sept/oct 08
august 08
july 08
jan-june 2008
dec 07
sept 07
august 07
july 07
june 07
may 07
april 07
march 07
february 07
january 07
december 06
november 06
october 06
september 06
august 06
july 06
june 06
all dates [5/05]

nearby trees [kith]
abrupt lee
lil’ flower tracer
kn29
sister of a friend’s spouse
wush [tafka bish]
olive
spenglar
shwan
susanity

email moi

3.2

i'm finding myself in a different space than a lot of people at choich [don't get me started about the one time where someone asked, «are there ANY good public schools in tucson?» — yes, the schools are what make your kids successful]. i don't fall into the american/xian/republican menage a trois — i just can't. there is a lot that can be written on it, but so much is already written elsewhere. here is my angle [helped along and baked by books and friends]: the evangelical church is still out to serve itself — it has no idea how to serve others or to carry out its mission in the world.

yeah yeah, we've heard it all before, but something from a book pushed it together. take a guy that is doing his own thing through school and just out of college. he does what he wants. later he gets married and settles down and gets really tied up with work. his marriage fails and it hurts him badly. he changes again and gets remarried, this time focused on his wife and kids. one would think, «great, he finally became selfless» but has he really? he is just changing to stop from getting hurt again, doing things that once again help himself out. nothing has changed in him other than his circumstances. he is still as self-centered as he began.

so now i have this huge question, one that seems paper thin and tucked on the side of things, but when pulled out is the size of a billboard. i've worked on it before, but now it seems dominating.

what does true selflessness
look like in my life?

is my heart directed towards others, and not just because it makes my life easier [i have friends, a job, wife and kids — all fulfilling my need for worth/companionship]? am i driven to help out the poor, unloved, social justice, etc? this isn't like handing a street median bum two bucks to appease my conscience, either. are global/politcal things that affect my wallet take top priority on what i care about?

i'd say that i'm not getting a passing grade. part of it may be that those i am around have no interest in this, so being someone else is much harder. my life doesn't revolve about getting a larger home, more money and a better car, nor plasma screen tvs or making our yard «the best ever». retirement? hopefully. there is so much more to live for and there is only so much time. sarah has a great idea about the money that she'll make doing loans: one quarter will go to some form of orphanage in mexico, and not only will it be money, but we'll go down there with the kids, too. hopefully we'll get others to pitch in and help. one small thing at a time, and not for us.

4.2

my parents subscribed to discover magazine when it first came out. i've enjoyed it immensely, and after disney took it over, they have put more into it. you could call it a pop science magazine, but they often have articles with two competing [and often opposing] viewpoints. i've never been much for bands with guys voices [okay, a few, like u2] and i rarely hear lyrics. i get called out for liking bands with female vocalists, and this article might explain why

...monitored the brain activity of 12 men as they listened to voice recordings and found they process male voices differently from those of females. Women's voices stimulate an area of the brain used for processing complex sounds, like music. Male voices activate the "mind's eye," a region of the brain used for conjuring imagery.

...Women's voices may also have more "natural melody," he adds. Qualities like pitch and volume vary more during speech. "There's more prosody in female speech."

Newspaper articles about Hunter's research said that men find the female voice more difficult to hear and understand. But Hunter thinks the opposite is true. Because the brain is apparently deciphering the modulation in women's voices, a female voice might be able to communicate more information per sentence than a male voice. "Most people at a railway station say female announcers are clearer," he says. "Maybe it's this added input."

so there you have it — i hear women's voices as an instrument. listening to a man's voice is like listening to a lecture. women singers sound better to me.

7.1

i just need to bookmark these for myself, the ipods from space. funny, but not as fun as the mordor images.

one | two | more?

8.1

i had some blood drawn at home for life insurance purposes. i hate having blood drawn. maybe it isn't the blood so much as just having a tube of some kind in me. the thought of extending my arm straight/clenching my fist starts to make me woozy. my right leg was doing the sewing machine trick and afterwards i had to drop my head between my knees several times. i was clammy and sweating a bit, going pale at times. having that picc line in me a few years ago was horrible, but i think i tolerated it as it was the first time in weeks that i was alive [barely]

i still liken the needles to having a black widow sitting on my open eye — i don't dare brush it away, yet it still completely freaks me out.

8.2

spencer came home with a class photo. our boys have that norman rockwell/all american look to them, the little boys of nostalgia.

my good friend stickpusher took a mess of photos of the kids and they are fantastic. i can't wait to get them and share.

11.1

i didn't ride at all over the weekend so my legs were extra fresh for the commute home. the wind was 17-18mph to my back so i used it. after i got warmed up [which i really didn’t — by the time i get home i am warmed up] i started having fun keeping up with the cars to my left. on a mile stretch with two hills i lost no more than 4 car lengths to the vehicle in front of me. another half mile stretch i did the same, and the last half mile stretch i was passing cars. i didn’t respond to the passengers being startled and flinching when i would catch and pass them. my largest gear was maxxed out and i was spinning pretty good, so by my gearing estimate [i don't have a computer yet] i was going over 40mph. woohoo for me!

12.1

i am one big pile of grumpy. i think it is because i over-clock myself to get work done [and i don't get acknowledged for it - not that i really want to, but it becomes «the norm»] and then they add more/expect me to do it again. i will go slower.

14.1

i am busy making pretties for easter, both for music and for talking. i don't know if i have enough time to get it all done. helping with easter is both grand and a pain.

14.2

my mouth says things i do not understand.

«never underestimate the power of the mariachi.»

this is second only to «always be kind to the mariachi as you never know when you may need to call on them»

14.3

today we are to have 25 to 35mph winds with gusts to 50mph — and they'll be from the south. maybe i'll break a new speed record for my bike as it will be a tailwind.

14.4

i've had a rough week. on wednesday i dropped the f-bomb a few times. i was SO stressed and working alone. neither are good things.

14.5

i rode 20+ miles this morning, and i think i rode it quickly but there was an 8 mile stretch on the way home where i caught every light green. for someone used to stopping every few minutes, that hurt. it was a good kind of hurt, though. i'm SO lacking in endurance.

17.2

i do believe i’m thinking clearer now [after sweeps week] and years ago i remember writing to someone i only knew online and i told him that he reminded me of beorn[?} from the hobbit[?], a huge burly man that liked a good laugh but was twice the size of most people. i expected it to be quiet in the room and then he would through the door open and his bulk would be in the doorway with a big wild eyed grin, the howling snow swirling in behind him. he replied with, «that is funny, that is how i always imagined you». maybe so.

we’ve been talking about authenticity, openess, vulnerability, blunt, direct, tact, transparency, and more the last few weeks, and though i do believe i have a fair amount of bluntness [8 parts direct, 1/2 part tact], i’m still mutating.

mutating. such a better word than transforming. it makes it sound as if my very dna, my makeup and personality and who i am on the inside is becoming something that i was not born as. so i think i can notice a mutation lately, one that got brought up on tuesday night as we went around talking about what we liked about each other, attributes we thought were cool and/or wished we might have, as well as how others went about life. well, maybe not. i’ll skip that part [bwahahahaha — you will never know what it was!] but what i am seeing is flames wrapping around me and lighting up the person in front of me. it doesn’t set them on fire, but the flames dance and jump towards them, and often times the person’s face lights up as they are unsure of what to do. kind of a whirlwind of flame, but a good one. i’m not sure what to make of that/myself. things feel a bit more pure now, like there isn’t as much riff-raff on/in me.

17.3

blue like jazz — meh, it is okay. i feel like i’m reading my own diary of sorts, all the thoughts i’ve had/am having, just written from someone elses set of experiences. he is funny, too. and honest. it almost seems like an empty book as i feel like i would have written something similar, just in my own goofy writing style. still a good book, more like lazily floating down a small river in an inner tube for me.

17.4

in class yesterday i did an easter craft that i learned from years with the mujahadeen in afghanistan [they were cool when they fought the russians, now they are our enemy — make up your mind already]. it conisisted of a paper match and tinfoil, folded specially and then a straight pen is used to make and exhaust pipe. my first 8 did nothing [a few did go backwards] and then when i got up later i attempted to redeem myself. the next 4 all flopped and i’m sure half the class was saying «dear God, let him succeed so he doesn't look the fool this morning» and it worked. click for the video.

later i made a comment that it was part of the el salvador space program, then that parts of our technology was gotten from the mexican space program which consisted of a vw bus on a hilly road. it wasn’t meant to be racist, but i'm sure it may have been taken that way. the best line of the day was when the staff guy kevlar was up to take a swing and golf a peep and he was down at the tee and asked, »what ARE all these matches doing down here? do i want to know?»

i also started to draw a match and as i was about to draw the other side i realized i was drawing church porn so i wisely stopped and erased.

18.1

superB just myspaced me and let me know i’ve ruined another song for him. now all he can think of is «halle, halle berry».

3.1

grey’s anatomy is now the only show i’ll stay awake to watch. i'm not much of a critic and i don't have a large base to comment from, but i'm finding that i enjoy the somewhat silliness of the show [i'm silly in real life, too]. i also enjoy the depth of the characters - they go through a lot of crap, a lot of relational crap. it isn't so much the 2 boundaries made up of behavior and information, but the messy part of living inside those, and living with other people. humans on tv. how nice.

3.3

honestly, i think of myself as being very fortunate to be able to ride my bike to work. i'm not an anti-car elitist, and though i intend to race, i'm not a racing commuting snob. i find myself pleased that i can get my butt from point A to point B and back again on my own power, almost like sticking my head out the window and feeling the wind on my face. walking is good, too.

3.4

from rabi'a

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water with the other
With these things, I will set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worship God
Out of fear of Hell
Or greed of Heaven.

sounds good to me. i'm not here to oversell what God has set up — i'd perfer that people get excited that they can now be a participant in God's kingdom, to be under someone else's rule. but, see 3.2

of course, the odds are high that her quote has been xianified. i'll look it up later [unless someone complains sooner]

4.1

i think most life verse stuff is bupkus. if you have no clue what i am talking about, consider yourself fortunate. just imagine it as claiming a certain line from a movie and saying that it is what you want to be true for you life. good ones might be «we don't need no stinking badges» [politicians?], «there is no spoon» [people denying global warming?], etc etc. but my fave would be for a large majority of american women:

so the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

that verse is SO easy to live out. i IM'd a friend and she responded:

My husband will so use that one on me if he gets a hold of it! I am such a nightmare when I am hungry, and this will just prove his point even more.

i think this post has the greatest usage of the word «so». so be it…

4.3

i'm not thinking very well, and i notice it in both what i write about as well as how i write. i feel as if i am just making out laundry lists of trivial information, little tidbits that tickle my fancy. then again, great blurbs that require much thinking by both myself and someone reading this are hard to come by. i think to often there is this hope of brilliance instead of simplicity, wanting something new and unique. all i can think of right now is my current fun in taking everything and saying «oh sure, that is biblical». you can use it with everything — greed, rape, murder, lust — it is all biblical.

but my problem with thinking comes from not being able to mull things over, from going too much and not being able to let what is going on around me sink in too far. it isn't because i don't want it to, but more from not having time to. on top of that, i often catch a glmpse of my thought like a beautiful tropical fish, brightly colored scales reflecting the light in undulating patterns. as soon as i try to speak it in to existence, it is either startled and zips away to the safety of a rock overhang, or it turns away and there is not much to look at. i still have that notion in my head of what i had just seen though i can no longer make words. i think i'll go add a fish to the masthead of this months blog. a fake fish, one that won't swim away from me.

4.4

my goofy usage of div tags seems to be making the color behind this text stop working halfway down. i'll have fun finding out what works and what doesn't in a non-programmer way.

an IM from my wife:

I put on the iron giant for spencer to watch.. and he likes it

he just drew a picture of the giant with the power lines all around him

I will save it

it is good

hopefully it'll be posted tomorrow, too. the iron giant — such a good movie.

10.1

i am plenty exhausted after a long weekend of setting up the house for dinner guests. before everyone came over we headed off to arizona inn and a friend took photos of the kids. they turned out great — our kids are awesome, though spenglar looks like he is zoning out. i even got to use a belt sander to put in the cabinet in the hall bathroom. then it was teaching yesterday [always an energy drainer]. after that we played at a friends house [ate subway — another sunday tradition beginning to form] and exhaustion set in. sarah drug herself off to clean my office and i took the kids up to walgreens to purchase some kites [spencer got some kind of flying toy instead].

trip 1 to the school playground:

i get them all out with their kites and tell them not to let too much string out as it may not be tied to the little tubes. i also remind them to stay a good distance away from each other so that their lines don’t tangle. rex the crazy dog races across the street and i tell spencer to stay in the playground while i put the dog back.

trip 2 to the school playground:

as i walk to the playground i notice that two kites are way up in the sky, and as i near get closer i hear trevs bawling. i see him red eyed in flopped in the grass, heaving. it turns out that he let all the string out and the kite freed itself. i tell him i'm sorry, and that maybe we can get a new kite later [i sure hope i didn’t say «i told you so» but i was beat, so chance are, yes, i did. ugh]. as i watch the kite fly away, i discover that it isn't flying away. as i start to walk downwind to find where the string has tangled up, rex races out and i take him back home again. turns out he has now chewed off parts of the gate. dumb dog.

trip 3 to the school playground:

i'm looking up in the sky on the street south of us, trying to find the string in a tree. something doesn't make sense — courtney has 500 feet of line and trevs had 400, but his kite is higher up. i walk back towards courtney, barely seeing the string against the sky and see both strings close to each other. it must be in the palm tree near on the inside of the fence and courtney must not have her line played out completely. i get inside the fence and only find one line. after some straining, i see that trevor is the luckiest little boy alive — his line is tangles up with courtney’s. we devise a plan where courtney pulls in her kite while walking backwards and i pull the line down until i will get to where the lines are together. as i get to the junction, it looks as if it tied itself into a knot to save itself. saved! i tie it to a spare rim i brought over and as i turn the rim, trevor is to hold the line down. it doesn't work well as his attention lasts less than a second and i get madder and madder. somehow we butt heads, maybe because he is so very much like me when i was young. i spend the rest of the day tryng to build him back up. i suck when i am tired, and i often suck when dealing him in general. i hope he forgets much of me, but i probably should be hoping i’m better and he remembers a lot of good things. spencer has to pee. this time he wants to go home, contradicting his normal route of dropping his pants and going wherever he is [often times going from inside the house out to water the roses].

trip 4 to the school playground:

on our way home we pass sarah and she contines to the school while spencer and i go pee. i hear the door slam while i’m still in the bathroom and think, «oh no, he is going out on his own». i chase him down at the intersection where the school is and yell out his name before he crosses. he turns to me and runs back with a big smile and holding his hands together [he hasn’t held his hands together in a long time]. he knew he was in trouble. we get to the playground and the girls are tired so the reel their kites in and i start rolling up trevs. everyone leaves and it is just trevs and it. we need bigger spindles — it must have taken me 20 to 30 minutes to pull it down, now close to 7pm. good times, but not that good when whupped.

17.1

*whew* — i'm so glad that sweeps week at choich is finally over. sorry, i meant easter week. it really isn't all that bad. i feel like we get a chance to host people for a day, not so much try to sell them on us or God but like a person that has their car break down in front of your house. you be nice [and hopefully that is who you normally are].

i got a chance to help out a good friend at choich, getting to do his slides for his talks the last few weeks and then i got to illustrate the talk for easter. i'm noticing more and more that i’ve got some skill with color and my stick figures are rather expressive. it was fun stuff, but it took a lot of my time. the big point is that i didn’t do it to help out the choich — i did it for my friend because he asked me if i could help him. i'm seeing that as a huge difference, but i’m not totally sure of what it means.

here are some small images of the slides, and if you want to see them all [okay, not all the text slides], click here —just don’t steal them, evil church punks that don’t want to pay for things [heehee]. you may notice the last set looks different as it is the oft repeated story from one of yancey’s books. as always, talker-guy friend mixed things around and left parts out, so he never really ends the story of the son in the distant kingdom [ah, the distant kingdom. wait, sorry...] but instead leaves it unconcluded and then had the yancey story finish it off. ver’ nice. i’ve heard of plenty of speakers go the same route but it was very nice for easter. if you don’t know the story, read it here.

and here are some of the song slides — purty purty, yes? click here for a few of them.

and then of course, this song should never ever be sung again.

why? we’ve come to find that it sounds far too much like someone having sex. yes, try singing it now — you can’t, it is ruined. throw in an «oh God, Yes» and you’ll wonder why everyone under 30 is snickering while this song is sung. i remember years ago when some people with huge banners on poles would walk into the service and there was this massive black banner. one day i whispered my «fwee! fwee fwom me! i am the dwead piwate woberts! fwee!» a bit too loudly and we never saw the banners again. good old princess bride.

18.2

beautiful.

indesign’s ability to automatically use the large character sets of opentype is just beautiful. i was setting an invite and was gleefully watching the characters change as i typed, the new letter forcing the previous letter to flip to something that connected well. i dug around in the glyphs pallette and there were wonderfull rare/non-standard ligatures. there were extra sets of caps that were more decorative than the normal caps, and then sets beyond that. i'm in love. take a look below — the «offi» on the right is one complete glyph. i may spend hours on invitations to make them beautiful.

beautiful.

19.1

i told myself i was going to write nothing more, but i did have a good conversation with olive yesterday. it is good to see people mature. way back when i would get a little annoyed/fearful/prideful[?] when someone would grow a lot and start to catch on as i wouldn’t noticable as being ahead of them in that area. yes, stupid, i know. now i know that even though i might be doing well in one spot, i was getting smoked in dozens of other areas. stupid pride. now i am so much happier to be around trees getting healthier as they force me to become healthier too [that is not why i like health, though].

olive: But yes... I sat down to start conversation with Justin the other night, and I ended up crying, like not tearing but really being upset and expressing it, over the direction of the house... And then last night I had a discussion with my mom and really told her what I've been thinking 'cause she was telling me what she's been thinking.

olive: It's weird. I don't know what to do with me. I'm growing and have all these gaps in my new overalls to fill, but I'm starting to fill them, but right now, when I look at myself, it just seems like I'm bulging in weird places, you know?

me: but yes, emotion is good. you had very little of that, and you held it back. or you wouldn't let your emotions play. i pushed you to watery items twice, i think

olive: I am such an emotional person, too. I feel things really deeply. Really deeply. But I got so detached from it. I didn't trust it 'cause I never knew how to use them before. They were almost too uncontrollable, so I assumed they were bad. And that's not right either...

me: yup yup. you need to get the water to run up on the surface. who cares about a raging underground river - it is far better to see it up top.

olive: Yeah... But I sorta worry that I'm gonna be raging all through--surface and all... And that's exhausting, even in theory. Then again, if it's God that's feeding the river, it comes naturally. If I have to supply it myself, I'll dry up immediately. I like the idea of being wild and uninhibited if it's in God. I can't be a force of nature on my own.

well, at least i think a raging river on the surface is good, as long as it isn’t out of control and overflowing and tearing things up. i think.

19.2

the kids love to play lego star wars on the xbox. spencer mostly enjoys being r2d2, and he needs to be the blue r2 unit, not the red one. he gets so sad when he mistakenly changes who he is. we'll hear him say, «shoot! blue r2....» and he has taken to making the squeal r2 made when shot in on of the movies. spencer is a keeper.

sarah just IM’d me with this:

spencer wants a cold hot dog and it is making him giggle because he realizes it is a contradiction in words

21.1

this may come as no surprise, but i have no desire to become the perfect person, to be viewed by anyone [included choich] as perfect. i want to be seen as fully human, transparent, no hang-ups, a listener and a talker. but definitely not perfect. i will not lie or squirm away to protect my image. my image will not be of someone else, someone better — it will be of me.

the choich and the people in it are more often about image control than about reality. image no longer interests me. real people interest me.

</random soap box statement>

there is a lot more to all this, but i’d say i’m rather comfortable with my identity. not perfect, but i think i also know who i am, though i’ll continue the process of self discovery as i continue to immerse my self in people. God uses people to pull me out of me.

[this doesn’t mean we get free reign to do whatever we want — that is hardly the case. it does mean that we can say what we are doing — not bragging — and that we can ask for help. how would we get anywhere if we don’t ask — or tell? i’ve known people that when they were unsure of what they were doing they wouldn’t think of telling someone else in the choich — that was a sure fire way of getting stoned. i’ll think i’ll make another entry after this]

i’m sure this all comes to a shock to you as i’m sure you are thinking, «since when did dann ever care?» — but i do and have, i just think my identity has mostly moved beyond an externally driven identity to an internal/group identity. my friends help make it safe for me to be me. if i ever moved, i think i would go crazy as i would most likely not be allowed to go to any choich, which is both sad and dumbtarded at the same time. i have plenty of friends that are alone in this manner, and that is wrong.

21.3

sarah and i spent both wednesday and thursday night doing much of nothing for once, relaxing and going to bed after 9. my brain and heart work now, i'm once again alive. i look forward to another relaxing night with my wife. yesterday we sat outside as the sun set, us hiding behind our huge grapefruit tree with its waxy green new leaves and chatted. just chatted. spenglar came out to draw with chalk on the cement, but sarah and i chatted. it was good.

comment | comments

22.1

corcor participated in a city-wide track meet with her school. she had done well in the long jump but didn’t place this time. she did well and i enjoyed the atmosphere at the university’s track. i’m not fully sure of the years, but me and my family [plus friends] used to help run the whole meet for years. i’m thinking 1985 through 1998. i was glad i wasn’t one of those overbearing parents demanding perfection from a 5th grader [idiot parents].

it brought back all the memories of laying around in the shade, saving energy for our events. fortunately i wasn’t competeing so i didn’t have to go through warming up and then trying to put out my best effort. speaking of best efforts, i went out early in the day and put in a high intensity ride, something i don’t usually do. it took me close to an hour before i could get my heart rate into the zone just before i would go anerobic. i was flying. i had a talk with the guyot about my training and he said i should have a great base built, just like another friend who is a national champion [no, not that i would be that good — i wish — but that he rides his bike to work too for a base and only rides 3 times a week].

[jump to the next day] i did a recovery ride, which meant just barely getting my heart going. it is a lazy pace, meant to rest the heart while still doing something and to give the body a breather. i was passing everyone and i looked down at my heart rate monitor and i was at 124. 119 is the bare minimum. okay, maybe i do have a great base. now i just need to start doing the workouts that will put me up in contention. my goal this year is to do a 40k time trial in under an hour. i think i can do it.

comment | comments

24.3

just in case you didn’t know, i think my wife, sarah, is hot. she impresses me daily.

comment | comments [yeah, like i would let you]

26.1

i am tired, cranky, stressed, and allegified today. not a good combo for me or those around me.

26.2

people is funny. evader just IM'd me with this:

umm. so wanna talk about sureal life :: a pen just exploded in my mouth, from the end.....

and i just threw it all up

black throw up -- this is new

yeah. i was trying to wash off my black tongue and i got the front clean, but the back was still black, but every time i tried to put the paper towel to get the back. i would gag. then i gagged too much it all came out....

this after a night where these phrases came up:

i’m wearing my promotional pants

no way, i have a monk in my past, too!

do you have another monk waiting in the wings?

27.1

superB’s status message on gmail chat was:

32° 6'27.41"N, 110°56'51.45"W

so i looked it up and you can click on it as a link to see where he is. the gps on my phone doesn’t work worth crap so i don’t know where i am. i’ve wanted to post the coordinates of my side of the bed on my blog so if someone decided to beam me up, they could find me there between midnight and 6am for sure. one never knows who might be reading «out there» and want a face-to-face. but please, only during the hours of midnight to 6am [NSFW].

comment | comments

27.3

to follow up on 26.2:

and and for the record :: asparagus and pen have something in common

yes. weird smell, and well... black...