Just so you know, I don’t think that anything below is particularly special or clever, so it’s not like I think I’m passing off dog breath as the smell of fresh bread.
New theories about the brain – and there are always new theories about the brain – suggest that Vitamin D makes us happier. Or so I’m told. Lifts the mood, engladens the soul. You mean the stuff you get from the sun? No news to me. I had a long period in my life when I liked cloudy moody weather because I was a Serious Person, and Serious People were prone to melancholy, and what better setting for the great drama of your own fascinating life than low clouds and mist in the distance? Some people always feel that way; some change; some decide that it’s all dark in the end, so you’d best luxuriate in the rays of a distant nuclear reaction while you can. I’m in the pro-sun camp, or Team Sun as the inane and endlessly annoying modern coinage has it, so yesterday and today made me Spring-Heeled Jack. But there was something else.
I’ve mentioned how I’m weeding out the iTunes? Right. It’s tiresome but it pays off – fixing all the tags on classical music, for example, is an exercise in brain-melting hair-pulling fury, because everyone enters information differently into the CD databases. Good. Lord. You rip a CD, and it comes back with every tempo in a movement entered in the ALBUM ARTIST field and the composer’s birthdate in the genre field. So I’m constructing playlists for every composer, and unifying all the field styles. Now and then when I have a moment I’ll enter a keyword, see what comes up, and go full Stalin on the results. The end product, as far as I can tell, is a musical collection that reflects what I want to listen to, not what I have that I might someday need. The curse of the digital age is the blurring of the distinction between the two: you want to have it all, just in case. Not anymore. Out it goes.
(After I back up the discards, of course.)
This means it’s easier for me to turn on my iPod and find something I actually want to hear. Song after song, why, it’s something I like. “Ten thousand songs in your pocket” turns out to be a curse it turns out that I am perfectly content with a small amount of music. I used to have hundreds of songs from the 40s on my playlist, but it turns out I can boil it down to some 40s CDs I bought in the late 80s. Turns out they’re called “Best Of” for a reason.
But today at work I was going through the as-of-yet-unweeded techno playlist, and came across an album I had loved the moment I’d heard, and of course never listened to again because there was something else to be discovered and curated. To some ears I suppose it’s your typical floaty gassy synth-drivel with a beat and a voice, but when I walked outside into the sun, the combination between the music and the light and the mood was so marvelous I just stood in the parking lot until it was done. It was as happy as I’d felt in a long time.
There was something more behind it, too; I’d just decided to rework my daily vidcasts at the paper, because I truly could not stand to talk about celebrities any more. I just snapped, and more or less put a stake in the old format. You want to see someone pour his heart out? It’s here. The new version will be much more web-culture oriented, and I’m going to produce it at work instead of home, which means building a green screen studio of my own down in Studio A at the paper. So I went down to A to see what I could do; it was empty, no one shooting anything at the time, and I walked around for a while by myself recalling the events of a year ago, when we were winding up the new video project. Some of the boxes we opened to liberate new equipment are still there. There’s some stuff on a whiteboard about a project I did last February. There’s a green hat I used for a St. Patrick’s day broadcast. It seems like a very long time ago. All that is past, and all the agita and tsuris is over, and now I’m closer to doing exactly what I want to do. So it didn’t feel dead and sad as it had just a week or so again, when I was last down in A. I made the decision to take home boxes of stuff from my old desk and start the new desk from scratch. Legacy desk flair: it ties a man down.
So there you are. It’s all that simple. A good song and sun and a new direction and the illusion of progress to salve the wound of passing time, and you’re set. At least for the moment.
The rest of the day? We had the annual meatball dinner at church, which coincides with the annual “let’s all take a look at our contribution structure” chat. The meatballs are so good you can’t help but increase your pledge to cover inflation.
Went home and wrote a Joe. Had a chat with daughter about WW2; she’s watching some anime show that has something to do about World War 2 and wanted to know where Austria figured in the mix. She said the words I think every parent hears at some point: “Well what about Prussia?” So we talked about Prussia. It’s one of those things a father just does. Then I
worked on this and that, but to be utterly frank: Tuesday nights I don’t feel like pressing the pedal through the floorboards. Spent some time prepping a computer for office duty, which sounds dreadful unless you’re as ill as I am, and then it’s a great joy.
Updates: oh, this is good. Just go HERE and witness the birth of Jazz Hands.
As for the song: Looked it up on the playlist tonight, and it’s called . . . Autumn Tactics. And here you go.
Pass it along, if you wish
73 Responses to Vitamin M
Host with the Most
Thanks, madCanada. But you may be surprised to know that I also believe in the innate sinfulness of humanity. It’s the reason we needed a Savior.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
–1 John 1:7-8
Well now madCanada, not to be contentious (with you anyway), but I seem to recall that Jesus did drive out some demons out of one of the afflicted, they were Legion by name. Their default host was in a herd of pigs who promptly imitated lemmings and ran off a cliff. So maybe swschrad’s use of metaphor has some validity after all. Having baled hay down wind of a few pig farms as teen, I find it a rather apt description of how the scent (or sin) can feel like it got absorbed into your very pores when I have failed to live and act well.
As for you Al, speak for yourself. WE all don’t know deep down that there’s nobody there to deliver anything. The fact that YOU seem to know all (not unlike Karnak the Magnificent) says more about YOU than the others you speak for.
I’m taking Al’s side re absolute truth, but remain a curious investigator of theology as a useful tool/guide for living.
I hope nobody here is a Calvinist, that’s all. What an absolutely despicable creed. I give all other strains of JudeoChristianity credit for believing that human thoughts/deeds are consequential, and that we each have the power and freedom to negotiate our standing with the creator/universe.
Poor Bobby Van – died too young. Always liked him, though – even enough to forgive him for the ’73 version of Lost Horizon.
And the podcast… you could have cut it at 0:15 and been just as effective. Still better then the local radio chat host who used half an hour of airtime with the same attitude toward LL and managed to say less than you did. (He tends to gripe about celebs making more money than “us regular folks”. He gets $30k a year for saying that.)
But today at work I was going through the as-of-yet-unweeded techno playlist, and came across an album I had loved the moment I’d heard, and of course never listened to again because there was something else to be discovered and curated. To some ears I suppose it’s your typical floaty gassy synth-drivel with a beat and a voice,
Bah, some of us are actually interested. What’s the album?
If anyone reading this is a Calvinist, please speak up. I have some questions … and not just rhetorical/adversarial questions, I’m really trying to make sense of what you believe.
I personally think that Calvin would not pee on as many auto manufacturer’s logos as the numerous window stickers would indicate.
Roger: ROTFLMAO
@bgbear: maybe Calvin has a picture of Ralph Nader on his wall
there’s also a herd of yellow snowmen to contend with in parsing this argument.
@MadCanada, Al Federer: as long as you have breath, it’s never too late to change. WELS is not the only church group that believes scripture is divinely driven, as in God is dictating and don’t mess it up, buddy, we’re watching you closely.
I still personally have some small issues with 6 days and a nap, but when you consider how fast things happen at the business end of a particle accelerator, it could well be.
anybody who claims to have all the answers down here… well, most of them are not relevant to the questions asked. trust none who claim otherwise.
except ME, of course, your candidate for Benevolent Dictator. had enough politics? they’re all liars and scoundrels? vote swschrad for Benevolent Dictator. you will be pleased, or else
I’m confused here, madCanada. I reviewed Herr Federber’s snarky inputs, but failed to see anything referencing absolute truth or something even remotely like it. All I could find was a gaping hole of disbelief. As for Calvinism, I grew up Protestant, but converted to Catholicism in my 40′s. I saw plenty of disconnects between the very different cathechisms of the two, but I am baffled by your assertion of negotiation. As for Calvinism, do you consider Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, and a few other contemporaries I could mention despicable in their beliefs? Consider your answer carefully, because their fundamental religious underpinnings were those of Calvinism rather than Church of England.
@ Mark E Hurling, thanks for the heads-up on Wren & Newton. I’m playing catch-up on theology here and admittedly don’t know everthing. Gotta say, though, having visited London many times, Wren designed some pretty club-houses.
@ swschrad … Worship/repent away. Be happy.
madCanada, your sense of honor and intellectual integrity do you proud. I’m always glad to communicate with you. I hope I can emulate you in this respect. I have to fight (really hard) to step back from my own strongly held beliefs and try to look at what I think is true with new eyes. You are to be commended.
@metaphizzle: See the YouTube at the end of the article.
“Autumn Tactics” (vocals: Justine Suissa) is on the album _Behind the Sun_ by Chicane (AKA Nicholas Bracegirdle).
“anybody who claims to have all the answers down here… well, most of them are not relevant to the questions asked. trust none who claim otherwise.”
_@_v – isn’t The Answer™ forty-two?
This perpetual lack of results is successfully used by church management as justification for more of the same (pray harder, have more faith, give more money…).
I trust, then, that if we substitute “government” for “church” (and mutatis mutandis) you would still be just as cynical/skeptical.
Well Al, if you’re right and we’re wrong, we’ll have maybe wasted some time and money going to church. But, if we’re right and you’re wrong, then you’ll have an awful long time to think about it.
Newton’s religion is a topic that has occupied scholars for decades. It’s not very easy to define, because he pretty much rejected _all_ Christian denominations as having been corrupted since the time of Arius in the fourth century. There’s been some debate lately, but it was likely that Newton followed Arius and denied the trinity. I’m not sure, but he also likely did not favor the predestination of Calvinism, but he did predict the end of the world based on intensive scrutiny of Biblical chronology (it will happen around 2050–look out!).
I’ve been in Europe for a while, and it’s interesting how the ads showing up on all my usual places are all in German now. At the top of the Bleat right now is an ad that says, basically:
“Your girlfriend is right here right now” with an arrow pointing at a generic park somewhere. Underneath the picture it says you can send them her cell number to get an exact location. 15 times for free!
Creepy. I haven’t seen that kind of ad in the states.
I’m a Calvinist.
Love those snowmen.
Thanks for the Chicane song. (I bought the CD.) In return, I’d like to submit for your possible approval an Australian DJ yclept Aaron Static, who does a monthly Power Hour podcast of progressive/house/trance/dance stuff. I think you might like it, or at least find some tracks of interest.
@Grebmar, I suppose we could debate this at some length and stil not convince each other. But (and this is just my opinion) when you look at Newton’s journals from his earliest days from childhood, and see some of the entries and how he seeks to list his sins and redress them with terribly great detail and specificity, it seems to me his very nature was infused with a very Calvinistic approach to redemption. As for predestination, his mechanistic approach to the universe, gravity, et. al. seem to line right up with the concept. If you examine Newton next to his arch rival in these theories of universal physics Liebniz, this leaps out at you. Or it did to me anyway. YMMV.
I agree, he came dangerously close to being accused of heresy because his rather guarded remarks about Arianism, but I’m not enough of a theologian to be sure that the one excludes him from adherence with regard to the other.
Actually, in our family, we really *did* have a “well, what about Prussia?” conversation, when the eldest learned that our last name is not (gasp!) German, as he had once been told. It’s Prussian. Having never heard of Prussia, well, off we went.
Bottom line? “So, basically, we’re German?”
Well, yes. Basically.
Hello Mr Lileks! Sad as it is, I missed a blog and when I went to have my say, there were already Jesus comments there. Even you sir it seems are not immune and leads me to the theory that this is perhaps the shelf life freshness indicator for web posts- when the hapless Bible quoters and Dawkins thumping atheists rear their mushroomy little heads. Where was I? Yes, playlist trimming… I was moved by your comments on the subject as I am a chronic curator myself and spend much time on this task. I hope you see it also as the good exercise that I do- cleaving the difference between the mechanical, practical thinking of “I might need this” to the more centered choices of what truly moves us. It is an art of knowing where to draw the lines in the most personal way (and it’s been said that that is all art really is) rather than saving hard drive space or something similarly mechanical.
Greetings to the Twin Cities and Huzzah! to you, Mr. Lileks.
“For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” 1 Corinthians 4:20, just sayin.