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In response to all the lies and bed-wetting on the Left over supposed "torture" levied by Americans upon those poor poor blood-thirsty terrorists being given the royal treatment at Club Gitmo...

I say we give them nothing but Fig Newtons-- as much as they care to eat, six days a week. Let them fast on the seventh. Fasting after all is good for the soul.

I say, let them eat fruited cake until they either tell us what we want to know of future attacks, or they burst. Or their teeth fall out. I, as a taxpayer, am content to let them eat the very thing I am too poor to enjoy more often than I do.

How can subsisting upon a diet consisting solely of Fig Newtons and water hurt anyone? Or offend any convenient religious sensibility? Surely Hitler's Germany NEVER gave a single starving Jews a single Fig Newton.

How generous America would seem in the eyes of the world. 'How kind,' the French would declare, 'the Americans give them fruited cake!' The Germans would likely be jealous, asking themselves, 'why did we never think of Fig Newtons? Herr Schindler would have saved far far more had he only offered the SS Fig Newtons!'

Yes, let the enemy combatants eat fruited cake. Let them enjoy the dainties they've so earned. Let them savor the delicate flavor of fig and pastry before moving on to the REAL fruit of their labors-- seventy-two perpetual hymened virgins.


...Songs to Stir the Savage Soul


No More, No Less -- Collective Soul
Funeral -- Band of Horses
Loneliness -- Annie Lennox
Take a Picture -- Filter
What If We Give It All Away -- REM
High -- The Cure
Bluebeard -- Cocteau Twins
Noah's Dove -- 10,000 Maniacs
Malaguena Salerosa -- Chingon
The Needle and the Damage Done -- Neil Young
Yoshimi Battle the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 -- The Flaming Lips
The Actor -- The Moody Blues
Obsession (Tango) -- Shakira



I've been listening to this for almost an hour...

Black cloud crossed my mind
Blue mist round my soul
Feel so suicidal
Even hate my rock and roll
Wanna die, yeah wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Ooh girl you know the reason why

Yer Blues,
The Beatles

Since I tend to associate moments in my life with music, there's a great story that goes with this...

What a clever, clever girl she was, Mary Angel Phillips. I've been pretty much directionless for most of my life, evidenced by the long list of jobs I've held over the last 48 years, but fresh out of high school I could think of nothing to do but wander a bit. That's a fancy way of saying I had no direction. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, and truth is, I'm still a bit unclear about that-- I'm more than a bit Peter Pan-ish in that regard.

The morning after graduation in June of 1979, I was left, like so many others, with the question, "what now?" What do I do now? First things first, I spent five months in Arkansas. Lived in Prescott, worked in Hope-- no, I never saw Bill Clinton -- stringing cable with my uncle for a small outfit. That ended, and in under a year I was in Orlando for Navy Boot Camp. My thinking was: my father spent 20-plus years in the Air Force, the Navy should be a piece of cake. It wasn't. I should have went Air Force. In under a year I ended up off-shore in Louisiana and Texas working the Crew Boats through the winter months of 81-82. Six months later I'm back in Panama City. Some of that time spent on the boats I wrote some lyrics to which an acquaintance from High School later wrote a song... that I didn't much care for at the time. But long story short, I ended up back in school.

Gulf Coast Community College was boring, although I loved my drafting class, Descriptive Geometry. Cool stuff. Pre-AutoCad. But one thing the community college had that proved to be fun, and ultimately destructive, was fraternities.

Iota Gamma wasn't much of a Fraternity when I joined, though at one time it boasted a much higher class of student. All we did was party, drink beer, consume drugs, and worked only to perpetuate the cycle. Then she came along, miss Mary Angel Phillips.

Iota Gamma and the "other" fraternity on campus had what can only be described as a sub-membership, strictly female, called "little sisters". The membership process was viewed mostly as a way to have guaranteed, challenge-less dates. And because each girl required a "big brother" sponsor their "date-able" status were thusly prearranged. Mary Angel asked me to be her big brother, and I happily agreed.

One thing that we always did with our female pledges was give them impossible tasks, though nothing degrading. I remember I set her out to find my favorite song with but one clue... My mother's name is Earth.

She knew the answer in less that a day.

Turns out she called my real little sister, and asked her what my favorite group was. The Beatles. She then asked my sister to look in the album covers for lyrics. No luck. --for those of you who don't know, the White Album came with four color glossy photos of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, AND a poster which was printed on both sides. Side A was a collage of band images, and side B was a full listing of all the album's lyrics. I never displayed the poster with Side B, so I'm not sure what possessed my sister to take the poster down to see what was on the other side. Once she did that, that was the end of it... Mary Angel found my favorite song (at the time, Yer Blues). And she was not pleased. Not at all.

Yes I'm lonely
Wanna die
Yeah I'm lonely
Wanna die
If I ain't dead already
Ooooh, girl you know the reason why


She chased me harder than any girl I'd known or have known since. She's married now, to a very lucky man.

There are four songs indelibly linked with her in my mind.

Goody Two Shoes, and Strip - by Adam Ant, for reasons I'll not say.
Human Touch, by Rick Springfield for one line...

You know I got my walls,
But Sally calls them prison cells
and All She Wants To Do Is Dance, by Don Henley

Wild-eyed pistol wavers
Who ain't afraid to die
All she wants to do is,
All she wants to do is dance
... and make romance


She was young, chatty, always smiling and full of life. I miss that a great deal these days.

But wouldn't you know it, just when I wasn't paying attention my mp3 player leaps to Houses by Great Northern [free download]. Oh, well... no song survives long without the heart's diligent care.

The end begins just as it starts,
And leaves me wondering what we left behind.
Told me not to talk but please explain
My thoughts that float around my mind...


Does it make sense? Perhaps, but likely only to me.


there were trees
in the fields of my optimism
tall and lithe in summer rains
pliant in winter gales
year after years of solitude standing
Graceful and tall to reach the heavens

there were trees

then came the famine years, tinder dry
the clarion of lightnings, and fire
sweeping them all away, pyres
in the cold heat of spent passions
cooling embers dying in anguish
dying slowly upon cold hearths

like the fields of my optimism
lying still ~ empty in a place
where once grew trees
...gone now

where optimism has fled
i should now be
for there is no hope without her
it is not trees that so lithely stood
tall and gracious
no tree ever trembled pliant
in the arms of my winter gales
there were trees, yes
but never did they comfort more than she
the year after years of solitude
never did they help me reach heavenward
graceful and tall

there were trees
but none of them her


ELAshley
042609.045507.6
so falls a soft shower after months of drought...

Revised:
042708.094216.1



Chickens Roast01

It takes all kinds, I guess. Some folk want to worship God, some want to worship themselves. Today, a good many have chosen to worship the earth. Fine, if that's their thing. I think it's loopy but more power to them.

Same to folk like Glenn Beck who, in lieu of his own celebration, chose to ask his listeners to celebrate Earth Day with chainsaws and timber. The problem here is not the fact that some are choosing to participate in an anti-celebration of Earth Day, but rather, to my mind, the problem lies in the waste created by destroying life just to "irk the tree-huggers."

It's pointless. It's wasteful. It reeks of sin.

I call the revolt against Earth Day "shiny"-- a good thing, so long as it's in the spirit of honest debate, but not this... One caller to the Glenn Beck show crossed the line today. "Rick"-- the aforementioned dim bulb --joked about his intent to squeeze six whole chickens onto his grill and cook them to charred, blackened, inedible husks. What an idiot.

It's bad enough our food supply is tainted by government, drugged and abused by producers, and generally not fit to eat, but now this jackass wants to go one better and make the miserable lives a few living breathing feeling animals, who were born for only one thing-- and likely mistreated in the process --worth even less.

This jerk may not have to worry about where his next meal is coming from, but plenty of people in his community do. And for those who haven't noticed, Hunger is not confined to any one person's community. It's a worldwide problem... an EARTH thing.

And it's a waste. It's akin-- it's actually worse --to the rich man giving poor Lazarus the crumbs from his table. This "Rick" would waste food just to jab it in the eyes of a bunch of Earth worshipers.

I have no problem with anyone choosing to protest the celebration of Earth Day. There are just better ways to go about it. Wasting food, especially animals which live their lives for the sole ignoble purpose of providing food for thoughtless bastards.

No, I am not a vegetarian. But Rick is officially an asshole.





"...on this lonely street of dreams"


I've been listening to the same song for the last hour and a half. Over and over... I get like that sometimes. What guitarist can't help but be impressed with Lindsey Buckingham? The man, for all his simplicity is perhaps the most complex guitarist I've ever been blessed to drowse in.

The song is so utterly simple, yet so ethereally beautiful. I can listen to this and Edge of the Ocean by Ivy, over and over and over anover nover over ver er r.

The first ninety seconds, by themselves, are wholly unremarkable, it is the bridge, subsequent verse, and solo-to-completion that give Street of Dreams its raison d'ĂȘtre. Even so, the bridge and solo are equally unremarkable; a bit of monochromatic simplicity held to the refrigerator door by magnets. Simple. Colorful. Beautiful in spite of itself.

And I'm still listening. And will be until something breaks the spell.




On another note, in a previous post I made mention of the complexity of Woman in Chains by Tears for Fears. I call it complexity but it's really quite simple, when you consider how Orzabal layers his elements. Layering... simple, but complexity is the end result. Much like what I do at work...

but with music...

Imagine the picture to the left as a musical composition. Woman in Chains begins with drums and bass working out a semi-complex but unremarkable beat... begin with a palette of colorful hulls. Then layer two flutes; endlessly repeating different melodies, one simple one slightly more complex... two mattes toning down the brash and stark color of primary hulls... or drums. And on and on you layer... logos, script... lyrics... then you put a face to the whole, and there you have a complete song... composition... verse, verse, chorus, bridge, solo, chorus...

Tears for Fears does this one other time-- overtly --to beautiful effect; from the "Songs From the Big Chair" CD, The Working Hour.

Look at any performing group. Think of each instrument as more than a mere layer of sound, but color, emotion....... voice. Think of a conductor's score; baton in hand calling each layer into existence at just the right moment to create something far greater than the individual instruments. Music has more to offer than mere sound. Likewise art has more to offer than mere color. They are both layered, nuanced... complex. Some to very fine effect, some not.

But were it just the solo; the guitar finally given its rein in the end, the song would be nothing. It is the whole composition that makes it so mesmerizing... so repeatable, end over end over end until something breaks the spell...

But all the science, I don't understand
it's just my job five days a week...


...and the spell is broken.

Absolutely beautiful.

There are only two kinds of people on the entire face of this planet: those who are going to heaven, and "those who are not..." which is PC for "hell." This means everyone has a choice to make. Technically speaking everyone has-- until their last breath --time to make that decision. Realistically, over time the heart grows cold and hard, and it is therefore easier to make the right decision when one is young, than on ones death bed-- the bible records only one such conversion, and he died on the cross next to Jesus.

There will only be one denomination in heaven-- one class of people: those who have been made "righteous" by the blood of the holy lamb of God. There will not be any Jewish folk, no Baptists, or Catholics, no gentiles...not a single one. Everyone there will be a child of the King, and HIS name is Jesus. Whether the Jew realizes it or not, his messiah was, according to prophecy, born of a virgin; in the town of Bethlehem; lived a righteous, sinless life; and died a substitutionary-- as in passover lamb --death, that the angel of death would pass over all who applied his blood to the posts and lintels of their hearts.

There are over 660 general prophecies, 333 about Christ-- 109 fulfilled at His first Coming, 224 still to be fulfilled at His Second Coming. Of the 46 Old Testament prophets, less than 10 of them spoke about His first Coming, while 36 of them spoke about His Second Coming. There are over 1,500 Old Testament passages that refer to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. One out of every 25 New Testament verses directly refers to the Second Coming of Christ. For every time the Bible mentions the first Coming of Christ, it mentions His Second Coming 8 times. Jesus refers to His Second Coming 21 times and over 50 times we are told to be ready for His return. Christ’s Second Coming is a major theme in the Word of God.


Upon the cover of this month's NewsMax magazine are emblazoned the words,

"The Jesus Question - Will He Ever Return?"

Two topics said to be covered within are:

  • How secular progressives are "fear-mongering" about Christians
  • Where different denominations stand on the Second Coming

But pointing back to the beginning, there are only TWO classes of people on this earth. Those who are, and those who aren't. The greatest deceit in the world today is conceit of denominational faith... sorry, but there is only ONE denomination, and that is the denomination of "those who are." There is only ONE church. What should "those who are" care about where other denominations stand on the Second Coming? Unless it is to combat the boundless errors propagated by "other denominations"? Let alone the ignorance of secular progressives? And to that appellation, christian progressives are just as insidious in their ignorance and rebellion as are secular progressives... but I'm not going there today.

Further, it stands to reason that if 109 prophecies relating to Christ's FIRST coming have been fulfilled, it stands to reason the others will be fulfilled as well. These prophecies were not written after the fact, but hundreds and thousands of years prior to His birth.

He is coming soon. Every day points to it.

The time to make your choice is now. Today. This instant. Every child of God needs to abandon whatever denominational loyalty they have and focus on Christ and His word. Being a "Holiness" will not gain you entrance, nor will the Catholic church, the Southern Baptists, or the Methodists. NO ONE DENOMINATION will save anyone because denominations are born of arrogance. The Church isn't made up of denominations or even the entirety of those who sit upon the pews. The Church is made up of individual believers, who are filled with the spirit of God, as evidenced by the fruit of the spirit, and the changed lives that result.

Whoever you are, wherever you are. Do not trust your pastor simply because he or she is your pastor. The bible commands you to "try the spirits" to see if they are of God. Trust the Lord that bought you, listen to the spirit that lives in you, read your bible every day, and do the things it instructs you.

There are not, as many contemporary christians believe, many ways to get to heaven. There is only one. Only one man died for your sins, and only one man rose from the dead having PAID your fine. Everyone else is mouldering in the grave, awaiting resurrection... either to life, or eternal damnation and punishment. The Buddha can't save you, Muhammad can't save you, the Pope can't save you, neither can any televangelist. "Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD." --Jeremiah 17:5

There is only one way. And Jesus IS that way. Time is short, and it's high time you made that choice.

He is coming. And soon.