Say Anything / Arcade Games

I recently had a friend reprimand me for not keeping current on here as of late. So I have two entries, none of which could stand on their own, combined into one entry.



Say Anything

I didn't like this band. Not the movie. The band.

They are odd. But I finally got a bunch of it (all of it) off of my roommate. And... well... I'm taking my words back. They're good. So here's where I've been corrected:

The first thing that turned me off to this band was their lyrics. Their lyrics are bazaar. Max Bemis, their lead singer, is psychotic, quite literally. On the early albums, a nice mix of excessive pot use and undiagnosed bipolar disorder made his lyrics quite awkward. But the more I hear, the more I indulge in his collage of verbal awkwardness from track to track. It takes a lot of guts to sing about an ex-girlfriend by name, a drug breakdown in a tour bus, and the holocaust all in pop punk format in a single album. Yet this guy pulls it off. And he recently found Jesus I guess, so his latest album brings that edge to the religious talk of how poorly Jesus is treated in both pop culture and Christian sub culture.

Second. They use the studio as an instrument and do a lot of things on the album that could not be mimicked live, such as string sections, sampling, and guest vocalists out the wahzoo. Here's the thing though, they make it work. I know, that's a lame answer, but they really do. In this way, a live show is interesting, because they have 6 members, so there are enough of them to assign tasks to recreating that sound. Ya gotta love that. Once you get passed the bias of live instruments on every track, their albums are quite enjoyable.



Arcade Games

I was talking to some friends at breakfast. And we began talking about arcade games. You know, the ones in the movie theaters and big tents at the fair. That's when it hit me: I have a dream to own an arcade game.

Now if I became rich (not gonna happen), I would fist throw money left and right at charities to begin with. This is most likely so I don't seem like a hypocrite for calling out every celebrity who buys a yacht and wants a key to the city when they give a check to an orphanage and take some photos for People magazine. So once I had charity-ed my butt off, I would splurge on arcade games.

Some would go with the classics. Pac Man. Space Invaders. War Lords.

But I didn't grow up with those. I can think of three that would be great:

1) Time Crisis. This game was great. You get that little foot pedal to pop up from cover and you don't even have to walk around. You just point and fire. But you never had time to play through the whole thing when you were in an arcade, and that's why I would buy it.

2) Tekken 3. I never learned the combos. I would just press the punch over and over and over again. This managed to both make me lose and look like a total jerk. With some time alone with this masterpiece, I could master the arts.

3) Arctic Thunder. Snow mobiles. Missiles. I'm in.

"Time To Leave" by John Reuben

Taught young, the world’s wisdom
I told life’s a game, the earth will be your stadium
Be alert, pay attention
(One day) Even your friends will become the competition
Trust no one but do remember this, never burn any potential bridges
Know who’s who, and what they can do for you
And don’t feel bad cause’ in the end they’re gonna do it to you too
Remember life’s not fair
In order to maintain, your gonna have to let you sensitivity be trained
A machine more than a human being
What you say doesn’t always have to be what you mean
Tell them what they want to hear if it’s to your benefit
And words beyond closed doors are insignificant
Push yourself, never be satisfied
Even if you don’t get it, at least you died knowing you tried

Born, live, strive, succeed
Gain it all, bye, now it’s time to leave…
Now, all we see is now

Taught young, the world’s wisdom
Begin to pay attention and make my own observations
All of the kids working hard for admiration
Trying their best not to meet their social expiration
Kind of hard in a world this finicky
Easily praised and yet destroyed just as quickly
I guess me and this world must not be compatible, cause I don’t want its approval to feel valuable

So who’s next to climb the wall of success, just to see how good the top truly gets
Chasing lies disguised as going somewhere only to arrive and realize it’s really no where’
That’s even if you get there in the first place
What an incredible let down we’re bound to face when we substitute purpose for cheap counterfeit
Too busy trying to succeed in life that we forget to live it

You can live in the infinite or give in to the immediate
Gain it all but someday you’ll have to leave it
This world is temporary and it’s heart is selfish
Think to yourself, is this what wealth is
But now, all we see is now and now is not a bad thing but now does bring tomorrow then
Now becomes then
Moments escape, new ones replace them
Don’t want to face the end still searching
Asking what in this world did I ever find worth in
What could be worse than life of wasted years
Nothing lasting, nothing true, nothing dear
I fear losing beauty in pursuit of bigger things
I fear a broken home courtesy of the American dream
Maybe that’s just me with my emotions on my sleeve, but one way or another we all wear what we believe

Simple Faith

_____________:
yeah....do you think it would be easier to love Jesus if you werent here? like here, its kinda everywhere...but at a different school...you would have to search for truth. 11:27 PM

Lukas Borton:
it makes sense 11:28
but no 11:28




I am not sure if I believe in divine providence. I'm not sure i buy such an idea. If i was certain of such a thing though, I would cite the college I chose as a place I was "meant to be."

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I gone to a state school. A lot of things happened in the first month of school that, had I been at state school, I'm sure I would have attempted to remedy with substances. But I wasn't there. I was at a Christian University and was forced to seek community before a bottle.

So let's say I believe in divine placement. Where else is there? Is there somewhere I'm destined to arrive in a year? 10 years? When I'm 50? It's all overwhelming.