Travel (reprise)

I have to echo my August 11, 2007 post about travel, ie: that I like being other places much more than the travel itself, especially when it involves airlines. I'll add at this point that a head cold with sinus congestion makes this even more true. My ears still haven't gotten over our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet.

Painting

After painting most of my house, I can't get away from the reality that everything surrounding the painting is really most of the work. Taping, covering, cleaning, redundant trips to Home Depot, etc have been much more tedious and time consuming than rolling and brushing paint onto the walls. Insert life application here.

The Question

It had been a while since the question had come up. “Your brothers are both so musically talented. Why don’t you play anything?” I used to get the question a lot at the church where I grew up. My dad was one of the pastors at the biggest church in town, so my brothers and I were sort of like local celebrities, but in none of the good ways. Imagine the weather guy from the local news channel that you see in the grocery store; he’s not anyone you’d brag about meeting, but you might look over your shoulder to see what kind of cereal he buys. And if you saw that he was buying Lucky Charms, you might have the thought that a guy like that should have better sense than to buy sugary cereals. All that to say that it seemed that everyone had an opinion about us, and it’s something I’ve had to spend some time getting over. The question itself is benign, it’s a curiosity to most people, but I don’t like what it implies, ie: that because my brothers were musically gifted beyond belief that my lack of the gift is some sort of intentional staying of the hand of God. I don’t know the answer; in fact I’m not sure there needs to be an answer. I got some other pretty good gifts, and I get to enjoy their music without the burden of performance. All of this is a bit difficult to explain, and probably a bit much to drop on someone for an honest question, but if you’ve read this post, you now know me a little better.

Patience

Much of life comes too late for me. When it does finally come it doesn’t always feel that way, but on the front-end there isn’t much patience. It’s hard to say that. I feel like I’ve done a lot of waiting so that should equal patience, but patience and waiting are probably two different things. Several aspects of my life have involved much waiting, but admittedly, little of it has been patient. I’m not sure whether waiting is a virtue or not; it would seem unfair to only be credited for the times when I really had peace about the waiting.

Postmodern

At times I get tired of the term postmodern. It seems that everything is called postmodern these days. I guess even defining postmodern is somewhat 'modern' as it seeks to draw boundaries, but I would still contend that the term is overused on a large scale. Like true cynicism, true postmodernism is impossible to maintain, unless of course, it's converted to a buzzword that means what we decide that it means.

In possibly the longest sentence ever, sociologist Dick Hebdige discusses the term:

When it becomes possible for people to describe as ‘postmodern’ the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a ‘scratch’ video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the ‘intertextual’ relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the ‘metaphysics of presence’ a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age, the ‘predicament of reflexitivity, a group of rhetorical tropes, a proliferation of surfaces, a new phase in commodity fetishism, a fascination for images, codes and styles, a process of cultural, political or existential fragmentation and/or crisis, the ‘de-centring’ of the subject, an ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’, the replacement of unitary power axes by a plurality of power/discourse formations, the ‘implosion of meaning’, the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a ‘media’, ‘consumer’ or ‘multinational’ phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of ‘placelessness’ or the abandonment of ‘placelessness’ (critical regionalism) or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates: when it becomes possible to describe all these things as ‘postmodern’ (or more simply using a current abbreviation as ‘post’ or ‘very post’) then it’s clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.

Top 5

What are the five most important things in your life? They could be ideals, activities, people groups or feelings. I'm pondering mine.

Pain of loss

I read an interesting quote in an article today:

The deep fear behind every loss is that we have been abandoned by the God who should have saved us. The transforming moment in Christian conversion comes when we realize that even God has left us. We then discover it was not God, but our image of God that abandoned us.... Only then is change possible. - When God Interrupts, Craig Barnes

Brands

On the way home from a Target run this evening, the thought ran through my mind: "What brands define my purchases?" There's a short list of restaurants, stores and labels that vie for my disposable income. I like to think that it's a matter of personal preference and value rather than marketing, but I have to question from time to time why I prefer New Balance to Nike and Colgate to Crest. What are your brands? Why?

Mixing business with pleasure

This sounds like a dumb phrase to me. Isn't the problem usually mixing pleasure with business?

Slack, but that's how it goes

Soerry for the long delay, but that's how blogging is sometimes...