Friday,
December
19th, 2003
3:36 p.m.
Well, this is my last day of posting for the next three
weeks. Tomorrow morning I take my last final and head on out of
here, first to my grandparents', then to my great-uncle's, and then
(finally!) home. I'm probably going to be cranky all day because
my relatives are keeping me from the comfort of my own home, but I'll
do my best not to make my little cousins cry. Maybe I'll teach
them to play Uno; kicking butt at cards always makes me feel
good. Teaching someone else to kick butt makes me feel even
better. *evil cackle*
I should be packing right now; I've got to
pack all my remaining clothes, my toiletries, my makeup, and a bunch of
other assorted stuff that I don't want to leave up here because I might
need it at home. I've also got to take home my jewelry, and a
bunch of stuff that I don't want to get stolen (not that it would go
missing, but I just don't want to take that chance). All in all,
it's like moving back home for the summer, but on a one-fourth
scale. It's a pain, but I'll be glad to be home.
I've begun writing my own "You know you're a
Ball State student when . . . " lists. So far I'm up to #43, "You
rejoice at being hired to shelve books at the library, because it's a
job where you don't have to wear a hairnet." My favorite one so
far is #42, "You begin referring to the school as 'BS
University.'"
To tide my faithful readers over while I'm
gone, I've got two more installations of Caps Lock Theater for you,
just to give you something to laugh at while I'm not around for your
mocking pleasure.
YEAH I LOVE CHRISTMAS I GOT THIS AWESOME GAME
LAST YEAR WITH LOTS OF NAKED CHICKS AND GUNS ALONG WITH MY NEW PS2 DUDE
IT WAS SO SWEET AND I WAS AT THIS ONE PARTY AND DUDE THERE WAS LIKE NOG
EVERYWHERE AND I GOT SO WASTED ON NOG YEAH IT WAS SO COOL I CAN'T WAIT
TIL BREAK I HAVEN'T GOTTEN ANYTHING FOR MY MOM OR MY GIRLFRIEND YET
THOUGH OH BUT HEY I GOT MYSELF THIS AWESOME DVD
YEAH I SAW THE LORD OF THE RINGS MOVIE I
THOUGHT IT WAS PRETTY GOOD BUT NOT AS GOOD AS THAT ONE HARRY POTTER
MOVIE YEAH I THINK THEY RIPPED HARRY POTTER OFF BESIDES THERE'S LIKE
TOO MANY CHARACTERS AND IT'S CONFUSING AND WHAT IS ALL THIS ABOUT BOOKS
DID THEY LIKE MAKE THE MOVIES INTO BOOKS OR SOMETHING THAT IS SO
CLICHED OH MY GOSH HEY HAVE YOU SEEN THE CAT IN THE HAT YEAH THAT WAS
LIKE ALL FUNNY AND STUFF MIKE MEYERS IS SO TALENTED AND HE CAN ACT
UNLIKE THOSE LORD OF THE RINGS LOSERS YEAH THEY HAVE WHAT LIKE TWO
LINES EACH OH MY GOD
Heh heh. When I return on January the
eleventh, I will have seen Lord of the Rings at least twice (more, if I
have anything to say about it), visited three different sets of
relative on two separate occasions, fielded questions about my major
from said relatives, and eaten more Christmas cookies than can possibly
be good for me. I will also have more (recent) pictures to put
up, and hopefully will have scored some kewl lewt from the parental
units and their progeny. So until then, adieu, farewell, here's
your hat what's your hurry, and Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy
New Year! So long, suckers! I'M OUTTA HERE!
[comment]
Thursday, December
18th, 2003
3:18 p.m.
A headline I would like to see (but probably never will):
"Israeli Troops Carpet Bomb Arafat's
Compound" And then, for the subtitle: "Sharon tells UN: "I'm sick
of my people being killed. You can take your delegations and your
resolutions and shove 'em." Mmmmm.
You know, it's interesting that Saddam, for
all his posturing, gave up without a fight. He even had a gun
right there with him, but instead of committing suicide, he let himself
be taken alive. I have a feeling that Arafat would do the
same. You see, it's my belief that no matter how much a dictator
or terrorist claims that God is on his side, deep down inside them is a
tiny nagging voice that says "That's what you think, pal." And
when it comes time to do and die, they can't bring themselves to pull
the trigger because their cowardly streak runs so deep that they will
do anything to live another day, to keep that voice from proving itself
right.
The thought of that voice gives me a good
feeling inside; it's the same fierce, joyful feeling that makes men
sing and shout as they wade into battle, kicking butt and taking
names. I get that feeling when I imagine Old Testament battles,
especially the ones led by David--I can just see the armies of Israel,
massed against the enemies of God, revving themselves up and knowing
that since their God was the
real one, they would prevail. I imagine they got the same
feeling, looking out at the Philistines--"C'mon, guys, we can take
'em!" It's a feeling that rides roughshod over fear, and turns
shrinking violets into rampant Kudzu. It's the feeling a mama
bear gets when you mess with her cubs. It's the sheer
exhilaration of battle, and it is the essence of all righteous
wars. You can shout "Alluhu Akhbar" all you want, but in the end,
you won't be shouting anything because my foot will be crushing your
windpipe. And that, my jihadist friend, is what that warm feeling
is all about.
I like that feeling.
[comment]
Sunday, December
14th, 2003
9:53 p.m.
Well, more and more good news: Much-Afraid doesn't have mono;
she had walking pneumonia and she's practically over it. This is
a good thing, because it means I won't get mono, and I won't have to
mess with her still being sick when we come back from break in
January.
I wish it was Friday night instead of Sunday
night, because then I'd be getting up early tomorrow to get ready to
leave instead of going to my last philosophy class before finals.
Berkeley is really starting to get on my nerves; he's an arrogant prig
who thinks that if something isn't perceived, then it doesn't
exist. Um, yeah. Here's an idea for him: maybe we aren't
the be all and end all of all creation. Maybe if a tree falls in
the forest and there's no one there to hear it, it still makes a
sound! I wish we were learning Locke instead--he held the same
view that I've held all my life. He just used bigger words when
he explained it, so people took him seriously.
Dagnabit, now the song's going through my head
again. Darn you Monty Python! *shakes fist*
[comment]
3:48 p.m.
WE GOT
HIM!
Saddam
Hussein Captured in Iraq Hideout
[comment]
Saturday, December
13th, 2003
2:24 p.m.
I just saw the new TV
spot* for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Nur nur nurnurnur.
*It's in Quicktime, so give it a minute. If you
don't have Quicktime, get it here
for free. It's so much better than Windows or Real Player.
[comment]
Friday, December
12th, 2003
4:30 p.m.
I wrote this for my English class, and it came back with a "10"
at the top, along with a note that said "Hilarious!" So I thought
I'd share it here. To give a little background, we've been
studying interpreting literature, and using classic fairy tales as
subjects. We had to write our own take on either Sleeping Beauty
or Snow White, and I chose Sleeping Beauty. And now, without
further ado, I present an original composition entitled "Well, It's
About Time!"
"It's about time you got here! Do you
have any idea how long I've been waiting for you? One hundred
years, that's how long! One
hundred years! What were you doing all that time,
anyway? You're not that young; you could have come and kissed me
ten, twenty years ago but nooooo, you had to go and do you own thing,
didn't you? You just had
to sow your wild oats before you got tied down, is that it? We
wouldn't want a handsome devil like yourself getting married too soon,
now would we? No, he's got to have his fun first. Meanwhile I've
been laying here, neglected, with a crick in my neck from this
gawd-awful pillow, and all my clothes going more and more out of style,
and no one to do my hair or my nails or give me a facial or anything,
and just waiting--waiting! That's all I know how to do
anymore! A few years more and I would have forgotten how to
move! Do you have any idea what it feels like to be off your feet
for that long? Oh sure, the first forty years or so are great,
you've never felt so rested, so de-stressed, but after that it starts
to get a little monotonous! Thank you very much for showing up so
promptly! I really appreciate your timely arrival and the concern
you showed in getting here so quickly! And another thing, that
kiss was the worst one I've ever had. Who'd you practice with, a
sofa cushion with a face drawn on it? I had better kisses from
the stable boy. Heck, I got better kisses from--hey, where are
you going? Get back here! You still have to marry me so we
can live happily ever after! GET BACK HERE!"
[comment]
3:58 p.m.
I GOT A JOB! OH YES I DID! AND IT'S NOT IN FOOD
SERVICE!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Starting next semester, I'm going to be
working as a page at Bracken Library. I'm guaranteed at least ten
hours a week for THREE SEMESTERS. This is a good thing.
Now I can quit my job at the dining service
and start doing something that doesn't require me to wear a hairnet and
a uniform. Two more shifts and then I'm done with them!
Ha!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do
the dance of joy, as performed by the inimitable Sheik Yerbooti.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh.
OH yeah. I feel GOOD.
[comment]
Thursday, December
11th, 2003
11:15 p.m.
The third number in my countdown is the biggest one. This
is not a blessing to me. If I had my way, the first and third
numbers would both be "1" and the second number would be replaced with
"I've already gone home; so long, suckers!" But I have to wait
another week for that. Pooh.
I've got some stuff that I've been saving
until next Friday night so that I can leave something good up while I
neglect the site over break. I was going to put the site files on
a disk so I could work on them at home, but my parent's disk drive is
tempermental at best, plus I'd have a heck of a time archiving.
I'm also not sure if the Ball State servers are going to be running at
full speed over break; honestly, I'd be surprised if they were.
[comment]
Tuesday, December
9th, 2003
9:26 p.m.
A few months back, I sprained my ankle and missed about three
weeks of class. This wasn't a problem except in two classes,
Philosophy and PhysEd. I was able to pull Philosophy up to a
half-way decent grade (I hope--I'm pretty sure), but PhysEd is a
bust. This is the second time in a row I've failed that
class. Luckily I can take it as many times as I need to in order
to pass it, but it's frustrating.
When I was in high school, my freshman year I
squeaked by, my sophomore year I did a bit better, my junior year I
almost flunked out, and finally in my senior year I got my act
together. I think the pattern is repeating itself, only now it's
running at double-time and next semester should be the one where I
break through and start doing a lot better.
I just wish that for once I would have a
semester of school where I didn't have personal "issues" or health
problems get in the way of my grades. Even in my senior year I
had troubles; I was just far enough advanced in the pattern that I was
able to pull my butt out of the fire. Maybe next semester will go
smoothly.
I wanna go home.
[comment]
Monday, December
8th, 2003
Blogging Blitzkreig!
10:29 p.m.
Sing it, sister: Mamamontezz tells it like
it is.
[comment]
10:26 p.m.
Well, crap on a stick. According to theonering.net,
the trailer for the next
Harry Potter movie is going to be shown in front of LotR:RotK.
Crap, crap, crap(sorry, Mom). Is it too much to ask that good
fantasy be kept away from bad, poorly written, one-dimensional,
waste-of-trees/celluoid/pixels downright evil fantasy?
Apparently it is. Crap.
Sorry, Mom.
[comment]
10:21 p.m.
If you've read my post at 7:44 on November 13th, you'll know
that I was a Ritalin kid. What a lot people don't know is that I
get depressed easily and have a tendency to give up on things after
only one or two tries. What does this have to do with
anything?
I found an interesting article today that sure
explains a heck of a lot. At least I don't have to worry
about my crack-riddled body winding up face down in a gutter in
Atlantic City with a C-note stuffed in my pants and no idea how I got
there.
[comment]
Sunday, December
7th, 1941
1:03 p.m.
A day that shall live in infamy.
Let us pray.
[comment]
Saturday, December
6th, 2003
3:55 p.m.
Hi Livingstone!
Don't ask.
[comment]
Friday, December
5th, 2003
9:49 a.m.
I found a very interesting article featured on blogs4god, and I
thought I'd link to it and perhaps add a few of my own thoughts.
The article
is about postmodernism and its effects of religion and theology, but
what makes it interesting is that the author uses Star Trek and the
Borg as a metaphor.
Last month I read That Hideous Strength, the third
book in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. THS is set "sometime after the war"
and centers around a young woman and her husband who get caught up in a
movement to save England and a movement to destroy it,
respectively. While the woman (Jane) casts her lot with a group
of Christians (one of whom, the main character of the first two books,
communicates directly with angels as a result of his previous
adventures), the young man (Mark) is drawn into an organization called
the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, a bastion of
secular postmodern philosophy. At least, that's the face it
presents to the world; in reality, the N.I.C.E. is a headquarters for
the forces of darkness, and those in its inner circle are some of the
most evil people imaginable. But herein lies the greatest deceit:
aside from a sadistic lesbian, they are all what society would deem
harmless: a distracted academian, an apostate, humanistic priest, and a
scientist. Straik, the priest, is convinced that Jesus was a
metaphor, and that the true Son of Man is Man himself, providing his
own salvation through science, apart from God. Frost, the
scientist, believes that all emotions are merely chemical reactions in
the brain, and that our natural revulsions and inhibitions are only
societal constructs designed to keep us from reaching our full
potential. Wither, the academic, lives his life in a sort of
stupor, putting up a facade to take care of the world around him while
his real Self, his essence, becomes more and more distanced from his
reality. Each of these men comes to a bad end--Straik is murdered
by Wither, Wither is mauled by a bear, and Frost is immolated when he
sets fire to the N.I.C.E. headquarters. It is upon Frost that I
wish to focus.
There is perhaps no better way to put one's
mind at risk than to deny the meaning of things. To define
emotions as chemical reactions, to claim that language, religion, and
morals are all meaningless social constructs, is to deny life itself
meaning. What do we live for, but to give glory to God? But
if God's creations are stripped of their purpose and reduced to mere
'things,' then it becomes impossible to give glory to anything.
To be in awe of something, one has to understand (or at least intuit)
that there is something else besides what we see that gives it that
awesomeness. Take, for example, a cathedral. There are two
ways of looking at it: the first is as a remarkable achievement,
brought about by the cooperation of men and the will of God. The
second is as a set of stones, fitted together in an arbitrary
arrangement that, given the right tools, anyone at any point in history
could have put together.
Many modern philosophers treat religion in the
same manner as the cathedral--as a human construct without meaning, and
significant only in its effect on society. In this view, all are
equal; no one faith is better or worse than any other. What a
cowardly thought! Instead of choosing to believe in something,
the postmodernists simply claim that all are valid, getting them an
easy out and making them look 'tolerant.' Well, I've got news for
them: 'tolerance' is the buzzword for people who don't want to take a
stand about anything, who have no strong opinions and are happy to let
other people do the hellraising as long as it doesn't interfere with
them. I heard a song about this once; the second chorus said
"Close your mouth, stop your ears/close your mouth and take it slow/let
others take the lead, and you bring up the rear/and later you can say
you didn't know." The song used the image of weeds growing in a
garden to illustrate the way tolerance and moral equivalence--which,
when you boil it down, is really a form of apathy--allow dangerous
ideologies to take root and grow unchecked. Yet even when some
hate-filled rhetoric rears its head and begins spewing its bile, the
oh-so-tolerant ones don't speak out--everyone has a right to their
opinion, and it's not for me to judge, they say. Hence the last
chorus of the song: "Close your eyes, stop your ears/close your mouth;
they're never there/and if they're ever here, they'll never come for
you/because they know you really didn't care." They find a sense
of safety in their unwillingness to call a spade a spade. After
all, why should they make themselves a target? It doesn't affect
them, so why should they care?
[Warning: rant ahead]
I am so sick and frapping tired of all these
people who go around and say "Oh, it's just a cultural difference, we
shouldn't judge them, they don't judge us, there's nothing wrong with
what they do, it's just their thing,
you know?" No, I don't know. I think there is something
dreadfully wrong about a society that punishes a woman for being raped
because they only allow the men to testify. There is something
horribly skewed about a religion that spreads itself by conquering
other peoples, and either kills or subjugates anyone who doesn't
convert. And all you people who say that the Judeo-Christian god
and the Muslim god are one and the same? Hey. Up
yours. Anyone who knows anything about the Koran knows that there
is no way this can be true. The God of the Bible is a just,
loving, and jealous god who wants nothing more than for his
people--indeed, all people--to be saved. The god of the Koran is
a bloodthirsty maniac who calls on his followers to slaughter the
unbelievers. I am sick and tired of all of this Tashlan* crap,
and my blood pressure goes up every time I hear it. There is
nothing in heaven, earth or hell that could possibly convince me that
the loving Father I know would condone the wholesale slaughter of his
people via bus bombings. ROPMA.**
I feel better now.
*The Chronicles of
Narnia, book seven (The Last
Battle). If you've read it, you'll get the
reference. If you haven't read it, you should.
**ROPMA: an acronym for "Religion of Peace, my *ahem*"
[comment]
Wednesday, December
3rd, 2003
9:20 p.m.
And now, for the first time ever, I am proud to present the
product of Livingstone's fertile (some would say futile) brain: Caps
Lock Theater!
SO
THANKSGIVING HUH YEAH I'M GOING TO FLORIDA THIS YEAR WHERE ARE YOU
GOING
OH YOUR GRANDMA'S OH THAT'S INTERESTING YEAH FLORIDA'S GOING TO BE
AWESOME
IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE NINETY DEGREES THE WHOLE TIME I'M THERE AND YOU
KNOW
WHAT THAT MEANS YEAH THAT'S RIGHT LOTS OF CHICKS AND BOOZE YEAH I'LL
TELL YA
WHAT I'M THANKFUL FOR HA HA HA WHAT NO I DON'T SEE THAT WHAT ARE YOU
POINTING AT BEHIND ME I DON'T SEE ANYTHI-- (whack) (thud)
This has been a presentation of Caps Lock
Theater, brought to you by your local PBS station and viewers like
you. Thank you.
[comment]
Tuesday,
December
2nd, 2003
10:38 p.m.
There's been a strain of mono making its way around campus this
semester. I doubt there's ever a time when someone one campus
isn't sick with it, but this year it's running rampant. I can
tell because this strain has a distinctive barking cough that goes with
it. How do I know this? Easy. Listening to that cough
kept me from sleeping last night.
That's right.
Much-Afraid has mono.
She's been coughing and losing her voice
on-and-off for about two weeks now, but I always chalked it up to the
common cold, and her former smoking habit. However, this Sunday
when she came back from break she was worse than she'd ever been and
running a fever, and today she went to the condom store* health
center and got the happy news. I'm not too
worried about catching it from her--Sausage Girl had the bad kind a
couple years ago, and I came out fine from that, but she was also a lot
more conscientious about sterilizing everything she touched than
Much-Afraid. I'm going to have to start eating vitamins like
they're candy and chugging green tea and bundling up extra when I go
out so my immune system doesn't weaken. There's only
two-point-five weeks left in the semester, so if I can hold out that
long I'll be home free.
Of course, given that mono has something like
a six-week incubation period, I could already be infected, but I'm
trying really really really hard not to think along those lines.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and chugging so much
tea that I can barely make it through class without wetting my pants is
a small price to pay if it means I don't have to deal with mono.
*at the health center, girls can get up to seven free
condoms in
all sorts of different sizes and shapes and flavors. gag.
[comment]
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003
12:07 a.m.
Oh, I am up far too late. It's all Stalker Boy's fault,
really--last week he saw my blog and decided to send me an email, and
now we've become pen (keyboard?) pals. I stayed up late just to
see if he would reply to my last letter before I went to bed.
Well, okay, it's not really his fault. I
stayed up so I could make sure I got a space in the computer lab
reserved to take my journalism final in two weeks. The good
spaces go like hotcakes, and I wanted to get mine as soon as it was
available at midnight.
Stalker Boy and I have a surprising number of
things in common--we're both rabid conservative Republicans, we're both
growing Christians, and we both like to write long emails to each
other. We've compared it to a wartime correspondence, to C.S.
Lewis and Joy Douglass, and to something else but I can't remember what
and I'm too tired to go look it up. My only problem with him is
that he doesn't like cats, but I'm willing to overlook that. Cats
are really more suitable for women while men seem to do better
with dogs. Dogs are companions; cats are co-conspirators.
If you injure yourself, a dog will run and get help, while a cat will
wait for you to die and then eat you. Of course, this leads to
the question "why have cats in the first place?"
Well, they're warm on cold nights and they're
cute when they play with string. That's about all the
justification I can give you, but it's good enough for me.
I'll blog more tomorrow when I'm not so
sleepy.
[comment]