Fairly simple and straightforward. I had a son whom I loved dearly. We sat down on a big couch and I helped him read books. Each one was an adventure books with vast, beautifully painted landscapes, breathtaking expanses of sky, and immeasurable danger for the character.
He laughed and pointed at everything, dreaming, hoping, and wishing he were the character.
So my brief experimentation with pirating is over with rather pathetic results. I tried a few things that ultimately led to a lot of lost hours of productivity and a valuable lesson about listening to my conscience.
When I bought my Vista-equipped laptop, I was in despair about having no other options for an operating system. In anger, I decided to download Windows 7 without paying for it on a couple of torrent sites. I justified it by saying that Microsoft owed it to me for making a terrible OS and forcing me to buy it. I successfully loaded the beta version, which was not technically stealing, and looked for a pirated market copy.
From the very beginning, I knew my heart didn't agree. I was going against God's commands because I thought I knew better--bitter, stubborn pride.
The consequences were immediate whether you believe they were from God or not. My computer did not handle the unstable beta well at all. I couldn't keep an Internet connection for more than a few minutes and I got the blue screen of death almost exactly every half hour. Therefore, I couldn't download any fixes or a stable version of Win 7. My poor lappy was shot.
There were other things, too, which I suppose I won't mention here. Bad things were happening to me and I think it was related to the rebellious state of my heart.
So I quit. I reset my computer to its factory defaults and looked for the cheapest version of Windows 7 I could find. With no good options, I decided to switch to Linux (a free, open-source operating system).
Then good things started happening. Among other things, I was made aware of a deal where Win 7 was only $30. I immediately bought it and now my computer is running smoothly. I don't think it was a coincidence that I didn't know about it until my heart changed. God speaks to me.
In retrospect, this is probably a nerdy post. I won't apologize...you'll just have to live with it. Once its been read, it can't be unread.
Jenny (my sister) and I lost our parents. And not only our parents, but all of our immediate family in an untimely and extremely tragic accident. We were grief-stricken and sick from it all. Some members of the community tried to reach out and help us, but our response was one of utter rebellion, anger, and hate. We lost our faith in God and began to act out our hate on humanity.
The way we escaped from our social circle was after church one day. All of our friends convinced us to go to church one Sunday. The sermon fell on our deaf ears and we ran away in Wixom during the closing prayer.
We started a gang that thrived on pick-pocketing, robbery, and occasional assault. Our group was very successful mostly because Jenny and I were merciless. We had gone through so much pain that we decided everyone needed a taste of our agony. People even died by the hands of our members.
We were soon hounded by law enforcement and forced to hide in forests and on boats to escape their attempts at our reform. They knew the group was being led by people who didn’t quite belong in this lifestyle. Not the simple-minded criminals that they were used to, but sharp college students who had fled the normal life out of grief.
Over the time (years?) of our rebellion, we never talked about our family that was tragically ripped away. We focused on causing pain in others to avoid dealing with our own. We both knew that that’s what we were doing, too. Running from the past and avoiding what we would eventually have to face.
When we were caught, it was almost a relief for Jenny. She was interrogated by a detective who showed her pictures of her parents and family. She fell to tears and released perhaps years of pent up grief that had been bottled inside.
My response was not the same. When the detective tried the same tactic, my heart hardened. I would not be made to feel vulnerable at the hands of a man I never knew. I tried to attack him, which made me look vulnerable anyway. It made me even more angry and hateful. I screamed, yelled, cursed, and spat at the man who played that card against me.
Jenny came in the room, full of tears and tried to convince me that I shouldn’t hold on to my anger anymore. My heart hardened again, taking this as a betrayal of what we had built in our gang. My torture was thus intensified as I could not do anything to lash out. I hated Jenny, hated the cops, hated God…I hated everyone and everything everywhere.
But I knew that in the depths of my soul, this was a front. Despite what had happened to my family, I didn’t hate, but I could never again bring myself to love.
It’s a good thing you can’t get real traffic tickets in dreams. I don’t have the money for that.
I was driving behind a pick-up in my old stomping grounds (the trailer park I grew up in). It was the middle of the day and school buses were dropping kids off. 3 such buses had pulled over to let kids out and the pick-up drove right past them. Not thinking, I followed him even though you’re not supposed to when the buses have that blinking stop sign out.
The first bus didn’t extend the stop sign and it was blocking my view of the other 2 so I thought it was OK to go. I was wrong. I passed the middle bus before I realized I was breaking the law. I stopped before the third and the second one cut me off, leaving me awkwardly in the middle of the road as people whizzed by on both sides.
A police car pulled up behind me, lights flashing. I went down a side street and stopped, considering my low bank account. I was mad that he had pulled me over instead of the pick-up and that he appeared to be pre-writing the ticket.
Dream 100509 #2
I woke up in a hotel room with Jeremy and Richard. I didn’t know where I was or why I was there. I vaguely remembered being really tired the night before and passing out while standing up. They laughed when I told them about my memory loss, but I was genuinely frightened. We were in a big city and we had to go to court for something, so they told me. It still rang no bells.
We got to the civil service building in a very hilly city and walked up the massive stone steps. The inside had shiny marble floors and lots of people. I totally lost focus for the dream as I recognized a girl I liked. I realized that I was in a dream by now so I was able to approach with total confidence. I walked up to her, we shot the breeze for awhile, and then I asked her if she’d like to fly. She nervously said yes as she took my hand. I bent my knees and pushed off the marble. We rose quickly. I was a bit shaky as I have never flown with someone in a dream before (or, for that matter, in reality). I had to compensate for the added weight, but we were gliding smoothly soon enough. I took us in crazy loop-the-loops, lazy circular spirals, and breathtaking drops toward the solid ground. People looked on in amazement as we both laughed and played above their heads. I looked in her eyes, noticing how charmed she had become.
I just saw "Pandorum" and I was fairly impressed. It had a lot of recycled ideas and cliche traditions, but the movie itself was put together well. As far as science-fiction horror stories go, this one was far above average. I could go through the whole movie, but I'll just add a thought and a conclusion.
About midway through the movie we find out that the primal, cannibalistic, and super-strong alien creatures are not really alien at all. No, in fact they're evolved humans. Jon raised this question: "Why is it that humans always evolve backward?" He's right! I mean, aside from "X-Men" (and only arguably so), when do humans evolve for the better? It seems that they step backward more toward our cavemen days. There are the grunts (only in the movies this is swapped out for screeches or some other high-pitched war cry), caveman-like strength (leaping around and tossing regular humans around like rag-dolls), and the merciless pursuit of food, water, and shelter (self-preservation is the top priority).
Will humans evolve that way? I don't think so. I think if there is a next step in evolution, it will be spiritual. See, depending on what you believe about evolution, life began evolving the physical aspect first. Dinosaurs became bigger, stronger, and faster. The next evolutionary breakthrough was the intellect. Humans, while physically inferior, were able to use the power of the mind to dominate the world. I don't know how much smarter we can get though. If there is to be another evolutionary explosion, what other aspect can be evolved than the spirit?
But I digress.
"Pandorum" is worth seeing if you can find a place to see it for $5 or less. If you aren't so fortunate as to have cheap student prices, wait for it to come out on video.
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