Do you want to, do you, do you want to, want to go

We went to see Cats last night. Worst play ever. It was an impressive tour de deforce of costumes and spectacle, but I promise, going into it thinking there is a plot is a terrible thing to do. If I had run into Andrew Lloyd Webber last night after the show, I'd have kicked him in the neck and made him sit through two hours of me introducing his cats back to him and see if he liked it. Very artistic, I guess, but not very literary. Boo to him.

That being said, New Years is coming, and I don't have a thing to wear...

God loves ugly

Two disturbing things this morning:

1) I found hair on my ear lobe. So my nascent into adulthood (I'm not sure if nascent works there as a play on words, but it came into mind quickly so I'm gonna take it) begins, not with a whimper, but with a lock. Holy crud, this writing is terrible. The theme is this: I found blonde hair on my ear this morning that seems longer than the other peach fuzz and I am now officially getting old. No 17 year old has ever said, "I wonder how to trim ear hair. Do you just shave it, or should there be some plucking or something else involved?"

And who do you ask? Your hairiest relative or just a stranger? Which is worse? "Excuse me sir, I couldn't help but notice that your ear hair is very well manicured. How do you maintain such an attractive length?" OR "Uncle Larry, when I saw my ear lobe hair sprouting, I thought of you. How often do you trim? I know it's not every day, because if I thought of you, it means that you hadn't trimmed..." So maybe I should ask people without ear hair on the off chance that they actually trim their ear lobe hair. Again, relatives or strangers?

2) I googled myself and became alarmed at how much information I've given to the internet. Bad people might find me and steal my mostly unwanted identity. So what did I do? Took my name off Superpages. Yep, that should do it. Never mind that I'm posted on the MO website, or here, or myspace; I'm going to make these crooks pay five bucks for my information from some super computer before they steal my soul.

To borrow from Vonnegut, "So it goes."

Regulators, mount up

I found Warren G's song on myspace and decided to put it as my home song on my myspace. What a trip back to the 8th grade summer camp when Danny Spoelma put headphones on me and I listened to this song for the first time. I'm SOOOO hardcore.

I'm reading a book by a guy named James W. Loewen. He wrote Sundown Towns, and also Lies My Teacher Told Me, but I'm reading Lies Across America. It's about all these historic sites across America and how the language on plagues, positioning of statues, etc, all contribute to the promotion of an incorrect history. I'm sure my father would call him a revisionist and might accuse him of wanting to change our history, but I agree with the author who says "oftentimes, our historic sites tell us more about the people who erected them than the actual historic event." Great thought.

Also, I finished reading Eggers "You Shall Know Our Velocity" a while ago, but apparently, I read a different version than what exists elsewhere. This guy published two different versions, and one of them is about 60 pages longer than the other. I read the shorter one, and it leaves out a HUGE section where everything about the narrator is questioned, kind of Fight Club syle. Most reviewers treat the two versions as entirely different books because of the giant discrepencies. Anyway, I think it's brilliant. I actually like the book more now because when I was talking about it with Ian, because I couldn't remember the section he was talking about, I questioned the truth of the story, of my memory, of the narrator, oh it was great! What control the author has on us. It is very Andy Kaufman like, but I think it's brilliant. Here's what one reviewer said about the whole thing and I think it gives a little more insight into the author. I love it!

That's all for now. Happy Holidays, whichever you choose.

When heaven and hell decide . . .

Happy Birthday to me. I wanted to type this to myself this morning at like 4:12 or something because I was awake, but decided not to. Mostly because I would have had to get out of bed. That's not how I roll.

I just found a phenomenal article in the NY Times. I don't know what to do about Africa. I know it's not really my problem, but it's fun to imagine that we can change the world. Self-sufficiency is probably something worth supporting.

Well you don't know where and you don't know when

It's my party this weekend. I'm going to party like it's 1959. I actually think I used that joke last year at this time. I hate myself sometimes.

Speaking of failures, I'm still trying to memorize some Scripture. I'm on week two and already a week behind. I really do think that it's something I want to do more but for some reason I'm really hung up on this week's passage. It's from the Beatitudes and the wording in The Message translation is screwy in my head. Oh well. Go week.

I'm turning in two papers this week. They have similar sources. That's all.

I had some good thoughts last week about Revolution. Mostly that we need to be a healthy community that takes care of members of our community before we try to add another ministry or anything like that. It's interesting that this is happening right before Xmas break, when our community will dissolve for a few weeks. I hope that we can keep the focus of our faith over the holidays. Hahahahaha. Not funny.

Speaking of not funny, last week during prayer at work George prayed something like this: "Lord, we know that it's Christmas, not the holidays. And some people want to take the Christ out of Christmas and make it something less than it is: your birth." And on and on. I'm not sure that common colloquialisms should be the biggest concern we have this holiday season. If someone doesn't want to call it Christmas, that's fine. If someone doesn't want to call it Kwanzaa, that's fine with me, too. I will celebrate Christmas and I will expect stores to be closed that day, but if they want to open, that's fine, too. The issue is not whether or not we can defend a date of dubious origin, but whether or not the man we believe was born on that day is worth following or not. I don't think he's worried about those who don't celebrate the day, but about how WE love those who don't celebrate the day. It's silly to try to pump ourselves up over semantics. That's all.

Time to pay more attention.

I guess we'll just have to adjust

It has been a good week, but I promise that I haven't done this much schoolwork in about three years. I have a 15 page paper due on Wednesday and a history of my local church was due tonight. So that went well.

Yesterday there was a good meeting about Revolution. We got to brainstorm how to actively embrace the community and reflect Christ better. A lot of cool ideas came up and I was refreshed with the opportunity to work alongside God to transform lives. After our two hour meeting, we came back to the actual Revolution meeting. I ran into Jesse Pazos, who is selling all of his worldly possessions and going to "live by faith." I don't think I could do that. But it was really interesting to see someone who is.

Anyway, at our meeting, we talked for a long time about the revolutionary life of Christ. Then we talked about the needs of the community and how to address that. Then, we looked at the needs of the group to see how we could address those. There is a woman named Paola in our group (who came for the first time) who has plenty of needs right now. I want to adopt her bus fare for a month while she works to earn money while she waits for her greencard to be processed. I can't really put into words how impressive it was to see people thinking about one another in regards to an actual revolution. It was neat. I am hopeful.

Class is rough. There is no incentive to listen to the professor aside from a desire to learn. Which is not a big enough incentive when I have other things to do. For more on incentives, see
Levitt and Dubner. Oh well. Time to not pay attention.