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gtrst4jss
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Name: Floyd
Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Metro: Stillwater
Birthday: 8/4/1981
Gender: Male
Interests: I have no hobbies. Hobby isn't a serious enough word for the effort I devote to my free-time activities.
Expertise: Check out the screenname. For the "I've gotta have vowels" people, that's guitarist for Jesus. So, umm, go figure. I'm also a techno-geek, so I know computer hardware, software, and gaming. G to th' izz-eek. Word.
AIM: gtrst4jss
Occupation: Computer related
Industry: Computers (Software)
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/22/2003
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| I'm abandoning this weblog for my more-easily-pronounced digital pseudonym, guitaristX.
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| Heroes of Morality
I remember being a child and having heroes like Superman. He was,
through-and-through, a good hero. Even without his super powers,
his actions, his speech, and his character made him a worthy role model
for millions of kids. I think that twenty years ago, our culture
accepted super-good superheroes. Now, we can't have that. We
have heros like Randall "Memphis" Raines from "Gone In Sixty
Seconds". Why is it that our culture can't accept a
through-and-through "good guy?"
I had an odd upbringing, in that my dad was fifty years my
senior. So, in a lot of ways, it was as if my grandfather had
raised me. I was brought up in the same way that many of my
friends' parents were raised, with the same values and
expectations. I see culture from an interesting perspective,
since I was brought up a little bit outside the cultural norm.
Having spent much of my childhood observing (in passing, of course) how
my peers were raised as compared to myself, I can look back now and
understand a few things.
My peers, for the most part, had parents that exemplified compromise in
many ways. Most of the families that my friends belonged to had
experienced at least one divorce. Some parents had criminal
records. Some parents chose not to discipline their kids.
The majority of the families that I saw had one thing in common: lack
of absolutes. For some reason, the following idea has crept into
the heads of those people who are now fifty-somethings:
"There's no such thing as wrong or right. Everything is relative."
I would dare to say that there is even some fear associated with this;
i.e. believing in absolutes is something to be afraid of. Before
I continue, please understand, I am not a parent, and I don't intend to
point fingers at parents for the degradation of our society. This
little rant is simply observation. I have observed that absolutes are eschewed.
So, our movies, our TV shows, our heroes, they all exemplify this
thing. Our "hero," Randall Raines, is a car thief - the best
there is. And we are made to believe that stealing fifty
expensive cars is the honorable, justifiable thing to do. Leaving
fifty victims, whom we know nothing about, without their rather nice
cars is made to be the "right" thing to do, in this very "relative"
situation. When you compare "Memphis" Raines with our childhood
heroes, critics say that Superman was "two-dimensional." What
they really mean is that our brains are willing to accept a Shelby
Cobra flying over one hundred yards of cars and landing without
significant damage, but they can't accept a hero who believes that
values are more important than situations.
I'm still trying to figure out why it is that our heroes aren't
better than we are. It seems that there is some great balancing
effort, where the more heroic a character is, the more grotesque his
vices are. I noticed this last night with the Tim Burton
reinterpretation "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory": The
characters tell us how horrible Augustus Gloop is, as though we
couldn't see that by his obesity and the chocolate smeared all over his
face. We hear how Violet Beauregard is such a "beast" (if I
remember the term correctly), as though we could not deduce that
ourselves from her beating the tar out of three grown men. It
seems as though our culture is intentionally trying to characterize
"good" and "bad" by polar extremes, force-feeding processed,
packed-with-preservatives morality with a baby's plastic covered,
PG-13-rated spoon. When we are then confronted with a character
who is not polar, who might have some good and bad qualities, we are
expected to ignore their shortcomings and still consider them to be a
hero because the media would like our moral compasses to be just as
under-developed and simplistic as a toddler's young mind.
If Randall Raines was a real person, and not a movie character, I would
feel obligation to overlook his criminal past and his willingness to
return to it, rather than criticize it like I'm doing. I don't
feel convicted in the least about criticizing these types of characters
because there is a fundamental difference between our relationships to
fictional characters and our relationships to real people:
We are expected to identify with and hope to become, in some way, like
the fictional character; whereas, our relationships with people are
rarely like this.
Hardly ever do we categorize real-life people as heroes or
villains. Often, every person we ever interact with is somewhere
in between, part sinner, part saint. It seems that Hollywood
intends for us to relate better to the dichotomous nature of society's
character, at the expense of our own individual character. The
movies, the sitcoms, and the prime-time soaps (7th Heaven, anyone?)
seem to be all working towards the same goal: destroying the
real-life applicability of the innate moral code that God designed us
with. Although we are not responsible for the behavior of the
people around us, we should never let ourselves believe that we are not
responsible for our own behavior.
Consider the fictional characters with whom you identify, and compare
them to Jesus. Jesus never drove a hot rod, He never leapt a tall
building in a single bound, and He never shouldered a .50 Caliber
machine gun and killed an entire platoon, but He did do something that
seems even more impossible now than it ever was - He lived without
sin. Isn't it interesting that the most daunting tasks for most
of our heroes would be to turn the other cheek, to love their enemies,
and remain sexually pure, rather than the "heroic" tasks of stealing
cars, seducing women, killing their enemies, and giving the middle
finger to the authorities? I am convinced that the most heroic
feats that anyone could perform in our culture today are not those performed with
with physical prowess, athletic ability, stealth, quick wit, seductive
charm, or intellect -- they are the moral choices we make.
the uncompromising gtrst4jss
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| Churchgoing morons and laughing mimes
So, this week, I've been listening to the radio on my way to work. It's
not much, maybe a 10 minute drive, but for some reason, right around
7:55am, the DJ on this station tends to talk about stuff rather than
playing music. So, I'm thinking, "allright, let's see what he has
to say." So, I'm listening, and I hear that a moronic hatemongering church has protested at the funeral of a fallen soldier.
Apparently, this church in Topeka wants to leave no doubt - God
apparently hates the military. You see, the military is obligated
to perform duties as indicated by the commander-in-chief, that is, our
dear ol' dubya. I don't support the war, I don't like dubya, but
I definitely don't blame a low-ranking soldier for it, nor would I
condemn him for doing his duty. For what it's worth, let's not
forget that the bible clearly states that we are to honor our
commitments - military service falls neatly into that category. Apparently, this church in Topeka seems to think that we shouldn't hold true to our word.
For what it's worth to whoever reads this, I am a Christian and I do
not support the behavior of Westboro Baptist Church.
On a lighter note, my wife, my sister-in-law, her
"not-my-boyfriend-just-a-friend", and I all went to the halloween
carnival at the Muskogee castle. We are going through one of the
haunted houses, and this dude in all black stops us so that the next
group can go through. I'm feeling particularly spunky, so I start
messing with this person, whom we shall call "Bob":
Me: It's the black knight! "You shall not pass!"
(Bob turns away, apparently giggling silently)
Little girl in group, to her dad: Daddy, why isn't he talking?
Me: He's a mime!
(Bob turns away, trying to keep silent)
Girl: What's a mime?
(Bob turns back towards us)
Me: or perhaps he's the ghost of a mime....
(Bob walks away, so we don't hear him laugh)
(Bob returns, and holds up his hand, as if to say, "No, wait here.")
Me: Ah! Charades! One word, two syllables...
(Bob starts to lose it, and covers his face with his hands)
Am I a bad person for making the silent dressed-in-black guy in the haunted house laugh?
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| I was listening to the radio today, and I heard an OKC DJ talking about
going to the OU game last Saturday. I thought to myself, "Ha! OU
lost!" Then, he started talking about the "Christians" with large
signs and loud speech near the entrance to the stadium, shouting that
he was destined for hell. Then he took calls from people who were
all, quite frankly, pissed off at these people. I felt so ashamed.
Lord, teach us all what Your love is
really like. I'm no better than these people, and so I ask
forgiveness for myself, and for them, and ask that You would repair any
damage done by the actions of "Christians" who do not act according to
Your leading.
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| Need help!
Okay, so there's a talent show at work, and there's a co-worker who's
wanting to do an electric guitar duet. We need some song ideas!
So far, we've got:
"Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix
"Patience" by Guns N' Roses
But we're looking for some fun crowd-pleaser type songs, maybe not
quite so mellow, but it's gotta work for ONLY two electric guitars, no
drums.
the guitar-playing gtrst4jss
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