How can we sing the lords song in a strange land?

On the wedding day of my esteemed publishers, Elana Amminadav, standing beneath the wedding canopy in her pure white dress called the whole ceremony to a halt. With a tear in her eye, she reminded us all, that in the midst of the happiest day of her life, she was still mourning for the state of the world, and the loss of zion.

Sitting here, a couple of kilometers (Metric System Shout Out) from mount zion, i can't but feel cheated. In my mind, Zion doesn't mean constant bar fights in jerusalem, zion doesn't mean burning hatred between religious jews, and non religious jews, jews and muslims, and anyone else who cares to step into the ring.

Zion doesn't mean bullets flying, bombs dropping, buildings exploding, children dying.

Zion, it seems, is more of a concept, a state of mind, then a physical place.

And so Elana Amminadav reminded all the onlookers to her wedding ceremony that when the jews were entering babylon they asked each other "How can we sing the lord's song in a strange land?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. It wasn't a complaint, said with hung head.

It was an honest question, and it was a promise.

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem​​, let my right hand wither; Let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you,
if I do not keep Jerusalem​​ in memory even at my happiest hour."

Once again, the question is asked, "How can we sing the lord's song in a strange land?"

The only way is to stand amidst the flying bullets, amongst the debris, in the middle of a battlefield, to stand inside of confusion, and remember.

And when we remember the true zion, and when we can sing the lord's song in this strange land, in this false and incomplete zion, cut off from true reality, only then can we expect to see peace, and love, and unity, and the true redemption.

Bob Marley said "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind."

And so the question we must ask ourselves once again, the question me must answer for ourselves.

How can we sing the lord's song in a strange land?

Bary Bonds and all that steroids jazz

Ahh, steroids. It seems the whole sports world is in an uproar over certain players getting an “unfair advantage” from the use of certain substances. Anyone will tell you about how “performance enhancers” are ruining the game, but it seems no one thinks about the unfair advantage of eating a good meal on game day. Is drinking milk and working out in violation of the rules? Is there some code of ethics that is broken by the player who stays an hour after practice to work even harder?
Of course steroids give the athlete an advantage! But the only unfair part is making it illegal. Would i take steroids? Hell no! But that's because hitting a hundred home runs in a season isn't worth shrunken balls to me. If I wanted to get laid that badly, I’d play in a band, and at least that way my parts wouldn’t be too shriveled from the “growth hormones” to be of any use. Any athlete who wants to be the best has to make certain compromises: High School wrestlers stop smoking weed during the season, so they don’t fail the obligatory drug test. College athletes suffer academically so that they can go to all the practices and be in the first line (anyone who thinks this isn’t true should talk to several college athletes, who would tell of coaches who told them they needed to cut class to practice for hours at a time). Professional athletes spend hours of pain and suffering pushing their body to always be stronger, and if they really want to be the best, they take testicle shrinking pills and injections to make them hit a little white ball across a big green and brown field, over a blue fence, and into a technicolored stadium seating area.
This whole thing reeks of Harrison Bergeron, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut in which all the exceptional members of society were forced to wear handicaps, either chains to way down the strong, glasses with bad prescriptions for those with good eyesight, and headphones that play distracting noises for the intelligent. Steroids are one of many acknowledged methods for boosting the performance of an athlete. Steroids alone won’t make a great player, much like weight lifting alone won’t do the trick either. It’s only natural that if there’s something that enhances the performance of the game, those who perform will use it. It’s impossible to differentiate (in an objective and scientific manner) between any steroids and any other substance that gives players and edge (such as water). The chemicals in food enhance the performance just as much as the chemicals in growth hormones do. (In fact, they are quite a bit more essential.) And the argument that everyone eats and sleeps, but anything beyond what normal people do is cheating holds no water either; when was the last time you saw an average joe pumping iron for 7 hours straight. The use of steroids should be seen as it is: another part of a regiment athletes go thru in order to be the best. There is no unfair advantage in substances widely available to all, and it’s about time the established sports world stopped holding athletes back.

(I think i lifted a phrase or two off wiki, when i was trying to remember which short story it was. I knew it was in welcome to the monkey house, so i checked on wikipedia, and found read the explanations of the stories until i found the right one. And then the phrase about making noises in smart people's ears was imbedded in my head.)

I just got turned onto a cool text formating device

I just found this cool site by way of facebook friends posting things.

I really like it because it gives another option to the artist on how to shape their prose.

One of the things I find most annoying about typing is that its so hard to shape one's words to one's liking.

I mean, it takes an impractical amount of tab and space bar pressing to create lines of poetry which create patterns instead of sticking to the margin, and it becomes impossible to draw your letters differently, and all sorts of other options that are available to the hand-writer.

But this is a step forward in expanding the reach of computer based passages.

˙ƃuıɔunoq doʇs ʇ,uoʍ sǝoɥɔǝ ʎɯ puɐ
-ɐıʇɹǝuı ɟo uoıʇdǝɔxǝ ǝɥʇ ɥʇıʍ spuǝ ƃuıɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ 'ʎɐʍʎuɐ puɐ
˙ʇǝןıoʇ ʎɯ sı os 'ǝʇıuıɟuı sı pןɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟı