A skittery, erratic attempt at a weblog. Rambles will be indulged and depths will be plumbed. Who knows what I'll come up with?
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| Fragments A skittery, erratic attempt at a weblog. Rambles will be indulged and depths will be plumbed. Who knows what I'll come up with? |
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Saturday, October 23, 2004 Weather: windyish, grayish Listening to: Tori Amos, "Black-Dove (January)" Taking a break from: health interventions studying Disagreeing with Dave The phrase "Do you agree with Dave?" has been scrawled in chalk all over my campus -- walkways, entrances to buildings, sidewalks, etc -- and is also plastered in poster form inside the student centre and residences. 'Dave', as it turns out, is a Christian who is going to be talking on campus in the next week or so about what it means to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The "Do you agree with Dave?" campaign is meant to pique people's interest and get everyone to ask "Well, who's Dave?" Now, good for Dave for being spiritual, and good for Dave for being commited to a religion, and even good for Dave for being willing and able to speak out about his faith, if that's what floats his boat. I don't have a problem with Dave or his personal choices. I was brought up Christian myself, and I've never had a major rebellion against it, so in theory, I'm perfectly fine with what Dave has to say. And sure, Dave can come talk to our school about being a follower of Jesus -- tons of other religions have their meetings, so why not? But I disagree with Dave, and here's why: I want absolutely nothing to do with Dave's tactics. First of all, they're annoying. Blisteringly annoying. This makes them counterproductive. When you've had "Do you agree with Dave?" shoved at you in every possible medium, you stop responding with "who's dave?" and start responding with "fuck it! no I don't! get out of my face!" More than that, though, I disagree with the whole idea of demanding my agreement or disagreement BEFORE I have any idea what I'm agreeing or disagreeing with. This seems to encapsulate most of my problems with organized religion -- or at least, MY organized religion. It's "believe and be saved, or disbelieve and be damned -- PICK NOW, PICK NOW, PICK NOW!" It's like they're selling something; spiritual telemarketers. Do You Agree With Dave? is a challenge that you have to accept before you know the terms. Which makes me ask, well, why do you want me to agree before you've even let the guy come tell us what he believes? It's manipulative, to say the least...and I know it's just an innocent ploy to generate interest, but it still bothers me. ~SQ posted by susan | 11:07 PM Monday, October 18, 2004 Weather: unexpectedly cold, often rainy Listening to: Switchfoot, "Dare You To Move" Taking a break from: creative writing essay A question of values Partly inspired by the essay I'm writing and partly inspired by Thanksgiving weekend conversation with Ziz, I have a question to pose to (all five of) the people who read my blog: Have you ever been asked, implicitly or explicitly, to make a choice between arts and science? Those terms aren't even defined in a precise enough manner for that question to make sense. What I mean is, it seems like at some point in everyone's life, they become either a 'sciences' person -- and study medicine, physics, radiology, statistics, mathematics, engineering or chemistry -- or a 'arts/social sciences' person -- and study law, literature, art, economics, politics, international relations, history or journalism. There is, furthermore, some kind of unspoken assumption that these two camps should not be mixed, and certainly not in a single individual. This seems to have filtered down to every student as the notion that each person is better at one of those things than the other, and that we should choose to pursue only that one side of the coin. Am I making this up, or is this actually out there? ~SQ posted by susan | 8:51 PM Wednesday, October 13, 2004 Weather: chilly, but nice Listening to: Ben Folds, "The Luckiest" Taking a break from: a break Today I realized while bussing it back from Bennetto that actually I quite like downtown Hamilton. Ok, no, it can't touch downtown Toronto, much less downtown New York or downtown Anywhere-In-Europe. And I don't actually like most of it all that much. But I like the boulevard effect of King Street and I like Jackson's Square. I like Hess. I like all the good memories I have of the Jackson's Square movie theatre, and I like the Jackson's Square movie theatre on principle because it's cheap and tacky and authentic-looking. I like the fact that I 'discovered' all of this while I was first living away from home, and now it all looks like home. Other realizations: -my cough is practically gone, for those of you who were following its progression. -MCAT scores are out and I don't have to rewrite (praise the heavens). -I did well on that immuno summary I stayed up all night to do, so CLEARLY the right lessons are not being reinforced here (oh dear). -I got out my old AP English anthology (Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry and drama, 7th ed.) and realized three things. 1: Hamlet is still the best play on the planet; 2: BSS English was definitely better than university English; 3: anthologies are wonderful things. I brought the anthology and my family's copy of the Branagh film version of Hamlet back up to Mac with me. 4 hours of Shakespearian goodness, yummm. -I clearly do not understand the definition of an 'accent colour'. I know someone out there (*cough*muse*cough*) can shed some light on this. Are there only particular colours which can serve as 'accent colours'? Is there some intrinsic property of colour which makes it an 'accent colour'? Doesn't it have to do with the proportion in which it is used? (the finishing decorative touches are being applied to our new bathroom, whose overarching colour scheme is "bleached Grecian sand", which is beige if you aren't my mother.) -I'm a bad, bad roommate. -In a normal high school, there are three levels at which subjects are taught. Academic is what we had at BSS; there is also Applied, which is sufficient for college but not university, and Essentials, which is sufficient for trade schools or your high school diploma. WHAT does it say about me, my life, my shelteredness and my general ability to relate to the population that I DIDN'T KNOW THAT until I started tutoring at Delta? Random stuff today, not much coherent. Fall's here finally. Pumpkins are already giving way to Christmas decorations and it's not even Halloween yet, but I'm trying to be okay with that. ~SQ posted by susan | 6:19 PM |
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