The Clinic

So I got to attend the two hour clinic that Petrucci held before the show. As John walked right by me to take the “stage” I immediately noticed that he’s built! He looks like he benches 300 lbs. In a rock world of drug-’n-alcohol-emaciated skank-males with wispy gangly limbs this is a welcome departure. John actually made several gym references and workout analogies during the clinic.

The next thing I noticed was that he really knew his music theory… (what did I expect?!) …which is what happens when you come out of Berklee and not your cousin’s garage. And he also spoke with authority, yet with a relaxed down-to-earth tone… like a police officer speaking at a school. It was great, and completely unexpected.

Needless to say the small performance illustrations he did during the clinic blew everyone away. This guy is insanely good. He is easily one of the top, top rock guitarists in the world. He covered a lot of ground in a short time, but here are some of them:

• Inversions – 1 note per string, 2 notes-per-string (with alternating finger assignments)
• Practicing – EVERY day… even if only for short periods, and getting in the habit of practicing through whole songs or sequences (as if playing live)
• Strength Exercises – 4 sets of 10 repetitions of tight, fast licks (just like working out)
• Endurance Exercises – Performing fretboard exercises like doing wind sprints (SPRINT JOG SPRINT JOG)
• Skill Exercises – Pure repetition of difficult phrases… over and over and over on top of one another
• Polish Exercises – Custom made repetition exercises to fine tune difficult phrases, hard to hit notes, and hard to form chord changes
• Sweep Picking – 2, 3, and 4-note sweeping (the right-hand tempo and consistency is the key)

And before I forget, Patty Womer needs to know that during the clinic he used the verb, “noodle”.

The Concert

This was my first concert at Albany’s Washington Avenue Armory… a cute little basketball arena that serves the purpose, I guess. We showed up in time to catch the last half of the third (and final) opening band (Opeth, who growled and gurgled a lot).

Once Dream Theater took the stage the place was electric. Despite the muddy sound mix (the low end really muddied both the vocals and the more treble-y moments) the band sounded other-worldly, each performing his craft to mind-numbing levels of accuracy and precision. At several points Petrucci has me just shaking my head… there was nothing else I could do but watch his effortless sweeps and runs (legato and alt-picked) up and down the neck. *sigh*

Here’s the setlist, compliments of Krazy Ken:

1. Constant Motion
2. Panic Attack
3. Strange Deja-Vu
4. Through My Words
5. Fatal Tragedy
6. Surrounded (extended)
7. The Dark Eternal Night
8. Take The Time
------------------------------------
9. Shmedley Wilcox:
      I.Trial Of Tears
      II. Finally Free
      III. Learning To Live
      IV. In The Name Of God
      V. Octavarium (Razor's Edge)

It was a great show. This was my first time seeing them. My only real complaint? They didn’t play Pull Me Under!? Holy smokes… how can you go to a Dream Theater show and not hear Pull Me Under? Oh well… just another reason to see them again.

As always, the show was a mind-blowing hard-rockin’ Christmas spectacular. Alex Skolnick and Chris Caffery were monsters on their guitars. Vocals, strings, keys, lights, lasers, smoke, fog, fire, flame… everything was as good as any other year I’ve seen these guys.

One amusing note – the previous two years Chris Caffery plugged TSO’s “upcoming” non-Christmas CD release called Night Castle. But the CD still hasn’t been released (much the chagrin of hungry TSO fans like myself). This year, Chris both plugged and joked about the Night Castle release in what would be the quote of the evening:

Albany, let me ask you a question. What will be more likely to see in our lifetimes: a McDonalds on Mars, or the release of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Night Castle album?

They put on a great show. I was glad to go for the fifth year in a row. Next year I will go again. In a few months I’ll start looking forward to it.

Right now, according to iTunes, my 17 most played songs are as follows (artist / track):

Hoobastank / Let It Out
Alanis Morissette / Crazy
Celtic Woman / She Moved Thru’ the Fair
Chris Cornell / You Know My Name
Train / Ordinary
Brandi Carlile / The Story
Damn Yankees / Coming of Age
Sunclub / Boomboom Good Time
Dokken / Walk Away
Alice Cooper / Disgraceland
Def Leppard / White Lightning
Dream Theater / Burning My Soul
James LaBrie / Pretender
Delerium / After All
Evanescence / Sweet Sacrifice
Dave Matthews Band / The Last Stop
Stryper / 10,000 Years

I could post an entire blog entry about almost every one of these songs… but we’ll save that for another time.

In the end I decided to wrap everything about me into one site. The design had to be bold and vivacious, yet clean and classy. Light on dark was a given. In the end, my nuclear engineering roots provided the inspiration for the design (hence the magenta trifoil and glowing green). I titled it, Nuclear Magic.

However, this new website not only serves as my personal site but was also a great proof-of-concept for using WordPress as a CMS. WordPress is widely regarded as the premiere blogging software… but its potential as a CMS is profound. So many web designers and developers already have WordPress blogs and are familiar with skinning and modding them… and the administrator interface is easy-to-use. Pound for pound you won’t get more bang for your buck when developing a dynamic website. WordPress works great, is free, and is easier to use for what it does than anything else I’ve ever even heard of.

Everything you see at SteveMooradian.com that is not part of the site’s physical design is dynamic. This is extremely significant. ALL images are called out in CSS or in MySQL… not the source files. All main textual content is stored in MySQL. On my Web Design, Programming, and Guitar & Music pages the lists of sites, projects, and bands (respectively) are all WordPress posts with categories matching the page title. The links at the bottom of every non-Home page are actual WordPress “Blogroll” links with categories matching the page title. Except for the Home and Gallery pages, each page is built from identical PHP code!

All my coding was done using Notepad++. All graphic work in the design was created by myself using Adobe’s Photoshop and Fireworks software. All markup is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS3. All of the site conforms to 508 and WAI-A accessibility standards. All dynamic content is semantic. NO TABLES!

I designed the site using progressive enhancement so that I could be search-engine friendly and accessible while also providing a rich user experience to those with Flash and JavaScript-enabled browsers. Examples of progressive enhancement are as follows: I used sIFR to style my headings for users with Flash-enabled browsers. NO images were used for any headings on my site. I used swfIR to style most of my content images for users with Flash-enabled browsers. All drop-shadows and rounding on content images happen dynamically. I used GreyBox for all in-browser popups and image popup galleries for users with JavaScript-enabled browsers.

My new site has already been featured on many CSS and web design galleries… including a prestigious “Editor’s Pick” on the W3CSites.com gallery (which requires strict adherence to valid markup and web accessibility).

WHAT :: concert coffeehouse featuring electric guitar wizardry

WHEN :: Friday, February 2, 7:30pm

WHERE :: Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, Latham, NY – for directions go here or call 518.785.4595

WHY :: Because you love me and I play guitar in the band… and hey, free coffee and snacks!

WHAT :: Concert and CD release party for our new CD Blunder

WHEN :: Friday, November 3rd, 7:00pm

WHERE :: Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, ; Latham, NY – for directions go here or call 518.785.4595

WHY :: Because you love me and I play guitar in the band and write songs and you want to be part of the excitement and it’s the right thing to do and there’ll be free coffee and snacks.

HOW :: By all means possible!

This will be a great night of energetic music including originals, covers, and new arrangements of old favorites. I can guarantee you that we’ll rock, so don’t miss the show!

No, really… these past nine days have been a pungent combination of a full-time job (software engineer), various social functions and groups, and a slew of guitar activities and events. Last weekend (October 14 and 15) one of my bands, MCCLAINE TRIBE, played three times for the worship services at Grace Fellowship church. Then on Tuesday I played for a special Acts 29 Boot Camp event in Troy, NY. Then on Thursday another of my bands, Hundred Monkey Theory, played for an event at Russell Sage College (my wife’s alma mater) called Artists for Social Justice (never have I heard so many “positives” of communism). Then on Saturday both Hundred Monkey Theory and MCCLAINE TRIBE played for an event called Shine to benefit arts in the schools. Then Sunday (today) I played for the worship service at Terra Nova Church.

So, when I say I’ve been busy… I mean it. I’ll post something meaningful soon.

Release Party
7:30pm November 3, 2006
Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, Latham, NY
Free Admission – Free Coffee – Free Snacks

The music on the CD is sharp and heavily loop-based (perfect for casual listening), and Steve McClaine’s vocals are tight. We’ll be playing several live shows coming up (see my guitar dates on my homepage) but the date to remember most is November 3, the official release party. We’ll be playing a full two sets of music including almost all of the CD songs. Our live music is less electronic-based than the CD… it’s much more straight-ahead melodic rock (perfect for live shows).

If you’re anywhere near Albany, NY that day stop on in and say hey!

Thankfully, the resurgence of microbrewing in the United States is helping to overcome the great loss and to resurrect the art of brewing. I personally long for the return to the glory days of Christian pubs where God’s men gather to drink beer and talk theology.
- Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission

Now, many Protestant Christian churches in America have been near-continually lying to their congregations for almost a century about what the Bible says on wine and alcohol. They deny that Christ both made and drank wine with his apostles despite overwhelming scriptural evidence. Not until fairly recently in US history has the newer church generation been mature and powerful enough to start casting out the feminism-driven romance with prohibitionism (alcohol is sin) and abstentionism (it’s not a sin but Christians should abstain) that has been perpetuated by “nearly-false” prophets. To be fair, not EVERYONE preaching such blasphemy does so from a Satanic heart… some are merely ignorant or mentally blocked by their legalistic upbringing… but never-the-less it is a sin to declare a sin something that is not.

Diligently do everything I command you, the way I command you: don’t add to it; don’t subtract from it.
- Deuteronomy 12:32 (The Message Bible)

It never ceases to amaze me how anyone (even people trying to pass off as Christ-followers) will re-write and re-interpret history and scripture to suit their own purposes. I’ve expanded on such in my previous post Chardonnay and Lean Pockets. Here’s a link regarding what the Bible says about alcohol [LINK] and a link that even specifically addresses Jesus drinking beer [LINK]. And yet another link on the history of beer in the Christian-influenced world [LINK].

If self-righteousness were an art form, many Protestants’ work would be in the Guggenheim!
- Brad Stine

Here is a little history refresher (taken from The Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll) that I like to bring up every now and then:

• Saint Gall was a missionary to the Celts and a renowned brewer
• After Charlemagne’s reign, the church became Europe’s exclusive brewer
• When a young woman was preparing for marriage, her church brewed a special bridal ale, from which we derive the word bridal
• Pastor John Calvin’s annual salary included upwards of 250 gallons of wine to be enjoyed by him and his guests
• Martin Luther once wrote of the Reformation, “While I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.”
• Luther’s wife Catherine was a skilled brewer, and his love letters to her when they were apart lamented his inability to drink her beer
• When the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, the first permanent structure they erected was a brewery

It is a striking truth how scarce the above facts are within Protestant sermons in the US. And as if our myopic faith had no limit to its hypocrisy… our “teachers” often neglect the fellow brothers and sisters in Christ across the ocean who live in cultures not plagued by relics of abstentionism and having no temptation to re-write the Bible. They regularly drink beer and wine with such Christ-given freedom that American visitors from legalistic backgrounds often express great shock and discomfort, a testament to the false doctrine they were force fed from birth.

Some Methodist minister by the name of Welch invents grape juice in 1869 to replace communion wine and we’ve been suckling it ever since.
- Steve Mooradian

I’m no liberal Christian… I’m a politically conservative, theologically fundamental Christ-follower who happens to drink beer and worship in blue jeans playing electric guitar. And now I will brew… but with so many choices of fine ales and lagers I am left to ask myself… what would Jesus brew?

Why? Because I want elected leaders who have policies that appeal to the movers… to the get-up-and-goers… to the put-the-potato-chips-down, turn-off-Oprah, and-let’s-go-vote-right-now-ers. I want votes cast by those with the most initiative… the most “genuine” concern about the outcome. I want the most civicly minded people to have all the say in who holds office. Because on the whole these people have some level of work ethic. The person who poops out on voting because it was raining (or because it was too much work to MapQuest the polling place… or because they didn’t feel like making the short phone call to find out their district) is NOT the person I want choosing a leader, because they’ll be more likely choose a laziness-enabler… some pervert in an ugly tie who’ll dole out handouts in exchange for slave votes. Yech!

It disturbs me when I see all these paid advertisements to try and “coax” people into voting. Whatever. Listen, either they care or they don’t. This ain’t American Idol and this ain’t supposed to be fun. It’s a duty… hence the phrase civic duty. You don’t do it because it’s entertaining or because some blowhard music artist tells you it’s kewl (and btw… that music artist… they ain’t votin’). You do it because it’s the right thing to do. Whining about being disenfranchised by the “boring parade of middle-aged bald men in ugly ties” only serves to reaffirm your immatury and lack of fitness to vote… and thus I am tickled that you don’t.

It also disturbs me that there are movements out there who want to make it easier to vote… by allowing registration in multiple locations and even suggesting that registering to vote be part of the required process for getting a driver’s license. That stinks because it’s poisoning the voting pool with those who don’t care… or who are borderline-too-lazy-to-vote… or who are only voting because a crackwhore with an acoustic guitar and a platinum-selling album spewed enough expletives about the incumbant. Making voting easier is worse than merely randomizing the results of the election… it’s active socialistic sabotage.

Of course, to be frank and balanced… I say it should NOT be harder for the elderly, infirmed, disabled, or military to vote. If anything this should be made easier (except for those tricky seniors in Florida who try to punch eight voting cards at once). But as a rule I want those who are physically able to vote to do so completely of their own accord… and walking over hot coals… uphill both ways… while being pelted with tennis balls.

Oh, last but not least… there should be a quiz! Easy quiz. Five questions (IN ENGLISH). Questions like… How many US States are there?… What is the national bird?… Where does the President live? And you’d only have to get three out of five questions correct for your vote to count. Seriously… if you can’t get three of five right then you truly do not possess the requisite knowledge required at a minimum to add any possible value to the outcome of the election… or to the direction of the country.

And if possible… maybe we could move election day to April 15?

I’m being treated to a Cape Cod getaway by my wife as a birthday present (yes, my birthday is the 4th of July). I’m planning on some rest and relaxation, with 100% chance of clam chowder. MMmm… some of that good Cape chowder hit’s the spot. And some whole fried clams… that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Usually these type of gigs are purely acoustic because of the smaller intimate settings, but this one will be electric, with myself on electric guitar and Dave, our drummer, on a full drum kit. If you come and check us out you’ll hear new originals, time-tested originals, and some familiar covers. I hope to see you locals there.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
- Dr. Seuss

I am an outgoing person. I’m very extroverted… in fact my Myers-Briggs rating is sometimes a straight ESTJ, meaning I’m a war general. As such I have always spoken, whether it was time to speak or not. You will hear it said that it’s much better to be quiet than to speak. You will hear people say “I’ve often regretted my speech, but never my silence.” You will hear sermons preached on the third chapter of James about taming our tongues and the massive damage our words can inflict on others.

This is all fine, but it is perilously lopsided to the point of being deceptive and dangerous. If you want to bring the Bible into it there are more of examples of Christ tongue-lashing than tongue-holding. The Book of Proverbs lauds speaking the right words at the right time. History is replete with examples of evils that were allowed to occur because of the silence of millions of people.

A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.
- Proverbs 25:11

Don’t let anyone tell you that going through life having never offended anyone was the holy way to live. There exist many with wacky beliefs and ideas… and if none of them are offended by you this is to your discredit. They say that defeat is just part of the road to winning… and the the only true losers are the ones who never try. I think the same is true to some extent with the expression of our ideas and principles… and that the only true losers are the ones who think that by staying quiet they’ve performed the more honorable and tolerant action.

Absolute tolerance is impossible for anyone, unless, of course, you believe in nothing.
- Brad Stine

So my blog is just an extension of how I do life. I decided a while ago that if I’m gonna’ go down I’m going down swinging. If I’m going to err it will be by actively doing the wrong thing rather than by a lack of doing anything. Now, does this mean say whatever whenever to whoever and be damned if you don’t like it? No, of course not. Common sense is still a cornerstone of higher-order humans. The proverb above specifically exhorts the use of “aptly spoken” words. The key is this… don’t let fear of not speaking perfectly aptly 100% of the time keep you silent.

You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching, sing like nobody’s listening, and blog like nobody’s reading.

The band :: McClaine Tribe. The mission :: to boldly go where no 37-year-old-male-fronted band has gone before. No, I’m not 37, but Steve McClaine is, and his group of audio marauders now go by “McClaine Tribe”. And yes, I would be his crazy electric guitar player. Check out our website.

I do break away from my electric axe to tickle an acoustic guitar every now and then. Case in point, the video clip in this post is from our recent June 2 coffeehouse. The song is I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe. The crazy thing about us doing this song is that it was supposed to be just Steve singing to an accompaniment track, but he brought the wrong disc to the gig. When he found out he had no backing track he was going to scrap the song… until his trusty electric guitar player volunteered the fact that he knew the song on acoustic by heart. *pats self on back* Add an able and alert Zach Kenyon on djembe drums and we were all good.

Here’s the best part… since we only decided to go ahead with the song four minutes before we physically started the playing we had no time to rehearse and had never rehearsed it together prior. That’s right… what you see in the clip is the very first time we had ever played that song!

The show will be different from the Hundred Monkey Theory gigs you may have heard me play before at the coffee house. Steve McClaine’s style is heavier with electronic loop-based influences. We’ll be doing about half originals and half worship covers… but the covers will be vamped up to our intensity.

Today the term guitar solo is commonly taken to refer specifically to the idiom of rock music. Although solo passages for guitar are found in many musical genres, the ‘guitar solo’ has an almost iconic place in rock, and particularly in the subgenres called hard rock or heavy metal.

Although in principle any kind of guitar can be used in a rock guitar solo, and counter-examples abound, the characteristic solo sound is created using an electric guitar with the timbral effect known as distortion…

- Guitar solo, Wikipedia.org

All music undergoes various movements and shifts of energy and rhythm. There needs to be highs and lows, louds and softs for the piece to be able to accentuate the finer qualities of tonal and vocal communication.

The guitar solo helps the development of most rock and harder pop pieces by serving as a break from the main lyrical content and often offering opportunity to incorporate a new chord progression or rhythm breakdown. The guitar solo is like the month of March… it can come in like a lamb and go out like a lion, or vice versa, or be all lamb or all lion.

Probably most important, a good guitar solo will emote a significant and tangible message to a song. Great solos are extensions of the lyrical and musical intent of the song itself and are tailored to fit the overall composition. A given solo would not have the same effect if lifted out of one song and placed into another.

Here are just a very few of my favorite guitar solos that I think are nearly perfect examples of form, expression, and song fit. Keep in mind that this is just a tiny smattering of the list I could generate and that these are not necessarily my favorite songs… this is a list for the solos (guitarist — song — artists/group — album):

• Zakk Wylde — No More Tears — Ozzy Osbourne — No More Tears
• Marco Sfogli — Pretender — James LaBrie — Elements of Persuasion
• John Petrucci — Pull Me Under — Dream Theater — Images & Words
• Chris DeGarmo — Silent Lucidity — Queensryche — Empire
• Phil Collen — White Lightning — Def Leppard — Euphoria

Now you may want to know why a liberal, left-hugging periodical not known for being faith-friendly would take front-page notice of a conservative, Biblically-based church? Let me suggest that Terra Nova was noticed just as much for what it is NOT as for what it is. Terra Nova is not suits and ties… not felt pews and purple thrones… not smile-all-the-time-or-go-to-hell. This may seem very strange and foreign to many church-folk so stick with me. Terra Nova, quite simply, ventures to be everything of substance the true Biblical church is supposed to be while shedding any non-Biblical ideosyncrasies that traditional “church” has picked up along the way. Indeed, most Christians think that their traditions made popular in the 17th century (and subsequently converted into doctrine in the 1950′s) have their foundation with the very roots of Paul and Peter themselves! Many Christians think that singing songs not older than two centuries and not sung to pre-America drinking tunes are… *gulp*… of the devil.

Aghast! By what demon doth thou curseth me, oh wretched and horrible ghost, that thouest hath wrought my ruin upon the face of this leftist propaganda?!
- Any of the lesser Albany pastors after hypothetically being featured in the Metroland

Terra Nova is just a group of people who know they don’t have all the answers and are seeking Christ for those answers. And while we’re at it, let’s not pretend we live in a different century or on a different continent. Perhaps that’s just what makes Terra Nova stick out a little bit… we’re Christians who’ll readily interact with the rest of their own culture. Christians who see their church featured in Metroland and go “Cool!”

Oh yeah… it doesn’t hurt that the worship totally rocks, too. [Thank you Scott Womer]

Here’s some excerpts from the well-written article by Chet Hardin:

I was told before the service that the band would rock. That 800-year-old songs written by St. Francis of Assisi would be brought up to speed and the windows would rattle. That people passing on the streets would wonder what on earth could be going on inside Revolution Hall on a Sunday morning.

“It’s just Terra Nova,” Phil Taylor, executive pastor, said and laughed.

[...]

Taylor tells me they chose Revolution Hall because of its size (it can accommodate 800 people), its acoustics (it’s been billed as upstate New York’s “most advanced musical venue”) and because it’s just cool.

And that’s Terra Nova. A cool, confident, Generation X church that has come of age. The teaching pastor, Ed Marcelle, looks like an average Gen-Xer. He is dressed casually in worn jeans and a pullover zipper-neck sweatshirt. His hair hangs a little long, a little curly and a little out of control. Up on the stage, while he preaches, he paces slowly back and forth, like a college professor, feeling his way through his teaching with modesty and charisma. It is my first church service in 19 years, but I find myself completely engaged.

[...]

Stephen Bugler and his fiancée, Kim Cahill, in their early 30s, have been coming to Terra Nova since it started up four months ago. Bugler says he has spent years searching for a church that he could connect to.

“I went to a traditional church where everyone wore robes,” Bugler says. “And they had all these rituals that were completely dead to me. With Terra Nova, they are taking those ancient traditions and making them relevant to my life.”

Relevance is key at Terra Nova, says Cahill, who is the director of the Albany chapter of Campus Ambassadors, a national Christian fellowship organization. “I feel comfortable inviting a student to Terra Nova,” she says. “It’s like, they’ve been in Revolution Hall before. It’s not a church; it’s a bar. They are like, ‘Oh, I can do a bar.’ ”

“It’s nice to have a church where you can wear whatever you want and you can go and feel comfortable,” she adds.

But most important, they say, it is the core values of Terra Nova that keep them coming back. Terra Nova might be cool, but it is fundamentally, Biblically grounded.

[...]

[Ed Marcelle] says, “We are pretty boring and orthodox, in terms of ancient Christian belief.”

It’s true. Theologically, Terra Nova is nothing new; its core beliefs would appeal to any conservative evangelical. For all the guitars and the come-as-you-are aesthetic, this is not a liberal church.

Terra Nova members believe that the Bible is the unerring truth, the infallible word of God. They believe in original sin, wine from water, the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ. They believe that there is only one God and that there is only one way to salvation . . . and that there is a Hell waiting for the unsaved and that a hell of a lot of people are headed that way. They believe strongly in marriage between a man and a woman. They believe that homosexuality is a sin, though they are quick to point out that persecuting homosexuals is just as much of a sin, and, for that matter, everyone is a sinner. And they believe that God’s truth is irresistible.

[...]

Terra Nova belongs to a large and growing movement of churches trying to break down [barriers] by reaching out and relating to the 18- to 35-year-old crowd. It is a movement of Gen-X pastors who listen to Radiohead, Matisyahu, Green Day and Death Cab for Cutie and drop quotes from Fight Club, Marshall McLuhan and The Matrix. They hold services in bars, coffee shops, dance clubs and auto-parts stores.

It is a movement in which authenticity is a coveted word. A quick scan of any of the thousands of blogs, Web sites and books dedicated to the Gen-X church movement, also known as the emergent or post-mod movement, shows just how important a marker for success authenticity is. It can make or break the reputation of young churches and pastors. Being in touch, being culturally relevant is vital. Be a member of your own community, and your community will be your congregation: This is the equation the guys at Terra Nova are operating upon. And their message seems to resonate.

[...]

The institutional church, Marcelle argues, has become so enamored with tradition it has become a preservationist society.

“It’s the fundamentalist and evangelical Amish of our day. It doesn’t look that weird now, but give it 100 years. I went to a church where they handed me anticommunist literature, like it’s 1955. I was like, ‘I don’t know how to tell you guys this, it might shock you. . .’ ”

There are so many people who want to have a dialogue about God, he says, “who were me when I was hanging out on Lark Street. And the Christian church, who is supposedly the keeper of those truths, isn’t talking.”

[...]

[Scott Womer says] “People are looking to something beyond this world.”

The church leaders at Terra Nova and in Acts 29 are touching a nerve in a seemingly secular and skeptical generation, a generation I have always thought was moving beyond religion in favor of science and relativism. But it seems I’ve been exactly wrong. Gen-Xers haven’t given up on religion; they’ve been waiting for it. And in the meantime, they have been using popular culture to express the same sort of wrought emotional outpouring, desperation for meaning and finality of action that now some of them are expressing every Sunday morning at Revolution Hall.

Amen.

The 2006 Congressional Pig Book is the latest installment of Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) 16-year exposé of pork-barrel spending. This year’s list includes: $13,500,000 for the International Fund for Ireland, which helped finance the World Toilet Summit; $6,435,000 for wood utilization research; $1,000,000 for the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative; and $500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta, N.C.

I’ve got an idea for “wood utilization”… and it’s tied very closely to the United Armenian Guitar Fund. [NOTE: I'm Armenian and I play guitar]

For as much as our political system is better than others, I still shake my head most of the time. It pains my mind to comprehend how obvious this all is… that our self-serving “representitives” (please hold all laughter to the end) use our dollars to keep their careers moving, rather than using their careers toward us keeping more of our dollars. And it isn’t just one political party who’s to blame… they all graduated from sheister-school (well, the vast majority of them anyway).

When we ram through a gigantic bill, spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s dollars with little or no debate because we want to go home for Thanksgiving, we send the message to the American people that we are not serious enough about our jobs. We essentially accomplish little almost all year long because everything requires 60 votes, and then, at the very last minute, we scramble around and throw together a 1,632 page bill like the one before us today.
- John McCain, from his statement on the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill