Saturday, April 30, 2005

e: Sun Studio



Sun Studio where Sam Philips gave Elvis, Johnny Cash, BB King and others their start.

As documented in The Man Comes Around: The Spiritual Journey of Johnny Cash, Sam Philips refused to let Jonny Cash do goespel songs. To me Sun Studios is icon of pop culture and the tension with faith and it's intersection with pop culture.

- Peace

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Brian McLaren and The 77's

Steve and I went to hear Brian McLaren speak about spiritual formation. I really enjoyed the presentation and learned a lot about the Celtic (St. Patrick) movement. I also come away with a new appreciation of the 77's song The Lust, The Flesh, The Eyes and The Pride of Life. Those are the things you need to deal with in the purgative way the first stage of spiritual formation. I knew the 77's were deep, but it this took it to a entirely new level for me. I brought in my ipod, hooked it up to Brian's ibook and played it for him. Either I made a 77's convert today or he's way too polite.

I had the pleasure of meeting Karen from Beyond Magazine today. I introduced myself as Dave King and she responds with, "oh you have a blog, I've seen you on Jordon's site". That was a little creepy. Very cool, but just a bit creepy.

Best quote of the day was Brian quoting Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy

'Vampire Christians? are those who are interested in the blood of Jesus to cover their sins, but want nothing else to do with him.

ok so that may not be an exact quote, I'll tell you when I find it in the book.


-Peace

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Firefly Movie Trailer

The movie I'm most looking forward to seeing this year: Serenity!

- Peace

Environmental Heresies


Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Nations already in a birth dearth crisis include Japan, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Russia - whose population is now in absolute decline and is expected to be 30 percent lower by 2050. On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon), birthrates are headed down. They reach replacement level and keep on dropping. It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason. Any variation from the 2.1 rate compounds over time.

That should create all sorts of havoc, our economies have assumed constant growth for sometime now. An interesting read, the article takes look at thing environmentalists love to hate: cities, bio tech and nuclear power. His take is all three will be needed to save the planet. I think he tends to put way to much stalk in the priesthood of scientists.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Adventure Game

As a kid I had a copy, pirated of course, on my Comadore 64. It was a bizzare text based adventure game. Never did get off the heart of gold. BBC - Radio 4's web site has the 20th Anniversary Edition, with pictures and hint pages for wimps like me.

- Peace

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

500 km down, 3000 to go

I past the 500 km mark on the ride to work this morning. That's just over 14%. I'd like to be at the 50% mark before I leave for Cornerstone.

- Peace

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Carol's Slideshow

Ok, I know I'm biased but I think my wife is an amazing photographer.
This is a slide show of some of her latest pictures.
Some are minor retouches, some are different angles, all of them blow me away.
Carol's latest slideshow

Monday, April 18, 2005

Born MP3

Over The Rhine has made their single Born available as an MP3. Born is just a hauntingly beautiful song. Down load it while you can.

- Peace

Sunday, April 17, 2005

d: Elvis' famous wall of TVs


d: is a stack of Elvis's three TVs from his bar/media room in the basement of Graceland. The Graceland audio guide makes it clear that Elvis was inspired by the President of the United States who watched all three Network News Broadcasts at once.

I had heard Elvis had a wall of TVs once I got to see it I was a little disapointed. I did note that almost every room at graceland had a TV, except his parents room and the kitchen. Elvis' wealth alowed him to be one of the first citizens of a media soaked culture that has become the norm.

- Peace

photo bloggin my logo



The current IdeaJoy logo is the first time I've used my own photos as the back ground. So I thought I'd blog through them.

The I is a shot of a wire suculpture by Carson Lamm as seen through a shop window on historic Beale Street, home of the blues, Memphis.

- Peace

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Paul Bellows MP3s

Paul has released his CDs as MP3s under the creative commons licence. I also noticed he's playing the
Karma Local Arts House with Brock Skywalker May 27th. Will have to look into that.

- Peace

Friday, April 15, 2005

Watermark


Eyes closed, she finds herself imagining a symbol, something watermarking the lower right hand corner of her existence. It is there, just beyond some periphery, beyond the physical, beyond vision, and it marks her as...as what?

The closing paragraph of the Watermark chapter from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Sometimes words just link up with a totally different set of patterns than what's going on in the book, or is it just me?

- Peace

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Mistaken for a Pagan

I was killing time at Borders, waiting for the 9:30 show of Sin City. I picket up Peterson's new book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, and the cashier asks

are you part of the Tuesday night pagan discussion group?

No, I think you recognize me cause you helped me find a copy of Paste last week. So what's the deal with the discussion group?

Turns out they meet at 8 pm on Tuesdays, between the music section and the windows. So last Tuesday I went and sat in on the pagan discussion group. It was an interesting evening. When I showed up I was asked if I was a practicing pagan or had any questions, and I answered no on both points. After a bit a perplexed look, I explained that I have had pagan friends in the past, and always found the discussion interesting so thought I'd drop in. I explained about the cashier.

There was no set topic for the night, a departure from the normal format so the discussion bounced all over the place, from

Joseph Campbell and how the same stories get told over and over.

The problem of commercialism. One of group, sorry I'm blanking on her name, had got a Hindi Goddess (idol, image?) in box from the clearance aisle at Borders. She also remarked how this version was a cleaned up version with nice hair and a dress as opposed to the normal matted hair and string of skulls. I quipped that we all the religions face the same challenge: our culture wants to put God in a box and make the divine safe for commercialism.

The importance of words and how our culture tends not to pay attention to anything that's not on the surface.

The group moved from borders to a near by dinner, and talked and laughed to midnight. It was a very enjoyable evening. I thanked them for playing great hosts. One of my rules for travel is that you get to hang out with the locals, vs just going and seeing cool buildings. This group of pagans allowed me to do that.

- Peace

Monday, April 11, 2005

Drunkard's Prayer

At the intersection of folk and jazz, just a block over from torch, there's an intimate little place where Over the Rhine has recorded their new album Drunkard's Prayer. It's musically and emotionally rich album filled with love songs for adults. The type of material that should come with a warning, instead of the juvenile stuff that normally does. Love, laughter, longing and tears given life by the sweet, lush, emotive voice of Karin Bergquist.

This album comes out of the near collapse and resurrection of the love between Karin and her band mate and husband Linford. See the liner notes. It's an honest expression of struggle and love, not an abstract emotional manipulation. From Born

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we'll find

Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don't mind

Put your elbows on the table
I'll listen long as I am able
There's nowhere I'd rather be

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke's on me

Give rest of the lyrics a read too, its pure poetry.

I brought the album home from Atlanta, and Kim has claimed it as her own. There are few albums that we both like so being able to cuddle up and listen to a mature romantic album that we enjoy together is a real treat.

- Peace

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Hitchhiker Guide To The Galaxy

From Paste Magazine

The last thing we wanted was to be known as the guys who destroyed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” said Jennings. “Because we’re fans of Douglas Adams as much anyone else. We’d have to answer to our friends.

After reading that I had a glimmer of hope for the HG2G Movie, but /. pointed out a review that confirms my worst fears. While they seem to have got the look of an HG2G movie should have, problems with Zaphod's head a side, they've left out the important parts like the wickedly dead pan humor. Bout as much fun as losing your towel.

- Peace

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Last Day in Atlanta

Last day working here and staying here. Looking forward to getting home to where my daily commute takes me through Fish Creek.

Google Statilite Photos are sweet! I love the fact that you can toggle between map mode and satellite mode.

- Peace
Dave

Monday, April 04, 2005

The Pope and Elvis

I was at Graceland when I head the news that the Pope had died. We were waiting for the shuttle bus at Graceland when the DJ on the background Muzak announced that the pope had passed away and that the Pope being a well known spiritual person just like Elvis, Elvis would have wanted to play tribute, so the DJ played How Great Thou Art by Elvis. It was as much about Elvis as the Pope. But that's Graceland; all Elvis all the time.

It's a very white washed tomb, Graceland. You get a very clean Elvis. In 1968 Elvis did a TV special widely known as his 'comeback special'. At Graceland it's the 1968 NBC special where "Elvis looked as good as ever". Thing is, at Graceland you never see him not looking good.  There's no hint that he ever had anything to comeback from, so the 'comeback special' looses it's power.

I was in Memphis to meet Kati of The Riehl World fame. I just wanted to get out of Atlanta so I dropped Kati a line and drove up there and back on Saturday. A six hour trip each way. It's was totally worth it. Kati was a gracious hostess taking the afternoon to show me around Memphis. I had genuine Memphis style ribs, got to see Sun Studio where Johnny Cash, Elvis and many others got their start. We visited Beale Street, self declared home of the blues, where BB King has his club. And then finally we toured Graceland. Thanks Kati!

Friday, April 01, 2005

Only $749 USD

Executive Pong, I want one.

as seen on /.

- Peace

Love isn't your life it's your job!

That's the key line from Hitch. It's a truly funny romantic comedy / buddy flick, but it's that one line that's stayed with me. Hitch is about a 'date doctor' who coaches guys on how to sweep the woman of their dreams off their feet, but gets in over head when he meets his own dream woman. Sounds cliche I know, but it was a ton of fun.

But that one line has stayed with me, especially as I read the first half of Run With The Horses by Eugene H. Peterson. The title is taken from Jeremiah 12:5

If you have raced with men on foot
and they have worn you out,
how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in safe country,
how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?
Jeremiah could have been satisfied with safe feel good pop religion. Instead he was called to painful messages of judgment and real hope. In both cases the question is do we play it safe, take the job and skip the life? Or do take the risk, and live hard?

Peterson is convinced that this call to Run with the Horses is for all of us, not just the fiery prophet. For me today, that's hard. It's hard to imagine running with horses in an anonymous hotel room on a trip that's been mostly pointless.

Wish I had a better conclusion to this, but that's where I'm at.

- Peace