Okay, first of all, this needs to be linked: A while back, someone decided that Nickelback was a prime example of the suckage of modern music. The biggest problem? All the songs sound the same. How much the same? Well, they decided to figure that out by mixing Someday with This Is How You Remind Me. As in, one song plays in the left speaker, the other plays in the right speaker. This produced the 'song' This Is How You Remind Me Of Someday (mp3). There is no dissonance, the choruses play at exactly the same time, the bridges play at exactly the same time, they are exactly the same length, the rhythms and chord progressions never ever clash. Formulaic? I think so.

A while ago, Frontline had a program called The Way The Music Died (watch online in that link). It's about how the music industry is now run by businessmen instead of musicians, and thus is about making money, not music. It's also marketed very carefully to fit niche markets, so innovation is frowned upon if it doesn't fit the prescribed model. Combine that with the monopoly of radio play, and you get very few artists in rotation and most artists going unnoticed. It's a good series and highlights a lot of interesting aspects of the (corruption of the) music industry.

So, York's exam period is December 8th-21st. Guess what? I have an exam on the 8th AND an exam on the 21st. They're both Linguistics courses, why would they put them so far apart? Thus, I get less than two weeks off for Christmas. Argh! (The other two exams are the 15th and 16th.) It sucks mostly because I really wanted to go up to Montreal for a week or so to visit my sister. I don't think that's going to end up happening.

Noam Chomsky is coming to Toronto to talk about "The Imperial Presidency" on November 21st, and I'm going to see him. I've been telling my Linguistics profs and watching their eyes light up. :)

A couple nights ago, Chris and I watched In the Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary. It is a series of interviews with Frau Junge, who got hired to be Hitler's personal secretary at the age of 22, was there in his bunker when he killed himself, and was not even questioned after the war. She kept quiet about her experiences and reflections about him until 2001, when she gave these interviews and talked about his personal qualities and how foolish and ashamed she has felt for being unaware of the horrible things he was doing. She talks about his relationship with Eva Braun, his pet dog that loved him and slept in his room, seeing him holding puppies, how the Goebbels children would come to see 'Uncle Hitler', being surprised that he was so cordial and such a gentleman, and eating and having tea with him every day. At the same time, she says that he was "horrible" and a "monster", because of the concentration camps, etc. I think the point is that he wasn't a "monster" (though his actions were monstrous), he was a real man and we should not be lulled into thinking that our leaders or ourselves are incapable of such delusions and crimes.

She also talked about how he was certain that he was helping the German nation by getting rid of the Jews, and that he killed himself because he thought that the fall of National Socialism would bring a world where the men were castrated, the women were raped, bombs fell all the time, all sorts of awful things. She said that they (his staff) were convinced that's what it would be like, and she was very surprised after the war to find that life was much better than he had feared. It reminded me of my own fears of life without Christianity and surprise at liking it; it was strange to recognize that emotion in such a context.

Doug replied to my Christendom vs. The World in Song Lyrics entry, and I'm responding to his (lengthy, thought-provoking) comments here. I'll respond in sections. (And I corrected your spelling, hope you don't mind.) :)

it seems like you have almost a hatred for christians, or I should say Christianity.

I'm not really sure how you got that out of that post, it certainly wasn't intended. Maybe because one of my (implicit) premises is that Christianity isn't true? Keep in mind, though, 95% of my friends at home are Christian, my family is Christian, I spent two years at Bible College and all of my friends from there are Christian... I certainly don't hate Christians, in fact I'm quite fond of a lot of them. Not only that, I spent most of my life as a very-serious-about-it Christian, so to hate Christians would be to hate... myself. Which I don't. Not even my previous-to-deconversion self. If anything, Christians still feel like my extended family.

I'm currently studying Sociology, I think Linguistics sort of counts as a sub-category to sociology (doesn't it?) which is a social science.

Linguistics is its own discipline, I believe it falls under social science. The reason you would run into it in Sociology is that pretty much all of the Arts disciplines are currently taking a "linguistic turn" as they move away from positivism (truth is unchanging) towards relativism (truth is determined by changing discourses). There are many sections of linguistics, here's a brief run-down: Phonetics: how we make speech sounds, Phonology: how we group speech sounds, Morphology: how we build words, Syntax: how we build sentences/phrases, Discourse Analysis, analysis of things larger than sentences. Another side of Discourse Analysis is the post-structuralist Foucault-ian version of discourse as a set of ideas and connotations around a subject that constructs how we talk about it. That's what my post is mainly about, this second type of discourse. I'm looking at the discourse of Christianity vs. The World.

You mention "Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests." I'm not sure if you were referring to Christianity specifically or if it was just a general comment.
but since I've been studying in a secular institution I realized that it's not much different than its own religion or some equivalent.

That's a general statement. I'll give you another example so you can see that it's not aimed just at religion. In this country, part of our ideology is that you earn money by working hard. That leads to the ideology that poor people are lazy and deserve their class, and rich people are hard workers and deserve their class. Now, that's not true across the board, seeing that one third of rich peoples' money is inherited, not worked for at all. But the ideology justifies and explains the interests of the dominant class -- the rich -- who would like everyone to believe that they deserve what they've got.

I would agree that secular institutions (in my example, capitalism) is like a religion (Christianity) in that it has an ideology that justifies the system, whether that's the ideology of Christianity=good, the world=bad, or the liberalist ideology that working hard=money.

Intellectuals are like their own elite. They have their own language, and there are many levels that one must pass to be an intellectual. only the very few in society can come out with Masters and PhD's. so in a way your comment; ""Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests." is just as easily applied to education, although I suppose that's no revelation.

You're right, there's a lot of hoops to jump through to be known as an intellectual -- financial resources to go to school, papers to write, courses to pass, language to learn, etc. You can't be respected as an intellectual and have the vocabulary of a construction worker, for example. Of course, you can't be respected as a construction worker and have the vocabulary of an academic either, it just doesn't fit. All those systems are in place to keep people in their groups, and that's one aspect of discourse analysis.

And of course Social Science is a science. all science aims to do is to make conclusions about us and our world through what can be measured and observed. That's why science doesn't look at or consider the possibility of faith or God because it can neither prove nor disprove God. But of course there is only so much that man can observe and measure and much of the time science asks more questions then it answers.

Science is about asking questions, and not about the supernatural, because the supernatural is, by definition, unproveable and there's not empirical evidence. The scientific method can't work with it. Why is science providing more questions than answers? Because science is about constantly improving the answers as more evidence comes in, so it constantly questions assumptions and old conclusions, rather than reaching The Truth and becoming static (like, for example, religion). I would say that's why the two are incompatible. Science doesn't take things for granted, everything is open to questioning and change.

A quote to rile you up re: biblical authority on science and religion: "If the bible is incorrect regarding matters that I can check and verify, why should I believe it is correct regarding matters that I can NOT check and verify?"

I guess i just don't like being labelled 'brainwashed' because I have faith and follow a religion. Karl Marx said how religion is the opiate of the people. and it can be if used in the wrong hands. but so can education, work, or anything else. It can all be used to control people if humans twist it that way. there's reasons why i'm a christian too, and not because I was raised/socialized to be one, or because i went to bible college. But rationally explaining everything I went through to decide that Christianity held absolute truth would take too long and be too boring.

Okay, two things:
1. I'm not saying that you're brainwashed. I'm saying that everyone's brainwashed. ;) We all live in societies that have ideology that justifies the interests of the dominant elite. Take the ideology about poor and rich people for example, that kind of shit is EVERYWHERE. And most of the time we can't see it because it's so ingrained that it's "common sense". I'm just looking at one aspect of the Christian ideology, which I can only do because I'm intimately familiar with it and because I've stepped out of the system and can look at it critically.
2. I'm not saying that you don't have reasons for your faith. I had reasons for my faith. I have reasons for my lack of faith. I'm just saying that we are also socialized by being raised in the church, and part of that socialization is this fear of leaving the church. Whether Christianity is true or not, there is this fear of leaving, and I'm just looking at some discursive representations of that and pointing out patterns and suggesting some ways that this might represent the interests of the dominant elite (the clergy, theologians, maybe even God).

Happy things:

1. Found this new online magazine that purports to be a zine for the post-college pre-parenthood quasi-adult market, and I quite like it so far. In fact, I like it enough that I'm stealing their recipe for chocolate truffles and making them with Chris tomorrow night. I think the most over-used step might be Step 4: "Taste frequently. This doesn't actually do anything to the chocolate. But when the smell of melted chocolate starts to permeate your kitchen, just try to resist." Just a hunch. :)

2. I wrote my midterm for Language, Power, and Persuasion today and I was a tiny bit worried about it because I had spent more time yesterday being on dates (with my girlfriend AND my boyfriend) than actually studying. In fact, I pretty much just skimmed the last few articles. However, when I was sitting near the lecture hall doing some last-minute reviewing, I could hear other girls cramming desperately and asking stupid questions like "what's transitivity again? what's a pseudo-agent?" and they were such basic obvious we've-gone-over-this-a-million-times questions that I was pretty sure I was set. At least, compared to them. And I was! The midterm was reasonable in asking lots of stuff from different material, but nothing surprised me and I didn't hesitate on anything. So that should be a good mark. :) (And I was the 2nd one done which, in a class of about 300, is not too shabby!)

3. I got my Discourse Analysis paper back tonight, the one in which I had to elicit a narrative (I got a story from Kathy about a Russian man who was a little, shall we say, bold), transcribe it, and analyse it with Critical Discourse Analysis. Annnnnnnd...... I got an A+! Yeah!

Just a small project I'm working on. I want to look at how Christian (music specifically for now) contrasts the world (life before/without Christ) and life within Christianity. I think the portrayal of the world as hopeless and full of despair was what made me so terrified to leave my faith, made me feel that the second I left I would become suicidal, when the opposite has been true.

DC Talk, Since I Met You: Without=lonely, void in my soul, giant hole, nothing made sense, darkness; With=love, alright, light

At every party and as far as anybody knew - everything was cool, but
The truth was bottled up inside of me
I was as lonely as a man could be
And my 200 friends couldn't fill the void in my soul
It was a giant hole

Nothing made any sense
I thought there would never be an end
Then love came knocking at my door

(chorus)
Since I met You I've been alright
You turn all my darkness into light
Since I met You I've been okay, I've been alright

PFR, Without You: Without=hate, meaningless; With: love, change of the heart, singing, [meaningful]

like love holding the hand of hate you choose to love me anyway
it doesn't mean anything without you
just words that i say without you
without your spirit to sing
of this change of the heart that you bring
without you it doesn't mean anything

Caedmon's Call, Thankful: Without=incapable, stillborn, dead, shackled, transgression, sin; With=redemption, [resurrection], hear, walk

I am thankful that I'm incapable
Of doing any good on my own
'Cause we're all stillborn and dead in our transgressions
We're shackled up to the sin we hold so dear
So what part can I play in the work of redemption
I can't refuse, I cannot add a thing

'Cause I am just like Lazarus and I can hear Your voice
I stand and rub my eyes and walk to You
Because I have no choice

Clay Crosse, Sold Out Believer: Without=[aimless], forget, lose, beg, steal, helpless stray, waste; With=truth, follow, love

You can live your life in a different world
Spend your time lookin' for a different girl
Carry on like there ain't no tomorrow
You can take your mind to a different plane
Push it to the edge and forget your name
Lose it all and you will beg, steal or borrow
But I don't want to live that way
Be another helpless stray
I'm lookin' for the truth today
And it's somethin' I've been prayin' for
[Chorus]
I wanna be a sold out believer
I wanna follow my Lord completely
I don't wanna waste another day
I gotta love Him all the way

Plumb, God-shaped Hole: Without: hole, restless, searching, void, gray, empty longing, cynical, something missing

There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And the restless soul is searching
There's a God-shaped hole in all of us
And it's a void only he can fill

Does the world seem gray with empty longing
Wearing every shade of cynical
And do you ever feel that
There is something missing?

That's my point of view...

These sentiments are usually set up in some form of a testimony, which follows a pattern of 1) this is how bad my life was like without Christ, 2) this is how I became converted, 3) this is how great my life is with Christ. After hearing literally thousands of stories in this form, imagine contemplating moving the opposite direction, from life with Christ to life without Christ. Obviously that would be a move from a good life to a bad, hopeless, waste of a life.

This is what I wrote on September 8th, 2003, when I was getting ready to make the jump out of the faith:

I am afraid that I might be heading towards a time that I would ditch on Christianity, as many of my closest friends have done. It scares me and hurts me because so much of my self is wrapped up in this endeavour and I don't know who I am without it. I'm not sure what the point of anything is without it. I don't want life without Christ, it is entirely unattractive to me. Sometimes I fear that the choice is between Jesus and suicide. The thought of ditching on it fills me with sadness, with grief, and it is strong and potent and I fear that people don't understand that.

These stories are everywhere, in testimonies, in sermons, in the Bible (especially Paul's writings), in worship music, in regular music, in every-day conversation. One could argue that this discourse is in place to protect the interests of the church. As long as people are afraid to leave, they will stay and will continue to contribute in terms of money, volunteering, higher congregation numbers, etc. Of course, the church's ideology is that life is really like that -- life without Christ can be nothing but hopeless. That's why there is such a big emphasis on evangelism, they want to rescue people from their hopeless lives and give them good lives. Ideology rarely matches reality, though, it represents the interests of the dominant elite and explains and justifies those interests.

My friend Trevor used to think it was funny to talk like a gangsta-rapper while enunciating very clearly and slowly with his white-boy-Canadian English. It still makes me laugh when I think of it. :)

Last night I had a dream where I was ordering candy from an online website (these specifically -- mmm Hoest!) and somehow I could just scoop the candy out of the monitor or something. Man, someone needs to invent that already.

Some random things lately:

Today one of my coworkers told me that I'm the only person she hears talk about what they study outside of a classroom. I told her that I go out for breakfast every week with one of our mutual friends and we talk about pretty much nothing but what we study, but then I realised that she's also right -- most people don't talk about their discipline if they don't have to. I think that's what bothered me most about people in my year at Tyndale. I wanted to talk about theology and the ideas behind what we were learning in philosophy and history and western literature, they just wanted to look for a spouse and ... I don't know, the girls were mostly concerned with cute shoes and cute hair and cute boys, not what they were studying. God forbid that they go to school to learn.

I miss my family. I miss teasing my dad and standing on his shoes and trying to hold my mom's hand when she's making supper and playing with my dog and cuddling with Melissa and coming up with weird threats for Amanda (so far the "If you don't stop, I'm going to give you a hickey!" threat has been most effective) and just having that family supper where you get conversation and an actual meal instead of whatever I manage to throw together for just me, and where there are in-jokes that are as old as I am.

I went to the doctor today and realised that I really like him. I always have to wait a long time to get in to see him -- today I only had to wait 45 minutes, and that's with an appointment -- but he spends his time with me and answers all my questions and that's why he's always late. He gave me another three months worth of anti-depressants (as in gave gave, he keeps giving me sample packs, how sweet is that?!) and I asked him some stuff about them. I've been really happy with them, I feel a lot more stable and normal on them and haven't had any side-effects since the first 3 weeks (and then was just a bit of dizziness and exhaustion). But I wanted to know if my brain is actually fixing itself, and he said that it's most likely fixed now, but it's good to stay on them for at least 6 months just to make sure that depression/anxiety doesn't come back. The brain can learn to adjust chemical levels, but sometimes it's good to babysit it for a while to make sure it doesn't go back to old habits. So that's good, it looks like another three months and then I will be normal without help! Or, well, at least as normal as it gets around here. ;)

I also got a flu shot today, which is free in Ontario, and he recommended it since I'm on the TTC a lot -- public transit is a breeding ground for the flu. Also, I was already getting a needle, so what's another stab in the arm, right?

While I was waiting in the doctor's office, I was alternating between dozing and listening to the TV, which got to talking about prostate cancer, and at one point they were talking about the three factors that increase risk factor. One of them was race, they said that black people have the highest risk, white people have medium risk, and Asians have lower risk. Now, is it just me, or haven't most biologists concluded that race based on skin colour is just as arbitrary as race based on eye colour? How could these things correlate? Race doesn't EXIST, it's a discourse based on discriminatory power structures, not biology. Or could it be that since people tend to marry within their race, they would pass down higher risk factors? It really jumped out at me; it seemed akin to saying that black people are more promiscuous (offensive!).

My thoughts about grad school have shifted a bit. I've been looking a lot lately at Cultural Theory-esque programs, like the Social and Political Thought (PDF) programs, either the MA or the PhD. Or, you know... both. What I really want to do is say, hey, there's this whole subculture of Canadian evangelicals (nice fundamentalists*) and here's what their worldview is and how it's affected by reading the NIV/NLT every day and how it affects their views on gay marriage, politics, education, etc.

I was single for a long time and really liked it and now I have a boyfriend and I really like it. But certain things were simpler when I was single, like how now I think about going to grad schools and those schools are in various cities that aren't Toronto and I want to take the program but keep the boy and don't know which is more valuable since they are both infinitely valuable. And yes I have time to decide this, I am in third year, but I think long-term and have to research grad schools now because it's not something you decide on the spur of the moment. How do people decide such things? What if you are in a super relationship but are accepted to a super but long program in a non-relationship-compatible city? Do you choose the relationship (emotional commitment) or the program (academic/work commitment)? How can you say that one is more valuable than the other? What if you choose the boy and forever regret not doing the program? What if you choose the program and forever long for the boy? Of course, maybe York is offering a Masters/Doctorate program that works for me and such things are not a concern. But then I'm done and I get to apply for jobs teaching at universities... argh. I wish life were simpler. Everyone that I love should live where I live -- my boyfriend, my best friends, my family, everyone -- and education should be amazing and stimulating and not so stressful and rushed and jobs should be available and crazy-awesome. Also, more time for bed. I'm a fan of bed. And chai lattés. And dogs.

* In the sense of believing in the "fundamentals" of the Christian system but not being rabid legalists. The fundamentals being stuff like the following:

1. The Bible is literally (or at least basically) true and inspired by God.
2. Jesus is the only way to heaven, otherwise you're going to H-E-double-hockey-sticks.
3. There is only one God and he's a trio.
4. Sola scriptura, sola fidæ, sola Protestantism.
5. Jesus is coming back someday, but for now he's preparing a place for you in heaven. And taking his sweet time about it.
6. The world was created and God might have used evolution... but probably not.
7. Evangelise! Because people are going to hell and YOU MUST SAVE THEM!
And so forth and so forth...

Ever wanted to turn off the TV in the bar/restaurant/store/laundromat/etc? Now you can.

Lyric of the day: "I can tell by your middle finger that you're warming up to me." Bad Attraction, Brad Sucks

This morning I had a Phonological Analysis test and I rocked its socks off. Give me an A+ baby, that's my prediction. And, as usual, I was the first person to leave. Yeeeeeeah, not even the BOYS are beating me this term! :) It's kind of weird of me, but I like to win tests both ways: both in terms of marks and in terms of speed. Back when I was at my first Bible college, my friend Jenn used to give me a run for my money -- she once finished an exam with 3 essays in 20 minutes and came out with a B. What the heck!

Tomorrow I have a Grammar midterm and I am dreading it, so to avoid studying I have:
- done laundry
- found my crochet hooks (this took a lot of effort)
- ordered shelves/bookcases/drawer units from Ikea
- devoured this article on two-colour crocheting in the new online magazine, Crochet me
- looked at winter coats on the Sears website, I actually like a few of them, so I'll have to take a look on the weekend

In other news, my OSAP has come in, so I am poor no longer! In more debt, but not poor. Or something. Hopefully I can keep myself convinced that I'm poor for a while yet, things are better when I'm frugal.

So many midterms and papers due, and all I want to do is crochet!

(I am actually studying, by 4pm tomorrow I will be able to tell you all about functors and phi-features and X-bar theory. Aren't you excited?)

I was going to take an Internet-based course on Sexuality and Gender in the winter, but I'm thinking better of it now. I've been reading a bunch of stuff about it in Meredith's course kit and stuff that comes up in my Language, Power and Persuasion class, and well... I just feel like I know enough about it, if I need to know more, I know where to look. I'm more interested in other stuff, I think. Like, say, fundamentalism. That shit interests me more than gender roles. So, here's a list of courses I'm thinking of taking (note that I need 6.0 credits, so that's either one 6.0 course or two 3.0 courses):

- Discourses Of Colonialism (3.0) AS/ANTH 3030 "This course explores the cultural and political significance of colonial discourse in the past and in the present, including an examination of the construction of Euro-American forms of knowledge about other peoples and how these understandings continue to shape global relations of power."

- "'What is Real?' Asked the Rabbit": 20th-Century Children's Literature (3.0) AS/EN 2250 "This course is a historical study of children's literature written in the 20th century. It explores possible ways of reading that literature, taking into account such issues as its cultural context and its audience."

- Tolstoy (in translation) (3.0) AS/EN 3720 "Detailed examination of the major fiction of Tolstoy (in translation), with special stress on the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina."

- Studies in Prose Fiction: Virginia Woolf (3.0) AS/EN 4266 "This course concentrates on seven novels by Virginia Woolf, possibly the most celebrated of British women Modernists, and considers her short stories, biographies, essays, diaries and her circle of literary acquaintances."

- Myth and Imagination in Ancient Greece and Rome (9.0) AS/HUMA 1105 "An introduction to ancient and modern myths and theories about myths and mythology in comparative perspectives and their influences on modern literature and art."

- The Bible and Modern Contexts (6.0) AK/HUMA 1850 "This course examines selected biblical texts, their social and historical contexts, and selected current issues such as the goddess, role of women in religion, social critique, sexual ethics, spirituality and biblical interpretation."

- Religion and Television (3.0) AS/HUMA 3827 "This course examines the role and representation of the religious on television. It identifies and analyzes ways in which different kinds of television programming reflect, shape and embody our world-views, values and commitments, both as individuals and as a society."

- Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (3.0) AK/PHIL 2090 "Can we prove God's existence or must we experience God directly? Is faith opposed to reason? Are miracles and revelations really possible? Do a mystic's claims count as knowledge?"

- Fundamentals of Editing (3.0) AS/PRWR 3720 "The course addresses the problems of sorting and arranging information and of writing it up in a manner that is clear and comprehensible in limited spaces. Students edit their own work and the work of others, learning both to administer and accept criticism."

Qu'est-ce que vous pensez? What would you take?

John Stewart appeared on Crossfire and gave them what for. Very amusing, and needed to be said. (bittorrent links are within the linked MeFi discussion, do download!)

Another female (Canadian!) singer that I have a great affinity to and who is greatly under-recognized is Sarah Slean. She just put out a new album, but I'm most familiar with Night Bugs and her self-titled independent album. Tonight I'm especially fond of the lyrics and beauty of My Invitation:

You are what they call the human season,
You are all the alphabet in one,
You are every colour of confusion,
You are all the silence I've become.

Love me for
Stupid reasons,
I like those most.

Wide-eyed, but
Worth believing,
God knows.

Damn the angry voice that keeps us quiet,
The editor whose work is never done,
Keeping pretty words between my teeth and
Sweet confessions underneath my tongue.

Drowsy contemplation,
Do I let you in?
This is my invitation,
But how do I begin?

She has such an awful lot of soldiers,
Quite a lovely army all her own,
Night and day they stand before the fortress,
Very safe but very all alone...

I watched Magnolia last week, and I've had one of the songs from the soundtrack in my head ever since. I googled it today and it turns out that it (and most of the other songs on the soundtrack) is by Aimee Mann. The one that has been stuck in my head is called Wise Up, and it's pretty in a sad, haunting sort of way. Aimee Mann also sang on the soundtrack for I Am Sam, she sang a version of You've Got To Hide Your Love Away with Michael Penn. She's got a lovely voice and seems to have some intriguing lyrics, I think I'm going to pick up the Magnolia soundtrack and probably her album Bachelor No. 2.

School is insane right now. Next week I have a test, a midterm, and a paper due. Not only that, it's also Convocation, so things are crazy-busy at work, especially since the people in charge of Convocation seem to be doing everything in their power to make things unnecessarily complicated. The week after that, I have another midterm and another paper due. I don't want to study... I just want to play!

Well, I went for coffee with Chad this morning while my parents and sister were at church. We had a good time, although I burned my mouth on my hot chocolate because I forgot that trying to swallow pills with hot beverages is not the best idea in the world. I'm not the brightest kid in the world sometimes. Anyways, good times were had by all, and the f-bomb was dropped more than a few times, which is funny because the last time Chad and I were living in the same city, we didn't really swear much at all. Now pretty much everything is "well, fuck that" and "what the fuck are you doing?!" and it makes me laugh. We talked about some heavy stuff, like radiation therapy and step-families and suicide and deconversion and siblings getting married and people inquiring as to my salvation and the crazy messed-up churches (cults?) in our past. It's good to have those talks once in a while, it's nice to go home to people who understand where I've been in regards to religion.

Tonight we're taking our Thanksgiving dinner to Kingston to Janice's house because she is my best friend and we love her. My sister, Melissa, is still in Montréal because she had to work, and my sister, Amanda, is working tonight. So, it will be a wee Thanksgiving dinner and we're adopting Janice to partially make up the difference.

Yesterday I got to ride for two hours in my dad's transport truck. Did I mention that my dad is a trucker now? Well, he is. It's weird to sit so high up and realise that there's a window beside my FOOT to see whether there's a car beside the truck or not. It's pretty neat though, and he seems to be getting into the rhythm of trucking life, so I'm happy for him.

I also got to play with my dog a lot this weekend. Yesterday, my mom was raking the yard (because all the leaves are falling, Meredith! you can't escape it!) by our walnut trees and the walnuts are falling like crazy (they look like this on the tree), so I was throwing them for the dog. That crazy dog, he'll chase anything. They must taste disgusting, they certainly smell disgusting, but he comes trotting back with them in his mouth every time.

I'm heading back to Toronto tonight, because I miss a certain boy, so I get to spend a good three hours on a bus... yay! [/sarcasm]

Janice and I on the subway when she came to visit in September. Photos courtesy of this guy (don't ask me, I don't know).

I'm going home today. I'll be there until Sunday or Monday, I'm not sure yet. It'll be really nice to be home, I've felt so scattered and frantic this week. I had my first Counselling session and discussed a lot of things that I've been trying not to think about for ... I don't know, years... and my Ideology class was really frustrating this week, I think I got pretty close to yelling at my TA. We've been reading JS Mill's On Liberty and JS is just such a bastard... I mean, look at the guy, don't you want to punch him? I keep trying to finish the damn book, but I just want to throw it across the room. One page he'll be saying that individuals are important and you should never make them change what they're doing unless they're hurting you, even if a change would be "good" for them, but then on the very next page he says that 'barbarians' (i.e. Africans) deserve despotic rule, for their own good, so that they can reach the glorious civilization of 19th century England. Stupid colonials. He's so racist, I really want to punch him, but instead I have to study him. So far he has attacked pretty much every race except the English, especially the Chinese, it's awful what he says about them. And his example of true things that people persecuted in the past (so you should always be open to other opinions, lest you damn the truth) is ALWAYS Christianity, because obviously that's true, which goes against the whole point of the example. Be open to other opinions, you don't want to persecute the truth, for example, Christianity is absolutely true and not open to question and people persecuted it... argh, it just makes my head spin. My prof thinks that JS was an agnostic, but I am not getting that impression at all.

See how agitated I can get over just one of my readings? I've been like that all week. I just want to go home where things are (relatively) familiar and I can sleep and play with my puppy (Jak will always be my puppy, no matter how old he gets!) and cuddle with my mom and tease my sister and go for "tea" with my dad and not think about ekstasis*. And I want my boyfriend to come home with me but he would rather spend his nights enabling people's gambling addictions than with me... ;) I want a break from my Ideology class. I've just been through a year of jumping from one identity to another, it's overwhelming to find out that all of society is just a big play we're putting on and isn't based in ... well, anything... Social theory is frustrating and too much, but ultimately very interesting and I'm thinking of doing it forever, but not this weekend.

*ekstasis as defined by Berger in Invitation to Sociology:

By ["ecstasy"] we refer not to some abnormal heightening of consciousness in a mystic sense, but rather, quite literally, to the act of standing or stepping outside (literally, ekstasis) the taken-for-granted routines of society... we have already touched upon a very important form of "ecstasy" in our sense, namely, the one that takes place when an individual is enabled to jump from world to world in his social existence. However, even without such an exchange of universes it is possible to achieve distance and detachment vis-a-vis one's own world. As soon as a given role is played without inner commitment deliberately and deceptively, the actor is in an ecstatic state with regard to his "world-taken-for-granted." What others regard as fate, he looks upon as a set of factors to reckon with in his operations. What others assume to be essential identity, he handles as a convenient disguise. In other words, "ecstasy" transforms one's awareness of society in such a way that givenness becomes possibility. (Ch. 6)

Found this in a journal-ish thing that I keep in my bag. It's dated April 5th, 2004.

To the dead god,

I remember you and it is strange that you are gone. When I am alone and quiet, sometimes I turn to speak to you, and the realisation that you are gone rushes back in, overwhelms me. It is not even a proper sadness, although there is an element of grief to it from time to time. Mostly I react like this:

"Dear God, today I... oh. OH." as I realise once again that you are not here and will not return.

How do I feel about your absence? Most of the time I am glad that you are gone, I feel free of you, I feel that I have room to breathe, room to think. Other times, I miss how you were always accessible, how I could turn to you at any time and that you would understand me completely. I miss the reassurance of your presence, I miss telling you jokes and secrets. I miss telling you my ideas and thoughts, letting you be a sounding board for the things I uttered nowhere else. I miss trusting you not to go away. Now I trust you to be silent, to be absent, to refrain from interfering or judging. Now I do not worry about angering you, I do not worry that you will frustrate my plans if you get upset. Now you are an idea that I gave up on, and I feel very conflicted about it.

I want to grieve you and spit on your grave. I want you to come back and I'm glad that you can't return. I wish you were here and I'm glad you can't find me.

I am alone, unwatched, unmonitored for the first time in my life. It is almost unbearably quiet in my head, you are not listening anymore. No one knows my secrets unless I tell them, no one understands completely, no one makes me feel guilty for passing thoughts that I don't act on. You were my thought police, dead god, my Big Brother. You were the telescreen in my mind, and now I am free of you. Now I have lost you.

Now I do not need to echo David's cry that you "cast me not away from thy presence, oh Lord."

There is anguish here, this is not what I wanted to happen. I wanted the words to be true, I hoped that if I called out you would answer me. I called and called and still you were silent. CS Lewis said that as soon as he wanted to speak with you, as soon as he needed you, the gates of heaven slammed shut and barred closed. He heard the locks click. He felt the barrier. You left him in his grief, you turned your back. Jeremiah didn't seek you at all, never agreed to be a prophet, and you forced him to listen to you. He accused you of spiritual rape, of forcing him to be with you, to be your mouth. David sang to you with his sheep, felt that you gave him strength and led him to rivers. But you spoke to him through Nathan, didn't you? Even the 'man after God's own heart' didn't get a direct link.

How you spurned the ones you loved. Was it a lover's game? Were you playing hard to get? Were you pulling the Ice Queen trick like Bridget Jones, being Busy and Important so we would seek you out, just to drive us mad with desire? Or did you seem inaccessible because you could not help with pain and grief? Days with laughter and relief and sunsets seemed more your style. You only showed up when the worship team sang beautifully. You seemed to abhor an out-of-tune piano. We never sensed you when the choir was flat. You ran away when life got messy, when the chemotherapy didn't work. You were useless when we came to you with cancer, and I resented you for it. We were only asking for time, was that really such an impertinent request? I thought about killing you then, letting you die with my friends' mothers. Letting you go under the knife and lose a breast, letting you feel the weakness and the nausea and the hopelessness. But I did not want to give in to the resentment, so I kept you around for a while longer. My questions were more poisonous than tumours anyways, and theology seemed more dangerous to you than surgery.

Okay, first post. This is actually my first solo-blog, I guess that's kind of weird. I had (have) my blog with Sanda and another secret blog with my best friend, Janice, in which we were discussing Age of Reason, but we got kind of bogged down because Thomas Paine is not the most organized of fellows on the best of days...

Anyways, I wanted to set up my own blog for a few reasons:

1. I was blogging with Sanda, and she's a youth pastor. I love her dearly, as she is the sauciest of the saucy, but I'm not so keen on Jesus anymore, and while I know that her heart is hard and calloused and she can take it as much as I can dish it out, I don't really like ragging on somebody's faith on their blog. So, I wanted my own space, where if people got offended they could flame me or leave, but it wouldn't be their space, so I could say what I want.
2. I'm starting to think about grad school and I have a billion ideas everyday and I want to throw them around and discuss them and try them out before handing in a proposal to York (or wherever) for a Master's thesis project.
3. Deep down, don't we all just want to be Meredith? ;)
4. Yeah, a lot of deconversion stuff. And issues with depression and anxiety and ontological worldview changes and shifting paradigms and the stress of being in university and having a thousand radical ideas to deal with every week.

Okay. I have spent a few hours setting this up, wrestling with Blogger, and figuring out how to make York let me FTP stuff through Blogger. Time for homework! I have grammatical analysis to do!