Just a quick thought before I head out to do a show

You have no idea how many things I have either resisted doing or else forced myself to do simply becuase today I am playing Jesus for our last Godspell, Jr show. But I'm supposed to be playing Jesus every day, aren't I? People should think I'm like Jesus all the time. Why don't I think of it that way every other day of the year?

What I Did Today

Everything is blackness.

Well, not everything.

Everything I can see may be black, but my other senses are having the time of their lives. I can smell sawdust, the faint smell that scotch tape makes when it is placed on your face, and my own sweat. All of these sensations are thick, hanging over and around my head. I can feel the rough planks around me. There are only hard angles in this almost-coffin.

The parallel stops my breathing for a minute, but I push it away and breathe deeply. I am not locked inside, unsure though I am of how much air takes up the space around me. I can hear footsteps coming nearer. This is unexpected. I wait for a voice to be attached to the feet that have stopped just in front of me.

"I'm going to move you now."

Before I can respond, I am moving forward faster than I would like. I hope it is forward. After the first few feet, I have lost all sense of direction. The darkness comes to an abrupt stop. I hear the voice (which I now recognize as being named Will) shouting to someone else. His voice slowly leaves the range of my hearing, and I am left once again to myself in the darkness.

Minutes later, another pair of footsteps, another voice. I shall soon emerge.

Et tu, Judas?

So the other night we performed Godspell at the Methodist Church in my hometown. The title of this post is a line that I thought of during the most serious part of the play, and I had spent the last four musical numbers building up emotion for the scene. Then suddenly this line comes to my head and the tiniest bit of mirth surfaces. I hate my mind sometimes. But I pushed it down right away. It would be the perfect line... if it wasn't supposed to be serious.

I prayed before the show, asking God to help make this my best possible portrayal of Jesus (in part because it would be my second-to-last time doing it). As far as I could tell, it was, but we can never please everyone, can we? My sister Sophie cried through the whole finale and afterward because she thought I had actually died. Even when I completely succeed, I feel horrible. Shucks.

Great stuff going down musically lately. heretoday performed at my friend's church, but that was yesterday. And today we're gone. We're talking about doing a Christmas show with lots of Relient K and Trans-Siberan, which should be fun. A few things went wrong, as they always do, but nothing horrible. The sub-par sound quality of the video hopefully disguises the fact that my amp inexplicably stopped working when I switched on the distortion. That's why you can see me playing during the bridge of "Hey" but all you can hear are drums. Emily started the piano solo two beats slow, but Charles saved it halfway through for us. We had a great time, though, and people worshipped. Hooray!

For some stupid reason, the video of the song that we performed virtually flawlessly was corrupted. Ah well. We did okay on this one.

Writing blog!

I've created a new blog, see, and I want you to read it. In fact, I want you to follow it. So don't try to be cool. Just do it.

http://ToughGuysWearBlue.blogspot.com/

It's a place for all of my writing, and that's about it.

I always copy Micah's ideas.

What more can be said?

All Good Things Must Go Up In Flames

The title of this post was going to be the title of a different post, but I never finished it. Right now, I'm thinking that it might be a great title for a thrash metal song. You know, just maybe.

In the last month or so, I have come up with over a dozen different ideas for things I wanted to post about. For some reason, though, this month I could not write a thing. I don't know why. I guess I was just too busy, and when I had time to do it I was busy thinking about other things and never had enough time to really get going.

Now I have a little bit of free time, but I'm just going to write about my life, since all of the complicated blog posts take too much time and effort. At least this post will be posted.

I have had a very musical week. Two of the bands that I'm in have shows coming up and we're rehearsing a lot. One of the bands has a show this Saturday, and the other has one in August. Also, the latest play I'm in is going into tech week, and we still have a lot of songs to run. Oh yes, and my friend Joe Harris and I are working on a musical again! Collaboration for the win!

I'm currently very excited that we finally picked a name for our band (the one that has a show in August). You would think that finding a name would be the least of our worries, but I was kind of bummed that it looked like we would be announced as "The Joseph Lamy Band," which just doesn't have the same ring as "The David Crowder Band" or "The David Matthews Band." I mean, you've got the short vowel repetition, but there's just no name recognition. No offense, Joe.

We're called heretoday, and yes, the "t" is supposed to be a cross. Just wait 'till you see the t-shirts. I'm quite happy with it, because it's short, easy to remember, sound kind of cool, and has spiritual meaning. And, on what I suppose is a more important note, we had a great rehearsal and our songs are sounding great. Finally I feel good about playing them. I still have one harmony that needs practice, but we're practicing again tomorrow night so I should be able to get it. Besides, we have at least three more after that before the show. Fun stuff.

In addition to blogging, I've started work on a novel again. Hooray! I finally found a copy of my book about a homeless college graduate on one of my dad's hard drives. After this post is complete I'll be back to work on that. It's amazing how many edits are required after growing just a year older. I embarrass myself sometimes... but perhaps after some more editing I will post an excerpt or two on here. I don't know, maybe somebody will be interested. We shall see.

And all that pop.

Perspective Post

Hi Everyone,

Jake said on his blog that I had agreed to write a post on perspective from my point of view. I am finally going to make good on that, but the first of three posts on perspective is so annoyingly heady that it really makes more sense to put it on my other blog, "Assuming I Exist." So if you head over to that blog, you can read it, and maybe at some point you can read the children's story I mention in the post. Maybe.

I'm working on a very long and difficult-to-word post.

Hence, nothing new right now. My apologies.

Feelings... nothing more than feelings

I am a very emotional person. This is different than being a feeler, as I've demonstrated two posts ago, but I'm sure it's still in some way related to my brain type. I dunno. It seems like the older I've gotten, the easier it has been to let these emotions out. While adolescence certainly plays a big part in that, it seems more like the catalyst than the constant cause.

Whoa, alliteration. That was actually an accident.

What I mean to say is that while my emotional side certainly came out during adolescence, it looks as if it's going to stay with me for a while. This is probably a shortsighted point of view, but as we know I usually make decisions based on how I feel. And this is how I feel:

That I am emotional. Not emo, just emotional.

That I often make decisions when I am still entrenched in emotions and this often results in poor choices.

That events like Nationals, in which I am taken out of my real life and placed among a tightly-knit group of friends in a unique environment, can be devastating when it ends.

Anyone who was with me last week in SC can probably relate to that last statement. This is admittedly true. But I have noticed that different people deal with it differently. Personally, I cried myself to sleep the night of the afterparty. When I didn't break, that was okay. When my competition was over, I just focused on spending as much time with my friends as I could. The last day of the tournament, I told myself that I'd be a coach again next year and go to plenty of tournaments.

I was fine until about midnight that night. Then my heart began to sink lower and lower until I actually became physically affected. I had to sit down and couldn't talk very much. I smiled a little at people and tried to listen as my friends talked about crazy plans for the new debate resolutions, but I couldn't sense anything other than the overwhelming emotion of the moment.

I went back to my hotel room that night with the same feeling pushing on my chest. I felt a little sick. Jake was a huge pal, he kept my spirits up as well as anyone could. He brought me out of my sadness just enough to keep me alive on the car ride back to our hotel. Jake, I know you won the credit for this blog post already in a game of poker, but you deserve it. Thank you for being a friend and warming my soul. I don't know if I would have made it alone.

Before going to bed I read a post by a friend of mine about his experience with NCFCA, and here's the thing: It wouldn't have affected me in the same way if I hadn't read it right then. See, my emotions can cause me to make bad choices at times, but I believe God also uses them to enhance my perception of His truth. This power can be abused by people who manipulate the emotions of others to cause them to agree with them, but it is also a powerful force for good, and I think we often overlook that fact. If I hadn't read that, I can't vouch for how I'd be right now. Currently, I am enjoying the life I've been placed in and have been taking advantage of all opportunities handed to me. I am loving people, although my mom would prefer if I went to bed right now, so if I'm going to be consistent I should probably wrap this up.

The other thing that has helped me has been distraction. Emotions are powerful things, and if we choose to wallow in them for unhealthy periods of time, they can prevent us from being who God wants us to be. I got back from my trip and was immediately thrust back into everyday life. This may not sound like a good thing, but for me it was.

This is what I often dread about coming back from Nats - the abrupt reentrance into an old, now unfamiliar, almost alien world. On the ride back to meet up with my mom in Rhode Island, I had difficulty remembering where I lived. I kept picturing my old house in the woods. I was worried that I would experience the transition the way I had in previous years: Disillusionment at the unamazing makeup of real, ordinary routine. I usually suffer from "speech withdrawl," a condition in which I usually withdraw from speaking as a result of withdrawing from speech.

However, this year I had one day. One day in which to feel depressed about being ripped away from my life in South Carolina and retreat into a hole. I spent that day planning the things I did today. Today I went to the first rehearsal for Godspell, which was my first musical. The same cast that originally did it two years ago has gotten back together, and this time we can sing! It's a reunion with some new faces, and I saw some people tonight that I hadn't seen in a long time.

Thank you, God, for that. I'm sure it would have been character-building for me to retreat into that hole of depression and rely on You to pull me out, but I know that You don't want me to be that way. You have bigger and better plans for me than that, and I am ready. Let's do it.

Boundless

Time has a habit of hiding his face,

Turning away so as not to be found.

When, to reflect, we turn our gaze around,

He has passed by and left void in his place.

Though we may beckon him, he never stays,

Though we construct our own temporal bounds,

Endless refinement of eloquent sounds

Spanning five years was complete in five days.

I have no methods, nor know I of ways

In which to grasp the elusivist Next,

All I can tell is the Next has begun.

This ought not stop us from searching the haze,

Finding the charges inherent in text,

Don't close your eyes, don't pretend the job's done.

For those who care, this is a Petrarchan sonnet written in dactylic trimeter. It was in part inspired by Jake Johnson.

I'm a Feeler and Proud of It

A note: This post was inspired by Jake Johnson, a fine fellow I might add. Check out his blog and maybe he'll post something new!

Yeah, so about the brain type thing. By virtue of my brain type, which is ENFP, I am not as into understanding and classifying brain types as, say, the aforementioned Jake Johnson, who is an INTJ. However, this past week I went on a road trip with Jake to the NCFCA National Tournament in South Carolina, and the discussion of brain types inevitably came up.

I did notice something interesting and tangible about the whole brain type thing, though. I won't get into the details of how braintypes are defined, because others who know more about it would most likely be correcting my description left and right. If you'd like to find out what your brain type is and possibly become obsessed with it, visit this link. Basically, the "F" part of my brain type means that I am a feeler. I base my decisions upon what feels best, not what is logical.

Before being indoctrinated with brain type theory, I was extremely offended at being labeled a "feeler." Was this implying that I was ruled by emotion and those who were "thinkers" were cold, calculating, logical, intelligent people who only thought logically and were unaffected by emotion? That certainly didn't reflect the real world. Everyone experiences emotion, and I knew I was plenty logical in my thinking.

However, I have now been shown the light. The classification of "feeler" and "thinker" is not so much which we experience, but which we allow to shape our decisions. I could live with that. Yes, it's true. I do base my decisions more on what I feel than on what I think. Often, I will immediately deduce what the most effective or beneficial course of action would be and then abandon it for one that sounds like it would be more fun.

Now for the tangible example of this dichotomy. Jake brought a chessboard on the trip, and I love chess, although I am a notoriously lazy chess player. I immediately deduced that Jake must be a serious player if he brought along a magnetic board designed specifically for playing in the car, and so the best thing to do would be to avoid looking like a fool and not bring up the option. However, playing a game sounded more fun, so I chose that instead.

Of course, he was a serious player and put me in checkmate after a scant number of moves. I expected it, but I did it anyway, and I'm glad I did. The rest of the week we played chess games constantly, and I got better at it. But I did so by realizing my natural tendencies to do what felt best and not think through things first. Every time I went to move a piece, I saw a move that looked elegant or symmetrical and went with that. However, after losing a few times, I decided to consider thinking about what I was doing for more than two seconds.

On the last day of the trip, I played my best game with him. I still lost, but I thought about every move and every move was a legitimate one. He's just better than me, and that's going to be the same way for a while. Currently we're playing long-term games on RedHotPawn.com, in which we have three days to make each move. This is already helping me a lot to tune out my feeler side and tune into my thinker side.

This is but the first of a flood of posts about Nationals... get ready for the rain.

Andrew Cass...

is going to bed.

Andrew Cass...

is tired.

Andrew Cass...

Is giving his impression of Twitter.

A sudden burst of pointless creativity... what else is new?

If wishes were fishes, hunting in a wishing well would be shooting fish in a barrel.
If wishes were my advice, we wouldn't have an overpopulation problem.
If wishes were cell phones, I'd have one.
If wishes were songs with the 1-5-6-4 chord progression, I would go insane.
If wishes were rips in the fabric of the time-space continuum, I would be my own uncle.
If wishes were monkeys banging on typewriters, the big bang theory still wouldn't be plausible.
If wishes were the letter "T," Sesame Street would be a little more predictable.
If wishes were your face... anyway.
If wishes were the best possible response to the question, "does this make me look fat?" I might date more.
If wishes were stale butter, I wouldn't wish for things.

Five days and counting...

So I'm trying to write my graduation speech, and it's not going. How do you thank everybody in three minutes? What kind of a cut-rate production is this?

Discipline.

A note: This post was originally begun in early May and it's taken me until early June to post it. How's this for some irony? The reason it's taken me so long to finish a post about discipline is that for once I've actually been disciplined when it comes to my schoolwork. I have only a few days left to finish it and I'm cramming in lesson after lesson after lesson. I'm finally becoming disciplined in my academics. Maybe now I'll finally become disciplined spiritually. Let's hope so.

Discipline.

D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N.

Discipline.

*DING*

Ten letters.
Big word.
Bigger implications.

Does anyone else feel this way, at this moment? That the thing that's holding them back from what they want more than anything - like, I don't know, let's say... a living, breathing, bleeding relationship with the Everything that created the universe and brings meaning to it - is a lack of discipline? For so long I've felt disconnected from God. Not that God wasn't there - he was always there, and I knew it - but that there was a wall separating me from him. God could have broken down the wall, but he chose to wait patiently for me to figure out how to get over it first. I realize now that the wall in front of me is not something to be chipped at and eventually torn down, but a challenge - something to be climbed, surmounted, with his help. But he isn't about to reach over it and do everything for me. Why? Because that wall is discipline.

In saying that discipline is a wall, I mean that to have any sort of a relationship with God, I need to know him, and I can't know him without discipline. The word "discipline" comes originally from the Latin word disciplina which means "instruction given to a disciple." So discipline is being given instruction and learning from the person who is discipling you. Disciplines are the ways we learn from our discipler. I want to be like the disciples in the Bible; I want to be Jesus' disciple. I want to learn about him, I want to learn how to love him, to follow him, to know him.

So how do I know him? Some of the most basic disciplines we're taught are fellowship with other people attempting to follow Christ, reading of the holy Scriptures, and talking to God one-on-one. (I told my friend once that I talked to God, and he said, "Really? Directly? That's pretty good." He thought he was a psychic.) You know what? The only one of these I do regularly is go to church. I mean, I talk to God all the time, if we define "talking to God" as throwing out words to nobody in particular that I happen to address as God. God hears the words, but we're not having a conversation. I am not listening to him with my spirit, and half the time I'm so busy worrying about meaning what I'm saying that I don't mean what I say. The most embarrassing lack of discipline I am currently displaying is my inability to read my Bible every day. Every time I do, I am so glad I did.

Can I possibly be so busy? No, I really can't. I spend hours every day lying around, playing video games, watching movies that are a complete waste of time (read: watching The Tale of Despereaux), et cetera. I spent the last hour trying to finish this post when I was supposed to be doing math. Sometimes I do nothing but think about how I have nothing to do. Does the thought of talking to God, talking with someone about God, or reading his word cross my mind? Very, very rarely. It seems I have time for everyone and everything but God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are nothing but a comforting thought. Do I engage? Heck no, I'm trying to beat the next challenge on Skate 2.

I spend a lot of time at MCA now, doing homework and whatnot. It's a quieter place than my house, and it's easier to get my subjects done there. How's this for a sad reality? I have no time for God, but I set aside a time every day to work on school all by myself. I even go out of my way to make sure I have a place to work uninterrupted. I seem to be very eager to learn about physics, learn how to love physics, to follow physics, to know physics. I say the same of myself about Jesus, but which one do I follow through on? This is the ultimate truth of my current existence, and it's humilating to say it. It's so humiliating that I can't even say it here. Click on this link so you can go away where I won't see you reading it.

Private schools pwn public schools, although homeschooling does pwn them all. I'm so glad I took a class at MCA this year. The socialization was great, for one thing. Homeschooling does not equal a lack of socialization, but there's something about seeing people almost every day that connects you to them, almost like the way a family works. Sometimes you can't stand one another, but you feel connected to them in a special way because of the amount of time you spend with them. However, the most encouraging thing for me has been the teachers. I have had an experience that is pretty unique, being sort-of a member of the school but in a way set apart. I spend a lot of time, sometimes whole school days at MCA, but I homeschool there, if you catch my drift. I get to talk with them from a different perspective then the full-time students there do. In truth, everyone who goes to that school could see it that way, but it's harder for them to because teachers are the evil people who live to give them more homework. One teacher in particular - I'll call her "Mrs. Longval" - has been an incredible encouragement to me. There's no way I can quantify how much of an encouragement she's been to me, but that's okay. If you ever need an example of someone earnestly seeking after Jesus, look no further.

Lately, we've been discussing teaching, because I really want to become a teacher in some capacity. She says that the being a teacher is basically composed of giving your whole heart to your students and then letting them break it. Wow, that's got to be tough. And I can see it on the faces of all the teachers. That must be something like how God feels when he pours his love into us and we break his commandments to his face. We don't even make an effort most of the time to keep them, never mind keeping an active relationship with him. I want an active relationship more than anything, but I can't get the discipline thing down. I started to tear up as I thought about this, and she asked me if I wanted to pray with her. We prayed, and I felt better, but a few weeks later and I'm still not reading my Bible and I still feel distant from God. Now, maybe I'm being too hard on myself. After all, most good things worth doing require hard work. But then again, the essential things in life, like breaths and heartbeats, come naturally.

It all comes down to the Fall (no pun intended). I believe that a real relationship with God is completely essential. So why isn't it like breathing? That's the thing - it was like breathing for Adam and Eve before they sinned. I was reading the account of the Fall in Genesis chapter 3, and there's a cool passage in verse 8 that reads, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden (Emphasis added)." Now, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems pretty literal to me. Can you imagine this? Adam and Eve literally walked with God physically. How incredible would that be? I'll tell you. Infinitely incredible. And then they had to go and sin. Suddenly God was distant, and is distant, at least in our default sinful state. It's as if our sin actually grips us, holds on to us, and we have to fight that sin nature in order to try to get close to him.

Now, one of the cool things about God is that he uses events in my life to show me his will. Here I am thinking all about discipline, and then a few days later I go on a fine arts field trip with the school to the Community of Jesus Ecumenical Monastic Community in Rock Harbor, Cape Cod. It's a mouthful, but basically it's a modern monastery, convent, and friary all rolled into one. The place is incredible, absolutely incredible. The place is dedicated to the use of the arts to glorify God, and that basically is my alley. My life feels like an Adventures in Odyssey episode where Eugene goes to a monastery to learn about discipline (episode 366, "Solitary Refinement," to be precise). Except that in that show, Eugene actually became a little more disciplined. I didn't get to do any of that solitude stuff. No, we took a guided tour. While it was fascinating to see all of that indescribably beautiful artwork, I didn't get to do what I really wanted to, which was talk to the monks and the nuns there. Not just the cute 20-year-old nun that I developed a short-lived crush on, but as many of them as I could. I wanted to ask them, "How do you do it? How do you keep all of those vows? How can you possibly be so disciplined?" Yes, it's true, monks mess up too - we could tell whenever they did because they did this quick little bow thing to confess to God that they said the wrong words in a Gregorian chant (which I actually got to sit in on - so cool!) or whatnot. But their capacity for obedience seems to be so much greater than mine, at least on the surface. Maybe I should take a vow or something.

Ending this post is difficult, because I'm not at the end. But I may as well wrap it up, because if I wait until I'm at the end, I'll never get to post it. After a month of writing this post, discipline is still a big word to me. If it was a word in the Scripps' National Spelling Bee, I would fail to spell it. Not because I can't spell the word, but because I wouldn't ever get there. I love watching the Spelling Bee on TV - call me weird if you will, and I know you will - but I couldn't do it. I always wanted to do it (the first time I saw it was the year I was too old to compete), but I don't think I would have the discipline. I would rely too much on my natural spelling ability and wouldn't spend enough time learning word roots.

So I'm not disciplined. What do I do? I fight the sin nature inside me. I resist the urge to take the easiest path. I look up word roots. I make an effort. It will be difficult. It is difficult. It might be impossible, or at least infinitely improbable. But I have a penchant for infinitely improbable things.

Discipline. Can I have the etymology, please?

"It's from Latin to French to English."

Discipline. Can you use it in a sentence?

"Andrew decided he needed to become more disciplined in his walk with God."

Discipline. Is it from the Latin disciplina, which means instruction given to a disciple?

"You're on the right track."

Discipline.

D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E.

"That's correct."

Fortunately, unlike the Spelling Bee, God gives us grace. We're allowed to try more than once, and I'm so very happy for that.

Quotes from The Shack...

God: "Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it's because I love you."
Mack: "But then, why is there such an emphasis on you being a Father? I mean, it seems to be the way you most reveal yourself."
God: "Well, there are many reasons for that, and some of them go very deep. Let me say for now that we knew once the Creation was broken, true fathering would be much more lacking than mothering. Don't misunderstand me, both are needed-but an emphasis on father is necessary because of the enormity of its absence."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God: "Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around. You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you. Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. And if left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place. I'm not like you, Mack. I am God. I am who I am. And unlike you, my wings can't be clipped."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God: "When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood. It would be like this bird, whose nature it is to fly, choosing only to walk and remain grounded. He doesn't stop being the bird, but it does alter his experience of life significantly. Although by nature he is fully God, Jesus is fully human and lives as such. While never losing the innate ability to fly, he chooses moment-by-moment to remain grounded. That is why his name is Immanuel, God with us, or God with you, to be more precise."
Mack: "But what about all the miracles? The healings? Raising people from the dead? Doessn't that prove that Jesus was God-you know, more than human?"
God: "No, it proves that Jesus is truly human. Mackenzie, I can fly, but humans can't. Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the firs to do it to the uttermost-the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence."
Mack: "So, when he healed the blind?"
God: "He did it as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God: "A bird's not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would recommend The Shack to anyone with the ability to discern. There are many Biblical inconsistencies and also many things that may or may not be interpreted properly, but in my opinion the things that weren't doctrinally sound stuck out like a sore thumb. Just bring everything back to the Word of God. One thing the book has done for me has been to get me reading my Bible in order to sort out what is truth and what is pure fiction. And besides, if you want to know what to watch out there, there are plenty of book reviews that will tell you what's wrong with it.

"You mean the SWIRLING VORTEX OF TERROR!?" "That's it, dude!" "Of course it is!"

I love Finding Nemo. :)

Anyway, I really enjoy photography. It's one of those things that I would do if I had loads of money to buy quality equipment. As it is, I still enjoy creating art from time to time with our 8 megapixel Canon Powershot from time to time. The other day I had fun leaving the shutter open for a very long time. Witness the power of flashless photography!


Here's me in the swirling vortex of terror. AAH!
Here's when I told the aliens I wanted to know everything... bad idea.

And here are some miscellaneous ones. Boy, is the last one creepy.

A Creative Collision

I'm lame, because I haven't posted something on my blog since May 2nd.

OR

I'm cool, because I've been spending time in the real world having face-to-face communication with physical people. It's all in how you look at it.

The problem is that since I stopped posting, I've started doing a bunch of creative things and have had no outlet for them. I got hooked on vector art after being introduced to it by Micah on his blog, I started recording tons of music with my new Micro BR Digital Recorder, I read The Shack and found a thousand things to quote/debate, I simultaneously started reading Hamlet and actually enjoyed it, and I found out that if I turned off the flash on my camera and spun around really fast I could create a swirling vortex of terror.

In addition, my mind was filled with thousands of thoughts from the deluge of consciousness and I had nowhere to display them. So I'm back. I've been busy the last two weeks, and my blog has fallen to the wayside, but here I am now. Get ready for a sensory overload.

Vector art is oodles of fun, and oodles really is a good word for it. The possibilities are literally (or, at least, virtually) endless. Here are some of my first attempts:

This would be a strange alien structure designed for intergalactic public relations. The silver grabber things field questions and the fake head on the front maintains a placid expression while the real head (green central dome) takes in the questions from the grabber things and computes appropriate lies for questions to which everyone already knows the answer. It then feeds the lies up to the fake head for transmission, while the articulated arms in the back hold reporters hostage while sending coded signals to the vice president out of view of the public. This apparatus was christened "Robert Gibbs" and has now been successfully accepted into Earth government.

My dad instantly dubbed this "modern art," and at first I was defensive, but he's right. It means nothing. I do think art should have meaning, but sometimes it's can just be fun. Besides, I'm sure if you work hard enough you can conjure up some kind of deep meaning within it. One giant red object is in the center of little objects of different colors that are inside of spirals. There's something for you to start with.


This always makes me think of mice. Not computer mice (although I do get that impression as well, for good reason), but the original mouse. I'm not sure why, but the overall impression is that those two red things are mouse. It probably has to do with the combination of the dashes and the squiggly tail-like line, but for whatever reason it is a game of mouse and mouse.

On this dead, mechanical planet, life is impossible. Perhaps at one point it was not, but now no souls may inhabit it and its machines are left to run down and eventually disintegrate. Shavings to shavings, sawdust to sawdust. In this universe, darkness dominates due to the black hole pictured in the upper left corner. Light functions as a shadow of darkness, visible only when an object gets in the way of the darkness to protect it. How twisted is that? Perhaps this is where Robert Gibbs' creators originated. As a note, the tree, although it looks organic, is actually a generator powering the gears that is sheathed in a brown synthetic material. My dad thought it would be cool (and perhaps redemptive) to create a negative (of sorts) of this image, so...


Yes, this the negative. Black is white and white is black. Vector art has turned me into an existentialist nihilist postmodernist. Micah!

More art later.

The Kingpin Wrecking Crew!

Technically, The Kingpin Wrecking Crew is not an existing band. This has been the source of much confusion and distress for me, but I still love them. Or not them, but what they are now. Whatever.

The Kingpin Wrecking Crew, for those who don't know, was an amazing band with an amazing label debut called Abolition Strategy. They were based out of Maine and I had heard of them before watching them open for Sanctus Real at a local concert. But once I saw them live, wow! Their musical innovations were a sound to behold. They managed to be both catchy and original, and the lyrics!

I'm unsure whether the music or the lyrics is the best part of The Kingpin Wrecking Crew, but I'm leaning toward the lyrics. Their songs read like poetry and (gasp) sound like it, too! They find the coolest ways of saying things. For once, I don't get a sense of deja vu while listening to a Christian band.

A couple years ago I was walking through a church where Micah and I were performing Fun With Phone Solicitors to promote NCFCA and I saw a poster for a concert being held at the church later in the year. The members of the band looked eerily familiar.

Wait, wasn't this The Kingpin Wrecking Crew? No, the poster insisted, this was a new band called The Wrecking.

Did they think they could fool me with such a flimsy, see-through disguise? It even had the word "Wrecking" in it. This was definitely my friends The Kingpin Wrecking Crew.

No, the poster patiently corrected me once again, this was The Wrecking.

Okay, so they changed their name. NBD. I still loved them. Oh, and this just in from the poster: they've got a new album out! It was apparently titled A New Abolition. That's funny, both of their albums have the word "Abolition" in them. Well, that's not so unusual. They just like that word or something.

I went home, pulled up the internet, and discovered something shocking.

A New Abolition was horrible. Half-horrible, anyway. It was nothing but a rerelease of six of the songs from Abolition Strategy combined with 5 new cuts by The Wrecking. The Kingpin Wrecking Crew was gone. The Wrecking was here.

And no, it's not just semantics. From what I could tell in the 30-second iTunes previews, everything that made The Kingping Wrecking Crew awesome was not in those 5 new tracks. I'll get into that in more detail in a moment, but let's get back to the future. Since The Kingpin Wrecking Crew became The Wrecking, I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Abolition Strategy. Yes, A New Abolition has half of the good songs, but some of my favorites aren't on there. I didn't want to waste money buying half the songs if I could buy the original album.

Recently, a family who took our speech class gave Micah and I some gifts. I received The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and an Amazon.com gift card. Now not only did I know how to land a plane if my pilot was knocked unconscious, but I also had the opportunity to fulfill my materialistic desires.

Wonder of wonders! Miracles of miracles! Abolition Strategy was used on Amazon.com! Yes! Yes! Finally! After years of searching! Quick, push "add to cart!"

...And then I looked at the price tag. Unfortunately, I had already purchased a book of Keith Green sheet music (admittedly, a choice I was very glad I had made), and didn't have enough money to buy the album. So close! Then I noticed that you could purchase tracks on the newer A New Abolition individually. I had just enough money to purchase all of the Abolition Strategysongs.

You'd think after all this waiting I'd be able to wait a little bit longer. But no, I hadn't ever counted on actually having this sort of situation at my fingertips. Besides, there wasn't anything else I wanted to buy with the small amount of money left on my giftcard, so... why not?

I did it. I caved. I bought the songs. I was so happy. A few minutes later, I started thinking, "You know, these guys are so good that their new stuff can't be that bad. So I caved again and bought the rest of the album. Bad idea. The stuff really was horrible. They sounded like every other U2 soundalike Christian rock band, borrowed everything from their other songs but did it worse, and were uber repetitive. I mean, really!

And the writing was bad! NOOOO!! Okay, I know Doug Elder can write better than that. Here's a sample of his writing from The Waiting:

So much of this sickness,

Far too much to witness

I wish a God-shaped fist would fix this

Reality breaks you every day

Yes I know you're dying dear,

Drowing deep inside your fear,

The same this time as every year

There's no joy in these darkest of days

When stumbling blocks get used in foundation

The downward spiral of a nation

First comes a bloodbath

And after that the aftermath,

But Jesus hears the accusation

I know you're waiting there for me

Across the deepest water

Beyond everything I can see

Life is short, but time is shorter

Remember to never surrender your colors

Like towers you know that we stand together

We shine the light in the darkest of cellars,

We're searching out voices we hear forever

March on soldiers, you know you belong

We kick the dark 'till it bleeds the dawn

We'll never forget you, the beat goes on

We'll strangle out screams 'till they bleed out songs

Try, act, move, don't relax, win

Decisively break what don't fit in

Trust and now wait expectantly for reply, swim

Turn corners and dive

Deep into water that's breathable,

Deep into water that's alive, shh

I think something's about to happen,

The conductor's hands are held high

I know you're waiting there for me

Across the deepest water

Beyond everything I can see

Life is short, but time is shorter

Pure poetry. Now here's a sampling from Sights and Sounds:

Closed doors suddenly start to open,

This healing comes so beautifully to the broken,

You're all around, more real than sights and sounds

I fall for you, I feel my feet leave the ground

You're all around

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without you here beside me

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without your hand to guide me

Lost life suddenly is revived

This future calls so beautiful and open wide

You're all around, more real than sights and sounds

I fall for you, I feel my feet leave the ground

You're all around

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without you here beside me

I know you surround me, and suddenly I see

That I'm lost without your hand to guide me

That's it. How did they get from that to this? Now, don't get me wrong, I listen to stuff much more simplistic than that, and I'm fine with it. It's only when I know they can do so much better that I get mad. It's a fine song, so long as they mean it, but I have trouble believe that they worked hard on that. What probably happened is their label didn't think they were accessible enough and told them to make something a little easier to understand and catchier.

The music is stupid. Just the same chords that everybody plays, with no variance, except what's copied from their first album and watered down. So all I can do is listen to the lyrics, and there's nothing there to hold onto. Basically, it's forgettable. So I'm going to make some money and then buy the original album, even though it has songs I already own now. This post is such a waste of time because I can't show you any of the music. I can't any good songs to stream anywhere. So much for the web being a bottomless resource! Seriously though, if you're interested I'd love to show you some of their music sometime. I'll bring it to Nats, how's that? And for once I can say with a clear conscience that you should definitely buy this album. Abolition Strategy, that is. If you don't want to buy it used on Amazon like I'm going to, the good songs on A New Abolition are as follows:

The Reel to Real

The New Jerusalem

March On

The Waiting

In Your Eyes (Cover of a Peter Gabriel song)

Burn the Bridges

The only one of the new stuff that I can recommend is Inside. It's nowhere near as their oldstuff, but it's pretty good. I like it. Don't love it, but it's okay. Buy Abolition Strategy if you can.

Isn't this sad? My longest post to date is a music rant. It took me multiple hours to write and I'm not sure if it was worth it. But I have to rant to somebody, and you were the only one available to me today. I hope you don't mind.

5 Stupid Things I've Done Recently:

1. Eating Smuckers apple jelly with a spoon because it was free at the restaurant and I had no money.

Lesson learned after realized how disgusting fake jelly is: The best things in life are free... as well as some of the worst things.

2. Jumping off of someone's roof so people wouldn't think I was dumb. Yeah, That helped.

Lesson learned after getting mud all over the side of the house by climbing up it: Don't succumb to peer pressure, especially always.

3. Forgetting to put more steering fluid in the car before leaving the house.

Lesson learned after being forced to drive without power steering: In reality, I have no control over that giant hulking mass of metal.

4. Trying to watch City Slickers 2 with the little kids.

Lesson learned after hurriedly pressing "mute" and then switching off the TV altogether: When it comes to movies, hindsight isn't 20/20.

5. Getting older way too fast.

Lesson learned after realizing that I'm graduating in just over a month: I gotta stop doing that!

Micah has some competition.

This guy is insane.

Just a thought... but that's what blogs are for!

I love being able to talk to people about random stuff whenever I want and be presented with the illusion that someone is listening.

I was at a little league baseball game today and one of the coaches walked by the bleachers talking to a kid who was helping ump the game. The kid pointed out that his dad was the umpire behind the plate, and the coach said something to the effect of, "Hey, whoa, what, I, uh, didn't even... yeah, hey!"

It was the ultimate verbal fumble. Good thing he didn't coach football. I do it all the time, of course, but at that moment I thought to myself, "Wouldn't things run a lot more smoothly if everybody said exactly what they were trying to say?" Basically, wouldn't it be better if everyone did NCFCA or something equivalent? I mean, think of how much time we could save, how much miscommunication we could avoid if everyone communicated perfectly.

But then I started listening to a conversation between a few kids who were practicing their swings. It was so cool! They were talking about absolutely nothing and getting on each other's collective nerves, but wow. I started tuning into the conversations around me one at a time, drinking in the completely unique combinations of words.

Most of them had been made before, but the pauses, the inflections, the pitches (no baseball pun intended) - it was like music. Words are like music, really. That's why I love being a writer. Coming up with new ways to say things is so much fun.

I thought of a better way to say all of this last night, but I didn't have time to complete and post this.

Sometimes I wish God had put a "Save" button on our heads so that we could keep a record of all of our thoughts and share them with others exactly as they came to us, before getting muddled and half-forgotten at best. My blog posts would be so much more interesting and so much more honest. They would actually reflect the things I was thinking.

The written word is great, but there's something about the spontenaity of human conversation (or at least the potential for spontenaity) that's fascinating and an incredibly complex result of God's infinite creativity. There may be no original thought, but original sentences are still thriving. I'll prove it to you:

Candles in pheremones; torque your inward purples.

See? No one's ever said that before. I made sure of it by pluralizing purple.

I don't think I've ever made the most of a day. I don't think I've actually ever lived a day as if it were my last... except maybe 9/11. I was seriously certain that the world was going to end that morning. The great thing is that God is so merciful. Today he gave us another day, another chance. Hopefully he'll give us another one tomorrow, because I almost completely wasted this one.

I was thinking about that and I recorded this. 30-second folk renditions of praise songs based on Bible verses FTW!

Download Andrew Cass - This Is The Day

The survey says...

According to Googlism, a fun site I just discovered, I am a lot of things I didn't know about. Google Fight is fun, but you can't really post about it in a blog. Googlism, though, is mad quotable. So here are a few facts about Andrew:

Andrew is a hot tan stud.

I love Googlism.

Andrew is a hit with the ladies in Chile.

So undeniably true.

Andrew is a wonderful and dedicated teacher.

Andrew is involved in a number of charity organizations.

Andrew is a public servant.

Andrew is cool.

Andrew is beautiful.

Andrew is the best.

Andrew is basically a perfect creature.

Yes, yes, yes.

Andrew is a Springsteen fan with a fascination of aquatic and marine life.

Um...

Andrew is in the confederate flag.

What!?

Andrew is the costliest natural disaster to date.

You've got the wrong Andrew!

Andrew is your single source for complete antenna repair.

Still the wrong one.

Andrew is a working hairdresser at the cutting edge of his industry.

Nope... well, maybe someday. And now, some examples of outdated information on the web that proves Schulyer Wolf's persuasive correct.

Andrew is 1 month old.

Andrew is 11 months old.

Andrew is 9 years old.

Andrew is 11.

Andrew is 13.

You're close, keep going!

Andrew is 24.

Wait, no...

Andrew is 40.

Oh, please stop. That hurts.

Andrew is approximately 319.

You're way off track now.

Andrew is a champ.

That's more like it.

Andrew is waxing megalomaniacal again.

Sorry.

Andrew is either very optimistic or very naive.

You're right, you're right.

Andrew is blatantly dishonest.

All right, I deserved that.

Andrew is evil.

I'm trying to change.

Andrew is graduating.

Oh, you had to bring that up.

Andrew is still not sure what the future holds.

You're telling me.

Andrew is an able speaker.

Well, there is that.

Andrew is nationally renowned for his rich warm voice.

I don't know if I'd go that far. Nationals isn't until June, anyway.

Andrew is designed and intended to glorify God.

Wow. Wow, Googlism, that is really profound. Thank you for reminding me.

I start out trying to goof off and and I'm reminded by a search engine of a timeless spiritual truth. God is really working lately. Of course, he's been working the whole time, but I'm just beginning to open my eyes.

I picked the perfect time to start blogging!

Why?

Because I'm so emotional lately.

Why?

Because of everything that's happened to me lately.

Why?

You ask a lot of questions, buddy.

To put it in a nutshell that it does not deserve and that cannot possibly contain everything that has transpired within the last few years to bring me to this point... God has been doing a lot in my life. It came to a head during senior speeches at Regionals, and, in typical God fashion, it came to a second head last night.

I invited about a dozen people to come judge at the NCFCA Regional Tourney, and only one of them actually came - my youth pastor, Jared. He's awesome, and I knew he'd come. He was only able to come the last day, though, so he didn't have to judge. So he followed me around for hours as I went back and forth from room to room, supposedly to compete in three different events at once. (Remember when Mrs. Hudson talked about how nobody was going to have to do that? I was the "maybe one" person she conceded to.) It took forever and a round, but I finally got through all of my events and Jared was able to see all of them.

After watching my dramatic, he caught me outside the room and told me he would like me to perform it on Sunday night after he gave the message. A chance to take my skillz outside of competition? Yes, thanks! So I did. After I finished, Jared came back up onto the stage and I could see tears in his eyes. "Every time I see that speech..." he began.

My initial reaction was, "Yeah! I got somebody to cry!" I know that shouldn't always be the goal of a DI, but I consider it a great acheivement whenever I, a funnyman, get people all emotional.  I was feeling mighty fine until I heard the words that followed from my pastor's mouth:

"...I think, there are so many people out there who are more broken than I am."

It wasn't about me. Not one bit. Suddenly I felt smaller than small. Suddenly I wasn't even there. Then people started turning towards me and clapping for my performance. Oh, come on. Don't do that. Don't even start.

I understood a little bit more what God wants me to do. In that room, no one was critiquing my speaking. Nobody was checking my memorization or judging my characterizations. They were simply drawn into the story, and God was speaking to them through my words and my actions. People started thinking about the thing I always had to remind myself I was speaking about - the persecuted church.

Jared wasn't crying because of what a moving speech I had given. He was crying because of what I was speaking about. God had used me and I hadn't even realized he was doing it. I was too busy thinking about how I was "moving up" and "expanding" and how God had "opened a door". I hadn't even considered why God had opened the door. I assumed it was so people could marvel at the fantabulous communication skills I had honed for the past 5 years. Nope. God had opened a door for an infinitely more important reason.

So God is working in me, and when he works in me I get emotional, and when I get emotional. Hence the post.

I've been wondering, what's wrong with emotion? Being a teenager, I know I'm a little biased right now. But the only danger I can see in emotion with our relationship with God is that we can start seeking him for the emotion, or, to put it a different way, we can start getting emotional for the sake of how cool it feels to get emotional. Goosebumps, et cetera. But emotions, at least for some of us, follow naturally from a true love relationship. It can also be an outward sign of that relationship to a world wondering why we're different. It shouldn't be the only sign, but it's a valid one, I think.

What do you feel is your biggest area of strength?

I'm filling out a job application right now and that's the question I have to answer in roughly two lines of text. Oh, please. I'm already skipping questions and planning to go back to them later. You have to ask this question!

Am I strong in any area? I'm funny, sometimes, with the right people if I'm on a roll. I don't think that's what they're looking for, and it would be pretty sad if that was my biggest strength. But I've got to put something down. I don't see the point of asking such a roundabout question. They don't actually want to know what my biggest strength is, they just want to gauge my response. But if I answer honestly and say my biggest strength is honesty, what do they do with that? In order to be effective, the question really requires some dishonesty. But in that way it's completely self-defeating.

I think I may be reading too much into this question. I tend to do that with applications. My answers are often overly complex and tell little about me except that I am eager to please and read too much into their questions. But how can I possibly answer the question and acheive a good result. In all likelyhood, the answer to the question won't hardly factor into their decision at all. But if I go by that logic and give a lousy answer, it will end up affecting their decision.

To be honest, a bunch of qualities instantly spring to mind. But they are instantly shot down because they all refer to how I am around other people. Let's face it, I'm usually a pretty nice guy outside my home. But around the house I can be a monster and frequently am. I yell and sometimes scream at my brothers, talk back to my mom, ignore my dad and get mad over the stupidest things. When someone is annoying me and other people whom I want to impress are watching, I am patient to the nth degree and then some. I have zero patience, however, when no one is around to watch me blow up. I'm caring and compassionate towards my family, my friends, and I have a vague sense of compassion for the world, but I care about myself a quintillion times more.

Let's face it. I'm a self-centered, self-serving, aggressively hateful broken-down machine. But you knew that already, and so did I. I listen to Steriogram. I'm a mess! So we've established that, but let's be real. The people who came up with this application form already knew that too. Why in the heck did they write the question, then? Just to make me further aware of my inadequacy and be spurred to write this?

No, of course not. They put the question in because they were writing a job application form and everyone puts that question in their job application forms. I guess the most honest answer I can give is that I'm compassionate and enjoy helping people. That'll sell me for a teaching position. I just hate applications in general.

Here are some lyrics about getting older. This is how I've been feeling all year and especially this week. Reading these words makes me want to stay up all night and drive down to the oval to feed cripples. Why did I waste so much of my life? Tomorrow I'm going to do something worthwhile, I promise. You hold me to that, okay?

We can't go to sleep

'Cause we'll wake up older,

We can't let these nights

Steal away half our lives.

-Sanctus Real, "Half Our Lives."

Christian's Glasses

My youngest brother's glasses came in today. As you can probably tell, he isn't very happy. We keep telling him that he looks great in them and people will think he's even smarter than he already is, but the change is just too much for him to handle. I can't blame him. At his age, he shouldn't have to deal with that all of a sudden.

Christian's eyesight problems came as a shock to us - we only just found out this month that he's had terrible vision all of his life. I never would have known it, but he's spent all eight years of his life seeing blurry pictures (he completely flunked the vision test... had to guess at the second line of letters). He's always seemed to view things normally, though he always did sit too close to the TV and the computer. We warned him that it would affect his vision, but what we didn't know was that it was already affected and he was compensating. Another reason we didn't realize was that he started reading at an early age and always read very well.

He cried for a long time after the eye doctor told him he would need glasses. He told me after calming down a little that when he picked out his glasses, he just picked a random pair. He didn't care what he had, because he didn't want to wear them. He got angry today after we received them and refused to put them on for a while. I think he looks great in them, but he says he hates how they look. I think what he mostly hates is the fact that he'll have to wear them almost all the time and doesn't have a choice.

I've always thought that glasses were cool and wished I could wear them. In reality, though, I'm sure I would feel restricted just like him. Earlier today, when he refused to put on his glasses (which he is thankfully now getting more used to wearing), God showed me something about my life which I thought was pretty cool. I don't know if you'd call it a silver lining, but it's something positive that's come from Christian's unhappiness.

When Christian first put the glasses on, his eyes weren't corrected right away. In fact, if they're ever 20/20, we don't know when. The doctors are hoping for at least 20/30. So he's really discouraged, because his vision isn't any better and now he's got all these things he has to do to make sure his glasses don't get damaged. He always has to keep the glasses on, and he doesn't get to see the results.

Life as Christian is now analogous to life as a Christian. We strive to be like Christ, but it doesn't happen instantly. It takes time. We don't know when we'll be perfected, and in the meantime we have a bunch of rules we have to follow. Not to mention we have to put on the armor of God and keep it on all the time. We won't see the results of our good works until heaven, but we have to persevere in the hope that one day our vision will be like His: perfect. When our vision lines up with his, all will be right. Just like Christian needs his glasses, we Christians need Christ to help us see.

There's something this analogy doesn't cover, though. Christian doesn't have a relationship with his glasses. However, he does have a relationship with Jesus. Even if his never improved (thank you God, it will), his life would still be preserved for all eternity.


See? He looks great when he smiles. :)