little to report

Lately I've been doing work, getting my classes off to a characteristic start.  Wrote stuff.  Edited video.  And have found a tiny open stage I can get up and sing a few songs at to keep in practice.  More mixing work with my brother-in-law and friends' band.  They're entering a contest.  Why is everything creative a contest nowadays?  Money. The contest is even called "The Big Money Shot."  Told them it sounds like they're applying to work in porn.  "Money," was their response.  Money.

I have enough money to have purchased more musical stuff than I need.  In my twenties I did amazing things considering having almost nothing.  Now I have amazing stuff and record nothing of my own with it.  At the open stage I had a lovely argument with a guy I know who'd had some beer and was gesticulating wildly and trying to disabuse me of some of my religious beliefs.  He's taking courses in religion, you see, so of course now he knows all kinds of things and wants me to believe him and not stuff I believe.  He is unable to see any good in any ideas outside of what he's been thinking, and unable to acknowledge other paradigms of any worth exist.  He was trying to test me to catch me being intolerant or closed-minded as to religious beliefs systems, and he quickly lost that race, by being intolerant and closed to anything I think.

He has this theory that the "golden rule" (which he expands to be about empathy) is central to all world religions.  I am not the expert many are, but to my knowledge, Jesus of Nazareth made certain inroads in the area of dealing with other people in ways that showed empathy, and I don't think empathy has quite the place in Judaism, Islam or the others that it does in Christianity.  Need to check it out, but I don't think all world religions are equally about love being the answer to everything.