The Background: Grubbs and I are meeting for lunch at the local Jamaican eatery, Kelly's Jerk. Kelly's is nestled at the end of a row of businesses in a small store-front shopping center. I see no parking spaces in front of Kelly's.
The Action: So, I park in front of the Smoke 'n' Choke. I see no signs to the effect that I am forbidden to park there if I am not a customer. But, of course, this does not stop a bitter woman from coming out to so forbid me. In a rather rude manner, I might add. Little did I know that there were two other customers already in Kelly's who had been similarly accosted by this woman, jealous for the empty spaces in front of her business. At first, I was perfectly willing to move my car, understanding her concern. But when she starts in with "Move your f***ing car somewhere else" and other tidbits of grating hostility, whatever understanding I had quickly left.
"A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger" (Prov. 15:1). Bristling at her tone, I tell her to settle down and stop her bitching. But, of course, it was all in vain; it was not a gentle answer. For some reason, she begins hypothesizing about the diminutive size of certain members of my body. This makes me laugh. She claims that using the word "bitch" gives me courage to stand up to her. I want to enter into a discussion of the difference between a noun and a gerund, but instead I laugh again. She must have really liked that word, since whenever she didn't have anything else to say, she would simply strike out with it. I pause in my thoughts: I want to add another, larger piercing--roughly the size of my fist--to her face, but instead I say that she could be nicer about asking me to move. I forget the Teacher's wise words, "When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise" (Prov. 10:19).
To my utter surprise, she defends herself here: I was being nice, she claims...and, ironically, this none too nicely. I'm sure that I knitted my brow, certain that I must have misunderstood. After a little discussion about what sorts of actions do not constitute "being nice," namely, hers, she then begins with the threats. "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence" (Prov. 10:11). She threatens towing, which I doubt she could enforce without the proper warning signs. But she does not stop here. She threatens to have my tires slashed. I am no longer smiling. This is no laughing matter. Visions of Molotov cocktails dance through my head. Some are aimed at her head. I decide this has gone far enough, so I do what I was completely willing to do in the first place: move my car. (At this point, spaces near Kelly's had opened up.) As I get into the car and pull away, she repeats her mantra: Bitch. I hope she was able to reach Nirvana with it, but somehow I doubt it.
At the door of Kelly's, I turn and she is still out there on the sidewalk, staring me down. I ask her if she's happy now. The last word I hear from her: Bitch.
The folks in Kelly's are laughing now. They, too, have Bitter Woman Stories to tell.
The Commentary: Two things were revealed to me, the kind of person she is and the kind of person I am. And, this is a crucial point, the two were not all that different. I was not a fountain of life. I was not turning away wrath. I was not being wise.
At least I have a story to tell.
1.25.2007
1.17.2007
The MacBook Is Here
Well, here I am sending the first blog on the new laptop. Uploading goodies to my course material online. Work and fun, and all from home! The MacBook barely picks up an open network somewhere close by, one that the desktop wireless USB modem couldn't keep hold of. But it picks it up, which saves me the hassle of heading to a coffee shop downtown to get online. Plus, I can't drink a beer at 4:00 in the afternoon at a coffee shop.
The trackpad on this thing is really cool. You can set it up to do the expected trackpad stuff: highlight or click with one tap, double-click with two taps. But you can also set it up to right-click by tapping the pad with two fingers and scroll pages (either up and down, or side to side) by dragging two fingers across the pad. Very cool!
Now all I need to do is get a firewire cable to transfer files, setting, bookmarks, applications, etc. from the desktop and I'll be set.
The trackpad on this thing is really cool. You can set it up to do the expected trackpad stuff: highlight or click with one tap, double-click with two taps. But you can also set it up to right-click by tapping the pad with two fingers and scroll pages (either up and down, or side to side) by dragging two fingers across the pad. Very cool!
Now all I need to do is get a firewire cable to transfer files, setting, bookmarks, applications, etc. from the desktop and I'll be set.
1.15.2007
Back With LOST...
Okay, so I should be working right now. But I'm not. Instead, on this MLK national holiday, I'm listening to the final LOST podcast of 2006, which I was too frustrated to listen to until now. In the main, they've been making good on some of their promises of giving us answers to some of the questions raised by the show. This latest podcast is no different, so far as promises are concerned, but I am more dubious about getting answers. Really, I'm dubious about what they consider an "answer" to be. They let me down when they said that by the end of the sixth episode we'd know who the caged dude who escaped was and why he was there. They didn't tell me anything of the sort. Unless, of course, an "answer" in the mind of Cuse/Lindelof amounts to hinting in passing that the dude was one of them and was having some kind of romantic relationship with Alex.
Anyway, I'd like to put that behind me and put the hand to the plow. In this latest podcast, Cuse/Lindelof say that, by the end of Season 3, we will have answers/more information regarding the following:
They say, without joking and without qualification, that there is, in fact, a second island off the coast of the bigger, main island. This seems to answer the question of whether or not Ben was lying about a second island.
Ben will not die on the operating table. (But it wasn't clear whether or not they were joking about this.)
Who is the real leader of the Others, Jacob (from "Jacob's list") or Ben? They don't say, but they do mention the biblical significance of Jacob and Benjamin. Jacob/Israel was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel; Benjamin (aka, Ben) was the youngest of the children. Is that relationship going to be reflected in the show?
Anyway, I'd like to put that behind me and put the hand to the plow. In this latest podcast, Cuse/Lindelof say that, by the end of Season 3, we will have answers/more information regarding the following:
- The meaning and significance of the phrase "LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK NORTH JOHN 3:05" phrase on Eko's stick for Locke. During Eko's funeral, Locke looks down at the stick and sees the phrase. Is it a sign? Will it lead Locke to an explanation of why Eko was killed? Cuse suggests that the phrase will "propel Locke on a mission."
- What's going on with Desmond and his strange abilities.
- Whether Ben was lying that the Hydra station is on an island like Alcatraz.
- We'll see Rousseau again. (This really isn't an "answer" per se, but it's something to look forward to, I suppose. She's quite the enigma to me at this point.)
- Whether or not the Dharma Initiative and the Others are one and the same group.
- Ben's surgery and what happens to Jack, Kate, and Sawyer.
We think that the show is spiritual, that it lives in a spiritual space. It's not just that [the characters on the show] are lost on an island, but also that they're lost in their own lives. We're not preaching, or promising, or trying to convert anybody, but we do like the idea that these people are all connected, that there is a sense that there is a higher power at work and we try not to call it anything. But, obviously, the characters are going to see it through the prism of what their own experience is. If they were Christians or Catholics or Jews or Muslims--we've seen Sayid pray, for example.... We're not trying to make any grandiose statements, not about a specific religion. Spirituality is an important part of human existence.Miscellaneous
They say, without joking and without qualification, that there is, in fact, a second island off the coast of the bigger, main island. This seems to answer the question of whether or not Ben was lying about a second island.
Ben will not die on the operating table. (But it wasn't clear whether or not they were joking about this.)
Who is the real leader of the Others, Jacob (from "Jacob's list") or Ben? They don't say, but they do mention the biblical significance of Jacob and Benjamin. Jacob/Israel was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel; Benjamin (aka, Ben) was the youngest of the children. Is that relationship going to be reflected in the show?
1.12.2007
Flags At Half-Mast
Well, my former-Athens-resident friends, the Mellow Mushroom downtown is no more.
Same management. Same menu (with a few additions). Same 100 Bottle Club plaques (not sure how long they'll be around). Different name: The Tavern.
Same management. Same menu (with a few additions). Same 100 Bottle Club plaques (not sure how long they'll be around). Different name: The Tavern.
1.09.2007
1.06.2007
The Philosophy-Culture Pipeline
Periodically I hear (mostly non-Academia) folks tout philosophy's importance along the lines of some sort of trickle-down effect that it has on culture at large. I suppose the claim could be made for most any discipline, but, honestly, I don't know quite what to make of it. On the face of it, it seems to me a connection that would be very difficult to track. I suspect that it rests on some sort of false cause fallacy: we see what philosophers are saying, we see what the hoi poloi say, and we find that they are roughly similar. So, we assert a causal connection, one in which the masses follow the thoughts of the practitioners in the Ivory Tower. But why should we think that the causal flow of ideas goes in that direction? Does Academia really hold that much influence over culture? If so, how?
Assuming that it does, perhaps the connection could be traced through the fact that nowadays most people end up going to college, and at the university they learn certain things that they take with them back into the populace. Take ethical relativism as an example. Have people learned this at the university and transmitted it like a cold to their fellow travelers? Or this amorphous thing called "postmodernism"--do people catch it in the Tower and spread it through the countryside? I have my doubts.
Maybe it's through the proliferation of books that ideas get disseminated. People read them, ingest the ideas in them, and expel them at different points in their lives. But this reading, along with the previous one, suggests that the Educated Ones set the cultural marks. Of this I am suspicious, though it may very well be true. (Perhaps I am suspicious of it because it is true.)
Of course, all of this assumes that we have a referent for "culture," but to what does the term refer? The Average Joe? The Businessman? The Academician? The Son, Daughter, Father, Mother? And how do we assess the ideas of a culture--polling data? (The Poll, what a dangerous invention!) Subject matter of books? (Ah, but then we're caught in a circle!) What the Academicians are teaching? (The circle!)
The more interesting question to me is not one of causal influence, but of existence. How does a Zeitgeist even come about? Think of the Middle Ages, a time when the Church was the big kid on the block. By the 17th and 18th centuries, this was no longer the case. What happened? We could cite both the Renaissance and Reformation here--both were reactions against the Church, though in starkly different ways. The Renaissance focus on divinely-unaided reason seemed to win out eventually, and soon Nietzsche signaled the death of God. (Was he simply putting in words what was already the case? Or did he bring it about?) The rise of science, practiced (for the most part) in terms of natural rather than divine explanations, surely played a part. (Were the scientists simply applying an already-present mindset where God had no special explanatory place? Or did they bring it about?) But after a series of aborted attempts to show that reason could figure everything out, even its privileged place came under attack. And here we are. We don't need God and human reason is basically suspect. Is this the spirit of our age? It seems to flow with a life of its own*, and everyone gets caught up in it.
Philosophers, like everyone else, are necessarily immersed in a culture, in a way of life, in a (dare I say it?) Zeitgeist ("spirit of the time"), a Volksgeist ("spirit of the people"). So, I suspect that the philosophy-culture influence runs both ways. The Academician does not live in the Tower; he only works there. The Academician manipulates the geist in various ways--puts words and labels to it, tests connections, concretizes abstractions, which then get taken up once again outside of the Tower. Perhaps in some eras the influence is more one-sided, but in the main I'm guessing it's a two-way street.
*I say "seems." In these ruminations, I certainly don't mean to bracket the providence of God in history. All of history is God's history. It is not as if it has slipped out of His hand. But within His ultimate providence there are secondary influences, and it is these of which I speak. To cite the providence of God is not to annul them.
Assuming that it does, perhaps the connection could be traced through the fact that nowadays most people end up going to college, and at the university they learn certain things that they take with them back into the populace. Take ethical relativism as an example. Have people learned this at the university and transmitted it like a cold to their fellow travelers? Or this amorphous thing called "postmodernism"--do people catch it in the Tower and spread it through the countryside? I have my doubts.
Maybe it's through the proliferation of books that ideas get disseminated. People read them, ingest the ideas in them, and expel them at different points in their lives. But this reading, along with the previous one, suggests that the Educated Ones set the cultural marks. Of this I am suspicious, though it may very well be true. (Perhaps I am suspicious of it because it is true.)
Of course, all of this assumes that we have a referent for "culture," but to what does the term refer? The Average Joe? The Businessman? The Academician? The Son, Daughter, Father, Mother? And how do we assess the ideas of a culture--polling data? (The Poll, what a dangerous invention!) Subject matter of books? (Ah, but then we're caught in a circle!) What the Academicians are teaching? (The circle!)
The more interesting question to me is not one of causal influence, but of existence. How does a Zeitgeist even come about? Think of the Middle Ages, a time when the Church was the big kid on the block. By the 17th and 18th centuries, this was no longer the case. What happened? We could cite both the Renaissance and Reformation here--both were reactions against the Church, though in starkly different ways. The Renaissance focus on divinely-unaided reason seemed to win out eventually, and soon Nietzsche signaled the death of God. (Was he simply putting in words what was already the case? Or did he bring it about?) The rise of science, practiced (for the most part) in terms of natural rather than divine explanations, surely played a part. (Were the scientists simply applying an already-present mindset where God had no special explanatory place? Or did they bring it about?) But after a series of aborted attempts to show that reason could figure everything out, even its privileged place came under attack. And here we are. We don't need God and human reason is basically suspect. Is this the spirit of our age? It seems to flow with a life of its own*, and everyone gets caught up in it.
Philosophers, like everyone else, are necessarily immersed in a culture, in a way of life, in a (dare I say it?) Zeitgeist ("spirit of the time"), a Volksgeist ("spirit of the people"). So, I suspect that the philosophy-culture influence runs both ways. The Academician does not live in the Tower; he only works there. The Academician manipulates the geist in various ways--puts words and labels to it, tests connections, concretizes abstractions, which then get taken up once again outside of the Tower. Perhaps in some eras the influence is more one-sided, but in the main I'm guessing it's a two-way street.
*I say "seems." In these ruminations, I certainly don't mean to bracket the providence of God in history. All of history is God's history. It is not as if it has slipped out of His hand. But within His ultimate providence there are secondary influences, and it is these of which I speak. To cite the providence of God is not to annul them.
1.05.2007
1.02.2007
I still don't have internet access at home, so I imagine that I'll continue blogging more infrequently. That is, until/unless I get a laptop. I should probably get one anyway, this windowless fluorescent-lit dungeon of an office is just depressing. I feel the need to be mobile. The thing is, I don't know what kind of laptop to get. I've set my sights on a Mac (like my desktop), but now they've moved to Intel-based processors (not Windows OS, mind you!), so it seems reasonable to think that Power PC-based programs (which is what Macs have run on until the new processors) will become obsolete at some point, which means I should probably get a new one with the Intel processor, but since they're new they're also buggy and expensive, and I'll mainly be using it for word processing and email and blogging, etc. anyway so why not get a cheaper soon-to-be-outdated Powerbook (to match my outdated PowerMac desktop) rather than the new Macbook, except that the Macbooks are faster and maybe I want to do something more with it than email and word processing one day. Breathe. I love my Mac, but what would be wrong with getting a PC laptop, besides the inferior OS? It'd likely be cheaper and run just as fast/well, and since I use Microsoft Office for Mac, the files transfer easily between the Mac and PC OSs, and any music, etc. I downloaded or DVDs I burned wouldn't be a problem to put on my Mac from the PC. Breathe. Sigh.
I've been playing around with my Google homepage lately. There are literally hundreds of little things (calendars, games, news, sports, etc.) you can insert into your homepage. But, at the risk of cluttering up one page, you can have multiple pages accessed through tabs. Pretty cool. One of the things I added to my page was a section from the How Stuff Works website. Yesterday was a pretty interesting article "How Hangovers Work." Today there is a nice article on "How Beer Works." They've got a few videos of the owner of the Brick Store Pub in Decatur, GA -- a most excellent place to have a pint, BTW -- talking about beer-related topics.
Speaking of beer, I think I found a new old beer fridge. I've been rearranging a corner of my room for a space. I think it will work. Goodbye bottles! My kegs have gone missing for long enough.
Yes, I saw the poor-quality cell phone video of Saddam's hanging. Now that's swift justice, my friends.
Bad Brains (Rastafarians who started playing punk and reggae in the early 80s) is supposedly back in the studio and almost ready to unveil their first album in ten years or so. I lost interest as they leaned toward more reggae and even heavy metal after they're second album -- that, and they kept breaking up and reuniting all the time. Well, this latest album is supposed to go back to their hardcore punk roots. If they tour, I've absolutely got to see them. Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch is producing the album. No surprise there, really -- at least two Beastie Boys songs feature samples from Bad Brains.
Iggy & the Stooges are also coming out with a new album sometime this year. I got to see Iggy (solo) several years ago at the 40 Watt here in Athens. It'd be sweet to see the Stooges, too (minus the one who died a while back, of course), for another show.
The Cowboy Junkies will be taping and filming a concert at the Holy Trinity Church in Toronto to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Trinity Sessions. And to make some more money off of a really good album.
I should be finishing my syllabi for classes next week, but instead I'm just filling my time and this space full of music and beer related crap. No more, my sweet. No more.
I've been playing around with my Google homepage lately. There are literally hundreds of little things (calendars, games, news, sports, etc.) you can insert into your homepage. But, at the risk of cluttering up one page, you can have multiple pages accessed through tabs. Pretty cool. One of the things I added to my page was a section from the How Stuff Works website. Yesterday was a pretty interesting article "How Hangovers Work." Today there is a nice article on "How Beer Works." They've got a few videos of the owner of the Brick Store Pub in Decatur, GA -- a most excellent place to have a pint, BTW -- talking about beer-related topics.
Speaking of beer, I think I found a new old beer fridge. I've been rearranging a corner of my room for a space. I think it will work. Goodbye bottles! My kegs have gone missing for long enough.
Yes, I saw the poor-quality cell phone video of Saddam's hanging. Now that's swift justice, my friends.
Bad Brains (Rastafarians who started playing punk and reggae in the early 80s) is supposedly back in the studio and almost ready to unveil their first album in ten years or so. I lost interest as they leaned toward more reggae and even heavy metal after they're second album -- that, and they kept breaking up and reuniting all the time. Well, this latest album is supposed to go back to their hardcore punk roots. If they tour, I've absolutely got to see them. Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch is producing the album. No surprise there, really -- at least two Beastie Boys songs feature samples from Bad Brains.
Iggy & the Stooges are also coming out with a new album sometime this year. I got to see Iggy (solo) several years ago at the 40 Watt here in Athens. It'd be sweet to see the Stooges, too (minus the one who died a while back, of course), for another show.
The Cowboy Junkies will be taping and filming a concert at the Holy Trinity Church in Toronto to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Trinity Sessions. And to make some more money off of a really good album.
I should be finishing my syllabi for classes next week, but instead I'm just filling my time and this space full of music and beer related crap. No more, my sweet. No more.
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