#{Boontdusties.com}

My friend Amber and I did an assignment of our styling the other night. Here is a poem we created by cutting up the “Word of the Week” (a leaflet left outside of a church) and rearranging the words:

Faith and Saving Faith

everything through faith temporary,
we guarantee the moment.

What manifestation describes salvation? Third,
Jesus said: “Them 238 Romans never gift things.
Heaven is about ourselves. You should root temporary miracles.”

The Lord that many maintian as one is also Jesus?
Sure God,
This looks real only in parable.
The Bible was right. Yet, different for some. Because
faith can turn Judas into three kinds:

a good person,
Iscariot,
and 1631 heavenly Ephesians.

There, I’ll boast miracles. All kinds.

(Acts will reward my claims of faith) – This man
hears himself,
in the presence
of
the
saving
Sun.

Believe in yourselves, that faith is the result of enough faith.
Grace has sent faith, but by no mention of Jesus,
faith works.

But faith in preach displays
works falsely.

Faith. Faith. Faith.

UPDATE:: I took down this video so as not incriminate ourselves and our prankplaying.

My roommate Ryan decided to finally go and get a checking account instead of having wadded up dollar bills consistently falling out of his pockets. The closest bank to our house is a little Bank of America, so he rolled in there and signed up for a regular account. Apparently “B of A” has this policy of asking new folks if they were recommended by any existing customers; Ryan wasn’t sure, but he put my name and our address down on the forms, and away he skipped into banking bliss.

Alright, I feel like I should give you a disclaimer before I go on: “I swear by everything that is holy and good and deep-fried that this is a real blog and not some forwarded chain mail.”

I say this because as crazy as it sounds, about two weeks later Ryan received a check in the mail for SIXTY DOLLARS — just for signing up!!!

Even stranger, yours truly received 25 dollars as well, apparently for “recommending him”, (which, for the record, I did not). So my little Perry Masons, this is where the legal issue comes into play:

I am not, nor have I ever been, a “customer” of Bank of America.

So then, should I cash the check? Or should I tuck it away and never look at it again as my mother suggets?

A friend told me about this fucking rad site: Learning To Love You More . It was created by Miranda July, who, if you don’t know, starred and directed in a pretty amazing movie called “Me and You and Everyone We Know”.

Anyway, the premise of the website is to give regular visitors a chance to complete little tasks doled out by the artist and then to document them for the site. From the mission statement:

“Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and see their work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience.”

There’s some great stuff in there like “take a picture of your parents kissing” or “hang a wind chime in a parking lot and record the sound”. Hey, these things might be a little too Yoko Ono or Evergreen State College* for you, but I think they seem kind of fun. This weekend I might try “write the saddest song”; drop me a line if you try one for yourself.

*A state “college” in Olympia, Washington where there are no grades given out by the professors.

This one is going to be a lot better than the last show I had at my house where fellatio was exchanged on my just-waxed living room floor.

I mean, come on ... Check out these bands:

http://www.myspace.com/junemadrona
http://www.myspace.com/annirossi
http://www.myspace.com/gowns
http://www.myspace.com/sonsongs

I’m going to work on getting one of Christina’s new songs up, they will blow you away. Otherwise, you
can listen to “Free Stuff” here.

Tim has a new-ish post about the dilemma of Virtual Adultery in the world of Second Life, and how people are being paid to be “detective” avatars that seek out cheating husbands. He also mentions teledildonics, but that is outside the scope of this post.

Because seriously, the solution to all of these problems lies in one thing, and one thing only: the fulfillment of one’s life through Jesus Christ. Let it be well known that free will still exists in the networked land of SL, even under the scorching taxation of $9.95 a month just to live and roam (and fly).

I believe that all men are free in Christ. And so one must logically conclude that those who confess their sins in a simulated Church will be just as saved as the next man. Why, I even did it myself. Salvation has never been this easy, now just a point and click away!

The sacrament of Baptism open to all!

Now I want to know, is who hears these script-generated prayers?

If you haven’t seen it yet, Tim has a new post about virtual reality, and raises a question about whether or not Myspace is an extension of a conditioning program meant to make us feel connected via completely artificial associations. It’s an interesting stream of thought, and it has spurred me into thinking about just how influential the connections made on the internet are in my own life.

MYSPACE:
I found this comment about Myspace left by “One Human?” to be strikingly familiar : “dude, wait until you have a few hundred “friends” and you find yourself out and about meeting people and sayin stuff like “Oh yeah, i seen you on myspace” “Arent you one of my “friends”?” “Yo, hit me up on Myspace” etc etc, seriously, the line betweeen virtual & reality has never been more blurry.”

This has actually happened to me on several occasions. Just the other night Tim and JK and I were accosted by a crazy drunk girl at a bar that I had once briefly corresponded with through myspace. Earlier in the night I had made long eye contact with her, but I turned away hoping I wouldn’t have to confront her in real life. I didn’t know if she would remember me from my denied “friend request”. But then she came up to our table and slurred out “I know you …. Stop pretending that we dont’ know eachother, “. It was awkward, because yes, technically I knew her – but we had never exchanged a word between us. Luckily, she got distracted and proceeded to try to get into JK’s pants.

FRIENDS:
On the same thought, if you’ve been around long enough to remember, I first met JK in a situation mediated through the good old world wide web – I was at a lonely little club drinking a beer and this stranger came up to me, put his arm on my shoulder and said “you’re Garrett Kelly, aren’t you?”. Of all the random goddamn chance occurrences, he just happen to recognize me through a picture on my old blog.

Now the guy lives with me.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES:

My band, the datura blues, is currently made up of three people I knew from real life in arcata, and five other folks collected off the means streets of Craigslist.

DATING (er… kindof):
I have been recently been “chillin” with a girl I met on the craigslist personal ads – we wrote for two months back and forth and because of the potential for anonymity I revealed a lot more to her than I probably would someone I had met in person in the same amount of time. When she wanted to actually meet face to face, I kept chickening out and cancelling, as per usual with my self-deprecating ways. And while I’m at it, I wanted to mention that you can read about our adventures here; she’s got this hilarious website chronicling the men she meets on craigslist.

There’s even more I could go into if time permitted, but I am curious about how many of your “real life” connections were iniated through the web? How many of your relationships have strengthened because of the power of instant messaging? Dwindled because of misinterpreted humor embedded in an email?