Chiltie's Musings

To top of a long week of rowing, work, and water fights with coworkers and bosses (my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss punked me in a water fight while I was refueling Thursday, but whatever, it’s a water fight) I went to see The Dark Knight finally. I gave up on trying to see it first at the Imax and saw it at the cinerama. I’ll get to the IMAX eventually for it. Simply awesome.

Immediately after the movie, I ditched my friends who went to the movie and ran over to the Capital Hill Block Party. I really really wanted to see Vampire Weekend at 10:45, and I wanted to catch as much of Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head as I could before Vampire Weekend came on. NPSH turned in a really solid performance, totally gald I rushed up to see them. I think they gave a better live show that Vampire Weekend, way more energy coming from the stage. Vampire Weekend played a couple of songs not from their debut album, but they seemed shaky about the lyrics and it was hard to hear them, the instrumental bits were pretty solid though. It turns out that my least favorite track from the album, “Blake’s Got A New Face”, is the one audience involvement song they do, which was a bit of a bummer. All is forgiven however, since the closed with an awesome performance of “Walcott”, easily my second favorite track on their debut album, behind “Mansard Roof.” My absolute favorite song of theirs is “Ladies of Cambridge,” which is the B-Side to the “Mansard Roof” single.

After all this excitement, could the day possibly get any better I ask. (Obviously it can sense I mentioned Cowboy Mouth in the title and have yet to write about them. I just like silly rhetorical devices. We engineering types don’t get to use them often.) The best news of the day came when I got home and checked my personal email account. I get “This page has changed” emails from Cowboy Mouth’s tour page. I have gotten to the point where have the time I don’t bother checking them, since it seems that CA is about the only place west of Colorado they ever go. (You’d think happenin’ music cities like Portland and Seattle would warrant semi frequent visits. A least I would.) This time the update actually includes a Seattle date!!!!! Come November 10, 2008 I’ll be at the Tractor Tavarn absorbing as much of that amazing New Orleans Rock as I possibly can. Who knows how long it’ll be before I get to see them again. I can’t wait. Cowboy Mouth has these incredibly amazing live shows… i totally hope that show sells out (after I buy tickets of course!) I really want Seattle to become a frequent stop for them.

More tomorrow after I see KIMYA FREAKIN’ DAWSON at the block party (oh and Fleet Foxes, The Hold Steady, and DeVotchka).

One of the side effects of having a pastor for a father, especially one who is the Assistant to the Bishop, is that when you tell him you’re thinking about seminary, he starts sending you books. Now we’ve always been big readers in my family, so the sending of books cross country is not a new thing, but there was definitely a new topic to the books. The one’s I’ve read or started reading so far have been really good, and this is not really the point of my posted but merely a preface to how The Reformation for Armchair Theologians came into my possession. I’ll post more about discernmen and about the books Dad’s sending and others I’m reading soon. Probably. Maybe.

As I was reading The Reformation for Armchair Theologians, I came across the discussion of the disagreement about Holy Communion had by Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, two leaders of the 16th Century Reformation. In short, Luther insisted that, while the bread and wine are not physically flesh and blood, they still posses the body of Christ. Zwingli took the position that they were really just bread and wine, but when taking the sacrament, our souls are lifted up to heaven briefly and they commune with Chirst in Heaven (since Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father).

In and of itself this disagreement is pretty interesting, but the bit that really struck me was this: Reportedly, when Luther and Zwingli met to discuss their disagreements, Luther pulled out his knife and wrote “Hoc est corpus meum” (which is Latin for “This is my body”). Luther pointed to the “est” and argued that this means that Christ is bodily present. Zwingli argued that “is” could be less literal and mean “represent.” This is where Brother Clinton comes into the picture. I immediately thought of the Lewinsky testimony and “it depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” Luther and Zwingli where having that same argument 500 years ago.

I haven’t figured out how to turn this into a Sunday school lesson yet, but I have a few months before Sunday School starts up to think about it.

As a side note, my father posts his sermons every week that he writes one on his blog, Delmo Dorite Writes. His sermons are very good, which definitely made it hard to find a church home of my own when I moved away. He’s currently one of the Assistants to the Bishop for the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA. Yeah, I think it’s cool.

I woke myself up at 4:30 this morning and forced myself out of bed to go rowing again. I’ve keep my membership at Lake Union Crew current for the last year and a half, but I haven’t been actively rowing since December 2006. This is a significant void in my life and a contributing factor in not insignificant weight gain in the last two years. Since i first stepped into a shell in the fall of 2001 (in Chattanooga), rowing has been my my connection to God and nature. I feel best when I’m gliding along the water with 7 other men pushing it as hard as we can. Every day for the last 18 months, I’ve looked out at the lake, or driven over the bridge and thought “I should be out there.”

This morning I was intending to sit on a rowing machine for a while and start getting back in shape, but they needed a sub and I was suddenly on the water. It hurt like hell, but it was the greatest feeling hurt ever. Damn I’ve missed rowing.

I’m relaunching my blog using SimpleLog instead of Typo. I’ve had way too many issues trying to upgrade my Typo installation lately and decided to just give up on it. I’ll be moving my old content over soon. For now I’ll start adding new content. I’ll talk about being a religious person in the secular northwest, baseball, politics, and sunsets. Oooo, Sunsets. I do like sunsets.

Update: I’ve finished importing about a third of the old posts. I hope to finish them up tomorrow afternoon. I’ll start adding the comments that aren’t spam after that.

Today, the City of Chattanooga charged 6 UT-Chattanooga football players with rape. Not only that but according to Coach Allison, these 6 are not likely to return to the team, ever. Good riddance. This is the kind of thing that needs to happen at higher levels of sports to show younger players that this sort of behavior is not acceptable. Just because you’re a minor celebrity locally through athletic prowess, you can’t disrespect your university by behaving like this, consensually or not, and not have repercussions.

On other Mocs news, Terrell Owens, formerly of the Mocs, has been suspended for the remainder of the season by the Philadelphia Eagles. Its okay with me, he’s been a punk ever since he got to the NFL. I’m a little ashamed though, he came from my university, and is the most high profile former student out there right now (sorry Dennis Haskins , I love ya, but your celebrity’s not quite equal to his), and he’s being a punk.