lately i've been down, and it's probably due to my not-so-stellar performance in college lately... ah, the classic struggle between what a christian is supposed to believe in vs what they're feeling due to society... how "strong" are we supposed to be? callous that nothing in the world can shake us, NO MATTER HOW BAD IT LOOKS FOR US? how much of that down feeling from society is due to our fear of ppl looking down upon us, where we're either saddened that we've let them down, or humiliated because they're laughing at us? how do we lift the heavy burdens off our chest? how hard do we pray? are we praying the right request? etc, etc, etc...

thank God... my car's FINALLY fixed... supposedly... please, don't fall apart... not now... i don't really care about stick anymore; what good's a stick shift w/10 disc cd changer that keeps falling apart every 2 months or so?

it's interesting really; i am that car... i see my downness impersonated in that car... my car problems were due to a coolant sensor problem... and likewise... my downness is due to a coolness problem... angry when i shouldn't be, saddened too long by the wrong stuff when i shouldn't be... this is my lastest cliche thought, and i think it's a good one to remember:

WHAT'S DONE IS DONE... WHAT'S NOT DONE HAS NOT BEEN DONE...
(WHAT'S THE POINT OF WORRYING ABOUT WHAT YOU DID? NO MATTER HOW TERRIBLE THE THINGS YOU'VE DONE IN THE PAST, WORRYING DOESN'T CHANGE THEM; JUST CONCENTRATE ON WHAT OCCURS NOW...
i understand you sometimes wanna worry so there's less chance of making a mistake, but really, why? so you can get an ulcer that breaks you down at 40? please, life ON EARTH is too stupid for that type of thinking... every phase has really just one blip on a cpu screen of life)

writing up a FAQ on bball low post offense... a flowchart of sorts... that way i can refer back to it when i'm trying to find out how to improve my offensive game... defense is simpler, but to get that i'll need to work on shuffling, hops, and liners... which i'll try more often in UCD now...

song's not finished... but then i had only one short week... hopefully though i get a lot done tonight...

wolf in sheep's clothing?
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as you know, my favorite genre of music is "christian hard alternative..." more or less i like some other songs from other genres, but this is the big one... it's hard, it's fast, it's upbeat... i smile upon it more because the writers are looking at God, you get a positive message in their lyrics, and if you get lucky, they throw in a good riff and fill from the lead guitarist... at times though, i have to wonder, how acceptable is this type of music for a christian? a lotta times, you can't find the positive message in the songs until you look them up and then go "AHHHH!" if pillar put one of their harder songs on 104.9 FM, i would doubt many ppl would cry out immediately(since the secular society is against christian rock), and call in going, "hey! what's this christian stuff i hear?" am i jumping up and down to the hard, driving rhythms, or because my heart is going "praise God! amen w/this man's message!" i wonder stuff like this at times...

the fact is, music can sometimes go deeper than the lyrics, to the melody, harmony, and rhythm... i've never been calmed by listening to hard, alternative rock... or hip-hop... my feet instead starts bouncing, my head starts tilting to the left, i might even start air guitaring or fake a mic trying to emcee... i think the high point may be when i hear a good riff... sometimes i'm calmed by that... but it's still kinda rare... contrast that with listening to classical music... you just feel a lot calmer from listening to that... not saying that's it's wrong to listen to music which gets your heartbeat up, sometimes you want that(though listening to it before you turn in is a BAAAD IDEA), but is christian music supposed to be calming, or upbeat, or just simply concentrate upon God? there's a lotta jumping, dancing, whatnot commanded in the psalms about praising God, so is that enough to justify an upbeat, hard song? am i dancing to the good lyrics, or to the melodies/harmonies/rhythms? the "big three" of music can't testify to an existance of God... or do they?

and then what about the music having an effect to you OUTSIDE of listening to it? if i keep listening to pillar/12 stones/ etc, and the laptop turns off, and i walk away, am i going to just explode every time something annoys me? "I FEEL LIKE THIS!!!" sometimes i wonder where i get this temper of mine... bball? playing tekken? could be, but hard to say...

it's funny really; almost every new music carries a demonic connotation w/it... i remember when heavy metal used to be categorized w/the devil; a lotta musicians honestly just said right out that they were satanists, and did pretty stupid stuff... metallica had some evil lyrics, the curent one ppl frown upon is manson... hip-hop is currently categorized with pimping w/the hos and bling bling, and dance/trance is the new one... it feels like spazzing so much, and since it's often played in dance clubs, sometimes it carries a negative connotation w/lsd and esctasy, to name a few... however, those used to be categorized w/rock...

but the bible suggests to test everything, and hold onto the good; therefore what i'm eventually going to try one of these days is to hold off a week or two on listening to music at all(the one exception will be songwriting); if i do listen, it would be classical music, but i don't have any, therefore i'm trying for the cold turkey treatment... maybe when i try that i'll also cut off cold turkey on video games and bball watching... if my behavior improves, i'll have to reevaluate...