The List

I have decided to be more discerning. The list of criteria is as follows.

1] She has to care for me the same way I care for her.

2] She has to be witty.

3] She has to be beautiful to me, if no one else.

4] She has to read a lot.

5] She has to write well.

6] She has to be a total freak.

7] She has to have a slightly crude sense of humor.

8] She has to enjoy video games.

9] She has to be musically talented.

10] She can't like Twilight. She doesn't have to hate it, she just can't like it.

Finals.

Sorry to anyone who reads this. I've been studying for finals, working on homework i should have had done long, long ago, and trying not to get sick on Chartwells food. There's hardly any time to post. I'll post a lot more as soon as this is all over with. Pinkie swears.

Welcome to the Freak Show

I'm such an awful writer.

No really, I am. I don't want to hear any of that crap you roll around inside your mouth. Those placating sounds don't mean anything to me. They never have. So cut it out. Now.

Possibly some of the most infuriating things I deal with daily are the constant reassurances of friends that I am something special. Gifted, would be a good word. I hate that word. Ever since the day my mother tried to buy me a keychain that said "I'm not weird, I'm gifted." That was the day when I realized I was a living joke. So talented, so unique, and so painfully different I soured the taste of the air around me, like lemonade in need of sugar. I'm not gifted, I'm a freak. My talent is making your teeth ache and your tongue feel thick. My writing is the same unsophisticated scrawling of the overconfident author who plasters his molested vocabulary on the page like double aught buckshot.

Don't think I'll mistake your prosaic flattery for an accurate representation of my abilities.

I'm getting older.

I'm 20 now.

It's been two days. 20 years and two days since I was born. An infinitesimal number of instants, events so fast they can't even be said to have really happened, since I breathed my first breath. And yet, only 20 years. Only an afore mentioned miniscule event on the grand scale that is Time, the construct fashioned to make our lives more manageable. To deter madness. Galaxies within galaxies. Forever spiraling inward in Golden Ratio. 1 to 1.6180339887.

I don't want to be older. I don't want to pass out of my teenage years forever. But neither do I want to be a child, clutching to his baby blanket long past the time it was put aside.

I've stopped eating enough. Everything tastes the same. I went to Olive Garden for my birthday. It tasted like the Cracker Barrel breakfast I had that morning. Now, I just hardly even bother any more. I might be sick. I might be dying. I might be overly dramatic.

I think it's the last one.

I thought I was done with letting other people control my emotions. Why is it one word from you makes me feel like I need to die? What is your problem? What did I do to deserve this? You're the one who broke my heart. You're the one who ruined me for months, if not longer. You're the one who haunts my thoughts when I'm with any other girl. Why am I so pathetic for you? You make me ill. You make me want to write black poetry and grow my hair long enough to cover my eyes and never change out of a robe and lie in bed until my muscles atrophy and are replaced with bed sores.

It's a hard fight to write this down, knowing how stupid it makes me sound. Poor little Alan. His life is so hard. No one loves him. Boohoo. I hate it when I get like this. Alex says he needs a catharsis. I say I need my skull tapped and the poison inside drained like maple syrup. Therein lies the simplified difference between the two of us, I think. The psychiatrist's son and the over imaginative wannabe poet.

Maybe when I wake up tomorrow I'll have an incredibly rare case of progeria that only manifests itself shortly after reaching the beginning of the third decade of life. I'll wake up an old man, too old to continue schooling but young enough to use the toilet on my own. Go back to being a child again, if just a tad bit more wrinkly. But that would just be a sorry cop out, wouldn't it? Running away from everything. Something I do too much.

Haha. Baileigh loves me. I know that for sure. Funny how just one little thought like that can make you feel so much better. And suddenly everything I was just feeling seems so remote.

I'm feelin' nice.

I feel nice.

I mean, I just got blown off on a date, but for some reason, I feel content about that. I expected it in that sort of depressing way that I sometimes do in the same way that I expect I won't be getting another girlfriend any time soon, especially not if I stay at Covenant like I'm planning to. For tonight, though, I'm okay with all of that. I'm fine with not being the center of someone's universe, as I've come to understand is what I'm really after. I used to think I was looking for love and acceptance and someone to release all of this pent up affection on, but I was wrong. I just wanted attention. I feel like maybe it's better that I'm denied this for now, like an alcoholic going through a detox. I'm not mature enough to love someone they way I should. I'm just not ready.

It helps that this bed is so comfortable. I seriously need to find out where Mom and Dad bought this mattress pad. It's like I'm sitting on a cloud, as cliche as that is.

I'm writing this blog a few nights before I'll post it. I'm at my home in St. Augustine and I don't have internet access, within reason, as long as I'm here. We have an old Pentium 4 Dell with high speed internet sitting in the other room, but it's so buggy from long use that I can hardly get it to pull up my Facebook page, much less type this whole blog out and post it. So I'm making due by saving this to my laptop until I have a chance to upload it to my blog.

I'm not even sure if anyone reads this. I know Micah and Shelby and Taylor follow me, but I don't know if they actually read any of this. I think they do. I think some other people who aren't actually following me also read it, like Baileigh, maybe. I'm not sure. No one talks about it. I almost stopped writing only after the first few posts because I wondered if there was a point. I realize now that, as public and attention starved as I am, this blog is really just an exercise in thought. I don't think well when I'm speaking. I only think appropriately when I'm writing. This sucks when you're trying to tell someone how you feel without sounding like a complete ass.

I worry that everyone at Covenant thinks I'm a whore. They have every reason to believe this because, in all honesty, I'm the biggest man-whore it has ever been my misfortune to see in a mirror, but I still try to keep up appearances. You know how it is. An honored companion and accomplice in all things criminal once told me, in regards to my thoughts on women, "Alan, you appreciate God's handiwork way too much. You need to start finding some of it disgusting." Is he right? It is true that I think every girl, without exception, has the capability of being absolutely beautiful if they try. Some of them just don't try. Even then I still see the beauty hidden inside them and have a tendency to fall in love with it, even if it never really will see the light of day. Does this make me a softer version of a satyriasis? A man obsessed with women, just not as sexually as the term denotes?

Do I have low standards? Is that my problem? I doubt it, but what do I know?

Why do these things even matter to me? They're so inconsequential in the big picture. Like, what does my taste in women matter to the president of the United Sates as he wields the power of the greatest country in the world at the moment? What starving child in Africa cares about whether or not I get a date with the girl in my history and doctrine classes while he's being forced to murder his countrymen with an automatic weapon? What person outside the small communities of Covenant College and St. Augustine, Florida, even knows that I exist much less cares that I have a sexual preference at all? Surely God cares but what divine purpose could a romance possibly have in my life outside marriage which is so many years away? Sometimes I wish for the strength to be like Justin. To swear off any interaction with anyone resembling a romantic relationship and to promise celibacy for the rest of my life in service to God. I have so much respect for that.

But I could never do it. As often as I tell myself that I'm a self-serving, people-pleasing attention monger, I know that, given time, all this love I'm prepared to give away was placed in me for a purpose. I was designed to love a woman for the rest of my life till death do us part. I swear that, when I die and they run an autopsy, they will find, stamped into my very DNA, the words "Human Being, Husband/Father Edition, V10.9.1" or something along those lines. It'll probably be written in some kind of God-code. Like Python, where you can Import(levitation);

When I'm not wishing I was a eunuch, I wish I could be like the couple at school that met only a little over a month ago and are already engaged as freshmen. Or my friends here at home who dated for a year and are engaged to be married as they graduate from high school. What a gift, to be so in love. I've been searching for that ever since I decided I liked cooties. Even if they don't make it and their relationships fall apart, they will remember these beginning days with fondness and a bittersweet taste. Some people don't think it's worth it and call it a curse. I'm more optimistic. More stupid, definitely, but at least I have my optimism.

Maybe no woman will ever love me. I wouldn't be completely surprised. The thought has crossed my mind several times, usually while writing obscenely dark and pathetic poetry that uses words like "black" and "alone" entirely too often. Perhaps I am unlovable, speaking strictly of the love a woman has for her husband. I am loved by my friends and family, no doubt in my mind, but to this day no girl has ever loved me the way my mother loves my father. Perhaps it will never happen. Unlikely, if I was in fact built to love and be loved, as I suspect I was, but what if? Will I be able to accept it? Will I be able to rest on the love of Christ alone? Perhaps it is my martyr's cause to be a creature devoted to loving someone while entirely denied that right.

But then, I am young. It has only been 20 years, the majority of which I was nothing close to an acceptable subject of anyone's affections. How can I possibly expect something as important as a life long love to just pop up in the first few years of my adult life? Some people don't meet the one they were supposed to marry until long after they've reached adulthood. Besides, who am I to guess at the purposes and decisions of a God I could never hope within reason to understand?

For now I am just a heart-sick little boy that none of the girls on the playground want to kiss. I think I'm tough enough to survive and so, for tonight, I feel nice.

Abba, Father, save me!

I pretended I was a dinosaur today. I pretended that I roamed the campus, eating anyone who got in my way and generally terrorizing both friends and enemies alike.

Not that I have enemies here, but I created some in my mind so that I could eat them.

Then I sat for two minutes holding an empty Nerf pistol against my forehead, pulling the plastic trigger again and again and again. I told my roommate that if the gun were real, I would have blown my brains out weeks ago. I was joking, but I had to convince my roommate that I was. I spoke the words convincingly, I guess.

I'm shutting down. I can feel it. There is a heavy weight in my chest whenever I think about the massive amounts of work I have to do, the confrontations I need to have. I feel so heavy I can't get out of my chair. I'm scared. I'm so scared and I don't know how I'm going to find the strength to keep going. I don't know if I can pull this off. I don't even know if I have the balls to walk into class tomorrow morning with none of the work done that should be. I'm tired and angry and hurt and scared. Father God help me! My own mother doesn't believe in me! She asked me yesterday how I did on my Doctrine exam. When I told her truthfully that I did okay in some places but not in others, she asked me if that meant she'd be saving the money she would be spending on my room and board next semester. She's been threatening to take me out of school here since summer. I feel like all I am is a drain on her precious resources. A damn inconvenience. A waste.

I'm so weak. I'm so broken. I feel like this is the part where God should be stepping in. I've admitted it. I can't do this on my own. I'm helpless. When is he going to step in? There is so much more I could lose, so much further to sink, do I have to go all the way before he'll save me? Do I have to leave this place? Forfeit my education? Lose my friends, my family, my money and my mind? How far is far enough? How broken is broken enough? How much more do I need to suffer before I've learned my lesson? Why am I so stubborn!?

Lord I've never been one for spoken words, so this is my written prayer to you. You are the sovereign king over everything I understand and everything I don't understand. You determine what is and what isn't, who lives and who dies, and the very flow of time itself. You know my thoughts and see my fears. All glory to you, Father, King of Kings and owner of everything that I am, body and soul. I love you, Abba, and I want you to be proud of me. Give me your strength, God, because I need it desperately. I thought I was struggling for so long, but I haven't even put up a fight. I laid down and died the day I thought I could do it without you. Foolish is my name because I've been nothing but foolish since the day I was born, but you call me your child and as your child please save me, Father, from myself. Grant me focus, determination, a bold spirit and a patient heart so that I can do what I am here to do and bring you glory in the process. Thank you for your love, God, and how you pursue me when I won't listen. I beg you to continue and to give me your help. Bless me, Father, and forgive my laziness and cowardice. Amen.

Sometimes I could choke on how silly I am.

I realize that I get offended by the stupidest things. Like when someone steals a pack of Oreos from my room or says "That'll do pig" to me without thinking. Or throws ice at me from an upper floor of the dorm. Really, it's not a big deal. It's cookies. Or it's a movie quote. Or it's an ice cube that didn't even hit me anyway. I don't know what's wrong with me these past couple days, but these things are really getting under my skin. They're not just little things to me. They're grievous breeches of some kind of code of respect and by committing these acts against me, someone is saying I'm not worth their respect. It's making me furious.

I'm getting angrier and angrier every day. Closer and closer to snapping at the people I love. I remember that I basically told my mother to shut up in the most snide way I could possibly manage a month or so ago on the phone. Why did I do that? All she did was ask me to go to a church that my brother attended while he was here. I heard her trying to force me to be like him, though, and if you know me and you know my brother, you know why that would make me mad. I shouldn't have snapped at her though. I never say things like that to my mother.

I feel like I'm full of knots. Every little thing is crawling under my nails, beating on my brain and tangling up my guts until I can't breathe, much less stay calm.

I'll pray about it. I don't know why I wasn't before. Or, I do know why, but it's a stupid reason I don't realize I'm using until I really look at it. I feel like whatever problems I'm facing are so small, so inconsequential, that praying about them would be a waste of time when I could use those few seconds to fix the problem myself. Like I've ever been able to fix anything on my own before in my life. My mom is right when she says I'm not an adult yet. I'm still the obnoxious child who refuses to hold hands when crossing the street. Soon I'll get hit, plastered across the road like so much red paint. It's just a matter of time.

When your daydreams are more violent than the movies that give you nightmares, there's something wrong.

Just a couple seconds...

It's all I've got, so I'm going to try and make it worth while.

No news now.

No news is good news, where I come from.

Where the news is spit from between the lips of so many sewed up mouths,

and everything comes with a lisp.

Every morning I wake up and it's Monday?

Who would have thought that school would be a drag?

We are all time travelers here.

Nothing goes by,

everything cycles,

and a week is a season long.

So all hail H.G. Wells the man has finally done it,

just not the way he expected.

Because while the time machine is always moving,

the moment never does.

Poetry? Really? I've got to stop doing this to myself.

Suga Suga

I'm so wired on Sour Patch Kids right now I can hardly type slower than fifty words a minute. This is so awesome. I've been playing FFX and Medal of Honor all day long when I wasn't being taken on a stupid trip to some german style supermarket that turned out to be a full thirty minutes further away than I had expected. Stupid David and his figgin' german chocolate.

I asked Waverly on a date this weekend to the Second South Charity Mini Golf Tournament. Generally speaking, the point of the tournament is to A] raise money for charity (I'm not sure which one.) B] get us used to interacting with girls since they make up the vast majority of the people here on campus and C] give us all a chance to dress really pretentiously in preppy polo shirts and sweater vests like Cody. Waves is a sweet girl so I should have some fun, even if she's terrible at minigolf and we'll probably lose the tournament as a result. My first name is Victor for a reason! But whatever. I'll let it go. Maybe.

Today in chapel we were asked by the speaker to think about where our secret hiding spot is. That one place you retreat to when the whole world is coming down on your shoulders and you just need some time alone to breathe. I realized immediately where mine is. So did everyone who's visited my room more than three times, too, I think.

It's the bathroom. I'm always in there. In here, actually, since I'm in the bathroom right now, typing this. No one bothers you when they think you're on the toilet. I just tell them I'm dropping a 'strous, as Micah would put it, and they leave me be for extraordinary amounts of time without complaining. It's awesome. The only real problem is that there isn't a cushion on the lid of the toilet. It gets annoying after a while. I think my hall believes that I have a intestinal problem, or something. I really don't care. So long as I get my own little space whenever I want it, they can believe I have aliens coming out of my butt. It don't bother me none at all.

I worry about the trip Shelby is about to go on, I worry about getting Micah's game working because he spent so much money on it, I worry about getting into my practical service since I still haven't done a single hour of work yet, and I worry a bout not doing well enough to please my mother as far as grades because she might take me out of school if i don't. *headdesk*

Gas Leak

There was a gas leak today. It kept people out of the chapel and Brock and since those were my two first obligations for the day, I got to sleep in. Which is such a blessing, considering how unholy of an hour I went to sleep last night. It must have been well after three in the morning. My roommate asked me if I wanted cookies and said he'd buy us some if I went to Walmart with him.

Free cookies? Sure. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

First of all, we get into his car and the immediate thing I notice is that he has a flat tire. He's completely confused, saying it'd been acting funny all day. He'd driven it on a flat tire for miles, apparently, but since he'd never had one before, he had no idea that was going on. So I got him to pull into North Lot and I helped him change it. Of course, it rained the whole time, his aftermarket rims required a special adaptor to the tire iron, which we couldn't find forever, and it's dark. We finished around 1:30. Then, riding on his spare, we got to my truck in Shadowlands. From there began to worst driving experience of my life. The fog was thick as soup and in places we had to slow down to a crawl to navigate a switchback. Living on a mountain sucks sometimes.

We got the friggin' cookies though.

Had to remake my bed last night because Micah had used it the night before, tore off all the sheets because he wanted to be nice and wash them for me, and then decided he didn't have time and threw them back onto my bed in a wadded up ball of fabric. Truck you, Micah. (I still love you though.)

He's now my laundry slave and is being forced to right his grievous wrong through some clever trickery on mine and Alex's part. We bet him Peter from peteranswers.com would know his full name. His options were either A] Ask out the girl of my choosing, B] kiss a man on the mouth or C] do my laundry. He chose wisely.

I'm being asked to write a story line for Alex and Micah to illustrate into a comic. I'm not really sure how I'm going to do that, but whatever. Perhaps it'll turn out ok. Who knows?

Fakers? I'll show you fakers.

You want to see deluded people living a life of complete fantasy? Go to an anime convention. Where men are women and women are skanks. This is the world within the glassy doors of the convention hall, while outside Cloud smokes his cig with open disdain for the other twelve sword-carrying, spike haired fakers because HIS fakery is the best. He pretends he is epic. He pretends he has worth and friends and love. The worst thing? He probably already does.

But it's not his own love and friends and glory he wants, it is that of a video game character. A person who is literally nothing except a complex mathematical function running through the silicon and metal inside his black plastic box he guard so jealously, like Cerberus at the gates of Hades. The poor guy. And yet, all the same, I wish the same for myself.

Why can't I be amazing? Why am I destined to be plain? Average except for the occasional outbursts of interesting thought or unique eccentricity, like my blog posts or how I sometimes say just the right thing to make a child smile. Where is my battle? My glory? My bottomless pit into which I can cast the enemies of my homeland? Is there a kit? Where do I order this stuff? Could I afford it? I'm probably too poor.

I want to be content. I pray that I will be content. There is a mission* that has been given to me and I am built to accept it. Otherwise, why exist? My arms are just strong enough, my legs just fast enough, my mind just bright enough to accomplish exactly what I was placed here for. This is not just a philosophy or some kind of feel-good platitude I feed myself to make life easier to live. It's truth. A truth I believe completely. It's just the being happy with it part that causes me pause.

Part of me is filled with disgust at these anime fakers. But there is also a simple, greedy, childish part of me too. A facet with all the characteristics of a grabbing, grubby, snot-encrusted three year old screaming for the "better" toy. I want to be remembered like Achilles, loved like Casanova, studied like Dostoyevsky, feared like Attila. I don't want paper cuts and baggy eyes for my battle scars! I want dust and sweat and blood, wiping it from my face while my enemy is struck asunder and crushed beneath my feet! I want my metal proved in the forge of battle, I want to save lives and take lives! But most of all, I want to never want any of this ever again.

I just want to be happy with what I am. I want to know I am loved the way I am, weak and pale and silly. My strength comes from the Lord, and he made me just as I should be. Someday these words will take precedence over my lust for my own pride. I pray that day comes soon.

*What's up with war metaphor? I hear it everywhere. There's got to be a better word I could use there.

Good morning, dinner.

Pleasant way to wake up if there ever was one, heaving your guts into the sink. Not to mention the thirty minutes I spent trying to fight it down, hallucinating about deltas, thetas and random number equations carved into my ceiling and walls and hearing the same line from Dashboard Confessional over and over and over again in my head. I was pretty sure I was going crazy. I don't remember being able to discern the hallucinations from reality. It was like I was right back where I was at six years old with a fever of 105.5 degrees and nightmares of burning skulls eating me alive. I definitely didn't eat that much meat, either. I'll own up to the Cheezits, but there is no way I had that much beef for dinner.

It's how I feel when I'm around you, really. Not entirely sure what's going on. No clue where the truth draws his little line in the sand. I hold it down, fight it off, sweating like an innocent man on death row and fumbling my way around you, trying to find that stupid line. Where the hell is it? Where is the real me and where is the me I want to be? Where are we?

And then I vomit. All this ridiculous pathetic stuff. All the crippled feelings and malformed emotions. I'm so dizzy at this point I don't even care, I just spit it out, praying to God you'll catch me and understand. I never wanted to be here. I never wanted to lose track of where the good ideas were chilling in their little hammocks and where the bad ideas scrounge in the trash heaps, scratching at their leprous sores.

You don't catch me, of course. I know why. I understand. Better I be on my own, dust myself off, and maybe get bruised enough to wake up and find where I am again. I respect your right to your own actions, your own lines and good ideas. But I expect you to respect my right to my own bad ideas, too. I won't listen when you tell me to go away. I won't listen when you tell me you deserve less. It's a lie. There is no less than me, covered in puke, counting thetas and screaming about broken hearts like jewelry. Neither is there more. All choices have their diseases and their hammocks.

I'm not even sure I'm making sense at this point. I love you, sister. I love you, friend. I take pride in the simplicity of it all.

A few minutes.

I have a few minutes before chapel starts. I'm wide awake and prepared for this one, too. So no dozing through the speaker.

Last night was possibly one of the most trippy nights of my life. Reading through the same 256 words over and over again. I've never had someone write about me so candidly before. Usually I hear the same things over and over again. Sweet, nice, smart, funny... no other words than that. It's like I'm nothing different to anyone outside of my own family, where they know me as a pain in the ass. It's a term of endearment, coming from my mother. But these words, the way they don't screw with me, pushing me to believe that the writer has missed some important facet, is intoxicating.

(A post I never finished. I published it as it was left, undone.)

uh..

screw it. i've got nothing.

(found out today, which is the 15th, that i posted this on the birthday of my very awesome friend Taylor. love you Taylor.)

Who ARE you?

Who the hell are you, Freak?

What's with your Bleach-White hair?

Why do you Wear those Clothes?

Why do you Tell those Stories?

And why are you so Damn Weird?

What's so great about Japan?

And when are you ever going to need to know,

How to Slaughter a Zombie or Throw a Knife,

or to Fight with those Delicate Hands?

Why do you Tease me so Roughly?

Why do you think I'm so Strange?

Why do I want you to Love me,

And consider me anything but Plain?

Fruit Fly Sex

Oh boy. Today I got to sex up some fruity flies.

We're studying mutations and how they're passed from generation to generation. It's all good stuff. We have to terminate the flies once we're done with them, though, which is kinda sad if you've gone and named all of them like I have a tendency to do. I name everything.

Tomorrow night is Kilter. A Sadie Hawkins thing. It's going to be at the Aquarium which is awesome. I'm really excited. I've been dying to go to the Chattanooga aquarium for a long time, but it was always way expensive. This time the cost to get in along with food is included in the ticket price, so now i finally have an excuse to go.

I don't have a date, of course, but I'm betting it's going to be hella fun anyway. And there's no swing music! That's the best part. The music is going to all be modern dance and hip hop music so I'll actually look like I know what I'm doing out there instead of tripping all over myself trying to swing. Now if only I had some of my favorite dance partners from back home up here, things would be outrageous crazy. Christa, Kelcie, Alyssa, Brianna... generally just all those kids. I'd even dance with Ali again, if she was around. I miss the fun I had at homecoming and prom back home so much. Which reminds me, I haven't ever danced with Shelby. I'm going to have to fix that some time. I'll bet she's really good.

Probably the worst part of not having a date to Kilter is the cruddy things people say to me when they find out. I mean, they've got the best intentions in mind, but I've really heard the whole "I can't believe no one asked you to Kilter" line so many times I can predict exactly when it's about to be said in a conversation. People just don't seem to understand me and how I function in my groups of friends. I am the "Guy Friend". A very important male figure in a mixed gender group, I am the one the girls are most comfortable with and, while they think I'm very handsome, are hardly ever attracted to. So while Kilter is mostly a friendly thing, and not really about dating, it's still a time when girls like to step out of their comfort zones and go big, asking their crushes or cute friends they don't know too well yet instead of the guy they figure is so sweet someone else is bound to ask him anyway. Problem is, everyone figures this and therefore I don't get asked.

It's not a bitter thing for me. Honestly I have more fun alone when I'm able to dance when and with whoever I want. I just really don't like everyone acting like it's some huge travesty that I haven't been asked. It smacks of pity and I don't like pity. Most times. Well, at least not now. I am a vicious attention hog.

Class in one hour. I'm really tired too. I have everything done for that class today, so I tried burning some time by playing a video game on Alex's Playstation but I nearly fell asleep in the middle of the game. Thankfully, falling asleep at the wheel of a car pushing 120 in a video game isn't deadly. Unless you fall out of your chair and hit your head on a spike or something, but I check the floor for those daily. Never know when your room might turn into an inverted porcupine.

Caleb is coming today. Actually, he might be here now, but I think he would have called me if he was. I miss him. We're going to do some stupid stuff while he's here, that's for sure.

No, thank YOU, Zidane.

Good... afternoon. Right?

Still feels like morning. I go to bed later and later every day. I woke up early, again, to get breakfast and ended up passing out the instant I got back to my room. I slept through chapel. Thankfully salvation is not dependent on chapel attendance or we'd all be going to hell.

I didn't sleep through HIS 150, though, so that's good. I hate missing actual class. Interesting stuff we talked about today: History and how it applies to you!

It doesn't. History is funny in that, the farther back you go, the more bizarre the society of the day was. Example: Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre, in which Darnton reconstructs the events that happened in 1730s France where there were three riotous days of killing cats for reasons no modern man could possibly understand. How does this apply to us? It obviously doesn't. History is not some kind of epic salad bar of folklore and stories we can pick and choose from to further a purpose or idea we have today.

Also, sloganeering sucks. So find a better use for bumper stickers. Like gagging hostages.

These are the things we learn in class. I'm going to go ahead and read Darnton's essay on the cats, for funsies, but I'm convinced that my desire to do so is entirely based on the "suggestion" the teacher gave to us to read it and his outright refusal to enlighten us as to the actual reasons stated by the participants in the massacre for their bloody deeds. It's like homework but worse, because I don't have to do it and I will anyway. I expected this crap from the psych department, but not from you, Dr. Green. I'm very disappointed in you.

I'm switching majors. To English. Because I'm good at it and your major has nothing to do with who will hire you out of college. Surprising fact, but true. All that really matters is your GPA and whatever internships or extracurriculars you can dredge up. So I'll be switching to English, working with the school paper, named The Bagpipe by someone who obviously took the schools Scottish heritage a little too far, and possibly writing articles for newspapers in Chattanooga. Maybe even finding some internships with non-profits nearby. One in particular that I really just want to join to find out what the hell they do.

"So... what do y'all do, exactly?"

"We're trying to change Chattanooga for the better."

"How?"

"By empowering people."

"What good will that do?"

"We feel it'll improve the city's culture."

"So how are you empowering people?"

"By getting them involved in bettering Chattanooga."

"And how are you bettering Chattanooga?"

"By empowering people."

I so want to be a part of that. Really. I mean, the bonus it'll add to my resume when I get out of here will be nice, but really I'm in it for the empowerment.

In MicroEconomics I was asked who my favorite sports team was. I said the French national soccer team. Immediately the two kids next to me claimed Italy and Manchester United as their teams. I think I almost died. Luckily Zinedine Zidane came flying through the door and head-butted a hold in the concrete wall after which he gave Italy and Manc a very meaningful glare. And so I survived.

I've got class in 15 minutes. Human Heredity. Genethics and all that good stuff. Nothing more attractive than a man who knows how to make a pretty baby.

The First Post

I was responsible this morning.

I'm one of the most irresponsible people I know, but this morning I actually surprised myself. I don't have class until 2:30 this afternoon, but I woke up at eight o' clock anyway, despite falling asleep at 2 AM, so I could eat a good breakfast.

Good being a loose definition of the lukewarm biscuits with sausage gravy, the consistency of snot, that I ate this morning. Better than most college food, though, so I ate it.

I finished the reading I need to have done. Mostly the reading was in Job, one of my favorite books, so I took the opportunity to curl up in my bed and read it with the sunlight coming in around the dive flag beach towel my roommate uses as a curtain. Probably not the best lighting for my eyes, but I got the reading done anyway and enjoyed it. I even wrote a journal on it all, so I can turn that in for credit. I'll go ahead and drop it in here:

I’ve always thought of Job as one of the wildest books in the Bible. Every time I read God’s words to Job, his call to “Brace yourself like a man”, shivers run down my spine. The idea of God’s power is made so evident in that passage, like facing down a thunderstorm or riding a tornado. I can’t possibly imagine what Job was feeling. I’m impressed he managed to answer, even just to say he had no place to speak. I would have started digging to bury myself just to save God the effort of doing it for me.

This passage is comforting, though, despite the obvious terror Job must have felt once he realized whom he was questioning. There’s this reassurance I get when I read God’s words, the idea that there isn’t anything God has not seen or measured or designed without purpose, regardless of its seemingly mundane nature. Each time the eagle takes flight it is because the Lord has determined a time when the eagle should fly. How cool is that? Nothing horrible that happens to me happens without His express permission and therefore, nothing horrible that happens is actually horrible. Perhaps to me it will seem so, but I am only important in a cosmic sense because of the worth God has assigned me. Whatever horrible things happen, they will serve His purpose and will build me up or tear me down to be the right size to do the work He requires. Nothing God does is horrible; we only perceive it that way because we can’t possibly understand Him. The true horror lies in the idea of a God who isn’t in complete control, or a God who isn’t just.

I also paid off the balance on my account. I still don't understand the amount of money I spend every semester. It's just too large a number. I can wrap my mind around a grand, maybe, but when I spend anything more than that there's some kind of disconnect, like it's not even money anymore. It's just the means to an end. It doesn't represent everything I could buy with it other than my education, it just is my education. I had to go down to the office and pay it by check instead of online, like I wanted to originally, because the handling fee on the money was 112 dollars and that is definitely a number I can wrap my mind around. That's enough money to live off of for a semester, if you're smart and have a meal plan to take care of food.

Then I sent some e-mails that I probably wouldn't have sent any other day because I'm so disgustingly lazy. It's not like it requires effort to write two sentences asking crucial questions and then click "Send", but I still usually put it off in favor of reading, playing games or talking with friends. But I didn't this morning. One to my advisor, asking about the amount of hours necessary for an English major and if I can collect enough credits for one in 5 semesters, and the other to the kids working the Practical Service racket, because I missed the "mandatory" meeting last night. I have class from 7:00 to 9:45 with a psycho who will not allow the skipping of his class for any reason.

So yeah. Responsible.

I remember when I used to get those Pillars of Character awards in elementary school. Responsibility was one of the ones they handed out. I never got Responsibility. I got Caring. Every time. I think that if I really Cared though, I'd stop being a lazy bum and be Responsible.