Bazooka-Joe
Reno, NV, United States

My Space Site
See my Blogger profile

iTunes I'm Diggin On Today:

• "Photograph" by Weezer
• "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Seven Spanish Angels" by Ray Charles
• "Always Love" by Nada Surf
• "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab For Cutie
• "All These Things That I've Done" by The Killers

My Links:

• My Monthly Songwriter's Column
• My Myspace Site
• My Bass Gear
• The Official Shotgun Rules
• Coming Soon - Some Christian Music Reviews I Do
• So funny they shouldn't even be allowed to update it weekly

My Friends:

• Go Off the Main Road with Dan
• Come Ride the C-Train
• You Drank What? - Pecadillo's Brainchild
• Michael Sorensen, A Watercolor Genius
• Challies Blog
• The Doulogos, for some real "deep thoughts" and Biblical Perspective

Sorry guys no pictures tonight. I don't have the energy (and yes the camera came, and yes it's great, and yes the manual is in English!).

warning: this one definitely qualifies as "incoherant" and "rambling".

I’ve already been to bed once tonight. While I was laying there a realization struck me and is now keeping me up in disgust until I can get it out and “on paper” as they say. My wife’s in the beginning stages of labor tonight (still). It’s a slow process and there’s a lot of downtime. We went to the hospital today and after a half-hour check, they sent us home with notification that the baby’s not ready yet. Some would look at this scenario with various glass-half-full or rose-colored-glasses thinking. But I don’t deal very well with disappointment. And that got me thinking, as I laid there in bed, that I let the fear of disappointment keep me from doing some things and this…well, this is one thing that I can’t escape from it or avoid it. I have to face it, buck up, and put my smile back on. For my wife, if for no one else or no other reason. I suck at that. Sure, faking it is probably a good thing to suck at, but I’m referring to the genuine attitude of getting back on the proverbial horse and trying it again.

And then it hit me, it’s not just disappointment I’m afraid of as my eyes pierced the cold black darkness from the lonely bed. I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of broad, generic concepts like disappointment, failure, rejection and I’m afraid of silly specific things like spiders and ghosts.

Rabbit Trail: Coincidentally when Jesus was resurrected (Mark 16:13) he appeared to them on Easter, and they thought he was a ghost. So he invited them to look closely at his hands, feet and side and to “handle” him. Jesus even had to ask for food and eat before them (Luke 24:36, John 20:20). Notice that he didn’t dismiss it as childish folklore, instead he went to the effort of proving he was not a ghost. I’m not saying I believe in ghosts…it’s just an observation.

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes fear. I’m pretty much disgusted at this moment how much I allow fear to choke the fun right out of life. Taking risks, even safe ones is difficult for me. I use words like “pragmatic” and “realist” to describe myself. But let’s face it. I’m a negative, pessimistic cynic and I think I’m getting really tired of living that way. I walk around quoting Murphy’s Law as if it were some sort of montra. “Whatever can go wrong…will go wrong” and “if I take the umbrella I won’t need it, but if I don’t, then I will” so I walk around holding proverbial umbrellas everywhere I go because I think, deep down, I actually believe there’s a cosmic balance of bad and good luck and I’ve somehow been elected as the bit-bucket-like dumping grounds for all the bad luck remainders abandoned after the even divisions have been divvied out. Pretty twisted, right?

Take my view of heaven. Now, there’s what I know to be true because it’s in the Bible and then there’s all the other stuff where I have to fill in the blanks. Admittedly if my knowledge of the Bible was greater, or even what it should be I’d have fewer blanks to fill. And I’m working on that. Emotionally, I react to heavenly concepts as if heaven were an enormous business. But bigger. Like if you took every piece of the United States federal government and put them all on one large Disneyland-esque campus. And that would make God something like the President…or Mickey Mouse depending on how you look at it. And Jesus some sort of a Vice Mickey. Bordering on blaspheme here I think, but it’s late so hopefully God’s getting some sort of humorous kick out of my absurdity and has put his smiting rod back in the gun safe. Anyway, if my view of heaven is screwed up to the degree that I think of it as a very large corporation or a government entity, then you can imagine how my fears of the way it is run are. Sure God is perfect, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc, etc. But what about his middle managers? His secretary? And his angelic case workers? They’re not, right? And whose client am I? The slightly narcoleptic junior apprentice case worker with a light gambling addiction? What if my salvation paperwork was put in the wrong pile? What if my file’s missing completely or has a coffee ring stain on the triplicate carbon copies that go to St. Peter? What if the clerical assistant for my particular division of souls is run by an angel like Roz on Monsters, Inc? What if the I.T. angel that maintains the databases in heaven had a bad day and there was some kind of accidental linkage problem in the SQL relations and my metadata was crossed with…I don’t know…Ted Bundy’s or something?!

Of course these are all ridiculous notions. I know they’re flawed and full of stupid inaccuracies, but that’s the kind of stuff you think about as you’re laying in bed wondering how much sleep you’re going to get before your wife’s water breaks all over you.

And if it doesn’t…do I still have to go to work tomorrow?

Bazooka-Joe made it so at 11:11 PM