Random Thinking

It’s Friday? Have you been waiting anxiously for the song of the week?

Relient K is a rock band from Canton, Ohio started by several high school friends in 1998. The original members of the band were Matthew Thiessen (guitar and piano), Brian Pittman (bass - left the band in 2004), and Matt Hoopes (guitar). Since then John Warne (bass), Jonathan Schneck (guitar and banjo), and Ethan Luck (drums) have been added to the group. The music of the group is usually described as either Christian rock or Christian punk. The name of the group is deliberately misspelled because of trademark issues with the car, the Reliant K.

The group has been fairly successful with three gold albums and two platinum singles. Mmhmm released in 2004, was the band’s fourth album and the first album to go gold. The success of the album brought the group to the attention of the public and helped push their earlier albums to gold status. Two songs from the album, “Be My Escape” and “Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been” made it to MTV’s Top 10.

“Be My Escape” is a plea for release from past mistakes. Because of the group’s Christian background, the song is assumed to be about asking God to be the singer’s escape, but there is no direct mention of God in the song.

Be My Escape
I’ve given up on giving up slowly, I’m blending in so
You won’t even know me apart
from this whole world that shares my fate
This one last bullet you mention
is my one last shot at redemption
because I know to live you must give your life away

And I’ve been housing all this doubt and insecurity and
I’ve been locked inside that house
all the while You hold the key
And I’ve been dying to get out
and that might be the death of me
And even though, there’s no way in knowing where to go,
promise I’m going because
I gotta get outta here
I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake
I gotta get outta here
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging
You to be my escape.

I’m giving up on doing this alone now
Cause I’ve failed and I’m ready to be shown how
He’s told me the way and I’m trying to get there
And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair

Cause I’ve been housing all this doubt and insecurity and
I’ve been locked inside that house
all the while You hold the key
And I’ve been dying to get out
and that might be the death of me
And even though, there’s no way in knowing
where to go, promise I’m going because
I gotta get outta here
Cause I’m afraid that this complacency
is something I can’t shake
I gotta get outta here
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging
You to be my escape.

I am a hostage to my own humanity
Self detained and forced to live in this mess I’ve made
And all I’m asking is for You to do what You can with me
But I can’t ask You to give what You already gave

Cause I’ve been housing all this doubt and insecurity and
I’ve been locked inside that house
all the while you hold the key
And I’ve been dying to get out
and that might be the death of me
And even though, there’s no way in knowing
where to go, promise I’m going because
I’ve gotta get outta here
I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake
I’ve gotta get outta here
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging
You to be my escape.

I fought You for so long
I should have let You in
Oh how we regret those things we do
And all I was trying to do was save my own skin
But so were You

So were You

Written by Matthew Thiessen

The music video shows the band playing in a room where the walls are slowly closing in on them. At the end, a burst of light appears and the walls of the room fall down, but away from the band. The band then plays in an open field with the album cover’s sunflowers in it.

The neurologist thought it would be fun for me to have a 24 hour EEG so there I am. I went to the testing office last night and spent about 45 minutes having all these electrodes glued to my head. It’s very uncomfortable but thanks to my Ambien I didn’t have any trouble sleeping.

This goes back to the electrophysiologist who was fairly certain that I passed out because of the vasovagal hypotension but he wasn’t 100% certain. So today I get to wear this silly hat. I did decide to take the day off from work because I really didn’t want to walk around in public with this thing on. How about you? Would you want everyone to see you like this?

Yesterday had been declared, “The Day of Prayer for the World’s Economies?” by a Christian group. So how did they celebrate this day? They went to Wall Street and prayed before the bull to get more money. Obviously these people never saw the movie The Ten Commandments or they would know how God feels about praying before golden bulls. And do they really think that God has nothing to worry about except their stock portfolios?

Note: Do you notice the camera the person in the front of the picture is holding up? That’s a Flip Video. Those are great for making YouTube videos.

h/t: Wonkette.

This year’s pictures came out fantastic. But then they come out fantastic every year!

Now this is funny if you can ignore the sacrilegiousness.

Richard Dawkins embarrassed after death and subsequent resurrection

Confirmed atheist Richard Dawkins was forced onto the defensive yesterday after he died but subsequently rose from the dead in a miraculous resurrection, much like that of the son of God Jesus Christ.

It’s Friday again… time to pick another song of the week from the music on my iPod. This week’s song I found accidentally, believe it or not. I used the new Genius feature of iTunes to generate a few play lists and one of the play lists was based off the song “Somewhere I Belong” by Linkin Park. One of the songs the Genius found on my iPod to go with that song was this week’s song.

Flyleaf is an American rock band from Central Texas formed around 2000. The band is made up of Lacey Mosley, Sameer Bhattacharya, Jared Hartmann, Pat Seals, and James Culpepper. The group’s music has alternately been described as post-grunge and as Christian rock. Lacey Mosley grew up poor, constantly fighting with her single mother, and using drugs. She lived at times with her wealthy grandparents which created more confusion in her life.

It’s funny, ’cause I kind of had the two extremes - I was really poor, and then I went to live with my grandma, who was really rich. I remember thinking, ‘Is this it? Is this all life has to offer? And if it is, I’m not satisfied with it.’ And I don’t believe what the world has to offer you is enough.

Mosley has claimed that becoming a Christian saved her life. She has also said that she found a new meaning to her life with Flyleaf. The group has released one album that has gone platinum. The song All Around Me has been their most successful single, reaching #40 on the Billboard charts.

All Around me
My hands are searching for you
My arms are outstretched towards you
I feel you on my fingertips
My tongue dances behind my lips for you

This fire rising through my being
Burning I’m not used to seeing you
I’m alive, I’m alive

I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling
Savoring this heart that’s healing

My hands float up above me
And you whisper you love me
And I begin to fade
Into our secret place

The music makes me sway
The angels singing say we are alone with you
I am alone and they are too with you
I’m alive, I’m alive

I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling
Savoring this heart that’s healing

And so I cry
The light is white
And I see you
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive

I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling
Savoring this heart that’s healing

Take my hand
I give it to you
Now you own me
All I am
You said you would never leave me
I believe you
I believe

I can feel you all around me
Thickening the air I’m breathing
Holding on to what I’m feeling
Savoring this heart that’s healed

Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay

It isn’t often that I find a book that I can recommend without reservation. This is one of those books. The story is fascinating, emotional, and pulls you in. You won’t want to put it down but you will so you can think about what you have just read. You will have to remind yourself to take a breath. It will make you cry and cheer.

On July 16, 1942, the French police rounded up Jewish families in order to send them to Auschwitz for extermination. The Nazis wanted only the adults but the French took whole families and then tore them apart. The children were ultimately sent later and all (more than 4,000) were immediately killed as soon as they arrived at the death camp. Sarah is 10 years old when the Paris police knock on her door. Her 4 year old brother Michel is too terrified to go so Sarah locks him in a secret cabinet promising to come back to free him and then she is taken away.

Sixty years later, Julia, an American living in Paris, is given the assignment of writing an article for the sixtieth anniversary of what has become known as Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv, the roundup and murder of Parisian Jews in 1942. As she investigates the story she finds that few French know or care about those events. It is the past and most Parisians wish to leave it that way. During her research, Julia discovers the story of Sarah and finds that Sarah’s story intermingles with her family’s story as the apartment that her husband’s family moved into in 1942 is the same apartment Sarah was torn from in 1942.

The first half of the book mixes these two stories in short chapters of only a couple of pages that keep the story moving quickly. The story of Sarah is what we wish to follow so the interludes with Julia as we learn about her family, her job, and the beginnings of her investigation of Sarah are kept short. The result is that the first half of the book is among some of the best writing I have encountered recently. We learn the story of Sarah, a character we wish we could wrap our arms around and protect, while being introduced to Julia, a character that we learn to like.

At the end of the first half of the book, Sarah’s voice is gone and we count on Julia, who we have learned to like, to tell us the rest of the story. de Rosnay wraps Julia and Sarah’s story together in the second half of the book so that we learn what happened to Sarah through Julia’s investigation as we see how Sarah’s story changes Julia. The second half of the story is not as strong as the first half but I still could not put the book down and had to race through the last chapters to find how it ends. This is an amazing story that reminds us that the Holocaust was about the murder of innocent people including little children whose only crime was being born Jewish. Strongly recommended.

Governor Palin looks very nice in her new wardrobe but maybe they could have spent that $150,000 on lessons with Professor Henry Higgins. She was recently interviewed by James Dobson of Focus on the Family which is about as friendly an interview she is going to get short of being interviewed by her husband. Anyway, it didn’t go too well. He asked her about the GOP platform approved at the convention and she seemed to get confused with pirate ships or something.

This is a strong platform around the planks in this platform that respect life and respect the entrepreneurial spirit of this great country and those things, back to the social issues that are what Republicans, at least in the past, had articulated and tried to stand on.

Now, finally, we have very solid planks in the platform that will allow us to build an even stronger foundation for our country. It’s all good and it’s encouraging. You would maybe have assumed that we would have gotten further away from those strong planks. But no, they’re there, they’re solid, we stand on them and again I believe that it is the right agenda for the country at this time. Very, very clear and contrasted tickets in this election November 4th. People are going to see the clear contrasts, you just go to the planks in our platforms and that’s where you see them.

I would have thought to ask her, “Huh?!?!?!” but then she might have tried to explain which probably would have just been worse.

I spoke to the doctor about my test results last night. Turns out that Michel and I were able to read an MRI after all. I have three herniated disks in my neck and that is causing the numbness, tingling, weakness, and pain in my hands. She said that you normally only see damage like that in someone who has suffered from whiplash. No car accident to sue over unfortunately. I have to see a specialist.

But that isn’t all. My rheumatoid arthritis factor was higher than normal. It wasn’t very high but it was high enough that she wants me to see a specialist for that too. Rheumatoid arthritis might explain why my knees tend to bother me.

And finally, my Vitamin B-12 levels are very low - about 100 times too low. I need to start getting B-12 shots. A low level of B-12 could explain some of the symptoms of fatigue among other things that I have been having. According to Wikipedia: “At levels only slightly lower than normal, a range of symptoms such as fatigue, depression, and poor memory may be experienced.” Yes, I have all of those. Wikipedia also says, “Vitamin B-12 deficiency can also cause symptoms of mania and psychosis.” You’ll have to check with Michel and Beth to see if I have those. Michel told me that there is a genetic link to people of Scandinavian descent and the inability to absorb B-12.

So that was my report. Nothing terminal but plenty of less than great news although if the B-12 shots help I will be very happy. And my neck has been killing me since she told me about the disks. I think I always had pain there but I tended to ignore it. Now I’m thinking about it so it is bothering me. Just another fun day.

You have to love the NY Post. No matter how wrong a story is, if the story says what they want they publish. Page 6 of the Post, the gossip section, is famous for being wrong. On Friday they published a story about Michelle Obama:

THOUGH he’s battling GOP accusations that he’s an Ivy League elitist, Barack Obama has a lifestyle of the rich and famous, like TV show host Robin Leach, who always signed off, “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!” While he was at a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Michelle Obama called room service and ordered lobster hors d’oeuvres, two whole steamed lobsters, Iranian caviar and champagne, a tipster told Page Six.

Only one little problem with the story… Michelle Obama wasn’t staying at the Waldorf-Astoria in NY that day. In fact, Michelle Obama wasn’t even in New York City. In fact, she wasn’t within 500 miles of New York City. Michelle Obama was giving a speech in front of 1,000 people in Fort Wayne, Indiana. How hard do you think it would have been to find where Michelle Obama was that day?

I’m willing to bet that the hotel she stayed at in Fort Wayne wasn’t quite as nice as the Waldorf-Astoria.

The NY Post did print a retraction on Tuesday:

THE source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation.

How about bread and water for the dopes who took the story without any verification?