another song...can't get enough of this CD

The Long Nights song below and this both come from the Into the Wild CD, which is both an interesting movie and great CD. It's also one Tia stole (along with a Canon DSLR) when she left my house.

"Oh it's a mystery to me.
We have a greed, with which we have agreed...
and you think you have to want more than you need...
until you have it all, you won't be free.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

When you want more than you have, you think you need...
and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
I think I need to find a bigger place...
cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me.

There's those thinkin' more or less, less is more,
but if less is more, how you keepin' score?
It means for every point you make, your level drops.
Kinda like you're startin' from the top...
and you can't do that.

Society, you're a crazy breed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
Society, crazy indeed...
I hope you're not lonely, without me
Society, have mercy on me.
I hope you're not angry, if I disagree.
Society, crazy indeed.
I hope you're not lonely...
without me."

Society - Eddie Vedder

a little poem

I listen to the Roots quite a bit. They're quite a lot different than your average rap group, whether it be because they actually play instruments or that they rarely have any songs that glamorize the thug lifestyle or treating women as anything other than equals. Anyway, there's a part of a song they wrote I really like...

"I tell you one lesson I learned
If you want to reach something in life
You ain't gonna get it unless
You give a little bit of sacrifice and...

Ooh, sometimes before you smile you got to cry
You need a heart that's filled with music
If you use it you can fly, if you want to be high"

on a different note....

I only learned about the site below because the co-director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at UNL helped with the digitization process of making Lou Gehrig's letters available on the internet.

It's fairly striking to me that she would have helped in this because it is the same disease (ALS) that caused my dad to die in 1996. I'll never forget the cheerful smile he gave to everyone when we visited him at the Masonic home in Plattsmouth, NE or the many, many laughs we had watching ice skating and doing our best to figure out what he was saying. The really unfortunate timing of his passing was that he had just earned a degree in business but couldn't find a job because he was "over qualified," something I imagine a lot of people are being told in this economy.

Anyway, this site is a great insight into what must have been a very confusing time for the Gehrig family since his was one of the first cases of this mysterious disease.

Letters of Lou

things are happening fast

I've read on many different sites that "things are happening fast" in a Biblical, the world is going to end, way. I'd argue whoever is saying this is trying to be a prophet themselves and guessing at an outcome for this world that would suggest they don't like the way things are. The biggest problem with that theory and the SDA church is that, aside from pounding the Bible, they purposely don't do anything to change it.

I'm fine with wanting things different, but trying to convince people to join your cult and make them as hopeful that the world is ending as you are is a little bit sick in my book. I get that the end these people are hoping for is supposedly the coming (or second coming) of God, but the ironic part of this belief that He's coming is that most of these people say He's already in control, so why the need to actually be here? Couldn't He just snap his fingers (or nebula tentacles I suppose) and make things better?

The other side of this argument, as I see it, is that we humans are what is making things happen at such a rapid rate. Satan didn't make the industrial revolution, we did. Satan didn't make cars, air conditioning, gigantic planes or Hummer, we did. Satan doesn't put half naked men and women on TV and tell us to look at them...just like every other animal on the planet we're wired to see the fittest and most attractive of our species as the most desirable.

It's really a no brainer, we've done what is causing "things to happen fast" ourselves and if they're going to change it's going to take us to do it.

anyone for a missionary?

As usual, thanks so very much to Bill Moyers for presenting newsworthy topics we probably wouldn't hear about otherwise. Please also note, this blog is in no way affiliated with, nor does Bill probably know about, this site.

Karen Armstrong on Bill Moyers Journal