Psycho

You should try listening to some really intense instrumental music whenever you next post to your blog. Right now, I'm listening to the theme song to "Psycho," starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and it is hilarious. I keep bobbing my head from side to side, and picture myself driving alone with some scary police car following me. And my eyes stare into the movie camera---penetrated, focussed, and frightened.

It doesn't do wonders for inspiring good thoughts worth reading on a blog though. Oh well, songs over. Happy hump day.

There's something to be said for the day or moment or second you finally realize your walk is not matching your talk. The time when everything and everyone gets to look at you---the real you---and see that your shortcomings and mistakes are, in a word, hypocritical. I know we all have many times in our lives where these times come up but how often is the evidence so blatantly contrary to how we say we live? How often does the evidence make our insides turn, our minds cramp up, and our heart sink and sink and sink?

I had one of these surreal moments this past weekend. The ones you tell yourself you will never have, because you are a good Christian. A good, balanced Christian. But I guess even Christians should never say never. Because when you do, you find yourself doing exactly what you told yourself you would never do. After this whole escapade occurred, the smell of justice was in the air and my name was up. And then I finally got what my self-righteous attitude had coming to it: a wake-up-and-smell-the-reality check.

And for the first time in my life, I woke up from a night of drinking---way too much, of course---and realized I had puked somewhere between the time of getting undressed for bed and the time I lay sloshed and sound asleep, on top of my blankets. And then I saw the trash can sitting next to my bed I did not put there, and the towel under my face hiding the puke I evidently spew up hours earlier that I also did not put there. Which was enough evidence to make me think: one of my friends did this for me and so, they know!! They know how pitiful and ridiculous and pathetic I looked at 3 a.m. lying fast asleep, unconsciously munching on bits of vomit spattered all over my pillow. I became the evidence that my words could not hide over anymore, and it felt unnervingly shameful.

But I guess we all need these moments that remind us again of how fallible we are. We need to be told again and again that 'yes, you are imperfect and you still make mistakes and you still are failing to live up to what you speak.' But it sure is difficult facing this fact. Especially when you're the one everyone's looking at. Like a dried up french fry you find under your car seat looking undesirable and cold and just plain pitiful, I felt like I was even smaller than this.

And so, to reach a new level in how-small-can-I-be, I decided to write you all this and confess via the blog world of just how stupid and selfish I really can be.

Even in China.

Blogger is so much better than Xanga.

It feels good to be back. Even if no one is out there, it's nice to hear and see my voice illuminated by the blogger template rather than the annoying xanga one. Although I will try to keep up with xanga blogs I like to read, I don't know how well I'll do with keeping up at posting there now that I can post here instead.

Happy Weekend. Bye.

I think I finally realized and put into words what relationship I have with the Bible. I know that sounds weird to just come out and say, but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and it has really been bugging me.

Part of me loves it, part of me hates it. Does this make sense?

Whenever I read something beautiful in it, I underline, I say 'yes,' I am personally reaffirmed of the faith I cling to and claim to be apart of. However there are those moments when I find myself hating it. I hate the way it looks at me sitting on my nightstand. I hate how when sometimes I read it, I want to run away from my conscience after finishing a certain sentence. I hate it for the way it makes me feel sometimes inside, even though most of the time, this is a good way of helping me grow.

But ironically (or paradoxically) I think what I hate the most (and have come to love the most too...if you give me a long enough time) are those times when the words sting so close to home and scrape so sharply at my own life. The moments when I read and can hear the ringing 'this is for you' in my head and heart. I can hear my body ache because of it.

And this may not be pretty and it may make me sound like a looney boy, but I don't mind it really. It's what I've come to accept as me, living the paradox, and its best if I stop pretending it's something that it really is not.

I miss the blogger blogs I used to read.

So Nate, and Chalupa, and Liz....well....I guess you three were my favorite ones (now that Tara has joined xanga:), I hope you can email me your posts or do something so that I can read what is going on in your life.

It sucks not being able to read them here.

The Xanga alternative

Because blogger is hard to post to while in China and even harder to read other blogs from here (I haven't been able to access one blogspot blog while over here---ugh!) I've decided to cave in and write on a xanga blog while in China.

Even though I'll try to keep writing on this one whenever I feel like writing to a different audience, I think that one will be easier to post to. So all your blogspot people, please know that I am still one of you...I just must avert to xanga for a few months.

Here is the web site address:
http://www.xanga.com/nevillekiser

My first day of teaching in China

Last night, I didn't think I was teaching until a week from today. But China had other plans.

At 9:00 a.m. this morning, I awoke to the sound of knocking on wood and soon realized there was someone at my door. It was one of the Chinese teachers and she had my schedule for this week of teaching (not next week). On the contrary, I was teaching this week. In fact, I was starting this afternoon (yes, that means 5 hours from now...I told myself). Did they just forget to tell me this? None of the other American teachers are teaching today or this week!

Oops. Oh well.

Of course I wasn't mad, only a little shocked. But then that wore off and I got excited. Two two-hour classes in the afternoon of sophomore english majors is not a bad thing at all for a Monday, and so, I think---looking back on it---it was a pretty wonderful day.

I learned that in China, students will not leave the classroom---even after the teacher has dismissed them---until the teacher leaves first. So when I dismissed my first class and they all sat staring at me as I put away my things near the front of the room, I felt like I was grabbing one two many cookies out of the hidden cookie jar. Everyone was looking up at me...smiling...and so, I reassured them: "You are free to go! Class is dismissed." One girl picked up her purse and pulled out her cell phone. I think she knew deep down how stupid I was.

And then of course, in the next class I somehow found myself singing the chorus to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly." Don't ask me how my students got me to do that, but in the first week of classes at any college---with all the lame introductions and 'my name is' ice-breaker games---something like this is inevitable. And then there was the moment when one student asked, "Do you think you are handsome?" and another asked, "Do you like yourself?" Yes, these questions threw me because they tend to only come up between friends (if ever at all). But I just kept wondering why these two kids weren't psychology majors instead. I mean, come on---what kind of personal, prone-to-self-destruct question is that?

When the second class ended, the sore throat from talking slow slow slow english had went from marginal to a scratchy dry high kind of pain. But despite this, I still couldn't help from smiling. Walking out of the class room with Chinese faces gleaming and smiling at you, and giggles and hand-to-mouth laughs constantly overtaking the entire room made me wonder why I didn't come to teach english in China sooner.

China at last!

I have only 2 minutes to write but I wanted to say that I think I found my new home.

I'm trying to find something I don't like about China and so far, nothing comes to mind. We're off to Beijing in a few minutes---taking the train up there for a few days---but I'll be back soon as I now am connected to the internet from my room.

At last, again...I feel as though I have a pulse. It's almost sick to realize how dependent we Americans are on the internet.

10.5 hours 'till departure

I love China already and I'm not even on the plane yet.

Can you tell I'm excited? Well, I am. I'm smiling right now actually! Seriously. I am.

Blake and Annilee's 60th anniversary was a success! A weekend filled with West Virginia oddities, found in the small town between Ripley and Charleston, I was amazed at how much L.A. already has tainted my view of the rest of small-town America. It's getting harder not to see the very scary side of small towns (i.e., the pride in one's own ignorance) and so, I've resorted to not speaking or making any comments whenever such thoughts come to mind.

Among other things, I read the most daring and provocative and depressing book I've read in a long time over this past weekend: "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim. I don't recommend it to the masses...only to those of you who saw "Irreversible" and "Requiem for a Dream" and thought it was "nice."

Only a few more hours of packing, and my road to China will begin. First start? Interstate 94 West toward Chicago.

All the way from Harlem

"I loved my friend
He went away from me
There is nothing more to say
This poem ends as softly as it began
I loved my friend." -Langston Hughes

I think this is the first time ever I've left on my last day of working at any particular job while almost crying in the middle of the employee parking lot.

Maybe it's due to China. Maybe it's due to the pictures I see with co-workers, wrapped up in giggles and oversized grins, reflecting the inner child inside of us all. Maybe that's why it's so hard not to cry.

Smashed

Maybe I haven't let the book fully set in yet, but after recently finishing "Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood" by Koren Zailckas, I thought 'people need to read this book.'

Not because it paints a frightening picture by juxtaposing alcohol up against other "more harmful" addictive substances. Not because it will probably fuel the paraonia already in most parents minds when it comes to wonderfing if their teenagers or college-agers still living at home are closet drunks. No, this book should be read for the very reason Zailckas writes in her introduction that she wrote the book: for the utter commonness of her own story. There is nothing terribly extreme or extravagent about Zailckas' experiences, but at the same time, her experiences are as harrowing sometimes as the darkest parts found within and beneath all of us. It's as if she's hitting the world (America in particular) over the head and going, "this happens all the time...why!?" Why is drinking part of what it means to be an American teen? Why is it that at age 21, it's expected that you get smashed and people look at you in almost shock and disgust when they hear you don't? What's wrong when someone is always asked for a reason they're NOT drinking, instead of those who do drink excessively in social situations? I'm all for drinking--believe me. I drink on occassion with friends, but these questions and so many more that Zailckas raised to the surface got me wondering 'what does drinking do to one's identity or more importantly, one's self-concept?' Especially when a kid starts at age 14, like Koren Zailckas did.

Even though the book runs a tad long, it sill reads (most of the time) like a fast-paced fiction novel---building up tension, heightening awareness, and brimming with greater and deeper insights the more pages you jumble through. And to top it all off, Zailckas never falls into the trap of self-deprecating writing. She manages to entertain, inspire, and tickle the annoying hairs on the back of your neck enough to keep you smiling, chuckling and shaking your head in awe throughout the book. So read it...and see for yourself.

14 days

14 days from today, I'll be on my way to China. I feel like a two-year old whenever I've tried recently to express how happy and excited I am to people about this trip, so we'll just leave it at that.

In light of my upcoming trip to China, the floor at the hospital where I work at decided to throw another "Neville Day." That is the name that someone came up with months ago and it just so happen to stick. So, for the past week everyone has been asking when "Neville Day" is. It's pretty ridiculous, yes, but it's good to see so many employees get so excited over a potcluck party that makes it okay to eat three kinds of chocolate cake in one setting. Carol, one of those huggable nurses that just can't figure out when to quit beating a dead horse, was frolicking up and down the halls all morning awaiting the noon-time splurge fest of chocolate, chocolate syrup, chip dip, hot dogs, and diet pepsi.

"Are you ready honey?" She asks me whenever she passes me in the hall. Her face can barely bottle up all the joy.

"I'm gettin' there!" I'd say.

Once the "Neville Day" potluck party began, Carol was nearly bouncing of the walls as others decided to throw some hot dogs on the George Foreman grill. At the sight of this, Carol exclaimed "Make sure you brown them really good! I like my weiners brown!" and then laughed uncontrollably, as if she was in third grade and had just told the naughtiest joke to her best girlfriend. And then, she danced the waltz out of the break room to get some more ice for the diet pop. Everyone else just kept asking if she was drunk.

Once the party was well underway, Carol admitted to sucking down three cups of coffee a couple of hours before noon. This, a co-worker named Flo informed me, is "all she needs to get going. Once she's gone there ain't no stopping her no more." And this is part of why I love working at the hospital. People eat a little too much sugar, perform a little too many blood withdrawls, and start one too many IV pumps before going sailing into a mental state of euphoric oblivion. And of course, everyone merely shrugs and accepts this as normal behavior. After all, if there's one thing you learn after working at a hospital it's this: vocational norms and public displays of indecency don't exist.

For a change, weddings this summer have been my beacons for worship. Normally this isn't the case (at least, not in my experience). All too often, they are cheapened down ceremonies of people's so-called "loves" finding each other with little or no accountability from family, friends, God, or the Church. Obviously, I'm not talking about people's lack of reverence for sacred spaces (because I'm not sure if that should even be a priority) but moreso I'm talking about the attitudes, motives, intentions, and thoughts found inside most of the people gathering around the wedding altar. But this is not the way it was meant to be. This is not what happens when the full spectrums of joy and pain, love and hate, cruelty and forgiveness come together under the recognized and received grace of God. What happens when we enter into this grace (or rather, receive and accept that it is already there and realize how we can do nothing without it) is how every wedding I attended this summer mirrored so beautifully.

Instead of splintered communions between strained faiths or no faiths at all, there was love. Instead of sharing a meal with a total stranger being as agonizing as getting fillings at the dentist, there was peace. And instead of self-centered receipients in attendence, there truly seemed to be the Holy Spirit dancing between the bride and groom.

It's no wonder then that at each one of these joyous occassions, I found myself soaring like a baby bird flying successfully for the first time. I found myself meeting and making new friends---not ones to be easily forgotten but to be quickly cherished. And now, I thank God for it all.

Take heart, and expire.

Due to confidentiality rights of patients, all people in the medical field are trained to speak in code. There is a symbol for everything, an acronym for every position placed properly within the hospital hierarchy, and every person/patient is reduced to a number (i.e., if you want to talk about Mrs. Roberts, please simply refer to her as "345 Bed 1"....OR if you want to talk about her roommate Miss Smith, simply say "345 Bed 2" seeing how she has a window bed).

And another issue that cannot be talked specifically about in hospitals? Death.

As absurd to me as this seems (after all, we all are going to die) employees are trained not to talk about patients potentially dying. Even though it is a hospital and it seems this would be the safest place (if any) to talk about such a thing (i.e., I realize saying things like "she is dying" or "he only has 2 more hours to live" may seem out of place and a bit creepy for say, a high school locker room discussion or a grocery store checkout lane but at a hospital? Can't this be a safe place, if there ever should be a safe place, to talk about death?

I'm not advocating momentary morbid conversations all day long, plus the weekends. I'm simply wondering 'why' we westerners think we must be so "proper" and "professional" and "reserved" and "calm" and "collected" and "put together" when it comes to the subject of death?

All this to say, today I overheard one nurse tell another nurse "285 Bed 1 has expired." Which in farmer talk means "the milk has gone sour." However, in hostpital talk it means a "this person has died." As soon as I heard this while walking by, I stopped, looked at the nurse and then walked on. I don't think I like the idea of referring to people as if they're all gallons of milk just waiting to be thrown out. I don't necessarily think it's healthy to be reduced to a number and treated as if you're the one product that just didn't make it into the big supermarket aisle display this Easter season.

But alas, I have no alternative language code or system to offer the medical field so maybe I should just shut up. Maybe I should be walking around room-to-room while working at the hospital, labeling patient's foreheads with my human-expiration/death-date stamp. "Oh I'm sorry 265 Bed 1, but you're probably going to expire tomorrow so please---eat your over salted pieces of bacon and try not to think about it."

Karl Barth is sooooo smart.

How does one reconnect with God? How can we reverse the flow, and go against the way we were born into this world? Were we crying when we came into this world because we knew---ever so clearly and simply---what it feels like to be separated (in some sense) from God's heart?

Conversations lately have been wild, as I feel almost embarassed at how blunt and obvious so many people in my life have been when it comes to approaching me about my own faith. Case in point: today at work, one of the receptionist ladies who answer phones, do patient charting, and a host of other things, asked me "tell me what was the best single thing you learned while at school/seminary last year?" Now, understand this: up until this point, the most contact I've had with this woman is a fair 'hello' exchange from time to time. But here she is, asking me the most radical thing I learned last year at seminary and wouldn't you know I had to think for five minutes before even answering. My response, now looking back, wasn't so great even though she seem to accept it as legitimate and marginally profound. And now that I think back again, I wonder why I didn't steal from the great theologian Karl Barth when giving my response. Because after decades of theological research and intense epistemological debates and creation/evolution talks, and liberal/conservative protestant discussions, he was asked what (out of it all) was the greatest thing he came to know.

"The greatest thing that I've ever learned and known is that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Sometimes I need to be just taken back to square one and remember who it is I'm actually living for. Yes, Jesus loves me...and Jesus even likes me (something Brennan Manning taught me to accept) and this I've come to know and love and cherish and cling to when I'm feeling alone and depressed, and depend on when I don't know where to go or who to turn to. It is the "it" in the gospel that blows me to pieces. It is in the form of grace and yet still, it hits me almost every time.

U2

I have a new favorite U2 song: "So Cruel" from their Achtung Baby album. Oh my! I've heard this song before but this is the first time I heard it and felt like I got it! And ironically, it was playing on the radio last Saturday night after talking to my childhood best friend from third grade for 2 hours.

Thank you again Tara for allowing me to see the light, again and again.

Welcome Home

South Carolina is just as beautiful as I remember it, and coming back for a wedding of one of my beloved childhood friends has been the thing I needed to do. Running into old faces, and friends I used to ride bikes to swim practice with, and my best friend from 3rd and 4th grade who I haven't seen since my family moved away from South Carolina, almost 13 years ago...has all been nostalgic to say the least. It's been like one of my favorite movies "About Schmidt," as the melancholy feelings and bittersweet recollected memories parade around in front of me in the form of ticking clock. I know I'm getting older, every day, every hour, every time the sun goes down below the trees. I realize this is happening but I don't think I'm comprehending it. I think most of the time, I like to live as if it's not happening. And although I don't think it's possible to live always aware of our finitude and of our own everyday reality, I do think it's possible to at least try.

Whirlwinds

Tody is one that is flying---by both bad and good winds---and I can't seem to figure out what the heck is even going on! Work was a blur. And I realize when I say that, I sound like Lindsay Lohan from "Mean Girls," but it was. I left it going, "what in the world just happened today?" Everyone's temperature seemed to be boiling at both ends of the spectrum---one minute people were laughing and giggling, the next they were in fits of rage or squabbles of tears. What is going on here!?!

I know people bring their home to work and vice versa. I realize that amongst me at work there are nurses working who have husbands that beat them, and there are those of us who are extremely lonely and confused, and there are others who continually find themselves living in fear, in anger, or in a state of being where nothing makes sense---at all. I realize we all bring our own worlds to the big world of work and we all attempt to continually throw bits and pieces of our worlds into the wide open melting pot. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised at days like today. And maybe you're reading this and wondering what the heck it is I'm really talking about.

It's so hard to explain really, but I"ll try in one sentence. You ever have the kind of day where near strangers began to ask you about the ultimate questions of existence, where persons are opening up to you about serious personal issues they have at home, where another woman seeks out your advice on whether or not it's "okay" for her to be a lesbian, and where in the midst of it all, you're constantly being torn between the thought of doing the work you're at work to do, and doing the kind of human work you know deep down really needs to be done?

Well, if you get that you know what kind of day I had. Not bad, not necessarily good---just befuddling and confusing and fascinating, all at once.

Gay marriage, Abortion, and Enron.

Maybe I'm so far off it's not even funny or maybe I'm just angry and wanting to think outside the Christan norm...but a discussion with my small group tonight made me think about this central question: is the Church apart of the the main "battle" going on in the world today?

Of course, it's hard to read such a question without hardly any context but immediately I thought 'no...it isn't!' Even though I generally frown upon such language (i.e., "we've got a battle to fight today, and the Church must fight back!") I understood the question and still found myself disagreeing. Consider the past presidential election for instance.

Were the two main issues (gay marriage and abortion) evangelical Christians rallied behind really the ones central to the global Church's concerns at large? Meaning, were these issues the main battle going on in the world today? Were these the biggest hindrances to people coming to Christ? Or coming to God?

Once again---like in the good ole' scary Bible times---people who know very little about God and don't even pretend to call themselves Christians generally seem to be the ones fighting for justice, for peace, for love. So when the Enron scandal came out, how did the Church respond? Did it speak vehemently and passionately against this corporate scandal of injustice, lying, cheating and stealing, like it did when it spoke about abortion and gay marriage? Or was it merely just another story of man wanting too much money and the Church believing that there were other more pressing issues out there? Could it be possible that maybe, the Church missed the boat---again!?

In the New Testament, it's no surprise to the average person that Jesus addressed the problem of greed and the love for money as the single greatest threat to knowing Christ. Yet, when was the last time you heard a sermon on America's equating salvation with earning more money? When did the Church last picket corporate criminals who steal from middle and low income familes just so they can take another week of vacation in a year?

Somehow, most of us Christians (including myself), don't seem to be too concerned with that whole "sell everything you own and follow me," command that Jesus gave. No, we're on America's side for the most part. After all, how dare we question this Christian nation's values? How dare we suspect that the things that America holds to be its dream is not at all what we Christians should be living or dreaming for?!

Elliot Fox Hoeflinger

I finally got to meet and see my beloved godson Elliot Fox Hoeflinger, and he is just as beautiful and wonderful and near-perfect as I imagined. Seeing Dave and Lindsay (his parents) was a blessing in and of itself, but Elliot added a little extra bit of wonder to the evening. I hope someday I can be like my friend Dave Hoe...not just because he's cooler than I'll ever be but because he really is (and tonight, watching him with Elliot and Lindsay and in just about everything) I saw the selfless, love-filled Dave Hoe I remember from Taylor freshmen year.

In other news (as if some of my friends confirming of this thing wasn't enough) I've finally come to terms with something about myself: I'm not a cynic, despite always saying "maybe I'm a cynic" in every other post. No, I'm an idealist. So whenever something coming from me sounds purely cynical, know it's really just my idealistic mind meeting up with my idealistic heart in order to construct an idealistic world.

Failing the Test: The Story of Abraham and Isaac

Recently, I've been thinking about something I read in a Madeleine L'Engle book ("The Rock That is Higher") more than a year ago that until now had dismissed as just merely something I didn't believe. The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most common ones to the Christian Orthodox and Jewish traditions, and rightfully so. Having to sacrifice your son is never something I'd like to be challenged to do in the future, and so, I used to not feel any connection to Abraham and the entire story surrounding God's request that he should sacrifice his son.

But then, it came up somewhere else---in another book---and I decided to revisit the story again and see if I really agreed with the "new interpretation" that was out there in so many Christian scholar circles today, on this particular story.

Simply put, many Christian and Jewish scholars today are saying (what Madeleine wrote over 10 years ago about) that perhaps Abraham actually failed the test yet God honored and fulfilled his promise to him anyways. Yes that's right...you heard what I said: Abraham failed the test and God intervened just before his son was to be killed.

If you read more closely and you seek out the character of God more thoroughly in the Old and New Testament, it seems very against God's nature to request such a thing. I know, I know...many of you are saying, "But he was only testing Abraham---to see if he really feared God, and loved God more than anything." But I'm thinking more now, "Was he?" It seems this tenth test of Abraham was really a test of whether he would choose law over love. And sadly, instead of choosing love Abraham chose law, and didn't even go as far as to question God's motive on the matter. Was Abraham simply obeying or is there such a thing as discernable obedience? Why didn't he question God who had called him to keep his commandments (which how could he forget, included "Do not murder") when God was asking him to violate one of these commandments? All throughout the Old Testament it seems Abraham and so many others wrestled with God and argued with Him whenever He would ask something shady or unreasonable of someone. I mean come on, God changed his mind a number of times because of people like Abraham who wrestled and duked it out in the relational life pool of ideas with God. Is it ironic or mere coincidence that Jacob, the man who wrestled with God is whom Israel is named after? God's chosen people's very name suggests the fact that they "wrestle," and yet, Abraham (this time around) doesn't do anything of the sort! Something is seriously messed up here, isn't it?

Perhaps I'm merely trying to understand the infinite too hard with my finite brain. Perhaps I really don't understand this kind of God---a God that would ask me to murder someone I loved so dearly. After all, if this happened today would not 99% of Christians be telling the Abrahams out there, "That is not God telling you to kill your son! That's someone else! Don't listen!"

From my perspective so far, it seems that you don't have to change a lick of scripture to come up with this interpretation of the story. It seems that Abraham could've seemingly failed the test, but yet, by God's grace was given what was promised to Him anyways. And if I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that be more in line with the God we Christians proclaim to serve? Wouldn't this interpretation make more sense when it comes to years and years later and Jesus is about to be crucified, and it is uttered (and compared) "Are you sons of Abraham or sons of God?" Or metaphorically speaking, do you live for the law or live for love?

I'm still thinking on this a great deal, but when I read this again recently and did some more research on it, I came to see it as a much more freeing and grace-filled interpretation of a sacred story that's been agonized and studied over year after year for thousands of years. I'm gonna keep searching, but for now this is just another thing in my life in which God's grace grows and my need for mercy extends even greater.

Behind the Times

I just saw the music video for the song by Beck entitled "Dead Weight," and although it's almost a decade old, am I so lame of a person to want to have it and listen to it now again and again? I know great songs can be enjoyed whenever but it always seems like that when it comes to the music world, I'm years and yeard behind the rest of the world.

But at least I enjoy it still even though most people would simply scoff and say, "Oh my gosh! That song came out like last summer! It's so old!" To which I always smile and say, "I know....but I really love the old songs! What can I say?"