Hibernate Tip - Using case expression in sorting

 I wanted to share this hard-earned discovery but couldn't find a suitable place to (or maybe didn't want to try that much)

Yes, the great and awesome Rand McRanderson has a day job and in such day job I do program and that programming involves the Hibernate ORM system.

One annoyance has been that Hibernate does not allow simple expressions in the sort by clause, that is I cannot do (inside a query annotation or by functionally using the entity manager to create a query)

SELECT * FROM Books b WHERE b.title LIKE CONCAT('%' , :param , '%') ORDER BY b.title = :param DESC, b.publishDate

For the unfamiliar, what this does is it looks through a database's book table for titles (the b.title field of the object) that contain the value of :param (which could be user input, for our example let's say the value is "Bob"), the LIKE and '%', '%', mean that the text "Bob" could have any text before or after it in the title, ie, "Bob's adventure", "Adventures with Bob", "The Bob of Bobbington" are all matches. The select clause is set to '*' which means to fetch all the fields (in this case that would be the entire Book entity).

In this scenario, sorting the results by b.publishDate is reasonable, however then you get cases where, a book called "Bob", published in 2022, is ranked after a book called "Long list of names including Alan, Joe, Michael, also Bob" published in 2024. Some people are fine with this, I find it a little annoying. 

So what I'm trying to do is to first sort by whether or not there is an exact match for the title "Bob" using the expression b.title = :param - this will evaluate to a boolean value, either TRUE or FALSE, and since TRUE (which means there is an exact match) = 1 and FALSE = 0 in Hibernate (as in most of the computer world), I sort this descending, after this sort criteria, I still sort by publishDate so I end up with exact matches first sorted by date and then the other matches sorted by date afterwards.

That's the idea at least, but Hibernate doesn't like this. Try to run this code and you get an exception like:

org.hibernate.hql.internal.ast.QuerySyntaxException: unexpected AST node: = near line 1, column ...

(On a side note, I wish there was a better way to check this expressions at compile time, I know I could use the Criteria API for this with the static metamodel approach, but that ends up being very verbose with a significant learning curve that I cannot spare at the moment)

This issue is that Hibernate does not like that raw '=' expression in an ORDER BY clause (it is legal in SQL I believe, which raises questions about why I'm using Hibernate, which I'm not going to go into now)

Anyways, I went through a lot of variations trying to figure out how to get around this behavior (once I understood what the issue was, which took a little while), I seem not to be the only one to get this error:

How to order result of hibernate based on a specific order

(Although given that this post is from 10 years ago I might be the only one in recent times)

What I finally discovered is while you cannot use simple expressions like X = Y in order by clauses for Hibernate, however you can use a CASE expression, like CASE WHEN A THEN B ELSE C END, where A is a boolean expression which can be... X = Y. So I can rewrite this thing as:

SELECT * FROM Books b WHERE b.title LIKE CONCAT('%' , :param , '%') ORDER BY (CASE WHEN b.title = :param THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) DESC, b.publishDate

(Not sure if the parentheses are necessary, but I think it looks pretty ugly without them, and it is my blog so...)

And this works, and it gives me the ordering I want, so I'm happy with it. Now the trick is to remember this into the future where I might encounter this type of situation again, whether that will happen or not, well, that is a true mystery of life.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks!

Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless! 

I dislike Donald Trump

 I hate that this is my first post in a long while, but if you wait for the perfect post you may very well wait forever.

I really dislike Donald Trump. I hesitate to use the word hate, partly on general habit, but partly because hate is an intimate personal feeling, ultimately, my dislike is pointed at a political persona, and it is a persona that is neither unique geographically nor historically. So hate seems inappropriate. However, I strongly dislike Donald Trump's hyper-nationalist anti-instutionalist populist persona fiercely.

I am myself a passionate nationalist, I believe in America and I have a passionate love for my country. I do not mind hyper-nationalism by itself, I find it excessive but I can sympathize with the feelings behind it. But I dislike how Donald Trump focuses the nationalism of himself and his followers on an exclusionary vision of America, one that must hide itself from the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, lest the troubles overseas infect us. I like to subscribe to a vision of America that welcomes the oppressed and takes the demons chasing them as challenges to be conquered rather to be appeased.

But that is a matter of ideals. In concrete terms, no one wants no immigration, very few are willing to realistically grapple with the challenges of open borders, everyone can admit that some people need asylum and that there are some people who will fake asylum and there are wide swaths of gray areas. Most disagreements in immigration come down to differences in degrees of policies, while adding and removing special cases from a system riddled with special cases. I dislike that Trump throws away the nuance of this in his rhetoric (although he is hardly unique in this, the degree and frequency to which he disregards nuance are exceptional, and degree and frequency matter), and is unwilling to wrestle with the full complexity of the situation in his policies.

I dislike Trump's disregard for the long term, his policies focused on short term goals while never asking how will these policies be followed by the other party when the other party inevitably comes to power in the future, because this is not the end of history. It irritates me in profound ways how Trump acts like this is the end of history, that the fixes in corruption and deep economic issues are something that can be fixed in four years without caring what the dismantling of walls between politics and the administration of government do to the long term. Again, Trump is not unique in this, but he does this more frequently and to a larger degree, and frequency and degree matter.

I dislike the emptiness of the winner takes all philosophy he pursues, when that does not look at the costs to the institutions of democracy, which while not perfect in this country, are priceless.

I could go on, but this is probably longer than most people like to read already. Donald Trump is not the devil, not every single thing he does is wrong or every single policy incorrect. In many ways, Donald Trump is the outgrowth of bad tendencies among politicians that have been growing for a long time here and overseas, however, his degree and frequency of those tendencies are exceptional and that matters.

History is long. Despite my nationalism I am not naive, one day the United States of America will become a fading memory. But just as I cherish the lives of my loved ones despite their inevitable return to the dust, I am concerned with the fate of America. Donald Trump did not ruin America in his first term and will not destroy America in his second, however, he may do lasting damage to the institutions and ideals of America that may set the stage for further damages down the line. I think he is bad for America, and that concerns me.

I could be wrong, and I really dislike how Trump rarely seems to consider the possibility, but I admit I cannot see into his head, nor can I predict the future. But I have my feelings and have stated them, and I will hope for the best, knowing the future will inevitably be different and stranger than I can imagine. In the end, all I can say is God bless America and I hope, whether I am right or wrong, America makes the right choice.

On the road again

Heading out on the road again, nice thing about being confined some place is it gives you time to do things, not the things you really want to do, but some subset of things

Another nice thing is it reminds me of that Bob Seaver song (although I first heard it via Metallica, and to be honest I still probably prefer that version, I still like my metal): Turn the Page

An excellent song that really lends itself to AMVs:

https://youtu.be/Jl6u6u8LEHM

Of course Metallica’s video for this is also highly recommended 

https://youtu.be/qPOTEs_yTJo

Excuse me if the video embeds don’t work, trying out a new blogging app.

Also, Excuse me as I kiss the sky!

Anywho, moving on, it is important to remember that I woke up at 4:45 AM and that is not a good time and it is starting to crush me with the weight of time and sleep deprivation.

So… there are quite a few good song segways there, but Rand tired

The 4:45 AM is really starting to hit me now.

Bobba booy

Anyways, take it to your head, take it your heart, and remember Rand rocks.

Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Kicking it up with InfiniteRand

Long time since I've posted anything, something of a long time since I've written anything. This prompts the question of who would have any interest in reading what I have to write. My brother gave me a good suggestion, thinking about writing for my daughters. While I try to be open with them about a lot of things, there are some things I keep to myself, and even more that I just do not have the time or occasion or expression to share. At the very least, what I write might be useful for them to have, even though I suspect even if they have it they are probably not likely to read it, after all how many go through all of the family photos except once in a blue moon, but in their lives they are likely to have a blue moon once and again.

Of course, that makes me think it's probably best to have some backup set up in case Google gets tired of this blogspot abandonware or gives some opt-in prompt that I neglect in my old age, consigning my words to oblivion.

Anyways, that is the minimum, I have two intelligent and curious little girls, and whether or not they read my words having the words would be a comfort, and it might be a discomfort for them to think that I stopped writing around the time I had them (the timelines do not line up for that, in fact my last post was before I met their mother, but people have a way of overlooking blurry timelines in these type of things, although I hope that is something I can teach them to avoid). So there is that minimum. And perhaps there are more that might enjoy my words, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... (I want to say that is from some British sitcom but I can't recall the name, maybe Coupling?)

Why I stopped or at least paused my writing? Many reasons, if I'm honest sloth is among them, fear of writing something bad, fear my creativity might be gone, apathy, feeling that my writing is worthless (so rather than giving up my writing for the sake of my kids, my kids have given me a counteraction against one of my hindrances, and yes kids, I expect you to learn all of those big words), questioning my place in the big scheme of things. None of that is especially new (well me not writing is not especially new at this point).

Perhaps what it is, and there is a little supporting evidence of this, is at the time of my life when I decided to get serious about being married, I decided to put focus on the rituals, procedures, and habits necessary to help me find a wife. I can go into this more a different day, but much of this rubbed against my anxieties, social and otherwise, and it took a considerable mental effort to push on this.

Essentially, to make it short, making a concerted effort to find a wife was stressful for me.

This is also why I resigned as a member of the national board of the MCYM, despite that being one of my preferred social and to some degree creative outlets (more on that a different day, in fact pretty much all of these sentences could be fleshed out into a paragraph or two, but I have promises to keep...), the stress of the obligations of my duties as a national board member (which perhaps I took too seriously) was a weight that I knew would be difficult to me to bear in addition to these new stresses.

While I did not make a decision to stop writing them, that stress did decrease my output (although it would be interesting to go into my notebooks and to see to what degree at what point, of course for that be accurate I would need dates on everything which I don't have). Then the stress of marriage, married life, eventually parenthood, all vital things I wanted in my life, these did not directly work against me writing but what they did do is leave less energy to fight against the old fears and anxieties associated with writing, which as always grew the longer I stayed away from writing. While this can be looked at as some unfortunate accident, I do remember at times reflecting on the trade-off between the married/fatherly life I was pursuing and the effort needed to sustain me as a writer, ultimately I made a choice. Not a choice to stop writing, but a choice to pursue the family life I wanted and believed was a vital part of my life's vocation, even if my writing life suffered.

I made a choice and I still believe it was the correct one. I look at my wife and my girls, and we have built something beautiful together, something blessed by God and sacred.

There's some simplification there, and so other factors that I know played a role, but I think this assessment is true enough to let it stand.

This leads me to say, there is no reason why I shouldn't write now, although it shouldn't be at the expense of this life I have built, if the two do not work against each other, why not write? (From the assessment above, you might say well it sounds like they do work against each other, but the relationship between different responsibilities, hobbies, duties and stress is more complex and subtle than that, they will sometimes work against each other, sometimes they will help each other, and sometimes each must be given a certain amount due, and sometimes some must be pushed to the background)

And it is worth coming back to the minimum reasons for me to write, in addition to my girls, there is a certain feeling of sacred duty to God. I often think of the story of the king who gave his servants different sums of money to invest, God has given me some talents of creativeness and some tendency toward writing, and so I ought to use it if I can, and share it if I can. God has given me other blessings more precious to me in the form of my family, and that sacred duty comes first. But if the clouds of my anxiety and the mysterious inner workings of my mind align just right, so that writing is possible without the neglect of family, then I ought take the chance, and I think that it is God's will for me to do so.

More could be written about this, but time conspires against me here. I do have other duties related to my family life (to be less vague, I have to do my job), while I have taken time away from that to write this, in some ways writing has cleared my mind more to help me tackle those duties. If I used that as an excuse to spend all my time away from my work, it would be counter-productive, and so I must set a limit and come to an end. (Although the story never ends...)

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

And a goodbye to India for this year

And so my India trip comes to an end. Doom, doom, doom!

As I remarked on Twitter (I really should make fewer purely personal posts on Twitter, they tend to be well, a little lame, or at least irrelevant to those who dwell on Twitter, least by my calculus of interest, but it is hard to resist the temptation, I could elaborate on this quite a bit, but I don't feel like it), my trip to India is coming to an end, and it was less than I may have hoped for, but well more than good enough.

That's life most of the time. It's a fact that's not often appreciated enough, at least I don't (see this is what the personal Twitter posts lack, a meandering introspective rant loosely connected to personal events). I can cite opportunities missed, imperfect aspects of my life, but all and all I have it pretty good, and things could very well be otherwise.

I have good friends, good family, and a good God who loves me, that's a pretty good life.

But even though this makes discontent unnecessary, discontent is not necessarily a bad thing. I can do better, I can do more, and I think I ought to, I think... although I am not sure of this, I think God has more planned for me, that is, I think God has plans to make me a better me which would do good stuff in His name, etc., etc., etc.

Now that I've gone well past sentimental, let me continue. My stated goal for my trip in India was to spend time with my grandmother (my Umachi - people have told me that Umachi should be spelled with an "A" in front, but I prefer the "U" and I'm contrarian that way), visit family, relax, write some, work on a family tree website, other stuff, and ultimately spiritual renewal.

Spiritual renewal... I feel a little closer to God, I suppose I feel I am more energized and determined to do God's work (that sounds more grandiouse than it is, and while I do enjoy dabbling in the grandiouse, I feel anything done keeping the service of God in mind, I have and will elaborate on this elsewhere). But do I feel that full sense of spiritual renewal that I've felt during other trips to India. No, not really. Ultimately this is my fault, I did not take enough opportunity to pray or read the Bible. That is something I need to correct in my life.

Writing... I did a little, not very much though. Again, not as much as in other trips. It's not so much writer's block as... sloth? Maybe, maybe a fear of writing (I'll go into this elsewhere) coupled with an inadequate sense of purpose and drive.

I did get some of my to-do list done. I worked on some websites I wanted to work on, sent some emails that I wanted to send, talked to people more than I have been lately. So overall I built up a little more momentum in my life toward doing the things I want to do. And I did spend a lot of time with my grandmother and with my family, and even though I often did not understand the language of my family members, I tried to treat them with love. In deepening my love of family, in that aspect, I did achieve a degree of spiritual renewal, for I believe God dewells in love (I say that in the poetic sense, the theological dimensions of this, I'll leave to St. Paul). Perhaps it's best I didn't go into overdrive and go deeply into a dozen different projects. Doing so has not served me well in the past, over-commitment has usually been prelude to the fall, perhaps because I commit the sin of pride in imagining I can do everything, often not trusting God to take care of the world, instead trying to grapple with it on my shoulders.

So a good trip, not a perfect one, but a very good trip.

But there was a question hanging over it, one which I must grapple with. When am I going to get married? But that is perhaps better left for a different post.

By the way, Mery Christmas and Happy New Year! (I link here to a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" (By the way, this video seems to repeat the song, and although it's a terrific performance and the video itself has a bunch of factoids about the song, you may want to cut out after the first 4 min or so) - which is apparently based on a poem by Robert Burns which can be found here - http://www.carols.org.uk/auld_lang_syne_burns.htm).

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

This is your brain on sleep

Stupid sleep and me not writing with the stuff and the lack of sleep!

Doom I say Doom!!!!!!!!!

Flying

Flying, flying, flying
Got to keep on flying
Fly some more
Fly some more
Fly some more, rawhide!

And what lies beyond the random in the heart of Rand

I find myself in an odd funk.

The essentials of my life are satisfactory - job, family, friends (though I admit I do not treat my friends as well as I ought). The extremities of my life - romance, projects, creativity - here - here is the problem.

I suppose I could take it as simply a classic case of You can't always get what you want, and in this case it does seem if I try I can find I get what I need.

But what is a human being, if he only seeks what he needs? And should not my reach exceed my grasp?

Which leaves me with two dilemmas boiling in my mind.

How should I feel about this?

I've often wondered to what extent does dissatisfaction serve as a driver. To what extend does it serve to aggravate the infirmities of my mind? To what degree does it cause me to use unnecessarily long words? Also, doom.

Essentially, is discontent needed for change or is it merely an irritant to the soul?

Answer, I dunno, stuff and such. Maybe a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, or maybe rather if other things were more aligned in my mind, discontent would be unnecessary. All and all, I'm leaning toward no-ish (that is unnecessary-ish).

And then we come to question number two. And this is I think a more common conflict than I give myself credit for, how to translate the ideas and desires of the mind to action?

How can the willing spirit overcome the weak flesh?

To be honest, some people have the issue to a greater degree, some to a lesser, and as for me... I have traditionally not done well in this regard.

So the answer is, err... I really don't know. Stuff and more such. Also, doom. What I can say, at least until I come up with a better answer, is that overcoming the combination of sloth, fear, inertia and anxiety that prevents me from doing what I want, that sort of triumph, becomes easier the more you achieve it. And so I will try to make small wins, and let them build on each other, till the big wins become easier, or at least let the small wins do some good in themselves.

That being said, I really, really, would like a short-cut in this regard.

But in the end, this too belongs to God, and to God's hands I must trust my fate. I must trust in the plans the Lord has for me even if I cannot see them now. For in the end, God knows the best path far better than I.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight folks!

And God Bless.

The waiting is the hardest part

If I am honest with myself, I have confidence that I will eventually become who I ought to be. After all, if God is with me who can stand against me? Can even I stand against me? (Maybe with some trick mirrors...)
I have a uncertain belief in a certain general idea of what shape that person should be. Someone who writes regularly. A husband. A father. In time...
But while this may be childish, and perhaps sacrilegious, I can't help but feel some frustration that I am not there yet. I realize this semi-destiny/fulfillment is something given through experience and time, but still the waiting...
As the man said, the waiting is the hardest part

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks! Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless. 

Christ has risen

He has risen, indeed.

All in time

All things start and all things end and with time all things begin again but never twice is it the same, long before the end all things change, but that is just this world

Because I am done with hate

First, let me give credit for inspiring this post to my Mom who wrote a very nice lesson about the Commandment "You shall not kill". My mother has been writing a number of lessons for our Church's "upper-level" Sunday-school program, which also go out to various people who are family, friends, or interested in the materials (a group which includes me).

This lesson in particular struck a cord in me. When I was little "You shall not kill" seemed like the Commandment least useful for daily living. But as my mother noted, Jesus taught that "You shall not kill" also applies to anger and hatred. After all, murder comes from such feelings.

But sometimes it feels like that as long as you don't act on the anger and hatred, it's fine to store it up inside you. At least, I used to think that way. When I was in middle school in particular, every grade there would be one or two kids who I hated, who made me constantly angry. I thought I was justified in my anger because they didn't seem to care about the effect of their jokes and teasing, and because they hit on topics that very sensitive for me at the time, but thinking back on it perhaps I just didn't understand them, or perhaps they had too much on their mind from other matters that made them careless, as my Mom pointed out, God asks us not to judge.

In any case, my anger, my hatred got me nothing. There were a few cases where I tried telling them off, but those were always ineffective (I've found that telling someone to stop a hurtful behavior works if that person was your friend to begin with, but is much more difficult when there isn't that bond). The anger also never gave me any sense of release for my frustrations, I had many of them in middle school and I thought perhaps if I could focus my irritations on a few people I could release it. Instead, I found my frustrations intensified as my thoughts circled around my anger. I found that when I was angry or caught up in hate, my enjoyment of life lessened, my relationships with those I cared about suffered, and my spiritual life faltered.

I'm not sure if there was a special moment when I decided to stop hating people. In fact, even now there are moments when I slip into that state of mind, but nowadays I take care to pull myself out of it. Sometime around my freshman year of high school a change happened in my way of thought. Whether there was a moment or not, I do believe this was a gift from God. I began to notice that I had no objects of hate, and though I tried to pick out historical figures or concepts to hate, I realized there was no need to hate. Anger and hate simply kept me from growing closer to God.

Later in high school, as I became more convinced that hate was harmful to the soul, I found to my surprise, without intending it, I had befriended most of those classmates I had once considered my enemies. Thinking about my later friendships, my previous anger seems silly.

I get angry at times, but I've been making the effort to catch myself and stop myself from being caught up in anger. Anger, hatred, even if they don't lead to actions like murder, the person who bears them I believe suffers, the mind, body, and spirit become corrupted, and the sin of hate pollutes the person's relationship with God. And it is so unnecessary. At least in my life, I have found that if I seek to embrace love and reject hate, I am much happier for it, I am much more successful in life for it, and I feel closer to God.

After all, if we love God, shouldn't we love his children, who are created in his image?

Those are just some thoughts I had about this Commandment, and I thought I'd share them.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

One day I'll sit back and say Thanks for all the Birthday wishes

It being two days past my birthday the proper time has come and so I'll share a rumination with my birthday and the lovely wishes from my friends I've received.

Anywho, the random reference in the title of this note is to "Someday" by Sugar Ray

And I suppose I'm just reminded of it because of that line "Someday, when my life has passed me by/ I'll sit back and wonder why you were always there for me" - because I got to say sometimes I wonder why I got all the good friends I got. It's really very lucky, very blessed, very awesome indeed.

Now in my life I've had up and downs, and while these days are far from my lows, my life, in some respects, fall shorts of my more ambitious dreams. But what I never could have dream of, is how many good folk I have in my life and how close I hold them to my heart. And maybe someday I'll do great things, maybe someday I'll conquer the world, but it doesn't matter too much, because I got people with love in their hearts and that's just beautiful.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

I can hear music

Can you hear the whispers of music in the wind?
The air is vibrating with potential;
I feel the blood within me dart back and forth
    Like newborn tadpoles in a sun-drenched stream.

Rejoice!
Cry gladness!
And leap into the sky while laughing;

Today and now,
    All things begin anew,
    And can be done better this time;
    And can be done right this time.

For no reason
    Other than,
    This is the day the Lord has made,

Let us be glad
And rejoice.

- Rand McRanderson

Because all futures come to pass given time and space

Including more posts by me - And yet more stuff - but I plan to do more stuff but busy-ness and wierdness and craziness + zombies / doom - and so on

Because its time to turn and face the strange

Once again, much like Mr. Bowie, time is taking me through changes as one chapter of my life passes to another. And what will this one hold?

I have finished my employment at TradingMarkets, a matter which was destined to come to pass sooner or later, and to recite once again what I have told most everyone, at least it ended on good terms and I got severance. And more or less that's the sum of my feelings about the matter. I will miss the people there, but I think better opportunities lie ahead, I would have liked things to not have come so out of the blue, but on the other hand it would have been irritating if it was dragged out over a while.

My job at TradingMarkets taught me a good deal about web development and all that jazz, but perhaps more importantly it gave me some experience with dealing with the odd universe of the working world, which hopefully will get me a better handle on things when I approach my next place of employment.

Maybe the biggest lesson of my time at TradingMarkets though, was the realization that the essentials of work really hadn't changed from high school to college to employment. You work hard, play the cards you're dealt, and don't take things too seriously. Of course what that means in a particular situation differs from place to place, time to time, etc., and I'm sure that despite my experiences my next employer will have many surprises and challenges, et al. But that's life, and all and all it's not too bad.

But the future... well first let me say the present isn't looking too bad. I've got a number of projects lined up to keep me busy, plus there's job hunting itself. But beyond that, at least for the moment, I think I'll try to catch up a little on relaxation and socialization, though sooner or later, I am going to have to dive into a new job... which I think ought be all for the better.

And if it isn't, well, I've got God, family and friends, things will work out. Indeed, I have more than all I'll need for a lifetime, and so things have already worked out and I'm just watching things unfold. The future might be bright and filled with fanciness, or it might not, but that's okay, at least it'll be filled with those strange creatures called people, and that'll keep it all pretty interesting.

Christ is risen, indeed

It was the pastor of St.Paul's, Monsignor Nolan, who taught me the traditional Easter greeting and response:

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed.

I'm not sure who's tradition that was, but it's a nice one. Now lest you think I'm in some bizarre time warp and/or zone, it is in fact the day after Easter where I currently am. Still that does not change the fact that Christ rose from the dead, nor that his death and resurrection saved us all.

Sometimes when I think about that, everything else pales in comparison. Jesus' death and resurrection is a testament to God's eternal love and His sovereignty over the universe.

Historically there was a brand of thought that concluded since Jesus took away sin that all moral responsibility was abolished by Christ's resurrection. Historically most theologians laughed and giggled at such logic. After all, Christ gave us freedom, and if sin is our distance from God, we then have an option to cling to our sin. God then does not condemn us as punishment, but simply restrains Himself from stopping us when we ourselves choose the path to Hell. Least that's how I figure it

Moreover, if we love God, (and when you accept that God is eternally loving and supremely good, I think that you cannot reconcile anything less than a love for God with an acceptance of this reality), then to not try do good would be to deny our love. Christ's resurrection has freed us from sin, enabling us to love him and draw close to him with all of our hearts, minds, and souls, but in order to love God, and because of our love for God, we are compelled to strive to do His will. And this means we must take care of each other and indeed ourselves, as God loves us all.

But reflecting on the enormity of Christ's resurrection, of the culmination of the supreme miracle of Jesus' life, Passion, and death, a concept encompassing humanity, divinity, and the triumphant cross which bridged the two...it's more than the mind can wrap itself around (but there's good reason to believe that any real system of reasoning cannot fully encompass reality, after all the universe is infinite, and our minds are not).

Thinking about the miracle of Easter, which is not a task simply confined to one day or one week or one season... but though the compulsion to do good remains because of our love of God, the compulsion to fear evil seems a bit silly. It is a silliness that we all fall victim to on occasion, but even the fears and anxieties surrounding that failure seem insignificant compared to God's love, which bears all the burdens of our sins and redeems us, which forgives any slight and turns all things to good, which raises us from the dead and grants eternal life.

Jesus Christ, who is God, came down from Heaven and became man. He bore the cross, for the sake of our sins and not his, and was crucified and three days later He rose from the dead. He conquered death and gave life eternal to all. If we trust in Him then what can this world do to us? How can even our baser instincts and frailties prevail if He is with us, now and until the end of time. (and beyond maybe, if that concept makes any sense. I'll admit, when I go off into the realms of theology, mysticism and metaphysics, I often am in unfamiliar territory. But if I can draw upon the guidance and advice of those I trust, love and believe in, it seems like a good gamble. After all, what is life but an experience of mystery and is not Love the answer to all things?)

Let me not pretend that I am some special wise man, let me not pretend that I am the bearer of some secret. I have suffered in my life, but others have suffered more. I have faith, but I know others with far more. I am certainly nothing compared to God, and compared to man... how should I know? and fortunately it is not my place to judge such rankings.

Yet I believe God loves me with a unique, perfect Love, which I cannot match but will spend my life trying to further experience and return. And I believe that God loves each of you, uniquely, passionately, and infinitely. And I believe if I just trust in that love, everything will be alright and when I fail to trust sufficiently, when I despair or harden my heart, I believe that God will still be reaching out to me and I trust that He will save me.

That I could have more faith, that I could have more understanding, that I could have more compassion or more strength of will... but it's okay. God remains and will take care of us all. Christ is triumphant and will redeem us. We don't need to fear. God is with us, always, and forever.

May God Bless you all, and happy day after Easter

The wizard will wait

What does that mean?

I dunno, something.

And if that aimless beginning implies a certain aimless-ness of my life of late, then it may very well be true. But then again, all aims have their seasons.

In actuality little of my ambition has been lost, perhaps just buried for a moment here and there, covered over by some disappointment and miscalculation.

Ah, miscalculation, and that perhaps is the rub, for so much easier and indeed more successful would my ventures be without calculation, but the requirements of pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, the limits of which are my death, does require a bit of skill and cleverness.

And a bit of a gamble. So I calculate. So I lie. So I pretend and dabble and fail and fumble, but then again... As a priest pointed out at my last Confession, I am too hard on myself. Yes I do need motivation, but I'm trying, I'm striving, and if I don't always succeed...

Ah well, all of this rumbling does not solve my problems, of which there aren't any... well not really, nothing urgent, nothing pressing, hence the aimless-ness. In this sort of uncomfortable haze of a life, relying not on the thrill (because life does go on without it) of life but rather the inertia... it's easy... and that I'm trying to get free (perhaps the solution is that I need to get out of California, except I'm in New Jersey), well that's something.

Still, I'd like something more to come from my life, and in response to that I think I ought have faith in He who I love above all else, and in Him is the hope of all possibilities, of striving toward all goodness, and finding it in His Infinite Love.

God's Love, it's just so beautiful.

So what am I complaining about... really I mean come on! I have God with me, always, forever, what more can I ask for, what more do I need? And if the road is tough, perhaps it is just tough to bring me closer to He who shouldered the Cross on a very tough road, and if I fall sometimes, perhaps it is just so I have the honor of Him picking me up. And the Lord remains always.

And so, even in the cold midnight, it's still a beautiful day.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Ken Turan, Roger Ebert and the incredible shrinking teamster

I've come to like twitter. I have little confidence in its long-term survival, but I like it. And hence I sometimes read the stuff of the people I follow, and sometimes I go along with the links they post and happen upon finding myself in an interesting article. And so it happened with Roger Ebert's twitter feed, and so I must thank him for this link to this article.

The article is While high school literary magazines are a bit removed from national film criticism, this essay brings to mind my days as an editor for the Ivy. For the first 2-3 years I was there, we followed a rule of whiting out the name of whatever piece we were reviewing. But then one year, perhaps we were just lazy, perhaps we were too smug in assuming of course we knew what was good, despite any personal feelings, perhaps we were just too informal and inattentive, but for some reason we stopped whiting out the names. The odd thing was we didn't end up favoring our friends much (maybe a few cases), mostly though we became more dismissive of people who weren't our friends.

But actually, thinking upon it more, it wasn't really a matter of who was our friends. It was more the case that we were dismissive of people didn't have an artistic reputation. I suppose the real reason not to review friends in our case was not so much that we might champion our friends, as that we became confident that we knew the scene and knew who deserved to be featured from it.

Film reviewers don't really have the option of whiting out the name. While no reviewing friends helps, just knowing who made what, affects the criticism, but on the other hand, deep analytical criticism often focuses on the filmmaker more than the film at hand, and sometimes part of the experience of the film rests in its context, including the context of who the filmmaker is. Most importantly though, film reviewers review famous things and even if they try to avoid it, they will inevitably hear from everyone who is in anything.

But perhaps the solution is thus, and this is an approach I try to practice when looking at films. Treat the film makers as abstractions, as phenomena, not as real human beings. Of course, you can analyze them as examples of human beings making films, but treat them as if they were not real, as if they were a legend, or better yet, a story unfolding in front of you. Indeed treat the entire film scene and history like that. I could go as far to say life... but I won't. Here's the reason I won't, life is something to be engaged in, to revel in, now analysis is part of that process of revelling, but it requires a particular focus to analyze something.

By focus I mean, you cannot analyze something and include everything that ever touched it in the analysis. Because, you as the observer are also touched by it and maybe you can appreciate that on an instinctual level, and maybe you can summarize it, but can you capture the whole of your experience with the object of your analysis? Say a film for example, can you really capture every aspect of how you viewed it, especially since how you experienced the film is intertwined with who you are and what your life has been, can you capture it all?

But if you start talking about the film as something real, something visceral, there's a subtext to it all, where you say "This is how I viewed it as me". And what does that give to anyone else who reads it? Since you cannot communicate the entirety of yourself, but your writing is soaked in the particularities of your experience, you leave the reader befuddled.

That is not to say do not make the writing personal, but rather make it personal in a particular way. Confine the personalness, to this or that aspect of your life. And try to detach the rest of your life from the writing. Now that's an impossible goal, but you try, and you might find your writing becomes more than just words but actual communication.

To get back to what I was saying about film criticism. The film critic cannot explain all of who he is in a citical essay, and if he views the film a real work that has lives and history and everything attached to it, then all his feelings about lives and history and everything, and really everything, becomes the subject of the essay. Usually that ends up at best a beautiful mess, and at worse an ugly one. So a degree of focus must be made, the film becomes an abstraction, and indeed the writer becomes an abstraction to himself, so that this particular aspect of the film and the writer's experience with the film can be detached and put on paper. And that is an impossible task but it's made harder when your personal ties to the film are dear ones. And yet...

Is it possible to communicate without that filtering, by just pouring everything out there? I'd say probably not. But perhaps if you're lucky, talented, or the medium suits you perfectly, you get the miraculous situation where pouring out everything is filtered just by the where, when, and how of your art, and thus despite the uniquely personal chaos of your thoughts, something to a greater or lesser extent universal comes out, or at least something shared by a few people.

The article that prompted all of this, is about a film review by LA Times film cricket Kenneth Turan where he breaks his own rule and reviews his friend's work. And does it create the beautiful mess that I implied would come?

No, but that's because the article by Kenneth Turan is not really about the film (it does contain maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs giving a brief ho-hum recommendation which sounds generally like a famous person recommending a friend's film with a touch of earnestness), rather it's about Kenneth Turan and the writing process. And here Mr. Turan does seem to abstract himself to a degree carving out a moment in his life, his writing of his review, and in reviewing himself, if not the film in question, he makes a fine essay.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

How did I get here? Really, how? Who and why as well

And the days go by and the water flowing underground...

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

And if you'd like to make sure that it's all the same as it ever was, here's the lyrics

But damn... it's weird... I really don't think I was going to be here. In fact, in high school I considered myself distinctly un-technical and was somewhat proud for bucking the Indian computer whiz stereotype (But then I decided to buy a stereo...). On the other hand my oldest brother's a tech whiz and I took a bunch of comp-sci classes and I also was involved with the Computer Club (which I tried to steer into a creating sentient artificial intelligence direction, but they said it was "unrealistic" and "delusional").

Still the comp-sci-y part of me always seemed a little less than the other parts and that my career would take me...

But what is a career? (let's look at webster..., though dude Webster, shiny-ness does not excuse a website so crowded with slow running js that it's barely usable (yeah I'm looking at you Mashable))

In a lot of ways, who I am, highly religious, writer-ly, and overall a jack-of-all-trades, hasn't changed much from my days as a 5-year old... but damn...

I guess a lot of my amazement at who I am now comes from 3 things:

1. I went through a period where any prospect of the future seemed unrealistic since I thought death was imminent
2. On occasion my imagination runs away with my ambition (but they never actually elope! I mean really!) and I have dreams of myself as widely read and respected and yet only a tiny bit older, if not younger
3. Perhaps most importantly of all, it's the gestalt of it all. Even if I might imagine a bit of myself here or there, to imagine the whole of my being... can I even conceive of it? (I'm pretty sure actually that I can't).

But while there's certain romantics to my surprise, a greater significance maybe the lesson learned. That is to say, if I did not predict who I am now, will I be able to know what I will become. And thus "How did I get here?" begets "Where am I going?"

But actually I know the answer to that...

I'm going to see the King

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks.

Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.