Derrida Does Dallas

Reflecting on Osama, Part I

2011-05-03T15:54:00.003-05:00

Osama bin Laden is dead. There have been a wide range of reactions to this in the last few days, and later this week I'll post my own. Before I do, though, I was reminded of the mass email I sent to friends and family at the end of the day on 9/11. I was an RA in a freshman dorm at Georgetown University in Washington, DC on that day. My residents had been away from home, some for the first time in their lives, only about two weeks at that point.

Here you go:

I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away

I saw the movie Pearl Harbor for the first time on Friday. I didn't enjoy it, despite the outstanding special effects and stunning imagery its producers were able to give us. The magnitude of such an attack was unbelievable to people of my generation, the grandchildren of those who fought so bravely in that war.

Unbelievable, that is, until today.

I woke up this morning a little before ten am. I've been recovering from a cold and I stayed up late last night to console one of my freshmen who had just broken up with her boyfriend. I saw my mother instant messaging me, and we chatted a little before she said "Two planes hit the world trade center and the Pentagon has been bombed." I thought it was a joke, a comment to make me more talkative. God how we all wish it had been a joke...

I pulled up the blinds to my window to see a billowing cloud of smoke. The Pentagon is not even three miles from where I live, and from the roof of the apartments next to my dorm one can see it on any given day. Today, it was given away by the torrents of hell that grew to the heavens in gray columns. I was shocked, and it was around that time that my freshmen started to ask questions. "What happened?" "Are we going to be ok?" "What are we supposed to do?" "Do we have classes today?"

Needless to say, today has tested me as an RA in a way that depression counseling, roommate mediation, and alcohol busts never could. Today I looked in the eyes of over a hundred young men and women, most of whom have been in Washington DC for a mere 18 days, and see concern, anxiety, and fear. I've watched them spend hours with a phone system that barely worked as they simply tried to let a parent know they were alright. I talked to a resident who's dad had a meeting in the world trade center this very morning but, thank God, he slept through his alarm. I've seen them spend hours in our lounge, watching ABC for every new bit of news. I've hugged, patted, and consoled so many people today.

I have already heard estimates of ten thousand dead in New York to go along with the thousands injured, the millions scarred, and the three or four buildings that didn't make it. I'm angry. I can't even imagine a time when I felt so much anger inside me. Like Anne Frank, I still believe that people, deep down, are basically good, and maybe that's what angers me so much. It is so infuriating to see so many people work so hard to destroy beauty, to destroy life, to try to destroy hope itself, and yet to still know that there is some goodness inside them, begging to break free. I had a meeting last night with the Charity and Social Justice Committee for Georgetown, and even our work there doesn't charge me up for justice as much as the events of this day.

I do thank all of you who called, IM'd, or emailed to check on me today. Your prayers and good will played no small role in my making it through today. I hope you continue to hold in your hearts all those affected by this tragic day. Perhaps from this horror we can draw a firmer resolve and a clearer vision of what sort of peace we should strive for.

God bless and take care,
Steve Okey, RA 2nd floor New South

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."
-Matthew 5:4-5:9

Stay tuned, a further reflection to follow.

Magnum is going to blow us all away

2010-12-04T21:19:00.003-06:00

In meeting with my committee, as well as looking at the response from the EPC, one of the concerns that has come up is the unpublished nature of David Tracy's alleged "God Book." It's supposed to be this great, ground-breaking work that he's been writing for nearly twenty years, but no one has seen it. Moreover, due to his retirement and his age, it seems likely that this will be his crowning achievement in a long and distinguished theological career.

It occurred to me the other day that Tracy has a lot of similarities to Derek Zoolander. First of all, Analogical Imagination, Plurality and Ambiguity, and On Naming the Present are sort of like Le Tigre, Ferrari, and Blue Steel. It's largely the same point, made over and over, in different ways (for those of you new to Tracy, I highly recommend reading Plurality and Ambiguity first - the rest of his work makes a lot more sense if you start with that one). Moreover, the entire modeling community in the film is waiting, with baited breath, for Zoolander to unveil Magnum.

The question that remains is whether or not the God Book, like Magnum, will in fact blow us all away, or if it will just be another example of his "one look." Either way, I don't know if I can finish my dissertation, or at least finish a good dissertation, without Magnum.

The EPC said yes!

2010-11-02T11:42:00.006-05:00

Hello, ever-forgiving blog readers! I post today with great news - the theology department has APPROVED my dissertation proposal! Yes, they seem to agree that it's a great idea for me to toil away for the next two years on a singular topic! It only took five drafts, a half dozen meetings, and several months of blood sweat and tears, but that stage is over. If it took that much effort to produce eight pages of text and 12 pages of bibliography, then perhaps I should be more nervous about my two year (more accurately, 19 month) plan.

For you faithful readers, wondering what it is I eventually settled on, here is a snippet from the proposal:

This dissertation will interpret, analyze, and evaluate the theological anthropology of David Tracy. Professor Tracy is one of the foremost American Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. His work has had a perennial influence on topics such as theological method, hermeneutics, the public character of theology, and religious and theological pluralism. Perhaps his best-known contribution has been the idea of the ‘classic,’ that expression of truth that comes out of a tradition and bears an excess and permanence of meaning.

Appraisals of and engagements with Tracy’s work have tended to focus on the methodological and hermeneutical aspects of his work. Yet Tracy himself has lamented that his interlocutors have not dealt with what he calls his “substantive” arguments, particularly regarding Christology. His continuing work over the last fifteen years on what has come to be colloquially known as “The God Book” is in part a recognition that the substantive, doctrinal aspects that permeate his work have gone unnoticed by his reviewers.

In this dissertation, I intend to offer a corrective to this lacuna in Tracy studies. Two questions guide this research. First, what are the focal points of David Tracy’s theological anthropology? Second, how does his work in this area develop from and contribute to the broader contemporary Christian and Catholic conversation about theological anthropology?

The dissertation’s thesis is that Tracy’s anthropology engages various traditional categories in Christian theological anthropology from a perspective characterized by liminality, plurality, and ambiguity in human life. This perspective profoundly shapes the four dominant foci of Tracy’s anthropology: finitude, relationality, sin, and grace. Tracy creatively develops these four foci from the broader tradition of theological anthropology in relation to limit-situations, pluralism, and tragedy.

So that's exciting. I know you will all rush out to Borders to buy a copy as soon as it is released to the public, so I'm not worried about giving you a little foretaste here.

The main thing that this means is that, from here on out, until the final horn blows, I need to do some work on this every single day. Read some chapters, some articles, compile some sources, do some writing, have significant conversations with my interlocutors, whatever, something has to happen every day.

And writing on this blog doesn't count, although I hope it will be updated more frequently now that I've been approved.

Get excited, my friends. This is what we've all been waiting for

Not a dissertation day

2010-07-11T09:57:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's true, this post has nothing to do with the diss. Perhaps the saddest part about that is it means there's no haiku in this post. At least not one at the top.

The theme for next year's annual Catholic Theological Society of America conference is "All the Saints". On the description sheet they included with the packet at this last year's conference, there was a mention of interest in papers that analyze the (potential) relationship between saints and celebrities.

Obviously, this is a topic that was invented for me. Unfortunately, in the call for papers the CTSA posted, there is no explicit mention of it. There are a couple of sessions I think it could be shoe-horned into, and I could possibly even propose a special session on it. And believe me, I will find a way to submit my proposal. All I'm saying is I'm glad the planners shared an intuition with me, I just wish they had followed through on it.

Proposals are due Sept 1, and I shouldn't have any trouble putting one together by then. I've recently started reading Gezim Alpion's book on this topic with respect to Mother Teresa. He's a sociologist, not a theologian, so I think it will be interesting to see what he says. I think his emphasis is more on the celebrity aspect, and I'm hoping to write more about the similarities between sanctity and celebrity. Nonetheless, it's a good starting point.

The other question I'm debating about it is whether to write my paper as a response to his book, and in that case focus on Mother Teresa, or to instead use some of his work to focus on a different figure.

It should be awesome, either way.

Mother Teresa
A saint, or celebrity?
I seek holiness

Dissertation Day, #129

2010-07-04T12:48:00.003-05:00

Labor in silence
Texts rain down like missioned leaves
Thesis equals life

Ah dear friends, the way of the dissertation continues. So many things have happened over the last nearly three months that I am unable to fill you in on all of them. Perhaps, then some highlights are in order?

* Prof Hinsdale has agreed to direct for me. Prof Goizueta has agreed to be a reader, and I believe soon so shall Prof Lawrence. Committee, thou are formed.

* The project has shifted, slightly, to a more intent focus on David Tracy's theological anthropology. I still want to study media and theology, and this will peer in that direction, but I wish all the more fervently to finish this project in under two years. Thesis indeed equals life, in that upon its completion I will embark for new shores.

* I had a chance to speak with David Tracy in person and by phone in April and May, and he is supportive of the project overall. He has confirmed that he in does in fact have a theological anthropology, and that no one that he knows of in the United States is working on this topic.

* I went to the Catholic Theological Association of America's annual conference, where several people of repute expressed interest in my work. I also had a chance to catch up with fan favorites Tom O'Meara and Vincent Miller, who have both been very kind and generous teachers to me.

* I am, at present, ankle deep in Tracy's most famous book, The Analogical Imagination, and expect to conquer it entirely over the next week.

* As part of my studies of Tracy, I have joined a small group of students who are wrestling with Bernard Lonergan, and especially his epic tome Insight. We are currently covering some of the articles in Collection in preparation for the larger work.

* Lastly, and arguably most importantly, I have begun the David Tracy page on Wikipedia. It is very limited at the moment, so please feel free to help with that.

More thoughts to come soon. Furthermore, for those of you in the twitterverse, you can now get information about updates to this blog from www.twitter.com/dedodal

Dissertation, Day #46

2010-04-12T13:21:00.002-05:00

One question, two years
Has it been formulated?
Internal debate

After a little more than a month of reading, note-taking, and conversation, I have arrived at something resembling the guiding question for my dissertation research. As you might note, there are still some decisions to be made about wording and particulars, but here's its current state:

"How does the growing role of electronic media (TV/internet) in contemporary Western/American society influence and contribute to a (Roman) Catholic understanding of the human person"

Further, the theologian whose texts will provide the most fodder for this will be David Tracy, esteemed emeritus professor of the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Obviously there will be many other thinkers to draw on and engage with, and I have lots of questions left to pose and to answer. But this seems like a good start.

I have a meeting with a potential diss director on Wednesday, so high hopes there.

And of course, any thoughts or suggestions people have on this would be appreciated.

Dissertation, Day #34

2010-03-31T12:22:00.002-05:00

The forest bird's song
So lovely, so transient
My thesis slips away

Hard to believe I've at least technically been working on the dissertation for a month. I have written nothing. I have outlined nothing. I have met with only two professors. I have not worked out a moderately formal statement of my guiding question. I am still loathe to talk to people who ask "so what is your dissertation on?" I am happy to report "theology and media," and sometimes to even go further and say "how media culture shapes the human person," yet I still am vacillating on what theologians to use, what method to pursue, what questions in anthropology to focus on, and so forth. I know that I have time, but I don't want to dick around forever.

The truth is, exams are still a recent memory. I took time off, I read novels, I had fun, but on some level I'm still a little burnt out from exams and from grading for the class I TA for. And as summer approaches, I need to apply for jobs and find a way to make some dollar bills. So much is going on.

But this is fine. I work best under duress, in crisis. I need to schedule some meetings, submit some applications, read some books, and kick some ass. Time to go do that.

Dissertation, Day #10

2010-03-07T15:43:00.002-06:00

Three man rocket man
Anticipates burning fuse
Dissertated boom

It's a really nice day out, and I'm heading to mass soon, so this will be brief.

It was a good week for dissertating. I got several excellent books in the mail, I've read more of this Mara Einstein book that I'm finding interesting, and I did a pretty sweet mindmap on one of the huge whiteboards in the department. So I have a better sense of what I'm thinking about.

I also found my notes from my theological anthropology class, which gives me a little more structure than I had a week ago.

Not that I've done any actual writing yet, or even ironed out my two sentence question. But I'm on the fast track, baby, and this dissertation is going to blast off like a rocket to the moon. Even Shatner couldn't speak/sing me out of this one.

Dissertation, Day #4

2010-03-01T15:14:00.004-06:00

Now, dissertation
I will you into being
From the formless void

About two and a half weeks ago, I passed my doctoral exams. This was one of the greatest reliefs of my academic career, topping both my acceptance into BC's PhD program and the time that (the now immortel) Jean-Luc Marion gave me an A on a paper that he told me could not be written well. I relaxed a little, went out for a cheeseburger, and soon began to enjoy the free-flowing tequila at the Green Briar.

Yet this also meant it was time to begin work on a dissertation in earnest. Many students take the completion of exams as on opportunity to take several months off, to disappear, to travel, and generally to rediscover what it means to be human again. Most of these students, however, have a reasonably solid idea of what their dissertation will be on.

I was not one of them. I took a week off, read the most recent novel in the Wheel of Time (The Gathering Storm), which was surprisingly good, and then got back on the horse.

I call this Day #4 of the dissertation because last Friday, henceforth known as DAY ONE, I met with my advisor of several years, Prof. Goizueta (who kindly did not break me like a horse during my oral exams), and began the process. I have long been interested in the intersection of theology and media, and he's one of the few professors I've found who share that interest.

So broadly speaking, I have a topic. It's going to be on theological anthropology in the media age. The specifics of that need to be worked out, still. Likely, I will follow one major theologian for that overarching aspect of the work, but it's unclear whom that will be. Bernard Lonergan? David Tracy? Johann Baptist Metz? It's also likely I will draw on a few other academics on the way - almost certainly Vince Miller, Tom Beaudoin, Stewart Hoover, and Mara Einstein. And I haven't nailed down what the range of work on media will include.

But I have a topic. I have a trajectory. And I have a reasonable expectation of support from one faculty member that it's worth pursuing this topic and seeing what I can find for the dissertation proposal. And that's a relief.

Still needed, however, are specifics, two more faculty members, and a definite dissertation director. I'm on my way though.

TRON Party

2009-09-19T14:38:00.008-05:00

Feeling the pinch of the ongoing economic problems in our country? If, like me, you're a grad student in your late twenties, you have probably discovered the time-honored recession-buster social activity of Movie Night.

But what if stale old movie night just isn't doing it for you? Well then make it a theme party. For example, consider throwing a TRON party with your closest friends.

If you aren't familiar with TRON, then you may not have lived through the early 80's, or you may never have been to Disneyland. TRON was one of the first films to use CGI heavily as opposed to practical effects. Thus, while it may look like a backwards film compared to Star Wars, it was in many ways for groundbreaking in terms of effects. Not that you care about this twenty-seven years after the fact; I'm just saying.

The idea of the TRON theme party can range from simple to elaborate. At its simplest level, you might just randomly say "end of line" whenever you finish a sentence, or refer to your fellow partygoers as "programs." On the higher end, you might create your own homemade TRON costume and demand that other guests do the same (recommended colors are red, blue, and yellow).

However if you're looking for options that are a little more middle of the road, such that there is a spirit to the TRON party without it being a creepy/excessive, the real key is food and beverage. You see, even though the programs in the world of TRON only drink "power" (that looks a lot like water), the programs attending your party will want something a little stronger while sitting through the film. We served an electric blue lemonade, which I have lovingly renamed TRONADE.

The recipe for TRONADE is simple. Proportionally, you want one part vodka, one part blue curacao, two parts sweet and sour mix, and two parts 7Up. You can put that in a highball class over ice, or you can make a whole big pitcher (like I did). It's, refreshing, delicious, and futuristic.

Drinks alone are not enough, however. Your guests will also demand foodstuffs. These simple cookie version of TRON's Identity Disk are sugar cookies with concentric circles of white and red frosting (much like the costumes, these colors can vary).

Obviously, with the exciting news that TRON's sequel, TRON Legacy, is coming out next year (with Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Kevin Flynn), you'll want to get started with planning your own TRON party. Especially if you're going to require costumes.

Unnecessary Text Exchange

2009-07-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

Nota Bene: This originally appeared on facebook, but in an attempt to make my facebook page less likely to damage my promotion and tenure prospects someday, I have moved it here (not that this will likely make any difference)

Tonight, while responding to emails, I had the following totally unncessary exchange by text messages with someone I don't know.

Him: "Marshmallow is hard to get out of hair"
Me: "Who is this? (although I do sympathize"
H: "Alex"
M: "This is steve. Do I know you?"
H: "Jesse gave me this number and I dont think he can get your number wrong"
M: "Who does Jesse think this is? What's your last name?"
H: "Larson" [sidebar - I don't feel bad putting who this person was in this note, as he irritated me. I will do more not-so-great things later on]
M: "Yeah I have no idea who you are"
H: "Then how do you know jesse"
M: "I don't know Jesse"
H: "Whatever he practically stocks you"
H: "Whatever he practically stalks you" [bravo for the correction, Alex Larson]
M: "Dude this is steve okey I live on the east coast. I just got this number two weeks ago. I would double check the digits"
H: "The east coast doesnt have the 765 area code" [yeah, he got me there]
M: "My family is in central Indiana and I just joined their family plan" [COMPLETELY TRUE]
M: "Go ahead and look me up on facebook"
H: "Whatever"
M: "Who do you think I am?"
H: "Emily [middle name] [last name]" [I don't want to punish her for having a moron friend]
M: "Yeah you totally have the wrong number
H: "No I don't" [persistent little teenager]
M: "Don't think so? Call this number" [surely this will convince him]
H: "You will just put someone else on"
M: "Ok you got me genius. Did Jesse tell you we slept together" [In my defense, I was tired, annoyed, and figured if high school kid wasn't going to even fact-check his phone numbers, I would try to add to his high school drama]
H: "No but thats a little weird" [when I went to hs, this would have gotten a slightly bigger reaction. kids these days]
M: "It was bound to happen eventually. I do love my little stalker. What's up with you? Why do you have marshmallow in your hair"
H: "You put it in there during war-zone"
M: "War-zone?" [admit it, you're curious what "war-zone" is too]
H: "Dont start this again" [at this point, trying to put an end to all this, I use the bits I've cobbled together - especially the full name of who he thinks this is - to try and find him on facebook, send him a message, and tell him "dude, i'm not emily"]
M: "Up check your facebook inbox" [yes my grammar is atrocious here]
H: "Why"
M: "Trust me"
H: "Ok?"
M: "Did you get a message from steve okey saying this is not Emily?"
M: "Are you getting it yet?" [I meant this question both literally - "did your receive my correspondence" - and figuratively - "has it sunk in that I am not your teenie bopper friend Emily who you CLEARLY are in love with even though she only thinks of you as a friend?"]
H: "No" [I think he was responding to the literal sense, but maybe he was responding to both]
M: "Ok do me a favor. Talk to Emily tomorrow. If she tells you this is her number, and that she was having this conversation with you, fine I'll pretend to be Emily since you are so convinced I am."
M: "And I'll make up more shit about Emiliy and Jesse. But for now leave me the fuck alone." [sorry for the profanity, but I had had enough.]

Now, as indicated above, I tried to send a facebook message to the adamant Alex Larson to the effect that I was not in fact Emily. I first searched for the girl, and there was only one person on facebook with her exact name combo. I think I verified that she did in fact have a friend named Jesse and another one named Alex Larson. Thinking my work complete, I messaged Alex Larson:

Subject: "seriously dude, this is not emily"

Me: "yeah, i'm the person you keep freaking texting. you have the wrong number. i don't know who the hell you are, or emily, or jesse." [please note my attempts to moderate my use of foul language]

Reply from Alex Larson: "what are you talking about? i don't even know anyone named jesse." [at this point, I though perhaps he was trying to play a game on me, thinking I (I being Emily) had played the exact same game on him the night before. But to cover my bases, I did a little more research, and low and behold, Emily in fact has TWO friends named Alex Larson. I had messaged the wrong one.]

Reply from Me: "hmmm. wrong alex larson. nevermind."

Reply from Alex Larson: "ha alright."

Now dear readers, a couple things. First, THIS IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU THAT YOU HAVE THE WRONG PERSON. You say some version of "my bad" and let it go. It's true, I could have insisted that this was in fact the Alex Larson who accused Jesse of stocking, er, stalking Emily. I could have told him to stop playing games. I could even have demanded his secret for removing marshmallows from hair. But no, I let it go, looked for a reasonable alternative explanation (there were TWO alex larsons), and moved on.

Second, perhaps there is only one Alex Larson, and in an attempt to save face he (a) removed Jesse from his friend list, (b) denied being the accusatory Alex Larson, and (c) put an end to these whole shenanigans with a diplomatic "ha alright." And if that's the case, should I feel duped? No, dear friends, no. Because then that would mean he learned lesson no. 1 above, and now we are all better people.

But just to be safe, I did message the other Alex Larson:

Subject: "not emily" [I'm maintaining a strong emphasis on the central fact of the case here]

Me: "are you the alex larson that thought he was talking to emily but the person on the other end says it wasn't emily? yeah, this is the dude on the other end. hope you figured that out by now. apparently, i also messaged the wrong alex larson.

if you're still the wrong alex larson, sorry. if you aren't, let's call this closed."

I have not received a response to this query (sent earlier this afternoon). But I owned up to my mistake here, and hopefully, if this is the true Alex Larson, he'll own up to his. Or never bother me again ever. That would be fine too.

Good Friday

2009-04-10T13:11:00.004-05:00

"it is a constant temptation for a therapeutic quick fix, aspirin culture to leap quickly over Good Friday to Easter Sunday.

"I, too, would like for Easter Sunday to reign soon and wipe away the pain of crucifixion, but the healing and liberating power of Easter is real only when we have grasped the ugliness of the tomb and confronted the idols of death. No victory really worth having is cheaply won. No real hope is born out of lousy optimism, for optimism is not the wellspring of hope. There is no 'cheap grace' on the way to resurrection.

"The road to our Easter celebration is littered with daily crucifixions. To think of the crucifixion of Jesus in an absolutely unique and surrealistic fashion is to rob it of its power. It is the banality of the crucifixion of Jesus that draws suffering people into it. It is also this banality of daily crucifixions that makes a claim on the way we live as individuals and members of the body of Christ, the Church. We need to realize that our comforts are subsidized by the cheap labor of crucified people all over the world.

"It is precisely in the banality of the daily crucifixions, when crucifixions are ordinary, when society is colonized by the culture of death, and when psychic numbing has engulfed the land, that the power of the risen Jesus must be witnessed. It is here that the power of the resurrection must blossom."

-Eleazar Fernandez, "Reimagining the Human: Theological Anthropology in Response to Systemic Evil," p. 215

Rudolph the Red Nosed Victim

2008-12-14T17:06:00.001-06:00

Earlier today, as I was driving from tutoring to the library, the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came on my Christmas mix CD. This particular rendition comes from the wonderful Dean Martin collection, Christmas With Dino, and it got me to thinking about the lyrics.

After all, we know Rudolph’s harrowing tale of struggle for acceptance, and of the redemption he achieves upon becoming leader of the reindeer. True, we are never told the origins of his shiny red nose, nor of the social conventions among North Pole reindeer that rendered him marginalized and an outcast. What we do know, however, is that he was not accepted by his peers, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of jealousy, until the chief figure of authority placed him in power.

Yet there are two things that typically go unquestioned in this story. First, that the reindeer have in some sense their own culture and society is clear. They have laughter, and thus humor, so they must have some sort of language and sense of contradiction or absurdity. Secondly, they have names they call him, meaning there are ways of being a reindeer that are looked down upon or viewed as “un-reindeer-like”. Third, they even have games, suggesting some degree of leisure time that allows them to cultivate interreindeer relationships outside of labor. Yet what is so troubling about the reindeer society portrayed in this classic, traditionalist song is that there is a non-reindeer hegemon who controls reindeer behavior. Do the reindeer live in an apartheid state, ruled over by an ethnically human minority? Are they instead like the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq, semi-autonomous yet still repressed by the dominant political authorities?

And if this in fact is the case, does this song intend to use the heroic tale of one outcast reindeer rising out of his station and leading all other reindeers to blind us to the deeper social forces at work? Are we to believe that, since one reindeer can ascend so high, then the real issue is the lack of ambition or work ethic on the part of the other reindeer? Are we meant to applaud Santa for his perspicacious selection of Rudolph as overseer over the other reindeer, rather than condemn him for his subjugation of the reindeer class?

Secondly, no one ever seems to note the implicit social logic beyond the lyrics. Rudolph has been rejected by his peers. Whether or not this is for a good reason (perhaps the red nose is a sign of contagion and they need to quarantine him) or a bad (racism), what’s important is the dominant social judgment is one of ostracism. Thus, it seems to make no sense at all that these same reindeer rejoice when Rudolph is placed in a position of authority over them. The song conveys none of the expected resentment that would normally result from a perceived inferior being made a de facto superior. Indeed, their “glee” seems at least to be false, an attempted defense mechanism for their own insecurities.

With these thoughts, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Merrily We Roll Along

2008-11-21T23:28:00.002-06:00

28 is a mathematically perfect number. This is so defined because it is the solution of the equation (2^n-1)(2ⁿ-1), where n=3, resulting in the number being the sum of all of its distinct factors (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28). It is the second perfect number, the first being 6 (n=2), and the next is 496 (n=5). Thus, not only is 28 a perfect number, it is the only one that I will consciously experience as my age.

So if 28 is a perfect number, does it stand to reason (or to hope) that 28 will also be a perfect year for me?

On one hand, there are certain things I can more or less count on. I’ll finish up coursework in my doctoral program, study for and take my comprehensive exams, try to get some sort of presentation done at a conference, and generally grow in my professional vocation. I’ll throw some awesome parties (starting with today’s chili cook-off), travel to other parts of the country and globe, meet new and interesting people, and possibly even write the screenplay I have kicking around in my head. I will continue to bake amazing cookies, make some solid pasta sauce, and possibly even start making my own wine.

Nonetheless, it seems that the real magic of growing older rests in the unknown, the unexpected, the inevitable and oncoming mystery. Almost daily I am reminded of how vulnerable my life is. I live thrown into a world that is profoundly beyond my control and understanding, trying constantly to grapple with my context and conditions in which I find myself. Even the big decisions I make, such as coming to Boston, only recast this reality with different scenery, different people, different events, all of which I engage freely but not autonomously.

The reality of our freedom is certainly finite, but not only because of the limits of our mental, physical and spiritual capacities. Such finitude is most seriously found in the simple fact of everyone else’s circumscribed freedom. I am unable to determine who I am, what I do and think, outside of my complex of relationships, and thus the question of “I” is only sensible within community. (Indeed, this is one of the ways I make sense of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical circle.)

So what does this mean for my year of being 28? I hope to grow more in community, particularly in the many close friendships I’ve formed over the last many years (including you, trusty blog-readers). I hope particularly to find a church community I can settle into (I think I’m almost there). I hope to grow in formation with my colleagues at BC as we seek out careers in academia. I hope to see plenty of my family.

And of course, it wouldn’t hurt if I met a special lady. That would definitely help make for a perfect year…

General bloggery

2008-08-04T21:21:00.002-05:00

I promised Andrea I would post, and then Zak gave me some guff-ish comments, so fair enough. Largely, I think I am done talking about politics - I think this election, for as long as I was able to care about it, has worn me out. I will share the following thoughts, and then stay silent on these matters for awhile.

(1) If McCain picks Romney as his running mate, I will not vote for him. I like McCain, I've liked him for years, and I still wish he would have won in 2000. But Romney is disgusting on many levels, and the thought of him in office again gives me the willies. Part of my pleasure in the Republican primary this year was watching Romney go down.

(2) If Obama picks Evan Bayh as his running mate, I'll think that's a good thing. Indeed, if both (1) and (2) happen, it is even conceivable I'll vote for Obama (but conceivable in the 20:1 against kind of way). I like Evan Bayh, I think he was overall a good governor for Indiana (despite his unfortunate selection of Lt. Gov), and has been a decent senator. I don't really think Obama will pick him, but it would be the first time in forty or so years that Indiana has voted for a Democrat.

Beyond that, I am developing some posts on more theological things, but they're in the gestatory phase. No promises on speed or regularity, but I wanted my three loyal readers to know that I'm still there for them.

Clinton compares self to Rocky

2008-04-01T11:29:00.002-05:00

Apparently she missed the part in Rocky where he loses in a split decision...

First, Republican Giuliani goes away...

2008-03-10T20:36:00.005-05:00

...now maybe Democratic Giuliani will too.

I have to admit, I have had no personal experience with Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, outside of the compliance training I had to undergo while working at Aon. Perhaps it would be petty of me to dislike the man just because he somewhat improved the reinsurance industry by forcing me and others, who like me at the time never had the capacity or clout to make promises to clients anyway, to sit through some combination of three hours of listening to a lawyer and half an hour of a "webinar" about corporate compliance. And yes, in the office, it was known as Spitzer training. It was, in the insurance world, like those martial arts that emphasize evasion rather than ass-beating, which at least I found disappointing.

Anyhoo, perhaps it's just my overdeveloped sense of schadenfreude, but I nearly laughed out loud earlier today in Bapst Library (the quiet reading room alternative) when I pulled up the story on CNN. It seems that his interest in humanity's oldest profession is both prurient and prosecutorial. I can't deny the partisan side of me loves seeing one of the Democratic Party's rising stars blow his career as easily as he blew thousands of dollars just to get, well, you know. Indeed, it's also nice to be reminded that the Republican party isn't the one with scandalous sexual misfits, even if it does have the more amusing ones (I'm thinking here of Senator Craig's airport bathroom tap dancing).

As of this post, Governor Spitzer hasn't resigned, and I am curious to see when and if that will happen. He always seemed a bit of a jackass to me, and I won't be sad to see him go (nor do I regret that the American political media has been distracted, if only for fifteen minutes, from the still ongoing presidential election). Indeed, the only thing I find sad in the whole sordid deal is the public disruption of a family of five and the perhaps inevitable consequences thereof. Sorry girls, but your dad is a douchebag.

Dante Alighieri and George Lucas

2007-05-02T22:48:00.000-05:00

I was recently in a conversation with a co-worker about the Star Wars prequel trilogy. We had talked before several times about the things that bothered me about the movies (chief among them that it made me realize all the painful flaws about the original trilogy - sorry Ewoks). But we shifted into discussing Lucas somewhat more generally, with my essential complaint being that he could never move past his masterwork and let it stand on his own. He had a constant need to refine, to improve, to the point of damaging the story he told. The most standard complaint here has been immortalized in the saying "Han shot first", but I think there's an even more egregious violation with the DVD set realized several months ago. And, with a little help from Dante, I'll explain why.

In his Divina Commedia, Dante represents Purgatory as a mountain. Each new soul arriving in Purgatory must climb, slowly, painfully, through the fundamental sins that have weighed them down. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust represent terraces in Purgatory, each with their own form of liberating the soul. Having passed through these terraces, through the cleansing fire, he reaches the Earthly Paradise, Eden. Yes, the summit of Purgatory is the place from which humanity fell in the early chapters of Genesis.

But this is not the end of Dante's Comedy, no no no. We have 33 cantos beyond Eden. Dante seeks the Beatific Vision, the overwhelming experience of God in a face-to-face manner. His travels, begun in a dark wood, in the middle of life, are not meant to bring him back to a state of prior innocence. Rather he, and in truth all of us, are meant for redemption and transcendence, to move beyond where we are and where we started.

In the original Star Wars trilogy, Luke Skywalker decides that he must try to save his father Darth Vader. When they have, together, defeated the Emperor, and are making their way to a shuttle to escape the Death Star, Vader's body gives out. Luke, trying to coax him into not giving up, into struggling to make it to the shuttle, says "but I've got to save you." Vader, mask and helmet off, frail broken body exposed, reassures him, "you already have." Luke takes his body back to the forest moon of Endor, burns it in Jedi-style, and joins his friends (and Ewoks) for a post-empire celebration. He looks over at one point and sees Obi-Wan (his first mentor), Yoda (his second), and Anakin Skywalker, the man who was Darth Vader. His presence in this smiling triumvirate recognizes his redemption, his final rejection of the dark side, of evil. It shows that Luke (and also Natalie Portman) were right - there was still good in him.

When Lucas released the new DVD box set in September 2004, he had made many more tweaks and revisions from the Special Edition that came out a couple years before the prequel trilogy. He did try to address the "Han shot first" crowd by moving the shots closer together, and he tried to clean up some of the effects and add some more celebration scenes of other worlds in the Star Wars universe. But the change he made, which I think most cogently upsets the original story, is replacing the older actor who played Darth Vader, Sebastian Shaw, with the younger man who played him in the prequel, Hayden Christensen.

The effect of doing so is to undermine the theme of redemption that runs throughout the story. If the Vader ghost takes the form he had before he turned to evil, then it seems as if that experience was not important, was not a real part of him, or indeed had not even happened. Vader was returned to Eden, made innocent again, but not redeemed.

And so, while no one but perhaps rabid Star Wars fans (or rabid haters of the Divine Comedy) would bother to argue that Dante is a better storyteller than Lucas, I think it is important to recognize that the theme of redemption fails when the tragedy, the evil, the flaws of the redeemed are ignored, forgotten, and not themselves transformed. Dante's journey, the (original) tale of Anakin Skywalker, or even Ebeneezer Scrooge and Andy Dufresne (of Shawshank) are compelling examples of this process. I just regret that Lucas let his compulsive editing and tweaking endanger the fabric of his story.

I swear I'm moderate

2007-04-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

It's exceedingly rare that I feel like the most progressive person in the room. Actually, I'm not sure that had ever happened before Wednesday.

I got out of work early to attend a lecture at the University of Chicago, especially since it would probably be good for me to remember what it was like to be in an intellectual setting. And right off the bat, I did feel like I was back at the U of C, since I had to search about 25 minutes to find parking.

The topic at hand was a consideration of Fr. Jonathan Robinson's book The Mass and Modernity. He gave about 45 minutes worth of discussino of the main themes of the book and of the way his ideas have developed since he originally wrote the book a few years ago. He was followed by two responders, philosopher John Rist and theologian Robert Wilken. The lecture was sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago, which probably should have been my first tip off to what was to come.

Robinson's essential point was that the reforms of the liturgy that have taken place since Vatican II need to be reformed themselves. During the first part, Robinson largely asserted that contemporary liturgy is terrible, is responsible for declining numbers in mass attendance, and fails to express true reverence. He frequently used the word "obvious" to express these ideas, which several great professors have told me is typically a sign of an unsupported argument.

Now, a significant problem with the lecture at this point was a failure to distinguish among various ways in which the liturgy changed in the period following Vatican II. A short list of notable differences would probably include the use of the vernacular, the orientation of the priest relative to the congregation, the wordings of many prayers, and the use of contemporary styles of music and musical instruments. (This is by no means exhaustive, and I want to point out that the pre-conciliar or "Tridentine" rite is in fact a different rite from the "Novus Ordo", which is currently in use.) Without any distinction among the differences in the masses and the corresponding impact they've had, it's hard for me to see his commentary as much more than romanticism for an old way of doing things.

There were two further omissions in the opening lecture that I thought important. First, he seemed focused on the US and Europe (and mostly Western Europe at that). Little consideration was given to the experience of Latin American, Asian, and African Catholics, who represent the vast majority of Catholics in the world (nearly half of the 1.1 billion Catholics out there live in Latin America). Second, he seemed to imply that lower rates of mass attendance and vocations are entirely or even primarily a result of changes in the liturgy. He did not seem to consider other cultural trends in the last forty years - consumerism, globalization, and, in the US, the greater integration of Catholics into the society. It is this last one especially that I think requires a lot of focus, as it seems common that assimilation into a larger culture tends to reduce a group's participation in its own culture. I will admit that he did talk about secularization, but he did so to explain how Enlightenment ideas related to and caused the changes in the liturgy, not in how they affected Catholicism more generally.

Anyway, in the second portion of the lecture, his responders were able to bring out some of these complicating factors. Wilken thought it was good to bring the mass into the vernacular, and Rist felt there were both strong historical and theological arguments for both directions the priest might face during the eucharistic prayer. Both seemed to agree that liturgy wasn't quite as great in the post-conciliar period, although they were both optimistic that "reform of the reform" could take place over the next couple decades. And the main conclusion they came to as a group was that the Tridentine mass should be more widely available, and by doing so more domesticated. At that point, there would be little controversy over the old rite and, hopefully, greater reverence among the faithful.

As for me, I have no problem with the Tridentine Rite being available. There are a great number of rites in the Catholic Church, even in the Western or Latin half thereof. Allowing access to another one shouldn't be problematic.

But honestly, I don't have a problem with the Novus Ordo liturgy, and I don't think that it is irreverent or lacking in solemnity. I think that it does not work with everyone's temperament, and that especially people raised in the old rite may have had difficulty adjusting. I understand those who don't like guitars at mass (I'm not a huge fan of them either), but I'm not sure that means they don't bring some people closer to God.

The liturgy is one of the most significant ways Catholics act out their faith. It stands to reason that changes to the liturgy can affect how Catholics live. But to imply it is the only thing that might affect how Catholics live is reductionist and misleading. I'm no progressive, especially when it comes to Catholicism, but I definitely see the benefits that came from the changes to the mass. For those of us concerned about the Church and its future, we do it a far better service by recognizing the complexity of the issues and not by getting upset about our pet concerns.

Recent Developments

2007-03-03T16:20:00.000-06:00

I had meant to write two separate posts as these two things happened, but, well, they kept me busy.

(1) I now have a dog, his name is Cato. Now, it's important to note for you illiterati, that it's Cato and not Kato. He's named after Cato the Younger, not Kato Kaelin (I won't even dignify him with a link). Failure to understand this distinction tells me that (a) our friendship is suspect and (b) you're a moron. I named him after Cato the Younger because he's a very stoic dog. He’s about 36 pounds, he’s not a barker, he's not even particularly affected by the weather, be that cold or rain or snow.

But he is a humper. There is some speculation on the part of me and my roommates that he is not actually neutered, since it looks like he still has balls. That, plus the humping, makes a strong case. So far, he likes walks, squirrels, chewing his bone, sitting on the blue couch in the apartment (with occasional breaks for the green couch), and canned dog food. That final part is too bad, since the shelter I adopted him from gave me a bag of dry food.

I’ve included a photo or two here so that you might burn his visage into your memory. Since he has now been fairly well trained in the art of sitting, I plan to next teach him to eat people’s faces off. Beware.

(2) I was promoted at work. I came into the office one day and ran into Deepak, a manager for whom I had previously written code. He offered me a spot as a “Senior Technology Analyst,” meaning (a) a promotion and (b) a raise. More importantly, it meant much more interesting work, as I would be creating stuff rather than just processing. I would be responsible for developing and testing some of the in-house software we use.

Of course, as whatever remaining faithful blog readers I have should now, I’m planning on skipping town in a few months (more on those developments when I know more). So as much as the new opportunities and new salaries enticed me, I felt I had to be upfront with Deepak about my probable non-future with Aon. Indeed, Javier, who knew of my plans, had even tried to dissuade Deepak from making an offer to me, claiming I wouldn’t be interested – his clever way of keeping my secret.

But, surprisingly, neither Deepak nor his boss cared, believing there was enough that I could accomplish in four or five months that it would be worth having me. I have to admit, that was a pretty solid ego-boost (not that I necessarily needed one). It did mean leaving Javier’s generally low-maintenance group, and he’s given me a fair amount of shit for deserting him. He will get to hire someone new, someone whom I can train to spend as much time as I did reading Wikipedia (the office has since blocked YouTube and Facebook, so it looks like Wikipedia is the final refuge for serious time-killing).

All that remains for me now is to hear back about schools and financial aid, and then decide what I want to do. While there’s still an inkling of possibility that I’ll remain in Chicago, there’s still a huge part of me jonesing for Boston.

At last...

2007-02-05T21:14:00.000-06:00

Watching the clock tick down to zero, it didn’t quite sink in. Ever since the Mayflower trucks pulled in from Baltimore, we’d been rooting for it. After years of subpar teams, and then a few years of teams that choked, the Colts finally brought it home.

I went home for the game. Sure, in part I didn’t think it was wise to be a Colts fan in Chicago this past weekend. I’d been laying low the previous two weeks, but on Thursday I was sussed out by a fellows customer at Potbelly’s. Even beyond the risk, though, I really wanted to be with my team and my fellow fans. I wanted to go to the grocery store and see all the people wearing blue jerseys. I wanted to go the bars and feel the energy in the room. I wanted to watch the game with fellow fans, few of whom live in the Windy City.

We threw a party at my parents’ house. We had food for thirty, drinks for fifteen, and eight bodies. Sixty inches of television, all of them standard definition (with all the water spots on the cameras, high-def would have only given us better resolution blurs). My brother, the token Bears fan, provided a lot of loud, irritating, counter-cheering, but maybe it was good to balance things out.

It’s easy to exaggerate the impact this will have on the city. It’s true, the excitement in the city is palpable, the party ongoing. It is the first major championship for the city since the 1973 Pacers (compare that to Chicago’s 2005 White Sox, the ’85 Bears, or the Bulls teams of the ‘90’s). But it’s not going to make Indy a major tourist destination, it’s not going to build public transit, it’s not going to solve economic issues. Hell, it won’t even guarantee us the hosting spot for the Super Bowl in 2011 or silence the complainers about the new stadium. All it will do is (hopefully) silence the Peyton Manning critics, maybe earn our defense a little more respect, and give just a bit of a boost to a city that could use it.

I’m just glad I got to be home for it all.

Hiatus

2006-12-05T16:12:00.000-06:00

My uncle has said that just because you can blog, it doesn’t mean you should. For me, the more pressing question is if I even can blog. I’ve been away for awhile, on what I’ll call unofficial hiatus. Rest assured my friendly and forgiving readers, it has not been a time of idleness. Just idleness on this site.

As many, if not all, of you know, I’m applying for a glorious return to graduate school. Applications are coming due, in a few weeks anyway, and I’ve been full throttle on this since I started my campus visits in late September. The main effort nowadays is getting those pesky “statements of intent” nailed down, in which, under some arbitrary word limit (and how, indeed, can you even compare words such as “to” and “implicate”? Word counts for essays should be more like the House of Representatives and less like the Senate), I am required to state who I am, what I’ve done, what I’d like to do, with whom I’d like to do it, and why they’d like to help me do that. Currently, the “whom I’d like to do it” question is filled with the names of schools and specific professors they employ, but I think I’d like this process more if I could use the same structure but give that answer as “Keira Knightley”. Not that I don’t love those schools…

Also, during hiatus, I’ve been thinking about some other internet ventures. I’m thinking, ten years too late, about HTML, and perhaps having my own website – like with my name in it and everything! I’m not sure how different it would be from, say, the combination of my blog and my facebook profile, but it would be my own little piece of virtual real estate. It might be a good place for photos, audio messages, even videos! And I can post my research, writings, ideas, various lists, upcoming events that feature me, what I’m currently reading, who’s on my shit list, etc. Flexibility. That’s what I’d be going for. But it might be a little while before such a site is launched, so don’t get too crazy. But you can email ideas to Jack Derrida.

My second internet venture might involve all you Catholics. I’ve been thinking about making a site with different articles, editorials, what have you, that are sort of like an adult catechesis. It could be a storehouse for information on different events, personalities, heresies (I do love heresies), etc. Talked to Rugani about it briefly, but still much to be thought out.

Lastly, I’m trying to talk Indy Joe into starting a t-shirt and other design company with me. I want to call it Skipper Jenkins Design, after my newest alias (no silly, the website doesn’t work yet. Be patient!). That, like the others, is also in development.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, other things going on. I had a new idea last night for a book, which would be my memoirs of my time between grad schools. In my self-aggrandizing mind, the working title is Two Years Before the Cubicle: My Corporate Interlude. The working title is loosely inspired by the seafaring memoir Two Years Before the Mast, which I haven’t read. Yet. It may come to nothing. It may come to win a Pulitzer. I’m aiming for somewhere in between.

So there. There’s a posting for you. Stop complaining. And hopefully, before long, I’ll have something substantial to say.

PS – To any of you who have heard rumors that I was engaged, those aren’t true. And a word of caution – social networking sites may not be the ideal place to live out exaggerated forms of the inside joke. When it starts to affect innocent bystanders, whether they be long lost high school friends or your old roommate’s wife’s mother, then it’s time to give up the ghost. And beware that your sense of humor, with its grip on reality already being a bit tenuous, takes that final plunge into Andy Kaufman territory and, though conceptually hilarious, is practically incapable of living up to its promise. Alas.

PPS – The stalker is gone, by the way. Expect to hear no more from her…

Into the sea of waking dreams

2006-10-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

Somewhere last week around Wednesday, maybe Thursday, MCS stopped calling. I think she gave in. I briefly worried that maybe something bad had happened, and that maybe being ignored by me was the catalyst. But, in my current jackass phase of life, that thought quickly passed, and I enjoyed the sense of freedom I had.

I imagine it was like the nice feeling you get just after getting out of a bad relationship.

Sunday rolled around, I drove to St. Clem's for faith group, and got there a little before 5:30. Three other people are there - all folks I know, folks I like, folks I trust not to stalk me. We went up to the meeting room, chatted for awhile, opened up and such. The reflection was on this past Sunday's readings, in particular the story of the rich man who comes to Jesus and asks what more he needs to do to get saved. Jesus tells him to sell all his goods, give to the poor, and follow Jesus (always a fun passage to discuss with young adults with high-paying jobs who live in an affluent neighborhood).

We get through perhaps half or so of our meeting, with great openness - I'm starting to talk about the idea of friendship in its second act and the beauty of reconciling relationships - and MCS comes. She had been with her family, celebrating her grandmother's 80-somethingth birthday.

It was awkward.

I have enough trouble opening up in small groups as is, so having my awkward stalker around doesn't help. She had a tendency to interject unrelated comments to whatever people were saying, which only exacerbated the weirdness in my eyes.

The group ended, two of us plus MCS went to mass. I didn't sit with her. We said hello afterwards. That was that for me.

She called last night. I ignored the call. Today, reprieve.

Unclear about what happens next. I think maybe it's over, but that's my optimistic side. Not much news beyond that. But I know everyone wants an update.

Life Cycle of a Stalker

2006-10-10T14:20:00.000-05:00

A little over a week ago, the young adult small faith group that I joined at St. Clement’s had its first real meeting. One of the people in the group is a friend of mine, Kelly, and we had planned to hang out afterwards since we hadn’t seen each other in about a month. Between my trips to DC and Boston and her trips to Nebraska, Michigan, and NYC, it had just been hard to find time.

The meeting took place during the 7pm mass, the regular mass that I attend. So afterwards, while Kelly turned off lights and closed up shop, I chatted for ten or fifteen minutes with a member of the group I didn’t know so well (whom I’ll henceforth spare by calling her MCS). MCS is a teacher’s assistant at some school in the ‘burbs, and she’s doing graduate work in education. I mention my upcoming trip to Boston, she gushes over her new but not yet delivered computer. She was friendly, if a bit awkward, and so we talked while gravitating towards the church’s front plaza, where I met up with Kelly and some other St. Clem’s regulars.

Now ready to depart and spend some quality time with Kelly, MCS asked for my phone number. Now yes, I knew this was going to end badly at the time, but who knows how to say no politely? Moreover, this girl was in my faith group, so I couldn’t be rude to her. That would be awkward, right? So I gave her my number, with all the digits correct, and thought little more of it. Kelly, a couple others, and myself headed to Starbucks while MCS headed home.

I eventually got home, circa 11pm, needing to do laundry. I hadn’t paid much attention to my phone in the intervening time, but it now showed two missed calls, from the same unrecognized phone number. A listen to the voicemail revealed, unsurprisingly, that MCS had called me twice in the short two and a half hours since our departure. TWICE!!!! And it wasn’t an emergency or a need for directions, it was a wanting to chat!

Well, two calls, ok, I can handle that. No biggie. Until the next morning, when she called again. And then in the afternoon, leaving a message that referenced the CS Lewis reading group I do at St. Clem’s. Not wanting to be rude, I called while leaving work that Monday, only to get her voicemail. Admittedly relieved, a left a brief message, referring only to the nuts and bolts of the CS Lewis group and nothing else. She called a couple more times that night. By the end of the day on Tuesday, she’s racked up about twelve entries in my “missed calls” menu.

Wednesday rolls around. I ignore her calls at 7:45, 8:30, and 9:15 am. The first one is too early for a non-emergency call, the second is during my transit time (and I am not rude on the El), and the third is while I’m at work (unless, like many days, I’m late). We’re allowed to use our cells at work, sure, but not for being chatty.

Noon comes, the sun is high over our building, the water on the lake sparkles….and MCS calls. Frustrated, looking for any option, any option at all, I answer. “Hello?” “Hey it’s MCS (she said her real name, silly).” “Hi………” An awkward moment ensues. She starts up the chat-factory, and I break in: “Yeah I’m at work, I can’t really talk right now. Plus tonight I need to pack for my trip to Boston (I was leaving the next day!), so I’m a bit busy.” “Oh, ok. Well I’ll talk to you later.” Hooray! Respite, if only for the rest of the day!

Thirty seconds pass. The phone vibrates again. Surely, someone else wants to hear my voice, so I open the cellular leash and see, oh yes, MCS’ number. Flummoxed, I answer. “Yeah?” “Hey I was wondering if you wanted to maybe hang out some time next week?” I recognize that terminology – hang out – as the socially awkward or inept way of asking someone on a date. A punch to the gut, really. Even if we exclude all the stalker-ish circumstances going on and we assume she’s just a normal, if shy, girl, she would still not be what I’m looking for – too awkward, little sense of sarcasm, not attractive to me, and a moderately irritating and hard to understand voice. But I’m caught, for it’s not every day that your brave blog-writer gets asked out; my rejecting skills are underdeveloped! I respond: “Well, I’ll be pretty busy and have a friend coming into town, so we’ll have to see.” A weak response, the sort I would condemn any other man for making in the face of adversity, but it gets me off the hook. Temporarily.

The day ends, I go home, I pack, I watch some television, I ignore MCS’ three post-work calls. I also ignore her invitation to join Gmail (which struck me as odd, considering the only email address she had for me was a Gmail one), and her email, which included such lines as “I have a good feeling that you and I got along perfectly!” and “I hope you have a nice weekend on your trip. I know that I will be thinking about you, though. ;-)“

And so the next day I left for Boston, for VACATION. She called numerous times, throughout the day, while I was in the airport, while I was on the plane, after I landed. She emailed, saying

I just wanted to let you know that I was thinking about you today. I hope you are thinking about me, too! Oh, please tell your family that I said hello. I would like to meet them sometime. ;-)

It is WAY too early to bring my family into this one.

The phone calls, text messages, and emails waned over the weekend, and she has limited herself to only a handful of calls the last two days, so far. But seriously friends, what the hell? Derrida here knows he’s handsome, daring, and charmingly Catholic, but this is ridiculous. My best friends don’t call me this much. When we were dating, the ex didn’t call me this much. Hell, when my bills are past due, the creditors don’t call me this much! This is super-inappropriate. Especially the calls during my vacation. That’s me-time, not me and non-emergency-friends time. We’re not even friends! I know her maybe fifteen minutes better than a stranger!

UGH. So, recommendations are surely welcome, but likely as not I will send her an email sometime today or tomorrow explaining that I don’t know what her expectations were after a friendly but brief chat after faith group, but they in no way justify the 25-30 calls, plus text messages and emails, that have ensued. It’s entirely possible that, had there been a hell of a lot less of that, I might have responded and we might have become friends. But now I’m just too damned uncomfortable for that to happen. Plus we have a small faith group to worry about – how awkward is that going to be this coming Sunday? That’s right: really f’ing awkward.

Pope + Islam

2006-09-18T11:54:00.000-05:00

I hadn’t planned on posting anything today – just a bit earlier, I decided I would aim for a Tuesday/Friday publishing schedule (much like The Hoya for you Gtowners). But, I think it’s probably time to say something about the fracas with the Pope.

For background, the Pope was recently visiting Germany, where he gave many homilies and lectures. As has become characteristic of Benedict XVI as Pope, his presentations lack the show-boating and possibly also the charisma of John Paul II, but they also tend to (a) be more intellectually rich and engaging, and (b) less concerned for what we might term “political correctness”. That Benedict XVI is not a natural diplomat seems clear.

The particular speech which has ignited the ire of Muslim communities across the world was one delivered in Regensburg on Sept. 12th. The specific passage in which the offending comment is found is here:

In the seventh conversation-controversy, edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threaten. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without decending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

I would agree that it lacks a fair amount of tact to quote this statement, and I probably wouldn’t strongly disagree if someone called it careless. There are certainly many ways to parse the statement, and its timing and placement, but I consider it spurious and ridiculous that the best interpretation thereof is that the Pope is being malicious towards Islam.

In the full address, this paragraph is the third of sixteen. It’s a jumping off point for a talk where the entire focus is the relationship of reason and the Divine. The point of that paragraph, and the talk as a whole, is that reason is analogous to God, and thus whatever is contrary to reason or unsupportable by reason should be construed as contrary to God. Moreover, reason must be understood beyond the narrow interpretation that is Western science and mathematics, but should rather be viewed more broadly to include the truths that come from philosophy and the great religious traditions of the world.

In closing the dispute paragraph, Benedict quotes the emperor in the dialogue, who fundamentally says the religion should be spread by reason, by good arguments, by discussion. If the beliefs are reasonable, then there is no reason for violence to compel one to believe. What makes the Muslim communities so angry is that the paragraph, out of context, implies that this is what the Pope, and by extension the Catholic Church, think Islam is – simply a violent religion intending a violent form of propagation. Unfortunately, this misses two major points: (1) the quotation was a historical artifact, not a current argument, and (2) the Pope has been fairly pro-Islam in his many statements since rising to the chair of St. Peter. In fact, the main thrust of his papacy has been one that, I would think, many Muslims would strongly support – he has argued consistently against the West on topics of relativism, particularly moral relativism; on consumerism and consumption; and on disdain for religious belief.

But what inspired me to write wasn’t just that there was a negative reaction the Pope’s remarks. It started with what I think constitutes an outstanding example of someone missing the point:

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West…The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."

Hmmmmmm……conversion or death? Unless I’m terribly wrong, that sounds a lot like spreading religion through violence. I recognize, and very firmly state, that any group linked to al-Qaeda does not represent the mainstream current of Islam. But when so many other reactions include burning the Pope in effigy or yelling “down with the Pope”, I see less and less reasoned engagement and more and more emotional reactionaries.

In particular, I’m frustrated with Turkey. The Pope has an expected trip there in November. Turkey is currently vying for a position in the EU, a move which Benedict opposed before becoming Pope, his reason at the time being that the Muslim character of Turkey was fundamentally not-fitting with the character of Europe. While there may be good arguments for that position, it seems arbitrary to me (not that the construction of an EU isn’t in some ways also arbitrary).

That trip is now in jeopardy, according to State Minister Mehmet Aydin, unless he issues a full apology for what he said. This is coming from Turkey, a supposedly secular state, which nonetheless has little regard for religious freedom. According to their civil law, Christian religious minorities are viewed as foreigners, not citizens. Even some Muslim but non-Sunni groups go unrecognized as religions. Issues of religious liberty are currently one of the biggest reasons for opposition to Turkish entrance to the EU, and it fails to convince me that a government so profoundly lacking in religious freedom should be so excited over a religious issue.

Anyhoo, just a little venting. Like I said, I’m not sure I would have said what the Pope said, as I generally hope I would be more tactful if I were in a massively influential opinion. But I think that the reaction to his statement is an overreaction, is an unfortunate argument against the rationality of Islam, and is going to be taken as an excuse for problems between Christians and Muslims throughout the world. Check this article out for similar/further thoughts.

Pop Quiz

2006-09-15T16:13:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated lately out of a lack of things to say. Hopefully an exciting weekend will intervene. But in the meantime, enjoy the results of the following internet quizzes that I took just before leaving work early:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

What Canadian Province Are You?

You're Alberta. You're always up for a good time and are the life of the party. There is an aura of excitement about you and you try to have fun wherever and whenever you can. You're quite popular and understandbly so.
Take this quiz!

Which Colossal Death Robot Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

S.O.A.P.

2006-08-25T12:02:00.000-05:00

So, have you made your plans for the weekend yet? It's Friday, you know, the weekend starts soon. Maybe you're among the lucky few that will be coming to my party on Saturday, in Logan Square? I hear there will be pinatas (oh yes, that's plural). Or what about Latin dance night at Ravinia? I've heard that from a few people with regretful RSVPs. I understand though.

But let's be honest. More than likely, you're either (a) going to stay home and watch television/movies, (b) go to a bar, spend a lot of money, embarrass yourself when you ask out the girl at the bar who is either (b1) with her boyfriend and his six beefy/martial arts friends, or (b2) is a lesbian, or (c) you're going to do something "artsy" like a museum, a symphony performance, or some sort of performance art where thousands of naked people lie down in the street so someone can take a photograph.

Care to branch out a little, maybe take a chance? Do you consider yourself a risk-taker, willing to live on the edge? Well my little Evel Knievel, perhaps you should give in to the internet hype and check out Snakes on a Plane.

What!? Yes, I said it. Snakes on a Plane. I watched it last Friday, opening night, with six non-beefy, non-martial arts friends. It was probably the most entertaining movie experience I've had, well, ever. The crowd, which filled maybe half or two-thirds of the theater, was very involved and invested. During the trailers, whilst we were all nervous with anticipation and hope for Samuel L's appearance, someone vocalized our communal desires and yelled "WHERE ARE THE SNAKES?!" Smartly, another fellow chimed in with the perhaps obvious but necessary reminder that "THEY'RE ON THE PLANE!"

Snake on a Plane is surprisingly good. The production values are pretty solid, the acting is largely decent or above-average, the special effects are pretty good, and much of the dialogue is great. There are far fewer unintentionally funny moments than I had expected (although there are still a pretty solid set thereof). Sure, the flick is predictable, but the pure energetic anticipation of Samuel L's most famous line led to a really amazing pay-off for viewers. We cheered so much that, frankly, no one hear the next 30 seconds of dialogue.

Sure, there's a plot involving a mob hit, a witness in protection, some love stories, a rapper, blah blah blah. I think there's even an FBI agent who feels bored after being promoted to a desk job. But c'mon, it's SNAKES! On a PLANE! It's COMPLETELY entertaining. Go see it in a group of people unafraid to talk during movies. See it this weekend (after a disappointing $14 mil or so last weekend, I'm not sure how long it will actually be in theaters).

Now, if you're still not convinced, let me give you the cheap option. At the end, during the credits, they play this music video by Cobra Starship. Oh, you've never heard of Cobra Starship? That's because the band was put together specifically for this movie. The video is in many ways a mini-version of the movie - largely irrelevant plot, some silly lines, but lots of fun and energy, and relatively solid production value. Plus Samuel L is in it. As an added bonus, one of the members of the band is, I'm pretty sure, the lost 4th Hanson brother (you'll know him when you see him).

So give it a try. Especially if you have a student ID and get a discount.

PS - completely unrelated. This is the best and most mesmerizing music video I've seen in awhile. The song is forgettable, but the choreography is timeless.

Love, Hatred, Confusion, Part I

2006-08-18T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today we inaugurate a new feature here in Dallas. In "Love, Hatred, Confusion", I will list three things that I love, hate, and (you guess it) feel confused by. I'm hoping this will be more constructive than some of my usual complaining.

LOVE:
(1) This ad for Nutrigrain bars. I don't know if it's a real advertisement - it's roughly three times the standard television spot, so it would clock in at around $7.5 million in last years Superbowl - but I don't much care. It makes me want to eat more Nutri-Grain bars, which should be an advertisers intention. The absurdist humor strikes a chord.

(2) The website Woot.com. Seriously, try it out for a few days. Each day they post a different product, and you can buy up to three until they run out. Next day (at midnight), new product. If you miss your chance, your chance is long gone. The reviews of the products are never dry, oftentimes told in narrative form. They give a plethora of statistics on purchasing behavior for the items, and much of what they sell is interesting. Usually tech-geekie, though, if you're not into that sort of thing. Plus they have a companion site, Woot Wine.

(3) Little Miss Sunshine. Go see it. Seriously. Right now. Even if you have to leave the state you are currently in to find a theater that is showing it. Probably the funniest movie I've seen this year, definitely the most charming. I got to see a free showing of it shortly before its wide release, and it was definitely worth the irritatingly long wait in the hot sweaty line, and it would be worth shelling out $9.50 to go see it again. It's got a little bit of darkness, a little bit of bitterness, a little bit of cuteness, and a whole lot of laughs. And in the end, things do more or less work out, but not in a way that's saccharine. If you like me, you'll like the movie. If you don't like the movie, start questioning why you like me.

HATE:
(1) The current Snickers ads. Peanutopolis? Nougatocity? SATISFECTELLENT?? These I can do without. Some people defend it, on the grounds that it's memorable and the brand is easy to identify. But let's play some quick word association: Hungerectomy. Does that word make you hungry, or make you run in fear of surgery?

(2) Hats, shirts, etc. for sports teams that are not in the appropriate team colors. A pink Cubs hat? This goes beyond my distaste for the color pink. Team apparel is supposed to use similar colors, logos, etc, to bring fellow fans together. For instance, at Georgetown, the fight song closes with these lines:
But the yell of all the yells
The yell that wins the day
Is the HOYA HOYA SAXA
For the dear old Blue and Gray
Not pink and gray, not blue and green, but BLUE AND GRAY. What if the Patriots (booooooo) used some different colonial jackass as their logo, or Georgetown a different seal, on their apparel? Wouldn't be the same. Even more importantly, in a see of fans, you can tell the colors. That jackass over in section 117, row 22 with the yellow shirt, YOU ARE NOT A CUBS FAN.

(3) The saying "Slow and steady wins the race." Often used as an overly simplistic argument for pacing oneself, I exist as living proof that this adage isn't true. In high school, I swam for two and a half seasons, the latter two-thirds of which saw me doing the 500 yd. freestyle event. This is, in regular old high school swimming, the longest event in a given meet. My first time out, I swam it in something like 12 minutes, 41 seconds. My second time out, I cut a whopping 2:20 off that time, to now come in....last....again. Indeed, as my time slowly approached the asymptotal ten minute mark, the top swimmers on my team were putting it in just under five minutes. Average swimmers? Maybe 7:30. Slow and steady might finish the race, but fast and steady will beat it everytime.

CONFUSION:
(1) This alleged killer of JonBenet Ramsey. He says the killing was "an accident." Ok, fair enough, maybe you didn't mean to bash her in the head and strangle her from behind, I can see how that would happen. What about ten years of not turning yourself in, was that an accident too? Or traveling several times to Thailand, which seems to be well-known for the underage sex trade, and even taking a position teaching second-graders? Looks a bit shady on this whole "oops" defense he's pushing. (Of course, all this is assuming he actually is guilty, which is by no means certain right now.)

(2) The spambot that posted five apartment hunting secret comments to my blog. Did I really need that many spams? Wasn't one, or even two, going to convince me not to use their freaking website, to open their page and make sure that I never, under any circumstances, ever used their service and never, in any way, recommended it to anyone else? Seriously, why the overkill? What a poorly trained spam-bot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Go back to the bot-factory where they created you and die.

(3) The binary language of moisture vaporators. I'm no C-3PO! (It's late and I need to get home - going to see SNAKES ON A PLANE tonight!)

High Recommend

2006-08-10T11:20:00.000-05:00

Just a brief note, friends. Read this article. I went to grad school with the author, and it's extremely well written and very very interesting. And disturbing. I'm curious about folks reactions.

New Apartment. New Neighborhood. Same Shitty Pop Music.

2006-08-07T16:29:00.000-05:00

I have recently moved, from the charming, formerly ethnic neighborhood of Little Italy to the charming, largely hipster neighborhood of Logan Square. Things that have not changed in this move are (a) my being less than three blocks from the Blue Line, (b) my being less than four blocks from a police station, and (c) my being within spitting distance of a Catholic church (plus there’s (c1), it being a church I’ll probably attend once).

The new place is spacious, with three healthy-sized bedrooms and a large living room. The kitchen is not as large as my previous one, yet I intend to make better use of it. The layout is superior, and it will benefit from adding a cabinet or two. The bathroom, sadly, is a bit small, and must be split among three people (two of whom are WOMEN). There are nice public spaces, lots of wallspace to work with, an excellent small communal deck area, and a very nice, very large public patio area with tables and grills.

I have espied, but not yet met, a handful of neighbors, who seem to be of roughly the same age and socioeconomic background as me. I expect that ever so soon we will have a housewarming soiree that will allow us to meet our neighbors, and also to bring together our extended Chicago friends for a night of shenanigans and shitty pop music.

Among the highlights of the apartment will soon be the hanging of the following poster, quite prominently, in the central locus of our place: Sean Connery for America’s Libraries:

Sir Sean will be joined by the (at last count) 23 boxes of books that I am slowly, ever so slowly, moving into the second floor, along with Lauren’s (who, as a fellow Div School Grad and former used-book store employee, will likely bring her own voluminous tomes) and Becki’s (currently an unknown factor in the book expansion, but she did graduate from law school) own collections. The overwhelming message of the apartment, which will house a former librarian and the son of a (different) librarian, will be READ! READ, DAMN YOU! READ LIKE YOU’VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF TIVO!

Hopefully it will inspire our visitors.

Hello Again

2006-07-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

So it's been a busy month, sorry for my absence. I attended two very nice weddings: Jeff and Michelle on the first, and Andy and Andrea on the 15th (all dedicated readers of this here blog, hello and congratulations to you). I've come to find that I really enjoy going to weddings. See, I'm not sure I always saw them as a big deal, beyond the expense and the high-school/college reunion aspects, since with most weddings I've been to it's usually the culmination of something that was obvious and a long-time-coming. It's not as though witnesses to a wedding watch a monumental change in the quality of love between two people. But I think I've realized I was looking at it the wrong way around. That there isn't an obviously enormous change is probably the point. It's a transition, the beginning of a new life, but of a new life for which (at least usually) the couple has been preparing for some time. In the immortal words of the Spice Girls, two become one, yet these two have been converging all along. They vocalize, sacramentalize, a commitment to stick together with honor, respect, and mutual affection....but it's a commitment they've made long before they put it into words. That's what I think is beautiful. Everyone gets together to support and affirm an outward sign of inward grace. Like I said above, it's a culmination.

Besides, weddings come with fabulous receptions where I get to act like this:

PS - no matter how good your engagement story might be, imagine telling this one to the kids....

Return to Bloggery

2006-06-20T10:40:00.000-05:00

I have been away from the blog lately. I attribute it, in point of fact, to the temporary loss of my beard. Like the great and tragic Samson, I am no better than the average man without my glorious mane, er, beard.

Some have claimed that the ladies prefer a man without facial hair. Perhaps this is true, I know that I have no real grip on the mysterious mind of said ladies. I do know, however, that I have had better luck with the ladies during times of beardedness (ToB) than during times of beardlessness (anti-ToB). Moreover, in total, ToB represents no more than a sixth of all-encompassing time of Steve (AEToS, which = ToB + anti-ToB). Thus, while perhaps some ladies have declined the love of this bearded man, I will stand by the relative success of my glorious facial locks.

In a related note, I am currently involved in a game at work known simply as “Beard Chicken.” A co-worker and fellow U of C grad, code-named Swan, challenged me to such a beard-off a few weeks back. Having no clue what he was in for, I accepted his challenge, with his setting the ultimate prize to be a free mani-pedi for the winner. Swan has never gone the distance with a beard, and his lady-friend is visiting Chicago this coming weekend. I foresee him cracking like Humpty Dumpty.

Huzzah!

I like to think this is moderately serious me....

...while this is hopeful, or even innocent, me....

....and this the more sarcastic, evil, "why wasn't I cast for The Omen" me....

Oh, incidentally, I did watch The Omen this weekend. Overall, I was underwhelmed. I don't know if a religious-occult-devil movie will impress me again, after the power of The Exorcist. I did think it was really well cast though, especially Pete Postlethwaite and Mia Farrow. And the kid, good Lord the kid is creepy. I suspect he's not going to get many cuddly kid, or even normal kid, roles anytime soon. Yikes.

Happy Birthday Vatican City

2006-06-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

It's the 77th anniversary of Vatican City, insofar as on this date in 1929 the Lateran Treaties were ratified.

I only know this because of Slate's picture of the day section. The first one is fantastic.

Goth Night

2006-06-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

I went to a goth club the other night.

Maybe I should repeat that. I went to a goth club the other night (Friday night). No, not those goths, these goths.

I'd gotten a call Friday after seeing "The Break-Up" with Cristina from Gabe, a friend from high school. He was in town only for the night, so he berated me (and tempted me with a compelling tale about Larry McMurtry) until I agreed to come and meet him and Gaylord (another hs friend) in Lincoln Park.

Well, after discovering that I'd lost my driver's license (as in misplaced it; it hasn't been revoked so far I know), I found my passport and headed off to Sturch's. Upon arrival, Gabe gave me a hug, a few pretzels, and the bartendress kicked us out (closing time, not us being obnoxious). We walked the two blocks to Gaylord's apartment, the two of them did a mojito shot (I passed), and we walked the three or four more blocks to Neo.

Situated on Clark Street just south of Fullerton, Neo requires one to walk through an alley of refuse and glass shards to arrive at the unpretentious wooden door that keeps subculture distinct from the mainstream. The moderately goth bouncer checked our ids, smirked at my passport (what American uses a passport to get into a bar?), took our $5 cover, and let us in.

A couple things struck me immediately on entering. First, the fog/haze/smoke that permeated the bar area and wafter over the dance floor wrought havoc on visibility. I wasn't sure if it was intended to create a mystical feel, much like an enchanted forest, or if maybe there had been an accident with their ventilation system. Either way, I couldn't see. Second, the music reminded me a lot of the mid-90's, when I listened to my fair share of techno. Indeed, when The Prodigy's hit song "Smack My Bitch Up" (note: link is to the very interesting but very controversial and fairly obscene video) came on, I felt like I fit in just a little bit, despite wearing a red plaid oxford shift, khakis, and sandals.

Overall, being there was a lot like watching certain scenes from the Matrix and its sequels, but in 3-D. Lots of leather, chains, studs, collars, high boots, black clothing, wild hair. I got the impression that a lot of the people there had a darkness, an angst perhaps, that they took out on their clothing. I won't deny that there was a girl there, wearing black and white pleather pants that gave off the impression of fire whom I found quite attractive, but I think the inner darkness that my red plaid gave off didn't vibe well with her inner darkness, and it was not meant to be.

The last comment I can make is on the dancing. The predominant style of dancing to the driving, industrial techno sound seemed to be a combination of Tae Bo and really slow Bhangra(Georgetowners, think of Rangila, but slower, and as done by Billy Blanks). As someone raised on the club hits of the 90's, with your Cotton Eye Joe, your I'm Too Sexy, and your This Is Your Night, I had trouble fitting in with my bubble-gum-pop moves and such, so I avoided the floor except for people-watching.

I will say that, despite everyone's inner darkness, their angst, everyone we met and talked to was qutie friendly, even huggy. And the people-watching cannot be beat. So, for $5, yeah, I'd probably go back sometime. But maybe I'll wear black pants this time instead.

In the last week....

2006-05-28T21:46:00.000-05:00

....lots has happened.

(1) Monday, was able to finally put to rest any notion that I would have to work permanently for the supervisor I don't like working for. The higher-ups who had given the impression that this was an inevitability in fact said that they simply wanted to offer the opportunity to me before hiring anyone else. Crisis avoided!

(2) Tuesday, met with Jean-Luc. He agreed to write a recommendation for me based on the two papers I had written for him while at the U of C. My concerns about getting recommendations for any forthcoming PhD application were assuaged, as I definitely then have one prof from the U of C in roughly my area who will support me.

(3) Thursday, took actuarial exam 2/FM. Currently giving self roughly 40% chance of passing, ie 40% chance of getting a raise and bonus and not having to take that exam again. Was able to answer most questions, so my primary obstacle remains stupid/obvious mistakes. Took rest of Thursday off from work, went to mass downtown.

(4) Friday morning, 12:01 am, went to screening of X-Men 3: The Last Stand with Cristina. Overall, let down. Will refrain from posting review so as not to ruin it for those yet to see it. However, in general, too many characters, uneven development, too much reliance on visual effects to make up for lack of depth, some upset-ness over direction some characters were taken. Also, missed the scene that takes place after the credits (which is ok, since I had already expected I would see it again anyway).

(5) Friday night, went to production of "The Last Five Years," my own favorite musical. Nice to finally see it performed (instead of just listening to it on my iPod), male lead was much stronger than female, but I usually like his songs better anyway. Fun time at diner afterwards with Cristina, Ian, and Brian.

(6) Sunday (today), Indy 500. Was not home in Indianapolis for it like last year, so watched most of it on television. Exciting race, very good action, some heartbreak. Had been rooting for Danica Patrick (see previous post regarding her from last year) and also Marco Andretti (who was leading through turn four of the very last lap, but lost it in the final seconds). Attended BBQ with the Cristo Rey ladies and educated them on the finer points of Indy Car racing.

Coming up? Apartment hunting, lots of for-fun reading, returning to the gym, possibly doing some apartment cleaning (HAH!). Hopefully soon going public with my karaoke rendition of Savage Garden's "I Want You". Meanwhile, check out this sad love story and these fantastic book covers.

This post goes out to Michelle H.

2006-05-18T11:38:00.000-05:00

Lots on my mind lately. I’m not someone who normally worries much about the future. I’ve usually had a pretty good handle on uncertainty, in part out of a naïve optimism (not that things will work themselves out positively, per se, but rather that whatever happens can’t be that bad), and in part out of real hope that my desire to be a more faithful Catholic, to conform my will more accurately to God’s, will help me accept what comes. Moreover, I think I handle change and transition well. I’ve never particularly minded moving, I tend to get restless when things are routine for very long, and I like the challenge of new things.

Now, if that set-up leads you to expect that I am starting to worry about my future, don’t fret. I’m not concerned, but it has been on my mind. That time of year when people my age, particularly those whose planners are on school time, are moving towards or away from me. Also, the parents are putting the house up for sale and preparing to build another, smaller Okeyan temple. And for my own self, I had a somewhat sudden and unexpected change of plans regarding where I myself would be living come August.

For me, I think place has an assumed and unconscious connection to change. I didn’t live in only one house growing up (although I did live in one town the entire time), most of my changes in direction have involved going to a different city, I’ve moved repeatedly, and I’ve changed churches numerous times (and even changed my Church once). It’s always made the idea of “roots” a little bizarre to me – I grew up in the same town, but since I went to a different high school I didn’t really stay in touch with those people and, by extension, with that place during four of my most formative years. My sense of community is fragmented by lots of geographical distance and by the social distinctions of different groups of friends from different contexts in my life. And let’s be honest, it’s hard to put down roots when you always feel a little nomadic itch on that spot of your back that you can never reach and can never satisfy.

However, like I said, “place” is an unconscious connection for me. I don’t have to think about it a lot in terms of making a change because it’s the natural way I do that. The conscious, reflected-upon, in-your-face question is what I’m doing right now and what I’m doing next. I’ve been studying like mad for an actuarial exam, one of the nine gauntlets one must run in order to become a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (or whatever it’s called). It is the professional certification for what I do, and (more to the point) it’s the most obvious means for improving one’s salary. And so I’ve spent a lot of time on it, a lot of energy, a great deal of frustration, in preparation for next Thursday morning.

But at the same time, I have a meeting next Tuesday (read: two days before the exam) with Prof. Jean-Luc Marion, one of my old teachers at the Div School, about writing a recommendation for me to return to theological studies on the PhD level. I’ve always had a desire to go back, even at my anti-U-of-C worst, and in many ways taking this job was a means of testing that desire. And I do like my job, the people I work with, the things I do, and the money I make. So I face what might properly be called a dilemma, where two solid options present themselves and I’m required to select one and, implicitly, reject the other.

Sure, maybe the meeting will go poorly, maybe Prof. Marion really will have no idea who I am or he’ll think, on re-reading the papers he gave me A’s for, that I’m not up to snuff and he doesn’t want to pollute his reputation. Maybe something will go awry and make manifest that I’ve mis-discerned the situation. Or maybe he’ll be so impressed by my writing and my wit and my ability to understand his accent that he’ll demand I begin studying with him immediately, with full funding. But let’s be realistic. The meeting will go fine, he’ll write a decent-to-solid recommendation that will certainly help me get into a PhD program, but it won’t be sufficient cause. And, in the end, I’ll still be faced with two options.

I think that’s a good thing, to have options, to have two stable, interesting, non-ethically-ambiguous opportunities in life. What gets my craw, though, is that I feel like the process of creating these options, of keeping them open, is keeping me from really giving my heart to one or the other. I’m not as good an employee or as focused a studier for my actuarial exam in large part because I think I’ll be moving on, but I put relatively little effort to researching programs, contacting professors, and keeping up with my theological reading because I can’t and don’t want to abandon my job and my colleagues. And if there’s one thing I’ve seen happen, when a man tries his damnedest to keep two possibilities open, co-existing, as long as possible, one will fade away and the decision is made by default, without passion and devotion. Or, perhaps even more harrowing, both possibilities become impossible.

And so, to conclude what might be my longest and most rambling post to date, what is on my mind, with the future? Is it moving? Is it career choices? No, not really. It’s passion and timing. I’m trying to get a more integral grasp on what it is that I love and where that love leads me, and also when the right time to make those moves will be. As far as job and school are concerned, the timing is somewhat controlled by the logistics of corporations and schools. But we all know that, at least for me, decisions are usually formed long before deadlines call for them.

Not that I’m worried. I’m trying to be a more faithful Catholic, and I trust that wherever I’m going, God’s already there waiting for me.

Beard

2006-04-30T23:25:00.000-05:00

I shaved my beard yesterday.

I had been kicking the idea around after reading something anti-beard in the Screwtape Letters. I solicited advice at work; the general consensus was "do it." This was largely a result of their having never seen me without a beard.

I mentioned it to some non-work people; they referred to a vague disposition that "change is good" or "I don't remember what you looked like without one." I accepted that it would only take about a month to return to my prior bushy glory, if it should come to that.

First my roommate gave me a haircut - I've been wanting one for awhile, and I figured he could just cut it short for free instead of paying the nice old Italian man in my building $19 plus tip for a slightly higher quality version of the same thing. Then I broke out my beard trimmer, but it was low on juice and needed recharging. While it sat in its cradle, I got my scissors and started trimming. It was slow, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful in making it easier. I'd use the beard trimmer for the 15 seconds of juice it had built up, then plug it back in; snip some more with scissors, use the trimmer again, etc.

Eventually, it was hacked away enough to shave. With a Mach 3 razor.

I still have sideburns - fierce ones at that. But I spent most of my evening last night, out on the town with Joe Collins and some of his buddies, rubbing the slight vestiges of stubble that remained. To be honest, I felt somewhat forlorn, like an era had ended - Three, almost four years of uninterrupted beardosity rendered asunder like Barry Bonds' status as a good role model.I look in the mirror and see a shadow of my former self (and more directly, an actual former self, the self that couldn't grow serious facial hair).

Cristina said she likes the look, and as much as my beloved latina firecracker can sway me in any direction she wants, on this even she was not enough to soothe my broken psyche. Maybe women don't go for dudes with beards, and that's fine.....maybe I should just go to non-stop stubble for that sexy but gritty look. But this babyface BS, sorry girlies it just ain't me. And it's not just about what everyone else thinks (although I'll consider shaving to be my good deed for my co-workers, one that I'll never do again); I liked my beard.

And I'll like it even more, when it comes back to me, when we have our Andy Dufresne - Red reunion like at the end of Shawshank Redemption. Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

Beard (old post)

2006-04-30T22:51:00.000-05:00

(I redid the post to add a photo - I couldn't get it to work otherwise!)

Gwyneth Paltrow

2006-04-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

I have a well known dislike for Gwyneth Paltrow. I briefly met her in late 2003 while the movie "Proof" was filmed at the Divinity School. She was rude and dismissive of the hundred or so students and professors who were displaced by the Hollywood production (which then took a whopping two years to finally hit the big screen, but was otherwise a good flick). She would not chat, nor do I believe would she sign autographs (not that I cared enough to ask, admittedly).

This of course was in contrast to Sir Anthony Hopkins, who was gracious enough to autography my copy of Michel Foucault's "Order of Things". I regret to this day that I did not commend on his work in "Mission Impossible II", but we cannot live in the past.

Anywhoo, I bring it up because I was much pleased to find someone who shares my disdain for the mother of Apple and Moses. Seriously, how many jokes is this older kid going to get about forbidden fruit when she hits puberty? Honestly, think about your kids when you name them!

Check your statements

2006-04-10T15:56:00.000-05:00

A man in Malaysia was recently charged 218 trillion dollars (that's $218,000,000,000,000.00 if you want the zeroes) on his phone bill. Authorities are unclear at this point as to whether the phone was used "illegally" or if it's just a mistake.

My question is, how is it possible to run up such a phone bill? Let's begin by making some simple assumptions: (1) The phone bill covers one line, none of that family-share plans where you get a free phone if you add a line for ten bucks a month, and (2) The phone bills in Malaysia are assessed monthly (if anyone knows otherwise, please let me know).

So, using the math skills I supposedly employ at work, let's figure there are 1440 minutes in a day, and so, in a long month like March, 44,640 minutes. If the Malaysian man were on the phone THE ENTIRE MONTH, nonstop, then he was making a call worth roughly $4.88 BILLION per minute. And this is not even factoring whether it's night and weekend minutes or peak minutes.

Seriously, how is there any question that this is a mistake? How can the government-linked Telekom Malaysia think they'll have any grounds for pressing charges should the man not pay up within 10 days? By way of reference, the public debt of the United States currently comes in at right around $8 billion. How could one man rack up in approximately a month a sum egregiously larger than what it took the US something like fifty years of government excess and low taxation to amass?

I mean, I got pissed when Cingular double billed me once....

They forgot 'House of Wax'

2006-04-05T14:43:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share this with everyone. It was in my daily Catholic news email that I get from CNA:

Indian director raises eyebrows with hopes to cast Paris Hilton as Mother Teresa
KERALA, April 5 (CNA) - An Indian movie director said he hopes to persuade Paris Hilton to play the role of Mother Teresa in an upcoming film.

Director T. Rajeevnath told AFP that Hilton made a casting shortlist after a computer-generated image showed a close facial match between the hotel heiress and the nun. A meeting with Hilton is scheduled for the end of April, said the 54-year-old director. Rajeevnath is well known in India for his Malayalam-language films, including award-winning "Janani", the story of seven nuns who care for an abandoned baby.

Hilton's prior movie experience includes a homemade sex video, which appeared on the Internet, and a starring role in the reality TV series The Simple Life.

While I am abhorred by the idea of Paris Hilton (who is, I think, nominally Catholic - her grandfather donated all his money to the Church when he died - but his son sued and got most of the money back) playing a soon-to-be canonized woman, I have to applaud the article for its concluding Paris Hilton filmography.

But not being one to mercilessly rip down without offering ideas for building up, who should play Mother Theresa in a movie of her life? And should they use one actress for her entire adult life, using make up and effects to age her, or perhaps use more than one for different stages? Perhaps something like the CBS movie of John Paul's life, where Cary Elwes played Karol Wojtyla, but Jon Voight took over when he became John Paul II (the transition took place in a very well shot scene, I might add)?

My best recommendation, off the top of my head, would be Paz Vega, known best in America for her role as Flor in "Spanglish". But that's also rooted in the belief that most Americans can't tell people of slightly darker complexion apart, and I'd be all for using an actress so beautiful in order to express the deep inner beauty of Mother Theresa (I don't know if she was a looker in her youth or not, though).

Any ideas?

RE: Your Resume

2006-04-03T16:05:00.000-05:00

I received the following email today:

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in employment opportunities at the University of Chicago. You recently applied for the Electronic Publishing Specialist position with the 5674580-Press-Journals Division. At this time, the hiring department has decided not to continue with the job search and has cancelled the position.

We appreciate your interest in furthering your career at the University of Chicago. Please continue to visit our website at http://jobs.uchicago.edu for a listing of all open positions. Best wishes in your career search.

Sincerely,
Employment Services

I applied for that job SEVEN MONTHS AGO, people. SEVEN MONTHS! THAT'S LONGER THAN KATIE HOLMES HAS BEEN PREGNANT (and we all know how long that has seemed!). I didn't even want to work there (thank you insurance world for saving me from academia)! I feel like job applicants have the right to either (a) a timely response on applications or (b) NO RESPONSE AT ALL.

Seriously, by now I had (a) forgotten I applied for an electronic publishing job, (b) repressed the memory of ever applying at the University of Chicago to begin with, and (c) STOPPED CARING ABOUT FAILED JOB APPLICATIONS.

UChicago = Assholes. Let's be honest, we know it's true. Sure, they invented the atomic bomb and have an undefeated record in college football against Notre Dame, not to mention educated me in all the perils and horrors of the ivory tower, but none of these things greatly mitigate their asshole nature.

Currently reading: Day of the Locust
Song of the moment: Bust a Move

(Belated) Weekend Round-Up

2006-03-21T12:05:00.000-06:00

This past weekend included St. Patrick's Day, which while I am not Irish AND was in Ireland only a matter of days ago, is still one of my favorite holidays. In part, it's because it was a holiday I celebrated in high school, during my staunchly sectarian Protestant days, by wearing a bright orange shirt. Sadly, only five people in my high school 'got it', and one of them threatened to lynch me.

However, in my staunchly sectarian Catholic days (which have really set in since the election of Pope Benedict XVI, or B16 as I like to call him), I have grown to love wearing green (which has in fact been my favorite color since I was little) and drinking beer.

Also, last year I had a very memorable St. Patrick's Day, and what this year's lacked in terms of staying up all night, smooching a gal with a tongue ring, and then driving to Minneapolis for a bachelor party, it made up for with a little song by Britney Spears called "Toxic".

Earlier in the day on Friday, while at work, I told a few pals that I was headed to a piano bar that night to celebrate (indeed, the same one Zak, Phil and I went to the year before). Moreover, I fully intended to request the aforementioned "Toxic". To say that song has become an anthem for me would be a gross exaggeration, but I can't deny how catchy it is. Some did not believe I would request, and even more did not believe they would play it, but I wanted to prove my mettle, to prove the piano player's lack of dignity, and to prove my co-workers wrong!

And so I went to Howl at the Moon with Zak, met up with LEO, and ordered drinks. I found a request sheet, wrote that songstress' name and that anthem's title, and in the comment sections, in massive, kindergarten-handwriting-sized letters, scrawled "PLEASE!!!!!" Attached to a fiver I borrowed from LEO, I handed it off and waited.

They played Copa Cabana, Since U Been Gone, even Touch Me Babe by the Doors....but no Toxic....the night wore on, I started to get my Friday night tiredness, and two beers had not perked me up....but having paid a $10 cover and knowing every other bar in the downtown Chicago area would be packed, I had precious few options for leaving. We stayed, holding strong, holding our liquor, but nonetheless dismayed.

At last, a monologue! The lady piano player spoke:

"I can't believe someone gave me their hard-earned $5 for this next song. Who requests 'Toxic' by Britney Spears? Who did this? It's sad that they picked it, but it's even sadder that I know it."

And so she played it. Glory passed through her lips, granting me my much-needed second wind, and the night roared on appropriately.

Perhaps not quite as memorable as the St. Patrick's the year before, but no less sublime....

Profits soar!

2006-03-17T12:07:00.000-06:00

So this past week I think I've finally added to shareholder value here at the company. How, you might ask? Well, certainly not by blogging, checking my email, or reading news articles on the internet.

Rather, I have at long last contributed something creative to the office, by writing some program code to ease the irritating task of querying databases and retrieving data. If you're wondering what the heck that means, let us recall that I am apparently an actuary, and my job is largely to take numbers out of databases and make them mean something. Oftentimes, I have to make tables of such supposedly meaningful numbers and give them to other people so they can make them mean something.

However, this task of making tables of numbers is fairly repetitive, and largely the same each time we do it. SO, I wrote a script that will do the same task repeatedly and save me a great deal of trouble. And soon, that very script (or some version thereof) will be put into a website the company will use to make reports. Then, the equally frustrating, irritating, and time-consuming process of making powerpoint reports for presentations will also be made easy. Hooray!

Now, it's possible I'm at risk of automating myself out of a job. Indeed, if my scripts are so good, why would they need me? Well, simply put, my script is thorough, excessive, top-heavy, and complicated, and thus I'm probably the only person willing to read the (at last count) 819 lines of code I have. Thus, instead of being replaced by a machine that will do my job, I will simply become caretaker of that machine (rather like the happy-ending in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Charlie's dad gets a job fixing the toothpaste-top machine).

Indeed, this is such good news that I can justify blogging again.

In a more serious vein, I really want people to read this article. It's really interesting, disturbing, challenging, and sad, and for these reasons, important. Especially if you have any interest in disabilities or life/abortion issues. And is possible, let me know what you think.

Safe Returns

2006-03-13T14:58:00.000-06:00

I have returned safely from my very own European vacation. I have many tales to tell, hence I will be writing up a narrative travel-log in the next week or two and (hopefully) figuring out how to post it on this blog. It will be complete with photos (and possibly maps!), and will answer all you blogiscites questions re: Operation Four Leaf Pierogi.

However, some quick facts.

(1) The Polish, or at least Warsawans, are by and large a friendly and helpful people who are almost completely ignorant of English. I will of course point out that they know vastly more English than the average American knows Polish, but a note to all who said "Oh, don't worry about the language, they'll know English, at least in hotels and restaurants..." - yeah, that wasn't true.

(2) The Polish are also by and large a very courageous people. Not only were there TWO uprisings in Warsaw against the Nazis (the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944), but they survived nearly fifty years of Soviet architecture afterwards. While many high-rise public housing projects rival Soviet archictecture in sheer soul-crushing-ness, truly Stalin trumps Daley in that matter.

(3) The streets of Dublin are beautiful but impossible to drive. Kudos to Phil Holland for his brave attempt to navigate those very streets when returning to our hotel Thursday night AND when trying to return the car the following morning. Lacking both conspicuous signage and also any rhyme or reason to their direction, the streets were harrowing.

(4) Travelling exhausts the body but renews the spirit. I feel refreshed at having spent time away from work, away from home, in foreign lands, and it greatly helped me to appreciate the bounteous privileges of living in America. Each delicious bite of fresh fruit, each admirably labelled grid-based street, and every mostly clear word of English I hear makes me feel greater gratitude to live here.

Four Leaf Pierogi

2006-03-03T08:56:00.000-06:00

I leave today for Buffalo in the first leg of my highly anticipated Catholic Half-Tour of Europe. I will neither be emailing nor blogging whilst gone, so I wish you all a happy week and a half. I'll be back on the 13th, hopefully with some good pictures and better stories.

Please do pray for me and my cohoort while we are gone...

Ash Wednesday

2006-03-01T10:24:00.000-06:00

I had hoped by today to get a hold of Fr. Costello’s homily from Sunday night because it had such a wonderful description of fasting. In lieu of that, I’m posting a section from the third prayer in Karl Rahner’s Encounters With Silence, a book I very highly recommend to anyone who struggles with prayer (if people want, in coming days I’ll post the rest of the prayer). Another good reading for today is TS Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday”.

I should like to speak with You about my prayer, O Lord. And though it often seems to me that You pay little heed to what I try to say to You in my prayers, please listen to me carefully now.

O Lord God, I don’t wonder that my prayers fall so short of You – even I myself often fail to pay the least bit of attention to what I’m praying about. So often I consider my prayer as just a job I have to do, a duty to be performed. I “get it out of the way” and then relax, glad to have it behind me. When I’m at prayer, I’m at my “duty,” instead of being with You.

Yes, that’s my prayer. I admit it. And yet, my God, I find it hard to be sorry for praying so poorly. How can a man hope to speak with You? You are so distant and so mysterious. When I pray, it’s as if my words have disappeared down some deep, dark well, from which no echo ever comes back to reassure me that they have struck the ground of Your heart.

Lord, to pray my whole life long without hearing an answer, isn’t that too much to ask? You see how I run away from You time and time again, to speak with men who give me an answer, to busy myself with things that give me some kind of response. You see how much I need to be answered. And yet, my prayers never receive a word of reply. Or should I say that the interior motion that comes to me in prayer, the occasional light I receive in meditation, is Your word, Your enlightenment? This, of course, is the pat and ready answer which pious writers are so eager to give. But I find it very hard to believe. Again and again I find only myself in all these experiences, only the empty echo of my own cry, when it’s Your word, You Yourself, that I want to hear.

I and my ideas are at most useful to me for the sake of others, even when these ideas concern You, and when people think they’re quite profound. I shudder at my “profundity,” which is really only the flatness of a human being, and a very ordinary one at that. And an “inwardness” in which one finds only himself leaves the heart even more empty than any dissipation or abandonment to the idle bustle of the world.

I find myself endurable only when I can forget myself, when I can get away from myself by prayer and find life in You. But how can I do this if You never show Yourself to me, if You remain ever so distant? Why are You so silent? Why do You enjoin me to speak with You, when You don’t pay any attention to me? Isn’t your silence a sure sign that You’re not listening?

Or do You really listen quite attentively, do You perhaps listen my whole life long, until I have told You everything, until I have spoken out my entire self to You? Do you remain so silent precisely because You are waiting until I am really finished, so that You can then speak Your word to me, the word of Your eternity? Are you silent so that you can one day bring to a close the life-long monologue of a poor human being, burdened by the darkness of this world, by speaking the luminous word of eternal life, in which You will express Your very Self in the depths of my heart?

Is my life really no more than a single short aspiration, and all my prayers just different formulations of it in human words? Is the eternal possession of You Your eternal answer to it? Is your silence when I pray really a discourse filled with infinite promise, unimaginably more meaningful than any audible word You could speak to the limited understanding of my narrow heart, a word that would itself have to become as small and poor as I am?

Preparing for Lent

2006-02-27T15:18:00.000-06:00

Ash Wednesday is, well, Wednesday, signaling the beginning of Lent for Christians ‘round the world. Among the Lenten traditions are “giving up” something for the forty days (such as sweets, alcohol, meat, sex, etc.). I am always reminded at this time of year by the following story from Mao Austin:

He went to mass at Catholic University on Ash Wednesday. After reading the Gospel, the priest pulled out a few sheets of paper with his homily on it. Quickly glancing over them, he decided not to read it but rather crumpled the sheets up, tossed them to the side, and proclaimed, with a forceful chopping hand motion, “You can’t give up a sin for Lent! Giving up a sin is not a sacrifice, it’s what you’re supposed to do!”

Now, I agree, and that makes sense to me, but here’s the thing. Giving up alcohol, sweets, meat, or (especially in my case) sex for Lent isn’t difficult. Sure, I have to be a little more conscious when I’m at a restaurant, or go to someone’s house for a party, but it’s not that big of a deal. I feel like I’m deceiving myself if I really believe giving up chocolate for a few week really participates in the suffering of Christ (heck I’d probably rather go 40 days without chocolate than sit through two hours of watching “Passion of the Christ” again).

So I’m wondering what I should do for Lent (and also what others are doing, as I could use some inspiration). The faith-sharing groups are starting up again at St. Clement’s, which will be really nice for the Lenten season. I’m thinking about going to mass more days throughout the week, and maybe doing a rosary on those days that I don’t make it. I was also considering giving money to at least one street musician a day (I really like street musicians because, well, I really think they contribute something for the change and bucks that they get, and I do appreciate the effort).

But I’ll be honest, the Spartan nature of giving something up suits me better than doing extra things does. Real sacrifices for me might include not wearing sunglasses at all, never sitting on the El, or not making fun of Cristina and “her people.” One I’m actually seriously considering is not checking out the women at mass. Yes, I do it (hint hint – all single guys at mass do, and at least a few of the non-single ones as well), and it’s true that what I’m really looking for is a nice churchgoing girl with an irreverent sense of humor (i.e., a cuter, female version of me?) and mass is probably a good place to meet a churchgoing gal...but still, it seems tawdry and not entirely fitting with the purpose of mass attendance. Anyways, if you have suggestions, please pass them on.

Jig and Polka

2006-02-24T11:05:00.000-06:00

Has my mother turned into a throng of Filipino protestors, who, unable to unseat Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, have decided instead to overtake my blog? Well, like Arroyo, I went to Georgetown, and I will not be unseated so easily. And while I may not have Filipino security forces to protect me, I do have a username and password, and I don’t think my mom would ever try to hack me.

Thanks for increasing the number of comments though.

T-One Week until I leave Chicago for what has become known as Operation: Four-Leaf Pierogi. While in Dublin, we will be staying in the semi-luxurious Harcourt Hotel, former home of George Bernard Shaw (not to be confused with Bernard Shaw). It is right by St. Stephen’s Green and the Temple Bar area, so we should be well taken care of for our time there.

But while in Warsaw, in the spirit of experiencing the Spartan nature of Eastern Europe, we will be staying at the not-so-luxurious Atos Hotel, a one-star (or, as some claim, a one-star plus) hotel connected to its two compatriots, the Aramis and Portos hotels. It features a complementary cold buffet breakfast (what others on the continent might call a “continental” breakfast). Also, we have been recommended to bring earplugs if we are light sleepers – not because of my constant snoring, but because of the ceaseless sound of cars and buses. Apparently every single room in the hotel can hear every single noise on the street. Here’s hoping they can make up for it with their “free smile of our multilingual staff.”

Any readers who have spent time in Dublin or Warsaw, please do let me know of any recommendations you have. There’s a lot to see, sure, so it will help us to narrow down our itinerary.

Also, people who want postcards would do well to send me your addresses….likely I have them written down….somewhere….but it never hurts to cover our tracks.

Pope Dream

2006-02-20T15:13:00.000-06:00

I had another Pope dream last week. In this one, I was at mass with the Pope, but not one that he was celebrating. Rather, we were sitting next to each other among other local parishioners. While I can’t say what the inside of the Church looked like, I think it reminded me a little bit of St. Thomas in Hyde Park, one of the more God-forsaken churches I’ve been in. Partway through mass, there was a singing of the Litany of the Saints (I want to say it’s number 796 in the Gather book, but whatever it’s the one Andy and Andrea are supposedly using at their wedding), but at some point a saint was mentioned with what I didn’t think was an actual saint’s name (the name coming to mind right now was “Vitek”, but that may not be precise). All this was certainly strange, but to cap it off, in the final part of my dream, Pope Benedict leaned over to me, in his full Papal regalia, and starting singing “Mustang Sally” to me. Strangely, this dream seemed much more natural than the one where I WAS the Pope.

Last night I talked to Mom on the phone. Mom is now a regular reader of DDD (feel free to say hello to her in your non-offensive comments), so I hope she doesn’t mind my relaying this bit of our conversation. See, she wasn’t sure what email address to send stuff to – she didn’t want to use my work address since that would be monitored, but she wasn’t sure about my U of C address either. Apparently, she was not aware of my more commonly used email account, so I filled her in:

Mom: “What’s the address there?”

Me: “Stephen DOT [my last name] – “

Mom: “Stephen with a ‘ph’?”

Me: “Mom, YOU NAMED ME”

She didn’t find it as funny as I did.

T-11 days until I leave Chicago for my Catholic Europe Odyssey. Anyone who’ll be in the NYC area March 10th, that’s when I return from Dublin…

PS – Special congratulations to Mao Austin for his recent engagement.

Being Scottish, Not Being Irish, and Other Vigilantism

2006-02-09T15:05:00.000-06:00

I’ve been reading a book on the Scottish Enlightenment, How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman. It’s really quite interesting, especially if you have any attachment to the Scots, own a kilt, or even just really like Braveheart. Yes, the Scots did in fact have an Enlightenment (most notably Adam Smith, David Hume, and James Boswell were Scots), but the passage I’ve liked best so far is an anecdote about how different Highland and Lowland Scots had become in the mid-18th century (around the time that Scotland was officially unified with England as part of Great Britain):

Once a member of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe passed a Lowlander on the road near Achnacone and gave him a traditional Gaelic greeting: “Beannachd Dia duit, a duine!” (God’s blessing on you, sir!) The Lowlander knew no Gaelic, but replied nervously it was indeed a fine day. “Foolish man,” said the Highlander, “do you despise the word of God?” With that he drew his sword and killed him, and then robbed the body, taking his shoes, his musket, and a guinea piece he found in the man’s coat pocket. Later he told his laird what he had done, “adding that to his mind it had been a profitable morning.” Big Archie MacPhail, as he was known, was a famed cattle stealer and was never prosecuted for the murder. But he did worry at night, he told others, about being haunted by the dead man’s spirit.

Somewhat in that spirit, I’m slowly assembling a group to follow my vigilante crusade against one of my co-workers. The last three days at work have been remarkably unpleasant, working on this one dreaded project from several months past. For those who have heard me complain, this is the project of the famed SEVENTY GIGABYTE TEXT FILE that causes no end of frustration for all who encounter it. It’s like King Midas, except all that it touches turns to sorrow instead of gold. I know JoeCo, Phil, and co-worker David Quaid are in – are you?

Thankfully, not all is woe in Dallas. In less than one month, I will be in DUBLIN, IRELAND, and, roughly a day later, in WARSAW, POLAND. I have booked passage on Aer Lingus, along with JoeKo my roommate and Phil, to attend these two fine Catholic countries. I have wanted to go to Ireland for a very very long time, but whenever I almost get a chance something happens or I miss an opportunity. Poland is just an added bonus (Aer Lingus had cheap deals while we were there), and hopefully while there I can stock up on JPII memorabilia and souvenirs. Indeed, the main goal of this trip is perhaps to finally purchase my Catholic mail-order bride. I will keep you updated.

2006-02-06T17:06:00.000-06:00

Watched the Superbowl yesterday. I rooted for the Steelers, but without passion, in the meaningless hope that the Colts’ tragic loss only a few weeks ago would not be in vain. In the end it was not, but it is cold comfort – it was supposed to be our year! I will remain vigilant for the coming year, and perhaps in 2007 the Lombardi trophy will finally make it to Indianapolis. Go Horse!

I was pleasantly surprised by the commercials this year. While there was, as usual, a bunch of crap, I thought once again Ameriquest did a great job with the “Don’t judge quickly” ads – killing a fly with a defibrillator and a disheveled woman straddling a man on a plane. The early beer commercial with beers hidden around the office, though a little formulaic, was fun to watch. I LOVED the MacGuyver commercial for Mastercard, and I like the airplane one where the boss fired a guy over the phone, so the guy flew to the boss’s conference and tackled him. I guess I like unnecessary tackling on television. Last, the magic fridge commercial was quite funny (the problem with beer commercials is, well, I don’t know which beer was advertising in which commercial, and so if anything I might be inclined to buy more of non-descript beer, but not necessarily the ones they want me too. Oh well, no advertising is perfect…).

My highly anticipated novel is coming along. I have snippets of some parts of the story, I have vague characters based loosely on people I know, and I have a general plot-type-thing which apparently has unexpected and unintended similarities to Anna Karenina (which I’ve never read). I’ve been carrying around a little yellow notepad on which I jot my ideas, so if you say something funny and see me pull the pad out, chances are you may someday be immortalized in un-published fiction.

The head of the Jesuits, Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, is retiring from the position of Black Pope this coming April. The position is typically considered a lifetime one (like the regular and more recognizable real Pope), so it’s a little bit surprising. As I was educated by Jesuits for roughly 1/3rd of my life (and berated by them ever since), I feel a little sad, but he’s stepping aside so someone more dynamic might take over.

Also, all singles in the Chicago area, I’m thinking of putting together some sort of bitter, commiserating Valentine’s party for next Tuesday – ideas are welcome, as is anyone who wants to come…

2006-01-30T12:50:00.000-06:00

This sort of thing fascinates me. I think it's part of why I studied religion in the first place. As some of you know, I've done research on U2 and religion (a study I continue), but this is even more interesting. Even though several churches have lined up in support, I'm incredibly curious as to how it will be received.

Huzzah for Oprah

2006-01-27T11:15:00.000-06:00

I’ve never been much of an Oprah fan. Her guest yesterday was the much-besieged author James Frey, author of “A Million Little Pieces” – the hugely controversial memory-fiction that she picked for her book club in September. And yesterday, she made me a fan.

A week or so ago, when Frey went on Larry King, she called in towards the end of the show to defend the emotional truth of the memoir and stand by him and her pick. It was widely viewed that this helped save his reputation and, correspondingly, his two book publishing deal.

Yesterday, Oprah laid into Frey and his publisher (Random House) for duping and conning millions of readers. When he tried to wiggle around the fact that he lied, such as talking about the “idea” of having a root canal without Novocain, she pegged him. He admitted the Smoking Gun report was pretty much all true, that they had investigated his story well.

I recently finished reading the book, having started it just before the controversy broke. I was alternately engrossed and irritated by his writing style. Particularly, I was disappointed with the conceit of breaking convention in punctuation (there are no quotation marks, for instance) for what seemed no apparent reason. It made the book a little harder to follow, especially those sections that were dialogue driven.

Moreover, in terms of uncovering the nature of being an addict, I don’t know that it was all that shocking. Beyond there being any number of books and (even more accessibly) movies that deal with addiction, I think anyone who’s known a drug addict or an alcoholic can tell some fairly unpleasant stories. It should come as no shock that (a) addictions are essentially permanent conditions, (b) addicts typically loathe themselves, and (c) addictions destroy lives. I can accept that there might have been an added power to the book, given that it was true, but I think only because it was the first time the mass-public had attached to a book – not because it was the only one out there.

More importantly though, now we know it’s replaced the facts with a lot of flavor. And while I appreciated that tact in the movie “Big Fish”, it seems rather appalling to take a couple of years to own up to a lie that, quite frankly, made the man rich. I wonder how many people, who took hope from the book and its good outcome for James, feel betrayed and maybe a little less hopeful now?

The section in the book where I think he really set himself up for this reaction is in pages 186-87 or so, when a rock star comes to speak at the clinic. He calls the man a heretic for coming to this center full of addicts and alcoholics and criminals and lying to them about what he’s done. He wanted to beat the man, to tell him to f*** off, for the heresy of mis-representing his past to addicts.

Thanks Oprah for standing up to him, for admitting what happened and not trying to save your own ass in the process. You owned up to the situation, rather than gloss it over, and in so doing really demonstrated your own integrity and strength. The part where the publishing representative said people were “sad” about what happened, and Oprah responded “I’m not sad, I’m embarrassed and disappointed,” was really excellent. Despite all the doubts I’ve had about the Oprah Book Club in the past, I think this is one moment where it shines.

More Nerd Theology Stuff

2006-01-25T15:48:00.000-06:00

I took this quiz on Chalcedonian Compliance. For those who have studied the vagaries of the first 451 years of Christian thinking on Jesus, it's a pretty easy test. So I answered as honestly as possible and, not surprisingly, I have a strong Pelagian streak (so persecute me).

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant

92%

Pelagianism

42%

Monophysitism

33%

Modalism

25%

Apollanarian

25%

Adoptionist

25%

Nestorianism

25%

Monarchianism

17%

Arianism

Gnosticism

Albigensianism

Socinianism

Donatism

Docetism

Are you a heretic?
created with QuizFarm.com

Unfortunately the bar graphs are not showing up (sucky quizzes! - if you know how to fix it, let me know).

Watched the last fifteen minutes of Love Monkey last night. Still not that good, still think Judy Greer's character is the best one (and the best-friend dynamic with them seems well played to be ambiguous - possibly the only really good thing about the show). Cameo be Leann Rimes = UNNECESSARY AND CHEAP.

Dinner tonight with the future Mrs. Staron and the always Mr. Carter. The artist currently known as Cristina is ditching us for the opera (and, let's be honest, I would ditch me for the opera).

My cold continues, but with less and less fury. My white blood cells, full of rage, are finally beating back the weakened beast. Had I more time/concern, I would make a comparison between between my WBC's and Sam Houston's army when they destroyed Santa Anna in Texas, but I only know about it from the last fifteen minutes of the recent "Alamo" film, which I have yet to catch from the beginning on digital cable. I like Dennis Quaid, but Billy Bob Thornton I can do without...

My New Band: 48°

2006-01-24T12:58:00.000-06:00

We got our heating bill yesterday. Last month’s heating bill reached a record of approximately $430 (split evenly between the three roommates). For that month, the apartment had been held at successively lower temperatures – 66, 61, even 56…and still we attained this unpleasant utilities bonanza.

Angrily, I turned the thermostat closer to 52 and left my space heater on a little more frequently. Unbeknownst to me, the roommates dropped our apartment to the lowest setting available on the device, 48. I hadn’t actually noticed (the apartment is, of course, always cold), although I did think that my sheets were a little colder recently before I turned on the space heater. But anyway, the heating bill yesterday? $180!!!! Whoohoo! The roughly $80 difference in utilities presents me with an opportunity to dole out my largesse to my favorite charitable organizations: Amazon.com and eating out.

However, we must keep in mind that if my apartment has been at 48 the whole last month, that means there were in fact days that were warmer outside than inside, and that is a wintertime abomination! Thank God for my Honeywell space heater. I would recommend it to, oh, just about everyone.

Also last night Joeboy and I finished season 4 of 24. Needless to say, the most excellent scenes in the whole series occur in the penultimate episode when (a) Tony repeatedly body checks the female mercenary-terrorist against the SUV, and (b) when Curtis subsequently punches said terrorist in the face. She’s a pretty intense character, but you’ve got to root for the good guys. Now I just need to go back and watch seasons 1-3…

I also broke the January alcohol fast last night. LEO and I went to the Red Lion to celebrate her A in Prof. Lincoln’s class. Drinking with a cold was, in retrospect, a bad choice, although I had only a pint and a half of black and tan – not enough to make taking NyQuil dangerous (I hope?). Phil, I still support you in your quest for temporary sobriety. Now begins a full week and a day of drinklessness!!

It’s Friday, I’m Still Sick

2006-01-20T11:28:00.000-06:00

I spent somewhere between all and most of last night coughing myself to sleep. I thought I had this cold licked, I really did, but then it reared its ugly head again last night around 11 pm and we tussled for dear life. I went to CVS on the way into work, stocked up on cough drops, Kleenex, and Night and DayQuil. I was toying with the idea of taking the NyQuil while still at work, to see if it’s strong enough to knock me out at my peak, but some coworkers cautioned me against that. Hopefully I will feel well enough by this evening to attend BuffyFest at DDH down in Hyde Park.

I recently posted a personal ad on Craigslist that has, to date, garnered no less than FIVE responses, besting all previous Craigslist ads that I have posted. While I won’t go into specifics so early in the game, at the very very least this has provided great entertainment to my working day. More news will be forthcoming as it becomes fit to print.

I have to agree with Michelle that “Love Monkey” was a disappointment. Roughly halfway through, I found myself at each commercial break wondering if it would be worth sticking out the rest of the show. I made it to the end, but I’m not sure it was worth it. Tom Cavanagh is certainly funny – he was great in Ed – but Jason Priestly did not look so good and the only character in the show I liked was Judy Greer’s character (I forget her name, but she was the blond friend that obviously had some manner of romantic tension with Ed, er, Tom). I think I mainly like her because she’s so damned good as Kitty on Arrested Development, but even in this markedly different role I was a fan. Will I watch again next week? No promises. But it had better super-impress me if I do, else it’s cut off!!

I’ve been reading “A Million Little Pieces,” the now famously disputed memoir by James Frey. I’ll offer some more thorough reflections on it this weekend or next week, but for now I feel it sufficient to say that I wouldn’t strongly recommend to anyone on its own merits – only really if you’re interested in the controversy.

To close, Derrida Does Dallas has recently joined up on another blog, the Mutanic BBC (Beloved Book Club). Its posts and comments will focus on the book selection at the time, its humor will be esoteric and offensive, and its audience will not be everyone. But don’t worry, Derrida will still be giving you love, right here, roughly twice a week. Boo ya! Happy weekend everyone! Andrea you still owe me a Christmas email =)

Cold War

2006-01-18T13:12:00.000-06:00

So I’ve been ill the last two days, felled by a mighty cold. I might have come in on Monday, but there was additional confusion as to whether we had MLK off or not. Had I known for sure that it was a workday (and it was), I think I felt well enough to make it. But I didn’t want to get all dressed up in my monkey suit, traipse to the office, and discover that my (moderately) sick self was unnecessary. So I emailed the secretary, took a sick day, and hedged my bets. I thought it would help (and it did, marginally), but I felt like shite yesterday and stayed home again. Reading James Frey’s disputed memoirs didn’t make me feel any better, beyond the casual sort of moral supremacy I experience over those who fake their stories (every word of this blog is TRUE!).

Last night Cristina brought me remedies of a medicinal nature, for which I am much grateful. I’m not quite hopped up on Robitussin and DayQuil, but give me a few more doses and I could be. My least favorite part of being sick, by far, is my chronic lozenge-popping habit. As soon as I finish one, I unwrap another, like a kid in a (medicinal tasting) candy store. It wouldn’t be so bad if the bag of lozenges I have were something other than plain MENTHOL, like maybe strawberry and pina colada.

Of late, several friends have been encouraging me to write a novel. This idea inspires and concerns me, for I would love expand my contribution to the written word into the fictional landscape (and every word of this blog is TRUE!), but I’m not sure that I have anything to write about. I tried while sick at home to get something started, but nothing was working. I have no names, no ideas, no themes, only the vague melancholy malaise of hopelessness that I feel for our world and future, wrapped in a thick veneer of cheeriness and sarcasm by which all have come to know me. I’m afraid my day to day life is not quite interesting enough to turn into novelized form, but I may not be creative enough to capture a broad audience’s imagination. If only I had a good starting point, a foothold, I think I could make a go of it. Any recommendations?

A closing aside: I liked the part in today’s readings where it segued from David killing Goliath with a stone to a Psalm response of “Blessed be the Lord, my rock!” I understand that God was with David when he slew Goliath, and that the weapons of the Lord are not spears and shields. But is God a stone for me to fling at my enemies? Can I load a catapult or perhaps trebuchet with God-boulders with which to smite my enemies (particularly pride, lust, and gluttony)? What about the scene in “Saved” when Mandy Moore threw the Bible at Jena Malone, who responded “This is not a weapon!” Did she mean to follow it up with God, her rock? Oh well.

Resolutions

2006-01-12T16:41:00.000-06:00

While I consider myself pro-life, I think I will be three parts bemused and two parts disappointed if this sort of argument becomes common.

I slept like crap last night, not exactly sure why. I'm tempted to blame the 10pm Coca-Cola I had, but caffeine has never betrayed me like this before. I was watching the times and travails of Jack Bauer in Season 4 of 24 earlier, but as intense as it may have been, I don't think that was the cause either. The downside is now, sitting here at work, a quarter of five, I'm just POOPED. I already drank my emergency ration of Diet Dr. Pepper, had some peanut M&Ms, but nothing is doing it. I'm thinking about leaving early, but Javier is stressed over a project purportedly due tomorrow (like the Div School, most deadlines here are flexible).

I also have yet to make any New Year's resolutions. While there is some temptation to fall on old stand-bys like "lose 50 lbs," "find that special someone," and "be evil less often," I feel like these lack a certain flair. Thus I've created the following list of potential New Year's resolutions which I, of course, request my devoted blogiscites thoughts on:

BY JANUARY 1ST, 2007, I WILL:
(1) be able to put both feet behind my head
(2) have convinced Josh Williams that using "CE" and "BCE" when dating historical events is not anti-Catholic
(3) have written an average of two blog entries per week
(4) have auditioned for the lead role in "Thatcher: The Musical"
(5) have performed Britney Spears' epic story of ill-advised love, "Toxic," with my new band The Coveralls (starring Joe Collins on guitar and Phil Holland on tambourine/spoons).
(6) be three inches taller without the use of platform shoes or stilts
(7) have recommended to at least federal representative of the United States that our three top priorities should be economic security, securing peace in the Middle East, and requiring broadcast networks to increase their ratio of good shows to crappy reality shows
(8) have convinced three total strangers that my masters degree from the University of Chicago is in Cross-Cultural Comic Book Literature

Please feel free to give suggestions!

Karma 1, Grace 0

2006-01-11T10:36:00.000-06:00

It's a busy week at work, so I'll offer this tidbit in absentia...

Mouse Thrown Into Fire Sets Home Ablaze

Sun Jan 8, 4:19 PM ET

A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.
Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.
"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.
Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.
No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.
Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.
"I've seen numerous house fires," village Fire Department Capt. Jim Lyssy said, "but nothing as unique as this one."

Back with a vengeance...

2006-01-09T15:06:00.000-06:00

New Years, for those who are wondering, was a very lovely time. I survived over twelve hours in the car with Latina Spice, despite her thwarting my attempted naps and her being, according to her sister, a “horrible” driver. The return ride featured a very illuminating conversation about friendship that helped, if nothing else, to reconcile some remaining concerns.

While in Cleveland, we partied at Hotz, the oldest bar in Cleveland (ie, the wooden thingy between customer and bartender, that was the oldest one in Cleveland). It was a neat, neighborhood-ish place in a neighborhood none of us knew, but they owner-operator-bartender folk were ever-friendly and only charged me a $40 bar tab (it should have been triple digits, with all that I drank and bought for others). The bar featured shuffleboard and karaoke – inspiring my very moving rendition of “Girl From Ipanema” (along with Josh Williams) that caused tears to well up in the eyes of at least one regular blog reader.

As to reports of my own level of intoxication, I can only say that I maintained a very peaceful level of tipsy throughout the evening, until such point twenty minutes before we left that Josh and I, whilst drinking to forget, each had two shots of tequila, followed by a half shot of brandy. On their own, these drinks are mere amateurs, easily handled by my liver’s JV squad. Sadly, however, the JV and Varsity liver squad were tuckered out from a long evening of battling rum and cokes, and, well, I was sauced. I did not vomit, as I never do, but I definitely clutched Cristina’s hand and the cheap green plastic derby hat throughout the car ride home. Many glasses of water – and my dramatic reading of romantic short story by Andy Staron – later, I drifted off to sleep.

So Happy New Year everyone (Prospero Ano for some others), I hope you had a fab time too.

In other news, a stirring upset yesterday in the ongoing feud between my cynical and romantic sides. Having long maintained that (a) I’m not much of a romantic (Princess Diaries aside!) and (b) I am rather cynical about love, I was quite surprised yesterday when, after watching the movie “Closer,” my only intelligible response was to then watch the end of “Serendipity” on HBO.

For those who have not yet seen it, don’t. “Closer” is a movie that would be sad or depressing if you felt anything for the characters, a largely pathetic group of cowards incapable of honestry, strength, conviction, or fidelity – let alone love. The only character to have redeeming qualities, in my mind, was Clive Owen’s, the dermatologist. He is certainly a bastard, but he’s honest and demands honesty from others (to a somewhat brutal extent, I’ll admit). The only time the cynical side of the movie wooed me was perhaps in the doctor’s office, when Jude Law, full of weak, sniveling self-centered diet-fury, tells him “you don’t know anything about the human heart.” Clive Owen, a doctor, responds “Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist covered in blood!!” That dark, brooding line certainly sticks with me, and I think I liked the not-quite-revenge of the ending, but all in all, I felt thoroughly unsatisfied after watching it.

But “Serendipity,” oh how you make me laugh! and hope! and seek after love. Sure, I don’t really believe in destiny, or fate, or even an explicit divine plan for my own sorry life, but I DO like the idea that hearts followed are more often hearts fulfilled. I hope someday soon to meet a woman that inspires me to be willing to make a total ass of myself, to forsake all manner of reason, at least for a time. If anyone knows someone I should meet, you likely know where to reach me….

Back to Foolishness

2005-12-29T10:43:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (or other holiday of your choosing – I understand Festivus was celebrated recently?). I spent several days in Indianapolis, Jewel of the Midwest, and enjoyed time with family and friends.

Now, cementing the strange shift that “a job” has wrought on my life, I find myself at work. Oh yes, not two days after Christmas, and I was back in the office, analyzing catastrophic risk and making (data) tables. This little interim week between Christmas and New Years is perhaps the strangest of all – not quite everyone is here, not quite anyone is working super-hard (except for Javier and his ceaseless devotion). It’s almost dream-like, at least as the corporate world goes. Today we cat-modelers (as we are affectionately called) get out early for happy hour with the big boss.

Happy hour, however, is at the Lucky Strike bar/bowling alley inside the AMC River East Theater. This bar has developed something of a reputation as being more discriminatory than any of my friends from college: (a) patrons are not allowed to wear skullcaps. Yes, this might seem like a dig at the numerous Orthodox Jews that frequent the lanes, but according to one waiter it’s actually intended for the “undesirable” Afro-American crowd of Chicago that tends to have those black nylon head coverings. (b) Men cannot wear sleeveless shirts, but women are almost required to (all the waitresses wear halter-tops (sp?) with short short skirts and knee high boots. Not that Derrida here is necessarily complaining about what the women are wearing (although my humanist side objects to its being required), but I also feel like I should be able to show off my guns too.

I don’t remember the other rules there, but I’m sure they offend somebody. Oh well, the big boss will be there, and he controls who gets what raises, so I think I’ll be going.

In other news, I received from the parents “Arrested Development Season Two” for Christmas. I recommend moseying if not running to your local DVD distributor and getting a handle on this ASAP. As clever as Season One was, I am even more impressed this time around. Important recaps – Tobias auditions to be an understudy for Blue Man Group, Buster’s hand gets bitten off by a seal (and he receives a prosthetic hook in place), George Michael dates a generally forgettable super-Christian, and GOB finally develops a business model (whom he met at a boat show). Do it. No no no, seriously, do it. Do it. Do it.

I leave for CLEVELAND on Saturday with Cristina for New Years celebrating. It should be an exciting and ground-breaking time for us all. I expect I’ll have more to blog after the new year.

And thus I leave you with this clever article from Slate. Be sure to check out the special features at the bottom.

Sin and Relationship

2005-12-22T12:41:00.000-06:00

So in response to the last post, I was asked to reflect a bit more on relationships. Specifically, when we confess our sins against others (friends, family, ex-girlfriends, mailmen, etc), is then all the sin gone from that relationship? And if so, is the relationship then perfect (or alternatively, why isn’t it perfect)?

It’s unfortunate, in a way, that the effects of absolution tend to be so short-lived. I have no doubt that, in the two days since my last confession, I have fallen again into sin. While nothing particularly major jumps out at me, honest reflection uncovers a dull ache in my heart that I can only identify as the feeling of sin and guilt. While I do not question the absolution I received, I remain a fallen person inclined inward and towards sin.

Absolution frees me from the culpability of my actions, but not the consequences. I can count on God’s forgiveness of my failings when I earnestly seek it, but I can’t always count on anyone else’s. And even if my wronged friend does forgive me, that can’t change the simple fact that I did them ill. Forgiveness is a precursor to true reconciliation, but that doesn’t mean reconciliation will always follow.

I think this might be especially apparent for couples where one or the other partner has a tendency to rehash old fights and old slights as evidence in a current argument. If they claim to have forgiven their partner for those past events, then this type of arguing seems to call the sincerity of that forgiveness into question.

In the extreme, we can see the issue between forgiveness and consequences for the imprisoned. They may repent and go to confession for their crimes, but this is not likely to reduce their sentence – the consequence – at all.

What is at issue, finally, is that our actions are irreparable but hopefully our relationships are not. Sometimes they will be so, because we are human, we are imperfect and broken, and we can never so fully know and love one another that our intimacy attains to the soul to soul level that our culture romanticizes. No matter how intimate two people might be, the relationship is always mitigated by their self-representations (conscious and unconscious). It is only with God that such intimacy is available, and correspondingly only with God that we can promise an always-fixable relationship, no matter how much we have degraded ourselves and despaired.

Our relationships with one another, by virtue of their intrinsic humanity, always flawed, never perfect. This should not stop us from forming relationships, because (to paraphrase Chesterton) it is better to dance badly than not to dance at all. Moreover, it should not stop us from striving to improve (for, dancing badly is a fine place to begin, but we ought also to get better at it). Particular failures may be inevitable, but they need neither to be debilitating nor to become excuses. As dear Chrysographis is so fond of noting, pride is not in aiming for high ideals, but in beating ourselves up when we fail to meet them.

Confession

2005-12-20T11:14:00.000-06:00

I went to confession last night. The fact that I went drinking afterwards notwithstanding, it was among the more interesting confession experiences I’ve had.

I’d been feeling a need to confess for awhile, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. When I was still in school, there were always a few priests around and it wasn’t hard to schedule a time. Sadly there aren’t that many priests on the 16th floor of Aon, which is basically the world I live in most days, and so it’s been a lot harder. I was getting ready to make an appointment to come after work this week when, at mass on Sunday, St. Clement’s announced they were having a communal penance and reconciliation service on Monday at 7.

I wasn’t entirely sure how they planned to do this – at Calvert, they would have an army of priests in various rooms throughout the building for people to receive the sacrament. They only have a couple of priests (bumped up to four for last night), and the maze of buildings inclined them to keep us in the main church.

So the four priests went to four parts of the sanctuary to hear individual lightning round confessions. One was stationed by the altar of St. Joseph, one at the tabernacle (a particular place of fear and trembling for confession), one was at the altar of St. Jude (Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes and one of the saints I have a real devotion to), and up in front, between the altar and baptismal font.

I felt a pull to the St. Jude altar, as I often feel that the particular sins I struggle most with are sometimes helpless, hopeless, and chronically debilitating, but, truth be told, the line was too long. Rather I went for the front, where Fr. Donatelli waited with his characteristic good humor and bright eyes to hear of our alienation and desire for liberation.

Sitting where we were, it felt much more like a communal process of reconciliation. Everyone could see everyone else, and although people waited in line just out of earshot, the presence of others was very strong. I struggle for a long time to understand why private sins might be a matter of public concern, but I recognize that it’s for the simple reason that when we distort our inmost selves, we drag our relationships into it too. While my confessions typically revolve around my thoughts and perceptions, it is always with a view towards becoming more loving of and generous with the other.

I was also struck by the pace of the experience. In my previous confessions, all of which were long-winded and involved some dancing around the subject, and always with Jesuits, there was usually real conversation and guidance as well. They were perhaps more gentle or gradual. In the last few years, however, I have developed an increasingly blunt style of communication, sometimes characterized by brutal honesty and opinion. This served me well last night when each supplicant had only a few minutes to speak with the priest and receive absolution. There was no beating around the bush, no hemming and hawing, just a quick, immediate laying bare before man and God of what has been on the conscience of late. While this is maybe not the only or best way to do confession, it did cut quickly and cleanly, and hopefully it might heal more thoroughly this time around.

My penance, incidentally, was to spend time with the Lord and offer up my struggles. I’m always a little dubious of that sort of penance – am I not always spending time with the Lord? True, sometimes that time is antagonistic, or silent, or plumb frustrating, but it is a constant feature of our being (or becoming, for you process theologians out there). But I did, I spent time with the Lord, and felt some consolation, which I guess is the best we can ask for. Like Fr. Donatelli said, we don’t all get knocked off the horse like St. Paul, so maybe a bit more patience is required.

Holidays vs Christmas

2005-12-12T15:10:00.000-06:00

I was going to write today about the movie Syriana, which I watched on Friday night, but I’m feeling a little hot-blooded at the moment.

I get a lot of Catholic-related news in my mailbox, and with the season that is on us, many news articles have been about businesses, schools, and governments calling this the “holiday” season and not the “Christmas” season. This bothers a lot of people, because the timing for a few days off from work, breaks from school, and especially a big single day of gift-giving, is essentially “Christmas.”

I think it would be foolish to deny that, historically, this is certainly true. The United States has always had an enormous number (I think majority?) of Christians in its population. And the cultural patterns of these people, plus the legal and social power they wielded, led to the establishment of the weeks before Christmas (and extending just past the New Year) as a time of rest, celebration, and gift-giving.

Of course, as secularism grew in our culture, the religious meaning eroded for many who had previously been partial to it, and I think for the culture at large as well. But the days were still days off, presents were still purchased; just the names changed.

Here’s what gets me. How is it an attack on Christianity to say that this season is a “holiday” season? First of all, it’s not incorrect to call Christmas a “holiday” – I imagine the roots of the word might have something “holy” about them. Second, I’m willing to bet that many of those who take those days off from work/school, or who buy presents for loved ones, aren’t actually Christian or don’t celebrate it as a holy day. So maybe in fact the reason they celebrate “the holidays” has nothing to do with Christmas other than the fact that other people celebrate it. Third, there are other winter holidays, particularly Hanukkah (and the somewhat less ancient Kwanzaa), but I imagine some Christian groups would be up in arms if we got extra days off for those too (then again, everyone loves a day off).

These are old arguments, sure, so here’s the one that ticks me off the most. See, I don’t care that Old Navy calls it the holiday season and not Christmas, because Christmas for me has NOTHING to do with sales at Old Navy or Kristen Chenoweth’s really crappy commercials. I do buy gifts for family and friends, that’s true, and I do that because that’s the general cultural construct I’ve grown up with. But there’s a difference between buying/giving gifts and the massive culture of materialism and consumerism that we’ve infused the “holiday”/”Christmas” season with.

See, I don’t care what the stores call it, because the stores have nothing to do with what Christmas means to me. They’ve got nothing to do with the straw poverty of God being born in a manger. An attack on Christmas? No, I think calling it something else should help us remember what Christmas is about. I’m glad the stores and everyone else call it “holidays” because that way I can keep some sense of reality about what I worship and believe.

Sure the three wise men brought gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – but I don’t think they shopped around to find the dealer who called it “Christmas” and not “holidays.” “Come o come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel” has nothing to do with saving big at the sales, but it has everything to do with saving us from our own sinfulness.

Winter

2005-12-07T12:55:00.000-06:00

Things I like about winter:
(a) wool socks
(b) snow
(c) knit hats and scarves
(d) cuddling (sorely lacking from current winter)

Things I do not like about winter:
(a) my nostril hairs freezing
(b) heating costs hovering around $200/mo despite apartment being at a balmy 62 degrees
(c) Mona's bad poetry

Things I do not like in general:
(a) apostates
(b) bigamists
(c) Coca-Cola's new product idea

A Greater Hive of Scum and Villainy

2005-12-02T17:02:00.000-06:00

WHAT TREACHERY IS THIS?!

In my last post, I placed a link towards the bottom for an article about a certain Mr. Phillippe Holland in Wikipedia. That I wrote this article is not in doubt, although the very structure and purpose of Wikipedia challenges many conventional notions of authorship (and I am by all means an unconventional author).

That all who read this article were in awe of (a) my brilliance, (b) my foresight, and (c) Phil was not in dispute. What was in dispute, however, was apparently the importance of Mr. Holland. Apparently “awe-inspiring” is not a sufficient condition for “importance”.

According to Wikipedia, the article was deleted on account of a Mr. “Hall Monitor”, who seems to enjoy some degree of editorial rights at the free, open-source encyclopedia of all human knowledge. According to the deletion notice, it was removed for reason “A7”, which is titled Unremarkable People.

Unremarkable People?!!? How can this be? Has there ever been a person who has met Phil or known of Phil that has not remarked upon him? True, sometimes such remarks are negative, but negative remarks did not prevent Wikipedia from including articles about Mussolini, Franco, or Gwyneth Paltrow.

First of all, I should like to make an objection to this flimsy use of “remarkable” that our culture so loves. As old roommate Andy likes to note, we use a lot of words for varying degrees of “good” so that we can avoid sounding redundant. I, however, am all for returning some sanity and some precision to our positive terms. Incredible – does that mean you really are not able to believe it? Fantastic - is it really in accord with fantasy and hence not reality? Awesome – are you filled with awe, as though a bush is burning without being consumed??? Phenomenal – why yes, it does appear – so what?

But beyond this, who is Hall Monitor to determine that someone is important enough to be on Wikipedia (smart-asses answer “he has editorial privileges”)? Isn’t Phil important enough to the entire Derridean Dallas community that we should like an article about him? Wikipedia may be a global community, but it’s one of many smaller communities, such as people who care enough to argue over Derrida or who (strangely) are interested in Gaussian binomials. I’m willing to bet the seventeen people in America that care about Gaussian binomials would care about Phillippe Holland if Wikipedia left the article up for them to learn about it. I’m also willing to bet the seventeen (or more!) people I can muster in defense of Phil’s article could beat up the seventeen (or less!) who, again, want Gaussian binomials.

Wikipedia was once hailed as the future of the encyclopedia, as the democratization of knowledge. Now I see it for the sham that it really is. Another attempt by the electronic, internet-savvy elitists of the world to keep down those of us who think our friends are funny. I have on occasion described Phil as a Confederate Fascist, but this Hall Monitor and his hombres are the true fascists. Want to make the world safe for democracy, Dubya? Let’s go after the WikInsurgents!!

Thankful was the name of Kelly Clarkson’s debut album

2005-11-28T15:22:00.000-06:00

I have returned from Thanksgiving break only to discover that I left my dear blogiscites (i.e., you) without any Thanksgiving bloggery. I feel a tremendous sense of guilt that, while you all ate your turkey and stuffing and fell asleep after eating in order to nap for round two (or three or four), all the while giving thanks for the great blessing that is this blog, I myself was eating turkey and stuffing and falling asleep and then doing it all over again without writing an entry. Sorry.

But I did get two, count’em TWO dinners. The first was at my aunt’s house, the second at my parents’. Both left me sleepy and bloated, but oh so satisfied. While at my aunt’s, I discovered that my (third) cousin apparently eloped with her boyfriend of several years, moved to Biloxi, Mississippi with him (he’s in the Air Force), and had their home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. My brother thinks this might be divine retribution for the whole eloping thing, but I’m withholding theological judgment.

Other Thanksgiving highlights included walking past my high school ex-girlfriend, her husband, her brother, and her parents in downtown Indianapolis while heading to the tree-lighting. That eye contact was not made is very important, for I have trouble imagining a more awkward situation for yours truly. I did a double take, convinced I must be mad, but it was that second take that took in the other members of her family. Note to self: thinking you’ll never see someone again will only happen if (a) they become permanently invisible or (b) you become permanently blind. Beyond that, all bets are off.

Also, Friday night featured live music, drinking, the worst tequila imaginable, dialing Cristina under the influence, eating gyros, giving relationship advice to a shallow 21 year old who didn’t understand why her 25 year old manfriend didn’t want to make a commitment when he was getting the milk for free, and lastly turning down a 5am invitation to play Twister with the same girl and about a dozen of her un-sobered friends. Joe really wanted to, given his deep yet naïve love of playing Twister (and his purportedly unbroken winning streak), but Mark and I were both beat. That I had other reasons for declining cannot be denied, at least one of them being the possibility that any failure on my part in the game of Twister could be life-threatening to my rivals.

Saturday night was somewhat less wild than Friday night. Maybe it had healthfully slimmed down, perhaps undergoing bariatric counseling and eating a shake for breakfast and lunch with a nutritious dinner. Or perhaps it had succumbed to exhaustion, like so many overworked celebrities, and was thus producing work at only a fraction of the quality of its younger, more dynamic self. Unclear of the causes, suffice to say Saturday night also featured live music, drinking, dialing Tia under the influence, and eating a White Castle combo meal in a less savory part of town around three in the morning. Twister did not come up, and we are all the better for it.

But seriously folks, Thanksgiving is just about my favorite holiday, because it serves as a reminder of how many blessings we have despite all the curses we see. I have much to be thankful for, including all of you who entertain my careless and carefree mumbling every few days. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and I hope you ran out of fingers and toes before you finished counting your own blessings.

PS – I’ve discovered how to write Wikipedia articles about my friends. Check out Phillippe Holland – you might be next!

In Good Company

2005-11-22T10:47:00.000-06:00

Yes, today is my birthday. But before everyone gets all excited, slaughtering cattle and shooting pistols in the air, let us take stock of the other important things to happen on this day in history.

1718 – Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the Pirate, was killed off the coast of N. America

1906 – SOS was adopted as a radio distress signal by the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin

1963 – JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Aldous Huxley died while on his last hit of LSD, and Clive Staples Lewis passed in his home.

1968 – The Beatles “White Album” was released

1988 – The Stealth Bomber was unveiled

1990 – Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister of Britain

2000 – Dick Cheney has a heart attack during the Florida ballot recount

2003 – Nomar Garciaparra married Mia Hamm, and Dave Navarro married Carmen Electra

In addition, I share birthdays with Terry Gilliam (1940), Mark Ruffalo (1967), George Eliot (1819), Scarlett Johansson (1984), Charles de Gaulle (1890), Rodney Dangerfield (1921)

And to the exact day, I share a birthday with Brynn Smith of the Real World Las Vegas

So tonight, to the Red Lion we go! Thanks for the quarter century. And if you feel inclined to get me a gift, don’t get me this (it’s disgusting!).

Damn It Feels Good to Be a Maccabee

2005-11-17T13:07:00.000-06:00

I was thinking just a little while ago whether I would have been among the Maccabees in Second Temple Israel. No, seriously, I was. The readings from this past week, especially today’s, got me to wondering how I would react if the conqueror of my nation (Dick Cheney?) were forcing me into apostasy.

Would I cave? Would I take silver and gold and become Dick Cheney’s friend? What sorts of gifts would he enrich me with? Are we talking the occasional batch of Mrs. Cheney’s cookies, maybe season 2 of Arrested Development on TV, or my own private battle group?

This further made me wonder what it would mean to be Dick Cheney’s friend. I assume I would be safe from extraordinary rendition, and most tax cuts would somehow benefit me. Maybe we’d play Time Splitters 2 together, and he’d let me have a handicap. We could laugh over the good old days of the Reagan Administration, discuss the prospects of what we would foolishly believe to be an inevitable Republicanizing of America, or maybe read each other passage of Scooter Libby’s The Apprentice.

But no friendship is without problems, right? I mean, it’s not like we’d ever play a pick-up game of basketball, or go for a serene bike ride along the lake. What if my friends and his friends didn’t get along? What would happen when the Mutantor hit on Cheney’s lesbian daughter? What if he got upset by my roommate and I watching West Wing at the end of a long day? Would he even have time for me, with all the secret government controlling he has to do? Would he even open up about that stuff?

Now it’s true, Dick Cheney is no Antiochus Epiphanes; Dick never placed the abomination that makes desolate into my church. But even still, would his friendship be worth apostasy?

On the other hand, I think sometimes I’m at my happiest when my just fury is aroused. I loved my four month bout of extreme Catholic sectarianism in the wake of Benedict XVI becoming Pope. I was enlivened by the Mutanic Revolt the summer at Georgetown when our employers tried to take away our housing. One of my favorite movies is Braveheart. And as much as my political philosophy leads me to think I might have been a Tory during the American War of Independence, how much would I have enjoyed aggressive pamphleteering and rabble-rousing? My zealous Protestant ancestors stripped the idolatrous Catholic altars in their day; maybe it’s time for some infuriating toppling of altars again?

So maybe, as much as I’d love to play Time Splitters 2, I should rebel against Dick Cheney. And when I do, perhaps I will run through the streets of Chicago yelling “Let everyone who is zealous for the law and who stands by the covenant follow after me!” All who wish to live according to the strict dictates of my anti-apostasizing religious message are invited to follow, or at least watch me run. Maybe I can time it for the Chicago Marathon next October and get a medal out of it…

So come, fellow Maccabees – our just fury awaits!

Cajun Lunch

2005-11-14T16:32:00.000-06:00

Celebrated a co-worker's lunch today by going out for Cajun food. Within minutes of our arrival, one member of the office began daring others to eat a tablespoonful of whatever the hottest hot sauce might be for a whopping $1. Memories of elementary school came in a rush, recalling the time when our table had eaten an entire (large) bag of pretzels. Feeling content in our great victory, someone then dared me to eat all the salt in the bottom of the bag...for $1. And I did.

But here and now, there was a dilemma: exactly which hot sauce was hottest? I was personally impressed by "Spank My Ass and Call Me Sally" hot sauce. Yet when asked which hot sacue was hottest, our waiter - without hesitation - picked up "Ass in Antarctica" hot sauce - the black top bottle. This hot sauce, along with its cousins "Ass in the Tub," "Ass in Hell," and (my personal favorite) "Ass in Outer Space," is apparently the premiere high-impact hot sauce for the Cajun elites.

Well, after tasting various other hot sauces, from sweet to just plain hot, I did in fact taste the Antarctica hot sauce - just a drop, mind you. I found it mild, to be honest, with only slight impact to my sinuses...at first. After about 30 seconds, I realized that some had gotten on my lips, which tingled slightly. I took a few sips from my iced tea, thinking I might quell the growing furnace in my mouth, but the tea served only to stoke the flames like a 19th century railwayman. Against fire's better nature, the heat travelled down my throat, searing my vocal chords and esophagus. Sweat beaded on my forehead. It beaded on my upper lip. The iced tea was gone, with my water glass far behind (indeed it seemed a premeditated cruelty that the Cajun restaurant's water glasses were of the mere 6 oz variety).

I was the only one at the table brave enough to taste the Antarctican hot sauce - woe to any who might try the whole spoonful!

It also reminded me of a simple fact when it comes to hot sauces. Sauce is about flavor. Sometimes, hotter sauces provide better flavor, or bring out the best in what is already there. However, there comes a point when there is no flavor, there is only hot, when it is not about eating but about macho $1-per-spoonful contests. Please, hot sauce makers, don't encourage these foolish displays of manhood - they only serve to embarrass and enflame.

Miscellany Reducks

2005-11-10T12:22:00.000-06:00

I have had little to say, of late. My furious reviewing of Sin City inspired nothing in the general populace but mild disagreement and some sadness (to which I respond "tough" - this is America, a country that enshrines the right, nay, the obligation to offend other people in its very Constitution). Work has gone along its merry little way, with my (near) successful (near) completion of the Auto Owners project that I inherited from my previously ill co-worker known only as "Bruce".

I read "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler in what seemed like a matter of minutes. I cannot recall the last book I read that went so quickly, even more quickly than my interest in jazz flute or crepe-making. It was an experience to, after years of film noir cliches and hard-boiled detective spoofs, to actually read such a novel and remember that, at one time, these silly metaphors were fresh. I hope someday soon to read the rest of his novels, and maybe Dashiell Hammett's too. Or, perhaps, this love will go the way of crepe-making.

The Colts won on Monday, dispelling one of the lesser curses in sports and winning me $20 from a foolish Patriots fan. You may have won 3 Super Bowls in the last few years, you may have beaten the Colts in the previous nine meetings - but I didn't bet on those games!

Dad turned FIFTY THREE yesterday, bringing him twelve years closer to that fateful time when he will start using the AARP card that Mom already obtained for him (she, although merely 57, uses it regularly for discounts). I'll be heading home to Indianapolis this weekend to celebrate with the family, allowing a brief overnight jaunt to Bloomington to see friends and go to a Better Than Ezra concert (I believe my fourth?).

Last night as I was exiting the 16th floor of the building here, I was caught dancing by a very serious Indian woman (dot, not feather) who has busted my balls on more than one occasion. I have noted a growing proclivity towards in-office dancing, particular in my cubicle, when I suspect others are not around, but usually no one says anything. Maybe I can inspire a dance dance revolution here? Boost office morale and boogie a little? Better catastrophe risk analyzing through music? Let's hope!

Sin City

2005-11-01T16:39:00.000-06:00

It was raining last night. Halloween lurched towards midnight with no sign of trick or treaters on the wet streets. The bag of candy on the table wasted away slowly, with only three twenty-something hands occasionally dipping in for a little bit of sweetness.

I'd given up trick or treating a few years ago, my maturing cynical side having finally corrupted that innocent kid inside me that loved the one night of the year it was ok to take candy from strangers. I'd been to a bar a few nights before, one of those swanky places with the ironic names and a room full of lonely normals in strange costumes looking for someone else's body heat on a cold Chicago night. But tonight, the real Halloween, I sat in my chair, eating cheap candy, drinking cheaper wine, and watching Sin City.

There's a kind of closure to a movie that begins with a murder and ends with one too. It's like a brutal sonata, the ballistic theme recapitulating itself in those last few strains, recallling to mind all the graphic violence and pointless killing that flirted with the unreality of the piece. Some call that composition "Variations on a theme of Kill Bill", but that's easily explained by guest conductor Quentin Tarrantino standing at the podium.

I sat there, intrigued by the narrators, each telling their tales, telling their kills. That shine of the Maltese Falcon glowed again, as Ray Chandler met Bob Kane sixty years too late. I was convinced by the film noir as it seethed and pulsed from every word to drip off of Bruce Willis' tongue, but I ached as almost every other John and Jane in the cast brought out their most wooden performances to date.

Or maybe I was just bored by the story, a story I'd heard before and told better. I hadn't read the graphic novels, I only knew Frank Miller from his Batman days. But it seemed like somewhere in the adaptation either too much got put in or too much got cut out, because between when the story started and when it ended one of my pals walked out into the night while the other drifted off to sleep. Oh maybe it was the hype, the expectation, the anticipation of a gritty comic movie with a championship cast...but I suspect it was the execution that really let me down.

So I finished the film, finished my wine, finished too much candy, and that was all. No desire to see the documentary, no curiosity about deleted scenes. Just a let-down with a comfortable pillow to follow.

Chopsticks

2005-10-31T14:32:00.000-06:00

I ate lunch with two of my co-workers today, one of whom is from Taiwan. I saw for the first time someone eat a french fry with chopsticks.

On some level, I'm hoping this catches on like in that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine's boss eats the candy bar with knife and fork. I even began to wonder a bit what a french fry with soy sauce and wasabi would taste like (Sherry dipped it in ketchup, this time). I didn't wonder strongly enough to venture and find out, but I do tend to be reluctant in movement.

Speaking of which, Javier's wife wants to set me up with some of her co-teachers. For those who don't know, Javier is the nice man who taught me virtually everything that I know about what I do here. Apparently, because the school his wife works at is so busy, few of her colleagues have a lot of time to meet men. So she wants to introduce them to nice guys from Javier's workplace. I sense two distinct opportunities here: one for hilarity, the other for heartbreak. Given my recent unexpected recapitulation of feelings I thought were gone, I'm not super-excited about the latter. But nonetheless, the ceaseless pursuit of hilarity beckons, and so I think I'll go with this one.

It should at least produce some entertaining posts...

Teaching Protestants to Pray (Catholic-ly)

2005-10-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

My old roommate Heath is teaching this year at a Jesuit-run high school named Cristo Rey. It is located in a heavily Hispanic area of Chicago, and the school of necessity is bilingual. While his Spanish is certainly passable, his grip on the many aspects of Catholicism that imbue Latin American culture is much less so. Marian devotion in particular.

So on Friday night, as eight of us ate our dinner at Gino’s East Pizzeria, the Catholics at the table took it upon ourselves to teach that simplest bit of Marian propaganda, the Hail Mary, to Heath (and to Kristen, whose Cleveland-located St. Martin de Porres is neither very Hispanic nor very Catholic in population).

I recalled some of my own difficulty, back when I came to Holy Mother Church from my vaguely Presbyterian upbringing, in learning the words and in learning to stomach the apparent idolatry in praying to a non-divine person whose fiat, while important, necessary, and indeed laudable, was not enough to worship someone for. I felt for these too, who on one level were preparing to masquerade as Catholics, but who were doing so out of genuine concern for the faith-lives of their students. I myself masqueraded as Catholic at Georgetown for most of three years (largely unintentionally, with the possible exception of my turn as Secretary-Treasurer of the Catholic Students’ Association). Indeed, several years later, I still feel unease regarding Mary, restricting myself to the Luminous Mysteries of the rosary because they seem the most Christo-centric to me (and because I miss John Paul…)

Heath and Kristen took to it well, I think. Heath would forget “the Lord is with thee” and throw scare-quotes around “Mother of God” (although if nothing else, the scare-quotes helped him to remember that part), yet by Saturday evening he seemed to have the hang of it. Kristen too, even as she stumbled over the differences between “Hail, Mary” and “Holy Mary.” And while it will take time for them to develop that natural Catholic cadence that whisks through the words without the slightest concern, we can take solace in the ease with which they learned to cross themselves in the haphazard, lazy way that Catholics do.

Hallelujah!

Friday Miscellany

2005-10-21T11:51:00.000-05:00

Even I don't like Larry Bird that much....

The old roommate Andrew is in town, which is a great relief to all in Chicago. Undoubtedly much wine will be drunk, many pistachios eaten, and a fair share of irreverent theologizing will take place. It's good to have him back.

I finally accomplished something correctly today at work (a mere five weeks into the job). I won't bore you with details about EVENTID tables and annual average losses, but suffice to say I did it right for the first time in two weeks with very little supervision. I think I'll celebrate with chopped steak and frites, candied orange slices, or maybe just a pbj and Diet Dr. Pepper.

In other linkage, an interesting theory on the origins of the 18 hole golf course (thanks to Yahoo!). Ah, the pleasure of double-entendres!

For you Wheel of Time nerds, I'm nearly 450 pgs into the latest bloated tome, Knife of Dreams. I continue to read these books out of a sheer desire for closure. I may have gotten burned by that same desire by the Matrix and Star Wars, but dammit I need to know how it all ends! So far, we can at least take solace in the impending return of Moiraine. Maybe then the series will get good again.

New Years in Cleveland this year, by the way. Wait, CLEVELAND!? WHAT?! WHAT THE HELL IS IN CLEVELAND!? A daring question, no doubt, one somewhat lacking in compelling answers. I could say Lake Erie, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the formerly inflammable river, but these would not suffice. But two years ago we lit up NYC with our haberdashery, and this past year we winded the Windy City. Thus we ought now, like the best artillery men of WWI, bracket our distances and aim for the middle. I will inevitably wear my silver disco ball shirt (insofar as I wear anything at all), and perhaps one of those hot Jos.A Bank suits that wows the ladies in the office.

I'm not promising miracles here, people...I'm only promising magic.

Law and Order: VEU

2005-10-17T22:22:00.000-05:00

One of the great blessings in my life has been to have so many artistic friends. Even better is having one with such talent and a sense of humor similar to my own.

I can now confidently say that, when EWTN finally goes to a more dramatic prime-time format, they will have two shows. “Charlie’s Archangels” will certainly be a hit (one that I will describe in great detail later). But what better to follow it, at nine o’clock on a Thursday night, than “Law and Order: Vatican Espionage Unit”?

Special Thanks to Joe Collins for the poster

Now Mother Angelica will have allies in her fight against heresy, apostasy, and lapsed Catholics. If only I can get some guest appearances from the Swiss Guards...

Reflections of a Eucharistic Minister

2005-10-10T10:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I did my first turn as a eucharistic minister at St. Clement's. I found myself nervous over the whole affair, starting from my pre-mass prayers all the way until I sat down again after communion. I think, coming from the tradition that I've drafter myself into, that it's a rather humbling experience to dole out these little bits of the Lord to the faithful and the hopeful. It was an interesting experience to be on the other side of the communion plate this time.

For instance, I typically bow before receiving, I think as a sign of reverence for the sacrament and the act. And indeed, many other Catholics do the same. Standing at the west side of St. Clement's altar, a stream of people coming up to me, I think at least a dozen people had passed through my line before I realized they weren't bowing at me and so I shouldn't bow back at them. It wasn't about me at all, much as I subconsciously assumed it was.

A second thing that occurred to me was how attached many people are to the symbolic importance of the priest. When my assigned section of the sanctuary was exhausted, I still had a fair number of consecrated hosts to distribute, so I went to the front of the altar and stood next to the priest to help speed the process along. Some people in the line split off, coming up to me, but many more continued to wait in the priest's line. N0t so much that my plate of hosts were lesser, but more that there is something special in receiving from the priest, something more weighty or more blessed, or perhaps for some it is a thing more proper and traditional. I'll confess, I am also guilty of this preconception - I sit on the west side of the Church because I know that's where the priest's communion line forms.

But I will say that one special blessing from this experience is that, although I was in front of a church of many hundreds at the time, I did not feel self-conscious to be up there. Typically when I participate at mass in some particular way (lectoring, EM'ing, that time I got baptized and confirmed), I feel very aware of my being in front of a lot of people, I get concerned about them all looking at me. But this time I didn't have that issue so much. Hopefully I'm learning at last to melt a bit more into the larger Body of Christ, to feel a bit more like I truly belong here.

Scientology

2005-10-06T10:56:00.000-05:00

By some clever trick of the Scientologist god, Katie Holmes is pregnant. Indeed, she has likely been artificially inseminated, perhaps at the Hollywood Scientology Center, as we have all heard the rumors of Mr. Cruise's impotence/latent homosexuality. And while I might usually take this time to rant about the vapid nature of Scientology or the apostate status of both Cruise and Holmes, I'd rather relate my own brief Scientology experience.

My parents were in town this past weekend, and among my mom's goals were to aspire to conspicuous consumption at Tiffany's. So we went to the store, she looked at exorbitantly priced jewelry, and I took the free stress test offered by the table of Scientologists outdoors. I held two metal cylinders, which looked similar to the tin-can telephones of yesteryear - except that they were attached to some sort of measuring device. The nearby Scientologist, Lisa, would ask my questions, and the dial on the machine would swing one way or the author based on how much stress my reaction caused. They call this process "auditing" (I call it "polygraph").

So, Lisa handed me a copy of Dianetics and had me read the back cover. I did, it read like all other self-help books, so I asked her about her experience. She had previously been a Unitarian, but two and a half years ago she embarked on a Scientological Odyssey that had totally changed her life. When I asked her how, she then read to me the back-cover of Dianetics (I think assuming it hadn't sunk in the first time). She has break throughs regularly, she is happier all the time. So, she gave me a little card about Dianetics: The Movie, and the free showings thereof at the local Scientology center. So I bought the book (hell, I do study religion).

And Lisa said she was sure she'd see me again.

WHAT?!?! Do Scientologists get prophetic powers too!? Was I so easy a mark? Now I know carnies love it when I come and that I can easily blow piles of money trying to win a big stupid stuffed gorilla, but this? I have half a mind not to go just to prove her wrong (even though she was cute), and another half a mind not to go because their false religion is leading many celebrity Americans straight to Hell.

But I am curious. And I'm sure the Vatican could use a spy.

A Day of Firsts

2005-09-29T16:04:00.000-05:00

The weather has chilled, with temperatures today somewhere in the 60's. This is great news for our hapless hero, for two weeks of wearing suits has generated enough sweat to drive a (small) hydraulic dam. Sadly this will have no effect on utilities this month, but perhaps in time I will be able to harness the power of my glands just as red-blooded Americans and Nazi defectors harnessed the power of the atom. (Note: my apologies to all of you now envisioning a deadly bomb powered by my sweat.)

Thus, while it is the first day that was pleasing to my skin and follicles, other firsts abound. Today I had my first group meeting (perhaps better known as a "staff" or "staph" meeting). Six men gathered around a small conference room table while a seventh (also male) called in from Dallas. We discussed what projects we are currently working on and also what projects are forthcoming. Apparently, tomorrow we are interviewing another person, who would be our last hire for awhile (until we hire our boss, as we are currently boss-less). Sadly, "we" who are interviewing does not include me, as the person we are interviewing is vastly more qualified than me.

Also, I am nearly finished with my first project. I am working on my first report and first summary, which I began several days ago during my first week. I will hopefully have it done first thing tomorrow morning, which is (coincidentally) the eve of October 1st.

Lastly, and perhaps most excitingly, I got my first business cards today. Now fast food restaurants all over Chicago's Loop will find "Steve Okey - Actuarial Analyst" in their jars for winning free lunches. Mitch Hedberg would be proud (if he weren't dead, that is).

Cubs, Pirates, and....Diplomacy?

2005-09-28T07:45:00.000-05:00

Now, if I had gone to the Cubs game last night, I likely would have made a face like this:

Joe K, DDD, and Zak at the Cubs game

Indeed, a totally understandable face given their disappointing loss to, let's be honest here, the Sucky Pirates.

No don't think it's that I have anything against Pirates. I still laugh at the old "Did you hear about the new pirate movie?" joke (It's rated ARRRRRRR!), or even the slightly less common "How much did the pirate pay for his earrings?" joke (A Buccaneer!).

But at a solid 33 games back, c'mon, the Sucky Pirates? Cubbies, you're only what, 19.5 games back? Tell me math majors, what's the difference? Right, 13.5 games. So why'd they lose?

Well, I don't know. As a rule, I don't follow sports. I watch games, now and then, and I enjoy attending. I think it has something to do with (a) my inability to memorize sheer facts in any organized way, and (b) my distorted sense of history that keeps me from being any good at following. I guess that and my general apathy about the whole enterprise. Hell, my fantasy football team is 0-3 in my league, with a continuing bleak outlook, but you don't see me sweating it.

In other news, today features the first move of the intra-office Diplomacy game. I have never played this game before, and I know very little about the other players, so it's already going to be difficult. But to top it off, I drew Austria. Freaking AUSTRIA!!!

It's true that I have been a force to be reckoned with in the occasional game of Risk, I have a strong poker face, and I have even held my own in the world of chess, so it's not as though I am tanked from the beginning. But c'mon, AUSTRIA?! Why couldn't I just be Luxembourg and get it over with? Or Spain and just nap right through it all? Perhaps I'll be able to channel the Governator's winning spirit and ruthless disregard for the opposite sex, but will that save me in this forthcoming all-male nerd-sausage-palooza?

Any strategy thinkers, king-makers out there want to help? I suspect my 12-turn goal is to make Russia scared. And if you know this game, you know how ridiculous a statement that is.

Musings

2005-09-27T09:08:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I heard the word "deontological" for the first time in three months.

Last night my friend Kat and I watched "The Pacifier", starring Vin Diesel. My reflections on V.D. aside (they will be covered in a later post, I guarantee), I rather enjoyed the movie.

Today is the two year anniversary of 5415 S. Cornell Ave's epic housewarming party. Travellers came from the far corners of the United States to drink our wine and write on our whiteboard bathroom walls.

Suffice to say, this day my thoughts arc backwards. It seems so strange to me that, after two years when words like "deontological" were a lingua franca, necessary for the great studies of Geisteswissenschaften and Kirchlichen Gemeinschaften that we undertook, that now the word should stick out like the f-bomb in a Disney movie.

And while "The Pacifier" may not be up to the Oscar-nominated heights of "Crossroads" or "Gigli," it did satisfy my need to laugh loudly at the foibles of apparent bad ass V.D. as he takes on five children with unsatisfactory character development.

I wish otherwise to point out that today we celebrate the birthdays of two especially wonderful people, Thais Carter and Liz Accornero. A far better honor is done them by saying too few words than by trying to say them all, so let me simply say "thanks" to the both of them. I know I am a better man on account of the examples you set.

Tonight I'm going to see the Cubs play, nay, demolish the Pittsburgh Pirates. Sorry Tony T, sorry Alice, but your boys just don't have the gumption to upset me tonight. I will be bringing peanuts in from the outside, so don't blow my cover the Wrigley's bouncers.

Also, forthcoming will be a poll on the ever delicate question of intra-office dating. Hypothetically, of course.

16W 19A

2005-09-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

Questions swirl re: my new job.

Emails filter in. Cellular phone calls enervate my cellular phone. Casual encounters become extended catchings-up.

How is my new job? For starters, I have not yet been able to explain in less than ten minutes with any degree of accuracy what in fact I do. Perhaps this is new-job jitters? Combine it with my related inability to describe, in less than ten minutes with any degree of accuracy, what the group I work with does. Ah, maybe that's just because I didn't apply for this job, but rather a somewhat similar job on the same floor of the same company.

How is my progress? Some have called it "swift," perhaps exhibiting a "break-neck pace." Others (i.e. me) have described it as "overwhelming, confusing, and undermining of my carefully sculpted ego."

How do I feel? Like an imposter, a fraud, a sixteen year old with a fake ID parading around Vegas casinos desperately afraid of the po-po hurling my ass out the door as though I were a frisbee. I pretend to understand what my trainers and handlers are talking about, I improvise on the latest statistical methods used in relation to probable maximum losses, exceedance probabilities, and the like. I put on clothing that not that long ago I associated with funerals and school assemblies. Indeed, I fill my cubicle, #16W 19A, with all the heft, spirit, and gas that my wholesale-sized person and personality can muster.

But how long before they find me out? How long before they discover that the lethal congruence of my lackadaisical attitude and the Georgetown Math Department's lack of real standards made me a BA without breeding?

I was never great at charades; how long can I keep this one up?

Pre-job miscellany

2005-09-18T12:01:00.000-05:00

This post likely has nothing to do with the fact that I start my new job tomorrow morning at an as-yet undetermined hour. Moreover, I will not delve into the specifics of how I'm not totally sure what the specifics of my job are, or precisely how steep I expect my learning curve to be. Rather, other reflections.

I had a dream that I was dating Mandy Moore last night. I found this strange, for I've only seen maybe two episodes of Entourage, and also only two Mandy Moore movies (not embarrassed about this one, moderately embarrassed about this one - and her role in this one doesn't count). And yet there we were, dating, waking up together here in my room on S. Loomis, perhaps in a double bed rather than my model-thin twin bed. I think the brief dream-relationship followed the story arc of episodes 14-16 of season one of Scrubs, which I had watched shortly before going to bed, but Mandy Moore doesn't even come up in those episodes!

Now, it is true that I once believed my dreams predicted the future. I once had a dream about a girl I met at a party (specifically New Years), and that we really hit it off and went out and it was great. And I thought maybe it predicted the future because, the very night before, I had met a girl at our New Years party. In point of fact, however, we talked for a very brief (<30 min) time at the party and, although we did go out (once), we also seemed a bit bored by each other. Not a stirring commendation of my prophetic skills.

Yesterday I went to the Celtic festival in Chicago. I saw someone wearing a shirt that said "I ♣ Chicago" (it was a shamrock, not a club though). What does that mean? What does shamrocking Chicago mean? Is it simply Irish love, an exceptionally ethnocentric form of concern? Or a euphemism for sex? Maybe it's an indictment of all the crappy music that comes here, hoping to hit it big in the Midwestern Metropolis? Perhaps the girl wearing it was a gardener? Please darling, stick with the standard symobls - heart, club, and spade (famously put by a now anonymous comedian "I ♥ New York, I ♣ my wife, I ♠ my dog" - disclaimer - I don't do any of those things).

That's all for me. If anyone wants to set me up with Mandy Moore, I'd be delighted (I am so much hotter than Andy Roddick anyway, no matter what Prof. Elshtain thinks).

Of Statistics and Employment

2005-09-14T13:10:00.000-05:00

I never took statistics in college. Most people, on learning this, are surprised due to the fact that I majored in math. I, for whatever reason, have never myself been surprised by this, for I was a math major at Georgetown. What's more, I was on the BA track, not the BS track.

Nonetheless, in cauterize this hole in my education, I provide here statistics no my job search, all with a 3% margin of error:

Job Applications sent: 107
Prayers offered on my behalf to God, Christ, and other assorted deities: innumerable
Personal connections used/abused: 17
Temp Agencies contacted: 6
Temp Assignments completed: 8
Interviews: 13
Interviewers: 24 (the record for a single session being 6)
Explicit job offers: 2
Job offers accepted: 1
Job offer accepted: Aon Re Services in their Catastrophe Risk Analysis group (here's a bit on the Aon Center building)
Beginning date of employment: Monday, Sept 19th
Importance of math/statistics for this position: Very High

So there you have it. Many thanks to all who have scouted jobs for me, prayed for me, read cover letters and resumes, made recommendations, put up with my sullen and somber self, taken me out drinking, offered me indecent services, written reference letters, written threatening letters, and generally been present in a substantive way in my life the last many months. You are all special, and I don't mean in a short-bus kind of way.

Breaking news...

2005-09-09T15:21:00.000-05:00

This just in...Steve has received a second job offer...Aon Re Services...downtown Chicago...competitive offer...decision to be reached by Monday morning....more on this story as it develops

I said, young man, what do you want to be?

2005-09-07T10:34:00.000-05:00

(as a forewarning, this blog is perhaps best enjoyed if you imagine Bill Shatner reading it, a la his era-defining "Rocket Man" performance)

This week brings the first multi-day temp experience for your fearless blogger. It's a grateful thing, too, for I have recently wondered if I might perhaps be fast approaching the very fiscal insolvency I hope to fend off. Job-hunting is difficult, and being jobless all the more so. Indeed, I was down and out with the blues...I felt no man cared if I were alive. Alas, I felt the whole world was so tight...

But that's when Jennifer (from Lakeshore Staffing, my temp agency) came up to me and said, young man, take a walk up the street. There's a place there called the YMCA, they can start you back on your way - in their research department for $12/hr. And so here I sit, listening to my iPod to drown out those great Village People ballads that really catapulted this institution to its legendary status among the sexually "adventurous" men of the US. Incidentally, for it being the Y MCA, there are roughly seven females working here for every male. Not that that's a bad thing, as the odds are in my favor. However, the plethora of encumbered left ring fingers perhaps lowers those odds a tad.

Today there was a meet and greet for the two new people who work on this floor. Technically, I'm also new, and also work on this floor, but they were not celebrating my (temporary) arrival here. I still felt fully entitled to attend the meet and greet and get my tiny slice of bundt cake, which was chocolate and delicious.

In a little over an hour I should learn the fate of my bid to work at Morningstar as a salesman. The lady said she needed a half hour to forty five minutes with me, which might mean there's a lot of good news and info to cover and that she's done it before - but if they want to offer me a job she could have said that in the brief three minutes we spoke earlier. i will, for news of this caliber, try to get an update on here before my usual weekly posting - but just for you.

A Rosary for Jack Chick

2005-09-01T07:37:00.000-05:00

Today I'm saying a rosary for Jack Chick and his army of evangelists. No, not that they will become Catholic, for I don't think I'm a tolerant enough person to share my community with them, but more that they might grow in the Christian faith and give over their deep intolerance for the One True Church, the one that's been around from the beginning with an unbroken line of apostles and bishops (yeah, I can be pretty sectarian, but they started it).

But I also know that I offer this rosary because it would piss them off. Or they would take it as a teaching moment to preach the Gospel to me. Whichever, but I'm sure my reasons aren't the most pure, and so maybe I shouldn't. Indeed, maybe that ill-intent is evidence of a deeper spiritual condition - indeed, of the awful pox that the Papal Household has inflicted on my God-made soul. Perhaps, perhaps Jack Chick is right, and I should throw off the sinful yoke of Romishness, reject the whole community of Christian Tradition, and believe that I have no need of other humans.

Who knows - check out the following Rome-directed tracts and see for yourself. Heck, I'll say a rosary for you too.

Catholic basics:
Are Roman Catholics Christians? - A very well-written, well-researched inquiry into the beliefs and traditions of the Catholic Church and the horrible Satan-inspired ways in which it binds many hapless believers to a punishment of eternal flame

Why is Mary Crying? - poor Theotokos, I'm so sorry for worshipping you and not realizing I was simply following a long tenuous line of pre-western civiizations that also worshipped women with children

The Death Cookie - the eucharist, "the source of summit" of the Church, is shown in fact to be the source and summit of Mother Church's steep plunge into Hell (take that, Whore of Babylon!)

Misled Catholics:
Murph - two cops, one's a Catholic on his deathbed, the other a former Catholic who saw the papist lies for what they were - thank God Murph gets saved!

Last Rites - poor John - only too late did he learn that living a good life, prayer, and the sacraments are really just a slippery slide to Hell

Man In Black - as if Mother Church didn't have enough of a problem with vocations, we don't need Jack Chick converting our priests too!

Apocalyptic Tracts:
Who's Missing - features the return of ex-priest Fr. Damien, plus a cameo by the Pope!

The Beast - features a brief appearance by the Vatican (it's good to know where the Beast will establish his Armageddon-style NORAD)

PS - I know there's another apocalyptic tract that features the Beast (who looks JUST LIKE John Paul II) and the Anti-Christ (who looks JUST LIKE Fr. Kolvenbach, superior of the Jesuits). If anyone knows/remembers the name, please send it in!

New logo for Derrida Does Dallas!

2005-08-27T13:04:00.000-05:00

Doin' it and doin' it and doin' it well

Receptionista

2005-08-25T15:59:00.000-05:00

So I'm a temp. On some level, I think it helps me nurture the virtue of humility, something I've long lacked, for I had always carried an internal judgment of being a temp. So maybe it's good for me.

But today has been a hilariously fun day. I'm a receptionist for Starcom, which seems to be some sort of advertising/marketing group. I've met people from Field and Stream, Clear Channel, the New York Times, etc. I also met a woman who used to date one of the actors on the Young and the Restless (which was on the lobby tv at the time).

The reception desk is usually staffed by Ava and Kelly. They are an unparalleled duo - someone calls, and no sooner than that person is being transferred, these two look at each other and mock them simultaneously. Ava is a musician, belting out tunes throughout the work day, and Kelly a former bartender looking to take over the accounts here. I think my few hours here have been a stirring reminder of how difficult it is to quantify the impact of one's colleagues on one's mental health. In my long hunt for a job, I have often emphasized the salary over the work, but I am pretty sure that I would take a lower-paying job for higher-entertainment coworkers.

I don't think my career as a receptionista will last long, but at least my one brief incursion has been a solid block of hilarity.

Your One-Stop Walken Post

2005-08-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

I am a huge fan of Christopher Walken. His acting, his singing, his dancing, indeed even his recipes - all are reliable sources of joy for Derrida Does Dallas. So, in the hopes of enabling others to live the dream, I have sought to collect the most important Walken sites here in this very post.

The widely acclaimed Fatboy Slim "Weapon of Choice" video, showcasing his lesser known dancing talents.

In lieu of Santa, some have written their Christmas letters to Walken. The letter from Noah and from the Chinese girl are especially telling.

The (recently debunked) website for his (no longer) forthcoming Presidential campaign.

Kevin Pollak's very fine Walken impression - featuring my two favorite bits, "Frankenstein never scared me" and "Walken's House of Pantaloons"

Walken reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"

SNL's Behind the Music of Blue Oyster Cult - "Gotta have more cowbell!" - his Best of... SNL DVD can be found at Amazon

A somewhat weak Walken soundboard.

That's about all I got. Really, the letters are the best part, that and the Kevin Pollak. Feel free to send in anymore links that you have....

Happy St. Lawrence Day

2005-08-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

Today is the feast day of St. Lawrence, a martyr in the Romish Church. A great way to celebrate today is to have a barbecue!

Hey, wanna hire me?

2005-08-04T20:10:00.000-05:00

It has been a long time since I said anything worth posting, or even reading for that matter, but I will in the coming days post some reflections from the last month that are not yet present here. That being said, let me offer a brief reflection about my ongoing job search.

I have had a very blessed life. I grew up with very loving parents in a good neighborhood and a nice town, I’ve attended great schools, and I have many very reliable and excellent friends. Thus I have little by way of comparison when I say that looking for a job has been the worst experience of my life. None of my limbs have been amputated; I’ve never been shot at with anything worse than a pellet gun; and after the 2000 Census I was redistricted out of Dan Burton’s jurisdiction. I have lost family members, true, but all had very long, fulfilling lives that ran their natural course. Bad life experiences and I have tended to walk on opposite sides of the street.

But oh, job hunting, you cunning devil. After deciding to indefinitely postpone the rest of my education in favor of a stint in the “real-world,” I dutifully made resumes, contacted references, and researched potential employers. I early on proscribed the profession I am most obviously qualified for, that of teaching, citing a need to be totally out of the academic environment in order to see if that was where I wanted to go back to. Yet, for whatever reason, no one in the “real world” seems interested in a dude with a masters degree in theology, even one who majored in math as an undergraduate.

So daily, I send out resumes and cover letters, I make my follow-up phone calls, and I prepare to do it all again the next day, feeling myself a far less grandiose version of Pinky and the Brain. I had an interview two days ago at Aon Re Services, located in the spacious Aon Center. I was interviewed by SIX individuals, each of whom had me for 20-40 minutes. I think I did alright, maybe even well, but neither so well as to guarantee myself the position nor so hilariously to recall the “Retainer” scene from Good Will Hunting. Having sent them all the information that they requested, I have now only to wait for their phone call, promised to me “either way,” before I might know my fate. Objectively, the situation is going alright, but internally it casts a psychological pall over everything I do, every plan I try to make, every conversation I have.

I will close with perhaps the bitterest pill of the whole thing, like a long expired Vitamin C tablet: this experience has made me question so many of my decisions in life that I feel the first hints of an identity crisis. Should I have majored in what I did? Should I have done grad school? Should I have taken Statistics when I had the chance, or perhaps applied for all those unpaid internships that DC offered? Should I have stuck with teaching and applied for those jobs when they were ripe, as now approaches much too late? Or perhaps the bitterest of all: should I have just stayed in school, since they’re the only ones that seem to want me?

Alas, I persist, if for no other reason than my affinity for Ahab. Even though it cost me my leg, indeed my very life, I must pursue my white whale to the ends of the earth (i.e. the Chicago metro area). Ahab, however, was driven by his inner thirst for revenge, while for I it’s the rent and the mounting credit card debt.

RIP, Scotty

2005-07-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

Scotty died. I won't say he was the inspiration for my interest in my Scottish heritage, but I won't say he wasn't (for the record, that was the movie Bravehart...).

We knew him only as Scotty. "Beam me up, Scotty," people said, even though Shatner never uttered those exact words on the show. Did we know that he fought in WWII? That he was shot 6 times, one of them taking off his right middle finger? Did we know that he had Alzheimer's?

Alas, Scotty, we hardly knew ye. Full speed ahead, my friend.

Los Quatros Fantasticos

2005-07-09T10:32:00.000-05:00

I went to see the Fantastic Four last night. It was a generally pleasing action/comic flick, neither great nor poor, probably more worth student ticket price than regular admission. Yes, most of the good lines are in the trailers/commercials, it does feature cheesy one-liners (like "He's always been a hothead", said about the Human Torch), and some poor points of explication.

The movie will especially suffer from comparisons to Batman Begins, which was really an all around fantastic film. Good acting, scripting, action, camera work, great shots of Chicago, all around great. Compared to it, Fantastic Four is definitely made for tv quality.

But let's keep it in perspective, eh? Let's look at other Marvel Comics films:
Blade (1998)
X-Men (2000)
Blade II (2002)
Spider-Man (2002)
Daredevil (2003)
X-Men 2 (2003)
Hulk (2003)
Punisher (2004)
Spider-Man (2004)
Blade: Trinity (2004)
Elektra (2005)
Fantastic Four (2005)

Now I will admit to having only seen bits of the Blade flicks, so I won't comment on them beyond saying that I've heard generally good things, and Wesley Snipes did return for both sequels (unlike in the Major League franchise). But with the rest of these movies, Marvel definitely succeeds or tanks, with very little room for sheer averageness. Spider-Man and X-Men movies? Pretty good to very good.

But Daredevil? SUCKS. Elektra? Unclear why it was made, except perhaps as an Alias spin-off. Hulk? Incapable of picking any one of four or five themes it toyed with, leaving the viewer bored/confused/annoyed. Punisher? Irrelevant. Brought down by a Scientologist and the guy from The Sweetest Thing.

So if Fantastic Four is thoroughly average, bravo Marvel! You aimed for the moon and landed amongst the...atmosphere. Let's just hope you can do half as well with Ghost Rider.

A note to all FBI job applicants...

2005-07-06T09:33:00.000-05:00

Should you decide to apply to that snazzy Federal Bureau of Investigation, as I am considering doing, you will be asked the following:

Are you a member of any foreign or domestic organization,
association, movement, group, or combination of persons which is totalitarian,
fascist, communist, or subversive, or which has adopted, or shows a policy of
advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny
other persons their rights under the Constitution of the United States, or which
seeks to alter the form of Government of the U.S. by unconstitutional
means?

I hope to Zeus you can click "no" for this one!!

I think what I appreciate about the FBI is that they didn't beat around the bush here. No subtle ruses designed to trip you up, to get you to betray your deep fascist convictions. This sort of candor is important, and I think that's what drew me to the Bureau in the first place.

Verdict

2005-07-06T00:36:00.000-05:00

Oh, and in other news, Okey vs. Barth's Church Dogmatics resulted in a hung jury of sorts...B+. Not awesome, better than I deserved - apparently Barth dealth with my same quesiton in some reading that I did not do (although, somewhat to excuse myself, I do not believe it was assigned reading, so I was only a lazy researcher and not a lazy class-participant). Also waiting on a Just War Tradition grade, but no rush there...

Heath got married, Andy got engaged...

2005-07-05T23:34:00.000-05:00

....and all I got was drunk. But seriously, the lack of blogging comes from my spending the last week in the Nation’s Capital. While there are many tales and vignettes to share, for now I want to reflect briefly on love.

Love is not something I can comment on fully. I’ve never “been in love,” although I have loved family and friends. I’ve also loved country, home, and alma mater, although perhaps with less passion and commitment as I’ve offered to individuals in my life. In my time in DC, love was shown to me in a myriad of ways, from the offers of futons and couches to sleep on to the late night conversations on matters of personal importance. My favorite expressions of love, the sharing of laughter and of meals, were certainly in abundance as well. But it’s through the examples of my recent roommates that I’d like to peek for the moment.

Heath and Thais married each other on Saturday, July 2nd, in a beautiful ceremony at Georgetown University. From my own stance, at the back of St. William’s Chapel in Copley Hall, I would say the height of the ceremony was their personal statements to one another. Each gave a brief reflection to the other right before making traditional vows to love, to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, and so on. It was overwhelming to hear Thais say “I am so humbled by your love for me,” for it was an admission of awe at the profound character of what they share. It’s as though the deep well of love each holds for the other only inspires further diving in, further committing, further giving of self. For them, this humility is a reflection of their encounter with God’s love. He gave himself in a total, ultimate way, a gift totally undeserved, one that ought properly to humble any recipient. These two lovers’ gift of self to one another, as completely as they are capable, is why Heath could say “I’ve known the love of God so much more fully since knowing you” in his own statement.

Not long after the wedding reception came to a close, Andy the other roommate took his girlfriend Andrea (NB: yep, it’s Andy and Andrea) to the Georgetown Observatory. A highly romantic spot on campus, they stayed there for a few moments before walking back down the hill and stopping in Copley Crypt Chapel. It was there, in front of the tabernacle, that Andy offered his life, his love, his promise to her and asked her to marry him. Each step in their relationship has truly been one of discernment and prayer, of deliberately seeking God’s call in their relationship, and so it’s only fitting that this moment should occur in the same place where Andy once offered up his hands on God’s holy altar. Especially touching in this scene of their story is that the ring was one Andy obtained mere hours beforehand from a nice Christian girl in the Leavey Center. He explained that he wanted to propose that night, that the diamond and platinum ring he’d selected weeks earlier was not yet ready, and that he did not want to let a jeweler dictate when and how he might confess the deepest desires of his heart. Perhaps it’s a mere placeholder ring for the more socially expected piece, but on a human level I think it demonstrates the intensity and urgency of the love they share.

Just a couple of thoughts, if not particularly deep or original. Love’s been on my mind – not regarding my romantic world, mind you, but more a matter of what real love means. Butterflies and giggles are all well and good (if you’re a schoolgirl), but what of commitment, of seeing through struggle, of loving the other for the others’ sake and not for one’s (schoolgirl) feelings? The other cannot be just a pleasing object, but rather takes on a trajectory of merging fully into one with oneself. Heath and Thais are now one flesh, joined by God – and in a bit over a year, so too will Andy and Andrea be so. And, more or less similarly, 2k years ago God and humanity married, became one flesh, in that Jesus figure. Love’s in communion, I guess.

TANTRUMS!!!!!!!

2005-06-20T11:18:00.000-05:00

HI MY NAME IS LAUREN EVANS OSBORNE AND I THROW TANTRUMS!!!!!!

No seriously, I'm "working" at the coffee shop and LEO is throwing tantrums like Mohammad Ali throwing punches. Move like a butterfly, bitch like a crybaby....or something.

In other news, there have been requests for clarification on the previous post. This past weekend was spent in Saugatuck, MI, and yesterday our group (Andrew the Roommate, Cory the Pop-Culture Illiterati, Fr. Mike the Priest, Kateri the Alaskan, and Matt her Sassy Gay Friend) went to the beach. Andy, for instance, was burned on his left knee. I was burned on knees, forearms, neck, and face (leaving me raccoon eyes because of the badass sunglasses). But K., oh you, her bum burned. That night she had to ride in the car for a solid two hours, nursing her blistering rump as Ahab the Oldsmobile Alero tore through Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois at 85 mph.

So yeah, she said that. And still, despite all that, I still think she's cool.