church to avoid

It is simply unbelievable the crap some people actually believe. I was going to a church over in Albany for a short time, but the guy started raging about "the homos." I guess his view is that gays are inherently evil or something. It's pretty sad when you see the leader of a church who spends all his time ranting and raving about stuff he hates. I guess hate is a big part of his life. Anyway, I doubt this guy has ever met anybody that is gay. My personal view is that people are born gay or not, and you can be good or bad, sexual orientation is irrelevant. Due to people like this moron, gays feel, for a very good reason, that Christianity is hostile to them. It's sad and pathetic, and I'm not going to waste any more time over there, that's for sure. He also spent a long time raging about how men are becoming more "effeminate." I don't know where he got that, but I see no reason to believe it.

In another incredibly moronic sermon, he talked about how he "kinda liked Bush" because Bush didn't have doubts, and didn't get involved in the complexities of the situation. He then went on to talk about how a soldier can't have doubts when he is deciding to shoot or not in combat. While it is certainly true that in combat soldiers have to react quickly, this idiot is trying to say that somehow it is good to not look at how complicated things are in the real world. That's what lead to the problems we are in today in Iraq. Bush's simplistic aggresiveness has resulted in a huge number of deaths. This pastor was somehow saying that he liked Bush for this? What a pathetic excuse for an intellect this guy is. The real world is complicated, and there are all kinds of peoples, believing in all kinds of religions out there. The Christians that are looking for some kind of holy war are the Christians that I really detest. I don't think Jesus or anybody else in the Bible said anything about having to go to war with Islam.
Besides, in my opinion, nobody can say that Bush is any kind of Christian. One of the main points of the gospels is that the poor should be helped. Bush has spent his presidency cutting taxes for the very rich at the expense of the very poor. There is nothing Christian about that, in my view.
There's a lot of good stuff in the Bible. This guy was unerring in getting nothing but hate and nastiness out of it. The whole spirit of the church seemed to be getting into the attitude that they were "in a war" having to do with morals or some other type of bullshit that they invented. They need to relax and see the numerous exceptional things in the Bible that have nothing at all to do with war.
So I'm never going back.

Note: I'm not saying that Christianity is bad. I was just pointing out the things about this guy that I didn't like. I'm not saying he's "representative" of Christianity as a whole, and I don't think he has a clue as to what it is really about, at least in my mind.

poetry books

Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beans, which then did glister fair;
When I (whom sullen care,
Through discontent of my long fruitless stay
In prince's court, and expectation vain
Of idle hopes, which still do fly away
Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain),
Walk'd forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames;
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorn'd with dainty gens
Fit to deck maidens' bowers,
And crown their paramours,
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my song.

There, in a meadow, by the river's side,
A flock of nymphs I chanced to espy,
All lovely daughters of the flood thereby,
With goodly greenish locks, all loose untied,
As each had been a bride;
And each one had a little wicker baket
Made of fine twigs, entrailed curiously,
In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,
And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
The tender stalks on high.
Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
They gathered some; the violet, pallid blue,
The little daisy, that at evening closes,
The virgin lily, and the primrose true,
With store of vermeil roses,
To deck their bridegrooms' posies
Against the bridal day, which was not long:
Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my song.

With that I saw two swans of goodly hue
Come softly swimming down along the Lee;
Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
The snow which doth the top of Pindus strew,
Did never whiter shew,
Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be,
For love of Leda, whiter did appear;
Yet Leda was (they saw) as white as he,
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing near;
So purely white they were,
That even the gentle stream, the which them bare,
Seem'd foul to them, and bad his billows spare
To wet their silken feathers, lest they might
Soil their fair plumes with water not so fair,
And mar their beauties bright,
That shone as heaven's light,
Against their bridal day, whcih was not long:
Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my song.
-Spencer, from Prothalamion

It is evident here that Keats was highly influenced by this guy, if you ever read his early poems....He even wrote one called "Imitation of Spencer." "Sleep and Poetry" ,one of my favorite Keats poems, sounds a lot like the Spencer style, which seems to be all about a great thing: the joy of beauty.

trip

Just returned from the moon. Not a lot going on there. I walked around a few craters and picked up some moon rocks...I would add some pictures but my camera exploded in the low-gravity environment. Nobody there has heard about Ford yet but then again, there is no life on the moon, so nobody would have any ability to "hear" anyway. It was a cool trip. There was a nice panoramic view of the earth on my way back.
The little town here that I like so much seems to have experienced a bunch of rain, so I hear, but now it is back to just being cold.
Udon is becoming one of my favorites. It is a big thing in Japan, I remember, where everybody who wants to eat for very little money can go into the ramen/udon bars and get some good noodles for a reasonable price.

ne albany

the outer doors were a backyard and the shovels lined up in even rows
houses down the alley, shopping cart by the railroad
four old cars rusting and shining and moss-covered
and the barking of a dog
and the outer truck in working order
tiny house in gravel walls and barking
across the street a trailer
dudes working on a wrecked car
stars in the skies
the river close by
the trains running by in different tracks
and the heavy feels
and the animals and the grass
littering sideways on the road
even in the hand of the mind
the deep ditch running through the mind
and when she opens the door
pained and lined and suspicious
not far from the felony flats
deep mined in the ore of the mind.

suspicions known and suspicions thought, finding the right part and the right fit, through the temperaments and angles, suspicions and senses of sense, to understand, what it is that matters in the few days of this vain life through which we pass like a shadow? Macaroni with margarine, a dog who reacts to music, rolling of cigarettes, and who's to say, who of us has been here at the start of things, and who of us knows what we should be doing, in the few days, as the rains fall, and the drops of dew settle on the trailers, the frost on the grass? Is this a worse world, or maybe just the place where the few perceptive know, that this is life lived at the essential matter, to see, that who of us can lay out the skies, hard as a bronze sheet? And who can number the drops of dew? Who of us can see eternity in and hour, and count the grains of sand?

Was I wrong in my perceptions? Did I not see what I thought I see? Do I truely have my priorities in order, and my ducks lined up in the proper order? Can I look at chaos and see the real order? I think so.

dickinson

The Body grows without-
The more convenient way-
That if the Spirit-like to hide
Its Temple stands, alway,

Ajar-secure-inviting-
It never did betray
The Soul that asked its shelter
In solem honesty

scribble

things as they are

the man bent over his guitar,
a shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue gitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

Who is a Wallace Stevens fan out there in blogworld?

I just got back from berkeley, and saw some old friends. Props to Vince of Stratosphere 68, putting out psychedelic rock for the new world, and Matt Richards at braintan.com for helping to develop an organic hide tanning process and being such a great guy. It's nice to know old friends are doing well, and it tries to make up for the old friends who are no longer with us, ...but one has to continue and hope for the best.