Ink And Blink

 

So there is this comment. On a video. On you tube.  I will spell it out below.

The video is about Bob Jones University. A bastion of Christian Separatist  Fundyism. The video shows 5 students who were kicked out for participating in the dancing to a peppy song.

Bob Jones University is a pround institution promoting guilt, shame, and cloistering in the name of raising up warriors for Christ. Where adults are given bare minimum freedoms and an illegitimate degree from their non-regionally accredited institution. College students  have bed times, chaperones on dates, mandatory chapel, rhetoric from teachers that women aren’t good at math and science…rules on hair length, panty hose, movie theaters, Red Lobster. And of course all the best goodies are disallowed (sex, drugs, and rock and roll) and by obvious reverse engineering… (kissing, alcohol, and Phantom of the Opera). I could go on and on and on and on. The unaccreditation fact is rarely brought up, and if it is It’s all “don’t worry about it, people have gone here before and had no problem. Trust God.”  But before you go just try asking the California teaching or accounting boards if they would like to award you certified status when coming from an unaccredited university. Please Please Please Check.  God doesn't come down and allow you to be a counselor at a public school with a counseling degree from Bob Jones. He Doesn't DO IT. Try Praying your way into your favorite grad school. No Can Do.   Try transferring after being expelled from Bob Jones University to any other non-religious public or private university without spending a full time job begging the transfer office for 9 months to let you in if they will at all.

But I didn’t invite you here to talk about that place. I didn’t invite you here to talk about the video. That was just some light background. I want you here to witness VISIBLE brainwashing.   The whole comment is full of incorrect assumptions and logic, as are many of the comments on that video. but there is that one line that really is a gem. OMG you’ll LOVE it.

 

Ok, so many people have commented on how Bob Jones is in so much control over the students, and how it's too strict. Well, get over it! if you don't like the rules, go somewhere else and quit whining about it!  yes, because fundy Christian parents give their children so much control and knowledge about college options that only well-informed young adults choose to go here. Or wait, is it,,, go  to BJU or else you will have to have an intervention with your Christian school principle, or go to BJU or else you don’t get your mom’s help in paying for college, or go to BJU or else you are disrespecting your parents and therefore disrespecting God and you will be ostracized from your social circles,  or go to BJU because your Christian school secretary altered and lied on the transcripts she sent to the public universities you applied to, or go to BJU because you haven’t received ANY knowledge from any friends, family, school on how to go about applying to any other college. (real situmations with real people’s names attached BTW)

And another thing: The rules keep you safe, and they're there for a reason. This is EXACTLY the type of attitude that kept the above poor high-school junior from having the choice to make choices about his/her college . The people in charge know best. They have reasons. They are there to keep you safe. Mom and Dad have a rule for you to go to Christian College. That Rule keeps you safe. It’s there for a reason.  Don’t think. Don’t make mistakes. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. But it’s your fault either way.

Like the rules about going off campus with a guy, that's to protect you from being hurt, because some guys are total jerks, you never know.

That is decidedly NOT the reason. The reason is that Bob Jones University don’t want you to have SEX. 

I think she’s trying to imply that the guy in this situation is raping the girl or is trying to convince a girl to be naughty. 

Proposition A. Some Guys are Total Jerks (Rapist and/or plain ol horny 22 year old)

Proposition B. Enough Guys are Total Jerks enough that we should all be concerned.

Proposition C. It is a school’s duty to protect you against Jerks

Proposition D. Going off campus with a guy will give him the opportunity to be a Total Jerk

Conclusion:  Girls can’t go off campus with a guy.

Logic isn’t bad. Too bad the Propositions are.

Not Mentioned…The chance a guy will be a Total Jerk (the kind you need to be protected against) is much less than the chance of you making a legitimate living off of your new unaccredited psychology degree.

Not Mentioned: Girls dig sexy time. 

Not Mentioned: Some uncles are Total Jerks too and step-dads (the bad kind). And you can go off campus with them.

Not Mentioned: There are plenty of places ON campus for guys to be Total Jerks. (The normal kind) (Ask me how many girls I know gave a decent Handy while watching Living Gallery) .

Not Mentioned: Some dorm supervisors have relations with underage academy girls (Being a Total Jerk) (By some I mean one, and by girls I mean girl, and that was just a rumor we all heard, but no one confirmed) (kind of like all those pesky Catholic priest Total Jerk rumors that went unconfirmed for so long).  And yet dorm sups can Chaperone ANYONE off campus.

Not Mentioned: Random non-Christians at the grocery store are jerks too (the normal kind and bad kind) and girls still go shopping (as long as you aren’t campused, socialled, have appropriate leveled privileges,  have received checkout desk approval…)

and the one with keeping your room clean and no drugs and no alcohol, The clean room rule is to make the dorm life easier, and also to keep people to respect your stuff.

Or you could just ask nicely and if that doesn't work you can switch roommates to one with more your aesthetic style. Oh, wait. The university picks your roommates for you and doesn't let you live off campus. You are right. Yours is the only valid solution.

And No drugs and alcohol, well, would you like to have a roommate who wakes up screaming when you're trying to sleep, or study?

This Comment. Oh dear god.  This is why I wrote this post. This poor woman has reviled that she has zero context outside her own fundy fundy world.  That she is a sad victim of bullying and lying. Can anyone tell me when the last time was that they went to bed with a glass of wine and woke up screaming? Can you tell me the last time you got BLACK OUT DRUNK and woke up screaming? Can you tell me the last time you smoked a joint to mellow out and woke up screaming?  Did you go out in college and play pool, have a few beers, watch a game, be a Total Jerk and come back to your dorm room screaming while your roommate was trying to study. Screaming, mind you.

Let’s read about Ecstacy. The second most popular drug (outside Weed)  as concerns first time users (from Wikipedia)

• A strong sense of inner peace self-acceptance (or you could just get saved)
• Diminished aggression, hostility, and jealously (or you could just get saved)
• Diminished fear, anxiety, and insecurity (or you could just get saved)
• Extreme mood lift with accompanying euphoria (or you could just get saved)
• Feelings of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness towards others  (or you could just get saved)
• Feelings of intimacy and even love for others (or you could just get saved)
• Screaming in the middle of the night when roommates are trying to sleep.

 

MDMA (Ecstasy) was used by therapists to facilitate open communication before the government decided it was illegal and a Drug. Once that happened, everyone who took it started screaming when the person on the bottom bunk took a doze.

 

From www.onesentence.org …

LSD

Sometimes I wonder if eating a sugar cube of acid and wandering Coney Island will always be the most beautiful experience of my life.

He wrote this before he started screaming . Fact

She knows that drugs are evil.  So is saturated fat. She has no idea that drugs come in a wide variety of ranges. Chicken Noodle soup don’t have a lot of saturated fat…McGriddles have a lot of fat. And there is a whole lotta food up and down and in between. Kinda like them drugs.  Heroin will mess you up, have you dependent in under a week, and potential produce societal consequences…weed, not so much.  But why use education when scare tactics are oh so much more effective and make the recipients look oh so much smarter and able to argue valid points.

or would you like to be all messed up so you can't do anything and you waste your money and your life?

Again.  Please be aware of the range involved here. 

75% of Americans drink alcohol.  Only all of them might not consider their lives wasted. And many consider it money well spent.

Which do you prefer? Just getting used to and following the rules, or waste your money?

Say What. 

I’m going to go have a beer and find a Total Jerk.

 

Sometimes I’m in the mood to be witnessed to.  It roughly coincides with when I’m in the mood to listen to my cube-neighbor open-mouth nom nom on an apple.  This comes around once every 130 years, and the last time was in 1975. 

So being that it’s 2009, we are WAY ahead of schedule to break out the soft candles and start playing the mood music.   And for all the Christians out there who believe that no one tries to “Go out into all the world and preach the gospel” anymore except for the small group of people you hang out with. TRY BEING AN ATHIEST FOR A WEEKEND and see just how many people carry the torch of Christ.  Trust me you can’t form your own “in-crowd” cause “in-crowds” are SMALL and the “Bible” crowd is very very big. Just ask facebook.

So I go to Bank of America to get a 1,230 dollar cashier’s check to pay the initial payment on my new apartment. This check signifies that I am financially solvent enough to pony up the cash a month ahead of time.  Two 80 year olds’ opinion of my liquidity is at stake.

So right off the bat, my teller is loony. Religion or no.  My teller was loony.  I got witnessed to/ hit on by an old religious man (who hated his own first name because it was the same as a famous GAY fashion designer) at Starbucks for a good hour the following day, and he was NOT loony (in the “I have a psychiatric condition” sense of the word).  So I know the difference.

The 45 year old mousy lady who served me started right of by getting chatty and personal. Which I sometimes appreciate if I’m dating you or if you can manage to talk and have motor function at the same time. And since it was to early to tell if a relationship was a possibility and since she spent 90% of the transaction doing nothing but trying to hold a conversation, I therefore did not appreciate it.  Did I mention that I was at a bank on a Saturday morning. Not appreciating standing there waiting for her to drill through her queue of actions and thoughts one at a time.

So she goes. “This must be for an apartment.”…just standing there.

Me.  (Still having a good day). “Yeah, I’m moving to a bigger place.”

“Really??, where to.”…just standing there.

…insert medium-length polite conversation about Studio City, size, location, roommates and how she just recently moved cause her greedy landlords raised her rent after 15 years of her being there…

I told her that I thought I was getting a great deal on the place, that the rent wasn’t that bad given the location and size and that I didn’t think the landlords had any idea what it was worth…

And she goes, “Either they don’t know what it’s worth OR  maybe they just aren’t greedy.”  I have a feeling she really thought it was the second one.

And I don’t really agree with her, but I whatever don’t care really.  So I say..

“Well, either way, it helps me be greedy cause I get to save a lot of money.”

Here she corrects me.  "You can’t be greedy if you are saving money, you can only be greedy if you are taking money.”   and it’s like sigh. LADY, just STOP ALREADY.  Either side is maximizing the amount of money they get to have. Maximization is the name of the game. You’re just pissed cause you don’t want to play and probably don’t understand the rules.  

And I don’t really agree with her, but I whatever don’t care really.

BUT then she goes. “All these problems would just go away if we just all relied on Jesus more.” She just said it. Like this wasn’t LA, like she didn’t work for a Company that I’m SURE would disapprove of pushing religion on paying customers, like she had never met an atheist, like as if saying what she said was like saying, “sure wish the smog would clear up,” or  “Would your child like a lollipop.” Because no one would say “Are you MAD woman. Actually, pretty upset they stopped the station fire so quickly. Was kind of nice being told to stay inside cause of the air quality.”

And that’s when I was DONE.  Jesus was supposedly IN her life and the only think I know about her is that she is one self-righteous condescending twatsicle who so far is incapable of finishing a bank transaction (otherwise known as DOING HER JOB). Cause if she wastes time on the job, that’s not greedy cause she’s the one taking Taking her paycheck money right, oh wait, she IS greedy, cause that’s the rule. Maximizing Taking = Greedy.  Damn, now I’m all confused cause I thought relying on Jesus fixed all that silly greedy stuff.  Apparently, BofA should just FIRE your ass and save themselves a lot of money, and therefore be all Christlike and ungreedy at the same time.

But I just say… “I don’t believe there is a God.”  And this shocked her a little cause up until now I’d just been nodding my head and saying uh huh.  So her whole reaction makes me think that no one disagrees with this lady, cause it just ain’t worth the trouble, cause she’ll probably just get all condescending (as before) and not understand every other word you say anyway.  But now I realize that this just gets her really confident that everything she says is GOOD STUFF. So after my statement, she gets INDCREDULOUS.  Like she’d never heard such a thing as “There is not a God.” 

And of course since she’s still not working on my cashier’s check.

And she says…bug eyed…wait for it…  “Then what do you believe in”?

And this is where I got Incredulous. Was she really saying “I believe in God cause people have to believe in something”?

And I say, “I don’t have to believe in anything.”

Her…“But do you ever think that one day you die and you don’t wake up.”  Which translates into. “Yo atheist, bet ya never thought of DEATH have you. Sorry to break it to you, but people are Mortal. What now?”   Like Really? ..Really. 

And i was all. “WHAT???? WE DIE?” cause that’s absurd ,and If I’d only known,  I would have gladly been molested by an authority figure in the church.”  Maybe I missed the connection she was making. Was it?  “We die, therefore there is a God?” was that the argument?

She is beyond hope and not being amusing.  I’m not into having religious discussions while i’m being held hostage.  I am not in this conversation because I found a drunk girl to laugh with outside a hookah bar, but because I’m giving her 7 dollars to write me a check for MY OWN MONEY. Ugh

I say, “Are you trying to witness, to me?”

and She repeats in a much lower voice.

“But you should think of that one day you die, and you don’t wake up.”

I say again, “Are you trying to witness to me?”

and she gets flustered and FINALLY finished my check.  Don’t like God, Get check.  ATMs are WAY easier to understand.

So I go to my new apartment to meet the new landlords and hand over the deposit, and they looked at the rent check, and they looked at me, and they said, “this rent check is no good to me.”

And my lovely, brilliant shining example of Christian love and charity had not signed the cashier’s check and made me look like a scam artist in front of my landlords.  I had to take off the 4 hours of my next day at work to DRIVE from Orange County to LA to get the manager of the bank to sign the check so that I could get the deposit to my landlords before they flew to Israel to see their new grandchild. 

This transaction cost me half a vacation day, respect from my employer, respect from my landlord, and at least 10 dollars in gas.  YOU woman, took this from me and gave it to no one, no one, no one, and Exxon Mobile.  Now that’s not even greed. That’s just waste.

So just got back from Starbucks and the barista made a comment or two about what a great day he was having. As if it was a much happier day than normal.

So I ask, as sometimes I do, if he was high, and I pretend to look into his eyes. (not hard to do, all these Orange County boys are lovely)

and he says…”that’s the fourth time today someone has asked me that…just cause I have a lazy eye, doesn't mean I’m high.”

And I’m all backtracking now, I’m like, “no No No, I asked if you were high because you were exceptionally easy going…I didn’t even notice about the eye. Looks fine to me.”  and it did.  Also, not lazy was his gorgeous jaw line.

And he just smiles and we joke some more and he goes. “That’ll be $4.20.”  Which is always the price of any specialty Grande anything in LA and probably the real reason why I don’t get a Tall or Venti.

I went to the Torrance Oktoberfest at Apline Village  (largest and longest Oktoberfest in SoCal(they say…)at the suggestion of my friend Nora. She sold it to me by saying “You’ll never see the variety of people that you’ll see here all having a great time together”  She was right. Apparently, listening to a Bavarian brass band , sitting on large benches under a massive white tent, and drinking beer crosses all nationalities and over-21 age groups.  The website boasts “Bavarian brass-oom pa pa band from Germany, German dancers, contests, beer brewed at the alpine village and Authentic German food.”  This makes me laugh, because the featured “dancers” was a single large 55 year old German lady wearing a frilly pink dress walking around stage and bouncing for 4 hours while holding out a German and American flag in the air. Rumor has it she drank a 32oz beer at the top of every hour.

At one point, two young hotties went on stage and started dancing to the polka music, within seconds the large, pink, lady was clear across the stage ordering them off. This stage is for professionals!! And frolien pink german went back to moving up and down without taking her feet off the ground. Like little kids do before they know how to jump. That way they dance with their feet planted but they kind of squat and unsquat walk a step or two, squat and unsquat. It was that for 4 hours.  And we loved it. 

Port-o-potties are one of the big cons in the should-i-go-to-a-place-where-everyone-will-be-drunk equation.  We expected Feces in urinals and the toilet paper rolls to be covered in urine.  While, nothing reached the expected level, the sticky floors and scattered TP was enough was plenty enough to make you wish we lived back in the times when anything we couldn’t see with the naked eye didn’t exist.  During our third trip of the night, Nora walked up to a P-O-P, opened the door, and stood quietly and unmoving with the door grasped in her left hand.  After the little zebra spent 5 beats of her healthy zebra life staring blankly ahead into the American Serengeti, a grizzled young man 4 people back in the P-O-P line yelled. “YOU CAN DO IT”!!!  And gave some enthusiastic hand motions of encouragement. Nora laughed sadly and went in to enthusiastic cheering from the P-O-P line.  Immediately after, I turn to my right and see a Potty with a green switch, glad that I’m not going in the stall to puke instead of pee, I confidently open the door only to see the full moon of a 40 year old man with his pants pulled down to his mid-calf.  Being my second-best potty peep show of the night, (The first was some female frontal nudity), I was unimpressed and shut the door before I had used up the full quarter’s worth of time.   The P-O-P line all cheer’sed me, and they drank to harry-man-bottom.

Throughout the night, we drank lots of beer, (including the 2 inches we were given as a gift from the friendly gay man who accidently splashed some of his beer onto our lady feet. He said. “It wasn’t me,” looked into our cups, glanced up with an expression of pained sadness, and quietly poured Nora and I a generous portion of his two new 32oz Budweisers before wordlessly walking away into the crowd.) …continued from previous comma, joined a congo line, ate Polish sausage, and danced uninhibitedly on stage to the chicken dance THREE TIMES!

All this and more for only an 8 dollar admission and 20 dollars for food and beer (btw. it doesn't take a lot to feed and inebriate the pair of us, so take the 20$ with a grain of salt in the 90% of people who is larger and more experienced at drinking and eating then the two of us).

A freshly-freed up me went to Barnes and Nobles last weekend to get my Starbucks on and wandered down the fiction aisle and snapped this picture.

I love this picture because of the calories that were clearly burned by someone who FOUND the religion section of the bookstore, got irritated at the title of "The God Delusion," picked the book up, read the book 100% completely,  decided that the book in its entirety was a complete work of fiction, and re-filed appropriately.

Of course the part that says "reading the book 100% completely" could more likely be replaced with...

...licked a Styrofoam ice chest...

...popped a blackhead...

...found Carmen Sandiego...

...literally anything

The goal is to be completely debt free as of 12/31/2009.  Two years after I graduated college; I want to be completely free of student loans.  It'll be like finishing a new year's resolution that was not EVER one! I have $5,300 left to go.

This last year's new years resolution was probably to get those damn pants hemmed. I bought like 6 pairs of pants from Express in February of 2008 and have never worn them once because they are all longer then my legs-plus-four-to-five-inches.

This last week, I had them hemmed (Three of them anyway). FINALLY!!!  And I'm saying Finally, urgently through clenched teeth, while squatting and balling my hands. Kind of like I will be doing come December 31st.  Because getting those pants hemmed is something that I've been trying to do for a 18 months and have been incapable of getting done. I could have given birth and had a walking and talking child in that amount of time.

I made a point to leave work for a lunch break on one day last week and wandered my way into an OC dry cleaners.  I pick them up tomorrow. Hopefully. Hopefully, I will pick them up tomorrow. I could always find myself wandering into a Starbucks instead.

This next week, the goal is to ... OMG There is a GIGANTIC cricket on my floor...it's dead.

This next week, the goal is to maybe get the other 3 hemmed and send a package of books to my sister. This people! are the small things that NEVER get done in my life. These insurmountable tasks.  These books have been on my floor in the box for 3 months now.  There is a very real possibility that I will have run two marathons before I will have gotten all 6 of my pants hemmed.

I went to the Castle Green last year sometime. I think last December. And while looking through other people's stuff, I stumbled across this apartment with the most brilliant concept of alternative wall paper. This lady had found a map of Paris, cut it up, framed the pieces, bought some pink chairs, and it was stunning.  Meaning to do this on a smaller scale for my smaller apartment, 4 months later I went on-line and bought a 4x6 ft map drawn of Enfield, CT in back when carpet mills and gunpowder where all the rage. And I've been meaning to cut it up, and frame the pieces. And I go to a frame store about once a month and look at frames, and do NOTHING.  Today, I went to the frame store, circled the frame store looking dead in the eyes, did NOTHING, and left. I am frozen from action. It's like the simple task of framing poster pieces is a mental block that I can't think my way through. I can't figure out the steps it would take to get me from map-in-cardboard-tube to map-in-pieces-in-frames-on-wall. 

Still training for that marathon. The one in Santa Barbara on December 6.  I ran 10 miles yesterday with a new running buddy. If I had not been with my buddy, I would not have finished the 10 miles. period.  I was feeling a new brand of tired and worn-out.

It was really, really hot by the beach. And I was feeling more exhausted than normal.  I attributed the exhaustion to the fact that I haven't been hungry for a whole week. I don't live to eat. I only eat to live. And since I wasn't hungry like ever this week. I didn't do a whole lotta eating. So I figure my body was running low on things to burn while it ran. Also, I am a big sweater. I was covered in a shiny greasy sweat/suntan lotion mess throughout the whole run, adding greatly to my misery. I drank four 16 oz bottles of water during the run and two packs of GU.

I finished the run, and immediately felt nauseous. The kind of nausea where you tell the driver to corner slowly or else. But not the impending doom type of nausea.  After breakfast at IHOP, I also had a thin layer of white dust sheathing my skin.

What baffled me was the fact that after 6 hours, the nausea was STILL there. This has never happened to me before, and I've pushed myself pretty hard in the past.  I had movie plans that night and hurriedly tried to take a half hour nap to force myself to feel better. It didn't pan out cause I was feeling like SUCH crap. I was flirting with exhaustion, but I wasn't tired. And I gave up after a couple minutes of lying in my non-airconditioned apartment and sweating some more.

Giving up on the nap, I took a Tylenol for a headache and left like a zombie to get to the subway station.

I exited the highway and saw some golden arches out of the corner of my right eye. And SOMETHING TOOK OVER.  I felt like I had psychic magnetism cumpulsing me to follow the pulling sensation.  I burned rubber driving over the curb into the drive-through lane.

I was so desperate. An image of starving Oliver Twist popped into my mind. "Please, Sir. I want some more." And I laughed, my control well past politeness, my mind screaming. FRIES, FRIES, FRIES, FRIES. I'm going to strangle a nun if I don't get some fries.

Two dollars, a cocked eyebrow, and eighteen cents later.  I was in paradisio.  I was eating the fries and sucking the salt off of my fingers BETWEEN fries.  I am emitting sounds like a hungry baby does when gumming down on a nipple. "YUM, yum, yum, yum, mmmmmmmm, gmgmgm, yom, yum, mm, mm, mm." Another Fry. "YUM, yum, yum, yum, mmmmmmmm, gmgmgm, yom, yum, mm, mm, mm."

I drove to the subway station. And having been informed that my party would be 5 minutes late, sat down beneath a tree in some shade and continued making progress on my fries.  A scroungy looking homeless lady wandered over and stared down at me, held out her hand, and said "Fries". I normally have no interest in giving away stuff to homeless people and now was BEYOND not an exception.  I shook my head while hunching protectively over the fries till she wandered away.

By the time I pulled my head out of the carton where I had been licking the sides, I was ready, alert, non-nauseous, and ready to board a train to travel to Hollywood to watch an under-whelming movie.

I remembered my new running buddy telling me about something called Hyponatremia. This is a sodium-water imbalance in the blood. Too much water, too little salt. Symptomized, among other things, by nausea, head-aches, and comas. And caused, among other things, by sweating too much, drinking too much water, and behaving stupidly at a Rave.  Maybe I am imagining things. His telling-me-to-beware made me convince myself I had the symptoms. Maybe I really was sick.  I sweated a lot and drank a gob of water. I had nausea and a headache for 6 hours.

Either way I bought these swell looking Margarita Shot Bloks from REI that have 3x the sodium of normal Shot Bloks. Their only flavor this far with this feature.  I'm going to be packing these on any future, hot long runs. I have a half-marathon to run next week; I'll let you know how it goes. And I promise to pace myself on the water next time.