It Never Rains But it Pours / The Eyes Have It!

So this is a double post (thus the two titles) - like two posts in one.. I was meaning to post about the first thing earlier but never got around to it, so now I'm just going to put all of my news into one! See - simple.



It Never Rains But it Pours


On sunday my band The Black Orchid Rebellion finally secured a functional jam-space in downtown Victoria and had our first REAL jam in there. For the first time I really saw and heard how good we are going to be live, and just how well the three of us actually work together, as we jammed it up really well - the songs seemed to come together very naturally and everyone seemed on top of their game. We even did a little arranging / writing on one song called 'Contagious', which previously hadn't had a lot of work done on it.

We kicked that songs butt, let me tell you. I've been borrowing Spencer's Big Muff overdrive pedal, which is a great pedal for putting a really cool sounding distortion on bass, and that ended up being an overriding theme of the song - a simple, smooth, and crunchy-sounding bass line underneath an almost Metric-esque drum-beat and cleanly distorted guitar turning dirty around the end of the song. Anyway, it was really good. Hopefully we will have some recordings soon, as Spencer moved his recording computer in there.

In other music news, the other band I am playing with finally had a full-out jam session last night in Brian's home studio. This was both of our first times playing with Shayne, the drummer, who is actually very, very good. Brian is a great guitar player as well, and we had a really good time jamming out some sweet tunes, including one of my own devising (I came up with a bass line that the other two totally built upon, ending in an alternatingly almost industrial / surf sounding song. Sounds weird, but it worked.) For a little taste of what we are doing, you can check out Brian's myspace page. The other cool thing is that we are going to most likely share the jam-space with B.O.R. , which will make it a lot cheaper for everyone - especially if this band ends up with four or five members as we are planning. $200 split between seven people is much better than split between three!









The cool thing is that I am getting so damned inspired musically lately, just in simple things like my own personal sound as a bassist. Having been listening to a lot of Muse lately, I totally want to be a bassist that makes a real creative impression by being central to the sound of whatever band I'm in.. to that end I have been playing with various effects and techniques - that Big Muff pedal I was talking about puts out some great sounds, and I also went into Long & McQuade to try out something I had never even really heard of previously, called a Bass Synth pedal (specifically the Electro-Harmonix Micro Bass Synthesizer) and I was totally blow away by the sounds this thing can come out with! It's like playing a synthesizer through my bass guitar.. just plain cool, and it will make me different than 99% of all the other bassists out there. I may not be a terribly technical player -- I like to play simply, and drive the song as much as possible (although there are times when I like to add interest to the low-end as well), but I want to make whatever I am involved with sound different, and cool. Too bad this thing is so expensive, but it's worth saving for. Other thing I need to get is a good compressor - a mainstay of any bassist for fattening up the tone.

So, to sum up - you can expect to hear some cool things out of my bands in the near future, I think!








The Eyes Have It!



In other news, my on-going eye-tearing problem has hopefully (cross my fingers) been taken care of today, after much long frustration and repeated eye-wiping for the past year and a half or so. I finally got in to see an Opthalmologist a couple of weeks ago, and he basically said that my persistent tearing was likely the result of either allergies or a blocked tear-duct. So I tried some drops for ten days or so, which did not solve the problem.


Today I went in to have my tear-duct irrigated in the hopes of discovering the blockage and fixing it - this was an interesting procedure, as the opthalmologist had to use freezing drops and then stuck a couple of different probes into my tear duct to "dilate" (stretch) the tear duct, and he noticed at that point that my tear duct was extremely tight, which was possibly the true cause of the problem. Anyway, after he had sufficiently stretched the sucker out he stuck another syringe-like probe in there and squeezed water or something through there. If there were no blockages I would feel the liquid draining down the back of throat, and sure enough I felt it.. and it was a strange, strange sensation let me tell you.


So we ruled out a blockage, however the doctor believed the problem was likely happening because my duct was so tight, and he said that the dilation might help for a day or two, or maybe a month, but would likely not fix it permanently. The best solution, in his opinion was a "three snip" procedure, in which he would freeze my eye (with a needle), and then use some tiny scissors to make a triangular incision (thus the three snips) to enlarge the tear duct. He said I could wait to see how the dilation worked, or he could just do the snipping right now, and I opted to just get it over with, as I have had quite enough of the tearing and wiping by now.


Probably the most painful part was the needle he had to stick in there to freeze it.. Lisa stayed and watched the whole thing, and she reported that my face while he was putting the needle in was the worst part for her. Yeah, it hurt, I will admit, and probably largely due to the fact that it was in my friggin' eye! Then he went about the snipping, which was a little uncomfortable in parts, but wasn't too terrible. Didn't take very long, at least.






The doctor seemed to appreciate the irony of the shirt I chose to wear to his office, which Lisa scored me on the weekend, though it seemed to make him slightly nervous... not really.



Anyway, my eye is kinda swollen and a little sore, but I will survive. I decided that it was probably not in my best interest to drive to work though. And besides, I have decided to make it a personal policy that any day in which I am subject to any sort of surgery, whether minor or major, is an automatic sick day.



Well, there's the news!

Ebay... Wins and Losses?

Recently, Lisa and I have embarked upon a sort of education foray into the world of selling on Ebay.. we could really use some extra money, and there seems to be a lot of money to be made buying a selling things on Ebay, if you know what you're doing. Hell, we even bought a book on the subject and everything.

We've started out by putting a few things we already had up for auction (Three nice dresses and three 164-1994 Commemorative Collection GI Joes - in their original package!) to test the waters as it were. So far we have not had a great deal of success.. the GI Joes each have one bid.. of 99 cents each.. and the dresses have no bids, although there are a few watchers.. hopefully they will start bidding closer to the closing date. In any case though - we need to find some stuff is a little more predictable.. electronics maybe.. to sell. If we could save a few bucks to buy some wholesale lots of things we might actually be able to turn a decent profit.. but we'll cross that bridge when we have the funds to build it, I guess.

In other news, though, I was awarded a refund of $88.07 by Paypal, after I got scammed by an Ebay seller into buying a bass guitar pedal that he never sent. It's a shame though.. I really wanted that pedal... oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Wait -- when do we start winning some again?

Job Update!

Are you ready for this????!?!??!?!?!
























Yeah, I didn't get the f***ing job. Yay me.

Yay!

My cabinet is here! My cabinet is here! My cabinet is here!

(That's the monstrous box with the 4 speakers in it, as depicted in my previous post)!! I'm going to pick it up after work! Unfortunately, the header has yet to arrive, so the cabinet will, for the moment, be, well, useless :( But hey at least it's here! I suppose there is an off chance the header will arrive today at some point as well.. it's pretty well due, I think..

UPDATE --

I spoke to Canada Post and apparently the amp has been in customs for the last week and just today was accepted and shipped to Richmond. Apparently I can expect it sometime next week. Too bad I won't be able to take it to the "All Nighter" tonight, but them's the breaks when you order stuff off of eBay :/

Can You Feel the Mountains Tremble?

Aha! I tricked you into thinking that this was some sort of esoteric post about something religious! Or maybe I didn't.. I just meant because the title is that of a popular praise song, which I have now shamelessly taken in for my own alterior agenda of destruction!! MUAHAHA!

No, actually it's not that either.. this is, in fact, a BASS-related post.. which is why the reference to mountains trembling is appropriate.. because THE MOUNTAINS ARE GOING TO BE TREMBLING REAL, REAL SOON, BABY, YEAH!

*Ahem*. Pardon moi, allow me to explain. I'm in a band, see, and I play bass. I think most of you knew all of that. Anyway, my big focus lately has been to buy a new bass amp, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I want something that really sounds GOOD, not just adequate, and something built for what I like. There are a few names that are synonymous with REALLY REALLY good bass amplification, my favourite of these being Gallien-Krueger, with Ampeg a close second. Not long ago I happened to become quite enamoured with the idea of buying a GK amp header on EBay, as the prices on there are quite a bit better than what you get here. I ended up buying a Gallien-Krueger Backline (their entry level, but from what I hear, this amp is really good) 600, which is a 300 Watt Amp, said to be VERY nice. Someday I'm sure I will upgrade to a 1001RB or something, but for smaller venues (clubs, etc) this is going to be GREAT! And, even after shipping and the exchange rate I still saved $100 over the local price.


Of course, a nice header is nothing without the cabinet (aka speakers) to go with it. You can amplify somethng till the cows come home, but without any speakers, no one is going to hear a dang thing. Thus, I made it clear to my family that what I really wanted to Christmas was purchasing power in form of monies or gift cards that would enable me to get a nice cabinet. And come through they did! I was looking for a particular Ampeg cabinet, but I couldn't find it anywhere, however I was able to get (well it is on order and I hope it will be in within a couple of days) this Gallien-Krueger 410SBX cabinet, which should match the head very nicely and by all reports sounds absolutely incredible. Needless to say, I am looking forward to pounding some air with this sucka!


All this to say one thing: if you feel the mountains trembling sometime in the next week or so, you now know why! Cheers!

It's Just a Matter of Time Now...

Well, I've just now finished my second (hour long) interview for the Quality Assurance Supervisor job here at work -- I think it went quite well, and I am confident that if it is a job I am meant to have, God will put favour on me in the mind of my boss, and also potential future-boss (yeah, make sense of that, will you?).

I still have to go back to a dream that Lisa had way back when we were talking about whether or not I should take a job at West or another position that, at the time, looked better. She dreamed of me in an empty white room, waiting. There was one door, and it was closed, but I went and opened it and behind it there was another door, and another, and another.. the doors just kept opening for me. She felt this was West, for some reason. Then she saw me in the same white room, with the same door. This time the door was opened for me, by some hideous looking man, and behind the door it was all just black -- I walked through the door and never came out again.

Certainly, my experience at West has been one of opening doors, and hopefully this is the next one in the series!

Anyway, if everyone could just be praying about the outcome, that would be great!

Two or Three... Hundred?

So what is it about Christian(ist)s exactly that always makes them want to simplify the complicated parts of the Gospel while complicating the simple parts? It is a strange phenomenon that seems to me, to have led to endless faulty doctrines, teachings, and belief systems within the church, resulting in sermon after sermon of cherry-picked scriptures from this book and that book and this book over here, that we fit together assuming they are all talking about the exact same things despite the disparate cultures, eras, and authors that they came out of.

When one comes across a verse in the Bible recording a conversation that Jesus had with a Jewish person regarding the sacrifices he was making in the Jewish temple, why is it our impulse to grab onto those words and throw them at each other, saying "See! SEE!! Jesus said you need to do it like THIS!", while conveniently overlooking the fact that neither party in the discussion is A)Living in the first century Roman Empire, B) Jewish, C) Attending a Jewish Temple, D) Making a sacrifice, or E) the individual the Jesus was addressing in the passage. These are all important questions that really do need to be contexutalized before any applicable meaning can be derived from the passage. To blithely look at such a verse and take it literally, or worse, start bashing people over the head with it, is completely disgraceful, deluded, and sinful, in my humble opinion. And yet, this is the way it has been in pretty well 100% of every church service or Bible study I have ever been a part of -- why?

It is equally eggregious, to me, when someone takes a passage out of the old testament, reads it verbatim and then says "Look - God said this, and this is what we are supposed to be doing!". By that twisted logic, we should be going out onto the streets and slaughtering every man, woman, and child we meet who doesn't worship Jehovah. And basically this would also mean nuking the bejeezus out of the middle-east until all the ungodly muslims have been extinctified.

However, we don't do this (at least some of us don't.. although certain American politicians seem to be leaning dangerously in this direction lately). For some reason it is okay to reject the old testament's admonitions to genocide, while embracing the condemnation of people with tattoos, or loud music, or alternative lifestyles. Again I ask -- why? Not that there is no applicable teaching to be had out of the old testament, but it HAS to be interpreted with a cultural, linguistic, stylistic, chronistic context that leads to discovering the underlying truth behind it.

Now to get back to the subject of the post title --- on the other hand, we also have this bizarre and opposite tendency to over-analyze and insert fictional meaning to entirely straight-forward issues, and things that Jesus said which really give us very little reason to delve further into. Jesus was many things, but I do not believe he was ambiguous -- evasive perhaps, when people were looking for easy answers, but not ambiguous. He said what he meant, basically.

Here is an example of what I mean:

"For where two or three gather together because they are mine, I am there among them.” (Matt 18:20)

It is a verse that pretty well every Christian knows, and it is a very important verse, but it is also very simple. And when I say that Jesus wasn't ambigious, what I mean is that in this passage, he specifically uses the number 'two or three'. Not 'twenty or thirty' or 'two or three hundred', and neither did he say 'two or three is alright, but you're better off with seventy'. I believe that something very specific is being established by Jesus here.

You know the really funny thing about this verse is that the times I hear it repeated most often is when it is being used as an excuse. Someone calls a prayer meeting or a Bible study and when only a small handful of people show up, the organizer looks around and flippantly says "Well he did say 'when two or three are gathered'", almost like they are apologizing for something. We've read far more into this than Jesus intended, and instead of placing the emphasis on the 'two or three' as being a desirable result, we've taken this to be a minimum threshold.

My theory is this: What if Jesus actually meant what he said? What if he was trying to get something specific across with his words? While this verse is usually taken to mean that two or three is the minimum number of people required for Christ to make an appearance, I think that Jesus was actually trying to tell us something else.

I think he was trying to tell us that it is in the intimate moments with people that we love and care about, that we will find him. I know it's always been true for me. More and more I am realizing that our sunday church services and fancy programs serve only to distract us from experiencing Christ in a personal way.

Often times we look at these huge venues where people are dancing and singing and "praising" as one body and say "Wow, the spirit is really moving here".

No it isn't. At least not usually. The fact is there is no big mystery to these occurances - these massive corporate moves of the spirit. It all comes down to a very well-documented effect known as mob mentality. It is a condition in which people cease to be individuals, lose their ability to think and act for themselves, and get swept along with whatever the rest of the group is doing. When the mob is doing something unseemly, we call out the police to go dismantle it with body armour, batons, and tear gas. When the mob is falling over, weeping, jumping up and down, etc, at an overly-emotional worship service, we call it 'revival' or being 'slain in the spirit'. Not that these things can't be valid, but not with the frequency we see it.

The reason I say this is because I have stood at the front of the church, with my bass strapped on, playing the best that I can, more times than I can count, and what I have observed, time and time again, is this: when the congregation is enthused about what is happening, everybody sings and everybody dances, yet when the congregation is indifferent, everyone stands around with their arms crossed. And at the end of the day, they go home and forget whatever it was they felt earlier, because the vast majority of the time there was nothing there for them to personally connect to, anyway. They got to sit down and listen to someone talk about things that more than likely had little or no relevence to their day-to-day life. Woo.

The times that I can really remember feeling like God was there, talking to me, are the times when I am with my wife, maybe at a friend's house, talking about why we fight, or why we're angry, or why we're sad. Talking about what God's words really means to the rat's nest inside my mind, quietly praying for things that are on our hearts and minds, and accepting those things, regardless of the right and wrong of it. Letting God, not people, sort us out.

And The Winner Is...

...Me!

Yes, National Novel Writing Month is officially at a close for 2006, and I can officially count myself among the winners, thanks to my astonishing feat of writing 52,000 words in 30 days! That's an average of 1733.33 per day! Woo!

The truly amazing part about it is that I actually ended up with a pretty decent story after all was said and done - I actually like it, despite all that I was worried about it ending up as a lot of crap. It has been partially posted at http://coldbloodnovel.blogspot.com and I will be working up putting the whole thing up there with a slightly easier-to-read format maybe today sometime.

Well that's all the news for now...

Won't You Be My Baby?

So, part of the fallout of starting a band that is destined to go somewhere (in my humble opinion) is that I have started to take a really serious look at the kind of equipment I'm using. Thanks to my patron saint of Bass-Playing (Mike P -- you know I love you man), I have a beautiful Fender American Deluxe V (5-String) Jazz Bass. It sounds great, but isn't really built for cutting through a heavy-rock mix, for whatever reason. Not that it isn't workable.. it most definately is, but I've been really thinking about eventually getting something that is really built for the style of music we're playing.
After having done a little research into what my sort of iconic hard-rock bass players, I have found my new axe -- ala Jon Cooper of Skillet. The Traben Phoenix Custo, 5-String. They sound great, look great, and aren't very expensive, compared to other instruments of their calibre. Check 'er out..

Yeah baby!

Oh Hell Yes!

At last, The Black Orchid Rebellion has found what it was looking for -- a drummer! And a damn good one, at that. In fact it just so happens I was able to get back in touch with my old drummer from Pure Silver, who I've been wanting to playing with again for a long time. Today, Spencer and I went over to his house and jammed the ever-loving crap out of his tiny jamming-room.

Anyway, to make a long story short, we have a drummer now: Welcome to the band, Steve Hawkes!

Coldblood!

The frantic writing buzz of the NaNoWriMo has begun, and my novel is off to a good start, at 5,003 words in the past 2 and a half days! I've started a new blog to post my novel as I go along, you can check it out at http://coldbloodnovel.blogspot.com

In other new, The Black Orchid Rebellion is coming along.. we still need a dang drummer though, so that we actually get our sound solidified and start gigging. Expect to hear more about both ventures very soon!

Attack of the Black Orchid Rebellion

You may be asking yourself - "What is the Black Orchid Rebellion?", perhaps assuming I am about to launch into some sort of deep Biblio-spiritual diatribe on God-only-knows-what.. but.. I'm not.

The Black Orchid Rebellion is actually a rock band.. alternative in style.. with some absolutely fantastic songs, a really great guy at the helm... and a new, kick-arse bass player :)

Yes, that's right, it's me, and I am really frickin excited about this, because my new friend and bandmate Spencer Lillo is an amazing song-writer and we're going to have some absolutely fantastic material to work with. Here's a little sampling for you to enjoy!

http://www.myspace.com/theblackorchidrebellion

Oh, and one more thing -- we need a drummer.. so if you know someone (preferably a Christian, but depends on the individual), or if you are a drummer looking for work. And you don't suck. And you have your own drums. And not the Fisher-Price kind. Then please let me know!

NaNoWriMo!

I am officially a participant in the NaNoWriMo - that is the National Novel Writing Month, in which thousands of wannabe-novelists attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in no more than 30 days, between November 1 and November 30. All who make the 50,000 word threshold are declared winners!

I'm cooking up something cool for my NaNo Novel, so wish me luck, and if it seems like I'm not terribly social next month, you'll know why!

If anyone is interested in joining me, go check out NaNoWriMo.org to see how it all works, and sign up! You can add me as a writing buddy or check out my writer profile as well!

And, there is a local group of NaNoWriMo authors getting together every sunday in downtown Victoria - the next meeting is this sunday, 2:30 pm at the Solstice cafe, though the regular time and place has yet to be decided upon. I'm going to look into getting a local group together on the Peninsula as well, so let me know if you are interested!

The Chosen Ones?

I've always been taught that Christians are God's children - his chosen people, as it were, as we are the ones who are connected with him through Christ; in essence we are the human element in his final covenant with mankind. But something that has always bothered me is how Christians still refer to Israel or the Jews as still being God's chosen people and that God's eternal favour must always rest upon them for some reason unbeknownst to me.

So which is it? Are God's chosen people the Jews, or are they the Christians (not to suggest that a Jew cannot be a Christian, but when I say 'Jew' I mean in the orthodox religious sense rather than the cultural observance), because it strikes me as silly to suggest that it can be both, seeing as how the two factions basically represent spritual notions that are diametrically opposed to each other (i.e. Jesus IS the son of God / the Messiah vs. Jesus was NOT messiah and such beliefs are tantamount to heresy.)

It seems to me, and is my interpretation of the Old Testament covenant versus the New Testament convenant, that the racial inheiritance of the Jews as the children and chosen people of Yahweh in the Old Testament (and subsequently doctrines and practices of the Jewish people up until the birth of Christ) were basically a symbol, or a foreshadowing of the SPIRITUAL inheiritance that would be brought about by the death and resurrection of Christ. The position of the Jews in the Old Testament effectively became the position of Christ's disciples in the New Testament (and into current times).

What this amounts to for current-time Christians is an interesting conundrum: Christendom (also spelled "Christianism"), as the political and religious institution that it most assuredly is, seems bent on defending the honour of Israel against her enemies at all costs, almost as if, in any given conflict, the Israeli people are incapable of doing wrong and we must pray for Israel to prevail because they are "God's chosen people".

In reality, the state of Israel as it stands today is a militaristic Zionist nightmare of extremist proportions with a long history of oppressing the Palestinian people in all sorts of horrible ways. The Israeli military is guilty of any number of homicidal and basically genocidal practices which, thanks mostly to the Christianist West, has the most technologically advances war machine to be found anywhere in the world, including (but not limited to) nuclear weapons and other WMDs.

Strangely enough, while the U.S., U.N., etc love to demonize countries like Iran and try to bully them into giving up their rights to nuclear energy, no one ever balks at all of the nukes possessed by dear old Israel.

I found it hard to swallow Israel's latest escapades against Lebanon, and the way in which the US backed them. It was basically the equivalent of some Canadian splinter group (let's say the FLQ, for instance) kidnapping a couple of U.S. police officers and the U.S. responding by bombing the living crap out of every major Canadian city and killing thousands of people who literally had nothing at all to do with anything.

And yet, surprise, surprise, most of the Christians I know were praying up a storm for poor, embattered Israel, God's favourite, chosen country. I just don't get it, and personally I think it is a deception of the enemy in the worst possible way.

Upon continuing my little exploration of the Gospels the other day I came upon this verse, which seems to confirm what I have been thinking regarding the passing of God's favour from the political state of Israel to the spiritual Church of Christ - it is the parable of the Evil Farmers found in Matthew 21:33-44:

33"Now listen to this story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country. 34At the time of the grape harvest he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. 35But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. 36So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same.
37"Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, `Surely they will respect my son.'
38"But when the farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, `Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let's kill him and get the estate for ourselves!' 39So they grabbed him, took him out of the vineyard, and murdered him.
40"When the owner of the vineyard returns," Jesus asked, "what do you think he will do to those farmers?"
41The religious leaders replied, "He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest."
42Then Jesus asked them, "Didn't you ever read this in the Scriptures?
`The stone rejected by the builders has now become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous to see.'
43What I mean is that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will produce the proper fruit. 44Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.

Temporary Reprieve

Well we took Baron into the vet today with every intention of having the dirty deed done, but after talking with our vet and really evaluating how we were feeling and also how Baron has been, we've decided to wait a little while longer. From the vet's obervations and also from what we have told her of our own observations he is actually not suffering the way we had thought, and though he is, as she put it "handicapped", he isn't in pain and isn't really suffering in the way human beings might suffer from similar ailments.

It is true that he will probably not be around a whole heck of a lot longer before his back legs really become paralyzed, and that is definately where the line would be drawn for us. Anyway, for now, our old boy is alive and kicking. And we found his favourite toy, to. Amazing how a dog can perk up at the sight of his Koool Kong :)

Home Sweet Home?

As anyone who has been reading may have noticed, I stopped camp journaling at Day 4, which was due to the flakiness of the wireless internet up at camp. Seems somebody installed a new antenna and nobody was able to connect wirelessly for some reason. So I will be attempting to summarize the last few days once I have had a little time to unpack it all myself.

It hasn't been a terribly easy transition, the coming home. I'm not a person who has a terribly easy time expressing or feeling comfortable with feeling a lot of emotions, but yesterday, and more last night I found myself unable to stop myself (much as I tried) from sobbing, even if I did do my best to hold my friggin breath to stop from sounding like it.

It was hard to say goodbye to the kids yesterday, especially a few of them in particular who I really connected with in a special way, and I'll admit I really felt like breaking down yesterday as they were leaving camp, but I sucked it up. The leaving, itself, was difficult - the routine over the last week is something I have come to depend on. Always somewhere to be and something to be doing, whether it be playing music for the kids or practicing, manning the Zunga (SO much fun), washing pots and pans or whatever else. And now that I'm gone there is a feeling of empty aimlessness.

I come home to find that my beautiful old dog, who my wife and I rescued at the ripe old age of 10, and who has been slowly succumbing to degenerative myelopathy (think of a doggy version of MS or ALS) has been rapidly going downhill in the week since I've been away, and now we have an appointment on monday to have him put down because it has become obvious that he just isn't happy in his own skin anymore. We love our dog, and I know that I personally have had a real struggle with the idea of putting him down because he isn't in any pain - he is just slowly becoming paralyzed. He poops and has now begun peeing on his own bed, or on the kitchen floor, unable to hold it or unaware of the need to due to the lack of feeling in his back-side. For a breed as proud and regal as the GSD, my wife points out, it must be a very shameful thing to go to the bathroom in ones own territory, and with no way to bury it or hide it from potential enemies. In other words, it probably drives him quite nuts. Whenever he does it there is a certain look of deep shame that comes over him, his ears droop down and sometimes he starts to shake as though we are going to yell at him or hit him. We never do, though, and never have, at least not for things like that which are out of his control.

As if that weren't enough, I get back from a week serving God in the best capacity I can think of, by minstering to kids, some of which whom really needed a week to just kick back and be kids and have fun, and also to have some exposure to a God who really loves them and wants them to know that. And what do I find but some hateful, left-leaning atheist creeps saying some really awful, hurtful and baseless accusations about Ron and myself, insinuating (or in Ron's case openly stating) their belief that only a pedophile would be "excited" about spending a week with children. Pardon my french, but WHAT THE FUCK??!! Where does this kind of self-indulgent trash get off saying this sort of thing about people he knows nothing about? I have to wonder what is wrong with a person whose natural assumptions are that all adults who enjoy spending time with children are also out to sexually abuse them. It actually creeps me out quite badly.

So yeah, a lot going on. A lot of really emotionally difficult stuff going on. Usually I have no problem being strong and stuffing it down, but I just feel like I'm being hit on all sides. Anyway, it isn't all bad, just really taxing and draining I guess. I'll write more about camp when I have a chance.

Camp Journal : Day Four (Part 1)

Energy: High
Relaxation: Good
Fingers: Rallying
Stings from unidentified insect type beast: 1
Number of hops: Several
Pots / Pans Washed: A babillion
Swings on the Zunga: 5 or 6

Another good day at camp - the heat was significantly lower today than in previous days and overall it was just a nice temperature all around. Sleep was about 2 million times better than previously experienced and I had a chance to have a good heart to heart with Benson. For those of you who don't know Benson, he's our drummer.

The kids are getting cuter by the day.. and some of them are getting more annoying by the day.. but mostly cuter. Especially the girls for some reason. The boys are sort of at that age when they are starting to get that competitive / mean thing coming out, which I guess most boys go through. I had to threaten one boy with being banned from the Zunga after I made the comment that Tristan (T-Man) gets the best air in camp, and the boy said it was because he is "humongous". Definately not cool.

Its funny I didn't notice it when I was that age, but its true what they say about girls being years ahead of boys in terms of emotional development. Most of them are quite easy to talk to and social, and also a lot braver than a lot of the boys. Its funny - we are having a name the band contest so that the campers can give us a name, so all day kids have been coming up to me with their band name submissions. Most of the names we've been getting are along the lines of "The Christian Rockers" or "God's rockers", but this one girl gave me the name I really hope we end up going with, because it was so bizarre and also hilarious. It was "Spicey Hot Fire Hydrants". I don't where she came up with it, but we all couldn't help but have a good chuckle about it.

I had a chance today to go to one of the cabins to help the kids with their memory verses, and the cabin leader asked me to help this boy named Roderick. He was having a really hard time with a verse was actually quite long for a 10 year old boy I would think. But within about 10 minutes I had him saying the whole thing, no problems. Then I asked him what his favourite thing was at camp and he said the Zunga, so I walked down to the Zunga with him and watched him take a swing.

Oh yeah, and today was my turn washing pots and pans in the kitchen. The head potwasher is a guy named Jim who is an old army buddy of Ron's, so Ron was warning me all day about Jim war flashbacks. His sage advice to me was to have one of the giant wooden mixing spoons ready to knock him on the head, should I see "that glint in his eyes". Fortunately that wasn't necessary :) It wasn't as bad as I had imagined it might be, though I literally felt as though I had just gotten out of the lake by how much I had been sweating in that big rubber apron. Fortunately, the first thing I did when I was done was to ... take a swing on the Zunga! There's really no better way to feel refreshed after a long shift of something like that.

Evening chapel was fun as well as we got to have it outside down by the water in their outside chapel. The sound was good down there and Ron kindly suggested that I crank the living crap out of my amp. Of course I happily obliged. Those kids sure love The Happy Song.

The majority of the rest of my evening has been spent trying to get askaninja.com to load (at Ben's request) - its a freakin hilarious site that I was introduced to today. I had a group of like 5 people (cabin leaders and other worker types) watching with me, but apparently the summer staff are downloading a movie, which makes the entire network slow and often inaccessible, which is also the cause of my lack of updates for most of the day.

Anyway, I'm going to save this now and hope the dag-gum thing works. Ciao!

Camp Journal : Day Three (Part 2)

Exhaustion Factor: High
Heat Stroke: Negative.. so far
Fingers: Still hangin' on
Number of swims: 2 (5 if you count my swings on the Zunga)
Number of children shot with water gun: Too many to count.

So anyway, day is almost come to a close now, and I am pretty tired I'll admit. It has been a busy day! The water is still great, and I've been making as much use of it as possible, but I'd say hands-down my favourite thing today was running the Zunga, which is a big rope swing that tosses you into a deep part of the lake. All the kids love it, and it was especially cool to see the same kids coming back again and again, starting from their first time (which inevitable resulted in belly/back flops or faces full of lake water) into being confident and competent Zunga'ers.

There was one boy in particular who has stood out to me for some reason. Probably because he reminds me of me at that age. He comes from what I have to assume is a wealthy family - his dad is a professional motorcycle racer (How's that for a "my dad is cooler than your dad" trump card eh?), and he was telling about his family's 48 foot boot that they travel around to various islands in all the time. Also they are thinking of sending him to school in Ottawa. He seems to be okay with that, but he didn't really answer when I asked how he felt about it.

Anyway, he reminds me of myself because he is a little on the chubby side, like I was, and one can tell he has a little bit of a self-esteem issue, though he seems to be the quiet comtemplative type rather than the in-your-face attention getting type - again, much like me.

What really impressed me was his approach to the Zunga. He had a tough time during the first free time period, and it seemed like no matter what he did he just couldn't hold onto the rope long enough to get anywhere. I can relate to that, I probably couldn't have either when I was 10. But Tristan (or T-Man, as I have taken to calling him) refused to give up, no matter how many giant faces full of water he got, and during the second free time, he came back, and again had some trouble. But then, much like I might have done, he gave it a little thought and figured out that if he stuck the knot at the end of the rope between his legs in a particular fashion (we all worried about the safety of his apparatus at this point), he could get a full swing and then jump off at the end, for massive air. Once he figured that out there was just no stopping the guy and he started to get creative, doing around-the-worlds and cannon-balls. Yeah, he suffered the odd back flop on occasion, which clearly stung like a mother-something, but he sucked it up and kept going.

I'd like to think it was at least partially due to my encouragement, but either way it was cool to see.

After that, there was a "wide game" in which the kids had to take paper "passports" around to various "countries" (stations) and get them stamped and they would get points for every full passport they brought back. The staff, however, were pirates with water guns who got to run around shooting the kids (and cabin leaders), and if a player was hit by a pirate one of their stamps would get crossed out and they would start again.

Anyway, at some point the cabin leaders revolted and started grabbing water guns for themselves and fighting back against the pirates. Much soaking of said pirates (myself included) ensued, and fun was had by all.

Our set tonight was incredible on many levels. We were just totally connecting as band and all of us were jumping up and down all throughout a bunch of songs, which the kids totally got into. I was so sweaty by the end of - actually our guitar player had to change his shirt, but I contented myself with three glasses of water and a little time outside :)

Dinner was great - roast beef, fries and veggies with gravy. Can't say no to that. And mug up, which I just recently partook of, consisted of delicious chicken wings..

So anyway, it is going well so far. Tomorrow I get to enjoy a 2 hour shift in the dish pit. Looking forward to that, not.

More tomorrow! Ciao!

Camp Journal : Day Three (Part 1)

So here I am, sitting on a wooden chair underneath the shade of shade of trees with a nice cool breeze coming off of the lake, which is about a stone's throw to my left. Hands down, the best place I've ever blogged from before :)

The day has been pretty good so far - up at 6:45 AM, which tricked me into thinking it may actually be cooler today than yesterday. Not so, by the way. We played a set during morning chapel which the kids seemed to like. Fingers are feeling marginally better, but I'm going to have to blitz it with alcohol swabs to try and get rid of the little blisters before they turn into big blisters.

Well, it looks like the lake just opened up for swimmers, so I guess that'll be all for now!

Camp Journal : Day Two (Part 2)

Heat Status: Hot as... well, hot anyway.

Finger Status: Tentative, starting to hurt, small blisters forming.

Fun Status: Good!

So yeah, today is just about over.. gotta be in bed with lights out at about 11:00pm. I really hope its a little cooler in there tonight because last night was just plain brutal.

Went swimming again today, which was great - exactly what was needed and very refreshing - the lake out here is great, and the water is the perfect temperature. Unfortunately we had to wait for awhile as all of the campers arrived today and had to have their swimming evaluation in order to receive a yellow wristband, which entitles them to use the deep part of the swimming area. Staff had to be evaluated as well, but I never did, so instead I signed a "Death Waiver". The way I figure, I'm going to go swimming either way, and if I die it really makes no difference whether I am wearing a yellow wristband or not.

The music went fairly well today - we played three times, once in the morning, for the staff, then in the afternoon, mercifully in the shade, while the campers were arriving. It was unplugged so I just sang and "played" the tambourine. Then we played again for the evening chapel. That doesn't include our 2 or 3 practices, however. I have to say that as hot as it might get in SPC on sunday mornings I have never felt heat like this while playing. I was worried for a few minutes that I might lose it, as I was sweating and just feeling overall not very good, but I made it through. Then I had diharrea afterwards. Yum!

Anyway, everyone is proving to pretty nice and in some cases super nice. The two music team people that I didn't know very well before are great and we are all getting along well and playing well together.

Did I mention that the food around here is really, really good? Last night we had turkey dinner, this morning eggs, sausage, bacon, etc, for lunch it was sandwiches and various forms of salad and for dinner it was spaghetti, caesar salad and foccacia bread. I'm liking it.

Well that's all I have to report for now.