Internet, I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of my automotive harem, Teresa.

[ more pictures ]

Rob has started a blog.

“Thinking Is Too Hard. That’s why I’m so thankful for the Washington Education Association, the only union I’ve ever been forced to join if I want to work in this state loved. They do all the thinking for me!” (>>)

“The new record is called Moonlighting. The title has to do with the place music has come to take in our lives… music used to be the main thing… Now we’re all responsible, married, working guys who play in a rock band sorta on the side… we’re not full-time rock star wannabe’s anymore, but family guys who moonlight as musicians.” (>>) [PDF]

“It was one of those moments where the sun is shining and the leaves are all aglow and you catch yourself. You’re not thinking about the past or the future or anything really besides being in the moment.” (>>)

“Attending school with students drawn from the upper reaches of the socioeconomic spectrum, I was acutely aware that our cars sucked, at least in the collective opinion of my peers, the only opinion that mattered to me back then.” (>>)

“I am not old enough to be anchored by material possessions. I have a truck. That is about it. So I speak without the benefit of real knowledge. Had I a family, I might think differently. A home is an expensive thing. A family lifestyle is expensive. Vacations are expensive. I think that all of these things can be considered necessary. Still, every possession is an anchor. When we have too many of them, we move sluggishly. Soon, we have so many anchors, we simply don’t move at all. I am not one to say that Christians shouldn’t have nice cars or toasters. I will say, however, that a nice car and a toaster are not needed to do what God wants us to do. And, should we purchase these things, we mustn’t excuse ourselves by believing that God would want us to have them. I don’t believe that God cares whether we have nice things. I believe He cares about whether we are obeying Him.” (>>)

“I want to remember the fun things we did, the way we were so comfortable. To remember how we picked up smooth worn rocks on the beach for hours and went away with our pockets bulging. The way we felt on our first date. The time we raked leaves and then the wind picked up so much our efforts became futile and we found ourselves crumpled in laughter beside our empty leaf bags not even caring anymore that we couldn’t finish the job. How you asked for me when your mom died because it was me that you wanted with you. The time we ate bad pizza and got super sick together in my tiny one-bathroomed house. That laugh you have when you’re tired and everything is hilarious.” (>>)

“Ah, when you hear the author start questioning the basic meaning of existence, it can only ‘mean’ one thing: yes, it’s ‘existentialism week’ here at Correction. Stay tuned for my three-part series for writers called, ‘Can you Camus?’ and all through September, Saturdays are ‘Sartredays’!” (>>)

made my day

“Avi called me the ‘Analyst’ (as he said it, the ‘Ana-LEEST’), mocking my tendency to gather all relevant data, weigh both sides, develop a critical framework and then analyze and apply before making a decision. Avi had a point, but only to a point. I could never rapidly trade in-and-out of stocks on rumors and innuendo, as he did very successfully, but then I lived for deep understanding, of which he had none.” (>>)

It’s not the song you listen to in the car on the way to work, or the one you play in your head while pretending to listen to the pointless conversations that surround you. It’s the song you put on repeat in the middle of the night when you’ve run out of distractions.

This time be different

You lie down on the floor, in the dark, and let it haunt you.

Don’t go

It lures the memories out of the recess of your soul, gently, slowly. The warmth she gave. The warmth you ached for. The warmth she stole.

Please stay

The song keeps playing, but you’re not tired. This song will never end.

“We must take these threats seriously before they fully maternalize.” (>>) [WMV]

“…there comes a time when you’re tired of your own foolishness. Like a glutton sitting at an all-you-can-eat-buffet, even self-indulgence will eventually become sickening. I’ve come to the abrupt realization: a life that is all about me is not important enough for me to give my life to. I don’t need my life to be all about me. I don’t even want my life to be all about me. But I desperately desire something important enough for which to give all my life.” (>>)

“If you’re a nerd, you can understand how important clothes are by asking yourself how you’d feel about a company that made you wear a suit and tie to work. The idea sounds horrible, doesn’t it? In fact, horrible far out of proportion to the mere discomfort of wearing such clothes. A company that made programmers wear suits would have something deeply wrong with it.

“And what would be wrong would be that how one presented oneself counted more than the quality of one’s ideas. That’s the problem with formality. Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as ‘suits.’

“Nerds don’t just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.” (>>)

“Nerds tend to eschew formality of any sort. They’re not impressed by one’s job title, for example, or any of the other appurtenances of authority.

“Indeed, that’s practically the definition of a nerd. I found myself talking recently to someone from Hollywood who was planning a show about nerds. I thought it would be useful if I explained what a nerd was. What I came up with was: someone who doesn’t expend any effort on marketing himself.

“A nerd, in other words, is someone who concentrates on substance. So what’s the connection between nerds and technology? Roughly that you can’t fool mother nature. In technical matters, you have to get the right answers. If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can’t finesse your way out of trouble by saying that your code is patriotic, or avant-garde, or any of the other dodges people use in nontechnical fields.” (>>)

“Sometimes, my boyfriend’s feet smell. Sometimes, he forgets to brush his teeth before he goes to bed. I never get flowers as often as I feel I so brattily deserve. He doesn’t understand why dishes have to be done every single friggin’ night. I think he watches too much television. I wish he hated lap dances as much as I do. Have I settled? Have I compromised my values? Is it time for me to get my profile back up on pickmeplease.com?” (>>)

“You’re part of their strategies, you’re partisan hacks… To do a debate would be great, but that’s like saying professional wrestling is a show about athletic competition… You’re doing theater when you should be doing debate.” (>>)

“When I used to see Norman holding Fr David’s hand, and the way this priest treated this wreck of a man, with totally unaffected tenderness and respect it used to make me feel really choked. It seems silly to be sentimental about it, Fr David certainly wasn’t, but even now if I visualize it it makes me fill up. I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s partly because I know I couldn’t do it. I’d have been too embarrassed, too selfconscious, too scared that someone like Norman would demand more and more attention. I could never forget myself enough to meet the need of this human being. But for Fr David it was automatic. It was natural to the man to give himself, not to be embarrassed, not to care about the smell. It was instinctive to him to give time and practical love to the least acceptable person in the parish.” (>>)

“But one thing that many people overlook in the first instance is that the writer of II Timothy was not referring to the New Testament at all. Nor was he even referring to the Old Testament in the form we now have it. ‘The Scriptures,’ for this writer, were the scrolls that were collectively agreed upon as the Holy Scriptures of their time, which do roughly (but not exactly) equate to the Old Testament texts, but could not include the New Testament as much of it hadn’t been written yet, and those parts which had had not yet been agreed upon as ‘Scriptures.’ It most certainly was not referring to II Timothy!!” (>>)

Kanye West has a new remix [MP3] of Jesus Walks out. This one features Mase and is damn good.

“It’s like the pursuit of happiness – if you set out to become happy, you’re almost guaranteed to miss it entirely. Happiness usually arrives when you’re busy applying yourself to something else.” (>>)

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your rewards will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (>>)

“One man from my church said to me following a Sunday evening service, ‘You couldn’t have been in that room tonight and not felt the presence of God!’ I wanted to respond, ‘I was there tonight, sir, and all I felt was the thump of the bass drum…’ ” (>>)

The Strangerhood is a new machinima series from the same guys who make Red vs. Blue. It uses the Sims 2 engine, whereas RvB uses the Halo engine. A trailer [QuickTime] for Strangerhood is on their site, if you’re interested in checking it out.

“It is the self-righteous person who takes pride in abstaining from that which is not evil. I might as well take Christian pride in an abstinence from eating peanuts – for they are the moral equivalent of a beer. And with self-righteousness, comes a haughtiness with which he of the ignorant conscience actually comes to look down on those of stronger faith, those whose consciences do not bind them in the same manner.” (>>)

“That is the feeling that follows me everywhere I walk. I have had it since I was very young. It is a voice that says, ‘They are out to get you, Schwab. They are just waiting for the opportune moment so they can leap from the shadows and spring upon you.’ I never know when the conspiracy will manifest itself, but it is there, lurking and growing among the people who I am supposed to trust the most.” (>>) [PDF]

“Forcing myself into objectivity, I must confess that the volume of my criticism is not so much directed at the church as it is at my own despondency, having realized that to know church is not necessarily to know God; that they are two separate institutions and one is the agent, or rather an agent, that takes a person to the other. And at this realization I began to consider, in the throes of dejection, that perhaps I do not know God.” (>>)

“Cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars of overtime pay, Wal-Mart employees in 28 states have filed lawsuits. In New York, several hundred delivery workers at the Gristedes supermarket chain just won a $3.2 million settlement; they were paid less than $3 an hour for shifts lasting 10 to 12 hours a day. Similar suits are pending against the national drugstore chain Eckerd and the uniform company Cintas, both of which allegedly misclassified their employees as ‘salaried’ in order to avoid paying overtime to those who work more than 40 hours a week. Employers have noticed the trend, and they’re taking measures to shield themselves. Companies like Circuit City, Waffle House, and Labor Ready are demanding that their employees waive the right to pursue employment-related claims in court. Under these waivers, known as mandatory dispute resolution agreements, workers must resolve any work-related legal claims against their employers through private arbitration.” (>>)

It’s an all-Oldies weekend here on KBBL, the Random. Coming up next we’ve got I Fall to Pieces by Patsy Cline, Tired of Being Alone by Al Green and Wouldn’t it be Nice by the Beach Boys.

“I’m pretty insulated when it comes to relationships. I give the keys to my heart to a select number of people. If you don’t have a key, you can’t hurt me. I’m very good at this. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you. It doesn’t mean I can’t relate to you and even be a friend. But you can’t hurt me if you don’t have a key, no matter what you say. That’s how I survive…” (>>)

“I am a comfortador.”