if you grew up in conservative christian circles in the 80′s / 90′s then you might be familiar with the mighty mullet & moustachioed one known as Ray Boltz…
he was incredibly popular with camps and “special numbers”… i can’t tell you how many times i’ve heard someone belt out Ray’s hit “Thank You” in church services through the years…
he was in my opinion the king of “schmaltz”: soppy emotional numbers that old ladies would weep to… not my cup of tea…
he released a gang of albums {15?!} in his career, married with kids and all round super christian dude in the nsahville “CCM” scene.
anyway today i learnt that a few days he ago he “came out” publicly as a homosexual. read about it here. you can even see how he looks with no mullet these days on his website here.
you know back in the day i might have been really upset about this, and i know that thousands of his previous fans will be devastated over this, his albums and music will be pulled from radio stations, from stores and a lot of his “product” will be thrown out by his once fans… but i don’t feel upset… for one, i never really liked his gig, but big picture wise, it’s not my place to condemn him, his story is not over yet, and i know Jesus is not finished working in Ray’s life. My world view and doctrine / dogma has not changed at all {i believe that quite clearly that Father has revealed through His word in the Bible that homosexuality is just one of myriad of deviations from His designed sexuality, right up there with adultery, divorce, lust etc}… but you know what has changed in me? my understanding of how LOVING Father is, how patient He is, how Big He is…. and i know all of that applies to Ray Boltz and his journey…. Father is not finished with Ray yet, and Jesus has not called me to sit on a little throne of judgement to condemn him.
does that make sense?
there is seriously too much going through my mind about the following clip. do i follow the old cliche “if you have nothing nice to say….” ? nah… bugger that.
this has got to be the worst of the worst of the worst. if i sat down and wrote a list of everything i could possibly hate about a “cutting edge christian youth service”, if i sat down and wrote a detailed script for that scenario, i couldn’t come up with one i hated as much as this clip.
call me an old fuddy duddy, but this is so far removed from true christianity it might as well be labeled as another form of religion entirely.
i’ve been busy. alot of stuff is happening. benita and i have three wonderful boys: drummond who is 4 and 1/2, galvin who is 2 and ??? who will be arriving in mid november…. benita works “night shifts” {4pm to 8pm} weekdays and my time is spent running or trying to run djp photography….
i just need to play catch up in my head and do a quick stock take of the past 44 days of so. bear with me… {all pictures are from my mobile phone}
tuesday 29th july – had “envirosaver” come and swap light bulbs. doctor’s appointment for the family. worked on a new wedding business idea with another local photographer: {who will be known as “PG”} registered some domain names and worked on some marketing ideas. also applied for a part time very casual job with World Vision. wednesday 30th july – had an appointment with a financial advisor in the morning, bumped into a World Vision display at Australia Fair and joked with them to put a good word in for me for the job. spent the afternoon mowing my lawns and my parents lawns. got home and saw an email from World Vision that they received my application late, so too bad, so sad.
thursday 31st july – took the family out to helensvale westfield for some overdue clothes shopping, got a phone call from World Vision that the staff i spoke to Australia Fair did put a good word in for me and can i pop in for an interview? drummond’s tonsils are acting up again, we have him on the public hospital’s waiting list to get them out… spent alot of the afternoon processing images. friday 1st august – take my mum to Ikea and we shop for shelves, cutlery and lighting for me and storage for her. have World Vision interview. benita has a big work meeting and a long shift. saturday 2nd august drummond has swimming lesson. do some serious home fix its and stuff with the Ikea stuff. get in contact with old friend Bob Butler from www.publicimagephotography.com sunday 3rd august – very busy cleaning day. tip runs and picked up bunk beds for the boys.
monday 4th august – benita and i’s anniversary. 7 years of wedded bliss? i meet up with PG and we head up to brissy for my first Brisbane Wedding Photographers Lunch Group meeting. interesting… meet two very cool people: John Reyment & Catherine Lowe. John slips everyone a note saying that they are looking for a new studio manager and photographer… hmmmm…. lot’s of brainstorming with PG about new wedding business ideas… meet benita at westfield for a anniversary milkshake before she starts work. tuesday 5th august – gardening, major house renovations, and another doctor’s appointment for the boys. wednesday 6th august – a full long day of training at World Vision HQ in South Brisbane.
thursday 7th august – built the bunk bed. studied up on the job going for Reyment Photographics. friday 8th august – first day on the job with World Vision, do he morning shift with David at Australia Fair. had my first appointment with my Dietician. got a phone call at 1:30pm to photograph a wedding at 3:30pm at the beach. did the job. saturday 9th august – World Vision AM shift again. That evening shoot a school formal with PG. The formal was at the same venue as a big Youth Alive event. sunday 10th august – great day of just house cleaning and family time. monday 11th august – emails, work on wedding business idea with PG, errands, got new logitech mouse. benita sick.
tuesday 12th august – World Vision AM shift in Nerang. Paint our “feature wall” green. wednesday 13th august – got a work team in and did “stage one” of our gardens. all day -full on- job. thursday 14th august – work work work and then do PM shift for World Vision in Nerang. friday 15th august – had a morning coffee and muffin with fellow Gold Coast photographer Catherine Lowe for the first time. then interview no#1 with John & Karen Reyment of Reyment Photographics. 2 hour interview. went great. saturday 16th august – catch up on work. benita took boys to two birthday parties. sunday 17th august – family day. all the family come over to our place. monday 18th august – do a massive email clean out. realise “professional” bloggers and “professional” blogs are all full of crap. with good intentions i sign up to host a adobe lightroom photo walk on the gold coast. tuesday 19th august – PG {the dude i’ve been working on some new wedding ideas with} calls me and says he is retiring from photography. ok…. more email work. wednesday 20th august – World Vision AM shift at Tweed Heads. email John & Karen Reyment thanking them for the interview. put drum to work on fixing my pownce. discover pixelpipe service. thursday 21st august – work work work, benita flys out to Sydney for the weekend, and the World Vision at Tweed Heads PM shift, start coming down with some weird flu…
friday 22nd august – gardening, cleaning, painting final coat of green on the wall. meet with Adam the photographer, have first adult portrait session at our place. invite my parents for dinner, get the phone call that i have a second interview with John & Karen Reyment. Glavin sleeps out of the cot & drummond in the top bunk for the first time. totally cancel all my misguided involvement in the photo walk. saturday 23rd august – me and the boys pick up my brother in law Shane and my nephew Wesly – work and look after boys. big family dinner at my parents. sunday 24th august – work, boys, big clean out, and a second big family dinner at my folks. monday 25th august – benita flys home from her sydney girls weekend. i start to prep for the Big 2nd interview. tuesday 26th august – a lot of prep for the Big 2nd Interview. wednesday 27th august – 9am is the 2nd Big Interview. i prepared everything on my iMac, so i took that and after a shaky start of me forgetting the iMac’s power cord, the 4 hour interview went awesome. as soon as i leave i feel like i am really coming down with something serious. i have a meeting with the owners of our house/property and a photo shoot of a naming ceremony down at the beach and by that night i am a feverish painful mess. thursday 28th august – doctors quote “your head is FULL of infection”, get on some serious medication. start packing and preparing… and start the transfer over of my internet provider. friday 29th august – very sick – prepare and pack the family up and we all fly out to Melbourne that evening. we will be staying with benita’s parents in Geelong for our time down south. eat a lot of Garlic. saturday 30th august – galvin’s 2nd birthday party with lots of visitors at my in-laws. meet with wedding clients. drive to werribee and catch up with corey “corex” sleap one on one. sunday 31st august – shoot Alanna & Nathan’s wedding and reception. over extend myself because the drugs are working. benita and i stay/ house sit at our land lord’s place in Ocean Grove. monday 1st september – benita have a beautiful breakfast in Barwon Heads. chilled out day. faulmann family dinner at Ben & Becs. good talks. *note* the entire time in Geelong people want to talk about our coming third boy’s name {we have no idea} and the job i interviewed for with Reyment Photographics. tuesday 2nd september – sleep in and have a great time “talking shop” with my old cronies Vincenzo from Ggingi Photography & Chris Fawkes from Chris Fawkes photography. Afternoon tea with Kin & Glenn Thomas, dinner at Corex and Mels in werribee. wednesday 3rd september – great day with my sister Megan & family at scienceworks – tim miller & fiance coffee & wedding chat – dinner at matt & kate jacoby’s – late nite chat with kirby.
thursday 4th september – try the Chrome browser, nice. me, b & boys take “the Ma’s” out to the new westfield in geelong. drive out to Anglesea to hang with Johnny ‘witness” Rama and family and then drive to Maude and have dinner with Rene & Corrie Inei at their amazing property… then Pizza Land dinner with Scotty Baker, Paulo & Stephen Carter and his new lady Rose.
friday 5th september – Breakfast with Rod Gear, have a couple of hours to myself, get THE PHONE CALL: i didn’t get the job with John & Karen Reyment: “this is not “No”, this is just “not yet” John Reyment. i feel totally peaceful and at ease about it. Lunch with Kirby at BurgerInc. Arvo coffee with David & Claire at GJ’s westsyde – Dinner with the beloved Kulic’s in Lara. saturday 6th september – up early for a great Faulmann Family Breakfast at Cafe Go. awesome. Eastern Beach and look at the major wall work going on. Lunch and arvo with the beloved Bateys. Dinner up in werribee with Simon & Michelle {at the funklab}, Jolane & Laura, wedding client chat with Dave Tibben. sunday 7th september – Father’s Day breakfast at Becka James & Jarrah Loe’s – wedding talk with them, take the boys to the morning service at South Valley Baptist church {which is always a trip} – quick lunch and then up to werribee where Jolane & Mistery and i did some work on Krosswerdz. had a good dinner with my man Mistery. can feel the tonsillitis rearing his ugly head again. get home to geelong late and pack.
monday 8th september – get up 4:30am to get to the plane in time. back on the Gold Coast by 10am. unpack. coming down sick again for sure. tuesday 9th september – spent the day waiting for the doctor, i am sick again. car troubles, rejoin RACQ. we finally get our own World Vision sponsored child in the mail… wednesday 10th september – try to catch up on work and rest at the same time… hard. call clients and explain sickness. come up with a new file back up system for my images etc…
thursday 11th september – today. paid for a boxed version of Apple’s Aperture at last. have my first lunch meeting with the Gold Coast World Vision team in Robina. answer emails, look after boys. feel sick. write this and clear my head.
i am a “post organised church” christian {whatever that means}.
but i never get tired of being amazed at the absolute stupidity of the “charismatic movement”. i know that might sound mean and nasty, but seriously folks, how stupid does the “mass christian mob” act and look to anyone with one ounce of intelligence?
here is a “word” for the modern church: “discernment”.
look it up.
in the dictionary & the bible.
you are all after “gifts” and “signs”? well how about the gift of discernment? shoot for that one because that is what the world really needs… not sham healings, scam “revivals” and more christian in-breeding.
just grow up…please.
you know what troubles me about that blog post from “fire in my bones”? despite the quite thoughtful write up and excellent points and questions asked through out the piece, at the end mr J. Lee Grady still says: “I still believe that God desires to visit our nation in supernatural power. I know He wants to heal multitudes, and I will continue praying for a healing revival to sweep across the United States.” where in the world do you get that from Mr Grady? from any actual biblical source? from anything based in reality? or just a feeling? a “prophetic word”? just nationalistic jingo? watch your language, to say that you “believe God desires” is pretty full on. why not be honest and say with much more human-ness “i really hope” or “wouldn’t it be awesome” or “i wish”? to put that back on God as something He desires is…. just not based in any biblical reality… it is exactly that type of wanting something “more” that get’s people into the Lakeland type foolishness in the first place….
… that is all from me… for now… what do you think?
though all my life i’ve never been a beetles fan and john lennon has given me the willies, lately i’ve been reconsidering that outlook… this amazing piece of work is helping the rethink too:
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
i remember clearly when TRON came out in 1982 / 1983. i was 10. i loved that film. i still do.
years ago there was news about Tron 2… there was a weird cryptic website for a while… a bubble of hype and then nothing…. until now.
“tron 2″ now being called TR2N {which is totally nerd cool hipness}. Jeff Bridges makes a comeback, which is totally awesome, he is one of my favourite actors. also starring RICKY GERVAIS!!! words cannot express how keen that makes me for this flick. also has Jada Pinkett Smith, Karl Urban, the always scarey John Hurt, and Sean Connery as the voice of M2P. so… put this on the list of films i hype for…. in 2010!
i love the POWNCE network of people. i have found it to be a great community of mostly really interesting people. i have two free accounts on pownce that i like to use – one for djp photography & one for mustard empire - i use my djp account the most, i love to post new pictures, setting up friends groups, posting some pictures just to people who are more friendly etc. i have my awesome ping.fm account set up to update my pownce/djp account and that works great for simple status update style bits… also i love pimping some of my favourite music on the mustard account, and getting into interesting discussions about the music etc… awesome.
according to the super brains at pownce war i am the number 5 powncer in the universe, check it:
about a month ago i satrted getting some serious issues logging into my pownce accounts. i went to one of the greatest ideas on the interwebs: get satasfaction, and started a discussion:
“i am on a mac and have the same problem in both safari & firefox. if i am not logged in to Pownce i can go to pownce and surf around no problems, i can even go to my own pownce profile page and look around no problems. i can create a dummy account and then sign in and be fine. no problems. but as soon as i sign in to my REAL ACCOUNT then i cannot get into my pownce. once i sign in i can view other people’s pownce accounts but i CANNOT get into mine. HELP ME! this is severely annoying. my awesome pownce account is http://pownce.com/djp”
then from the pownce community manager Ariel i got this: “Just a quick update – we’re still looking into these isolated issues. In the meantime, if you want to create a new Pownce account, I can transfer your username to it afterwards. Let me know.”
well of course i didn’t want that so Ariel went on to say:
“Can you try logging in on a different system (e.g. different network/computer)? If not, I would need permission from you to login and test your account. We’re wondering if this is potentially a problem w/ the network or computer you’re using due to the browser errors you’re encountering and the sporadic nature of it. Any additional details help – thanks!”
i was up for them to log in and see what the problem was… so i gave permission. Ariel and the pownce team tested and here’s the reply.
“The issue seems to be caused by the fact that you’re a fan of an unusually large amount of people (DJ Paine, you’re a fan of 6,872 people and friends with 2,878 people). Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us to make the site perform for people who are a fan of such a large amount of users. In order to make your accounts accessible again, you can login (in which you might encounter the white screen) and then navigate to http://pownce.com/djp/fan_of and cancel some of your friend requests. We’re very sorry for this and we hope to be able to accommodate these types of situations in the future.”
woah woah woah! i had some questions:
“ariel, how many people can i be a fan of? what is the sweet spot?
and when is this going to change? if ever? i like being fans of lots of people!”
she relied:
” This is really a trial and error and it depends on the quantity of notes coming in to your home page more than how many people you follow. I’m *guessing* that following more than 500 people will start to slow the page down….. No current timeline on when this will change. We’re always working on improving the speed of the site, but this typically requires long-term work. Apologies for the tediousness of the process!”
so i went and had a good look at all those people i was fans of and i realized that 90% never post anything, they don’t use pownce. so ok, i’ll get rid of them! away with all those people i am a fan of! {on pownce you remain someones “fan” when you friend request them and they do nothing or deny you – that’s why interweb celeb kevin rose has 15,623 fans and a didly 132 friends…} to see who YOU are a fan of on pownce go to www.pownce.com/YOUR USER NAME/fan_of/ – once there you can see a list of people and the “cancel request” button it looks like this:now how easy is it to do a mass cancel of people you are fans of? let’s take a look {excuse the voice}
now mind you, i WAS a fan of 6,872 people and as you can see from the video above i have now go it down to 4,860. it has taken me days of mindless clicking to do that {i’ll watch a video podcast or a movie on the imac at night while i click on the pownce page to one side… yeah i know what you’re thinking; dj paine you know how to live it up!}.
i’ll end this blog entry with a few points i’ve gleaned from this experience:
1} be careful of “social networks” that keep people you want to “friend” as people you are fans of – this whole concept sucks big time. friends and fans and all those words are stupid.
2} if you are planning on building a social network {why bother?} please do not cripple users for really using your site.
3} pownce team – fix this. or at least make a mass delete button or something!!!
EDIT / UPDATE – for those interested… other people are having this issue, big time:
