A Thousand Candles

I just saw the best episode of Moral Orel that I've ever seen. I'm not a big fan of the show, and don't really watch it that much, but it was a really great episode about the nature of faith and prayer. The show is about this really faithful boy, who's pure faith is constantly being attacked and perverted by the adults around him. In this episode, Orel is in the praying bee, and uses meditation instead of traditional prayer styles to to become more at one with himself and with God. It frickin' rocked. If you've never seen the show, I would suggest checking it out.

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha

What Goes Around, Goes Around, Goes Around, Comes Back Around

It's more than an awesome J. T. song. It's the idea that what you put out inthe universe comes back to you. Take a look at this excerpt from this article:
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The "slam dunk" issue arose last September, the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" that before the U.S.-led invasion, President Bush asked Tenet how good the case was against Saddam Hussein involving weapons of mass destruction.

"It's a slam dunk, Mr. President," Tenet responded.

Former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin, now CNN's national security adviser, was at that 2002 meeting. "What he meant was that it's a slam dunk that we can put more information into the mix to make it clearer why analysts believe there are WMD in Iraq," McLaughlin said.

In his new book, "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet writes that the remark was taken out of context.

"As if you needed me to say 'slam dunk' to convince you to go to war with Iraq," he writes.

In his interview with CBS, he adds, "And you listen to that and they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. 'Look at the idiot (who) told us and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous. ... Let's everybody just get up and tell the truth. Tell the American people what really happened."

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Now I just want you to take a look at that. Really let it marinate. Especially the bold part. I mean, what kind of bullcrap is that? This is the funniest thing that I've ever heard in my life. Seriously. This administration which has built it's foreign and domestic policy on lies, finally has it coming back to them. I mean, my gosh, how dumb do you have to be to think that slam dunk is part of a larger, omitted phrase that means 'proceed with caution'? Even Bush isn't that slow. It's pretty obvious what's going on. It's coming to the end of the term and the Bush administration is imploding in on itself. It's Paul Wolfowitz and Alberto Gonzales aren't examples of this then what is? And you can just blame Wolfie for his mistake, but it was obvious that Gonzales was doing the dirty work for a political agenda. It's like Santa Claus. After a while, you and your parents both know that Santa doesn't exist. But, you continue to put cookies out because it's tradition. You know he's not real, they know he's not real, but there's a status quo. It's the same thing with the Bush administration. There isn't a thinking person in America who believed that we were justified going into Iraq. This is obvious. But the Bush Administration keeps plugging away when they should be getting the wrap it up music. And when you ask them about their motivations, they just smile and nod, and change the subject. They know it's bull, we know it's bull and they know that we know it's bull, and NOBODY'S CALLING THEM ON IT! It's insanity. But what they've sowed out into the world is coming back, and it's the reason that the GOP will not walk away with the White House in 2008. And if the Dems don't screw it up too badly, they'll have Congress too. But George Bush is going to leave office thinking that he got away with something. And the bad this is, he will have.

Chicks Pledge

In celebration of my DixieChicksaversary I'm posting my Chick's pledge which you can find on this awesome site. Also, I want some sausages. Don't judge me! I can't properly regulate my body temperature.

The pledge that all Dixie Chicks fans are required to say before even being considered for Chickdom.

I, (state your name), promise to love, buy any CDs of, purchase magazines pertaining to, go to concerts, watch on TV, pay per view, or any other media, and visit the website of the Dixie Chicks, forever. I promise not to let this get the best of me however, so that I become obsessed to the point of watching them through binoculars, looking through windows, and or garbage. I promise that when I hear Natalie sing, or Martie fiddle, or Emily pick, that my heart will fill with admiration and respect for these women who give so much to the music world. I promise that when the day comes when they become (heaven forbid) old and wrinkly, saggy and gray, when Natalie can't sing so strongly anymore and Martie's fingers don't move as fast as they used to and Emily can't remember what all those strings are for, I will still respect them, still admire them, and have a high regard for the Chicks and all they stand for and do.

Another Lame Test

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I Need to Do My Cootchie up and downs...

Put that cootchie up, put that cootchie down. I frickin' love Saturday Night Live. A lot of people don't. You probably don't. But as I sit here watching the latest episode hosted by Scarlett Johanssen, I just thought about how much I love this show. I started watching SNL in the late 90's. My group was Ferrell, Shannon, Oteri, and Kattan. I missed Farley and the rest by a couple of years, but I didn't care. I was hooked. I mean, Craig and Ariana (the Spartan cheerleaders), the Roxbury guys, Goth Talk, Mango.... I could go on and on. The show had me, and even though I was in middle school, then high school, I still would stay up late on Saturday nights to watch this show that was highly inappropriate, hit and miss, and live. Then I went back in time, met Spade, Sandler (who was the Jimmy Fallon of his day), Farley, Martin, Ackroyd, and Radner, and of course the puppet master of it all, Lorne Micheals, and I realized how much of an American pastime SNL is. But go onto a message board for SNL, NBC, or comedy in general and all you get are complaints about how unfunny the show has become. But I challenge these people to watch an episode and not laugh at least once. And okay, maybe you're thinking that you should laugh more than once during an hour and some odd minutes, but think about this: This show is basically produced in one week. It goes from concept to script to rehearsal and finally to show. When you look at a show that everybody's always comparing SNL to; Madtv, you get a show that has basically the same cast, without a new guest star every week, where they get endless reshoots. If an audience isn't digging a skit, don't put it in the final broadcast. The beauty of SNL, past the hilarity of the skits, is that everything is done on the fly, sets, costumes, scripts, everything. It's hit or miss because you don't have do overs, you don't get second takes, and you certainly don't have comedy gold every time. Sometimes the audience doesn't go for it. That really effects how funny you're going to find it at home. It might be a perfectly funny skit, but it's a bad night. So for all the haters out there I would suggest that you think about how off the cuff ans spontaneous it really is, and maybe you'll come out thinking differently.

DixieChickAversary Part 3: The Never Ending Rock

So, I've posted this before, but sometimes, I thought, why the deuce not, since this day only comes around once a year. Wouldn't you like to know... So, yeah, here we go:

Well, today is my birthday, but it is also something else, something more. It is also the day that I was created anew and bathed in the glow (like the phoenix rising out of the fire) of Dixie Chickdom. It was six years ago today, that my mom gave me the CD FLY as a birthday present. I remember the day well, because, well, I don't know why I remember it so well. But my parents had rented a truck, for some reason that I can't identify, and had driven to the army base to visit my brother. I think it was Fort Jackson, or maybe that one in Fayetteville, I can't remember. So, anyway, they had been gone all morning and I was thinking that I would get or do anything for my birthday, because they wouldn't get back in time. So, when they pull up I'm pretty depressed, but I go out to the truck and my mom starts handing me presents. First, I got a portable cd player, and it was a nice one too, with a car kit and everything. It's the one that was later lost by Ms. Ann Clark at Zeb Vance High school. Side note here, all the years that I went to Vance, and I never knew who he was, then the other day I found out he was the either first, or longest running governor of North Carolina. You learn something new every day, I guess. Anyway, back to the point. So, my mom gives me a couple of CD's and one of them was Fly. I really didn't want it, because I was really into oldies music at the time, and I was at that point, where I was like, 'oh it's country? Then I don't want it!' But my mom had heard 'Goodbye Earl', and she liked it, and she thought I might like it as well. Now that I think about it, if it weren't for my mom, I never would have gotten into the Chicks. But, I took the CD, and it probably took a couple of weeks for me to listen to it. But once I did.... Oh, once I did, I never looked back. The stirring vocals of Natalie Maines, the heart pounding tenacity of Emily Robison, and the down home, terrific fiddling of Martie Maguire (at the time Seidel), it was terrific. I didn't think that I'd ever hear anything half as good, and then I listened to Wide Open Spaces, and they blew me away again. As I've gotten older, so has thier sound, which has always changed, and yet always stayed the same. Through ups and downs, sunshine and rain, I will continue to be a fan, because of what drew me in, a kid whose favorite singer was Bobby Darin. That sound, that talent, and that music. Thank you Chicks, for making this day more than just my birthday, thanks for making it a really great day to remember.

What I Want to Accomplish

1. Learn to snowboard.
2. Go to China.
3. Visit every continent (except for Antarctica, I guess) and especially Curitiba, Brazil.
4. Buy a horse. (And be able to afford taking care of it too.)
5. Learn to skateboard.
6. Learn Chinese.
7. Play my guitar more.

Who Knows?

Apparently that's my new catch phrase, because I say it about every five seconds. Anyway, so I wrote this a long time ago, and as I still like it, and I'm dedicated to posting more than every other bicenquintennial, I figured I'd post a poem that I wrote. Yeah, I wrote it, wanna fight about it? Sometimes. Even if you in a benz, you still a nigga in a coupe.

Please don't hate me.
I'm not that smart, or that pretty in real life.
I'm not thin at all.
These aren't my real teeth.
This isn't my real hair.
My eyes aren't this color.
My boobs aren't this big.
My nails aren't long, my lips aren't red.
When I'm asleep, I drool a little bit and I snore a lot.
I take too long in the bathroom.
My bed is never made.
I pick my nose when no one is looking.
And my pinky toe is a weird color.
And I wish you loved me.

--Matches. Malone.

There's No Accounting for Taste

Wow, it's certainly been a long time since I posted here. I guess I'm slacking off a little bit, but I've been known to do that. Sometimes. I've been doing a multitude of things, mostly just trying to do my work in a timely fashion, and as that's not working out, I figured I'd shirk my responsibilities for one more day and try to explain my taste in music one more time. This comes after I realized that while I'm not a big fan of Fall Out Boy's older work, I absolutely love half of their new album. The first half. That got me thinking. I also love Jay-Z, and some of his older stuff, but some of his earliest work, and his new album, I don't have a taste for at all. Have these people really changed their sound so much, or is it me? And then you go to the other side of the spectrum, and I will buy anything that the Dixie Chicks have ever done, if it's bluegrassy, or contemporary rocky. That being said if you tried to classify the type of music that I like, even the genre, or the decade, or the artist, if you didn't pick from a group of three or four, I wouldn't be able to say that I loved absolutely everything that they've ever done. My friend's don't understand why I like the songs that I like on FOB's new album, when I don't even enjoy what they claim as the best song on the album. Another friend of mine sent me the music that sounded just like the theme song to Firefly. If I haven't mentioned it before, I absolutely love the theme to Firefly. It's like the best thing ever. I listen to it over and over again and bemuse the loss of my favorite shepherd and leaf on the wind. The songs that she sent me from this other group sound almost exactly like the theme, yet, for some reason, I just couldn't get into it. So, having all of these examples, among others, I have come to one conclusion: My taste is like the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, and the Abominable Snowman eating lunch at Stonehenge after taking a tour on a UFO; inexplicable. There is no rhyme of reason to what music I'll like. One minute I'm listening to Robert Johnson, next to Avalon, then to Jay-Z, and then finally Robin Thicke. There is nothing normal about the range in which my taste in music exists. And even more bogglingly is the fact that two songs might exist in the same genre of music, they may be by the same artist, and even on the same album, AND I WILL NOT LIKE BOTH OF THOSE SONGS! Insane, I'm sure, but it's just me. So, if you find some group that sounds like the Dixie Chicks, has the same sound, and even have the same band, if I don't like it, don't be surprised.