My Life as a Buffy Musical
I am a big Whedon fan, primarily a Firefly/ Serenity fan, a Browncoat. But I have watched all of Buffy/ Angel and am totally into Dollhouse. And I find the musical episode of Buffy, Once More with Feeling, to be a favorite. I am not a Buffy expert or uberfan, but I listen to the soundtrack on regular rotation. I was listening to it this morning and thought on how I relate to certain aspects of the characters and the songs. So I thought it would be insightful to share how I feel they relate to me.
I preface this by saying that God frequently shows me things through what I am interacting with at any given time. So several aspects of my response have a direct correlation to what I feel is the state of my faith. And that this concept will probably turn into a series of posts.
The show opens with the overture… ok I guess that is straight forward and needs no comment. But the first song is Buffy singing Going through the Motions. Buffy is lamenting about how she has no real joy or emotional connection to what she is doing or her life in general. Well this one is probably the song relate to the most at this time. She has been feeling empty because she had recently been dragged out of heaven. And I have felt for a season or two that I have frequently been operating on autopilot. Not that I have been dragged from heaven nor do my blows have lost there touch. But my faith and emotional state has. Let me state that my faith in God has not diminished but my active participation in my daily faith has. I haven’t gone to church in a long time, but I haven’t missed a service in years. If that doesn’t make sense to you. Let me explain. As a staff member whose job is to support the services, I don’t go to church, I go to work. So the nourishing of my faith has taken a beating. So more often than not, I am just going through the motions.
Next song, is I Have Got A Theory. The aspect of this song that I relate to is the concept of a group of people getting together to figure out a problem. And how off their ideas were. Giles had the right idea in the first stanza of the song, but had to sit through everyones opinion. Or Xander having to back down from his opinion to please those around him. Now I don’t claim to be the master of anything, and the concept of me being the resident expert on any topic I find entertaining. But I am smarter than average bear,(not bragging..stating a fact). And as I look around at my world I find that I am more often right than wrong and I see things in ways that most people don’t. And yet I still have to endure everyones opinions. Just find out that I am right, or that my input should be taken more seriously.
And I always laugh at the Bunnies break and They got the mustard out.
This post is long enough. I will add next songs later. But it will have to wait, because life gets in the way.
Theatre is scared
(Col 3:23) And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
Am I truly a Geek
As most of you know, I am a podcast junkie. And a good portion of what listen to would be considered geeky. I listen to everybody rant about the latest video games, or movies, or comic book or whatever falls into the geeky lifestyle. Well, I have taken a step back and realized that all I do that qualifies as geeky is be a fan of geeky television and hangout online way too much.
The budget has killed my movie going. My Xbox died and can’t afford a new 360 or PS3. Haven’t collected comics since my daughters showed up. Reading scifi or fantasy novels put me to sleep because of my 55-65 hours a week work schedule.
Now it’s not that I don’t want to do these things. I have in the past and enjoyed every moment of it. But life has gotten in the way. So I ask am I truly still a geek? [polldaddy poll=1200229]
Podcast fandom
I have officially subscribed to more podcasts than are humanly able to listen to. Even though most days, I have four to five hours to listen at UPS and maybe a few more at the church. I now have more coming in than there are hours in the day. So I am interested in everybody’s list of must listen casts.
And as this blog grows, I will be adding what/ who I am listening to. I probably will include a review of some kind. Hopefully, this will help me give positive feedback to my podcast friends. I know I should actually comment directly to them on their websites. And maybe even give them an Itunes review. But since I don’t have my laptop at UPS, I usually forget individual comments per cast. And believe it or not, some of the podcast websites are blocked at the church.
AND if this goes well, it will be included in my future podcast.
How often this will happen depends on how much Life Gets in the Way.
Podcast in the future
Well I have picked up a new mic and headset. Not overly expensive but adequate for the first step in this experiment. I am strongly considering a podcast about my corner of the world. Not too sure of the format or content at this time. I am considering a couples cast with my wife maybe down road too. But I will probably record some ramblings and see what comes out.
Don’t know when this will happen, because life gets in the way.
AM
What’s in a name
As I lurk and tweet around, I use the name Hereticfred. It has been around awhile and has served me well. But Fred is not my name. Nor am I heretic in the traditional sense.
My name is Andre’. It’s the french version of Andrew. I’ve been told it means strong and manly. I am cool with that. But the name Fred comes from one of loves from my youth. When I had the time, I used to role-play a lot. But because of my GM style and the style of the other GMs I played with, a character didn’t have a long life expectancy. Part of the fun was finding creative ways of killing first level characters. So until a character survived long enough to get its true name, it was Fred. Fred’s surname would describe what class he was. Like Father Fred was my priest or cleric, or Fireball Fred was my mage, etc. And when I joined the online revolution, I adopted Fred as my name. Originally it was Lordfred because of the regal sound of it. But over time I found that it was popular and I couldn’t claim it. So I had to find I another.
I chose heretic. I include the definitions below.
| Noun | 1. | heretic - a person who holds religious beliefs in conflict with the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church |
| 2. | heretic - a person who holds unorthodox opinions in any field (not merely religion)
recusant, nonconformist - someone who refuses to conform to established standards of conduct
|
Although, I don’t hold to many of the Catholic traditions. I am a man of the Christian faith. I am thankful for the church’s catholic history. But all this is for another post.
Definition 2 is the one I am claiming to use to identify with. As a man of the Christian faith, I believe that I find myself out of the social/cultural norm. I believe that our society is starting to view us as outsiders for my faith. Not only does my faith make me a nonconformist, my geekiness and my weirdness allows me to be a heretic in a society sense. I believe that is where one of my greatest strength lie.
And after all this rambling, now you know why I am HereticFred.
Community
I have decided to give this a try. I think one reason i have been so attracted to the whole Web 2.0 is because the easy way to sense community. I enjoy the fact with some of the new internet social tools like Fbook and Twitter, I can interact with people all over the planet. I listen some them rant on their podcasts. Or get into on Twitter. But it is nice to feel like I am participating in their worlds. I probably have been without the sense of being part of a community here for quite awhile now. My sphere of friends that I hang out with is not a sphere but more like a dot. My busy-ness and usual lack of funds has made it hard to have a lot of free time to go and do and be. Life gets in the way. That is what this blog and possible podcast is going to be called.
Any way, I have to get back to work.
Life Gets In the Way
Life Gets in the Way
Hey,
This is just a test to see if I can blog and if any one is going to read it. I want to say that life gets in the way of geekiness and what I really want to do.
