Idiocy

Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. The recent political duldrums in Canada helped make the president-elect of our friends south of the border look much more attractive. The world was finally feeling safe with America as a superpower--no more wanna-be cowboys in the driver's seat any more. The Americans as a people seemed to have made a good decision, and we were all pleased with them.


But that number of people who must have stepped out while the vote happened started talking again. It would mar the pleasure of Obama's victory, except that the elite stupidity of the people with keyboards and an Internet connection has confirmed for me that Obama actually did win. It has a sort of ring of the familiar that tells me this is the same world is was in October, just with the promise of a little more.

On Why Writing My Take-Home Is So Painful

[Warning: this post contains whining about my life on-line. If this does not appeal to you, get off the Internet entirely.]

I'm writing a take-home exam. It consists of three questions, each regarding three thinkers and consisting of roughly four pages, as I cannot exceed twelve altogether. The process has so far been more time-consuming and painful than I had anticipated.

The reason is not limited to the fact that I don't find the topic very interesting. The reason is not limited to the fact that this process consists of lots of skimming through the texts for relevant material. The reason is not limited to the fact that I do not feel like I am in any way contributing to the academic community while writing this. The reason is not limited to the fact that my boredom incites me to eating unhealthily and unnecessarily. These are all contributing factors, but they have not essentially ruined the last two days for me.

No, the reason is that I have no focus, and therefore spend upward of a third of the time allotted for "working" on ridiculous forms of procrastination that are only mariginally more satisfying than the work itself. Had I had the concentration to just finish the miserable question all in one shot--or even in two intensive shots--I would then be able to go and do something I actually enjoy. I could read a book, or work on something creative, or play a game, or whatever. But I could then spend a significant amount of time on some activity that I could walk away from and say, "I'm glad I did that."

Instead, though, I waste time on Facebook applications. What a stupid way of spending the day. I also researched who the Crazy Babysitter Twins are. (They were credited to the Grindhouse flicks, and apparently they're a big deal right now. I suppose if you're willing to do photoshoots like that, you would be.) I also spent better than an hour on xkcd.com. Penny Arcade got some attention, as did the blogosphere (some readers will note comments from me on their own blogs). I watched the fake Grindhouse trailers on YouTube. I am pretty sure I spent time on Wikipedia, but I don't actually recall what I did there. Oh, and I looked up the list of fetishes from the xkcd comic I posted previously. Yeah, weird, I know. But I had to know. You can look it up yourself you want. "Deviant Desires," I think, and throw in "fetish map." A Google search should get you there. The domain name has been removed, but enough people have blogged about it that the original image and some of the content are still available, at least at the time of writing this.

So I theoretically remember everything I did. I can guarantee, though, that I won't look back on today and think, "I am so glad I did that. It satisfied me deeply." No. If I look back on today at all, I'll think, "What a slave I am to the computer. And I abused time so badly. And I pushed my computer to it's physical limits, more than likely. How horrible."

I feel unclean, somehow.

But tomorrow...

I have a study class thing for an upcoming exam. That will get me out of the house and will force me to interact with people I haven't seen for more than a week.

And I have Running and Reading, which will force me to run and discipline children and walk long distances in the cold in running pants.

I will also do more of my take-home. But tomorrow might be worth something. More, at least, than today was worth.

To make up for the unhappiness, I will post some pictures that should hopefully improve everyone's mood.

It Hurts...

...it's so funny. And true.
I'm thinking about this one: http://xkcd.com/481/

But this one will do: http://xkcd.com/513/


Oh, and this one! http://xkcd.com/468/ This sucker's pretty deep nerd. I was proud at first that I got it--you have to have a basic knowledge of the philosophy of mathematics--but then I realized how very very low I've sunk into nerdom that I was proud that I got a xkcd reference that I doubted many others got. It's something I'll have to live with, but...
And everytime I hear Whitehead is still imagine him as a giant pimple.

[Edit 7 Jan 09] Because of the remote possibility of a new democraphic of people reading this blog, I've removed certain elements from comments to this blog. Let's just say I didn't want anyone's feelings getting hurt. It's highly unlikely that it's you we were talking about, so there's no need to be paranoid; also, it wasn't all that bad; you'd probably just prefer you weren't used in the discussion at hand.

The parts of the posts that were fine, and need to be given for the following posts to make sense, are as follows:

Jon Wong says: Ick, while I don't pretend that comic 513 never happens, I don't like it because it gives nice guys a bad rep. I have a hardcore, anti-nice-guy friend (if you can believe it) who can't seem to break out of her extremely set conviction that all nice guys behave like that guy in comic 513.

English Clergyman says: The reason I posted it is because it's something I would have attempted in an earlier, stupider, more selfish and obsessive incarnation. Thus "It hurts". And that guy's not really a 'nice guy.' He's actually just a coward. There's a difference.

Computer Illiteracy

Apparently I am computer illiterate. I just spent 1 hour trying to rip Big Fish from DVD to my harddrive, and failed entirely. Well, no, not entirely. I did manage to get some garbled and useless files. What I did not get is anything I can use. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

DVD copyright protection: 1
English Clergyman aka petty criminal: 0

Recently and Soon

Recently...

1) I postponed writing my take-home exam some more. I really need to play catch-up tomorrow.

2) I watched Donnie Darko for the first time. It was enjoyable, though less creepy or confusing than everyone claimed. Also, it has re-enforced my dislike for Jake Gyllenhaal's face, though he's admittedly a good actor. About the biggest deal for me was that Donnie wasn't just crazy; his visions were partially true, even under most interpretations. [EDIT 05/12/08: If you want to read about more interpretations of this film, you can go to the blog of a friend of mine; he's written something that should be on this page somewhere.]

3) I rewatched Big Fish, which was yet again enjoyable. I also watched some of the features, and was sad to see that they didn't have anything about how they animated Ping & Ying. That's something I was disappointed about. Nonetheless, I want to write things like that movie now (and also like Stardust, incidentally).

4) I rewatched The Fellowship of the Ring the other day, and enjoyed it more than my previous reviewings. I really felt the setting this time, and it made the movie more engaging and real to me. Similar rewatchings of The Two Towers failed to create the same response, possibly because the settings were less familiar to me, being more extravagent.

5) I bought friends nanaimo bars. They were cheap and good, and helped these friends de-stress (I hope).

6) I read some of Lake Effect from the library. I am excited!

Soon...

1) I am going on a "Downtown Encounter" tonight with my small group. This will be a way of thinking about the urban poor and engaging in Christ.

2) Tomorrow I am going to do extra work on my take-home to make up for the lack of work these days. In fact, I may start after small group tonight!

Truths to Write

I have a piece of paper, and at the top of it I have written a paraphrase of C. S. Lewis:

Do not worry about being original...
tell the truth, and you will find that you will be original as a byproduct.

Below this I have listed a list of things I consider "truths" about which I would like to write:

• No good has ever come without sacrifice. This is not sacrifice in the sense of payment or investment. This is sacrifice for someone else, without the expectation of return.


• Sometimes people do not need help, but to be asked for help.


• Look to your needs only as part of the means to the end of helping others. This may, of course, be a very important part of those means, because you are human.


• There is beauty is simplicity.


• There is also beauty in complexity. This truth, and not the previous one, explains beauty in the world.


• You must be observant.


• Just because someone doesn't do what they should do does not free you from your obligations to them. It only makes those obligations harder.


• The world may look ugly and bleak. This is either because it is or because you have been taught to think it is. In the first case, imagination and false hope are paramount to ethical behaviour and survival; in the second case, imagination and hope are necessary to uncover the true beauty of the world.

We'll see how that goes! It may not, or it may. We shall see.

And some marginalia I wrote about, The Fellowship of the Ring, which I was watching while compiling the list of truths:

• There is nowhere I'd rather be than the Shire.
• 0:10:24 or so when the little hobbit girl runs up yelling, "Gandalf! Gandalf!" is maybe my favourite moment n the whole movie. [up until 0:10:55, Gandalf's smile]
• "I think in his heart Frodo's still in love with the Shire."
• "He is summoning all evil to him. Soon he will have an army large enough to [conquer?] Middle-earth."
• "Where are you taking us?" "Into the wild."
• Write a landscape you can see.
• When Frodo is in Rivendell, feeling homesick, we know that he's hardly begun. This is the sad part. "I am ready to go home." By the end of the trilogy, that dream will lost forever.