TV, bowling, and camping.

It’s an unwritten rule that whoever has the remote control gets to decide what’s playing on the lounge TV. (Unless it’s the RA, who will just stretch a cable to his room TV, which I think is illegal, but as the RA he’s obviously not gonna enforce that rule.) In order to guarantee that you’ll watch what you want, you have to get there early enough to get at the remote first. (Sometimes that involves taking up permanent residence in the lounge, like some guys I know.)

In any case, I wanted to watch Alias tonight, which started at 8. So I stopped by the lounge around 7ish and managed to get the remote from the last TV-watcher, who was just leaving. I killed an hour watching something about submarines on the History Channel… then someone arrived who wanted to watch Smallville.

Apparently there were two other groups on campus planning to watch the season premieres of Smallville and The O.C. Ugh, teenage soap operas. I never could get into ’em. I admit, back when I was in junior high I used to watch one of the daytime soaps, but after two years I began to realize how the writers took a simple, basic little story and stretched it out to insane, unbelievable lengths—and it wasn’t even a good story, either—so I haven’t been able to watch soaps since.

Alias does get a little soap-like, but it makes up for it with a whole lot of ass-kicking, which I like… plus I can’t always guess the ending, which I also like. TV shows are too predictable these days.

The other guy was a little bummed about not watching his program, and went to join one of the viewing parties. But I don’t know of any viewing parties for Alias. (I certainly don’t think anyone was watching Joey.)

After the 8 o’clock shows, I killed some more time watching CSI while people began to dress for the “Clash ’n Bowl” social, in which Bethany students are encouraged to dress funny and go to Santa Cruz to go bowling. Two things I don’t do. I don’t have enough weird things in my wardrobe to clash; and I suck at bowling and really don’t like doing things that I suck at. I decided to be a party pooper for this one. But tomorrow I’m going camping, and that’ll make up for it.

Most summers I go camping. That consists of taking a tent, a sleeping bag, a lounge chair, books, and food, and getting the heck away from civilization. If it’s with family it’s more fun; if it’s surrounded by trees it keeps the temperature down.

But I didn’t get to do that this summer. ’Twas too short, what with summer school and all. So I brought my gear with me to school. At some point, dangit, I was gonna go camping.

This Saturday, when I usually have classes, my professors are off on their faculty retreat. Therefore I am gonna take my camping gear, and Friday night I am going into the woods, mountain lions or no mountain lions.

Prayer... and lousy examples of it.

Sojourners Church has prayer meetings every Wednesday. It’s not widely attended. It should be, since the growth of a church is directly related to how often we talk to the One whose church it is. But people come up with all kinds of excuses to not be there… or they don’t offer any excuse; they just don’t go. (That was me last semester.)

It’s not that they don’t care about the church. It’s that they don't care enough to make this effort. And considering that this is such a little thing, it brings to mind the parable Jesus made about the slaves who were trustworthy in little things; thus their master put them in charge of big things. [Mt 25.14-30] And then there was the slave that wasn’t, but I don’t need to bring him up.

But I can understand some of the reason why they don’t want to attend. It’s the public prayer. Public prayer always makes me uncomfortable. Not because I have any fear of public speaking; it’s because I have a fear of hypocrisy. Public prayer always seems to bring out the hypocrite in me.

I start doing the preaching-described-as-prayer thing. You’ve all seen this behavior—probably so often you don’t think anything of it—where a person is publicly praying, and suddenly a little mini-sermon pops out. Something along the lines of, “We ask you for this because we know that…” and this is followed by something that perhaps everyone didn’t know, and it’s secretly meant to instruct them. Or at least show off the wisdom of the one praying. Or to show sincerity, or to show one’s knowledge of scripture, or to show anything other than what prayer is about: Communion with God. Once it stops becoming that, it’s not prayer.

Then there’s my other bad habit: Hebrew poetry. I’m not the only one who does this: I say something, then I say it again a different way. (I call it Hebrew poetry because read the Psalms—it’s Hebrew poetry.) “Oh Lord, please help us get our work done. Please help us accomplish our goals. Be with us when we do our tasks. Stand by us as we toil. Be with us when we do the things we need to. Strengthen us on our journey. For” (’cause it always sounds good to toss in a quote) “your yoke is easy and your burden is light.” I don’t actually say it to be poetic. I say it to pad the prayer out into something substantial, so that I don’t whip out a thirty-second prayer. And again, it’s hypocrisy.

At least I’m over the “Lord God Lord Jesus Holy Spirit Father God” phase, where I’ve gotta keep saying the name of God over and over again—to remind everyone who I’m praying to, and as a substitute for “uh.” Some of us Christians say the name of God in prayer more often than the Hare Krishnas.

All these bad signs point to one obvious diagnosis: Prayer immaturity. I don’t really pray enough. If I did, I wouldn’t sound like a babbling pagan or a holy hypocrite. I’d sound like I was talking to God.

I sound like I’m talking to God when I’m not praying in public, but it’s different. When I’m praying in private, God prays back. (Yes, that’s exactly the right word for it. He praises me—he’s very encouraging—and has requests of me. He rebukes me too, but in an encouraging way.) It’s not a one-way thing like public prayer is. Maybe that’s why I’m so uncomfortable with it; so much of it is putting on a show for the people around me, and it’s not an accurate show either.

To be fair, it wasn’t an accurate show when Jesus did it either. “Father, thank you for having heard me! …I know, you always hear me. I said this for the sake of this crowd standing here, so they’ll believe you sent me.” [Jn 11.41-42] Maybe that’s what I should do; stay honest by admitting that it’s all a show. ’Cause it is. And so long as we don’t admit it, it’s gonna stay a show that some of us are always gonna feel uncomfortable watching.

Mountain lion mania.

For the past year or two, rumors have been flying around the campus about the existence of mountain lions in the woods.

Ever since California declared mountain lions to be “endangered” a decade ago, it has been against the law to hunt them. The few lions that do get killed by humans are the result of people defending their livestock or pets, which the lions eat because they’re easier to catch than deer—which are not “endangered” but are harder to catch because a six-month-old deer runs faster than a six-month-old puppy. Since humans scare lions (because we are, after all, their only predator) they mostly keep away. But every once in a while we bump into one another.

Anyway, after two years of unofficial sightings (mostly unbelievable rumors, with few exceptions) there has finally been an “official” sighting, and now Bethany University students have an official reason to let their paranoia run amok. I suppose it’s nice that the students will stay indoors at night (particularly the women, who are noisier). But I know from experience that lions are more afraid of us than we are of them, and there’s still nothing to be afraid of.

𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘵 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 lousy at describing men.

God created men differently from women, true. But he didn’t create all men exactly the same as one another.

Every once in a while I come across a book so annoying I just have throw it across the room. But I can’t do that with library books… nor books that belong to other people. Actually, I think the last book of mine that I pitched in this way was Left Behind—yes, I do actually own the bloody thing; it was on sale, okay?

I couldn’t pitch Wild at Heart because it belonged to my brother. (That, or he was borrowing it.) We were vacationing in Lake Tahoe at the time, and I had an hour to kill, so I picked up his copy and started reading.

John Eldredge, the writer, has the premise that God created men differently than he created women. (Duh.) The main difference, Eldredge believes, is that men are meant to be wild, free, and adventurous. He didn’t necessarily put it this way, but we men are to be hunter-gatherer camping and hiking types, and occasionally Mel Gibson-like warriors from Braveheart. The reason we aren’t is because… well, it’s not because of the women (because Eldredge doesn’t want to alienate women; they might buy his book for the men in their lives). Not because of the conservative women, anyway. Liberal women, maybe.

What makes a person become a man? On the most basic level, it’s a Y chromosome instead of an X chromosome. That’s all. This garbage about what makes a “real” man is subtle toxic masculinity as a marketing ploy; it gets guys who imagine themselves macho to buy more books, and maybe more camping gear.

• “Real” men are supposed to be adventurous? Buddy, everyone is supposed to be adventurous.
• “Real” men are supposed to pursue the desires of their heart? Depends on the desires—if they’re good, yeah; if they’re sick, no.
• “Real” men are supposed to camp and hike and eat meat? Only if they enjoy it. Otherwise there’s something to be said for electricity, indoor plumbing, comfortable mattresses, and unclogged arteries.

Anyway, it was so much ridiculousness that I had to at least put the book down and announce loudly that it was crap.

My brother-in-law didn’t agree. He likes the book, actually; something about it resonates with him. Okay, I can see how it would resonate with lots of people. But it certainly didn’t resonate with me. I am not a nature freak. I like to look at nature—from the comfort of my tent. I’m not fond of hiking around in it and shooting at things in it. I like civilization. Men built civilization, you know.

As to the desires of my heart… well, that’s why I’m back in school.

By and large, men who feel like they’ve been too domesticated really like reading books about how they should throw off said domestication and become the “real” men they were meant to be. There was that men’s movement thing in the early ’90s; there was the Promise Keepers movement in the mid ’90s (and it’s trying to come back, it seems), and now there’s Eldredge’s book.

Look, if a man feels like there’s something amiss in his life, he should stop blaming other people and look at what he’s doing. Is he not being true to himself? Well, he should first figure out whether that’s a good thing—secretly wanting to be a pop star is one thing; secretly wanting to be a porn star is another—then do something about it. Forget blaming women, or society, or bad parenting, or illegal immigrants—if you’ve created a less than satisfactory life for yourself, you have no one but yourself to blame. If you’re not living up to your potential, it’s your own bloody fault. Do something about it. If it takes Eldredge’s book to spur you on, fine. But I can’t recommend it.

On having stuff named for you.

Christopher Columbus, whose genocidal atrocities many Italian-Americans prefer to ignore.

Sometimes buses don’t come. Friday night, I was stuck at a bus stop and two buses in a row didn’t come.

I know it was the right schedule because the new schedule calls the Scotts Valley Transit Center the “Cavallaro Transit Center.” They changed the name to honor some guy named Cavallaro. They have a new plaque with his name on it outside the transit center, but I haven’t read it so I don’t know who he is. I presume he has something to do with local transit issues, but probably not. Likely he’s just some local schmuck whom some local official felt should have something named for him. So they spent at least $200 on a plaque, and more than that on changing every bus schedule in the county, and now people aren’t gonna know where on earth you're talking about when you tell them you need to catch a bus at the Cavallaro Center. (If they call it that.)

I also presume this guy’s dead but you never know about that. While the U.S. Postal Service and U.S. Treasury won't put you on stamps or coins unless you’re dead, government has no problem naming things after live people. Ronald Reagan was still alive when they renamed National Airport after him; and G.H.W. Bush Airport in Houston is named after the still-living former president. Gov. Schwarzenegger already has a stadium in Austria named for him; and Donald Trump has been naming everything he owns after himself… probably because he knows no one else will do it for him later.

Almost got scammed.

I have three email addresses. There’s the one attached to this page; the one that Bethany University assigned me so I can be contacted through their FirstClass network, and the private Hotmail account that I really only use for family. I used to only check the Hotmail account because of the incredible amount of spam on the FirstClass network (and the rant about that is here) but now I have everything filter to the same box. It manages to get pretty full over the course of a day.

Anyway, I got an email from Amazon saying that someone had been poking around inside my account, so would I please sign on to their server and verify some information. And since I had bought a CD on Amazon while I was using wifi in a coffeehouse, the paranoid side of my brain kicked in and said, “Maybe someone hacked into your signal,” so I clicked on the hyperlink in the mail and went to Amazon’s website.

“Need password.” Okay, I typed in my password.

“Need credit card information.” …Wait a minute. They have that information already; they don’t need it again. And usually when a website needs my credit card information, there’s a little padlock icon in the upper right corner of my browser. (I use Safari.) There’s no little padlock. And what’s with this Amazon tab at the top of the page that reads, “Maureen’s Wish List”?

Fortunately the paranoid side of my brain works both ways. I hopped off the site, went immediately to Amazon, and changed my password. Then I emailed their security office and forwarded the email.

Today they emailed back. Yes, it was a scam. It looked like an Amazon page; the URL even looked like an Amazon URL. It's pretty impressive; it actually won’t work unless you use a legitimate Amazon account name and password. And plenty of people will be oblivious enough to get severely ripped off once they give away their credit card info.

So Amazon thanked me for the tip. (They could have thanked me with a gift certificate, but oh well.) And they reminded me that Amazon won’t ever send emails asking for credit card information. Which I knew already; that’s what tipped me off. Now, as to what they’ll do about the scam artist, I’m not sure… hopefully something involving a taser to the genitals, but that’s just wishful thinking.

Okay, a longer rant on friendship.

“So are we friends?” was the response someone had to my previous entry. Okay, in the case of that individual, yes.

But let me put together a definition so that there’s less confusion about what I mean.

“Acquaintance” is pretty much a catch-all term for anyone I know. Some acquaintances I know fairly well. Others, I honestly don’t even know their names. Obviously they aren’t friends.

Friendships, on the other hand, are intentional relationships. You choose to do stuff together; you don’t have circumstances determine that for you.

I choose to join groups, eat dinner, attend classes, etc. I don’t choose who happens to be there at that particular time. Those people who are there—I’m friendly to them, ’cause I’m a nice guy. We have conversations. Sometimes interesting ones. Sometimes it’s small talk; sometimes not, because I’m a deep guy too. But that’s pretty much that.

A lot of people assume that friendships are caused by deep conversations. You have a heart-to-heart talk with someone and that makes you “friends.” Well, not really. You might notice: I can talk about my deepest feelings with the whole world on a freakin’ internet blog. That’s right; total strangers can find out more about me than my family members. (Unless they read my blog too. Some of ’em do. One complains I write too much; another complains I reveal too much. The rest ignore it… at their peril.) But obviously I don’t care who knows this stuff about me. If I share it with you, does it mean I’m your best friend forever? Not at all. It just means I have a much deeper well from which I can pull small talk.

With acquaintances, outside the small talk, you’re not really there for one another. You don’t make time for one another. You don’t make plans around one another’s lives. When you annoy one another you don’t bother to work it out unless you’re forced to spend time together. When you try to speak into one another’s lives there’s no acceptance (unless you already believe what the other person’s trying to tell you). There’s nothing solid in the relationship. There’s nothing, really.

I once lived an entire year with the same roommate and we were never anything more than acquaintances. It’s not that he isn’t a great guy. It’s that we’re two different guys, with different interests, and we hung out with different people, and that was that. I have nothing against him. We just never made our relationship intentional. Once we stopped living together, that was the end of that. There are lots of people I’ve known where that’s been the case. Our lives are full of such people. But friends stick around.

I am very particular about friendships. If it’s going to be a healthy friendship it’s going to involve a lot of work—and interest—on both friends’ parts. We have to make time for one another. We have to put in some effort. It helps to have common interests and goals, but the friendship can’t be based on those things—it has to be based on the person. In fact, some of my friends don’t have any common interests with me anymore. But that doesn’t make any difference.

However, there are lots of people I know who, when it gets down to it, are never going to be anything more than my acquaintances. I don’t necessarily want to be friends with them. It’s not that they aren’t great or good or valuable people; it’s that, most of the time, I recognize that they’re not going to put in the effort. They’re too distracted by life and work and social occasions and all the other friends they have in their lives. Some of them don’t really have time for the friends they do have, so beyond the novelty of being a new friend, I don’t stand much of a chance. And some of them… well, they’re fun to watch and listen to, and that’s all.

It’s actually a lot like dating. Which is why I hate the breakup line, “Let’s still be friends.” We can’t be. Part of the nature of a breakup is that you’re ending the relationship. You’re not exchanging it for another one. You’re choosing to not see one another anymore. No more intentional meetings (or “dates”); no more anything. You’re going from being friends—as every healthy dating relationship is—to being acquaintances. Sometimes friendly acquaintances, but nothing more. (Sometimes there can’t be anything more, when all the emotions are still there. I’ve tried. It just made things more miserable.)

So if you’re asking yourself, “Does Kent consider me a friend?” think about the last time I chose to do something with you. If you can’t think of anything, there’s your answer.

Sorry.

I would invite you to seriously think about the other “friends” you have and whether those relationships are in any way intentional.

And stop trying to guess who Y is. If I wanted you to know I would have given her name. Regardless of how annoying I may find her, I’m also trying to save her from embarrassment and gossip. No one deserves that.