Welcome to the Friday Random 10, StreetProphet's weekly music discussion group. Grab a beverage of your choice from today's Happy Hour thread, pull up a comfy chair, and start thumbing through the records, 8-tracks, tapes, CD's and mp3's lying around. If you're not into music, here's some noise-canceling earplugs- they'll filter out the music while you stay and chat with us about other stuff :-).

So I've been wondering off and on for the last two months about what to do for this, my first ever Friday Random 10. Finally, I was inspired by Sister Quarterstaff's excellent Random 10 from last week (which I failed to reply to ><). The difference is that, instead of turning 30, I work for a college radio station. Listening to extremely new music, and becoming familiar with a bunch of different bands and genres, is part of my job. It's inevitable that I start to really like some of the artists I hear about, and interestingly enough, I've found that the more I learn, the more I appreciate some of the artists I've been listening to my whole life.</p>

Soooo . . . I meant to write this diary a few weeks ago, when I first had the idea, but then midterms were upon me and posting here became the least of my worries. I couldn't forget about the topic, however, because it's one that I've contemplated several times before but, by it's very nature, cannot answer myself. You guys might be able to help me.

I was listening to Speaking of Faith on NPR a few weeks back. Krista Tippett was interviewing a guy named Adrian Ivakhiv, an environmentalist and fairly prominent Pagan. They were talking about the pagan origins of many Christian rituals and practices, and then Tippett asked Ivakhiv (raised Eastern Orthodox), "does knowing the pagan origins of so many Christian practices make you view Christianity as less authentic or less legitimate?" It was something along those lines.

And Ivakhiv . . . dodged the question

It started at lunch. Almost independently, my entire social group decided to go eat lunch at the same place at the same time, about 1 p.m. Given that there were over 12 people, lunch got dragged out to about an hour, which was fun, but something that had certainly happened before. I went back to my room after lunch, and decided to pack off to a coffee shop to study(Jittery Joe's, if your familiar with Athens, GA). This is when things got interesting.

"More pointed yet will be the blame belonging to liberal, moderate, and evangelical Christians who fully understood the true meaning of "whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me" -- and still kept their silence while a fearful, violent minority rose up and walked off with their good name."

I love Karmakin. I mean it, I really love him. Between him and my dad, I'm actively considering becoming an ethicist. Also, this diary grew out of Karmakin's diary just before it, so he's a perfect and unwitting prop for my writing.

My best friends include agnostics, athiests, and members of several religions. We get along fine, but whenever serious topics of beliefs, ethics, and policy come up, I have trouble shaking a kind of uncomfortable feeling. So I'm always worried when a split rears up between secular and religious left-wingers, especially when we should be agreeing. This has been the topic of several writings over the past few days, including a diary by Karmakin, in which he said something that threw my diary switch. Follow me down.

This coming week, I'm leaving on a trip to Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron, New Mexico. It's a 70 mile backpacking trip and I'm really stoked about it. I love hiking, I've been to Philmont before, and the experience there is just great. Wonderful terrain, wonderful campsites, just really cool.

We'll, To save money, the crew from my troop is travelling to/ from the camp with another local troop who has a trek at the same time. We won't actually see these guys while we're hiking, but we we've tried to get to know them a little bit. I think this other troops scoutmaster may have interpreted this a little strongly, because he just sent us an E-mail, in which he asked If we'd like a copy of the Devotional series (red light) he and his crew will be using during the week. All I can remeber from the title of the series is "Biblical Manhood" and "Making a Modern-Day Knight."

Oh Hell.