Grim News

I’ve been reading my Shakespeare again lately and as I grow older I find myself more and more enjoying the histories, specifically Henry V. As a youth, I preferred the tragedies; Othello and Macbeth still hold a special allure for me. In fact it wasn’t until college that I even started reading the histories, and that was mostly due to productions the school was doing of Richard III.

I like Henry V for the same reason most others do; the inspirational tones, the mounting suspense of battle, and the dance numbers. Ok I made that last part up, but still.

I like to draw parallels to my own life and often quote the play as the situation demands. Often I can be heard walking through the office exclaiming “Once more into the breach, dear friends…” But nothing inspires me against the overwhelming forces we all deal with every day like hearing or reading the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech. The French outnumber the English 5 to 1, they are veteran troops and fresh, unlike Harry’s bag of tired sore soldiers. No one would mock them if they just packed it up and came home, but the rallying cry of Henry steels his men and tempers that steel with swagger and off to win the Battle of Agincourt they go behind their inspiring leader.

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here

But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

God Save the King.

(P.S. If you haven’t seen Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V do yourself a favor and watch it immediately. The following is a scene from that film which has one of the greatest choral arrangements I have heard in a long time.)

Seriously, has any political movement gone from “Majority Party” to “Clown Shoes” so quickly?

Here are some of the choicest tidbits from President Obama’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

• “Dick Cheney was supposed to be here, but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled, ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People.’”

• On House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), whose apparent fake tan has long been the butt of jokes inside the Beltway,  “We have a lot in common: He is a person of color,” Obama joked. “Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

But the line of the night had to be this gem from Wanda Sykes on Rush Limbaugh…

• “I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight,”

The Republican Party has become a complete shambles.  When your party’s guiding lights are talk radio hosts, and some of your oldest and most established members are jumping ship to the other party, perhaps it is time to think about how disconnected you have become from “Mainstream America”.  Seriously, these clowns are seriously entertaining the notion of running Sarah Palin for President in 3 more years.  It might be more dignified, and certainly less expensive to just say “We give up” and let Obama have his second term without a fight.

As a parting shot, I’ll leave you with this little nugget to think about.  The same “Conservatives” who decry Obama’s spending bills and invoke the “holy name” of Ayn Rand when espousing their preferred economic philosophies are the same bozos who voted for Bush’s bailout bill back in December and managed to turn a budget surplus into record deficits in only a few short years.   Hypocrite much?

Oddly enough I found this blog ironically, while using StumbleUpon.

StumbleUpon has carried many web surfers deep in the night, into the wee hours of many mornings by offering a never ending stream of interesting randomness that is always just a click away.

It’s an adventure. Your clicks bring you to visuals and sounds you never would have expected to find on the internet. Before stumbling existed, web surfing consisted of search engines and links given to you on web forums or by friends on IM. Surfing used to be a mundane process where you knew what you were looking for and only needed to find a way to get to it.

Stumbling has brought us unseen destinations, exciting vistas of information and opinion and stupidity, the exotic dangers of a random NSFW page, and the mindless time wasting flash games we would never have found otherwise. StumbleUpon has given people a reason for being on the internet when they have nothing else to do but explore.

Parents have always told their children that it is best to take things in moderation, this also applies to the click of StumbleUpon. Most stumble addicts out there know who they are, and that’s a good first step. No more stumbling through papers and meals, no more stumbling until the crack of dawn scares you into your bed. We can enjoy StumbleUpon, but we must not abuse it. The world misses you, and we only want to see you again and we hope you are doing well.

It is the evolution of the web. We’ve moved past railways and roadways and are now flying through the internet, teleporting from destination to destination. There is a new world to explore, and its all at your fingertips, just one more click away…

Working as I do for churches, there is a very special feeling I get when I think about Christmas. And that feeling is trepidation. Allow me to ‘splain.

The 2 biggest holidays in the church market is Christmas and Easter. Christians are big into birth and death. The in between parts, meh, not so much. Megachurches love to take advantage of these events and hold huge concerts or passion plays during these times.

Seems every year around this time, I get drafted into programming a lightshow for a Christmas concert or 2 (or 4!) This week it is a giant behemoth of a show, with 80 moving lights and a Vista T2 console, which I have never used before, and programs unlike anything I am used to. Not that that is a bad thing, as I am really impressed with the Wacom pen tablet GUI and the visual approach to programming, I just wish I had a better grasp of the interworkings of the programming commands. Of course, that is another blog post.

The trepidation comes from just knowing how these people operate normally and what they expect of you. Most of the time the stuff they expect you to do, they expect you to do it for free because they are a church and it’s the “christian thing to do”. I generally nip all that talk in the bud real quick and let them know that God works for free and I’m not God. However good this show is for my wallet, it is murder on my body, mind, and sleep schedule. Since Monday, I have put in 80+ hours with notes and the performance still to come on Sunday.

These people have a full 80 piece orchestra and 3 full choirs: children, youth and adult that number over 300 voices. They want all of them on stage, at the same time, and didn’t think to rehearse or stage any of that until 2 days before the show. /fail

Anyway, here are some iPhone pics I snapped real quick:

I’m just getting my breath back after a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas for my 30th birthday. It was my wife’s first trip to Vegas, so we toured the Strip and downtown and saw the shows and walked…and walked…and walked.

Seriously, I thought my legs were going to fall off. I was also there for a convention and covering the floor everyday was about 2 miles, plus we walked the entire Strip, not to mention going inside all of the casinos and shops. Caesars Palace alone took 2 hours to go through. My blisters have blisters.

But, overall it was a nice time. I got to see some good friends I haven’t hung out with in years, and drink catch up with them. I lost every single time I sat down to play anything, but I’m not complaining. Plus, I think the city impressed the wife enough that this may become an annual occurrence. Any one else want in?

On the birthday front, I’ve made it to 30. Apparently I’m supposed to be an adult now and put away my childhood. So, for my birthday, I bought myself a gamepad and spent the weekend playing Super Nintendo roms. We’ll see who calls the shots here, age.