Sometimes I get carried away when I write. I have a lot to say about all the bad things going on in the world and why it’s our own fault and that we might be doomed. And then I realize that maybe I put up a more negative image of myself than I intend to.

Truth be told, I have a lot to be thankful for. And I don’t mean to flaunt that in front of those of you who don’t.

First and foremost, I have to say I am thankful to live in a country where it is nearly impossible to go hungry or without shelter. In the very worst case scenario, there are still homeless shelters and soup kitchens in most cities. And in cases where there aren’t, it honestly isn’t very hard to find a charitable person on the street or a church to help you out.

Aside from that, I’m thankful that, in this crazy world we live in, love still exists. We all get discouraged and downtrodden, especially in times like these, but most of us have someone to love us. And if you feel entirely unloved by everyone, chances are there’s a person out there looking for you just so they can love you. I know this because some of the people I love myself are the kind who actually take joy in loving the difficult ones. I have a hard time putting myself among them, but I’d like to think myself a rather patient and caring individual when I see it’s needed.

Finally, I’m thankful for music. That’s a no-brainer. When things go wrong, when you have a bad day, a bad week or a bad year, music is still there. I have friends who have seen almost every kind of trouble imaginable, but when things are particularly rough, they sit back, roll a cigarette and ask if I’d like to play my guitar along with them during a rousing rendition of “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd or any one of a hundred Beatles songs.

Music gets us because it IS us. It gets to our souls because that’s where it came from; it comes out of one heart in hopes that it can go back in to a hundred others that we might continue to identify with one another as human beings, fighting the good fight together. I’m thankful that God or physics or logic or whatever you choose to call holy gave us that.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Please don’t eat too much. And only make what you’re going to eat. Give the rest to someone who needs it. Or donate the extra cash you’d have spent to hunger relief. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t buy into Black Friday.

Since it’s the day before Thanksgiving and I have no motivation to write, here’s the Muppets singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Enjoy and be thankful!

When the last tree falls, when the last river is polluted and when there is not a breath of clean air left, people will realize you can’t eat money.

Anonymous

Okay, maybe not exactly what my blog is about, but it seems to be an extreme version of a general statement I seem to be making lately.

Us humans, we suck at taking care of the world. Especially us Americans. We worry about money and comfort before anything else. And, surprise! Not only is the level of comfort we’ve created dangerous due to complacency, lack of personal growth and physical and emotional health, but the resources we’ve depleted for these comforts could bring about some extreme situations if nobody did anything to slow it down.

I believe that, beyond personal morals, there are natural consequences to our actions. If we are selfish we lose our friends. If we eat too much it kills us. If we continually seek bigger ways to satisfy our desires, the earth won’t always be able to support it. I don’t think that’s God, necessarily; it’s logical cause and effect. (Whether God created that logic is another idea entirely.)

Do I think we’re going to get to the extreme highlighted in the above quote? No. Do I think it’s no coincidence that our wasteful lifestyle caused a recession to help prevent that? Yes. Plus, we have people like the TEDsters who are actively seeking out solutions to many of our problems.

Evangelical churches must understand that making the Church relevant through trying to “meet people where they are” is a valid philosophy to attract numbers. But, it is a flawed approach when numbers become the end in and of itself. Relationship should take precedence over the spectacle.

(via RELEVANT Magazine – Church Shopping)

Apparently I saved this quote a while back so I could write about it. And now, here I am, writing about it, I guess.

Numbers don’t make for a good church. You can have a big church that is good, but it gets harder and harder as it grows. I’m a missionary’s kid, so I’ve been to my share of churches. And, let me tell you, the big ones where they buy up a city block to run all their programs and services were almost always the ones that frustrated me. And the small ones with a loyal, long-time congregation were the ones where you felt like a family.

I don’t know what the evangelical fascination with numbers is all about; especially with its lack of hierarchy, it only opens up the possibility for trouble once leadership is too small to manage everyone on a first-name basis.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

The other day a friend related a story to me of a man he knew who had been caught cheating on his wife. And not just any man, but a priest (in a denomination that allows marriage, of course).

The idea of infidelity has always bothered me. Now that I’m in a serious relationship, it bothers me even more.

I wonder how many of the men who cheat on their wives once thought what I do: that I’d never cheat and don’t know how anyone ever could.

I’m not suggesting that I feel like I’m unaware of how capable I am of cheating. But it does scare me. What slippery slope do these men go down that leads to dirty deeds behind their wives’ backs? Certainly something else had to come before the cheating. And, of all people, it seems as though a priest should have the character of passion, fervor and devotion that would hold him back even more so than many people.

I don’t have anything else to say, really. I guess I’m just shocked that this happens, and probably more often than I’m aware of. The more I grow, the more I realize how different we are from each other. Much like with murder, it’s clear that we all have different shortcomings that we struggle with.

This week’s episode of Radiolab presents an interesting hypothetical that in turn presents some bigger-scale questions.

The hypothetical is this: you are wearing a thousand dollar suit. You are walking along the edge of a lake and see a girl drowning nearby. She screams for help. If you jump in to save her, you will ruin your thousand dollar suit. So do you save her? Common morality says yes, right?

Skip forward a couple days. You are now walking downtown and you pass a man at a booth saying that, for a thousand dollar donation, you can save the life of some girl you don’t know in another part of the world.

My guess is you’d be less likely to donate that money. But why? Because she’s not an immediate, tangible concern? Because, if you didn’t save her, nobody would judge you negatively for neglecting a child?

Radiolab goes on to discuss how this difference in thinking is due to a long-standing human mentality, that we have evolved to the point that emergencies in our physical location are those of importance and all others are easily ignorable.

What does it take for humans to evolve to the next level? To be aware that there is always an emergency somewhere? To gain a global consciousness?

Certainly the resources are there. Despite our recent economic crisis, America still has most of the world’s money; a small fraction of it could end the plague of starvation, ensuring every man, woman and child on earth did not go hungry. If only we’d think globally instead of locally. (That said, why do we buy burgers for homeless people when our local homeless shelters seem to be able to feed them just fine? Why not donate the money to fund relief in Africa?)

So the growing pains are there. People are making attempts at solving this, at pushing forward to encourage people to think about emergencies globally. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Is this a sign of mental evolution? How much longer until people react together to solve any emergency in the world? My guess is that we’ll get closer, but never quite there.

The fact that these nonscientific tests are sponsored by Volkswagen sour the deal a bit for me. But the theory is great: make people do good things by making them fun to do.

It’s hardly a revolutionary idea, but it’s one of the first times I’ve seen someone make a considerable effort to test it out.

But I have questions: Would it get annoying if all our trash cans and stair cases made noise? Would these ideas hold up over time? If the idea becomes commonplace, does it remain fun? What useful tasks do we do regularly that don’t lose their enjoyment factor?

I guess my point is that, yes, we need to find ways to encourage people to recycle and exercise, but I wonder if our nature as humans will “evolve” to resist such things once the fun wears off.

And then I wonder why it is some of us are more health- and earth-conscious and others are not. Perhaps we need to narrow that down and figure out what makes those people tick versus those that choose to be wasteful and slobby.

Here I am, contradicting my own thoughts about technology purchases from a few months ago. This is what happens when your Verizon contract expires mere days before the launch of the Droid, unarguably Verizon’s best smart phone to date.

To be fair, as a web developer on the go, I can probably justify owning a smart phone more than a lot of people, but that’s beside the point. I bought it and, thus far, have not regretted it. Other than a slightly higher phone bill, it’s been all ups and very few downs.

What I love about the Droid

For one thing, it does everything I’d want an iPhone to do, but on a way better network. Sure, not as many apps and games, but if I really wanted to game on the go, I’d get a Game Boy or whatever they’re called these days. But when I was in a rural spot with a few iPhone friends and had full bars of 3G while they were all barely getting Edge, I smiled. Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPhone. If it were on Verizon’s way-better network instead of AT&T, I’d probably have it. But, at the same time, the opportunities for expansion on the Droid with its open development platform give me a lot of hope when I look at Apple’s sometimes-draconian control over their app store and device.

I also am enjoying the turn-by-turn directions powered by Google Maps that comes for free with the phone. I used it all last weekend getting around southern California with zero complaints. The GPS is accurate and I only lost GPS signal for a few seconds on a back-country road.

And the fact that I could run multiple apps at once came in handy when I was listening to music on my Droid through my car stereo and it was still giving me turn-by-turn directions over the music. And to run those apps at lightning speed with the Droid’s impressive hardware is nothing to complain about.

On a similar note, the fact that I can listen to streaming music and download podcasts from anywhere I get service is extremely convenient.

Also, I’m a big texter and tweeter, so the keyboard is highly important to me. The Droid, conveniently, has three: two on-screen keyboards (one each in portrait and landscape mode) with amazing predictive text when your fingers slip and a physical keyboard that isn’t perfect but can be nice once you get used to it.

Lastly, being the Google apps junkie that I am, the automatic integration with my contacts, calendar and email on my multiple Google accounts, and the integration with my contacts on Facebook, make for a smooth interface when calling, emailing and texting friends.

What I don’t like about the Droid

Well… not much. Nice, huh? The only things coming to mind are minor bugs and annoyances. One thing is the lack of multi-touch on the screen. It’s a bit confusing in the web browser, Google Maps and photos. I hear the phone actually supports it, but that it hasn’t been built. I’m not sure how true that is, but I can hope.

Another is that, occasionally, the text messaging app freezes up for a few seconds when I try to type and the browser has crashed for me a time or two. But they recover quite well, so I can’t complain too much.

Also, the camera leaves something to be desired, with its weak auto-focus and dark-ish exposures, but I hear there are already software updates in the works to fix some of that.

Lastly, the music player pauses briefly when a new text or email notification pops up. I’m not sure if this is a bug, really, because it was actually nice to know I’d gotten a message once I figured out what was happening.

Wrapping it up

All in all, I’m extremely satisfied with my purchase. I am still finding new reasons to love it and I think most people jonesing for a great smart phone on a great network will be satisfied, unless there is some iPhone-only feature or app you “need” that you know isn’t ever going to come to any other phone. (I can’t imagine what that would be.)

I intend to work this phone to death. I’m rarely an early adopter of new devices, and this one came along at just the right time. I will use it until it no longer works and, unless another better option comes along in the meantime, I can’t see myself switching phones any time in the near future.

America washes ashore like cultural driftwood in countries like this one. The locals wear and digest it like an imported non sequitur as they walk through an absurdist landscape that used to be their homeland. Driftwood, dead chickens covered in the Colonel’s secret recipe, whatever. It’s all cool, right? Why should the rest of the world miss out on clogged arteries and thickened blood? Don’t hate the freedom!

No one is innocent. Nothing is sacred. Everywhere is America. Mr. Friedman, we won, we won!

Henry Rollins

That quote, from one of the world’s favorite punk icons, reminded me of a question I learned the answer to that most people don’t even know to ask: Do you think the stuff you donate to thrift stores stays there? Obviously some of it has to, but a whole lot of it doesn’t.

A while ago, I read an essay in a wonderful collection of writings by a guy who donated a shirt to Goodwill and tracked where it ended up. You can read it too if you’d like, but here’s a hint: it didn’t stay at the thrift store in New York City where he donated it for very long. And it wasn’t bought by one of the store’s customers. Read on and find out for yourself where it went.

Spoilers: Americans are so wasteful that even the clothes we buy end up getting sold to third-world countries in bulk, priced by weight.

America is bleeding. We eat too much, we produce too much, we buy too much, we waste too much, we expect too much, we complain too much and we’re bursting at the seams. And our excess is getting passed off to other countries. Sometimes it helps, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Do us all a favor: next time you consider buying a t-shirt or a nice pair of jeans that you probably won’t wear in a year, don’t. Just… don’t. Send the money to Africa or, you know, save it to make sure you can actually pay your rent or mortgage at the end of the month.

Even on my worst day, however, I hope I was better than the hacks they brought out on Tuesday in the first day post-Maura. Eventually, the internet community dredged up where “Robbie” and “Becky” came from (gay culture site Towleroad and a gossip blog hosted by the cable channel E!, respectively), but that’s not the issue: what was once a clever site that brought out the best from those posting and commented covering whatever was happening in music became a Lady Gaga fansite overnight. I really wish that were an exaggeration, but long thoughtful, provocative posts were gone, and quick, poorly edited posts with an occasional PMS joke thrown in as a replacement.

(via The End of Idolator by Dan Gibson)

An “oh snap!” moment from Dan Gibson, former contributor to Idolator — a music news/commentary blog that I read daily. (Side note: I applied for the writing position that Gibson eventually took; he did much better at it than I would have. He has also contributed to Buzzgrinder a time or two, so that’s how you know he’s legit.)

Idolator’s editor and last original staffer Maura left rather suddenly last week, and the two people who replaced her have, indeed, let the site go into shambles more quickly than I thought possible. When I checked the site this morning, the top headlines were Katy Perry, two Lady Gaga articles in a row and an Alicia Keys video.

What happened to articles exploring the ’90s revival, alternative rock, the quality of modern music journalism and a healthy balance of mainstream and underground music? All out the window.

This is a very obvious argument for being attentive to branding. Idolator regulars knew Maura and Dan and what to expect from them, and that was what Idolator was. If those people leave and their replacements don’t look and feel at least a little bit like them, good luck keeping your readership. Unless, of course, your goal all along was to gain momentum, then spam Google with headlines about pop stars for boosts in page views (and losses in reader loyalty). Thanks, Buzznet.