Too Good to Not Share

Hey y'all--

As Malia implied in her comment (which reminds me...13? I can only get to 11 in my head...who am I forgetting?), the snow is still falling here in Colorado, which just basically reminds me that the Spreezee beats the crap out of Tulsa at having winter. Right now there's been 2.5 feet of snow here in the past 10 days or so, and blizzard conditions going on outside the window behind me make me think that things are only going to get deeper.

Oh, and my dad went out today and broke down and bought an SUV. It's not 4wd, but it is another step down the slippery slope we at this Margheim household have dare not tread.

Anywho, Hil sent this to me, and all I could manage to say through my grin was "Dear God." So, anytime something like that happens, I repost it:

here

Enjoy!

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Too Good to Not Share

Hey y'all--

As Malia implied in her comment (which reminds me...13? I can only get to 11 in my head...who am I forgetting?), the snow is still falling here in Colorado, which just basically reminds me that the Spreezee beats the crap out of Tulsa at having winter. Right now there's been 2.5 feet of snow here in the past 10 days or so, and blizzard conditions going on outside the window behind me make me think that things are only going to get deeper.

Oh, and my dad went out today and broke down and bought an SUV. It's not 4wd, but it is another step down the slippery slope we at this Margheim household have dare not tread.

Anywho, Hil sent this to me, and all I could manage to say through my grin was "Dear God." So, anytime something like that happens, I repost it:



Enjoy!

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

what i miss most

that excitement you get when you get a text message and you don't know who it's from. or you hope it's from someone in particular.

phone calls from people i know, not just people who i have accounts or appointments with.

eating apples (which is entirely unrelated to the rest of the list; nonetheless, i do miss it quite a bit, and--quite unfortunately--it sounds as though the day of my resumed apple consumption may never come: apparently, the human body can reject a dental implant)

facebook messaging about anything and everything just because we have so much to talk about.

e-mails. from humans.

lunches and dinners where no one else even seemed like they were there.

study sessions in the netcaf or the library; really, these were always just (from my side at least) excuses to be near to one another.

hearing about family back home, wherever that was.


i guess what i miss most is contact. i kinda feel isolated right now, and i'm sure it's all self-inflicted, but--i don't really enjoy it much.


anywho

peace, love, and joy to you all.

Rambly ~or~ The News from Inside 'The Holiday Blizzard of 06'(tm) ~or~ Why I Think I am __________

Well, it was probably pretty dumb of me to get everything set up on this new blog, pimp out subscriptions, and then take a little over a week off. Oops.

Let me catch you up real quick on what you've missed in my life in the past week: jury duty, dental consulations, 800 miles on the road, and 2 feet of snow. As for that blizzard y'all non-Coloradoans might have been hearing about--it was no joke. I'm kinda thinking that maybe Colorado heard about Tulsa getting 8" of snow a couple weeks ago, and so it thought it had to reassert itself as "more wintry," but man, it was out of control. The worst driving weather I've ever been in. And everything closed.

But that's not what I want to write about right now. I set this blog up as transparency|inaction hoping that that would always keep me focused on the goal of having a medium through which I maintain a transparent lifestyle. So here goes.

I've been able to do a lot of thinking this week, between hours waiting to be called to a jury (which didn't end up happening), to the hours spent in a dentist's chair waiting to be fixed (which also didn't happen, but will just after Christmas), to all of the past two days I've spent snowed in. And I've been thinking about why I feel like I need love.

So before I can get into anything real, here's what I need to say: I came to the conclusion not long ago that I wanted my life to be something where I did things, like a speaking engagement across the country, because I wanted to, not because I needed to for the money or whatever. I decided that that would probably lead to a happier family and a happier life in general.

Then I began to apply this principle to love, and I decided that I would much rather find love because I wanted to, not because I felt like I needed to in order to survive. So now we're back to why I feel like I need love.

I think it's the ultimate sign of my desperate quest to find the approval of others. Now, I don't mean the selling out of myself in order to please others, as in doing precisely what they wanted me to do, but that what I want to do would be acceptable to other people. I guess it's the same end, just a different starting point.

So love, I've supposed, would be the ultimate sign that what I was doing was ok, because somebody else wanted in on it.

But that's not really the end. There are a lot of other questions I want to ask, or things I want to think, but I'm afraid of what people might think of my responses. I don't know, this feels rambly. I don't write as well on this computer...it's not mine.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Using RSSFWD to Subscribe

So, Malia brought up a great point in the last post comments about subscribing to the blog, which is one of the reasons I stuck with xanga for so long...the big, scary internet where you have to figure all this out on your own was, well, big and scary.

But this morning, whether spurred more by the thought of actually having readers again or delaying the cursory studying I need to do for my Charismatic Life & the Healing Ministry final, I have girded up my loins and ventured out onto the big, scary internet and found us a solution.

It's called RSSFWD.

Check it out if you'd like, but basically it takes RSS feeds (which I don't really understand) and converts them into standard e-mails (which I almost understand) and sends them to the inbox of whatever e-mail account you want. So voila! Problem solved.

There should be a spot at the top of my sidebar labeled "Subscribe via RSSFWD." All you need to do is enter your e-mail address and you should start automatically receiving blog updates via the e-mail.


Peace, love, and joy to you all. (Oh, and a real post is coming)

:\

Nobody reads me...woe upon woe.

But, Malia definitely "won" a manuscript of my awful awful novel, if she still wants it. :)

Melbourne.

Peace, love, and joy to you all anyway (and please come back...).

A Parable, A History, and A Mystery

The Parable:

A man once was walking along the beach, scouring the sands for chests of treasure left behind from wars long ago. He searches through the debris and scattered rocks and shells for anything of value. Disappointed, he returns home empty-handed. If he discards the rubbish, what does this say about him?

The next day a small boy passes through the same beach. He sees all the scattered debris as treasure: he doesn't know any better. Turning over every rock and opening every shell, he happens across an oyster's shell still holding a magnificent pearl. But the treasure for him is not in the pearl's immeasurable value, but in his own wonder at the beauty of the pearl. If he retains the pearl forever, never cashing in on its value but always appreciating its simple beauty,
what does this say about him?

The History:

A group of nations once sat down together to divide the world up between them. "We are white," they said, "and we are better and stronger." Certainly, some "kill the Indian to save the man" and "white man's burden" jargon was thrown around...regardless, they drew arbitrary lines through a place now called the Middle East (and I don't mean Ohio and Iowa, though I am campaigning for MidEast to be the new title for the fake midwest [Colorado's got to be in the midwest--look at a map. This really probably frustrates me too much, but, sigh, we've got to be the freaking midwest]). Then they found oil there.

The Mystery (A Scavenger Hunt, if you will):

The Fly+Margaret Colin+imdb+"" = a synopsis



All of this refers to the conclusions I've come to. Maybe I'm wrong, but at least I'm entertaining.

Prizes available:

1 ) First comment.
2 ) Most clever comment before 11.00pm cst 12.11.06
3 ) First one to crack the mystery.

Oh, and you can't win twice, cause there's only one prize.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Don't Download This Song

Some Things Never Change...

I still care more. And that's all I got on that.

Fortunately, other things do change:

1)

Like my brother's medical condition, which continues to improve. He's still having some troubles keeping the O2 stat high enough, but he's detubated (i realize that this prolly isn't a word. i do not really care.) and has been walking around a little bit. We're expecting him to get discharged from the hospital on Friday.

Oh and here are some pictures of his car:



2)

The big news is still coming. It involves change.

3)

There is no number 3 tonight.

This is all that I have. I'm tired, I can't figure out up, and, most frightening of all, I think I may actually be happy with my life, or at least more happy than unhappy. And that's the hardest to admit.

Still licking my wounds, but wishing

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Update on the Bro-Ham

First and foremost, thanks for all the prayer and support. Jon's doing a lot better. I talked to him for a little bit today and he said that he has trouble breathing and he's in a lot of pain, but everything's roses other than that. My parents went to the impound lot today to get some of his stuff out of the car and take some pics, which I'll post as soon as they get here. Apparently his car made the news as well, so my dad saved that on one of our computers for me to watch when I get home.

That's all I've got tonight.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

In Other News

Hey, so, my brother was in a pretty serious car accident this morning. He was apparently t-boned on the passenger side of his car while traveling westbound through the intersection of N Carefree and Powers (if you don't know, don't worry; that's just for those of you who know the Springs). Somehow he ended up then colliding head on with an old (as in, made entirely of steel-reinforced steel) pickup truck that was stopped waiting for the light. Conditions were super cold early this morning there, so icy roads are prolly what set all of this off.

By the time my sister got there, the paramedics had arrived and were cutting my brother out of his now completely totaled Chevy Malibu. They stabilized him at the scene, and he was conscious and responsive. Well, right now he's at the hospital. He's going to be fine, I guess, but in the meantime he's kinda jacked up: 3 or 4 broken ribs, a punctured lung which has already collapsed once, a cracked spleen (which I don't even know what that means), and a small cut on his thigh which required 5 stitches. They're doing x-rays on basically his whole body now to find out if he fractured his femur (which they are relatively sure he did) or if he did any damage to his spine. He'll be in the hospital for the next couple of days while they watch something or other.

But the word is he's going to be fine, so thank God for that. I'm thinking I'm going to end up leaving my car in Colorado after Christmas break for him to drive around in, at least for next semester, since I only very rarely use mine out here. The really, really scary part of all of this is that at this point, my brother doesn't have health insurance. Which is just plain scary.

So, I guess I'll just say, Please pray.



Peace, love and joy to you all

Pretty Much Entirely Out of Control

This is what I would make if I was smart enough.

Big Talk, Small Talk ~or~ If You Think I Find You Terribly Dull, It's Prolly Cause I Do

Last night I decided something. I'm not sure that I'm right, I'm not sold on the idea, but maybe, so here goes, we'll throw this out and see if the cat licks it up. In this world, there are big talkers and there are small talkers (and maybe [probably] a third category who does both).

I suck at small talk. Chatting with people about their major, or their name, or the news, or movies that are coming out, or the weather, or even sports is arduous for me. Painfully so. I think this is part of the reason why I hate meeting new people so much. Certainly, I am, at least somewhat, a shy fellow myself (and I just said 'fellow,' which means I win). But I just really honestly don't care about your surface level opinion about the next big thing to come out in movies. I think it's wasting oxygen for me to want you to agree with my tres intellectual observation that the weather's been different lately.

I much prefer big talk. Finding out who people actually are, what drives them to these opinions that they have about movies or music or whatever. I strive to get to a point where I'm hearing what people are passionate about--and I listen and remember these real things. If I don't remember your major, but I remember your passion, I count that as a win.

And so I think that people can get the wrong impression about me. I think that I often come across as wholly disinterested in other people. Which is only half true. I'm just incredibly underwhelmed with this prospect that knowing you is knowing that you think that Apocalypto is too bloody for somebody who makes Jesus flicks. That doesn't interest me at all. But the essence, that really, really, really does.

I came to ORU hoping that it would be a place of gut-level honesty and real transparency. And, more than most places I've been in life, it is. But it's still a place filled with small-talkers.

Small talkers can be wonderful people. And small-talk is something which I probably ought to get better at, and I'm actually trying to (to cut off that whole perception that I really don't care about other people). But small-talk works for about fifteen minutes. When you spend days, weeks, months, and years trapped in these small-talk relationships, it should be no wonder that everything seems shallow and meaningless.

I guess I just want meaning in life, in everything in life. And me telling you that I'm from Colorado Springs, that's pretty meaningless.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Around Here Somewhere

There must be more to life than pain and painkillers;
there must be more to life than picking and being unpicked.
Somewhere there's more than papers and presentations
than profit and price, a world without end.

So--this week is going to be very busy (as in, I still have 18,000 or so words to write for my NaNoWriMo project and I have yet to cave...I might be up all night on Wednesday...we'll have to see).

Also, I need a theme song...any suggestions?

Peace, love, and joy.

Conservative Again?

The two strongest predictors of Republican affiliation in America are (1) marriage and (2) church attendance. These are also the strongest predictors of female sexual satisfaction. The authoritative 1995 University of Chicago survey Sex in America found that conservative Protestant married women were the group most likely to report that they "nearly always" orgasmed during sex. Married women of all religions were almost twice as likely as unmarried women to describe their sex lives as "extremely satisfying."

From here, via here

So, as it turns out, I'm nowhere near liberal, or even moderate. I'm pretty much Karl Rove, Big Dick Cheney, or any of those other PNAC freaks y'all can name.

Hooray hoorah for the death of habeas corpus, for torture at home and abroad, and for us invading the hell out of anybody who even slightly oversteps their authority by challenging us. Because if there's one thing I am at the end of the day, it's sexually satisfying. :)

I'll be in Colorado for the holiday, which means that I either will be writing quite less or quite a bit more than usual. Not really sure which.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.

Deja Vu: A Relationship Existentially: Wal-Mart

Tonight was weird.

I was reminded of so many different things tonight. That's what was weird about it.

And I would be reminded in weird deja vu ways, like I couldn't actually remember what this was hearkening back toward, just that it was somehow hearkening back. I guess it was just a night facing the wrong way.

I remembered seepage, storage bins for clothes, speeding back through the parking lot and screaming at each other so that we could get her keys. I remembered getting donuts just because I was already out there, 16 Blocks, and telling secrets via an IM guessing game.

But more than anything other, I remembered a story that went down before any of the rest of that.

It was a little over a year ago, when it was just starting to get coolish at nights down here. I was out with the girl who was occupying all my time (either with her presence or her phantom staring back at me in my mind), and I was really nervous. We were, I suppose, interested in each other. I was filling my car up with gas, chatting with her through the door she'd opened for just such a purpose.

At this point a man walked up and accosted me. He asked how things were going. I could sense where this was going to take me. He looked me in the eye and told me this long story about how he needed just $24.78 in order to pay his rent at the Days Inn just down the street. He told me all about how he had done the whole Seed-Faith thing and he was just broke now from having given it all away, and I closed her door.

I told him that I didn't have the money. He looked at my car, at her, and he looked back at me and called me a liar. I don't think she could hear. On second thought, my car isn't very sound proof. She may have. I hoped that she didn't. I told him that I really didn't have any money, that all this--except her, I suppose--was my parents' money, not mine. He said something rude.

As I started to walk back around to the other side of my car, I told him that we'd definitely be praying for him. He told me not to. "Don't pray for me, pray for yourself. You don't know God, man," he said. I told him to have a good night. He walked away.

I went out and had a great night.

But it gnawed at me. Had I done something wrong? We talked about it and she took my side. She said that God would provide what the man had needed, and if it wasn't me it wasn't me.

The next morning I was driving to church, prepared to teach about Micah 6.8 ("He has told you, O Man, what is good, and what does YHWH require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."), and it just gnawed at me and rang in my heart. "You don't know God."


And tonight was kinda like that.

God, please know that I did the best I knew how; please bless my (probably failed) attempts at walking out this faith that you've entrusted to me. God, know that whatever I did or didn't do that I did it all with the best of intentions. God help me.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.