Why I suck.

Yesterday, we got keys to the department and our office. I went to check and make sure mine worked. I didn't think the key to the office was working. I tried and tried and it wouldn't open the door. Turns out, I was turning it the wrong way.

Today, with my grand ambitions to go sit outside and work, I walked down to a cafe on University, only to find that there were no wireless networks available (or so I thought). So I went to the student union, where I knew there was wireless access and encountered the same problem. I just now realized: I had the wireless turned off on the computer. Doh!

I love having a laptop again.

Today, I'm totally about to go sit at a coffee shop and get my work done.

Why am I a boring person?

And how do I become an interesting person?

...or at least seem to be an interesting person...? ideas?

I hate long lines.

Today, I waited almost an hour in the Parking and Transportation office in order to change out my parking permit from a garage all the way across campus to the one right beside my apartment building (turns out they have some reserved for apartment residents).

The line actually went outside of the building. There are seven little windows at which customers can take care of their business. There are at least ten employees out front and visible. Only three of the windows are open. Why?

I was about to add: "And why do all the undergrads bring their parents with them to get parking tickets? The line was as long as it was because half of the people in it were not actually getting permits themselves." But then I remembered that my mom had gone with me to get my permit.

Sorry this is not a very interesting post.

In case you care...

I just made the tastiest mixed berry smoothie. Frozen berries + nonfat vanilla yogurt + ice + water = what I am eating for the rest of my life. I used to make this with bananas and a dash of splenda for sweetener. Little did I realize how much those ingredients were holding back the absolute tastiness of this drink.

Tales of the navigationally illiterate.

Yeah, there's nothing like taking a courtesy shuttle from the car dealership and not knowing where in the world you live. "Umm... it's somewhere near the University of Arizona... yeah, I'm pretty sure it's past that street. Oh, turn in here!" Turns out, "here" was not at all where I needed to be (though it was off of the correct street). But, it was definitely within walking distance, and I wasn't about to get back in and say, "oops, sorry, my mistake. Could you take me down a little bit further?" I guess I'll have to walk back out there when he comes to pick me up.

Meet Oliver.

He is my new computer. I know have Internet access. The world is right again.

This prolonged absence from regular contact with the Internets has impressed upon me how much I rely on the world wide web for everyday tasks.

Who needs a phone book? A map? Just look up whatever you need on Google, then use Google maps (or mapquest, or yahoo maps) to give you directions. I found out that I'm not very good at maps. Sad, really, considering I was once a fourth grade champion in the "Maps, Graphs, and Charts" competition. Ahh well.

And, I've become very proficient at text messaging on my phone, something I had heretofore been reluctant to engage in. I mean, really, what's the point of spending forever typing a single sentence? You can't have a real conversation that way. Can you? Turns out, it's a much more effective tool for communication when your fingers learn how to use the buttons you've got. And when you figure out how to turn on the predictive text.

And--why read the newspaper or even watch TV news? When you've got the NY Times online, CNN.com, and the various political bloggers to keep you informed, paper-and-ink newspapers seem kind of useless. But, if I gained one thing during my extended Internet fast, it's that there is a real appeal to the feel of newsprint in between your fingers, the black ink that it sometimes leaves. You find so many more interesting articles that you would never think to click the link for online.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings about my time without a computer. I have one now, and he's lovely. I hope to update much more frequently now. Cross your fingers!

I'm in Tucson.

I've finally arrived in Tucson, though I won't get a computer until early next week. I'm sitting in the Student Union writing this at the moment.

The drive here was absolutley beautiful, with all the mountains on all sides. When I can figure out how, I'll post some of the pictures I took with my phone.

As happy as I am to be here, and as excited as I am about school starting, I wish I were back in Denison at the moment. I hate being so far away when awful things happen. *Hugs* to Jason and his family.

My apartment is small but cute, and you'll get pictures of that about the same time that you get pictures from the drive up here.

I'm sorry this is a pathetically short post. But--I promise that when I get a computer, I will begin to blog regularly again. Now, I can't promise that it will be good or interesting--but it will be there.

Bye for now. I'm gonna go check out the library!

Just how boring is working in the kitchen of a girl scout camp? (you might ask)

Boring enough to come up with a theory of salad bar usage that could, if one were bored enough, be empirically tested (I would answer.)

See, with every meal, we have a salad/fruit bar available. Obviously, one can predict that when the meal is not appealing or unfamiliar to the kids, the salad bar gets used by many who don’t eat anything else. But, if we were to hold the meal quality/tastiness constant, what would predict the likelihood that any particular girl scout will use a bowl at the salad bar?

This is an important question. To me. Because I cut veggies for the salad bar and wash the bowls they use.

Is there an inherent quality (or, at least, an outside-of-the-dining hall quality) that makes one a salad-bar-user (SBU)? Or does the social context of the meal influence an individual’s salad bar usage?

The observed data could point to either conclusion. For instance, when the “hoppers” (those who take the food to the tables and return the dishes after the meal) bring the dirty dishes from their tables (8 girls/table) back to the kitchen, it quite often happens that most people at the table are SBUs or none are. Either they bring back 6-8 bowls for their table or 0-2. There is very rarely a middle ground.

This could mean that one person going to the salad bar encourages the others at her table to do the same. The possible paths for this result include peer pressure (“come with me to the salad bar!”), noticing the tasty things at the salad bar through ones’ tablemate (“that bell pepper sure looks tasty! I think I’ll go get one.”) or perhaps through feeling more comfortable going to the salad bar once a few others at your table have gone.

But there is another possible explanation. Perhaps those who are inclined to be SBUs tend to share characteristics that lead them to sit at the same table and those who tend not to be SBUs have other characteristics that draw them together. What could people who go to the salad bar have in common with each other outside of going to the salad bar? Perhaps they are healthier eaters? Perhaps they are heavier eaters? Who knows. We don’t have enough data to make a call.

One way that we could get at the answer to whether peer influence or table homogeneity has a bigger role in creating the SBU polarization would be to see 1) how often table composition changes, i.e. do the same girls always eat together or is it kind of mixed up at every meal?, and 2) how consistent is SBU-behavior? Do girls who go to the salad bar go to the salad bar every meal or is it kind of random? Are there are girls who never go?

On worship

What is it like to follow a god simply because he [most people I’m thinking of do refer to God as a “He”] might strike you dead if you don’t? How is that different than following God out of a sense of love and compassion for others? I cannot say that I don’t understand this sort of worship (if it can be called that). I do understand it. For many years, I was a “Christian” because I didn’t want to go to hell. I was afraid that if I didn’t follow the rules, if I hadn’t followed a precise prayer outlined by 20th century Christians, I would die and go to hell. Honestly. But I don’t like using the term “worship” for it. To me, worship is an act of devotion, an act of love, not doing something because it’s better than burning forever in a fiery pit. To me, that’s just good cost-benefit analysis, of course you would decide to not go to hell, and in the long run it doesn’t cost you a thing. Worship, however, does cost. You don’t do it because you don’t want to burn. You do it because you can’t not do it. (wow, look at all the negatives in those last two sentences.)

Many of you have heard tales of my scary conservative boss this summer, and the few (two?) of you who read the other blog have heard my dispatches from crazyland. So, this isn’t new. But, this morning, we were talking about how people can die at any second, just randomly. And s/he said, “yep, I tell my wife/husband every morning, you better make sure you’re not doing anything God doesn’t want you to.” Why? Because if you’re sinning, God will kill you. I can’t imagine worshipping, I mean truly worshipping, a god who made that kind of sense in my mind. There’s no sacrifice involved, there’s no love, no devotion: only fear. I must do what’s right because God will punish me if not. What does that make morality? Truth? Values? It reduces them to bargaining chips with an angry deity. They mean nothing without the constant divine threat of punishment.

According to my boss, this is the same god for whose sake s/he feels “sick” at the thought of Ellen deGeneres and refuses to watch Friends because of “all the homosexuality.” When s/he said this, I wanted to say (in a sarcastic voice), “that’s really Christian of you.” But, s/he doesn’t really get sarcasm and just would have responded, “I know, it really is.”

It's not (just) laziness, honest!

I know I've been light on posting recently. Don't expect much change any time soon! I'm in Denison, and not only is internet access skechy and slow, in that it's dialup, but my brother is often playing his online video game, taking up the line. I had to do some hard bargaining to get this time. Yes, here at my house it is the Wild West of internet access, a throwback to the mid-to-late 90s. DSL and Cable won't deliver service out here, we live so far out.

But, anyway, thanks to all of you for the encouraging emails and prayers and whatnot. They really do help.

We swam today and we will swim tomorrow.

And I will get a tan. Or (more likely) I will burn.

radical faith

Kent responded to my earlier post, and I thought I'd give him a reply here. It's really a reply plus some random rambling and a statement of how I believe.

I’ve grown tired of having to defend my faith from those who either disagree with the idea of religious faith or from those who insist that mine is wrong. But I think there is value in such a defense, so I’ll do it again. But, right now, I’m surrendering my internal fight against the Christian Right. I’m still fascinated by them. And I am professionally interested in them. But no longer is it a personal mission to prove them wrong or "expose" them. Perhaps living my life as an example (or struggling to attain that) can be all the exposure that is necessary.

Because for me, I think, the fight against the CR was less about truth and more about being “right.” It was a pride thing, an insecurity thing. I wanted to show that I, unlike them, really understood faith. I wanted to reassure myself that I was right, more than anything. After a good deal of prayer and thought, I realize that focusing on negating the CR takes away from my focus and my witness. If I can live faithfully and act peacefully, confronting distortions when they occur, but not going out of my way to find a fight, perhaps that act in itself is an antidote to a culture that too readily wants to draw lines, be confrontational and paint the world in black and white.

While I try to live my life according to God’s will, I will have to deal with some confrontations. But I also will have to recognize, as my commenter below does not, that there is room for many ideas in a single faith tradition. There’s lots of room, even room for disagreement. Hopefully there’s also room for some civil debate and discourse.

Now to address the commenter’s comment substantively: I assume what he primarily objects to is historicizing Christianity and the church. I, on the other hand, think it is vital. I agree that one need not have a Ph.D in religious history (or even to have studied it) to be a Christian, but I do believe that it can help faith and help us to understand it. Even if it makes us question our foundations. That is a good thing!

He also says that if I were to just read the Bible, I would know “what a Christian should believe” about things such as gay rights and abortion rights. I don’t think there’s one “Christian” position. I think that my faith leads me to certain positions on those issues. But, as I said, the Christian tradition has room for differing ideas.

That may be the difference between Kent’s faith and mine. I accept those differences and don’t judge him as suddenly unchristian because he has ideas with which I don’t agree. I believe he has different interpretations of scripture than I do. One of the wonderful things about the Baptist tradition is its stance on the personal interpretation of scripture by the individual believer. This is something that, obviously, the larger Baptist institutions (e.g., the Southern Baptist Convention) have gotten away from (enforcing certain interpretations as “right”), but I don’t think the idea is gone at all.

I believe that faith and politics are firmly linked. Kent probably agrees with me :-). I know people in conservative religious traditions who feel politically bound because of their religion. They don’t necessarily agree with, say, the Republican party, yet they feel that they must support them because it is the “Christian” way of voting. This is where I think living my faith proudly can be helpful. Yes, I am a Christian. No, I am certainly not a Republican. It is possible to be both. And it doesn’t mean “separating” your faith from your politics! It means embracing your politics in your faith. For some people, that leads them to vote Republican. But not me.

For me, recognizing that my sense of social justice and resistance to oppression grew out of my basis in faith was like coming out of Plato’s cave and suddenly seeing things for what they are. Seeing the history of the church and the power struggles not only legitimates my doubt about some things but strengthens my faith about others. I came out of the cave and am in a constant struggle to see more clearly.

The ideas of Jesus were radical. One of the most compelling parts of his ministry was his compassion and fellowship with the disenfranchised and marginalized in his society. What was the primary condemnation of him by contemporary religious leaders? That he hung out with “sinners” too much. Sound oddly familiar, no?

I believe that I am in the radical tradition of Jesus. While Jesus may have been lost, while he’s always kind of up for interpretation by prevailing political and religious winds, and while I have no monopoly on the “truth” of Jesus, I can be guided by faith. I can be guided by the words and actions of Jesus. His teachings cut through the oppression of his day. He called out to the poorest, the most reviled, teaching a radical egalitarianism. Jesus and the church he created are not just made for Sunday preaching. They are made for changing the world! What I seek to regain is the sense of Christianity as a social movement, as a movement for peace and justice and equality.

While this faith may sound simple (and it is), it isn’t easy. Sometimes it is easier to have someone else tell us what to believe and how to live. Sometimes it’s easier to see the world in black and white than to recognize the immense complexities presented in the world. Sometimes it’s easier to follow the political and religious winds than to challenge them. But, we need to ask ourselves the deceptively simple question: “What would Jesus do?”

The Da Vinci Code

I haven't read the book. I'm working on it. But, I have seen the movie. Here are some thoughts:

Undoubtedly, it is fiction. It twists history to make a point. Mostly Brown is trying for good fiction, but I think he's scoring some political points in there as well. I don't think that's much different than the authors of Left Behind or other evangelical, apocalyptic fiction, though. They twist scripture to fit their ideological and political points of view.

I think one of the best things that could come from this book/movie is a resurgent interest in church history. Most Christians I know don't really have a solid understanding of church history. And that makes sense--it can often be a big shock, to see the power struggles, the politics, the way that things we take for granted today were socially constructed. But I think challenging and learning is part of faith. All education, good education at least, gets at the root of how and why we "know" what we "know." It always involves a good bit of shock. All good education challenges our preconceived notions, questions received wisdom. We can't sit in a bubble and have people tell us what we want to hear. How does that grow faith? How does that grow a person?

While much of Brown's "history" is not history at all (it's fiction, people!!), my hope is that it will cause interest in church history, the formation of doctrine and the canon, etc. Maybe it will cause us to reexamine our notions of "Jesus" and how he has been constructed historically. Brown's version may not be accurate, but neither is the Jesus that is dominant in today's culture. We have the filter of churches, authors, commentators, and culture telling us what Jesus should be like. Who needs the bible at all, really?

My fear is that those who might most benefit from the questioning/thinking process that could be started from this book/movie are the very ones who won't go to see it. But that's always how it is, isn't it?

judging people

Dear guy in UPS truck outside UT-Southwestern today,

I am sorry that I made a weirded-out face when I walked by you and your parked brown truck. I heard the voice of Rush Limbaugh emanating from your radio, and thought bad things about you. Through my stare and facial expressions, I didn't mean to imply that you were stupid or a mindless "ditto-head" [term for a Limbaugh admirer]. In fact, I have no clue why you were listening. Perhaps you, like I do, find right wing talk radio (well, political talk radio in general) to be interesting, fascinating, and silly. I had no right to assme that you were a conservative. People assume I'm a conservative all the time too. I often wonder what people think whenever they get an earful of Sean Hannity in my radio. I hope they give me the benefit of the doubt, as I failed to do for you today.

Sorry!
Jennifer

Quote book

Once, a long time ago, I had a quote book, where I wrote down randomly bizarre things that I or my friends said. I lost the quote book, and rather than starting up a new one, whenever I heard a funny quote, I would write it down on whatever was handy. This was a good two or three years ago. Now that I am packing up my closet, I found a whole folder of random napkins, bits of paper, church bulletins, and class handouts with quotes that are sometimes funny, sometimes funny if you know the person saying them, and sometimes probably only funny in context. And context is long gone by now. I'll post them anyway.

"It looks like a highlighter but you drink it." --Dylan on Mountain Dew
"No, more like pee." --Luke
"Dude, what does your pee look like?" --Dylan

"Bird poop isn't the same as gravy." --Travis

"I weave a mean blanket." --Jason

"The hottie, the hottie, mmm, I love the hottie." --Sarah, to the tune of "The Bunny Song."

"Eat the chicken." --Sarah

"She wants to shrink-wrap the world, but she'll go the jail first." --Lauren, on Martha Stewart

"Now our only hope is that this church bus has a head-on collision." --Sarah

"They wanna get it on." --Sarah
"Get what on?" --M., Jason's little sister

"So, going to the bathroom together is off limits?" --Sarah to Jason
"Mmmhmm. And sleeping in the same bed, as well!" --Jason

"Give it to God." --Jason

"Where do the students park??" --Jason, looking at the B. McDaniel middle school parking lot

"She made the Colt face! I heard it!" --Jason

"I so want to like your ear." [a few seconds later] "Oh, I have earwax on my tongue now." --Sarah (to Jason, presumably)

"Jason, you can bite my tongue." --Sarah

"Forget poking a dead body with a stick, I want to lick people." --Sarah

"Jason, do you want to have my babies?" --Sarah

"It feels like dog poop between my toes." --Sarah

"Clinton in the oral--I mean oval--office." --Ema

I think many of these quotes (especially the Sarah and Jason ones) were from really one night where I insisted on being annoying and writing down everything they said. Oh well.

I have gotten nothing done today.

I am amazingly lazy.

Why isn't he funny?

As many of you know, I love scary conservatives. Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly amuse me more than offend me. (I know, I'm evil.) But, this guy, Michael Savage, I just can't laugh at. I don't know that his words are inherently more offensive or wrong. But I just can't laugh at him. Perhaps (and I'm just thinking out loud here--I don't know my subconscious near as well as I should) it's because Robertson and Schlafly appeal to religion. Savage doesn't. I guess I credit the former two with good, but misguided, intentions; but Savage just seems kind of evil and mean-spirited. He may be religious, I don't know, and he probably is (though not in any recognizable Christ-like way). But because he doesn't really make that the basis of his appeal, maybe that's why I just don't like him rather than finding him interesting and wrong.

Anyway, listen to this clip. He is seriously getting it all in: racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. He's expertly playing on feelings of many working class white men that they are being marginalized. he uses the police department as an example, saying that because of affirmative action and subjective tests given by "lesbians and minorities" they are not getting the good jobs anymore and that unqualified "dummies" become "the white man's captain."

"Do you understand what I just said to you? You do if you're a white man."

This is "a low grade communist revolution" according to Savage.

Objectively, some of his claims are quite laughable, and, indeed, the sorts of things I generally laugh at. But something about hearing this man makes me literally nauseous. Perhaps a lot of it is that Robertson and Schlafly generally sound patently ridiculous. But Savage? I could see my dad listening to him and totally being sold on the idea that he is a victimized white male. I could see thousands of working class white men being fed the same lies.

immigration

It's really fascinating to see the two sides of the Republican party so obviously exposed and President Bush so obviously caught between them. The two sides are, of course, the social conservatives, and the big-business conservatives.

Big business is clearly in favor of a guest worker program--it gives them access to cheap labor. Social conservatives are afraid of increased immigration for more cultural reasons. John Gibson (from FOX) the other night warned white couples that they need to have more babies because hispanics are starting to outnumber them. To them, the problem with hispanic immigration is more about race and culture.

Bush has sided with the big business conservatives. And the social conservatives are unhappy. I find it truly interesting and can't wait to see how it plays out.

Many of you have asked about my own feelings toward immigration. Here's what I think: in order to deal with this problem, we have to deal with both the push and the pull factors that lead people to come here seeking a better life. No one wants to have to come to the U.S. No one wants to leave their family behind. But the lack of economic opportunities in the sending countries and employers who are willing to hire undocumented workers in the U.S. cause a massive flow.

How do we fix it? Securing the borders is important, but unless you ameliorate the flow by stemming the sending and pulling factors, people will always find a way in. We need to really enforce laws that criminalize the employment of undocumented workers. We need to invest in the economic development of the countries that send workers here, creating jobs.

And making humanitarian workers criminals? That's just idiotic.

Nooooooooooooo

Worst thing about being graduated? No longer having access to library databases.