I always wonder what people stare at others for. It’s this steady gaze, it’s sort of unnerving, and it’s a source of endless mystery to me. Are they staring in dislike? Are they hoping to see a head explode? Are they merely trying to gauge reaction or read expression? I never know, and try not to do it.

Now this is a question for the masses: have yall ever noticed how easy it is to be a pompous windbag? Maybe not as in some British fellow constantly looking down his nose and speaking loudly at people, but just being full of oneself. Full of ones own opinions and viewpoints and advice, full to the point where people can no longer stand to tell anything or listen to you? Yeah, it’s hard not to do.

It’s wierd what you find out, and the way you find it out, you know?

In other news, the week has begun and everything is fine and dandy. I ran out of room on my C drive earlier this morning (or / if you prefer), so I got to work late, having to fix that up. One thing that annoys me about windows is how it won’t tell you what drive your programs are installed on when you’re trying to remove them. Grrrr.

But, in the words of Relient K:

Marilyn Manson, he’s not cool.
Marilyn Manson went to Matt Hoopes’ school.
Marilyn Manson, he’s not nice.
Marilyn Manson shows are overpriced.

And that’s all for now.

If you’re a journalist in Afghanistan and you get your hands on two computers that belonged to Al Qaeda, what do you do? Well, turn them over to the CIA, of course. But first, you copy the files for yourself. Then you write about it.

1. Get computers from Al Qaeda.
2. ???
3. Profit!

What is love? Is love a choice? Is it an action? Is it something expressed in emotion? Is it perhaps a combination of both? When is the right time to start trying? When is the correct moment to end? How hard is too hard? How rough it too rough? How much is one person worth? How much is an idea worth working towards?

Becka: “I’ve got a headache in my eye!”

Anonymous: “Relationships are great, but sometimes they suck. Like right now, it sucks. I mean, it’s amazing, but it sucks, you know?”

Stu (with little yellow forklift): “This is a fifteen hundred pound machine.”
Me: “Don’t drop it.”

Me: “No, really Steve, that $88 goes towards us flushing the toilet every day. It’s called ‘overhead’ ironically enough.”

It’s been a bit of wierd week. You know how you have days when everythings kind of meh? Yeah, having a few of those. I dunno. How do you explain to someone why you’re feeling blah when there’s no good reason? I’m in perfectly good health, God is alive, I have a job, I have good friends who love me, I have a functioning car that isn’t going to break down any time soon, etc, etc. So why am I not bursting with joy?

Who knows. Maybe it’s something. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just life moving (to quote Jack Allen) “in rhythms and cycles.” Next week will be better I think. Oh well, at least I don’t pin my hopes on an expectation of always being happy. Which would be also knows as being discontent half the time.

And this is where my Jungian self-analysis ends. Finito!

Today I was mindlessly tumbling some thoughts in my head, and suddenly something struck me (much like when I was thinking about Kate back in the day and realised that she would hit lows every time she saw what’s-his-face), something so obvious, something so brick-trucklike that I wonder how I didn’t see it before. I’m not CIA analyst, alright? But there you have it.

So I investigated, and it’s true. It was so absolutely true. No doubts. And I laughed gleefully, because I put two and three together and came up five. Finally!

Recently Sufjan Stevens (of “Seven Swans” and “Michigan” fame) granted two interviews, one to the New York Metro, and one to Pitchforkmedia.com of all people. You may recall him as a multi-intrumentalist in the New York area, a prolific songwriter — having vowed to do an album for each of the 50 American States — a Christian, and a sort-of member of the Danielson Famile. Check out some of his music; it’s really quite good.

First off, Sufjan talks to the Metro about Top 40 pop (and please forgive the fact that he liked Peaches), but he chats with Pitchfork about the state of modern music, what the Danielson Famile is like, and strangely, why rock music has such an aversion to overtly didactic themes. Enjoy.

I got my hands on a CD called “Under My Skin” by Avril Lavigne this weekend. The problem is, I was expecting to hate it, from what I’ve heard (the first single about not sleeping with a guy, which was like, good concept, bad execution), but it’s actually catchy. It has no redeeming quality except that: it’s catchy. So goodbye Miss Lavigne (the name always reminds me of Leslie Anne Lavigne, of Decemberists fame) and hello something better.

You know, I had this same thing with Linkin Park’s debut album, “Hybrid Theory”. Nothing to it but angry little man/boys screaming about their horrid love lives, but it was really catchy. “Meteora” didn’t have even that grace.

And I don’t want to go all no-good-canst-come-of-Nazareth on secular pop music, but will they every produce something that will appeal to me on more than the “catchy” level? For crying out loud, people, The Shins were able to make good deep songs with Beatle-esque arrangements, why can’t you do the same with pop music? I mena, the last CD I can remember even slightly respecting was “Life for Rent” by Dido, and that’s not saying much.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between conscience and preference? It’s kind of a fuzzy little old line, what with people feeling quite strongly about their preferences. Me, for example, I prefer playing volleyball to baseball for some very good reasons — but that doesn’t mean that I feel so strongly about not playing baseball that I never want to and try to stop people around me, you know?

People get like this with cars a lot, for some reason that I can’t figure out. They prefer Chevies, or Mazdas, or just imports, or just European imports and then go out and act like anyone who buys anything else is insane. I’ve gotten a lot of that owning a Ford Focus. People are like, “You bought a Ford? Here, check out this cute acronym you’ve already heard 751 times!” Not that they know anything about the Focus, not really, but the preference and bias are still there.

Okay, so that’s a bit more like fanaticism than preference-cum-conscience, but there’s other places that this shows up, too. And none so sharply as in the church. Now obviously there’re extenuating circumstances: this is, after all, religion, something that touches the innermost core of a person’s being. But on the other hand, stripped down to its essentials, Christianity is really not so complex as we make it out to be. And a lot of what goes on around the essentials is tradition and preference. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — tradition has been formed over a long while, and while the tradition is useful, helpful, scriptural, and understood, there’s no reason not to keep it in place. On the other hand, some preference and tradition is no longer any of those things.

Take as an example some Reformed (and sorry if it seems that I’m ragging on the good old Dutch Reformed, but to be fair, I’ve spent most of my adult life amongst them) churches and the emphasis they place on organs and hymnals. As if these things somehow sanctify worship, give it some sort of holiness that isn’t present in the praise teams down the street, endow it with a gravitas the culture has forgotten.

The ironic this is that it does do that. At least, it appears to. Hymns are wonderful gifts from God, no questions asked. Organs have an inherent magesty. But then, our worship of God isn’t just about gravitas, magesty, sanctity, and deep theological treatises put to music; worship is also about the sheer joy and energy of exaultation, something that the hymns we sing — face it — aren’t all that good at.

But in the face of everyone knowing this, or at least a lot of people admitting it, nobody actually wants to change. At least not now. And why? Because people would object, because some people wouldn’t like it, and because (and this one always gets me) some consciences would be offended. And let’s be honest, most of the people who fit this category are a) extreme Regulativists and b) old people. In the case of “a”, I don’t know how to deal with that. Regulativism is conscience-binding, for sure, but it’s straight-up legalism. Inventing law from hints and echoes yanked out of context out of the scriptures.

But with “b”, you have to wonder how someone can be walking with Christ for fifty, sixty, seventy years and still have a weak conscience? You’d figure that they might have begun to understand a few things in the meantime, and I mean no disrespect to the aged. Dr James McDonald even goes so far as to say that if you understand the concept of conscience, you are not a weaker brother. But I’m willing to bet that we’re mostly mislabling this phenomenon, that these men and women have perfectly functioning relationships with Christ, not to mention intact and fleshed-out consciences. Maybe what we’re dealing with is not conscience, but inflexible personal preference.

Not that somehow, because it’s preference, you can just steamroll over them. They must be considered, just like everyone else. The thing is, they have to realize that preference is never a good reason to join or leave a church. Doctrine is a great reason to join or leave a church, whether or not the church is expressing the marks of a true church is a great reason, whether or not the church is an example of Christ’s joy and love is a great reason, whether or not the church is alive or dead is a a good reason, even friendships can weight the balances between two churches. But personal preference in worship styles, clothing styles, building styles, or lifestyles is not. I’ll go so far as to say almost never.

I would richly love to be part of a church that had a more contemporary worship style. But I can’t find a good one that does, at least a good Reformed one that does. It would be wonderful to go to a church that doesn’t make a big deal about whether or not a guy has an earing or not. But then, that’s not important, is it? So I’ll set aside that particular preference of mine. Restrict my freedom.

But it’s not just about restricting freedom, you see. That’s not what conscience is: when Paul talks about having one that’s weak, the obvious implication is that it must somehow become strong. Weakness is not used as a metaphor because the Greek language was too limited in expressions. It was used because weak is bad, and strong is good. You might say that some people have to restrict their freedom out of love, but others (the ones with weak consciences) need to expand their boundaries out of the same love. The scriptures say do no injure, but they also say do not judge.

And by that I mean you may love the Chevy of worship, but remember the Ford. It’s not so bad as you all think…