Derailed Thoughts

Not As Big a Proposal As Eating Babies.

July 20th, 2008 - 1 Comment

In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” a solution is presented to world hunger. He suggests that since much of the population dies young, and as overpopulation is a growing problem in the world, babies should be used as a source of food. Babies like the larger one pictured to the right could easily feed a family for days.

I have a much smaller proposal to make. It’s very unrelated. So unrelated, in fact, that you might correctly infer that I just wanted to use a crazy title to see if people would read this.

Facebook provides us with a great place to keep in touch with friends wherever they may wander in the world, and it has become the worst addiction that I currently entertain. Every page on Facebook has been carefully engineered to quickly catch you up on friends’ lives: The home page gives us a quick update on the lives of our acquaintences (a somewhat cold update from time to time–”John Erickson is now single” with a little broken heart next to it); friends’ pages are continuously updated with all of their activities on facebook, facilitating easy stalking with the click of a button; status updates allow us to see, if not our friends’ actual emotional or locational status, the latest brain fart that resulted from it. All of this is great fun.

There is one way, however, that I think facebook has gone a step or two too far. I realized this the other day as I was looking through a friend’s page and noticed a wall post that interested me. To find out the background on the post, I clicked “Wall-to-Wall” and read the past conversation. Since the conversation was sparse and went back for more than a year in just a few lines, I quickly learned some facts that I didn’t know; though they weren’t dark enough to be hidden from the public domain, these were things of the past that I’m sure this person wouldn’t have liked brought up. As you are reading this, it will be more fun for you to pretend I was on your page, and that I just read some set of desperate or angry wall posts that you wrote back in the day and forgot about (until now when I mention them). Those are the ones. I read them. Spooky.

How many times have you clicked on the Wall-to-Wall button? It looks pretty innocent, just sitting there underneath a wall post. I think you’ll agree with me, though, that 50 percent of the time, you end up feeling a bit creepy after reading through a conversation you were never a part of.

At the very least, we need to all keep in mind the fact that others’ conversations, although they may strangely choose to post them out in public, are still somehow private. I think any one of us would be weirded out to have some random acquaintence from a class three years ago reading through a set of posts to a recent ex (or maybe having a recent ex reading through conversations to an attractive acquaintence we just remembered from class three years ago, also weird).

Therefore, I propose that Facebook change the Wall-to-Wall button to the “Rudely Eavesdrop” button. While functionality will remain, we will be at least reminded that we are being creepy before we make the mistake of reading through others’ notes.

A much better idea than eating babies, I’d say.

Randomness

July 18th, 2008 - 1 Comment

I stinking love nights like tonight. There is nothing better than going out and doing random things.

First, we drove to the store and bought stuff for a Pina Colada shake, came home and made it (and it was the best shake that has ever shook). Then I met a girl from California via text messaging (never done that before. Neat!). We went to my basement and had a jam session with Chris on piano, Matt and I on guitar (I’m so happy I have two guitars now–my two conveniently pictured at the right) and learned how to play Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run (second best song ever). Then we finished off the night at Draper Days, watching a band that apparently used to be famous, but I had never heard of–Herman’s Hermits. Apparently Google has heard of them. So here they are.

How can you beat that? To me, nothing is better than doing something new. I live for days like this.

Living in the Present

July 16th, 2008 - No Comments

This post will be focused on how my faith in God helps me day to day, so it might be a little serious :) Bear with me.

Today has been an amazing day–every second of it has been spent doing something useful or fun (with the exception of the ten minutes I spent trying to fit a bicycle into my car. That could have gone more smoothly). I love days like that! What’s best about today, though, is that it was a day that I felt entirely free of worry. I finished everything on my little Palm Pilot to-do list, and I felt at peace with myself.

I have to admit–I’m a worrier. Always have been. I don’t know if that’s a genetic thing or not, but I know that for as long as I can remember, I’ve always worried about the least important details of life. Some days, I have so many small pressures weighing down on me (at least my mind decides I do) that I will stop and sit to plan my course of action for 30 or 40 minutes. Often, I then worry some more and re-plan the whole thing.

On days like today, I’m able to look at my worrying self and realize what a waste of time worry is. As a matter of fact, this tool of forceful fear is one of the many tools used by the Adversary to stop man’s progression and to limit his use of agency. In The Screwtape Letters, the master devil Screwtape instructs his student Wormwood to clutter his assigned human’s mind with regrets from the past, and with worries about the course of the future–action in the present must be avoided.

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity… Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present…thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.

Nothing is more helpful to the Adversary’s plan than worry’s catatonic state of fear. If the bible dictionary teaches that “doubt and fear are opposed to faith,” then the adversary must rejoice to see us fretting over the course of the future.

One simple fact remains–the future is not ours to control. While we may choose in the present (against Screwtape’s wishes) to mold a character that can continue life in greater strength, and while we may strive to do those things that we know are good and right, the entire course of the future is determined by the hand of God.

I write this now mostly for my future benefit, but maybe also for the benefit of anyone who might read this post feeling the same feelings of worry I often feel: God does have a plan. I don’t feel myself walking down the path he has already laid for me every day, though I wish that I was perfectly in tune enough to do so. Every so often, though, the Spirit comes strongly enough that each of us is able to poke through the veil and see a bit more. I think every one of us has had moments when we feel that greater plan rolling forward, and greater power watching over us–some call it fate, but I define it as a loving Father. I know He is there, and that he has no other object in mind but your and my greatest eventual happiness. Because He loves us, He will fulfill His promises to you and me, and He will be there every step of the way. The Psalmist wrote, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

Worries will always come, just as they always have. From here on, however, I think I’m going to stop listening to them–I’m more interested in living in today.

Family Vacation

July 15th, 2008 - 1 Comment

After about five days on a vacation, I start to get grumpy. Vacation is a great thing and all, but after you eat too much of it you just don’t want anymore. I feel ready to work again, ready to meet some new people that I’ll be able to see again when the day is over. Therefore, I’m excited and happy to be home.

That being said, though, this last family vacation was a blast while it lasted, and I was grateful to grow a little closer to my family.

Mom and Maegan flew to California to start their vacation a week early, and Dad left on Friday to road trip the whole way. Ryan and I got to go the fun way–We started our Saturday with a flight into Oakland, picking up the BART (Bay Area Rapid Train… I think. Or Big Awesome Railed Trucks.) to San Francisco. We killed a few hours wandering around the city–got some pizza, took a trolley to the Pier, and taxied our way down to the train station. We took the Caltrain to San Jose, where our Dad happened to arrive within 5 minutes of us (behold our awesome planning skills). The rest of the trip to Monterey was a beautiful road trip in a white Nissan hampster ball (that sums up my thoughts of long car drives). What a cool way to get to California, though!

Monterey is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Although you quickly run out of things to do in Carmel (Tetris against my sister became a quick favorite… I won), nothing can compare with spending a little time watching the waves crash on the shore. The beaches of Monterey are one of God’s masterpieces, and there is something powerful to be felt there. My favorite place in the world, as a matter of fact, is a little rock just south of bird rock. While spending a little time with my dad, I found out that one of his favorite places in the world happens to be a mile South of mine–another rock high above the beach, on a cliff surrounded by cyprus trees.

Anywho, enough about Monterey. When we finished up there, we went to the most holy-cow-stinking-awesome-yay-happy place on earth: Magic Mountain! I’ve never been happier to stand in lines for ten hours straight. They have the craziest roller coasters ever! Watch this video of the Tatsu coaster–you ride the whole thing strapped with your back to the track, feeling like you’re flying at 90 MPH over the park. Amazing. If you get bored, you should look up the X2 as well– a roller coaster that spins you 360 degrees while you go around corkscrews at 60 MPH. So much happiness.

We finished up our trip at Lake Arrowhead, CA for two days. My mom’s entire side of the family was there, and it was good to get to see them. Honestly, by this point I had eaten so much vacation that I was grumpier than Chris Flint after bedtime. So all I can say about there is that it was really really really high to the point that looking down the mountain made me need to change my pants.

Well, that’s the trip. I guess the coolest thing that happened the whole time was just getting to know my family better. My brother and sister are finally turning cool. Neat!