watching tv relationships is hecka bad for me.


its not all about the chase is it?
:(

songs that say goodbye

schuyler fisk
"songs that say goodbye"

standing at your door
just as nervous as the first time
and you greet me with a kiss
how could you know that i don't feel right
i wish there was a way i could want you
wish that i could be the right one for you
wish there was an easy way to say this

these words are heavy on my mind
like songs that say goodbye
like songs that say goodbye

how can i explain that you did everything the right way
yeah you made me feel safe and you made me want to say
things i couldn't say
wish i didn't have to watch you fall
wish this didn't have to hurt at all
wish there was an easy way to say this

these words are heavy on my mind
like songs that say goodbye
like songs that say goodbye

and i don't want to take it back
the time we had
got no regrets
i don't want to wonder if
we should have been
what could've been
what might've been

but i didn't to break you
i didn't want to break you
like songs that say goodbye
i didn't want to break you
i didn't want to break you
like songs that say goodbye
like songs that say goodbye

another one

third eye blind
"deep inside of you"




When we met, light was shed
Thoughts free flow
You said you've got something
Deep inside of you

A wind chime voice sounds
Sway of your hips 'round rings true
It goes deep inside of you

These secret garden beams
Change my life so it seems

A fall breeze blows outside
I don't break stride
Thoughts are warm
And they go deep inside of you
Oh yeah

I had never felt alone alright
Oh till I met you

Friends say I've changed
I don't listen
'Cause I live to be
Deep inside of you

Slide up her dress
I'm seeing darkness
I'm so alive
I'm deep inside of you

You said boy made girl feel good
But still...
Deep inside
Still

I never felt alone
'Till I met you
I'm alright on my own
And then I met you
And I'd know what to do
If I just knew what's comin'

I would change myself if I could
I'd walk with my people if I could find them
And I'd say that I'm sorry to you
I'm sorry to you

And I don't wanna call you
But then I wanna call you
'Cause I don't wanna crush you
But I feel like crushing you

And it's true
I took for granted you were with me
I breathe by your looks
And you look right through me

We were broken and didn't know it
We were broken and didn't know it
We were broken and didn't know it
We were broken and didn't know it

Right, oh right.
That's right, oh...

Something's gone
You withdraw and
I'm not strong like before
I was deep inside of you

I can go nowhere
I burn candles and stare
At a ghost
Deep inside of you

And some great need in me
Starts to bleed
I've lost myself
There's nothin' left
It's all gone
Deep inside of you
Deep inside of you
Mmmm...
Deep inside of you

file under: i wish you could hear this now.

phil wickham - divine romance


The fullness of Your grace is here with me
The richness of Your beauty’s all I see
The brightness of Your glory has arrived
In Your presence God, I’m completely satisfied

For You I sing I dance
Rejoice in this divine romance
Lift my heart and my hands
To show my love, to show my love

A deep deep flood, an Ocean flows from You
Of deep deep love, yeah it’s filling up the room
Your innocent blood, has washed my guilty life
In Your presence God I’m completely satisfied

science is fun right now.

escape velocity



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity


do i really need a definition though?
i think ive always desired this.


http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/vesc.html


but, very simply:

escape velocity
n.

the minimum velocity that a body must attain to escape a gravitational field completely.


which is only approached with the expectation that there is more, beyond.



good thoughts by djchuang:
at this xanga

Parental-expectations barrier is a hard one to overcome, and there are some examples of it eroding in subsequent generations, but, alas, it only erodes for those who are cultural creatives, those who break the mold, and those who are willing to leave the predictable narrative of going to college, getting a job, getting married, having kids, repeat. Most people have a tendency to stick with the predictable and norm, but a few will reach escape velocity. In other words, everything won't change for Asians in just one generation. And, wealth and prosperity has its own seduction for people of every kind and generation, with or without parental hopes and aspirations.

Yes, Asian Americans on the whole have the highest median family income, and they are also the most educated, but it does not yet show up in the world of nonprofits and philanthropy. Yes, it'd seem to be consistent for their Asian pastors to be among the highest paid, but there may be more underlying cultural philosophies about ministry & money that needs to be excavated, exposed, and redeemed.
Posted 10/5/2006 at 8:28 AM by djchuang

impressive... self made man?

With growing confidence, he began to rethink his public image. As his contract with EEG was ending, Chen approached the company and asked to produce his next album. "They creatively held everything, which was really frustrating to me because I would have to do a lot of things that I was not accustomed to doing," he says. "It was an uphill battle."

He eventually secured the money to do "Please Steal This Album." It was a transitional record, more soft pop than hip-hop. But it went gold, and Chen says, "I guess that burned a lot of bridges."

In 2004, on his own in a company town, Chen decided to reinvent himself in the mold of one of his heroes, Jay-Z, whose rap career broke the year Chen was in New York. He was especially impressed at how Jay-Z had parlayed rap success into fashion and lifestyle branding. Chen traveled to Japan to visit the Harajuku area, the vibrant, style-conscious home of East Asia's new lifestyle economy, and picked up a powerful mentor in the scene's godfather, Hiroshi Fujiwara.

When Chen returned to Hong Kong, he read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point." Taken with the thought that he could help change the way an entire country thought of itself, he joined with friends Kevin Poon and Billy Ip to form Clot, potentially China's answer to elite Japanese brands like Visvim and A Bathing Ape. They started designing T-shirts and selling them from Juice's second-floor walkup.

Nike eventually commissioned Chen and a friend of his, the rapper MC Yan, to design a model of Air Max shoes. The orange-and-tan Chinese-themed result, called the Clot Kiss of Deaths, became a small sensation in the hermetic world of sneaker-obsessives (released in May, they now go for more than $200 on eBay), and led to contracts to redesign Levi's jeans and Pepsi cans. Chen was again in the right place at the right time. Clot expanded into a complex for his new businesses, including shoe and clothing design, Juice's retail outlets, his record company, an event-planning concern and a marketing consultancy for multinationals trying to gain a toehold in the new China.

"Ten years ago I'd be wearing Phat Farm and Enyce, and people would say, 'They're so baggy! But nowadays the same people that would say that are like, 'Yo, hook me up with those Clot Jeans.' "

Chen thinks the rapid growth of Chinese youth street culture is similar to hip-hop's mid-'90s mainstream breakthrough in the United States. "Just last week I went to Hangzhou, which is a small Chinese town, and 1,500 kids packed the club, wanted to come see what we were doing," he says. "I think it's the beginning of it right now."

China's rampant piracy has created a problem for companies like Nike and Levi's. Not only does bootlegging hit the companies financially, it diminishes brand value. Clot resolves the problem by offering its target audience -- young, affluent, mostly Chinese consumers -- limited-edition goods that offer mystery and create loyalty.

"We try to create stuff for our people, meaning we make it for Chinese people, and the messages are for the Chinese community. I think this is the way to start getting it deep into the roots of our people, where they can really understand what is going on," he says. "We're trying to make it localized so that they're not saying, 'Oh yeah, this is what's hot in America.' We're trying to make it so that this is what's hot in China."

In an odd way, Chen returns to North America with a backstory that encapsulates the new China's image of itself, embracing a new world of consumer-goods, adeptly future-oriented in its decision-making, formerly belittled but now respected.

Although Chen's rap skills won't put any fear into Chinese American rappers Jin and Chan, not to mention Jay-Z, he's done mix-tape cameos with Lupe Fiasco and Clinton Sparks. Chen's forthcoming, hip-hop-oriented Mandarin-language album, "Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself," is already impressive as an act of brand leveraging. Not only will it feature songs from big-name producers Just Blaze and Jazze Pha, it will be supported by Clot-crafted campaigns with Nokia, Lacoste, Levi's, Nike and Pepsi.

When Chen's contract with EEG came up in 2005, another intensive courting period began. Hollywood's biggest agencies -- CAA, the Firm, Schiff and Co. -- came to Hong Kong to woo Chen. He decided to go with Schiff and Co. because its clients, including Gwen Stefani, Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake, have interests not just in music but also in film and fashion.

also his blog is funny: here

GREAT quote.

"Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith but rather an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is merely to insist that God be taken seriously, not frivolously — to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks... In other words, biblical faith progresses by an alternating rhythm of yes and no, a taking hold and a letting go, a believing and a doubting. Peter represents that part of our heritage that says 'I will believe though I have not yet seen.' But Thomas represents the other, equally needed part of our heritage: 'Unless I see, I will not believe.' More than ever, the strength of evangelical faith must draw from both sides of the heritage."


- Mark Buchanan

hes indeed a fine preacher.

Alpha Males and the Messiah Complex

I first met Kevin about eight years ago at a youth camp in North Carolina. He was 25, just had his first child and was married to a woman far too beautiful for him. Kevin was a gifted and passionate young man enjoying a very fruitful season of ministry in an exceptionally large church. In fact, up to this point everything he touched quadrupled in size, filled up with the Holy Spirit and turned to gold. The thing that impressed me the most about him was his passion for truth and his desire for instilling that in the people Jesus had asked him to lead. Walking away that week, I felt that I would hear about Kevin again. I even thought maybe I would go looking for him if Jesus ever let me pastor.

This past week I was speaking at an event. After my second session, a man walked up to me and introduced himself as the same Kevin I had met eight years ago. I’m still not sure if it was really him, because the guy I spent the next two hours with was nothing like the man I met in North Carolina. I don’t think I need to go too much into his story here; you probably already know it anyway. Not his exactly, but a version of it. Kevin apparently wore down, got depressed and imploded. He even left the ministry for a couple of years. He had just started back at a small church in the Houston area, but, to be honest, he is a shell of the man I met all those years ago. He still seems to carry an unbelievable amount of bitterness towards God and the Church.

I couldn’t sleep after Kevin left my room. Why does this keep happening? Why do we keep losing sharp, young, godly men to bitterness and despair? Am I in danger? I found myself praying and thinking for the next few hours. I always want to go back to the life of Jesus when it comes to questions of surviving ministry. There has never been a harder road than the one Jesus walked. When the prophet Isaiah said that Jesus would be a man acquainted with sorrow and grief he wasn’t speaking nonchalantly. Jesus’ ministry was filled with soul-crushing events. He was hated, harassed, hounded, and betrayed by one of his own. His friends died, his disciples were clueless, his family believed he was crazy, and he constantly wanted more for people than they wanted for themselves. Throw in that he daily saw his slaughter getting closer on the horizon and I’m not sure how he survived. The tendency here is to play the “yeah, but he’s God” card. The thing we can’t forget is that he was also fully human. How did the man Jesus endure? There are a few things we see Jesus doing consistently that might help us as we seek to run our race here with faithfulness and perseverance.

The story in John 4 about the Samaritan woman always stirs my soul. The piece that always shocked me was Jesus’ confession to his disciples that he was tired. I never think of Christ in these terms. The scriptures say he was tired, so he sat down and told the disciples to go on into town and get lunch. I try to imagine their conversation as they walked on into town “This guy can calm the seas and feed five thousand people, but he needs us to go get him a freaking sandwich?” It seems like the only alpha male I’ve ever read about that doesn’t have a messiah complex is the actual Messiah. I think about how often we get tired but pretend like we’re not, pushing on through like we’re some kind of superman, cape waving in the wind, feeling no pain or fatigue. Not Jesus. When he hits the wall he confesses it to his crew and sits down for a bit.

The second thing we see Jesus doing consistently is getting alone for silence, prayer and meditation. This area of my life can quickly—and, at times, carelessly—be folded into sermon preparation or study. The problem is that studying to preach, teach or write is very different than feasting on Jesus in such a way that it feeds the soul. Don’t get me wrong, there is a definite feasting that occurs in study, but I think what Jesus is modeling for us here is different. Silence, trying to hear from him, meditation for our own souls…This is different than meditating on a text to be preached.

The last thing I’ll mention about Jesus’ life is that, when he was finally overwhelmed and exhausted right before the cross, he didn’t have sex with his secretary. He asked publicly for prayer. I habitually ask the people who worship at The Village to pray for me and my family. Sometimes I even give them details about the specific area they can pray about. I need it. I am a young, aggressive, alpha male who didn’t get hugged by his dad a lot; no doubt I have serious issues. The people of The Village have been so faithful; I believe, at times, that God’s response to their prayers has provided the power to help me keep going.

Days after my conversation with Kevin, I still feel a heaviness in my heart, not only for him but for his family and the Kingdom. We walk through such a mine field as ministers and servants of the great King in this fallen world. I pray for your honesty, I pray for your perseverance, and as always, I pray for the Kingdom to come.

hmm

Despite working outside the classroom in his latest challenge to Hollywood and its distortion of Asian American male sexuality, Hamamoto says he is acting on the tenets of his academic field. "Asian American studies is founded on the principle that it's not enough to describe and rehearse the features of Asian American and Asian oppression, but you have to change it," said Hamamoto. "That's why I made the porn movie – I'm going to change it."


also...


http://dir.salon.com/story/sex/feature/2003/10/10/asian/index.html?pn=2

"I'm talking about a lot of very fundamental issues in our society," says Hamamoto. "Sexuality, race and power. I'm touching all the hot buttons. As a professional intellectual, as a writer and as an artist, that's what I'm supposed to be doing."

first day of research: the 'strawberry generation' - articles and parents

current generation: like strawberry, cannot carry the duty, looks pretty but not raised in trees, so not able to endure strong winds. tree: from young age, grown at a steady rate

strawberry: grows fast and abundantly - no seed/ core, tough skin, cannot handle much pressure - looks very bright and pretty, but not able to sustain any pressure.


currently in taiwan - defined by writers, scholars, article journalists

only two kids: when kids are reluctant, dont listen, are not very productive


strawberry: cannot handle pressure, bruise and collapse under
not able to withstand responsibility
second generation asian americans - social economic standards are always better, so not often send them looking for jobs, no workable skills, their parents overprotect them - so that when they run into problems

first generation - coming to america start from the very bottom, no language, just going to school, no income - had to look for ways to educate - work and school aggressively, accelerated level in order to survive.

since we do not desire the next generation to go through the same, tend to be overprotective, no desire to suffer. a stage of growth that help us become stronger people... because of hardship.

taiwan very similar - economy not well
grandparents: at dads age, 30-40 years ago, even if they wanted to work they could not find any. so their hope was for better education for their children so they would get good paying jobs.
parents: we went through it-- through immigration to america. but desired to stay in america. do not wish for their children to go through the same suffering. their tendency is to ask their children to work less... greater economic power to support the kids, so the only job is to push kids through school. to excel in school but don't care about anything else.

stanleys parents -- ever since they got married have never gone to movies, save every penny to go to school. now that all this money has been spent, what is there to show for it? finally received a graduate degree, next step is supposed to be to find a job, but he says he cannot handle the pressure.

most people like me are good at school, work very hard in school even though they might not like it, but do it anyway because of parental pressure. even if the only reason is to please them.
(definitely not a strawberry, but still trying to figure it out.)

-- give them more responsiiblity and dont overprotect them
-- give them a chance for failure (parents cannot handle that) AND face consequences.

they are under the protection of their parents
- how many need to be financially responsible for their own education?
vs white students...
- if you have to be responsible for what you are doing, you will take the steps to become a leader.
- because in america, people are expected to support your own self, esp after 18.
- they might overachieve in the classroom, but they dont learn anything else.
- parents dont have money for trade school - its more of a last resort.
- usually, asian americans on the career track - very rarely take on management or administrative jobs. technicians or engineers. racial glass ceilings - stereotype? but culturally not the ones to stand out
- medical school, engineering school - doctors dont need to oversee other people (supervisor)


"the nail that sticks out gets hammered down?"
not really
but parenting difficulties: kids that embrace all that is american.
but no one told us how to do this.



another group that covets japanese generation: desire japanese "ha ha" ha ri zu
(tribe)

today was a cool day.

skippy
auntie
rhea


romans 1:11-12

driscoll and piper

"A preacher cannot show that he himself is clever and that Jesus is mighty to save."

- james denny
as quoted by john piper to mark driscoll



I said that I would tell you one small concern. In my book on preaching I quote James Denny like this: "A preacher cannot show that he himself is clever and that Jesus is mighty to save." I said, that you have one of the more remarkable gifts for turning a pop-cultural phrase, that it could easily set a standard for overweening cleverness for others who do not have your passion for the truth. Most of the chapter titles in your books are clever turns of phrase. Thus the general tone seems to be one of clever speech. That's my yellow flag.

Here is the interesting (second) thing. A brother came to me this morning before I spoke and said, "You know, pastor John, Mark is clever with pop culture, you are clever with academic culture." I looked at him and said, "That is VERY perceptive and I receive it as a God-sent exhortation." So when I stood up to speak I narrated that exhortation to me in front of all the people and said, "So you can see that Mark and I are in this battle together. We both want to speak in a way that is NOT boring about the greatest things in the world and is not worn out and tired and hackneyed. It is a sin to bore people with God. So pray for us. The line is fine between choosing words to strike the soul with glory and strike a clever pose."

not a jealous woman, but a careful one.



be careful, be gentle to yourself...