K.W. Leslie, snot faucet.

I am going back to Santa Cruz. I need to get my fieldwork done, but more importantly, I need to get away from the FREAKIN’ ALLERGENS.

Seriously. Ever since my train went past San Jose, my eyes have watered and my nose has dripped almost constantly. I have gone through all the tissue boxes in the house and am now going through the paper towels and the toilet paper. The phlegm in my throat makes me cough like a carton-a-day smoker. Just for fun, Tim has taken up counting how many consecutive sneezes I go through before I finally come to a stop. I have taken to retreating to my room, where I sit with the window closed and the fan on, still dripping like a Bethany faucet.

Don’t tell me about the latest and greatest allergy meds. I’ve tried them all, and they either don’t work or make me drowsy. I’ve tried over-the-counter stuff, I’ve illegally tried most of the prescription stuff, and I’ve even tried the natural herbal stuff. (Admittedly, bee pollen works, but only for 15 minutes. And since a shower also works for 15 minutes, I’d rather take a shower.) Some years ago, out of desperation, I tried a combination of pseudephedrine hydrochloride and caffeine that induced peripheral-vision hallucinations and made me twitch like I was on Ritalin. I’m not going through that again.

The cold hard facts are that my ancestors are likely from cold, coastal areas, and that by moving to North America they left their natural habitat. The next closest thing to that habitat, for me, is to live at or near the beach. I have to. It’s genetic.

(See how nicely that solution worked out?)

Post-wedding update.

Not listening to anything… other than the last of the family conversations.

My brother Chad is now married. I have a new sister… and a bunch of new relatives that I don’t really have to deal with, but they seem nice.

I suffered through the polyester tuxedo. I waded through a ridiculous amount of food and drink. I treated the groom and groomsmen to lunch. I schmoozed with an unknown number of relatives and friends and schizophrenic neighbors. I handled the music (easy enough to do because I turned all the CDs into MP3s and played them off iTunes on my Macintosh). My allergies miraculously stayed out of the way during the wedding and reception. God is good.

I have a lot of cleanup work to do tomorrow morning, but it was all worth it.

Now to bed.

The sucky school situation in Solano County.

I just realized…

After I graduate, I’m gonna have to go teach in a public school. (Or “government schools,” as some right-wing nut-jobs call them. Fine; they can call every public work a “government” work. They can take government transportation down the government roads to the government park, to read a book they checked out from the government library. Oh well; side-rant over.)

Teaching at a public school is not the issue; I am getting a state credential so I can do this. But now that I’m in Vacaville, I considered the state of the local schools… and considered that it’s not necessarily a good idea to work for one of these local schools.

Vacaville schools are underfunded to the point where the Vacaville district shut down two elementary schools and fired a lot of untenured teachers. Fairfield-Suisun schools are regularly having fights between the administration and the teachers’ union. Dixon has that history of electing school board members with God complexes. And Travis schools seldom hire.

So much for job prospects in northern Solano County.

Moving day.

So, Friday night I had a minor dilemma: Stay in Santa Cruz or move back to Vacaville?

See, the Teacher Education Program never entirely ends at the end of the semester. Papers still need to be done; fieldwork still needs to be observed; I still need to get my stuff back from the professors, with corrections, for me to redo and resubmit; and I need to get placed for student teaching next semester. So it makes sense to stay on campus and knock out all that stuff there.

On the other hand, my brother is getting married Saturday, and the wedding is at my mom’s house. Plus the rent is cheaper, my expenses are smaller, my family is here, and I need to get a car. (And a driver’s license, I suppose, while I’m at it.)

Why was there any dilemma to begin with? Well, my sister was coming Saturday afternoon to attend a wedding; and while she was at it she’d help take most of my stuff (and me) back to Vacaville with her. So I had to figure it out quickly…

…and I decided to stick with my original plan and go to Vacaville. Beautiful landlocked, 90°, full-of-allergens Vacaville. Fieldwork will have to wait a week.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to talk my mother into letting me paint my old room orange. I think I’ve got her most of the way there…

As of midnight, Kerry is 23. So today we had lunch to celebrate, since tomorrow will be full of wedding busyness and angst.

I am going to attempt to get some errands done so that I don’t have to do them later in the week. And yes, seeing Star Wars 3 counts as an errand.

My current daily schedule.

Today I am just tired… To give you an idea as to why, let me give you my typical schedule.

5:30. Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button until…

6:00. Get up, shower, eat, make coffee.

6:30. Start walking to the bus stop, which is a mile away.

7:00. Reach bus stop. Resist temptation to go to Starbucks across the street.

7:15ish. Bus arrives.

7:45ish. Bus deposits me at the high school.

8:00. Begin fieldwork—watching the classes, mainly.

12:10. Lunch break; I don't often stick around for the afternoon class. So…

12:30. Catch bus back to Scotts Valley.

12:45. Bus makes it to Scotts Valley. However, it doesn't go back to my bus stop; that takes another bus. So I have to wait for the other bus. Fortunately, there are coffee houses downtown.

1:45. The other bus arrives.

2:10. Back to my bus stop, followed by a hike up the hill back to campus.

2:40. Back on campus. Shower, start reading for class.

5:00. Class, which goes until…

8:30ish. Supposed to go until 9, but there's only so much one can cover each day… Aren't I paying for this, though?

Afterwards: Eat, maybe watch some TV, sleep.

Note how much time is killed thanks to the bus system. Obviously I have to buy a car this summer.

Time for class…

Painting the house.

Mom had the kitchen retiled and house painted for the wedding. (Weddings, as I’ve said before, are her excuse for home renovations.) I like the house much better yellow. Dad had previously painted it a greyish-brown.

I told her it really ought to be red.

“The neighbors would kill me,” she said.

“Yeah, but you’d be the only one with a red house,” I said. “You could tell visitors, ‘Just look for the red house.’ They wouldn’t miss it.”

“It would look like a barn,” she argued.

She figures she’s taking enough of a risk painting the front door a dark red. I’ll have to work on her a little longer. Once I move there for the summer, I’m gonna try to talk her into letting me paint my room orange. I don’t think she’ll go for Day-Glo™, but maybe I can wear her down to a nice cantaloupe color…

Bachelor party hijinks.

Back from Vacaville. Taking the train after 6 a.m. is a giant pain. Because the bulk of the San Jose commuters take the 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. trains, Amtrak’s 7 a.m. train ends in Oakland and one has to take a bus to San Jose thereafter. And thanks to traffic, I missed my Santa Cruz connection, which means I also missed my Scotts Valley connection, which means I couldn’t get back to the campus before 2 p.m.

But I got here and finally registered for my class (which meets tonight). I’m $800 poorer, but ready to go.

So I may as well mention the bachelor party hijinks.

The photo is of Chad (holding the foil sword and shield) and his best man, Tim, in downtown Berkeley. Tim is responsible for the silly armor and the funny hats. All six of us had to wear the funny hats: In ’N Out Burger paper caps, which was where Kelli worked when Chad first met her. (It had the interesting side effect of tourists saying, “In ’N Out! Where’s the In ’N Out?” They wanted burgers. We had to explain that we were from out of town.)

Chad was required to hassle passersby—asking the married men for marriage advice, and at other times randomly shouting out, “I’m a love slave for life!” It didn’t get much reaction; we were in Berkeley, after all. Stranger things have happened in that city’s history.

Oh, and we had Indian food. And we wore our In ’N Out Burger hats into the restaurant; kinda inappropriate, but fortunately it wasn’t a vegetarian restaurant. I may as well give the place a plug. Next time you’re in Berkeley, go to Pasand Madras Indian Cuisine. (There’s another one in Santa Clara, but I don’t know if that one’s exactly the same. Chefs always vary.) I recommend the lamb curry.

Meanwhile, our sister Kerry (who is serving as maid of honor) was taking Chad’s fiancée Kelli on her bachelorette party in San Francisco, where apparently they were being similarly odd.

Twelve days to go…

Visiting family.

I’m in Vacaville for the weekend; my brother Chad is having a bachelor party and wanted me to be available for it. Knowing him, it’s unlikely we’ll be playing drywall roulette by the end of the evening, but it should be fun. Maybe. I dunno. We’ll see.

By the time I reached San Jose, my allergies came back.

See, this is one of the great things about Santa Cruz; I’m not allergic to it. Here, pollen is everywhere, and my nose has basically turned into a snot faucet. I hate allergies. Maybe I should spend the whole summer in Santa Cruz…

Mom’s house is also under severe renovations for Chad’s wedding. New floors, new paint job, slightly new landscaping… I’m actually glad I’ve been gone for most of it. I remember the renovations for Shannon’s wedding and they were insane enough. Not that I don’t love my brother, but I don’t love landscaping and home repair and am happy to be away from that part of it.

Stupid Internet Survey: Personality tests.

What’s your personality type?

ESFP: The Performer

You are a natural performer and happiest when you’re entertaining others. A great friend, you are generous, fun-loving and optimistic. You love to laugh—and you like almost all people equally. You accept life as it is, and you do your best to make each day fantastic. You would make a good actor, designer, or counselor.

Your #2 Match:	ESTP: The Doer
Your #3 Match:	ENFP: The Inspirer
Your #4 Match:	ENTP: The Visionary
Your #5 Match:	ISFP: The Artist

What’s your personality type?
created with Blogthings.

Just out of curiosity I took a personality test. It’s off the internet so I don’t expect the results to be all that scientific.

The last time I took one of these things was in 1987 and I wound up an INTP. So either my mind has been taken over by aliens or two-thirds of my personality has joined the dark side. What’s more likely is that this test is just plain wrong. I am not an extrovert. I like people; but I also like a lot of alone time. As to the career choices:

1. I tried acting, and I am not good at it; I’m too egocentric.
2. I was a graphic designer for four years and got thoroughly tired of the pretentious jerks that the business is clogged with.
3. I don’t like listening to people complain about their problems because 80 percent of the time they won’t do a bloody thing to change things.

But I’m not going to knock the rest of the description of me.

…Then again, who would? All these personality types have nice, positive, fortune-cookie-like statements to make about anyone who takes the bloody test. Everyone’s a “doer,” “achiever,” “artist.” No one’s a “functionary,” “drone,” “space-filler,” “pain in the ass,” etc. Just once I’d like to see one of these tests respond, “You are an unpleasant, obnoxious person. Please live alone.” But these tests never ask questions about disorders.

For the most part, I am suspicious of these tests because I keep running into their pseudo-scientific cousins—the tests that determine whether you’re sanguine, melancholy, choleric, or phlegmatic. This comes from Hippocrates and Galen’s theory that health comes from a proper balance of four liquids (or “humors”)—blood, black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm—which are related to air, earth, fire, and water. Of course, if you’re too sanguine of a person, this means you can always be cured by a good bleeding.

Personality types are too complex to be easily sorted into 16 categories based on four factors that are loosely based on ancient Greek science. Besides, personalities change over time. People mature, realize which things are more important to them, get rid of hypocrisies and inconsistencies (or find excuses—which work for them—for such behavior) and once they determine who they “are,” they spend the rest of their lives conforming to their self-generated stereotypes. It’s particularly sad if they can’t stand who they are; such are the people I met in my counseling groups.

My new hall doesn’t smell as much like ass as my last hall! So that’s nice.

I suspect it may have had something to do with the bathroom doors being open all the time. The bathroom doors here are spring-closed; poorly ventilated, but all the smells do stay in the bathroom.

Metrosexuals: Really closeted homosexuals.

A metrosexual is simply a gay man five years before he’s ready to come out.

Yeah, you think I’m kidding.

Before such a term existed, I knew several metros. Always so stylish, always so fashionable, quick with the sarcasm, quick with the hugging, best friends with most of the popular girls, no threat to any of their boyfriends. Maybe the stereotype leads to the lifestyle, or it’s preparation for it, or it’s a form of denial; I have no idea. But within five years since the time I met all of them, all the metros in high school, in my church’s youth group, at work, at Bethany College, etc., came out.

There was one holdout. I got an email from him this afternoon. He’s no longer a holdout. He’s moving in with his partner, they’re having a housewarming party, and they’re registered at Target. (I had no idea you could have a housewarming registry. I find the whole idea of registering gifts to be tasteless and impersonal, but that’s another rant.) So, say what you will about my statement being too general—I don’t personally know any exceptions to the rule. Not anymore.

…Well, there’s the metrosexuals I know now. But wait five years.

Amusing comic strip: Warning labels.

Ctrl-Alt-Del by Tim Buckley, 12/10/2003.

Moving blues.

Today I had to move across campus. In 10 days I have to move off campus and back to Vacaville. What a pain.

I also have a big pile of laundry to do, and there are no change machines for quarters on this campus. On this campus, having a $20 bill is often as good as having no money at all. Another pain.

When are we moving to that cashless society all the science fiction novels talk about? Why don’t they just put some kind of microchip in our foreheads or right hands that every merchant can scan for a transaction? Plus, it’ll be great for identification; and you can’t buy or sell without one. That would be so useful…

Killing time and 10-year-old mattresses.

I’ve noticed some other Bethany University (née College) Xangalings complaining about how vacant it is in their halls now that the semester is over. I have no such luck. Half the guys in Burnett South are still around.

With nothing to keep them occupied, lately they’ve been poking around the fountain outside the library, hunting frogs. I don’t know why; you can’t hear the croaking from our hall. Maybe it’s to lick them—certain frogs and toads secrete a natural hallucinogen as a form of self-defense, and some idiots discovered you can get a cheap high by licking them. I once wrote a sketch for a church drama group called “Finger-Lickin’ Good”: Three lads went on a casual frog-hunt, and one had inappropriately brought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to lunch on. This made their fingers too slippery to catch frogs. Pretty soon the three were seeing the trees drip blood. My youth pastor decided it wasn’t appropriate material. Killjoy.

Anyway, you know what they say about idle hands. Most of them have nothing better to do than eat a lot of awful food and watch a lot of awful TV.

Tomorrow we have to move all our stuff to Gerhart Hall, where we’re all to spend the summer: women on the ground floor, men upstairs. Then, in theory, maintenance can fix the rooms. In reality, minor cosmetic changes will be made and then the students will return to those tiny little rooms with their 10-year-old mattresses.

That’s right, 10 years. My first year at Bethany as an undergrad was in 1995, and we arrived to find the mattresses newly arrived, still in the plastic wrap. Since that time, either I or one of my siblings have attended Bethany and the mattresses have not been replaced in that time. That’s an estimated 5 to 20 people’s worth of body soil embedded in each and every mattress; a veritable feast for bacteria, dust mites, skin mites, and the other vermin that feed on mites and bacteria. Bedbugs and fleas come next.

For some, it’s worse than others. My friend Harlan never put sheets on his mattress. He was in the regular habit of working out in the gym; then he’d go back to the hall and sleep, unshowered. Eventually, his mattress developed an ungodly grey-brown sheen that triggered the gag reflex in everyone that saw it.

“Be on the lookout for that mattress,” I warned everyone at the beginning of the next school year. “You’ll want to burn it.”

Sadly, half the semester had passed before Robert, my next-room neighbor, flipped his mattress over and discovered the Harlan-stain. His shouts of horror and repulsion could be heard from the other end of campus. The mattress was quickly disposed of.

Now, that’s a worst-case scenario, and a more obvious one. Others have been more discreet in their various unsanitary behaviors. There are some who have partially sheeted their beds, some who have never washed their sheets, and some who have hidden accidents of one sort or another. (Once my brother had a guest stay in his roommate’s bed overnight, and the guest wet the bed and didn’t say anything about it. I believe that mattress was disposed of, but I’m not completely sure. Rumor is it may have been salvaged by an unsuspecting RA, and is somewhere in Swanson Hall.)

Knowing what I do, I made sure to wrap my mattress in foam padding before I sheeted it. I’m not comfortable with the idea of a thin layer of 150-count fabric between me and that foam core spring-filled Petri dish.

Exploring other blogs.

I keep poking around other blogs. I find it interesting to discover that I know people at those sites. I still don’t plan to switch from Xanga, though. Not because it’s the best weblog community ever, or that all my friends are here, or that they’ve won my loyalty, or I find the source code easy to hack, or anything like that. I just haven’t found anyplace that I like so much that I just gotta switch. Xanga’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now.

I also find the degree of information they want about their users to be likewise interesting. They swear up, down, and sideways that they won’t give your data to telemarketers, or to use it for their own marketing purposes, yet the stuff they want to know about your life and habits could put together a database that most marketers would give their left gonads to get. One wanted to know every last habit I had: the last 20 movies I had seen, books I had read, CDs I had bought; favorite music styles, clothing brands, food purchases, etc. All this ostensibly for the sake of people who logged on to my blog, so that they’d get to know me faster… and if I were shallow enough, I suppose they would get to know me faster.

But so would someone who is trying to sell me stuff. I don’t necessarily mind that a company wants to know what I like so that they can sell me stuff more efficiently; Amazon does it. So does Safeway and Starbucks, which is why they have their cards. What I mind are the people who try to sell me stuff in the mail, on the phone, through email or pop-up ads—you know, advertisers who inconvenience. If you have to go out of your way to make them go away, they inconvenience. I wish they’d test-market that, but that’s another rant.

Anyway… As I was saying, the stuff that they want to know is fairly superficial, but that’s likely also the result of marketing. Most of the people on these sites are teenagers and twentysomethings, many of whom don’t know who they are, and fill in those blanks with the media they consume.

Scott and Dave.

A disturbing reminder of how little depth I had in high school.

Which reminds me… Two guys I probably hung out with the most in my high school years were Scott and Dave. We all went to different high schools, but we were all in the same youth group. We went through five different youth group leaders in the four and a half years we were in that group together (and then I had to join the college group).

We spent a lot of time goofing off, driving youth pastors to distraction… During our Mexicali mission trip we even invented “baño busting” together.

We spent so much time together that you’d think we had a significant relationship… until I ran into them again eight years ago. Scott’s sister was putting her child in the preschool my mother ran, they got to talking, numbers got exchanged, Scott called me up, and I spent an evening at his house. Dave came by. We chatted.

We had nothing to talk about. We could talk about punk rock, old Saturday Night Live episodes (we used to follow that show religiously), politics (slightly; they hadn’t kept up), God (slightly; same reason), people we knew, what’s been new in our lives… and that’s all. And I realized, to my horror, that our relationships (and, to a large degree, our personalities), were based on punk and SNL. (They hadn’t even discovered Monty Python yet.)

We haven’t talked since; and the whole experience weirded me out so much I decided to skip my 10-year high school reunion. (Which worked out well; our senior class president, who was supposed to be in charge of it, never put one together anyway.)

It made me quite aware of how superficial my life was… and more determined that it must not be that way. My blog is as superficial as I get.

Typical graduation pabulum.

I really wish they wouldn’t pad graduations with speeches. The speeches are crap.

Attended graduation today, which was anticlimactic as usual. I am never impressed by graduation speeches. They either have to do with looking back or looking forward, and little of the advice is practical. This is for two reasons, which I’ll rant about below.

(Bear in mind I’m not speaking in particular about our graduation speakers. I’m speaking generally, in light of years of listening to such speeches. If my comments apply to this year’s speakers, good—my generalities are valid, somewhat.)

1. The student speakers don’t know anything. No offense; but they really don’t. By and large, they went directly from high school to college. Their parents supported them financially. They’ve never had a real job; they’ve never been able to use their own merit or qualifications to earn one. They’ve never lived on their own, paid rent (or a mortgage), and discovered that if they didn’t live within a budget, the power would be turned off. They never had to eat Top Ramen out of hardship. (Having no spare cash but a Café Bethany meal plan does not count.) They never had to fill out a 1040A tax return. They never had to be truly independent.

   And—before you who don’t know anything think I’m trying to make the future sound awful—they don’t know how easy it is to overcome all that stuff, and how independence isn’t hard. They don’t know that the jobs will come, the career paths will be decided, and the future will be just fine. (They also don’t know that, five years from now, they’ll wish they had picked a different major entirely.)

2. The adult speakers don’t know anything. Both our speakers—at the baccalaureate and the graduation—don’t know what it’s like entering today’s job market. It’s been years since they had to do any such thing themselves; and while some parts of it are definitely easier, some parts aren’t. They don’t realize how much your average young graduate’s expenses are, compared to when they entered the job market; but fortunately the college student of today is better-connected and can more easily recognize and access available job opportunities. The interest rates are way better today. And time has a way of selectively weeding out bad experiences.

“Love one another” is always good advice, but the best graduation advice I’ve heard so far is from Mary Schmich’s article, “Wear Sunscreen” (which is best known for the way Baz Luhrmann spliced it together with “Everybody’s Free”). Nobody was asking her to speak at any graduation ceremonies so, pathetically, she made up her own speech. It’s good, practical, utilitarian stuff. I love it. (I hate wearing sunscreen, though.)

Kerry came to graduation and said hello to lots of people. Then she, and I, and her friend Kerrie had lunch, then coffee. Pergolesi’s still freaks them out a little; I sometimes forget that Kerry hasn’t seen half the weirdness I have. (That’s probably a good thing.)

I came back to campus to find Mike gone. And he took all his stuff with him. I suppose this was to be expected; I figured he would leave after graduation, and I had spent the afternoon in downtown Santa Cruz. Wasn’t I supposed to sign off on his check-out so I wouldn’t get stuck with his room damages? (Although it’s most likely that all of the room damages are mine. Mike didn’t drill the holes in the wall.)

The campus has been pretty well vacated. Finally… some quiet I can work with. Time to see how loud the speakers can really get. Then, on Wednesday… I gotta switch halls.

And now, the izzle version of this site.

Fo’ shizzle, pizzle drizzle.

Cinco de Mayo: Fake holiday; sucky birthdays.

Cinco de Mayo is another American pseudo-holiday. It’s not really celebrated in Mexico; kind of to the same degree that V-J Day isn’t really celebrated. Like St. Patrick’s Day, it’s just another excuse for Americans of every ethnic background to drink a lot of alcohol; and it’s a way for Mexican restaurants to get more business.

Since my birthday falls on that day, it means that most birthdays I had growing up were spent in Mexican restaurants. Specifically, Casa María, which became my dad’s new favorite Mexican restaurant after it was discovered that his previous favorite Mexican restaurant had violated health codes. Anyway, every Cinco de Mayo they strung a piñata for the kids. Then, in order to pick the kid who was going to hit it first, they said, “Whose birthday is closest to el Cinco de Mayo?” And you can kinda guess who was going to get the stick.

In later years, they replaced the stick and the blindfold with a pull-string. I had to jump for it. When it opened, out came the candy; and because I wasn’t in a convenient position to pounce for the candy, I didn’t get much. “Pobrecíto,” they told me, “you can have the piñata.” So I got a piñata. (It wasn’t even one of the good piñatas; it was one of the $5 piñatas you find at the grocery store.)

Birthdays could have been worse, I suppose. At least I love Mexican food. But for the longest time, I didn’t want to see the inside of a Mexican restaurant on Cinco de Mayo. I’m over that now; but I still dislike birthdays.

My family members—heck, bloody near everyone—are completely insensitive to this. They don’t care that I don’t like birthdays. They call me anyway and sing “Happy Birthday” to me. “At least,” it was pointed out, “they call you on your birthday.” Thus they miss the point too.

I dislike birthdays. It has nothing whatever to do with getting older. (I have no problem with that; in fact, it amuses me to no end to tell Dad’s friends how old I am so they can see to what degree he’s been lying about his age.) I don’t hate birthdays, like I used to; and I no longer avoid Mexican restaurants on that day. But my process of getting over a series of sucky childhood birthdays will not be helped by the pure obnoxiousness and semi-sadistic insensitivity of my family members as they ram their enthusiasm down my throat. Trouble is, they don’t get this; and they’re trying too hard to reform me when they should just lay off, dangit, and let me get over it at my own speed.

But it’s not just my family; it’s everyone. Inevitably, people want to reform me. “I can’t understand why you don’t like birthdays,” they say in their defense. “Is there something wrong with you?” That’s it exactly. There’s something wrong with me. I recognize this; I’m working on it; and you’re not helping. It takes pretty much all of my self-control to not tell them to piss off. So instead, I told no one when my birthday is. (Well, no one but Mike and a few others.)

And I will pre-emptively tell anyone who wishes to express fond birthday wishes to me: piss off.

Stupid Internet Survey: Me, a Goth?

What’s your high school stereotype?

You scored as Goth.

Goth	56%
Ghetto gangsta	50%
Loner	50%
Stoner	44%
Drama nerd	31%
Prep/Jock/Cheerleader	25%
Punk/Rebel	25%
Geek	0%

What’s your high school stereotype?
created with QuizFarm.com.

The nutty thing about this survey is that I never hung out with the Goths in high school. I hung out with skaters and punks and stoners and drama nerds. (And sometimes cheerleaders and preppies and jocks… it was a small school, and I didn’t really limit myself to one group.)

I was the nonconformist type. I’m not talking about the nonconformists who look like every other nonconformist; that never made any sense to me. I mean really nonconformist. I didn’t want to look like any other student. So I started to wear ties and carry a briefcase. Hey, nobody else was doing it.

Not even the teachers, who were worried about it for a while. See, they recognize the other categories. Those are known quantities, and they figure they can deal with them. But when you get someone who doesn’t do anything they way that other students do, it freaks ’em out a little.

I take pride in the fact that I was so nonconformist, my parents once had to attend a teacher conference about it. “He totally ignores peer pressure,” they were told. “That’s a bad thing?” they responded. Well… yeah, it can be. We teachers often use peer pressure in order to get kids to do things. When kids don’t respond to that, it means extra work for the teachers. They’d have to spend extra time trying to figure me out. (Which was part of the point. I don’t always like being a known quantity.)

But I never did put on the face paint and the black clothing. About the only thing close to Goth that I ever did was listen to the Cure and Nine Inch Nails. But I still liked U2 more.

Update, 11/17/2024: Mia Goth. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist the pun.)

It’s also interesting to look at these high school stereotypes from the perspective of a teacher. There are so many of them that match my own high school experience.

There’s the mouthy kids who want to contribute their limited experience to each lesson. There’s the kids who never take off their cowboy hats. (At my school, it was the kid who never took off his fedora. He even wore it to graduation.) There’s the kids who’d rather hang out with the teacher than “those children” in their class. There’s the art geeks, the band geeks, the sports geeks (they can’t play, but they get to do stats and operate the control board), the video geeks, the secretly-smart girls who play stupid because they think it attracts boys (and it does, but it attracts stupid ones)—and many other categories too numerous to name.

Fun to observe. Fascinating because I now know how to manipulate the system. (That talent would have come in handy when I was in high school, but it’s a good thing I didn’t then have it—I might have used my powers for evil.)

Reading list.

Started reading Nikos Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation of Christ. I’m only up to chapter ten. I didn’t care for the movie too much; I don’t know that I care for the book. Kazantzakis knows little to nothing about first century Palestinian history, and it shows. Jesus comes across as a confused kid who doesn’t know how to deal with his divinity, so his solution is to resist it. He sounds much more like Jeremiah than Jesus.

The book is supposed to be an exploration of how the human and divine come together in Jesus, but as it usually happens in books of this sort, it’s an exploration of the author’s superstitions and limited frame of mind. But at least Kazantzakis isn’t annoying like Salman Rushdie.

Also started reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Good advice about staying positive and avoiding conflict. Too bad conflicts can sometimes be so fun.

Speaking of which, lately the hall has been smelling too much like an unholy combination of Tag™ and ass. There is a rumor going around that the women in one of the nearby halls are going to invade and prank us, so some of the lads have decided to post themselves as sentries in the hall. With their mattresses.

Now, a sleeping sentry isn’t much of a sentry… and ladies, if any of you decide to invade the hall one such night with water balloons, I will be just as amused as you are.

Kool-Aid balloons are even more funny.

Contributing to the glut of stupid internet quizzes.

Since I was poking around QuizFarm, I decided what the heck and wrote a quiz called "How Pentecostal/Charismatic are you?" It's loosely based on the 16 Fundamental Truths of the Assemblies of God, plus sociologists’ usual definitions of Pentecostal and charismatic.

It’s not the greatest quiz ever, of course. There are a lot of flaws in the QuizFarm system. It doesn’t give you 50-50 choices in the results, it doesn’t allow you to weight certain questions higher than others… but it’s all in fun, after all.

Some people might find it a little eye-opening. See, there’s a lot of people who call themselves Pentecostal, when they’re really just charismatic. Probably a more simple definition is this: Charismatics believe the Holy Spirit still acts, and miracles still happen, but Pentecostals attach some rather specific theological interpretations to the Spirit’s acts and some of those miracles. (This is why you can find charismatics in every church, but Pentecostals tend to stay within Pentecostal churches.)

Which reminds me… I need to get my final done for my Pentecostal Spirituality class.

Putting the concert on VCD.

I spent the bulk of the day creating a VCD. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a CD that plays video on your DVD player. You can only record about 45 minutes of video, and the quality is about the same as an extended-format videotape. But you don’t have to rewind it, and you can make lots of quick, inexpensive copies of it with any CD-burning computer. All you need is a Macintosh and Roxio Toast Titanium.

Video editing can really kill an afternoon, but I’m happy with the results. Considering the source material, it came out all right. (It’s of portions of the Spring Concert. David McBride was holding the camera, and he was sitting in the second row, so everything’s too close… and David has this tendency to squeal like a little girl, right next to the microphone. But otherwise it’s all good.)

Xanga doesn’t ask for my password when I post entries. However, it always asks for my password whenever I want to change the “look and feel” of my site.

So, my background colors are secure. Meanwhile, someone could hop onto my computer and easily add pseudopigraphical entries to my blog. Ah, priorities.