Alone at Midnight

There is an old hymn that goes:

"Oh Jesus, my Savior, my song in the night
Come to me with thy tender love, my souls delight,
Unto thee O Lord in affliction I call
My comfort by day and my song in the night

Oh why should I wander an alien from thee,
or cry in the desert my face to see
My refuge my solace, my souls delight,
Oh Jesus my Savior my song in the night

Lord Jesus, I come to thee in lowly despair,
give strength to my fainting soul, the burdens to bare
My comfort, my joy, my souls delight
Oh, Jesus my Savior, my song in the night."

When I hear this song, I always feel like I should cry - not because the words are sorrowful, but because of the truth and beauty that are contained within those words. When you are alone at midnight, your covers on the floor due to your tossing and turning and your eyes wired open, where does your soul find refuge?

link here

Review of things I have watched and/or read over the last couple of weeks

I have been on a movie watching kick lately. I haven't watched this many movies since I was living by myself (when I watched around 12 a week - nothing else to do, I'd already read all my books).
Recently I've watched: Forbidden Kingdom (twice), Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Darjeeling Lmtd, There Will be Blood, No Country for Old Men, An American Crime, The Proposition and The Curse of the Golden Flower (also, many parts of various retarded movies along the same line as Rush Hour 2). I have also read/am reading Fury (Rushdie), Robinson Crusoe, two Agatha Christie's, Mathilda, as well as a few other smaller books whose titles escape me. I have also been listening to/studying some great new music by Haydn, Beethoven, Lizst, and some Renaissance composer (I forget again) (coming soon in this category The Art of the Fugue, of which I recently read a fascinating article whose location on the internet has also deserted my memory - unfortunately).
In spite of the title I am not going to review any of these things (at least, not in any formal way). Others have done so and they have done a far better job describing the works respective faults and strengths. I also tend to like/dislike things for odd or even unknown reasons. For instance, Speed Racer was not a great movie, or even, really, a good movie. It was, however, interesting enough that it has provided humor and headaches since I watched it (they throw beehives and snakes at each other and they have dueling car wheels, also more colors in one 30 second scene than Willy Wonka had in the whole movie).
I would however like to discuss appeal to people - as I have grown older I find that I am appreciating things for different reasons. I find that I appreciate passion for one's craft almost as much as I appreciate talent at one's craft (although execution of a craft is still the most important). In some ways I believe this is a product of the environment that I find myself in, a place where the talent pool is lower but the desire is still present. But back to appeal, it is interesting to me to find out why people like things - even if its very banal: "It makes me happy" "It appeals to my simple side" "It makes me think of cheese" and if I can find out and partially understand the appeal that it has to someone it has become increasingly difficult for me to find fault with the work. So what do you think?

With deepest apologies to all you who have some sort of vested interest in the writing of this blog I am ready to write. Some of the Official Friends of the Blog have told me that they are starting/have restarted/will be restarting blogs because they need to make themselves write (for various reasons). I believe this to be an admirable goal and in that spirit I would like to offer you a semi-firm promise that I will write these epistles to you at least once a week.

I'm somewhat hesitant to write to you about semi-important things. mostly because semi-important things tend to make people upset and then they leave comments that are questioning, or they send me emails about how I'm wrong, or they leaving burning bags of dog poop on my front porch - I don't like burning bags of dog poop.

But I actually do think about important things - like world peace and tree huggers and global economy, the state (or lack thereof) of christian education, problems with a belief system that doesn't support rational thought, or even what you were wearing today - I think about that a lot, mostly to mock you.

So I warn you, there may be IMPORTANT (notice the capitalization and emphasize the word accordingly in your own mind) things in store for this blog. I'm going to marry "The Huffington Post," "The New York Post," "Wired," and "Slate" and add in my own take on other stuff.

Ok, have a nice life
until next time
this is Jaron - spokesperson for J.R. Ledgerwood
signing off.

Family. Photographs. Weekends. Steak.

(Aside: [note: this doesn't count as the beginning, in fact, it should be its own post but I'm to lazy for that] To the thousands out there reading my blog I need to tell you that it really helps to read my posts in "voices" for instance, An announcer voice, A mocking voice, A guru's voice, etc. - If the general reading public so desires I could tell you what voice you use - reader response theory always was a ridiculous notion in my book).

In a predictably vain attempt to bolster my ego and to get people to respond to me I'm going to lead off my post with a question - that demands an answer! - what do you feel about family pictures? I am always torn on these things, most of me hates them with a passion that would put Al-Qaeda to shame. The rest of me thinks more along the lines of "You need those memories for when your old and senile so your great-grandkids can have the ability to make fun of how stupid you looked when you were twelve" (Yes this is an actual thought taken straight from my brain and put into . . . whatever the internet is).

So this past weekend, padre and madre visited the land where I am presently being domestic. We had fun, we went out to eat a couple of times (my steak was heavenly, and the chinese is always above average), we walked around a nice little town, had a nice drive, talked about everything, met my piano teacher (which sounds incredibly stupid but really isn't - everyone would like this guy), went swimming (man I stink at swimming - can I hear it for nerds the world over!), went to church, and we didn't take one picture. And now, as I sit here, I think I might regret that decision.

To make up for this lack of photographs, I post this picture.
I really want my life to be like this picture. And if my family activities were more like this one, the weight of my pictures would cause the state of Illinois to sink in to the earth. Which, all in all, would be a very interesting thing to see.

A link for you

I don't like telling people that they need to do something. But you all need to go here and watch this clip. Where else can you combine finger-wagging, beatles haircuts, pseudo-militarism, jumping around and whistling?

This also serves as a link to a friends blog - which I'm told is a good thing.

Speechless in Shannon

I have some numbers for you
75 x 2000 = 150,000
Remember that number and here's another:
3000
And:
50


Second set of numbers
100
and
8

And one last number
10,000

Now to set the stage for the story.
I had gone to work, just like any other day, sat in my office most of the morning working on bulletins, powerpoints, spreadsheets, etc. all very normal Wednesday activities. Around 11 I started to think about lunch. Around 11:30 I decided I wanted pizza from Casey's, and around noon I got my pizza and went home. I walked in the door all ready for lunch - watch some sportscenter, talk with Kay, etc. Kay is watching a show on the DIY network called "Clean House" which (ironically enough) is about people cleaning up (or out) houses, mostly houses that are lived in by hoarders. Most of my readers will have some type of knowledge about hoarding - some of you may even have stayed in a hoarders house. As Kay and I were eating we began chatting about the show, what we thought of the people, the state of the house, and gradually the talk shifted to other shows that had been watched. Which is when she told me about Oprah yesterday.
(Quick note of reassurance: I don't really have much to do with Oprah, any person as rich as she is doesn't really know how to relate to me - although she does pick good books).
Oprah was/is also doing shows on hoarders (apparently its going to become the new add/adhd - all it needs is its own designer drug) and she had on one of the grossest, most disgusting, shameful exhibitions of American wastefulness I have ever seen.

Remember those numbers? Take a minute and go look at them

Ready?
Here's the explanation
75 TONS of garbage. Thats 150,000 lbs of junk
In a 3000 sq ft house (thats about 50 lbs of garbage per sq foot)
Thats just what was thrown out.

The cleanup operation took 100 people 8 weeks

Oh, that last number - the 10,000?
That was the size of the warehouse in sq ft that they rented to hold the garage sale to get rid of stuff. Needless to say, it was completely filled.

The lady hadn't had any visitors in 12 years. She hadn't seen the oldest son and his family in 5 years. And it took the youngest son and his sister to call Oprah in for help.
Lest you take the cheap way out and blame it on being a redneck - the lady and her husband are very nice middle class people, their house is in an older looking suburb, it has an inground swimming pool, three car garage and is generally a fairly nice house.
FILLED WITH 75 TONS OF GARBAGE!!!!!

There's so much stuff in the house its taking Oprah two days to do a show on it.
Tonight, after church, I'm watching Oprah.

UPDATE: They had a garage sale for all of the saleable items left in this house (actually a lot of this was still reasonable - it had never been touched - it was underneath 75 tons of garbage), they mad $13,000 dollars on a garage sale. This does not count the 3 semi trailer loads of stuff that was donated to Goodwill the dumptruck loads of stuff that was thrown out or the still sizable quantity of stuff that was returned.

To the worst invention ever.

On June 2nd 1875 the world ended.

No more would we be able to ensconce ourselves in a cocoon of solitude. Our "life in the woods" would become a life in the wire. Our communities would be destroyed, our families wrecked, and I would have to answer the phone. On June 2nd, 1875 the first documented sound traveled through an electric wire - a sound that would ruin our lives.

Alexander Graham Bell was the servant of the devil on that day.

I don't want to hear about how the telephone is a good thing because it keeps us connected and informed. Don't tell me about all the good things that the telephone is able to do. I'm not interested in hearing your useless drivel about "oh! I can't imagine being able to not call my friends at any time, not being able to order pizza - oh, the horror!" You only say that because your all idiots. The telephone is horrific - it has produced the breakup over the telephone (and led to the truly despicable: IM breakup), it has created a whole host of new criminals and it has helped in creating a world in which it is easier for me to order authentic Indonesian food at 4 am on December 24th than it is for me to pay my taxes.

All in all, it would be a far, far better thing if all the phones would make up their collective minds to destroy themselves (yes they are sentient beings -BEINGS OF EVIL!), they would rid this world of at least one problem. (just don't destroy the internet - because life then would truly end).