Friday, April 29, 2005

You're Gonna Love It

Yeah, I totally stole this from someone else's blog, but it's absolutely hilarious. For those of you who don't know, livejournals are particularly melodramatic kinds of blogs. What do you think, appropriate?

My Live Journal is annoying because:

I post weird poetic stuff no one understands.

why is YOUR livejournal annoying?
brought to you by Quizilla

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Funny story: we're in Lottie last night, right? Eating dinner as always, and a bunch of pirates, vikings, and ninjas run through. They're yelling, screaming, video taping, stealing ice cream cones (and, I heard, a whole tub of ice cream), and 'kidnapping' some girls. They carried glass bottles of, I suspect, Jones' soda, and continued their random yelling, and suddenly, on some unkown signal, they all rushed out of Lottie. I have to say, it was absolutely hilarious.

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In other news: Hitchiker's Guide comes out today! I so want to go see it! I'll probably have to wait until it comes out on video or DVD or something though. Maybe, some day, they'll bring it to Messiah. If so, Liz is working on getting a bunch of people together to sleep outside Parmer Cinema and wear Star Trek outfits. Now that would be fun. I'd want a bunch, and I mean a bunch of pictures, black, white, sepia, and of course glorious color. I want to work on my photography skills - particularly candid. I tend to stop and think about it way too much, and with people, especially groups, that doesn't work. I don't have that miraculous talent of just clicking and poof! it turns out miraculously beautiful. But I'm gonna work on that.

Wow, that was a tangent off the subject of Hitchiker's Guide, which I hope will totally rock my socks off! Douglas Adams was a genius, albeit a gallows humor genius, and I hope he doesn't end up turning over in his grave. Good night all! And good luck with the homework this weekend!

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Newsflash! Mackenzie fixed the wiring on her lamp! It now turns on! Hallelujah!

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Wishes

If wishes were... fishes? kisses? There's a song that begins something like that, and I'm sure that if I knew the words it would turn out to be perfectly applicable to this post.

I've been thinking a lot lately (well, I always do, no matter how hard I try to stop) about what I want to do after I graduate from college, and about what I want to accomplish in college. You've all heard my plan to go on to grad school and try and be a professor. Well, I've been thinking that, if that doesn't work out, it would be awesome to run a gallery of some sort. Not sure if I'm the sort of person who could handle the stress and responsibility of running my own business, but at the same time, I think it would totally rock my socks off. I would absolutely hire someone to deal with the numbers and forms and stuff. I think talking with artists and scouting for their work and being around good art all the time would be cool. And it would totally rock if I could find someone I get along with to work with me. I'm not sure that I would wish such a risk on any of my good friends, but hey, as long as I get along with whoever-it-is at work, who cares if we're friends or not outside of that? It would rock my socks off if I could get an internship or something sometime in college at a gallery and find out what it's like.

I was also thinking of my senior projects. I have to take part in a senior show, obviously, but I have to do something extra for honors I think, although I'm not sure about that. Whatever I do has to be 'grad school level' according to the forms. What I would totally love to do? The senior art show, plus write, compile, edit, and try to publish book of poetry/prose pulled from my four years at Messiah. I couldn't write an entire book in my senior year I don't think, but if I could draw on the past four years for material and just focus especially on senior year, I think it could be done. Both at once? I dunno. But it would be cool to give it a shot.

No, I'm not ambitious at all. It's not like I have dreams or goals or anything, and it's definitely not like I feel I need to prove to myself that I can do what I set out to do by setting ridiculously high ones. We all know that I'm much more down-to-earth than all of that.

I was also thinking that I'd love to be on the Minnemingo Review staff, specifically editing it, and I'd love to be an organizing part of the art league (they're really slow about organizing and publicizing things, and I think it could be run so much better). I'd like to help organize the service trips. I'd love to be on the photography staff of both the Swinging Bridge and the Clarion. I want to help in the gallery - help hang stuff, see how all of that is administered, and how they choose who's going to exhibit, and why, and all the wheels and cogs behind all of it. I'd love to organize a sort of 'pinch penny press' thing here at Messiah, and somehow get more forums in which student writing can be heard, and student art can be seen. I mean, we have a student publication, right? Why not a student run art exhibit somewhere?

Yeah.... I have no plans whatsoever. I just don't know what I'll do during my four years at Messiah. You'll all have to send me ideas and suggestions so I don't get bored with my life. I tend to get bored so often. = D

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Idiot-Proof

It never fails. I post before work, and then I have more to say. I wish I could come up with an idiot-proof time to post. If I post too early, I end up not getting to say everything. If I post too late, I end up sounding depressed.

Mostly, I just wanted to post this quote:

"...and Caesar wasn't a vegetarian!"

[no offense to my vegetarian friends]

And I also wanted to post this, and say that, although I love it when all the ranges are represented (like in the chamber singers, whom I totally loved), I greatly enjoyed the women's ensemble concert.

[those of you who hate lyrics, at least without music, or the excessive repetition of the word snow, you'd better skip ahead here.]

O snow, which sinks so light,
Brown earth is hid from sight
O soul, be thou as white as snow,
O snow, which falls so slow,
Dear earth quite warm below;
O heart, so keep thy glow
Beneath the snow.

O snow, in they soft grave
Sad flow'rs the winter brave;
O heart, so sooth and save, as does the snow.
The snow must melt, must go,
Fast, fast as water flow.
Not thus, my soul, O snow
They gifts to fade like snow.

O snow, thou'rt white no more,
Thy sparkling too, is o'er;
O soul, be as before,
Was bright the snow.
Then as teh snow all pure,
O heart be, but endure;
Through all the years full sure,
Not as the snow.

Also somethin' I been thinkin' of since today... the words just stuck in my head.

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Out-Nerded

At dinner tonight, all was going pretty much as usual. Andrew and Matt were arguing about Star Wars things, Liz and Sharon and Michael and I were talking about relatively normal things. I think I was watching the other people at some other table tossing an apple studded with silverware back and forth. Matt and Andrew progress to the subject of the yuuzhan vong and how they're not susceptible to the force, which they thought was dumb, and suddenly, involuntarily, I found myself turning toward them and saying, "Well, actually, they later discover that they're susceptible to the force, just not in any spectrum currently 'visible' to the Jedi."

Yes. I let it slip. My guilty secret has come out. I've read practically every star wars book in existence - at least as of 2002.

Andrew and Matt just sort of stared. "She just out-nerded us!" said Andrew, in sheer shock and disbelief. I don't blame you for being surprised guys. I was kind of surprised myself. Like true star wars geeks (or did you decide you were nerds?) they couldn't quite decide what to ask about first - the plot, or how I knew the plot. They eventually got around to asking both.

I have to admit though, I kind of liked surprising them. It was a good feeling to think that after a school year of acquaintance, I still can spring one on them occaisionally. Even if it is something that, given my amount of knowledge, would technically be classified as nerd-y.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Showdown

I decided that I'm done with my identity crisis. Or at least that I'll be ignoring it with a vengeance for the next couple of weeks. My identity crisis is ridiculous. I can't believe I've spent so much time obsessing about it lately, and I really don't have any more time to spend obsessing over it in the next couple weeks. So it's done, by royal decree from (Qu-ing) Mackenzie. I intend to put spend my last few days at Messiah thinking of much more productive things.

Like showdowns. Between professors. I want, more than anything, to get Dr. Miller to sit in on one of Dr. Downing's chapel lectures (or vice versa), and then to see them face off. Dr. Miller has this wonderful common sensical, down-to-earth approach to the Bible. Dr. Downing has this incredibly pie-in-the-sky, how-can-I-use-this-to-support-my-point, deconstructionist, death of the author appraoch to the Bible (um... and everything else, come to think of it). Basically, her approach to the Bible is everything Dr. Miller is telling us never to do: read into it our prejudices, read it out of historical and cultural context, and take it out of its literary context, as a connected whole, with all the verses related to one another, and ignore authorial intent. I keep wondering who would win? The English department's postmodern poster child? Or the Habakkuk Inquisitor (and by that I mean he put on the pressure during our Habakkuk presentation)?

Dr. Downing is armed with a formidably large vocabulary (larger than most dictionaries I know), is loved by all and sundry, especially the honors program, and favors deconstructing everything and extracting meaning from the smallest bits possible, so that by the time she's done I have completely forgotten what the oroginal point of the material was, or her original point in deconstructing it (or else I wasn't paying very good attention, which could also be the case).

Dr. Miller, as I've said, is big on common sense and the big picture. What's happening as a whole? Tone? Authorial intent? In its context? Ok, you got that? Now go in for details. What's the eternal relevance?

They're both intelligent, they both have PhD's. They're both extremely passionate. Both, I suspect, can raise their voices very loud. Dr. Downing, I have a feeling, would perceive any attack on her theological hermeneutics as an attack against herself. Dr. Miller would perceive an attack on his theological hermeneutics (depending on what subject and which passage) as an attack on the Holy Spirit, or God, or something. Or reason. He's kinda big on reason.

Which would win? Pie-in-the-sky or common sense? I think it would be fascinating to watch.

You've probably notice, in and among my musings, my slight bias against Dr. Downing. I'm not sure why I liked her so much in my interview and am so irritated by her now. Is it her mangling of the Bible in chapel? Is it her emphasis on the situatedness and individuality of belief propagated by the postmodern view? Is it her extremely large vocabulary? (Heteroglossia? What?!) Is it simply a personality thing? Is it merely my natural perverseness (and by that I don't mean perversion) coming out, and demanding that since nearly everyone else (not you Andrew, I know.) professes to love her, I need to dislike her? Is it because this whole postmodern thing has me completely flummoxed, and, since she is the postmodern poster child, I feel threatened by her? I wonder.

And I will leave you to wonder too. Wonder, with all the might of your tiny human brains (which are probably larger than mine.... but then, I can't figure out what's wrong with me either).

*warning, strange mental image ahead*
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Red promo poster with large letters:

COME SEE THE SHOWDOWN BETWEEN
THE POSTMODERN POSTER CHILD
AND THE HABAKKUK INQUISITOR!!!
Tonight, at 7:30, in Miller Auditorium!
Tickets are $7 for students and $15 for adults!
Don't miss this historic one-time event!

*image at bottom of poster consists of Dr. Downing in her leather pants and strangely curled hair wearing a boxing robe and gloves, facing Dr. Miller with a sumo wrestler's haircut and a boxing robe*

Monday, April 25, 2005

Thinkin's

For some reason, even when I'm sick, I find chill weather exhilarating. I mean, yay sunny weather and all that, but honestly something about flowers against a cold grey sky makes me happy in a way that flowers against a perfect blue sky rarely does. Rain, even when I'm sick, is more beautiful than the prototypical spring weather. When we had our thunderstorms, I really just wanted to grab my camera, my umbrella, and start taking rainy pictures. Or take off my shoes and dance in the rain. I didn't, of course, knowing that my cold would probably worsen as a result, but the urge was definitely there. Thunder? Amazing. Lightning? Beautiful. Sheets of rain? Bring it on. Chill? Why not? That is, as long as it doesn't hit below freezing. Even with a stuffed nose, I can smell rain, and it makes me happy.

Question: Can no meaning be drawn from instabilities and contradictions, as Dr. Michael said? Are ambiguities not revealing? Is incoherence really telling us nothing?

And why, suddenly, was I reduced to tears at the thought that Christ gives us the strength we need when we need it? Why, today, out of the blue, did the thought of Christ's humanity make me want to cry?

Things I been thinkin' of:

I hold onto my past categorizations too much: "Mennonite," "Midwesterner," "homeschooler," "not southern." All of them described me in the past. I haven't been a Mennonite for 9 years. Anabaptist, yes. Pacifist, yes. Mennonite? Why am I so insistent that I grew up in a Mennonite culture? Did I really? Do I have any right to claim any of those titles? Am I even really a northerner any more? Do I have a right to claim southern knowledge? I lived there for four years, almost five now I suppose, but I honestly don't understand them any better than I did when I got there. Do I have a right to claim nonconformism? Or what about conformity? With what then do I conform? Is there any such thing as conformity or nonconformity? Child - am I? Adult - not quite? Middle-class? Well-off? Oldest child? Dysfunctional? Girl? Or woman? Honest? Christian? Bookworm? Poet? Artist? Have I earned any titles thus far? Have I outgrown any? Shy? Or socialite? Words that I used to define myself by are either inapplicable or are coming under fire. Martin. Horst. If I'm not Mennonite, does it matter that my family is? Do I still identify with them as strongly as I once did? Thelma and Rufus' granddaughter, George and Beulah's granddaughter, Lita and Kent's daughter, Tammy's cousin - am I still defined in large part by my family relationships? I'm not a homeschooler anymore - I'm not a Bible quizzer anymore. I'm not a swimmer. I'm not a violinist. I'm suddenly an overacheiver - but am I really? Or am I simply trying to distinguish myself with that title - or any title - because I have a gnawing fear of normality and anonymity?

I think too much.

I want to go home and just be, and not have to deal with any of these questions about what I am and what I want to be and what I used to be and will I ever be an artist or a poet or how do you earn those titles and who am I and what do I want to be.... And repeating myself like a broken record all day every day. I want to go home, where postmodernism has not yet confused everyone's thought processes.

So.... Yes, I suppose I am having a sort of mini-identity crisis, and have been for the past two or three weeks. But I'm not sure why. It's almost the end of the year, I'm doing fine in my classes, I'm working hard, everything's going OK (except that I'm sick).... I really shouldn't be having an identity crisis. I feel like I should slap myself and snap out of it, but I've always been a little averse to pain. I haven't really had any sort of ideological or theological crises so far, just identity crises. I wonder why that is?

It's weird how much I like and respect people who are their own explanations and adjectives, and here I am, unable to define myself as easily as before, and I'm terrified. The hopeful part of me is thinking, hey, maybe you're becoming one of those tautological people. The bitter part of me is thinking, oh great, what next, do I become invisible?

I apologize for the... strange and bizarre nature of this post. But it's been wanting to come out for a while, and I suddenly had the words. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming. Which would be... discussions of zombie apocalypses at dinner and our plans of responding by holing up in Wal-mart, apparently. = D

Pish. Identity crises. Who needs 'em?

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Spring Fling Pictures


P1130370, originally uploaded by mczquiz.

Just look at us lovely ladies.... The Spring Fling was a lot of fun. I actually didn't feel all that stupid, and there was a huge group of us being awkward together, so we actually looked like we had a purpose. No, I can't dance, but face it, it's Jesus college and practically no one else can dance either. I had a sore throat, but didn't actually feel really sick until yesterday. I probably exposed everyone to my germs - sorry guys! I'm definitely sick right now. I think I feel a little better than yesterday though. So, in order to see all the gorgeous Spring Fling pictures, click on the photo above, and it'll take you to my 'photo stream' (whatever that is exactly) and you can browse among them to your heart's content. A few of them didn't load all the way, and I've tried to fix that, but it didn't quite work (Just call me computer illiterate). So, once again, enjoy the hilarity, and be excellent to each other!