Money talking

Halls of Justice Painted Green
Money Talking
Power Wolves Beset Your Door
Hear Them Stalking
Soon You’ll Please Their Appetite
They Devour
Hammer of Justice Crushes You
Overpower

From …And Justice for All by Metallica

Our society and culture has conditioned me to root for the little guy. Justice, it seems, can be bought and sold like any other commodity. O.J. Simpson parlayed his money and fame into a not guilty verdict in what appeared to be an air tight case. Ironically, African Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than their Caucasian counterparts and spend more time in jail.

Here in Canada the situation isn’t much better. Aboriginal Canadians are discriminated against by our prison system. My friend Mushi who came to Canada from the Congo four years ago, once commented that while Canada is a great country, in many ways our systems are racist. “Paul, look around you. It is only the Aboriginal people who are in jail.”

Despite my desire to root for the little guy in matters of justice, God sees things differently. I was actually surprised when I first read the following verse the other night.

You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute (Exodus 23:3 NKJV).

Doesn’t God root for the little guy too? After I thought about I realized that God’s thoughts are indeed higher than mine. God doesn’t show partiality to the poor in matters of justice just because they are poor. God seeks to create through us a world where justice is blind and impartial. When we actually seek justice for all people, the systems that are in place which create the imbalances that exist now will disappear.

Music not miracles

The point I’m making is that still, the music, the performance and the space in which the music is made is what is most important. If an engineer is doing more than switching on the gear and pushing up a fader or turning a control knob, there may be too much interference with the performing process.

The nostalgia I speak about is triggered by the fact that my partner Rachel is recording next week, and I would love to have a studio for her to work in like the ones in which we made our middle-period recordings. An 8-track analogue tape-machine, a simple mixing desk, some good microphones, some basic compressors, and a good sounding room. I would – acting as engineer – set up the microphones, route some cables, push up the faders, and sit back. I think such a studio would be a magical place, uncluttered, containing just a few grey boxes, a piano. It would send a message to anyone who walked into the room that this is place to perform music, not miracles.

pete townshend – (who he?): Recording

Blogged with Flock

I like to call this the marriage saver

My new Jo-Ral trumpet mute.

Blogged with Flock

Playing telephone with Moses

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow; whether man or beast, he shall not live.’ When the trumpet sounds long, they shall come near the mountain.”
So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and sanctified the people, and they washed their clothes. And he said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not come near your wives (Exodus 19:10-15 NKJV).

You know, I’ve probably read this passage a hundred times and last night was the first time I noticed what a weird exchange went on here. Moses is up on the mountain having a chat with God, which I’m guessing is pretty intense in its own right. God tells Moses to go down and tell the Israelites to wash their clothes and get ready because in three days (by the way, I am guessing that Christ’s three days in the tomb is a reflection of this first three days) God is going to consecrate these people. Oh, and by the way, if anybody touches this mountain before God says so, they’re dead.

What does Moses do? He heads down the mountain and tells the Israelites to wash their clothes and get ready. Oddly, he neglects to tell them to stay away from the mountain on penalty of death but he does add that they shouldn’t have sex with their wives because, well, just don’t.

Have you ever played the game telephone? It is the one where you have a bunch of people lined up and somebody whispers something in the first person’s ear, they then whisper it to the person beside them and on it goes. Finally when the message gets to the last person they say it out loud so you can hear how the message changed as it made its way down the line.

It seems to me that God inadvertently played a game of telephone with Moses here. God told him one thing and by the time Moses got down the mountain he told the Israelites something different. He did get the part right about washing their clothes and getting ready, he just added and deleted some parts. Now, before you get all angry at Moses, hang on a second. Moses is hardly the only person who ever worked over the message of God.

Jesus told us not to retaliate violently against someone, even when conventional wisdom says it is OK. What do Christians do? Well, let’s just say that we are the architects of some of the most brutal violence that history has seen. Jesus taught us that no person is allowed to judge the sins of another. Unfortunately, the only thing that modern Christians seem to be known for is how judgmental we are.

The reality is that people have been guilty of adding to and deleting things from God’s message ever since Moses came down that mountain. Some churches teach that only the people who are part of it can be saved. Others teach that you have to go through all of their rituals to be saved. Fortunately for us, God thinks much differently that we do. When that final day comes, I think we will be surprised by just how much we have veered from the teachings of God.

Very scary

Franklin D. Roosevelt said that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Actually, what he really said was:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Despite this brave assertion, there is so much in life for us to be worried about. Disease, unemployment, global warming, gas prices, our children, the list goes on and on. I am choosing to stop there because it is too depressing to keep going. Can it really be true that we don’t have anything to be afraid of?

Jesus said:

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing (Matthew 6:25 NKJV)?

I think FDR was getting at the same thing that Jesus was. Namely, that we can choose to worry if we want too, and that worry can have very serious affects on our life. Worry can hurt our health, our relationships, and our ability to function. The thing is, worry doesn’t change a thing. We can freak out all we want but it won’t stop us from getting cancer (ironically, worrying about it may even cause us to get it). We can worry about losing our job all we want but that won’t somehow stop us from being laid off. Basically, worry won’t change a thing, so what’s the point?

Now if I could only learn to practice that in my own life.

Alanis’s humps

Interesting article in the LA Times about Alanis Morissette’s rendition of the Black Eyed Peas hit “My Humps.”

PEOPLE endlessly complain that Hollywood is full of dopey, superficial films bereft of anything new to say. And they’re right. Anyone looking for art that is edgy or relevant — and inspires comment — is turning to Internet video, which has become the true engine driving our pop culture.

Nothing demonstrates this better than the tsunami-like viral success of Alanis Morissette’s “My Humps,” which surfaced three weeks ago on YouTube and quickly became the most popular video on the channel, attracting 5.5 million views, easily outdistancing such rivals as “Otters Holding Hands” and “Farting in Public.”

On one level, “My Humps” is a commentary on dim-bulb pop. The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps,” though a huge smash, was widely mocked for its vapid, suggestive lyrics. (Sample: “The boys they wanna sex me, they always standing next to me, always dancing next to me, tryin’ a feel my hump, hump.”) The video, featuring Fergie, the group’s lead singer, was, if possible, even tawdrier. Full of nonstop teasing and thrusting, it’s the kind of hip-hop booty porn that would make great torture material for Muslim prisoners at our Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Dressing herself Fergie-style, with baubles and bling, surrounded by black-clad male dancers, Morissette retained the original’s visual sluttiness but replaced the Peas’ thumping rhythm track with a pensive solo piano. By removing the intoxicating bass line and clearly enunciating the crass lyrics, she gave the song’s sexpot swagger a new tone of sadness and desperation while simultaneously parodying her own artistic tendencies toward self-absorbed angst.

This is what gives YouTube its real power. It is a forum not just for amateur pranks but also for career reinvention. For Morissette, this video — made at her home on digital video for roughly $2,000 — may transform her persona as much as taking a part in “Pulp Fiction” did for John Travolta.

Morissette has followed the model once practiced by Bob Dylan, who in his ’60s heyday refused to explicate anything, bobbing and weaving in interviews, baffling the MSM of the day with a fog of evasions, sly jokes and put-ons.

Unlike Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Fergie, who can’t stop blabbing about their various addictions, pet causes and loser lovers, Morissette has greeted all “My Humps” interview requests with a vow of silence.

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If you haven’t seen the video, head over to YouTube and check it out. It is very well done. The first time I saw it I laughed, it was obviously a parody. The next time I noticed the sadness in the vocal, it seemed that Ms. Morissette was saying “enough with this kind of crap already.” It’s kind of catchy too.

Is Internet video the next big “thing?” I don’t know, I kind of hope not in a way. Anything like this that is kind of cool and edgy gets over done and used up in our disposable culture. If I had a choice I would say let it fly under the radar for the most part, popping up only when something extraordinary like this comes along.

Everything we see is so polished. Not even our newscasts are really genuine anymore (I’m not sure if they ever really were). Everything is sanitized and has a spin put on it before we can consume it and make our own choice. Internet video is the only hope we have of seeing something real. That is what is great about blogging and viral video, they are what they are. Although I suppose, they too have their own spin.

Tomorrow is a new day and our society will have new obsessions. It seems we have grown bored with Anna Nicole Smith. Britney Spear’s personal troubles don’t intrigue us like they used too, but there is always someone new coming down the pipe. We can guarantee that whoever they are, they will be plastic perfect and completely soulless. In the meantime, we can still hope for some great art from somewhere, can’t we?

Complete and utter failure

Just in case we weren’t already convinced the Iraq war is a complete and utter failure, now the US is proposing a wall to separate the Iraqi people from each other. When I first heard about this I figured it had to be a joke. I mean, why would the US create a Berlin style wall?

Is this what a free society looks like? Have the US and the rest of the “coalition of the willing” only succeeded in replacing one evil with another? Yes, Saddam Hussein was a prick, but Iraq has become so destabilized that stopping people from blowing themselves up to kill their enemy has become an impossibility.

I guess it isn’t really shocking that the US would propose segregation as a means to peace. It wasn’t that long ago that large parts of that country segregated their Caucasian population from their people of color. Hell, this school just had its first integrated prom last Saturday.

Despite a history of racism in that country, I believe that the vast majority of Americans are decent people. I can’t imagine that they will support their government turning Iraq into a police state. The US government needs to admit that they have failed. In repentance they have to turn to the international community and ask for help.

I can understand why the international community would hesitate to assist the US. After all, they went into Iraq against the wishes of the majority. This isn’t about the Bush administration being negligent anymore. For the sake of the Iraqi people, that country needs some stability. They can slap the collective wrist of the US government later.

Honesty and madness

Matthew Good has a great post on his blog today detailing his struggle with mental illness. It is very courageous for him to come forward and be so candid about the battles he has faced. Hopefully what he has written will be a blessing to someone going through the same things.

One of the (many) things that I admire Tiffany for is the courage she exhibits in being so candid with her journey through Bipolar Disorder. I know that more than one person has been helped by her because of this ability to be honest.

It is strange that we are so hesitant to face the reality of mental illness. For some reason these diseases have such a stigma attached to them, a stigma that is non-existent when dealing with any other disease brought on by heredity and/or physiology. The idea that we need to just “buck up” and get over whatever problem we face still pervades our society. As recent events in the life of a friend have shown, even those charged with caring for those who battle mental illness sometimes have very little understanding of how seriously these diseases need to be taken.

The most ironic thing about our shyness when it comes to mental illness is that most of us suffer from it to one degree or another. Be it depression, anxiety, or seasonal affective disorder, most of us have these problems in our life at one time or another. Maybe that is why we are so uncomfortable in talking about it. When someone is as honest as Matt Good or Tiffany, it hits a little too close to home.

My prayer is that mental illness stops being our dirty little secret. I hope that honesty and courage exhibited by a few will help all of us face the skeletons in our own closets. I never want to hear about another life needlessly lost for want of understanding.

Michael Moore’s lies

Canadians Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine still remember with glee watching documentarian Michael Moore assail President George W. Bush for waging a “fictitious war” against Iraq when the filmmaker won an Oscar in 2003.

“That Oscar speech – when he did that, we were standing in our living room literally on our feet applauding,” Caine recalled Thursday. “At that time, four days into the Iraq war, 80 per cent of the American public was onside with that war. So it was an incredibly courageous thing to do at that juncture.”

Filled with admiration, the couple set out to make a film about their hero, who first became a darling of the left with “Roger and Me.” That 1989 documentary centred on Moore’s supposedly unsuccessful attempts to get GM president Roger Smith to talk to him about the devastating effects on Flint, Mich., after the carmaker closed down a plant there.

“It was a slow reveal, really,” Melnyk says. “We go into things and start to research them as we go along and start to do interviews with people, and we started to realize: ‘Oh my God, there are some cheats in these films.’ Obviously, the biggest one being that Michael actually did talk to Roger Smith twice during the making of ‘Roger and Me.’

Such apparent disingenuousness is par for the course for Moore, according to those who spoke on camera to Melnyk and Caine. Indeed, the couple say the dishonesty about Roger Smith wasn’t the only false note in “Roger and Me” – an entire segment featuring an ABC news reporter telling viewers how a disgruntled autoworker had driven off with the network’s satellite truck was a fake.

The reporter was a friend of Moore’s and agreed to stage the phoney report as a favour to him, they say.

With those sorts of revelations – “Manufacturing Dissent” unveils similar questionable tactics used in Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11″ and his Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” – it’s no wonder American right-wing news organizations, longtime Moore foes, quickly came calling after the film screened last month at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

Several Fox News shows were keen to book the couple for some on-air Moore-bashing. They agreed to go on a live Fox show – but only to prevent their comments from being edited to fit what they feel is the network’s political agenda.

“We said: ‘This is crap. We do not want to become poster kids for the right-wing media. No, we haven’t seen the light and converted.’ That is exactly what they were thinking,” Melnyk says. “But we were intent on telling them that it’s not only Michael Moore who is lying and cheating, it’s mainstream news organizations and George Bush.”

Adds Caine with a laugh: “I could hear a person in New York screaming into my earpiece: ‘Get that asshole off the air.’ They cut us off.”

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Agendas

The other day I had lunch with a friend of mine. He was telling me about the church he used to attend with his family. My friend you see, is a bit of a skeptic. While he supports his family in their faith he isn’t sure exactly what it is that he believes. Despite this, he attended church with his family for about a year or so and he actually enjoyed it, right up until their agenda became clear.

Suddenly, after about a year of going to this church, people started asking him to go for coffee. From what I understand, these people weren’t friends. He didn’t know them and he felt uncomfortable with the sudden interest they had in him. Rather than making him feel like getting more deeply involved in the church, they scared him off. He hasn’t really gone back since.

Its funny, I would love to encourage this friend of mine to seek out a relationship with God. I’m not concerned so much with getting him “saved”, I just believe that his life would be enriched by knowing God. The thing is, I know that beating him over the head with religion won’t do any of us any good. Also, I am not interested in being a friend to people only as long as they are helping me fulfill some agenda I have. I am interested in knowing and loving people for who they are, just like God does. My beliefs are a big part of who I am, so they come up in conversation from time to time, but it isn’t the only thing we talk about. Far from it in fact.

The really sad thing is that my experience has been that once they get you to “make a commitment to Jesus” these people who showed so much interest in you suddenly lose interest. Once you have helped them fulfill whatever it is they felt they needed to fulfill their attention becomes focused on their next project. All you are now is another person who is expected to give of your time and your money to the church. If you don’t, you are a second class citizen.

Evangelism is not a right, it’s a privilege. You have to earn the chance to share your faith with someone. Ironically, you earn this chance by not being concerned with sharing your faith. Quite a paradox, isn’t it? You can’t enter into relationships with an agenda, people see right through it. More than that, it isn’t the way Jesus did things. He wasn’t interested in getting people to voice faith in some doctrine, He was just interested in people. We Christians have a lot to learn from Jesus.