
I walk past the ticket-half.
I walk past the ticket-half
just as I've walked past the Cross on our wall.

Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don't see
You.
But Gentle Jesus, aren't You always,
aren't You every hour here?

Messing With the Loose Tooth

It's so hard for me not to think about the financial state i'm in right now. It's a bit like a loose tooth. You know it's going to hurt to push that tooth with your tongue, but yet you keep doing it, out of compulsion or a hope of eventually wearing down the connection enough for the tooth to pop right out. While I know the answers aren't going to change, I keep asking myself the same questions over and over, out of compulsion or a hope that eventually I might see some angle I hadn't before and find a way out. Probably all I'm gonna get is a lot of pain and a mouth full of blood.

Mountain Goats Day

i think i could have listened to the mountain goats all day long today (and i just about did).



for the uninitiated...

tallahassee
Window facing an ill-kept front yard
Plums on the tree heavy with nectar
Prayers to summon the destroying angel
Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector
And you
You

Twin prop airplanes passing loudly overhead
Road to the airport two lanes clear
Half the whole town gone for the summer
Terrible silence coming down here
And you
You

There is no deadline
There is no schedule
There is no plan we can fall back on
The road this far can't be retraced
There is no punch line anybody can tack on
There are loose ends by the score
What did I come down here for?
You
You

hear more here and then buy some records here.

faith is hard.

i want to have faith that everything will work together for good.

today it's hard to see just how... even though i know that's not really my place.

here's a bit of jesus' teaching that i'm trying to take to heart today, made fresh by a different reading (the second half of matthew 6 from the message):

Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or--worse!-stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.

Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!

You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both.

If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion--do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best--dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers--most of which are never even seen--don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

next time i need to jackhammer during a vikes game, i'm set.

my dad gave me one of these babies tonight:
i can see the envy welling up within you. don't make me sic kevin spacey from se7en on you. he's creepy.