religous "Blending"

If you want to blend in, in any church or cult, be it a Lutheran supper or Wednesday muffins at Heaven’s Gate Cult or a typical Jehovah Witness lock-in, you can very simply, when the meal/service/kool-aid time is over, start putting away chairs.  When they see you put chairs away they know you are one of them, and not just one of them, but a solid ‘top-notch’ believer.  This key might save your life someday.

I used it at a Morman christmas supper yesterday night and I had folks (yes, it was a woman in a classic ugly mormon moo-moo-ish dress..that was light blue denim)  chatting with me at length, and, when mentioning a brother of hers, she used the insider phrase ‘he’s not a member’ to differentiate him from one of “us.”  Even a dread-headed model like me who didn’t close his eyes or fold his arms during their prayers can fit in and be assumed a mormon.   See..... I told you. Cleaning up, especially in the chair-putting-away department is key. You could become a bishop.  

All you need is a religion and a meeting involving chairs.

Note on Praying, if you keep your eyes on the religious leader until everyone closes their eyes -you’re safe. No need to fold arms or use whatever posture they choose to get their heavenly reception tuned in right.  So, unless you take a posture of “what do I do” like you look around at everyone when someone says ‘let us pray’ or ‘lets bow our heads’ or ‘it’s carpet time’,  prayer requires no effort because they can’t see you.

Muslims are harder to fit in with because of certain religious fashions (the Sikh too), and because depending on the muslim praying fashion or sect, they could have their eyes open. But you’ll likely never need or want to “fit in” with them so, no worries.

For catholic masses, or any “pew” situation, of course the chair trick is useless, so one must take things up a notch to be left alone. The key there is to wear a suit (white shirt should be choice, as some sects use them religiously [pun intended]...unless its a black church, but white can pass their too, but no ‘top-notch’ rewards) and you must shake peoples hands and smile and carry a large ‘scripture-esque’ book with you, and you’ll be assumed to be on the “in”.  If you want people to think you’re top-notch, then say something like “you’re a blessing” to the pastor/preist/speaker/talk-giver/juice-pourer dude, and everyone will think you are a top-notch slinger in that religion. Babes will follow. And remember, you are always “visiting here from canada/california/put-interesting-place-here”.  I once had a leather journal of mine mistaken for a bible (which is funny, cuz it doesn’t look like any bible-leather cover I’ve ever seen, but hey, points are points)

The christmas supper was the first Morman thing I’ve really done in a long while in terms of the psuedo-christian cult social circuit.  My dad and step-mum and my baby sis went, so I had addition introductions and people would say things indicating they knew all about me like “enjoying the warm weather for a change?” and I’d think “how do they know I’ve been living in canada....?” so... I guess my dad shares more about me than I ever imagined.  I got invited by a mom or two to their “firesides” or “singles social events” ... They must’ve been convinced by my chair moving that I was a mormonite ... They’ll be sad when I never show up on a Sunday...although I bet they have daughters who would be awesome sacrifices for the Creech volcano.  Maybe I should go to a mormon singles event.....um....nahhhhhhhh. I’d rather hit myself in the face with a tack-hammer...  ...unless I’m bored one night.

Good thing I rarely get bored.

the problem

The problem with saying almost anything about God, is that God won't fit properly into almost anything that can ever be said.
what i mean is, you say God is 'merciful', and the guy to your left says "but he is also just", because to SAY that he is merciful somehow cutts him down to only that trait, and whenever you hear someone saying that, you automatcally start thinking "yeah, but".
people who say "yeah, but" to everything are annoying as hell.
i know, i've been one of them, and i know them.
you start to say "God has been showing me that he is like 'this', and they say "but he's also like that"

maybe this happens because God is not like us, he is ultimate.

if someone says "bob is nice" i'm not dumb enough to think that bob is ALWAYS nice, but that merely in general, bob is nice.
Since God is an eternal being, and since i'm kinda locked into agreement with the way the ancient greeks talked about God, i tend to picture him having immutatble qualities, like never lying.
so if he is something, its not 'in general', its 'eternal.'

try to slip past a pastor that God is love, but only 'in general'.
"in general God is a loving guy"

because whatever trait you tack onto God must extend into eternity and a trait he can't have one second or another, its really hard to talk about him being only one thing.
if someone in a group is learning that God is 'calling us to obedience', someone else is learning the God 'accepts them the way they are, and calling them to hear that he simply loves them'

so, when you say God is wrathful, your friend will say "but he's also happy with us"

and we all grow weary of giving preludes to all our comments on God saying "listen, i know that God is wrathful and just, and that he asks us to follow Jesus and that he loves a contrite heart, but he has been showing me that he smiles at me today, even though i feel like a horrible sinner"

what a mouthful, when you just want to say that God is happy.

maybe i'm wrong, since we do react funny when someone says "mike is nice" and in our minds we are thinking of how much a jerk mike can be and we toss out "but he can also be a jerk"
but maybe that' different.

maybe we should see God as a changing person when it comes to certain qualities.
maybe it'd be better to say "God is patient, but don't piss him off"
or to say that "God loves us, in general" and leave open the implication that sometimes it changes.
it becomes hard to hold the two truths taught in the ancient scriptures that
1. God hates sinners (read the Psalms) and
2. God loves sinners.

can we just say "sometimes God loves sinners and sometimes he hates them"?

its seems wrong to go there.

we want a simple rule- "God loves sinners always" end of story.

if only the Bible and God both would just stop doing their own thing and just follow the simple rules we'd like to impose on them.

i think maybe its not as simple as "sometimes" with God, but that he has this eternal qualities that show up in or world in ways we can only read but as changing, or fickle.

I think this blog goes into the category of things i'll read lately and realize i didn't communicate it properly , or that i'm like "no no, thats all wrong" about.
thats what happens when you think about something, then right about it later. you end up writing when you're NOT thinking and how can that ever be good?

sometimes.

sometimes when i drive home, like late tonight, i can't imagine my life headed anywhere at all, and i just expect God to send some car flying from a side-street through a stop sign at me. i'd die in that automobile accident and pop up in heaven and be like "ok, THAT explains why my life has been like it has been lately"

but sometimes i don't feel like that.

alone.

loneliness is relative.
the nights spent in groups, alone.
the laying in bed, alone.
being alone is something you can do anywhere, with anyone, when you are not with the person you really want to be with.
i wish writing a blog could solve my lonely sum, where i always equal one
i wish understanding some concept could crash it into a pile.
i wish the issues i had four years ago weren't still the issues i have today.
i wish new romances would make me deaf to the sound of my own heartbeat that's not for them
i wish God had not waited me out, and proved me poor, impatient, impoverished, and revealed how weak my trust in him was.
i wish i could write enough songs to express it and pray through it and fight it, join it, feel it off of me
i wish i didn't have to try.
i'm so tired of trying.
i wish i could cry it out.
I wish God seemed more of an author and less of a editor.

i wish God would let my heart change, or that he'd change this world

i want to constantly apologize to my friends and family "i'm sorry i'm still such a sad stupid boy" when God wants me to be a man

I don't know if i know who i am anymore, and i don't think i like who i know myself to be right now.
i can read the christian type "find your identity in Christ"
which to me sounds like "create a black hole by blinking your eyes"
if i could find Christ, maybe i could find out who i really am, maybe i'd have an identity again.

i realized recently that the problem with being good with words at all is that no believes a single word you say.
The people i've ever said "i Love you" to haven't believed me.
and i find that all my poetic honesty is labeled dishonest simply because it is poetic.
no wonder poets are often so lonely - they are good with words, and we are afraid to believe them.

no one believes me when i talk anymore, and i feel like my mouth is wasted on such a life.
how can being good at communicating and connecting with others alienate you and cut out your tongue?
how does it cause you to end out alone?

it seems everyone i talk to knows a Tony that doesn't exist, and the sad thing is, is that the real Tony still does exist, as shy, alone, and thoroughly insecure about being alone as ever. If i had some arch-nemesis he'd find this out and play on it to lead me down a path of destruction.
maybe he already has.
i feel destroyed, the best parts of me have all but slipped away.

let me loose of this listless life and loneliness,
or perhaps i'll pretend to be OK

if you're lost in the woods long enough every free place to step looks like a path.
if you're lost in the woods there are no paths.

Obama interviewed by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church before the Election.

Convo

Tony "i used to date lots and lots and lots and lots of girls"

Kim  "was that when you had short hair?"

haahah

Solutions

G.K. , one of my best'est pals ever, once told me:

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
  -

Anthony is

This was on Facebook:

Anthony is a lot of things (status update, 1:54 am Sep 17)

John Paul Trammell commented (4:45am Sep 17 )

But a Fool is not one.

anthony thomas creech commented (1:34 am Sep 18)

really? ...i always fancied myself a fool. Perhaps it is the most true thing about me, endlessly foolish.

But what men are, in the middle and in the end, are different. A foolish man who hopes on the right starry light can be revealed as wise in the end, though scorned in the middle.

i wouldn't mind that at all. 

buy it while it lasts

my new friend at The House of Hunt recently pointed out a new item hitting the market that i'm sure you'll not want to miss.

Tired of all that secular-trash-devil-music used on Guitar Hero and Rockband?

Still want to hit buttons to a beat and a TV screen and feel like a musician without all the hard work of really learning anything?

then i've got just the thing for you:

Guitar Praise    (click to get more details)

Proof that as Christians we have no need of creating Rock Anthems worthy of notice to make it on a video game

what can i say about this?

This is pretty much the future of all music.

My great friend (yea, even a Friend of Sinners) John Clapper,  sent these to me to give me an idea of the kinds of things some churches do to "attract young people"

    i think you'll find this priceless

now this next one has a dance i'm memorizing for next Sunday,

To Not Be Spoiled

Rummaging through my room up here in Canada, im finding forgotten effects of mine that seem to arrive from the depths of the sea, rather than recent experience.

A piece of wood -carved from a branch camping last summer- sits on a shelf and i stare at it asking "why?"

I always fight two oddly converging movements in my will

1. to have tidiness (which allows me to relax and enjoy a space, or work in it)

2. to hold on to stupid crap.

Since i first ventured overseas years back and witnessed poverty and personally lived on an extreme few possessions, i've held a commitment to regulating how much i own.

i'm only an owner of so many shirts and so many pants, etc.

needless to say that i could go on for hours about how i got to that place,

but walking into my little palace on Saskatchewan Street in Saskatchewan, i think i've found myself a betrayer, maybe even a deserter of my high-ideals.

so now its the Sally Ann and the Junkyard for most of this pile; possessions fighting to rob me of my freedom, heart for people, and life in what really matters.

where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

your heart chases what you put your money into, as money chases what you put your heart into.

i've treasured a lot of worthless crap in my day, and i need an annual release from the materials of mayhem that even the most innocent object can become.

So far, i've only seen 6% of the earth

Kingsnake

Little known fact about Paul Creech (my brother and the king of the free world).

he'd sign his name and follow it with his own bestowed title... "Kingsnake"

We all had little Alter-Ego nicknames we'd use of ourselves in our private writings and drawings...if you want to call what 11-14 year-olds write "writings" 

Herbie would draw "H C Cool" on stuff

i was, as always, an unimaginative follower, and used "T C Cool"

if find anymore i'll dish them out, you must understand that they were an extremely important part of our growing up.

Lord of the Fly

Flies, pff. Flies.

flies suck. i hate flies like Taco Bell hates MacDonalds- ( a LOT)

i hate flies like Warren G hates listening to the latest Snoop Dog record.

i hate them like a bloated pirate hates a wench kicking him in the belly

here it is :

yesterday i sit down to the desk of glory to write, or do homework, or taste the rainbow or something, 

and a Fly - out of nowhere-  lands on my arm. He jumps a foot back, and all those Fly-lands-on-you feelings start racing up my skin.  he lands on me again like a Fat girl on the small guy at the party, and I'm swatting and twitching like I'm in an insane asylum. 

the little bits of my own hair that touch my face start to morph into flies attacking me, and i constantly rub odd parts of my skin that sense suspicious  vibrations.

i am instantly aware that i have a fly in the room, and i won't get squat done until that little skin terrorist is dead.

i grab a paper and he disappears like a beat child. i am ok with this, except for his landing on my legs and feet when i try to type again and i start to shake and Jump like a Pentecostal at the Azuza Street Revival.

i went and cried and rocked back and forth on the sofa.

today he showed up again, but lingered just a TAD too long on some mail from West America Bank, and i dropped him like a Japanese Bomb on Pearl Harbor.

the fly is dead.

but still the hair on my body shifts and i can feel invisible bugs landing on me and moving around on  my skin.

life rules.

i need a hammer i can squash into my face.

Tinman Blog.

after much research, or none, ive decided.
I have no heart.
i'm like a waste of an artichoke, you get to the center of me and its blank.
i don't know if i can feel anything. i think not.
wait- scratch that, i can. i can worry and feel anxious, get lonely, laugh, feel unloved, feel appreciated, i can feel the pleasures of a good scare, a good kiss, a good flick, a good game, or a good converstaion.
i can feel inspired, and know when my friends are disappointed in me, or that they love me, but in the feelings department i'm like a offshore bank.
i wonder if i'll ever be able to love someone and feel more than that common anxiety of wanting others to like you.
don't go dramatic on me, i'm not being sad or... dramatic.
but i know it.
i sit and observe myself, and become astounded at the pessimisms that have grown up and encased me
for a really open guy, its tough to get through to me arriving at "feelings"
friendship i got down, but too many girls have had to sit across from me, trying to unlock me like i was a vault or a rubik's cube.
i try to tell them that others have done so and found the treasure inside to be less than what they expected, less like treasure and more like constant frustration.
its not like i lock myself up like a vault.
its more like i'm an open vault, and you go in and find nothing.
no apologies, i told them it was empty.
oh well, no one beleives me.
i'm sure i'll fall in love one day.
"sure" being loosely equivalent to "why not, i'm a sexy beast"

I was reminded yesterday that God has chosen to give me a chance at love-relationships, and to have a wife.
will he really bring me someone who'll actually like me for me- a potty mouthed artist theologian with the ability to out-talk Rush Limbaugh ?

Chicks don't me cuz they can't push me around.
ha

or because i'm the weirdest human being alive (not including celebrities, who get paid to be stupid and weird)
or maybe i'm insanely lame.
i feel insanely lame, the books that i read even call me lame.

i'm reading Richard Dawkins and he's not as bright as he claims to be.
i'm tired of empty arguments that are more limp than a Mormon in his wedding day.
i think i'll go back to GK Chesterton and enjoy my life again.

i like a good salad too.

Good nose or Bad nose part deux

Time to VOTE- which nose is better, more "attractive" and, ultimately Perfect.
I think it's an easy win for Ashley Zarate, but now you can decide.

The Happiest Man in the World

Mailbox Explosion

MAILBOX EXPLOSION

I used to have a mailbox,

they were two boxes in one -our neighbor's and ours, in the shape of a house, with a cute little roof with wooden shingles.

but no more.

I come home on the night of the 4th of July, and Rainman met me to tell me that he had heard it, and missed who had done it.  

I pulled pieces out of the street, called the cops (had a great conversation with the cop about everything from how to get out of speeding tickets to our both changing to Apple -  how that was like driving a Pinto for years and then finding that you could have been driving a Porsche for much the same price)

In the morning i found my neighbors (whose box had stayed intact) had set their box back up on the wood.

The Pope and Me in Washington DC... that has a ring to it

When i was in DC for a week in April with my mommy, The Pope (Benedict) happened to come to America for the 1st time; it was also the 1st time a Pope has been to America since the clergy sex-abuse scandal rocked the U.S. Catholic Church in 2002. It has cost the U.S. Church more than $2 billion in settlements to victims of abuse and has bankrupted six dioceses.
the day this picture was taken was also the popes 81st birthday... how cool is that,
it's all true folks.

Obama... yeah.

Where i Am today

It’s 1:00 pm as I start to type, not hungry yet for lunch. I never get hungry for lunch when I’m thinking and writing. Lunch will come later.

I trod out the words on a large-flat screen monitor I’ve set up on my old art-table, pulled from under a pile of canvases and picture frames in my old room.

I’ve set-up in the front room of my mom’s house in Suisun California. The desk is near the middle of the room, with most space in front of it, lit with golden light through large drapes. The front grass is mostly dead, mowed for the first time in months. The house is quiet and it’s my first time here without my abuelita (grandma) alive and around to constantly insist on me eating every 15 minutes.

I wanted to see what would happen if I tried to write in the middle of an open room, but now I feel like a security guard at his little desk in the front hall of the National Air and Space Museum, with planes and space-capsules to look at.

I’m back home for the summer from teaching video production in Canada, and it’s been so long since I spent more than 5 days straight in California. I feel alien and at home at the same time.

I’m a 6 year-old boy dressed up in his father’s business suit sitting in a meeting full of executives, hoping they won’t ask me any questions. But I guess I have enough gall to show up to the meeting and toss in my 2 cents, even to correct the VP to my right when he declares that the economy won’t bounce back. After all, you’re only 6 once.

After a pause, and recognition of my need for some food, I realize that this summer is going to be the most different part of my last 4 years, even though in those years I lived in Canada and spent a spell in China, Hong Kong Romania and Germany, between doing other things like record CD’s, play and write music with incredible musicians and friends, and become a college teacher and digital filmmaker.

It’s like I’m at the movies and the opening credits are finishing, and the first character’s are about to be presented, and I couldn’t be more excited, though I have no reason why.

My visa for next year got rejected, because my new boss changed my Position Profile, that outlined how I do more filmmaking then film teaching. I remember that I need to finish my application for Canadian Residency, and I think of how it’s been a week since I cracked open my Bible, and if there was a time to seek God, it is now.

I get stuck thinking of all the things and updates I should write to you all, and they will come. I could start by saying that this last year I asked myself what I should be doing to further myself and in December I applied foolishly (and hastily) to the Academy of Art University for a Masters in Fine Arts for Motion Pictures and Television. I was surprised to get accepted, and started full-time in January on-line (they have the best online stuff I’ve ever seen..but then again they teach web-designers now don’t they… so they should)

So from January till mid-May, I worked from 8 to 5 or 6, and went home and did school from 6 till sleep, and had no weekends or friends. Now I’m on my paid vacation from my job (which I might not get to do next year) and in the middle of my first week doing School on-campus in San Francisco, thinking of how I’m glad I only have to commute 2 days a week.

And now I really should eat, and talk to God about this life I’m trusting him with.

Body Break

It's time to get fit. My body aint the piece of easy management it used to be.
You've gotta do SOMETHING to stay/get into shape when you pass 25, no matter what you look like.
life is too short to be fat when you're 25+ years old.

Here is a video of me, when i was a young fat kid (please forgive the spanish swearing, i was young).

it's time to get in shape