And now for something slightly more highbrow.

I find it really interesting that Christianity, which has probably caused more bloodshed than all other religions combined, has also produced some of the most beautiful and powerful music ever written.
It's a little disheartening, really. Even today, the best music seems to be religiously inspired. John Rutter's Requiem, written in the 1980s? Gorgeous. "Chansons," a secular piece written in 2000 that my high school choir had to sing, containing the line "We question not the impulse to give tongue"? Not so much.
So I've been listening to a lot of Requiems lately, with the ultimate intent of writing one. Or rather, I want to do what Mozart, Verdi, Brahms, Berlioz, Faure and all the others did when writing their Requiems. They took this simple yet powerful text and set it to music that reflected their personal feelings about life, death, hope, faith, and just about everything else. I've got a couple sketches right now but I get really intimidated when I listen to Mozart's "Lacrymosa," or, a recent favorite, Berlioz's "Dies Irae," which starts off with a chant and builds up to a thundering "Tuba Mirum" requiring several brass ensembles and about a million timpanies. The ultimate effect is kind of like listening to someone shouting affirmations at the top of his lungs, standing in the middle of an avalanche.
A little preemptive defensiveness: if you haven't listened to any of the above mentioned music, you have absolutely no right to call me a geek. Listen to a Requiem or two, and if you can pick your jaw up off the floor for long enough to insult me, you'll have earned that right.
And hey, I wrote about the Ying Yang Twins last time. How un-highbrow is that?