friday and my thoughts are scattered.

the jehovah witnesses have invaded. seriously. they're all over down here. they're busy going to a conference so they're not as interested in making me part of the 144,000 or whatever. thankful i don't drive down here because they've taken over all the parking lots and garages too.

back when i was a lowly undergrad at kent, i was a victim of a driveby evangelism campaign at 7am when i was walking up the summit street hill and this minivan pulls up and throws a couple watchtowers and that awake! magazine at me and drives off. i read the things just for kicks and marveled at the bad graphic design and the poorly written, uncredited articles. i wouldn't want my name on that either.

i am drinking coffee and attempting to wake up. trying to plan a weekend cleveland date of fun hanging out this weekend with the lindsey. not that i ever really make plans because the best plans tend to be those that randomly happen to you, but i do like to know what's going on.

somehow the eric b & rakim cd i ordered from the library got mixed up and i ended up with orchestral maneuvers in the dark instead.

when i was walking down mayfield yesterday i could tell there was a punk show going on because of the sudden influx of cars with loads of bumper stickers and kids with pink hair driving suv's with nofx painted on the back. reminds me why i didn't start listening to punk rock until my late teens when i got addicted to college radio. before that, i figured that if it all sounded like the sex pistols, mxpx, and the offspring, i wanted no part of it.

might check out the tremont art walk tonight after work. the last time i was down there on such a night i was driving around with val singing along to bad classic rock on the radio and somehow ended up exclaiming "die yuppie scum!" in the direction of a hapless well-dressed couple that came out of nowhere into the path of my car. not one of my finer moments especially considering that they heard me.

despite all that, st theodosius is having some display of byzantine art that looks fascinating (i have this weird thing for icons and iconography that i don't understand, no longer being catholic and having no orthodox background at all). i like seeing what other people are doing creatively and it gives me new ideas to try and also makes me realize why i've never wanted to break into the art world in the first place.

i think one of the things that i like about this style of work is the fact that it's hardly changed in about a thousand years and even though the portraits are stiff and not as lifelike as later renaissance religious art, at least jesus doesn't have blond hair, blue eyes, or european features. that's refreshing for some reason. this one below dates from something like the 6th century and resides in a monastery on mount sinai: