Last night Joyouswind asked us about The Most Wretched Sound.

It was a good post with some neat responses.  However, I feel it needs a different approach.  Therefore I give you a few of the most beautiful as I hear them.


Helicopter in flight


Airplane engines (jet, turboprop, piston, it doesn't matter)

What do you think are the most beautiful sounds?

This morning I drove down to the new location of the church that I left back in January.  They just moved into this new location a couple weeks ago so I hadn't yet seen the finished product.  I might have just let my interest in what the finished product would wind up looking like fester but I'd been hearing about how great and beautiful it was so my curiousity grew and I had to see for myself (I wasn't finding many pictures online).

I wasn't impressed.

Parts of it looked like a warehouse and other parts of it looked like they were trying for a mountain lodge type atmosphere, while still other parts looked like they were trying to combine art deco and modern and post-modern stylings all in one place.  All of that in only in the large open atrium area right inside the front doors of the building.  It doesn't look too bad as long as you don't look at too much of the space at once.  Also, once you've been in there for a while you begin to get used to it and it sort of works.  So really, after the horrible first impression, it isn't too bad, though I wouldn't say that it ever became good in the hour or so that I was there.  It might have helped if I'd had some better understanding of what they were trying to do with the space as my confusion about that was influencing the rest of my perception.

I didn't get too much of an idea about the auditorium space since there was a service in progress and it was pretty dimly lit and somewhat crowded.  I will say though that it didn't appear to be any bigger than the auditorium at the old location, though I'm sure that will change they do phase 2 of the construction (its supposed to anyway).

I was also struck by how out of the way and hidden the church office is.  The idea of setting things up so that you have to go in the front doors and then around a corner, around an obstruction, into a hallway, through a door, around another corner and then through another door to get to the church offices just doesn't make any sense to me.  I'm sure that setup works great for much of the staff as they write sermons or do paperwork or whatever else they do that doesn't involve actually interacting with people.  I'm also sure that the path to the offices won't seem like much once you've walked it a few times.  However, I can fully see someone stopping in there during the week to drop something off or to meet with a staffer or just to get information about the church and then wandering around for a while until someone sees them and can guide them to their destination.  The guy who was giving me my tour of the facility (maintenance guy) said much the same thing himself about the office setup.

I don't understand why conservatives and Republicans are excited about the results of the elections in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday.  It is not in any way a resounding denunciation of Obama and his policies or a rallying victory for conservatism.  Even if the two winners had run solely on platforms of being an anti-Obama and won 80% of the vote it would still be nothing more than evidence of a dislike Obama by motivated voters in two states.  I have to believe that there was something more to the campaign of the two winners than just ranting against Obama.  Still it could have just been a dislike of eccentricities or something of the opponents in the races.

In short there are two many variable affecting any single election for it to have any significant meaning.  If you want to achieve real meaning, or likely meaning, you need to have numerous races spread over a large area.

As for the idea that it will give pause to Obama and Congressional Democratic leadership.  Well, I suppose this is possible.  However, I don't buy it because I don't see much to indicate that any of them have any respect for the voters except when they're campaigning when they pretend to care about the voters.  As for the idea that it will cut into the willingness of moderate Democrats to support bailouts and government takeovers of health care, I think this is possible but not something to bet on.  I believe that it is the like of Obama and Reid and Pelosi that are the driving force behind the Democratic Party and that they will happily cut all party support for politicians who do not follow orders and vote as they're told to vote.

I also believe that this will lead to further fraud or attempted fraud and belligerence and rapid fire legislation operations in the years to come.