No doubt I will eventually end up owning, listening to, and enjoying the newly-released, long-awaited Guns n' Roses album.

But just as enjoyable has been reading the reviews:

• Grunge. Techno. Boy bands. Both President Bushes. These are just a few of the things Guns N' Roses has improbably outlasted.
• Effectively narcissistic
• [The album is] a long way off from every rock fan over 30's worst nightmare: a fat Axl with dreadlocks making a techno record about political life in Beijing with some dude in a Kentucky Fried Chicken hat.
• Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn.
• A convulsive single disc of supershred guitars, orchestral fanfares, hip-hop electronics, metallic tabernacle choirs and Axl Rose's still-virile, rusted-siren singing.
• Rose's still-astounding vocals [is] often multitracked into a paranoid boys chorus.”
• [Buckethead’s guitar solo is the] sonic equivalent of a Russian robot wrestling a reticulating python.
• The explanation as to why Chinese Democracy took so long to complete is not simply because Axl Rose is an insecure perfectionist; it's because Axl Rose self-identifies as a serious, unnatural artist.
• Pros: power ballads. Cons: techno influence.

As per cryptic messages on Facebook, we're buying a house.

I find telling people about it a bit like having a baby... well, the bits that I'm familiar with, anyway.

So, much as we have actually put pen to paper, and have a contract with our names, our signatures, and a price on it, one wonders if it would actually be more prudent to wait til after the all-important cooling-off period. After all, if some unpleasantness is uncovered by our conveyancers/solicitors in the next few days, then we could potentially abort, and leave behind our deposit with some sadness. A bit like a miscarriage.

Once again, we enter into a phase where there are all sorts of experts in fields I know nothing about (pest inspecting, building-inspecting, conveyancing, renovations) and I'm seeking out everyone's ideas and trying to figure out what we need and what we can get away with. I.e., do we need to have a bassinet and a cot and a pram and a stroller and a car-seat and a change table? Some friends of friends used their dining table as a change table, and a washing basket as a bassinet... could that work for us? Do I need an expert to do our re-grouting or is that something I can do myself with time, effort, and research?

Everyone, family and friends, has an opinion. I just do what I do best, listening to everyone, weighing the mountain of the advice, and (eventually) settling on something that will work for us and our baby (and our house).

§

Okay, so here's where Grace comes in.

I've been observing myself as I tell people about our news today.

The thing I find most diffcult—more difficult than the timing, the cooling-off period, etc—is the whole aspect of grace.

I am no longer a highly paid IT professional. I am a ministry trainee who gets paid ¼ of what I did. Next year, I will become a full-time Bible college student, earning even less than what I get paid now.

So any observant person would realise that there is no way.... no way that I could possibly afford a house like ours on my own. At all.

My father, who has a penchant for generosity, is buying the house for us.

In reality, he's not even buying it as an investment property, which I am often tempted to say... a full-time mum and a bible college student wouldn't even be able to afford to pay market rent. He's buying it because he loves us, and wants to give us somewhere to live.

This is grace, pure and simple. Unmerited generosity. Undeserved and unearned favour.

And, in my human nature, I rebel against the idea of grace.

The idea that my father is doing something in his self-interest, investing in property sounds a better story. When I say he's "helping" us buy a house, it sounds like their chipping in, when in fact they're contributing the entire sum.

The liar and the sinner and the social conformist in me wants to explain away grace. I am ashamed of it. I am ashamed of undeserved wealth, and the affluence of my family. Most people in my situation couldn't do this... live in a veritable mansion they didn't pay for. They struggle and scrape to get through college.

How ought I to respond?

Firstly, I could either be thankful, or ungrateful. I could take our riches for granted, or I could remember, and keep reminding myself all of this, too, comes from God. My father is the father God gave me, and his riches too come from God.

Secondly, I could keep quiet about it (in my embarrassment) or I could be vocal about it. I could sing praises of the one who has been generous to me, or I could be ashamed of my father and my Heavenly Father. I think there's a warning against that somewhere. (Mark 8:38).

Thirdly, I remember this: that those to whom much is given, much is required. I hope and pray that this house is something that we can use for the glory of God. I hope it is a house where we can be hospitable in. I hope it is a house where we can raise godly children who love the Lord Jesus. I hope it is a house where the Bible is read. I hope it is a house in which people will see the people of God in action, despite imperfection. I hope it is a house where we can share our lives with others.

Pray for us. And pray for me that I might live and act as I should.

H: Uh... are you okay?
S: I think my stomach just had a heart-attack.
H: ...uh... is that even physically possible?
S: You're not physically possible!
H: [thinks: *phew* Sarah must be okay then.]

Our child will be born in March 2009.

If my maths works right, then their life should look something like this:

• 2014: Age 5, First day at school
• 2021: Age 12, Enters that wonderful twilight world known as high school
• 2022: Welcome to the wonderful world of adolescence, and teenage rebellion!
• 2025: The roads become a much more dangerous place...
• 2026: Our car tends to disappear far more frequently than it used to. Apparently they let babies drive when they get to 17. On their own.
• 2027: Scarily enough, university... bars and nightclubs await. Legally. Of course, they won't drink at all before this date. Not at all.
• 2030: All those baby photos and videos we're going to take get pulled out of storage (off a hard disk, no doubt) and dusted off for compulsory embarrassment.

Everyone seems to be talking about the election. All I've got is one observation... I think it really interesting to watch speeches by Obama and McCain. When Obama pays tribute to McCain, people cheer (albeit not quite as loudly). When McCain pays tribute to Obama, people boo and jeer.

I find that wholly remarkable.

Well. Because I don't have enough things to do at the moment, I was thinking I should redesign my blog. Because I'm a bit over the whole boringness of it.

But then I'm wondering... how many people will it affect? Most blogs I read these days are via Google reader, which means that I rarely get to appreciate the wonderful web designs of the originating website.

I could hack my RSS feeder...maybe sneak more formatting into the HTML. But that would be sneaky and probably break a lot of things for a lot of other readers...

Should I bother?

This is probably not something I should talk too loud about (Ssshhh!!!) but I find it amusing. I just have to tell someone about it!

DET is pretty good at annoyingly blocking all sorts of useful sites. Like Hotmail, GMail, Amazon, Ebay... even Zazz is blocked!

So I resigned myself to never being able to access my email at School... Until just now. Because I just figured out:

• http://mail.google.com: BLOCKED!
• https://mail.google.com: ...mail loading...

Heh. I think that's really funny. I'm too used to my little WebMonkey script loading me onto HTTPS at home that I don't even think about it anymore.... until now. Yay. Email back online 7 days a week! :)

• Current number of baby paraphernalia amassed: 12 (The "Un's Box o' Fun" has been converted into "The Un's Box o' Baby")
• Currently freaking out about: The size of the Baby industry, the range of cots, prams, change-tables, etc, and the price of all-of-the-above
• Bemused by: the fact that most baby-related stuff is transformable (i.e. cots transform into toddler-beds, prams convert into front-face, rear-facing, and car-boot configurations)... It'll be like playing with Transformers all over again
• Number of limbs: 4
• Number of fingers and toes: 20 (yes, 5 on each limb, thanks for asking)
• Weeks til arrival: 20.4 (approx)

I have a tendency to be sentimental; to build attachments to places as much as people.

But on the whole, I find myself oddly struck by the fact that there are quite a few things I don't feel as strongly about as I should.

For instance, I'd expect myself to be feeling a lot stronger an attachment to the QHAC church building. After all, it is the church I've been at for 4 years. It's the place where I met Sarah. It's the place where we married, and the place where I've worked, and the home of many late-night games of Ticket to Ride.

For all that, I don't think I'll miss it too much.

I think I'm more attached to our house than Sarah is. This is the first place we lived in when we got married (and I really should take some photos to remember it by). And it's a nice house, it's small, and simple, and elegant, and there's a lot of things to like. Of course, that's hard to remember in the bustle of our daily clutter. We have too much stuff—have had too much stuff since we got married, and have continued to accumulate... because that's the sort of people we are.

All in all, I think the prospect of living in a new house next year is actually pretty exciting; like Sarah keeps saying, we were both used to living in new houses every year or two... So the prospect of living somewhere new is just exciting. But the prospect of buying a house? Scary as.

I have just spent a week running an HSC Study conference. Thankfully, it was non-residential.

Nevertheless, I am quite tired, there is lots to talk about, and to vent, as well.

Of course, that probably means some inquisitive punk has just googled me and found my blog, which one of the leaders unhelpfully mentioned I had. If that's you... welcome to my blog. I talk about anything I damn well want over here, and if you don't like that, you can stop reading.

It occurs to me that I've had of week of teenage kid ministry, and I realise how little exposure I've had to it thus far. Especially the weird psychology of groups, peer pressure, and boy-girl stupidity. At Wyndham, there are structures to deal with discipline and I just do the light fluffy stuff. Here, I spent a week being the bad-ass enforcer (which is not a role I particularly enjoy), and dealing with kids I have no prior connection to.

Interesting.

I wasn't particularly surprised by stupidity, especially from teenage boys. Grown men can be pretty darn immature, so I didn't expect more from teenage boys.

What I was particularly disappointed with, though, was the behaviour of some of the kids who called themselves Christian. In fact, by Friday I was convinced they were entirely non-Christian, until I was told they went to church and youth group.

Remember: I've never really dealt with kids at this stage of life; I'm normally used to dealing with university students who are growing into adulthood, and making mature life-decisions. But I never really got how vast the gulf was between Yr 12 and first-year uni.

I guess I can see exactly why it is that Uni is when lots of nominal Christians fall away, and when lots of non-Christians have the chance to think intelligently, critically, and honestly about Christianity.

But the point is, that I was physically sickened by how people who could claim to be Christian could act in such an unChristian way. As if no-one had ever explained before that bearing the name of Christ is an enormous privilege. That to be rescued, called, blessed, saved by Jesus is an honour, a grace, a gift beyond all measure, and that sullying that glorious name with blatantly selfish, unChristian behaviour is the very worst desecration of the 3rd commandment.

I spent a week feeling like I've contended for these kids' HSCs; eking every last possible minute of study out of them; pleading, bullying, exhorting, encouraging them to study. I feel like I ought to have given them every last ounce of me, to contend for their faiths, for their souls, for the name of Jesus Christ.

But instead I guess I rest on the unfailing love of Christ, the righteous judge who will bring all to account. And I rest on his ability to save any that he has called. And I rest knowing that he will reap the harvest he has sown though our feeble efforts.

detur gloria soli deo

It is such a good day to be a Manly supporter.

...

On another note, I can't believe I haven't bought a Manly jersey sometime in the last 20 years. Seriously.

I can't believe the uppermost post on my blog for the last two weeks... nay, three, has been a frivolous post about plumbing.

---

Quick Hits

Quick update, followed by more brain-spam.

So, the end of the year and the (if God-is-willing) plan for next year is something like this:

• Do my tax.
• Finish MTS. Finally.
• Buy a house in the inner west. Courtesy of the generosity of my parents. [Grace is a genuinely amazing thing]
• Move house.
• Find a new church.
• Decide if we're going to go to beach mission Sawtell Ignite or not; decision made necessary because we're going to...
• Have a baby in March 2009.
• Start Bible College (at SMBC)
• Learn lots about God, and Jesus, and the Bible.

In the meantime, I may well:

• Plot dream and scheme about changing the world.
• Help start a ministry. Or two.
• Dye my hair.
• Buy a Wii. (Sarah thinks it would be great to have Wii-Fit, and that's enough excuse for me.)

That'll do.

---

The nature of news

We're having a baby. We're¹ having a baby!

It's such odd news to tell people. We had pre-emptively decided that we would wait a few months to tell people, to give us time to get used to the idea. We had also decided pre-emptively to give our parents and families a week or two notice before we told the general public. We also decided that we'd avoid blogging about it or Facebooking or even emailing about it for a good while, to give us a chance to tell people in person.

Indeed, it's apparently normal for a lot of people to wait until 12-weeks to tell people.

But by virtue of forcing myself not to say anything to anyone, and to not give away a telling pause when someone asks, "so, when are you going to have kids?" when I knew very well that Sarah was pregnant, it made it a good deal less real. I was excited, and I couldn't tell anyone, when I really wanted to call up good friends and say, "I'm going to be a Dad, what do I do?????" And so I suppressed a whole lot of the excitement, even as I was thinking through, in practical ways, about things we needed to do.

I'm wondering if its because I process things communally, verbally, and relationally. I can internalise and think about things, but emotional response is less internal. I get more excited when people get excited for me.

Anyhow.

When we started telling people, our main aim was to tell important people in person.² That's easier for Sarah, and harder for me; partially because a great deal of the very-important-people in my life don't go to church with me; and 4 years of MTS hasn't made me love the phone any more. Thankfully, people organise conferences like Engage for us, just so I can see heaps and heaps and heaps of people I know in one weekend. Love it.

But really, once you start telling people, they want to tell everyone else they know. And the idea of telling people slowly goes out the window, because as we all know, there are only 2 degrees in Christian circles, and all it needs is for one person to tell the right person, who then posts a nice public Facebook message about it, and the whole world knows before we've had a chance to tell anybody.

So, frustratingly for all involved, we tried to swear people to secrecy. Frustratingly for me, because I could see our well-crafted scheme falling down around a single weak link³, and frustratingly for everyone else because they wanted to tell all their friends and couldn't.

And I think that's something fundamental about Good News. Good News is exciting! It's great! And it wants to be told. Trying to keep it secret is ultimately futile, and trying to prioritise who hears the news first is also pretty useless. Next time around (if, God willing, there's a next time) I'm getting rid of the cone of silence.

I'm sure there's a Gospel analogy in there. You can figure it out yourself :)

---

¹I was told off for saying "we", because it's only really Sarah whose pregnant, not me. I disagree. I've been intentionally using the word "we", because there's way too much worldly guff about it all being about the mums. The literature is all about the Mum and the partner. The Biblical idea is that life comes from the Father; so the earthly father (a poor and pale but nevertheless significant impression of the heavenly father) is important; and so it is Our baby, it is Our pregnancy. In a very real sense, it is My family: it is the wife and the child that I am responsible for. No cop-outs here. I am involved, and I take the hits for the team. I look after Sarah, and I will look after our child. (Sarah will too, of course, but that's known, and assumed, and taken for granted. Obviously I don't have to go through the pain of childbirth.)
²Apparently, it's not as cool to tell people by email, SMS or Facebook.
³ Me being endowed with supernatural abilities of paranoia.

I wonder if life would be better if pipes were better insulated.

It seems that water is generally at the mercy of the elements: in cold weather, the taps always run at almost-freezing for five minutes, until the hot water kicks in. On an Australian-summers-day, the cold water always run hot, or at least luke-warm for several minutes.

That leads me to hypothesize one of three things: either the pipes are laid too close to the surface, and thus are not well insulated by the earth, the earth is not as good an insulator as one would expect, or that the pipes are too thin.

I toy with the idea of pipes better-embedded in the ground, but I suspect that we are slave more to the mains than anything else. There would be not-much point in getting a pipe a metre below the ground, and then submerging it by an extra metre for all of the 3 metres it takes to take it to your kitchen.

Pipes could be thicker though, I suspect. From what I remember seeing, most of them are thin plastic (apart from metal pipes running out of the hot water system).

Theoretically, that would reduce heat-inefficiency at the point of water-supply (the tap in your kitchen and bathroom) and thus waste less water.

I'd like to experiment on point 2, though. If I ever get around to building a house, I'd like a den. My suspicion is that a house with an underground floor would be much more heat-efficient than a house with a second floor above. The earth ought to insulate my den and make it nice and cozy.

Hobbits probably have cozy houses 365 days a year.

I save the planet when I'm bored, and my brain isn't erstwhile occupied during breakfast.

[This post is brought to you by the letter D, for Discretion, which is said to be the better part of Valour, and is probably also the better part of Honour, for a gentleman never tells, n'est pas?¹]

I get frustrated often and annoyed frequently, but I am rarely angry.

And so when I become so, it takes me completely by surprise.

Me, and the dented door to our bedroom.

Given a few hours to think about it—it's no less scary. The speed at which it arrives, the naked aggression and my entire potential for violence explodes out of nowhere. It burbles around, it boils, it threatens to flare out of control at any moment. Thinking about it makes it worse, but thinking is the only way to resolve it; to apply reason and logic and rationality. And control. But as the offense replays itself in my head, automatically, insistently, repeatedly, the rage ebbs and flows. But ignoring it, bottling it up, can only lead to worse.

Perhaps it runs in the family. It is times like this that the old anecdote about my dad, a meat cleaver, and a mischievous cousin ceases to become merely amusing, and becomes something I too have the capacity for. Or capacity for worse.

I've had a few legendary brain-snaps, most of which are in the dim dark pasts in primary school. Thankfully, I have done almost nothing I regret. I pray it is something I never unleash on Sarah, or those close to me; or anyone at all for that matter. Because inside, as the rage overwhelms, within is the small calm psychotic voice who points out all the targets, measures all the possibilities, measures all the methods of vengeance and how they might be most justly and cruelly exacted.

One can see how one could conceive of Mr Hyde. One can see how crimes of passion are entirely possible, how mild-mannered men become murderers.

§

I find that the situations that usually bring it up is usually a misunderstanding. I am in the right, but nobody else is entirely in the wrong. Normally it is miscommunication, misguided expectations, and human error. Something that might have been avoided but was not; and things escalate.

If I am at fault, I can happily lay the blame on me, and persecute myself inside. If someone else is in the fault, I can work at forgiveness. With misunderstanding, there is no wrong party; merely a series of unfortunate events, with the wrong stars in alignment², and human error, which leads to the plan going awry, which leads to me being very unhappy.

And so it's not something that can be rationalised, can be explained away, can be dealt with by logic or reason. It is "bad luck", something potentially unavoidable, and imperfection and an abberation which I, the thwarted one, will have to live with.

Which does little to mollify.

Raaargggh.

It still makes me mad. Not furious, anymore, but grumpy. Hopefully sleep with make it go away.

---

¹This will only be a paradox for those familiar with Ultima
²Only in a manner of speaking. Astrology is bunk.

It probably won't surprise anyone to know that I've been listening to old-school (old skool?) music recently... I successfully manage to avoid music on the radio, and it's a joy to delve back into the 80s and the 70s and the 60s.

My parents were never massively into music (I think I ranted before that Mum was living in England at the right time to see the Beatles, The Who, or the Rolling Stones, or Hendrix, and never saw a single one live! Aargh!)

And so a lot of "cool" music other kids got to grow up to (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, etc) is still mostly unfamiliar to me.

Anyway, the two artists I've been listening to a bit are both old-school, although that's about all they've got similar... as far as I'm aware.

Dylan

First of all, I've been digging into Dylan. He's sort of hard to avoid, really, and I have enough Dylan on compilation albums and music soundtracks, and I think I picked up a CD of his unplugged performance. But I've never really spent much time in his older, classic albums.

The first thing you encounter, and most inescapable, is his voice. My parents had this obsession with "a good voice", some sort of idea of a clear, sweet, classic voices in a 60s pop mode; Linda Ronstadts and Mary Blacks, or even Elvis doing gospel.

Someone like Angie Hart would be too much like a little-girl, Mariah Carey would be too warbly. Bob Dylan would be untenable.

But there really is something to imperfect voices. Actually, that's a rant for another day.

But my point about Dylan is, his voice is deceptively ugly. Although it seems ancient and rusty and easily bettered, his voice serves him well: he hits every note he wants to hit, and when you sing along to the songs, you realise that he covers a pretty broad vocal range.

But what gets me is how talented Dylan is. He was 22 when he wrote Blowin' in the Wind and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. He was 24 when he wrote Mr Tambourine Man, Baby Blue, and Desolation Row.

His confidence reeks from reel to reel of his albums--you can tell he's having a great time as he's recording, and occasionally you get the impression he's fighting off laughter...having so much fun in the throes of music. Ah, there's so much more to say about Dylan. But another time.

Jackson

And then, I've been listening to Michael Jackson.

After a decade of extreme weirdness, followed by a decade of lawsuits, oddly-named children and relative obscurity, It's easy to forget exactly how cool Michael Jackson was back in the 80s. I guess I must be exactly old enough to have bass line of Beat It and the groove of Billie Jean burnt into the back of my head. Or my older cousin had the album. or something. Because every kid in primary school wanted to dance like Michael Jackson and moonwalk everywhere. There were the trademarks, the fedora, the glove, and the effortless spins, complete with crotch-grabs. Only with MJ, it looked cool, not obscene. There was even a computer-game that a kid up the street had... where you beat the bad guys by spinning, clicking your heels, moonwalking, and throwing your fedora at them. Or maybe you beat them, by grooving so unbearably that they just have to dance along (like in the film clip to Beat It).

The cool thing about the 25-year anniversary of the re-release of Thriller is that it comes with a DVD of the film clips, and the landmark performance of Billie Jean at Motown's 25th Anniversary. It was the first thing I watched, and then I made Sarah sit through them all when she got home. [And that's how I figured out the age thing... because Sarah, only 2 years younger than me, had heard the songs on the radio like everyone else, but never seen the film clips.]

Even though the film clips are tacky and 80s, they're still pretty darn cool. Whatever you think of Michael Jackson's music, his dancing was second-to-none. If he could still dance, someone from So You Think You Can Dance really needs to invite him on to show the kiddies a thing or two. It's mesmerising. It's fascinating. If I didn't have other stuff to do, I could probably sit and watch it all day.

But listening to Thriller in it's complete glory (I don't think I've ever sat down through the whole album, never having owned it) reminded me that, regardless of what I think about Michael Jackson's weirdness, his music was also brilliant; ground-breaking, unbearably catchy and groovy. Every other song rings and old bell in my head, and raises nostalgic excitement; Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean. And even songs that, by any true measure ought to be lame ("The doggone girl is mine"... a duet with Paul McCartney) are someone made cool and catchy.