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Notes: 1 / 1 year ago
A modern take on the Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, designer, creator, builder and supporter who is in perfect, relational community, in your nature and your character you are completely unlike us.
May you live here among us.
May your desires happen here in the same way they do in your presence.
May you provide for us in exactly the way we need.
Forgive us for hurting you; and allow us to forgive those who have hurt us as well.
Don’t lead us into destructive patterns of life; but save us from the desire to act in ways contrary to you.
For we recognize that everything we have is yours, you alone hold the ability to change us, and we give you all recognition, honor and worth forever and ever.
Amen.
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Notes: 1 / 1 year ago
Official Yellow Car/Slug Bug Rules
Many years ago I “invented” the game of Yellow Car/Slug Bug. I use the term invented loosely however, because I essentially took what many people call “punch buggy” or what my Mid-West (meaning South Dakota not Ohio) friends call Slug Bug and threw yellow cars into the mix.
To be fair, we also made the game point based and not about hitting people. Furthermore, my only real reason for added the yellow car was because it stands out and I was hoping people would focus more on yellow car, leaving me the victor in the slug bug points.
However, in recent years I have noticed that some people have attempted to make amendments to the rules, even going so far as to add additional cars and point values to the game.
So to clear up an confusion I have decided to post the official rules and point values for the Yellow Car/Slug Bug Game.
Yellow Car: +1 Point
This is one half of the basic construct of the game. Without the yellow car you really only have a slug bug game and that’s not fun for anyone. Any time you spot a yellow car, call it out for +1 point towards your score.
Slug Bug: +1 Point
This is the second half of the game. It’s a Volkswagen Beetle, affectionately known as a “slug bug.” In order to get points for a Beetle you must refer to it as a slug bug. Punch buggy does not count. Nor can you call it a Beetle or a Bug.
Yellow Car Slug Bug: +3 Points
Now the yellow Volkswagen Beetle is worth 3 points. 1 point as a yellow car, 1 point as a Beetle and a 3rd bonus point. It must be noted that the phrase “Yellow Car Slug Bug” must be used in order to get the points. ”Yellow Slug Car Bug” does not count. You just sound silly. ”Slug Bug Yellow Car” officially does not count, however if you are playing with some lenient people.
Convertible: x2 Points
Now this is where the game gets more interesting. Convertibles are considered a multiplier. By this I mean that you cannot call a convertible by itself, but if either a yellow car or a slug bug is also a convertible then you double your points.
Example: If you call a yellow car convertible you will get 2 points. 1 point for the yellow car, then the convertible will double that point, making it 2 point.
However, if you happen to find a “yellow slug bug convertible” that would give you 6 point since the yellow car slug bug is a 3 point car, multiplied by the convertible.
It should also be noted that you can only call a convertible multiplier when the top is down. If the top is up, it is simply a yellow car or slug bug respectively.
Old School: x2 Points
The Old School multiplier works the same as the convertible and can actually multiple the convertible multiplier. However, the rules at this point are semi-vague on what classifies as an “old school” car. While there is no definitive year where old school cars begin, the general idea is that the car must look as if it is obviously old. Thus, a 1997 yellow mustang does not count as an old school car. However, a yellow hatchback from 1975 definitely counts. The major difference between the old school multiplier and the convertible is when it must be said in the phrase. While convertible is placed at the end of the string, old school is placed at the beginning. Thus, you would have an “old school yellow car” compared to a “yellow car convertible.”
Old School Yellow Car Slug Bug Convertible: 12 Points
This elusive car is the mack daddy of the Yellow Car/Slug Bug game. Due to multipliers, this car is worth 12 points total. First of all, it is a yellow beetle, which make it a 3 point car, which is multiplied to 6 points by being an old school car and multiplied again to a 12 point car for being a convertible.
Additional Rules:
1 - The order of naming a car is very important. If you fail to name the car in the correct order you are not awarded any points. In which case if someone else can call out the order before you manage to correct yourself then they have stolen your points.
2 - All cars must be verbally recognized unless physically unable to do so. Therefore, you cannot simply point to a car without calling it unless you have duct tape over your mouth, a burrito in your mouth, or some other speech impairment. Generally speaking it is a good idea, although not required, to call out and point out the car in question.
3 - You have the ability to trump other players in a car call. For example, if Player A sees a yellow beetle from 1973 and simply calls a Yellow car, Player B could call a Yellow Car Slug Bug and steal the points from Player A regardless of the fact that Player A saw the car first. However, if neither player realizes the car is also an old school car then only the 3 points are award to Player B. But if either player, or potentially Player C realizes the car is also old school the call can be trumped again.
4 - Parked cars do not count. Cars must be on the road, or at the very least attended too, in order to be called. Thus, the slug bug getting gas at the local QuickTrip counts, so long as the driver is still near the vehicle. If he is inside paying for the gas, it doesn’t count. Furthermore, the yellow beater that has been sitting in your neighbours driveway since 1993 also doesn’t count. Nor does the car parked at Wal-mart, unless people are actively getting out of it.
5 - A car can be called more than once, provided at least 20 minutes has passed and visual contact has been lost between the cars at least once. Therefore, the yellow beetle someone drives around town for advertising can be called on a daily basis. However, the white beetle you are trailing on the highway cannot be called twice during the 6 hour trip unless you lose visual contact.
6 - Cars that traditionally always yellow (i.e., a yellow school bus or yellow construction vehicle) can not be called as a yellow car.
7 - In order to be considered a “yellow car” at least 50% of a car must be yellow. Therefore, the car that is yellow with some blue trim counts. However, the red car with yellow flames on the front does not count.
8 - Along a similar vein, semi-trucks are only considered a “yellow car” if both the truck and trailer are yellow. So a yellow cab with a white cab does not count, nor would a white cab and yellow trailer.
9 - While this is a point-based game, there is really no time limit and the score is rarely tallied, so the game continues pretty much forever. However, a group could decide to play a game for a pre-determined amount of time. For example, during a road trip to Boston to see Jimmy Eat World in concert.
Those are all of the official rules for the Yellow Car/Slug Bug game. If you’re read through the whole post, I’m super surprised and feel I owe you a cookie. Have fun playing the game.
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Notes: 1 / 1 year ago
Radio play Christianity or How to not unload on your local grocer
I probably couldn’t count the number of times that I have had a conversation that goes something this:
Person: I don’t like <insert name of band or artist here>.
Me: Oh really, why not?
Person: Ugh… that song of their’s get way too overplayed on the radio.
While I usually don’t try and discuss the merits of the particular band with the person that that point, it is an interesting notion none-the-less. Here a person has condensed an entire band’s work down to a single song, and then determined that they disapprove of the band based on the single song.
While the idea seems rather illogical when discussing music, I wonder how much we do that type of thing with other areas of life.
Namely, I’m curious just how many people have been turned off to God based on my overplayed radio tune of a life.
The other day, in some group setting, Amanda raised the question, “What would a non-hypocritical Christian look like?” It’s something that I have been mulling over in my head a lot recently.
The only answer I can begin to give is that a non-hypocritical Christian would own up to their junk. They would be open and honest with people about how they are a flawed, fallen human. And I think it would take more than just recognizing the “forest” of junk in their life. I think it would require talking about the trees.
The conundrum is in discovering who to have what levels of honesty with. For example, when you go through the check out line in the grocer, and the lady asks how things are going…. do you actually tell her how your day is? Probably not.
But my guess is that when one of your friends takes you out for pizza and says that you’ve been on his mind recently and wants to know if everything is okay, that is probably the time to talk about how frustrated you’ve been recently. Or how you feel like a completely failure as a husband or as a graduate or as a member of society.
I think if we were that honest with people, it wouldn’t surprise them when we end up acting in ways that are completely contrary to Christ. And if people weren’t surprised by Christians that didn’t always act like Christ, then maybe we could move past radio play Christianity into the diverse creative spectrum that God has to offer.
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1 year ago
The Bride of Christ or “You’re Beautiful”
Over the past few months my church, Kings Valley Wesleyan, has been singing “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Wickham.
One of the verses says, “We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring, Your bride will come together and we’ll sing… You’re beautiful.”
The idea that we are the bride of Christ is something I’ve been reflecting a lot on recently. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how my marriage (to Amanda) should be a reflection of our marriage (as the Church) to Christ.
In theory, marriage then becomes ridiculously easy. How do I want Jesus to treat me? If he is our husband (including mine), how do I want him to act? What does he do that makes me feel loves, supported, cared for, etc.? Whatever that is, that is how I should be treating Amanda.
Christ showed serious sacrifice for us. How can I sacrifice for Amanda? Christ tells us the truth, regardless of the fact that sometimes we don’t want to hear it. I need to be honest with Amanda at all times. Christ works hard and provides for us. (“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2 - which by the way, was apparently a common phrase used in the first century by Jewish men when they proposed marriage.)
I could list a lot more examples, but the bottom line is that I am supposed to love my wife as Christ loves the Church. However Christ loves me, I should be transferring that to Amanda.
Similarly, however I want Amanda to treat me, I need to model that for her by acting in those ways towards Christ. How I relate to Jesus shows Amanda how she can relate with me. So all the times that I choose not to read my Bible, pray, or generally show that my relationship with God is unimportant, what I am communicating to Amanda is that she can take the same lackadaisical approach to our marriage.
But I want Amanda to love me. I want her to respect me. I want her to be proud of me and trust me. How can I model those things for her? How can I show her what love, respect and trust look like via my relationship with Christ? Those are the things I should be modeling for her.
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1 year ago
“A GPS God” or “God-Positioning-Unit”
Yesterday Amanda and I got into a big fight. To be more precise, it was one of those really little fights, that ended up escalating into something a lot bigger than it should have been.
We went to Quispamsis to pick up a plinko board for the Bethany Admissions department. I had been there before, in fact both of us had. However, when I called the pastor to let him know we were on our way, Amanda asked me to get the street address from him. We have a GPS unit, and Amanda wanted to be able to plug in the exact address so that we would know where we were going.
I didn’t ask him for the address. In my mind, asking for the address was a waste of time. I had already been there and knew how to get there again. For Amanda, getting the address was a comfort issue.
However, the fight ended up being about how she doesn’t trust my ability to navigate a situation she is unfamiliar with vs. my lack of consideration for her requests. Because she asked, she expected me to comply with her request. I wanted her to trust that I could get us there safely regardless of the fact that she personal had no idea where we were.
I don’t want to get into a discussion about how I was totally right and she was totally wrong (Honestly, if I knew at the time just how much comfort the address would have brought her, I would have just taken the 20 seconds to ask the pastor). However, the entire situation made me think of how we often relate to God.
So often I will ask God for something and expect that he will grant it simply because I asked. I think my logic goes something like this, “God is love… and God loves me… therefore, God wants to see me happy… which means God will give me this thing that I want.” Now this progression of logic does not work for those times we pray for a million dollars, or for the destruction of an abortion clinic, or whatever other seriously un-Christlike thing we ask for. But when our requests are in line with our faith, I essentially expect God to grant my request.
However, the problem with this is a problem of control. If I assume that God is in some way obligated to grant my requests, simply because I asked him for them, then God is no longer in control of our relationship. I am. If God’s hands are somehow tied every time I ask him for something, then he is no longer the master of the universe. I am.
Which is an incredibly comforting thought. God becomes the magic genie that can grant my wishes. I can effectively put God on a leash and in a very small box.
While this delusion gives me a safe God (thus the comforting thought), it also gives me a false God.
At the same time, I think there are tons of times when I’m asking God to give me the address because it will put my mind at ease. I want to know where we’re going. I want to be able to take over in case God fails to find the church. Once again, I really want to be in control.
But I wonder how often God is listening to our prayer requests and is essentially saying, “I’m going to say no, because I really want you to trust me on this. Where is your faith? Do you truly trust that I can guide us through this situation, even though you have no idea where you are right now?”
Once again, I’m not saying I was “in the right” as far as keeping Amanda in the dark about the address. After all, I’m not omniscient (all-knowing) nor am I all-powerfully. There are times I will let Amanda down and fail to come through.
How many times have you sat in the car with God and asked him to give you the address instead of relying on him to get you to the church safely? How many times have you expected God to provide you with the address, simply because you asked?
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1 year ago
“The Joy of the Lord” or “2010: The Year of the Buffalo”
In March I kept saying that I was having a bad month. Of course, even as I was saying it I felt like the “month” had started around mid-February. My computer had pretty much decided to crash and was hanging on by a barely visible string, my external hard drive was acting roughly the same (which meant virtually no music for me). Furthermore, it seemed like just about everything in my life was falling apart.
All I wanted was to make it through March. However, as March ended and April came, I found that relief was no where in site. All the problems I had in March were still there in April. Furthermore, the problems were compounded as I began to prepare myself for graduation. Each day grad inched closer and closer and I reflected on how I would spend the rest of 2010 “stuck in Sussex” with no chance of getting a good job. By good job I mean something ministry related, something that would pay me a salary and give me some freedom to come and go as I needed.
Because of everything going on my relationship with God began to suffer (or perhaps it was my suffering relationship with God that caused all these things to feel overwhelming). Either way, by the time May came around I hit the deepest depression I have been in in a really long time. The only reason I did not spend all day sleeping is because I’ve seen enough that I know where that road leads. However, all that means is that I got up and sat on my couch all day.
May was a month long drought of not reading my Bible. I might have touched it once or twice, but I doubt much more than that. Beyond reading my Bible, prayer was pretty much non-existent.
I have a friend that just went on internship. He will be done with school completely in six months and free to go get a job anywhere. I have two other friends that are going on internship this summer and fall, after which they as well will be completely done and free to go and do anything. Finally I have another friend that graduated with me and is taking the senior pastor position at a small church in Nova Scotia. Beyond that I just found out that one of my old college roommates. who dropped out and did not even finish college, has excepted a senior pastor position at a church here in New Brunswick.
And then there is me. I just applied at Wal-mart, Tim Horton’s and Canadian Tire, as well as a plethora of other jobs like that. So I have to confess that most of May I spent the month thinking, “Does God not love me?” Did I do something wrong? Is God punishing my for something.
It has been incredibly difficult for me to try and worship God. I know that worship isn’t about me, and that worship is a lifestyle and all of that, but the fact remains that it has been hard for me to see God as loving and caring and good when in all honesty 2010 has not been my year.
Over the past week or so I have found myself thinking, “Once my situation clears up, I will be able to read my Bible and pray a lot better.” Once things start going my way, then I can come to God and has a relationship again. Once I get what I want… then I can be joyful.
But even I’m not convinced of that one. Joy is not something that comes from external circumstances. If that was the case, Paul would have been the greatest emo kid to ever live. Yet he sat in prison and wrote one of the most joyful and encouraging letters of his life.
I’m realizing that there is something wrong with me. I have a sickness of sorts. If I can only experience “the joy of the Lord” when things are going my way, then I’m not experiencing true joy. In which case, what I think is joy is rather a dark veil, hiding the truth and allowing me to ignore the deeper issues in my life.
So… I’m not sure how to go about resolving this. I don’t know what steps I’m supposed to take or how to “fix” my lack of joy, but at least I recognize that it’s there. At least I recognize that I’m not nearly as “connected to the vine” as I should be. And according to our 12-step friends, admitting there is a problem is the first step.
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1 year ago
The Worship of the Work
I read this quote in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest today:
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.
The truth is… I’m guilty of that. I’ve been feeling bad for myself recently (and by “recently” I mean probably the last month or so) because here I am a recent college graduate and I already feel like my life is going nowhere. Amanda has one semester left of classes and then a six month internship. So what that means for me is that I’m sticking around Sussex for the next six months, before running off to who knows where (probably California) for another six months.
Obviously I want desperately to be involved in ministry some how (that’s what I just spent five years in college training for) but it’s hard to get involved in any kind of meaningful ministry when you’re only around for six months. What that means is that for now I get to go find a random job. I then get to find another random job when we go on Amanda’s internship.
Of course, I originally had to potential beacons of light… at least for my time here in Sussex. My first thought was in the Pastor of Community position that Kings Valley Wesleyan is wanting to hire. My thought was that I could get that job, and when Amanda needed to do her internship that she could intern there. I would love to work at Kings Valley. I would love to work for Jim Agrell. I feel like I would be an excellent addition to the team.
But… Amanda doesn’t want to go there and as I have been taught multiple times from multiple professors and mentors “a tied vote is a no vote.” Which means if Amanda doesn’t want me to get the job at KV then I don’t get the job at KV. To be fair though, I now understand her logic. She wants to feel like her internship is about her and not any after thought. Instead of me getting a pastoral job and her coming on as an intern simply because they have me, she wants to find a placement that specifically wants her for her, and not because she’s my wife.
I get that. I really do. But that means that at best, I could go talk with Jim about bringing me on staff for six months, then letting us leave for another six months, and then coming back to work for two or three years. I say two or three years because my goal is still planting churches in Calgary. It is only because those same professors and mentors have said that I should really look to get on staff somewhere before going out to plant that I’m not thinking of moving to Calgary in the next year.
So instead I will try to get on staff with a church where I can work as an associate pastor for a few years to get some good experience. Then we will head to Calgary.
But when I look at the possibility of Kings Valley as six months on, six months off, two years on… I start to feel like there is no way he would want to bring me on. If I was a senior pastor looking to hire a new staff position and a kid straight out of Bible college, with no experience, came to me and wanted to come on staff for that short of a time, and take a six month hiatus, I would tell him we’re going to look elsewhere.
My second option that I was thinking of would be in the Bethany admissions department. My friend Ben is probably going to get the job as pastor of Shelburne Wesleyan in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. His wife Bayley works in the admissions department here at Bethany. So with them leaving I could get a job working there. It would only be through the summer and fall semester, but I’ve been here for five years, I know Bethany like the back of my hand.
But before I even went to talk to Scott, the admissions director, I was informed that they probably won’t be hiring a replacement for Bayley. Which means that option #2 is out.
Which leaves me in Sussex for six months without any good job prospects. However, Dave Cotnam works for a landscaping company in town and his boss is looking to hire. So I turned in my resume this week and Dave seems to think I have a near guarantee that I will get the job. So I will probably spend the next six months working landscaping before heading off to California and working who-knows-where.
The problem with this is that all my friends are either going on internship this summer (after which they are completely done with school and can job right into full-time ministry) or are actually going out into full-time ministry. And then there’s me… a recent graduate that is now taking a year long hiatus from ministry (a year and a half if you count this past spring semester).
Which is why I’ve been feeling bad for myself recently. But that also brings me back to that quote from Chambers:
We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us our one great aim is to pour out a wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.
As much as I don’t see it or understand it God has me here for a reason. For one reason or anything God wants to to stay in Sussex and work a blue-collar job for six months, followed by six months of Amanda’s internship.
To be honest my first thought is that I’ve done something wrong. There is something horribly wrong with me that God sees and thinks I’m completely unsuitable for ministry. That thought tells me that I’m a failure and will never be good at being a pastor. Obviously that thought cannot be coming from God.
In which case I don’t know why I’m here. But I can try to make the best of it. If my “great aim” is to fully worship and honor God wherever I am, than I can do that here is Sussex.
I’ll be honest, this is going to be a really tough year. I have a voice screaming at me that I’m a horrible, worthless failure because I’m not in ministry like all of my friends. But I know that voice does not come from God. And I know that I should be devoted, or worshiping, God and not the work that he could be giving me. My first responsibility is to God, not to being a pastor.
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Notes: 1 / 1 year ago
Freedom of Speech or “incendiary”?
I realize Cinco de Mayo was a week ago, but I feel like I need to comment on this anyway.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/06/california-students-sent-home-wearing-flags-cinco-mayo/
Here is a link to the article from Fox News. You can google “Cinco de Mayo Morgan Hill” and find this story all over the place.
The basic story is this: Last Wednesday, on Cinco de Mayo, the administration at a high school in Morgan Hill, CA sent five students home for wearing american flag shirts and bandannas. Apparently the clothes were “garments the school officials deemed ‘incendiary’ on Cinco de Mayo.”
The school has a large Mexican population, and the administration did not want the American flag paraphernalia to offend any of the Latino population. The students were approached and asked to remove or turn inside out the various articles of clothing. The students refused. The administration sent them home. Cue huge uproar about freedom of speech.
Later the Morgan Hill Unified School District released a statement essentially claiming that the high school administration was not acting on behalf of the district and that they had misinterpreted the district dress code.
Okay… that’s all fair. I understand that the school board cannot and should not try to enforce a dress code that disallows the wearing of American paraphernalia.
But I feel like there is a secondary issue here that no one seems to be addressing. Every article says that the administration approached the five boys, who were all sitting at the same lunch table. That tells me that these boys were all friends.
I remember when I was in grade 3, my friend Eric and I both wore the same Shaq Orlando Magic jersey on the same day. It was one of the greatest days of my elementary school career. It was an accident, but here we were both showing our Shaq pride on the same day! For the rest of the year we tried to replicate the event, but either one or the other would forget to wear the jersey.
Now I realize that High School kids have an easier time remembering something than elementary school kids do. So when I consider the odds of not only 5 students, but 5 friends, all coincidently wearing American flag clothes on the same day, and not just any day but Cinco de Mayo, well… I just can’t help but suspect that this might have been planned.
But that leads me to another question. Why would five friends all plan on wearing American flag shirts and bandannas on the same day? On Cinco de Mayo no less? Why would you do that? What’s the motivation?
Should the kids have been sent home? Maybe not. Were they trying to start some trouble? I suspect they might have been. If five friends all wore Mexican flag clothes and bandannas on July Fourth, I’m willing to bet lots of people would be excusing them of anti-American sentiment. Yet, when it goes the other way… nothing?
I know a lot of people are up-in-arms about this because it apparently demonstrates a lack of free speech. But at what point do we need to start saying “You’re being a douche. Stop it.”?
Did the administration have the right to send the kids home? Probably not. Was this event incendiary? You betcha.
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Notes: 1 / 1 year ago
New Music Tuesday’s: MGMT
If I keep this up, I might need to change this to New Music Wednesday. Of course, along a similar vein, I need to start writing some posts that are unrelated to music. I realize that writing begets writing and that if I want to be better at this gig that I just need to write more. So although this has nothing to do with music or todays blog, I guess I’m saying that I will try to blog more from now on. (I’ll write more on that issue later)
I think I was first introduced to MGMT when I was interning at Epic in Michigan. I’m fairly sure the song “Kids” was a big hit on the XM radio stations. Honestly, I can’t quite remember. But what I do remember is that I was a huge fan.
What’s not to love about that song?
But as for anything else MGMT had done… I was clueless. Although since I have been known to use the interweb on occasion I’ve seen countless ads on various websites for MGMT’s new album Congratulations that debuted on April 13, 2010. I have to find new music somewhere right? And I already knew that I was a fan of at least one of their songs.
Fortunately Playlist.com was kind enough to have a feature on these guys, which meant their new album could be listened to in its entirety without pesky purchasing or illegal downloading (which is not illegal in Canada… but that’s another issue.)
After doing some digging (read: went over to wikipedia) I discovered that MGMT used to be known as The Management, but I guess that name was already taken so they eventually settled for MGMT. MGMT of course is pronounced as em-gee-em-tee.
Furthermore, MGMT formed when Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden were at Wesleyan University. Naturally this interested me since I am a recent graduate of Bethany Bible College, a college of the Wesleyan Church. I knew that Wesleyan University is not affiliated with us though, and did some digging (read click the link in wikipedia). Welseyan University was initially started in 1831 as an all-men college for the Methodist Episcopal Church, but became a secular university in 1937 when it severed that last of its ties with the church. Interesting.
Either way, Goldwasser and VanWyngarden met at Wesleyan University and formed MGMT. At the time they were simply trying to show each other some of the music they liked. After experimenting with some various sounds they finally settled on their current sound, a blend of synthpop and psychedelic rock.
Their new album Congratulations is short; only 9 songs total. Of course,\ one of those is Siberian Breaks, a song 12 minutes long that actually sounds like 3 songs. So in a way you could say the album is 11 tracks long. Slightly better. The total run time is just under 45 minutes long. Also not horribly short for an album, but it’s not The Wall either.
The thing I appreciate about this album is that it is actually a marriage of music and lyrics. It seems like most modern music goes to one camp or the other. Either the music is catchy, in which case it is lyrically lacking. Or there is what I call the Kelly Clarkson effect, where you can easily hear every word she sings, but the music is completely indiscernible. For all I know, they take a single guitar with a heavy distortion and play the exact same chord the entire way through each and every one of her songs.
MGMT on the other hand, is a refreshingly retro band with a mix of 70’s disco, progressive rock and “Transylvanian Scooby-Doo” as my wife calls it. There is more than one song that Amanda claims could easily be played in the background of a modern day Scooby-Doo chase scene.
So, in conclusion… here is my favorite song off the album: Brian Eno.
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1 year ago
The Problem with Pudding
This is a blog post from my old myspace blog. I was told I needed to repost it, so here it is:
So I’ve recently come to the realization that the number one problem with pudding cups is their size. You eat one, but it’s so small and unsatisfying that it begs you to eat a second. And even after that you’re not entirely satisfied, so you eat number three. However, after eating the third you have a single pudding cup left. And no one wants a single pudding cup left in the fridge… that’s just uncouth.
Besides do you really want a single pudding cup later? All that will do is stir up the desire for more pudding. But you have no more pudding, because they come in packs of four. So in reality you’re forced to purchase 12 cups total (bare minimum) for a multiple of that just so you can always eat your three cups of pudding without having an odd man out afterward.
No… pudding cups really need to be three times larger than they are currently. Nothing else will do at this point.
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