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Charles is as bad as I am about posting, but here’s some new pictures to keep things THRILLED TO THE MAX!

Today’s post is in the style of Samuel Pepys.

Tuesday, 6 November, 16672007

Up, and to lessons; much accomplished on Ravel’s Prelude. The nimbleness of my fingers quickens, despite my recent frustrations. All the morning spent at the computational room, that I might improve the notes thereon, but was denied. Submitted necessary forms to be allowed to continue my efforts. Meetings through the afternoon, accomplishing little, and wasting much tyme. To the in-laws to retrieve My Lord and bring him then home; there we made much merry whining. A bath, and then idle. Ate sparingly, and to bed.

Notes:
Lessons: Piano studies.
Frustrations: On Monday, Hearn was so incensed by his inability to play a Brahms waltz that he punched a dent in the adjacent drywall.
Meetings: Technically, conference calls.
Idle: Technically, 3 hours of Flight Simulator.
Ate sparingly: Hearn is on a diet, and hopes to lose about 15 pounds, despite the Holidays.

WOW. WHEW boy. THAT woke everybody up, didn’t it? Apparently I need to throw a little more controversy up on here! Stir the pot, I guess. Okay, here goes:

Gay men are better at interior decorating than straight men.

Is that going too far?

Anyway, I suppose I should respond to the responses, but I should post a few disclaimers:

1. Sunday school is routinely held at the same time as choir practice in all of the churches at which I’ve worshipped. Since I’ve been singing in choirs of one kind or another since I was roughly 12, I haven’t had a lot of theological instruction in almost 2 decades. Any insight I have on the subject is stuff I’ve gathered from Dilbert cartoons.
2. My theological beliefs are entirely colored by my experiences, not the other way around. I’d like to believe God exists, but so far He hasn’t revealed Himself to me fully. And that’s fine; maybe He will someday. Meanwhile I have to live my daily life in a Schroedinger’s Cat situation of “God exists/God doesn’t exist,” so I hedge my bets (example: instead of donating all my cash to the poor and wandering the earth in sandals and a robe, I toss a few bucks to worthy charities occasionally and spend the bulk of my money on, say, housing, food, diapers, and high-end electronics). What I’m saying is, if God really “hates fags,” then he needs to find a better way to say it than Fred Phelps, ’cause the gay folks I know are pretty much all awesome.

Having said that, let me make a few points:

• To quote my boy HeavyDluxe:
  

  Interestingly, the Bible itself really presents you (in numerous places) with an all or nothing proposition. It either is all true, or it’s a complete lie. Doesn’t really give you a middle ground, sadly.

  I’m not sure about that. The fact that the Bible is technically the Word of God as written down by fallible humans means to me that, if we were to assume that God Himself was telling folks what to write down, some things got lost in translation. Genesis, for example, was passed down orally for generations before being put to parchment somewhere between 900 and 450 BCE. The New Testament is obviously different, since theoretically it was written down by people who knew Christ, or at least knew Him second-hand, but it speaks volumes to me that there are numbers of gospels and other documents that were considered for canonicity and discarded. It’d be nice to think that they were excluded because historical documents abounded showing them to be false testaments, but from what I’ve read it seems like often they were thrown out because they showed Jesus in a light that the church leaders didn’t like (as more of a man than the earthly manifestation of the divine, etc.).

  What I’m saying is that there are probably parts of the Bible that are true, parts that are outright false; most is somewhere in between. My view of BELIEF of the Bible, however, is either you believe it wholeheartedly, or other. (Other can be “I believe it’s not a literal account of anything, but shows a greater truth” or “I only believe the New Testament, because it’s clearly intended as a replacement for the Old Testament” or whatever.)

  I do concede the point that the rules outlined in the Old Testament may be there to show that nobody can be perfect, and the New Testament shows the way to heaven despite our imperfections. I had not considered that before. So in theory you CAN believe that the Bible is entirely literal, and still get your bacon on. I’m not sure that I like the implication that God is basically saying “Okay, here are the rules. Now don’t worry about them, break them as much as you want, but MAKE SURE YOU BELIEVE IN MY SON.”

• The Bible is merely one of many documents, including the Koran, the Vedas and Upanishads, etc. that purport to show some kind of True Way (although they all seem to lead to different places). The only reason most Americans follow Christianity at all is because it’s what they were raised with. It’s like preferring steak and potatoes (Mmmm…steak) over vegetable curry (Mmmm…curry).

  If an alien was flying through space alone, searching for the meaning of life, landed on earth, and decided to pick himself a religion because he wanted to believe in SOMETHING, which one would he pick? They’re all pretty much equally well-documented. If he wanted to pick one based on which had the EARLIEST documentation, it’d probably have to be Hinduism. If he picked the one followed by the most people, it’d probably be a form of Christianity. If he landed in downtown Mecca, he’d probably pick Islam. In the end, he’d have to make a decision based on whichever religion felt right to him. It’s all a matter of faith.

  I guess what I’m saying is that when it comes to religion, you have to choose what FEELS right. To get back to the reason I originally opened this massive ridiculous train of thought (anti-homosexual feelings in the Christian church), a God who makes a person gay, and then denies him the right to be who he is, is not a God who feels right to me.

• One more HeavyDluxe quote before I get back to my usual thoughts of booze and women:
  

  God = Holiness + Justice + Love + Wrath Against Sin. God without wrath/justice/holiness is neither God nor loving.

  Which makes sense short term, but not eternally. For example, I love my son. I show this by smothering him with hugs and kisses whenever he gets within reach, and also by disciplining him when he, for example, tries to touch a hot light bulb, because I don’t want him to get hurt. With God, it seems like he wants you to believe in him, and if you don’t, you get eternally damned. Which is similar to Charles refusing to acknowledge me as his father, so I kill him. That’s not an act of love. That’s solely an act of vengeance.

  Of course, that’s projecting human feelings onto an omnipotent being; I obviously can’t know how God thinks. What I do know is that I have a hard time having faith in a God who is reported to be loving and yet supposedly lets people burn in eternity, often for the simple act of growing up in a remote place that hasn’t heard of Jesus yet. I actually have a much easier time believing, for example, that if you are a dick to people you get reincarnated as a tapeworm, but I like celebrating major Christian feast days, so I’ll stick with what I got.

Okay, I’ll shut up now. Remember: I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. Next week: how God demonstrated Himself to me by way of a massive jolt of electricity through a 5-iron!

In poking around Facebook recently, I came across the True Love Waits group (link only works if you’re, you know, in Facebook). I’m not much a believer in it myself, but I do think that overall it’s a good idea, because the numbers of young people who are too stupid to be having sex before marriage seems to be growing (because they won’t stop having sex, you see, which often results in reproduction). If we could maybe get all these folks in one place and maybe get them to hold off on the nooky as long as possible, or lordy at least until they’re in HIGH SCHOOL for heaven’s sake, the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, of the people that I’ve met who joined the True Love Waits organization, all tended to be people who weren’t going to be having any pre-marital sex even if they weren’t opposed to it, due to significant personality/body mass/acne problems.

Upon viewing the group, I noticed the “Recent News” section, and read through it, and it’s a bit terrifying. It starts rather tamely:

Purpose of Group: I do not want to be the one who secludes others because they simply believe differently than myself and how I interpret God’s moral code. Even though I believe in absolute truth, I believe in showing love and respect to all first (even though I heavily disagree). First, I want to address why I created this group, this group is meant to be a place of encouragement to others who have decided to be virgins until marriage.

Great idea. If someone wants to remain chaste until they get the gold band, I’m all for it (though I have to admit, if I were single, and went on a date with someone who revealed they intended to wait until marriage to give up the punani, well… I probably would not call her back). But scroll down further, and things start to get a bit creepy:

This group is based on God’s absolute word revealed to us in the Bible, and the God that I serve is a God of love (who is also a God of justice and wrath)…

Uh, okay, sure. Unfortunately, the love>justice+wrath prioritization doesn’t seem to hold with what comes next:

The concept of Homosexuality if [sic] strongly forbidden in the Bible. Such examples include Leviticus 18 (Old Testament) and Romans 1 (New Testament). I cannot and will not condone such actions to be pure or holy in any shape or form. Homosexuality is a direct perversion of God’s created sex and therefore I will not allow any such discussion in this group.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, first of all, congratulations on not having made any intellectual progress since, oh, about 1840. Secondly, looking above, it seems like you’re FAR more interested in the God of Wrath than you are in either the God of Love or the God of Justice. Thirdly, let’s talk about the absolute truth mentioned in the first quote. As I see it, the Bible can be looked at in one of three ways:

1. The Bible is the absolute truth: God made the universe in 6 days and partied on the 7th; He really did kill all but 8 people and 2 of each animal with a huge worldwide flood; and he actually sent His Son to earth, had him killed, and then raised him from the dead; etc. If this is what you believe, then you’re ignoring valid science (which led to, among other things, the computer you’re looking at, the construction of which isn’t detailed anywhere in the Bible) in favor of a document that is between 1800 and 6000 years old, depending on which section you’re reading. At least no one will ever tell you “Don’t be so smart.”
2. The Bible is Man’s version of God’s word, and therefore flawed, but still contains valid instructions that must be followed. Of course, these instructions include things like:
   • Deuteronomy 22:5 – The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
   • Deut. 21:18-21 – If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
     Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
     And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
     And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
   • Deut. 22:23-24 – If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
     Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour’s wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

   Those are from the King James Version, and say, in order: if a woman wears pants, it is an abomination to the Lord; if your son is a jerk, you and your friends must kill him; and if your fiancee gets raped but doesn’t scream loud enough, she and the rapist get killed. Definitely an authoritative moral code for the 21st century. Oh, and don’t forget all the dietary laws that somehow get ignored these days.

3. The Bible is, at best, a collection of jazzed up stories handed down by word of mouth and eventually put to paper. It contains some nice ideas about love, and how to treat other people, particularly in the New Testament, but should never be taken literally.

How anyone can believe option one is beyond me. And yet a surprising number of people do, even young folks, which astounds me. How can you sit through a basic 5th grade science class and still believe that the world was created in a matter of days? Doesn’t it make more sense that, maybe, JUST maybe, some skeevy priest made that story up in 4000BC because people kept asking him how the world came to be and were getting tired of just hearing “God did it?”

The second option I can at least understand; follow the rules, and you go to heaven. Don’t, and you go to hell. Super simple. However, since the Bible contains all those crazy Old Testament minor commandments about keeping kosher and stoning disobedient children, which even hard core conservative Christians seem to ignore these days, folks are just picking and choosing which rules they want to follow. Which leads to the question: what exactly makes you think that the rules you’ve chosen are the ones that really count? For example, the most frequently quoted Anti-Homosexuality Bible provision is Leviticus 20:13:

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

But in Lev. 11:12:

Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

So crawdads, lobsters, shrimp, crabs, etc. are all abominations too. Not to mention, of course, how pigs are unclean (which I gather is one step below abominable), and yet I don’t see the churchgoers at the Bob Evans on Sunday afternoons asking the servers to make sure the cooks hold the bacon. What fundamentalists are saying is basically “Okay, you only have to obey the IMPORTANT rules, and we get to say what those are.” Sorry, but no; either you obey ALL the rules, or you don’t get to condemn others for saying that the prohibition on homosexuality is no more valid than the prohibition on eating delicious pork chops.

What scares me isn’t that some people believe that gay folks are going to hell. You can believe that Jesus appeared to you in a vision and told you to sell all your possessions, buy a used Harley Softail, and ride around Arkansas preaching Rastafarianism for all I care. What terrifies me is that folks that believe this crazy stuff have a tendency to band together and convince the government that they have some kind of True Path, and that True Path involves telling the rest of the world what they may and may not do. Religious fundamentalism is religious fundamentalism; the difference between telling homosexuals they can’t get married or adopt kids and stoning them in the streets is just a matter of degree. And time.

Even if fundamentalist Christianity starts to decline, I’m still saddened by the fact that, assuming popular statistics hold true, 10% of them are repressed homosexuals. The likelihood is that they’ll force themselves into marriages, and then get divorced many years later when they can no longer contain their own sexuality; the results of this are never pleasant, particularly if there are kids involved. I was hoping we were moving into a time where we’d see less of it, but I guess not.

I apologize for this not being even remotely humorous; I don’t know what came over me. Stupid facebook.

Like many Americans, I am on a diet. And also like many Americans, I hate it and it’s not working. Well…it sort of is. I can’t tell.

The problem is that I weigh exactly the same as when I started, roughly 240 pounds. (What can I say? I got a BIG ASS.) But my pants fit better, my belt is on a thinner notch, and people have been asking me if I’ve lost weight. I’m all, whaaaaaa? I have lost no weight! I weigh the same! And yet am thinner!

Perhaps my guns are getting bigger. Yeah, that’s the ticket. And my MASSIVE PECTORALS! Or, and this is far more likely, my neck.

In other news, I have gotten addicted to MS Flight Simulator 2004. I don’t think I’ve played a flight sim since about MS FS 4.0, which wasn’t actually a half bad game, but 2004 is way bitchiner, with full training programs, a number of built-in airplanes (plus bajillions of downloadables), real-time weather, and the ability to connect to the VATSIM network and interact with amateur air traffic controllers.

It’s not a bad deal, really; FS X is now out, so 2004 is a steal, brand new, at Amazon for $19.99. I got a Logitech Extreme 3D controller at Target for $26.99, and it has more gizmos than my car: throttle, twistable stick (for rudder control), trigger (in case I get a combat sim some day; meanwhile it controls the brakes), and 11 other configurable buttons. I haven’t crashed yet. Even on purpose! Although I’ve flipped a few planes by taxiing too fast.

I’ve gone through enough training to get my Private Pilot’s Certificate, and it makes me wonder; how much harder could it be to do that in real life? I mean, aside from the written test, and the costs, of course.

So now of course I’m looking at how much it would cost to someday buy a used airplane, and wondering how easy it is to make a flight in a single-engine airplane from New Castle County Airport to Mason, Texas. As usual, I’m whole hog into something that will be forgotten in 3 weeks. YAY FICKLE BRAIN!

Yeah, I was working crazy hours last week, blah, blah, usual excuses. In exchange for not having anything new, here’s something that will probably take you DAYS to wade through: Anything Goes, 2007! Enjoy.

I found a picture of your mom, and her friend, and the man who might have been your dad if he hadn’t gotten stuck in traffic:

(Yeah, I’m posting a lot this week. So? Shut up.)

I think I have mono. I don’t know why. I haven’t been near anyone who has it, as far as I can tell, but I am just EXHAUSTED. I guess getting paged at precisely 1:15am every night for the past 3 has something to do with it, but it’s KILLING me, whatever it is.

I’m tireder than a one-armed paper hanger who also has mono. (You can tell how tired I am because my humorous comparisons make even less sense than normal.) It’s 12:40 pm and I’m ready for a nap. I NEVER nap. I consider it an affront to all that’s good in the world; it’s not dark outside, so why would I be asleep? That’s CRAZY talk.

I once got into a really stupid argument with my wife about this; I think we were on vacation with some friends, and I was downstairs playing video games and carrying on and getting frustrated trying to beat some kind of level, and she was upstairs attempting to nap. Eventually she came downstairs and asked me if I couldn’t possibly shut the hell up, and I told her it’s daytime, I’ll make exactly as much noise as I want to. At some point during the argument, I uttered the brilliant observation, “I have no respect for anyone who sleeps in the middle of the day.”

It was not one of my kinder moments.

What I had probably meant to say was “I’m sorry honey, I’ll quiet down. Can I get you a drink? Foot rub? Vicodin?” but as frequently happens with me, the words that come out of my mouth have absolutely NO relation to the words that were formed in my brain. This is how I end up saying things like, “Sure, I’ll drive you to the airport on Friday at 5pm!” when what I mean to say is “Hire a bleeding cab, you putz.”

This all points to one thing: I’m a dingus.

The Phillies have turned me into a 13 year old girl. After their big win yesterday, I spent roughly an hour sending text messages to all my friends that said “OMG TEH PHILLIEZ R THA NL EAST CHAMPEENZ!!!1!1!1 WTF LOL” After a while Sarah had to take my phone away and slip me a mickey to get me to chillax.

Nevertheless: The Phillies are the National League East Division Champions, something that hasn’t happened since 1993, which is very nearly half my lifetime ago. Already I’m looking for omens: I realized that the last time the Phillies won a World Series was roughly 2.5 years after my birth, so I started examining statistics to see if the Phillies had out-of-character good years shortly after the birth of new Hearnspawn. Unfortunately the Phillies were the diahrrea of the National League for most of the 20th century, so as far as I could tell, my father’s and grandfather’s births were not harbingers of championships. They weren’t even harbingers of winning seasons, as far as I can tell.

Still. I’ve already ordered my “NL East Champions 2007” tshirt, and not because I’m Happy To Be Here, always the kiss of death for any playoff team, but because I’m hoping they’ll be able to get the bloody thing to me in time to actually wear while watching a game, which seems unlikely because MLB.com is a LIAR! (Their website said they had the shirts already in stock, only to send me an email after I ordered saying that they don’t actually have them, but will TOTALLY ship them when they do, so I sprung for expedited shipping for no bloody reason. Liars.)

I may have to run to Dick’s and load up on Phillies merch, because it is a requirement that I wear something baseball-related on all game days. I feel like a Virginia Tech fan! Except that I don’t have to root for Sean Glennon.

Hi, my name is Matt, and I’m a Facebook addict. Here is my story.

A friend suggested I sign up, so I did so, back in August. I was immediately intrigued by the complete lack of all the annoying crap that makes MySpace suck donkey teat (ads, overwhelming page designs), but was frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t FIND anybody. I could only seem to search my own “network,” and only in a way that basically presented to me every Facebook account in the Greater Wilmington Area, which is several thousand people. Left with no option (I believed) but searching through poorly alphabetized lists of people I don’t know, I said “F This” and went back to my life of chasing my son and watching Doctor Who.

And then my boy Shaun TC added me as a friend; I got the notification email, and said to myself, “Meh. Let’s go see.” I confirmed his friendship, and then scanned his friends list for people I knew. Hm…there were many. I added them. Then I added their friends. Then I added my friend’s friends’ friends’ friends. Plus, I discovered that the way I had been searching was faulty; once corrected, I found even MORE people.

Now my social life has been quantified: I have 144 friends. The ramifications of this are as yet unclear. Also, I’m in touch with people I quite literally have not communicated with since 1994. And I refresh my Facebook homepage every 15 minutes, looking for new Wall posts and pictures.

When do I sleep? I don’t.

In an completely unrelated story, “Under African Skies” by Paul Simon just popped up in iTunes, so you’ll forgive me, I need to take a brief moment to bust it.

Bust what?

A move.