Dead kitty.

Nixon Leslie (1989-2004)

God killed my cat yesterday.

I’ve owned Nixon, my cat, for 15 years, since he was six weeks old. The rest of the family was not so attached to him; he didn’t like humans. He liked me, though mainly it’s because I fed and pet him.

He tolerated the rest of the family, who felt in his last year that I should euthanize him. I didn’t; I don’t approve of euthanasia, and hardly think arthritis is enough of a reason for it. I will of course remind them of this when their joints start to ache.

I’ve been an absent owner a lot, what with living in places that don’t accept pets. The past three months have been at school. I suppose it’s better that I was back to see him before he died.

I feel sadness and loss, of course. I don’t know if animals have an afterlife; despite what we tell children, we don’t know anything about their spiritual nature, or even if they have one. Do I have any hope of seeing him again? Well, what I have hope in is that God is good, and that’ll have to do.

More work to do.

School is out but my classes aren’t done. I have one more paper to turn in. This sucks but it’s my own fault.

I notice that at the end of the semester, many people don’t care so much about getting good grades as much as they care about getting the semester done and over with. Currently, I relate. I’d love to have A’s but I want to be finished and start over and do better next semester. Plus, I have to get started on my Christmas shopping.

It will be nice to be done… next week.

There are coffee fans, and there are coffee snobs.

You don’t love coffee unless you love all coffee.

I love coffee. I know some other folks who claim to love coffee, but they’re really just coffee snobs. If you really loved coffee, you wouldn’t care whether it’s Starbucks or Yuban, so long as it’s coffee. Coffee snobs are particular about their coffee, so one can argue that they don’t love coffee so much as they love one particular brand or style. It’s like those people who claim they love music, but only listen to pop; or those people who claim they love Jesus, but don’t obey his commands.

Hey, check it out: I made a little mini-sermon.

Need to check my email more often.

I really don’t check my email enough.

I do; but I have too many email addresses. The only two I check regularly are my Hotmail account (which I use for family) and my iWon account (which I’ve had forever and use for just about everything else). Then there’s a Juno account I never use. Finally, Bethany College gave me a FirstClass account.

I’m not in the habit of looking at it. I care more about my other accounts, and I find that most of the things on FirstClass are administrative spam. So I check it maybe once a week. This freaks people out. Too many people are dependent on quick responses to their email, and they don’t consider the possiblity that I have other email addresses that I give a higher priority to.

Except I now realize I have to check my bloody FirstClass email too. But I think there’s some way to forward it to my iWon account or something. I’ll figure it out.

Surrounded by hypocrites in the café.

When mature Christians are offended, they say so privately. Hypocrites get loud.

So I’m in the café, complaining about all the thumping that goes on in the upstairs hall. “It sounds like someone has a trampoline up there,” I commented.

“It’s probably R,” said one of my hallmates, who was at the table at the time. “She bounces around a lot.”

“If this weren’t a Christian college,” I commented, “I’d presume she was doing something inappropriate.”

This offended the others at the table.

“If this weren’t a Christian college,” I reiterated.

Still offended.

Ah, but were they?…

The greatest asset the Pharisees had was a pack mentality. Here, I was surrounded by a group of—presumably—good Christians, some of whom live in my hall. I have personally witnessed how “good” my hallmates really are. They’ve said much cruder things than I just did, using four-letter words or their euphemisms; some of them swear solely in Spanish, assuming that white English-speakers won’t know what they’re calling their moms. Compare, now, with how I never said what inappropriate thing R might be doing. But since there were women at the table—women they found attractive—they suddenly became the biggest bunch of self-righteous hypocrites to ever piss off Jesus.

Nah, there have probably been bigger hypocrites. But you see what I’m dealing with here. And ladies, you might also notice what you’re dealing with. If a guy starts to get righteous on you about another person’s inappropriate comments, consider this: Truly righteous people ignore such things. They’re better than that. If they feel the need to discuss your inappropriate behavior, they take you aside and do it privately. Hypocrites, on the other hand, get loud about it.

Staying in my hall, even though it’s noisy.

There is some minor pressure to get me out of my hall, “Burnett South,” previously known as “Victory” and sometimes known as “the Endzone,” though I think only Alvin Leota calls it that. It’s mainly because other Burnett guys want to live here next semester. I don’t blame them; but I’ve got a sweet deal here and ain’t moving.

Besides, some of them are music majors and we have enough singers in this hall. Good Lord, some of them are the most tone-deaf people I’ve ever heard; how the heck did they manage to get into the program? The way they mangle Stevie Wonder is just criminal; the fact that they even sing Johnny Mathis tunes deserves them a caning; and what’s with the Metallica lately? (Not that I object; but must they sing along?)

On the up side, they are at Bethany College to learn something, and I’ll simply need to tolerate them getting their horrible music choices and practices out of their systems. Bethany did wonders for my sister. Not to embarrass her; but she used to sing Whitney Houston songs before she came here, and thank God, Bethany cured her of it.

I know some people are going to say, “You should talk; I’ve heard that sucky ‘Cup of Jesus’ song you play on your blog.” That’s different. I play that song so you, like me, can make fun of it. You also have control over your computer’s volume. I have no control over the other music played in my hall; I can only turn up my music to drown the other stuff out.

What I’d love to get is one of those inverse-noise generators to cancel it out completely, but I don’t know where to find a non-industrial version. (They used to be installed in certain luxury cars to cancel out engine noise; but I haven’t seen them in a few years.) If you know of any place that sells them, drop me a note. Such devices are necessary in college dorms.

Etch-a-Sketch Tech Support.

I found this Etch-A-Sketch Tech Support info amusing enough…

Here to answer your frequently asked Etch-A-Sketch questions.

Q: My My Etch-A-Sketch has a distorted display.

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: What's the shortcut for Undo?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I create an empty New Document window?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I exit without saving?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I set the background and foreground to the same color?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Etch-A-Sketch?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?

A: Pick it up and shake it.

Q: How do I keep from losing my Etch-A-Sketch documents in the middle of my work?

A: Stop shaking it.

The state has no business legitimizing marriages.

Marriage is a religious sacrament. Isn’t there supposed to be a separation of church and state?

To pick up on this Rant from lunch, where it came up:

I believe in the separation of church and state. The state has no business telling the church how to run things, telling Christians how and where they can worship, and legitimizing religious rituals. Likewise, the state doesn’t take orders from any one church. I think every American can agree with these principles; problem is, most people believe “separation of church and state” means how the courts currently misinterpret it: the removal of religion from public places and functions, which violates the spirit of the First Amendment’s clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Technically, it’s not really violated—Congress doesn’t make laws against it; the courts do.

Another way in which the separation of church and state is violated is by the government legitimizing marriages. Marriage is a societal function; but it’s one that comes from religion. For crying out loud, the marriage ceremony is a religious ceremony. It’s considered a sacrament by many churches. Yet we actually have judges and J.P.’s performing marriages, and we don’t think anything of it because we really aren’t thinking about it whatsoever. You wouldn’t have ’em perform a baptism, a briss, communion, or the last rites; what are they doing performing marriages?

Most of the problems with marriage in America are because of state legitimization of marriage. The state will let you get married with no premarital counseling, no waiting period, and no judgment calls; some states don’t even require a blood test. They dissolve marriages in a no-fault manner; everything is simply divided fifty-fifty, with no marital counseling. It’s like a business arrangement; and to the state, that’s all marriage is. And because it’s nothing more than a business arrangment, the state really doesn’t care what gender the partners are either.

The state needs to get its hands out of it, but instead, the Republicans want to define marriage in the Constitution. This is no surprise, since most politicians worship their party rather than God; why else are so many of them available Sunday mornings for the talk shows? They don’t understand the nature of marriage any more than most of us; they certainly don’t respect it, as seen by their past examples; they even tax it, which is why my grandmother and her boyfriend are currently shacking up—why get married when it means they lose pension and Social Security incomes?

As a result, they’ll likely pass their silly amendment, create a Constitutional contradiction that helps nullify the First Amendment, and help future judges erode the Amendment’s protections even further. Bloody Congress.

How many repeats does it take to drive a roommate mad?

New fun prank: Put “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads in your CD player and hit Repeat. See how many times the song has to repeat before your roommate realizes what’s going on and freaks out.

Currently Mike holds the record; I ran that sucker 14 times and got tired of it before he did. My previous roommate S only needed to hear it start the second time. “Dude, you're sick!” he squealed, and fled from the room.

I don’t even sing along.