I'm done university! I have a BA! It's all a little bit strange!

I handed in my last paper (the last one EVER! maybe!) yesterday, and I have to say, it was a fine piece of work. It was a discourse analysis of the time when Jon Stewart went on Crossfire in 2004 and told them off. As reported by MTV.com, "Jon Stewart Bitchslaps CNN's Crossfire Show". But the kicker? The New York Times reported a few months later that CNN will cancel Crossfire and cut ties to commentator.

Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at "Crossfire" when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were "hurting America."

Mr. Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.

mefi thread | daily kos thread

Here's a bit of my transcription of the interview:

STEWART: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yeah.
STEWART: I- s- S:top. ((audience laughs)) Stop, stop, stop, stop h:urting America.
BEGALA: OK. Now- (  )
STEWART: And- and come work for us, because we, as the people-
CARLSON: How do you pay?
STEWART: The people? Not- not well.= ((audience laughs))
BEGALA: =Better than CNN, I'm sure.
STEWART: But, you can sleep at night. ((audience laughs)) See, the- the- the thing 
is, we need your- your help. You're- Right now, you're helping the politicians and
the- the- the- the- the corporations. And we're left out [there to mow our lawns.
BEGALA:  [But by beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them
when they make mistakes!
STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their (.) 
strategies. You're partisan um ((snapping fingers)) what do you call it. (.) h-hacks. 

Now, this is a Conversation Analysis transcription, so there are some codes, like these:

(.) = pause
- = word got cut off
[ = overlapping talk
= = no break between talk
: = sound is drawn out

If anything, this paper was a lot of fun. I could have done a lot more with it, really. Heck, I could do a Master's thesis on it, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there.

Anyways, I'm DONE! And Chad is coming to my house this weekend to compete in Canadian Idol!

I made a CD a few weeks back and it's been in constant rotation in our kitchen. My roommates complain that it makes them want to sit at our table and have a good cry, and then they play it again. I'll acknowledge that there's a long section of heartbreak and depression in the middle, but it brightens up towards the end!

Tracklist:
1. Gonzales - Gentle Threat
2. Asylum Street Spankers - Breathing
3. Sonya Kitchell - Train
4. The Frames - What Happens When The Heart Just Stops?
5. Liz Phair - Shatter
6. Ane Brun - Where Friend Rhymes With End
7. Aimee Mann - Wise Up
8. Derek Webb - Wrong Man
9. Counting Crows - Colorblind
10. James - Laid (acoustic version)
11. Ben Harper - She's Only Happy in the Sun
12. Sarah Slean - My Invitation
13. Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah
14. Cat Power - The Greatest
15. Sinead O'Connor - No Man's Woman
16. Jack Johnson - You're Missing Me
17. Fiona Apple - Waltz (Better Than Fine)
18. Greg Brown - Just By Myself

The next CD I make will have at least these songs on it:
Clap Your Hand Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day

We had a bit of a party last night for Agnes's birthday. :) There were more cupcakes than you can imagine (want some? please, come take some!), party hats, lots of wine and hummus and guacamole and salsa, and many entertaining people. Sam #1 (Sam #2 is my roommate, Sam #1 is Jim's) was drawing caricatures all night, so we're going to scan those in later and do something fun with them.

The other night, I went out for Ethiopian food with Kathy and her friends (yay!) and it was soooooo good. You have no idea. And we got the coffee, which is this elaborate process where they do something with it for half an hour, then burn frankincense and give you these little dainty cups about the size of an expresso cup with the strongest and BEST coffee I've ever had. I don't usually drink coffee black, but this stuff was so good, I had to. And they brought us popcorn too, which we figure is because they flavour their coffee with clarified butter and salt, and what goes better with popcorn than that? Anyways, so so good.

Alright, off to do some discourse analysis and hope this headache goes away!

Paul Ford's Followup/Distraction article has been rattling around in my head for a few months:

It is a wonder of the world, the Web. I have facts at hand by the thousands about everything from the different kinds of government to the names of the stars of television shows I've never even seen. I'm smarter, then, with my computer on, but not much deeper. I worry that my knowledge of the world is actually growing shallower, in fact, because for every idea there are a dozen articles and Wikipedia entries to read that allow me to avoid thinking for myself. And it's not like any of that is going away, nor will I be staying away from it. Just putting it aside for a few hours a day so that I can think without the world humming in my ear, sitting in front of my blue screen with gray text, or stretched in bed with my little portable keyboard, a working setup so bland it's actually inspiring.

I've been suspiciously absent from MSN lately, due to a few newfangled ideas, namely hanging out with real-life friends, going to work regularly, and actually going outside. Now that I live downtown and my neighbourhood is somewhere people actually GO, and the weather has been super-nice, I really have no excuse. There are so many trees in bloom! I've been reading novels and poetry instead of articles on the web, and journalling, and taking photographs, and sitting down and laughing with my housemates. There's something cleansing about putting a pen to paper instead of typing while staring at a bright screen in the dead of night.

Things have been good, I'm feeling happier lately. I'm feeling more vigilant lately about monitoring myself for any recurrence of depression and anxiety, but I think things are still good. It's been almost a year since going off anti-depressants, and I'm still feeling as normal as ever. There are some times when I feel a bit weird and worry that I'm regressing, but they're infrequent and brief. Paranoia, I rejoice in your absence.

I got offered another job last week, with a prof that I absolutely adore and who be incredible on my resumé should I ever apply for graduate school, and I found out today that my tax return will be enough to cover three months of living costs. Woo, extra money that I didn't figure into my budget! Sweet mammon, you will sit in my savings account and collect interest. :)

I discovered Killing the Buddha today, a collection of essays and articles about struggling with various faiths, whether they be Buddhist or Jewish, Catholic, Pentecostal, Muslim, whatever. Articles for people who love God but don't find their answers in traditional religion. Or, as they put it:

Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches, people embarrassed to be caught in the "spirituality" section of a bookstore, people both hostile and drawn to talk of God. It is for people who somehow want to be religious, who want to know what it means to know the divine, but for good reasons are not and do not. If the religious have come to own religious discourse it is because they alone have had places where religious language could be spoken and understood. Now there is a forum for the supposedly non-religious to think and talk about what religion is, is not and might be.

Jesus and I Broke Up is a decent description of the heartbreak involved in deconversion. My Holy Ghost People explores the Pentecostal tongue-speaking world from a familiar but outsider perspective. In The Temptation of Belief, a Buddhist woman describes her reaction to immersing herself in American evangelical culture. I think I'm going to be checking this site out rather regularly.

My dad just emailed this to me. We talked about it a bit over Easter, and Melissa decided that the funniest part about it is that my father looks stunningly Amish. Oh, the 70s. :)

Okay, I'm starting to like the Marten/Dora relationship a bit more now. But only because I like lists! Seriously though, Jeph, Faye is the most stellar character in the strip. Has been since her fabulous entrance. Why you gotta go breakin' her heart like that, man?

Then again, a Faye/Marten hookup would be just way too happy for QC. It's all angst, all the time. Um, and also hijinks from Pintsize, indie rock music critiques, and Hannelore's constant vacuuming.

Today is Linda's birthday! Happy birthday Linda! And yesterday was Agnes's birthday, and we had cupcakes! And it's still my mom's birthday week!

flashboy's Genesis 1 as a text adventure game post on MonkeyFilter makes me laugh a lot, and this badger animation might be required viewing to fully get it. Oh, and Genesis 1, of course, if you haven't read it so many times that it's practically memorized. Ahem. Oh, and the Two Towers Special Edition, now with badgers and mushrooms, is for extra credit.

I am tired of crime dramas. They find more and more explicit and flashy ways to show you murder and rape every night and call it entertainment.

Melissa showed Eric (first photo) how to use a camera, and Doug and Chad did us all the courtesy of posing for him:

I wish I could have been in Toronto for the newmindspace Easter Egg Hunt today, but I am visiting my family dans la campagne. There have been family visits, walks in the woods, and Cowan's ice cream and Don's Fish & Chips excursions!

I love Rob:

I guess the big difference is that Christmas celebrates hope and peace and harmony and good stuff that even us heathens can get behind. Easter's harder to explain. "Yeah, we killed Jesus, but he didn't hold it against us, and then he turned into a zombie, the Greatest Zombie of All, and so we play with rabbits and chickens and eat chocolate eggs. Any questions?"

I'm enjoying The Martyrology. Some excerpts:

bpNichol, The Martyrology, Book 1, saint reat and the four winds of the world:

saint reat this is all nothing

do you understand?

there are no myths we have not created
ripped whole from our lived long days

no legends that could not be lies

you were simply a man
suffered the pain of silence in your head

let your sounds lead you out of that dead time

were made a saint
for lack of any other way of praising you

bpNichol, The Martyrology, Book 2, book of common prayer:

let us forget them

let us put them behind us forever

let us join hands & be free

goodbye

goodbye to you saints

goodbye to you saints of pain & wisdom

holy prayer mother

holy prayer father

praise be to this to praise
in your longing
infinite

if we allow ourselves indulgences
let them be those of clarity & truth

if we wallow in self-pity
may we be cursed forever



i wanted to end it

step into my room happy
still this nameless ache upon the chest

i wanted to reach you one more time

i'm sorry
not for the life i've led
i've led this life i've
no i'm simply sorried
held in this room i'm sitting writing to you

prayers

as if you were there & heard me

This has been my favourite piece of graffiti all week. It made me laugh, and it's gotten that song stuck in my head! It's on a church on the corner of College and Bellevue. :)

There's a balcony outside my office at York, and there's a pigeon nesting an egg out there. I saw it today when she shifted positions. I'm hoping they don't clear the nest off the balcony. It's locked and no one goes out there, and I'd like to see the chick hatch and stuff.

I'm going to make a point of photographing Toronto's murals this summer. Here's a couple to start:

I went to the National Ballet Open House yesterday with Jonathan and Linda. We didn't get to see the dancers practicing because the line was really long and we got impatient, but we got to see the models of various sets, and we also talked to some seamstresses and saw where they make the costumes. They had a bunch of costumes on display, and WOW. They were so intricate! Absolutely incredible.

Saturday night, Kathy and I went to see the Toronto Symphony Orchestra play Hungarian Rhapsody (a Liszt piano concerto and a Bartok concerto). It made me want to get some recordings of Liszt. We got all dressed up, because we like to do that for the symphony. It's nice to have an excuse for that once in a while. :) The pianist for the piano concerto was absolutely incredible. Concert pianists are so much fun to watch, because they don't play with their mouth, so their facial expression is clearly visible. This pianist looked absolutely furious in the angry parts, and like she was about to cry in the sad parts. It adds so much, and shows how much she invests in the piece.

Tonight it's time for.... TRAMPOLINE HALL! Tonight's lectures are on Tony Robbins, why doing things for free is conducive to success, and Norwegian Black Metal. Last time I went (January), I was laughing so hard I could hardly breathe, mostly due to the hilarious speaking style of one Misha Glouberman. A story and mp3 of Trampoline Hall is here if you're curious. AND YOU ARE.

And the price?
Ballet Open House: free
TSO: $12
Trampoline Hall: $5

Toronto the Good, indeed! :)

So, tonight I was watching this thing on TVO by Michael Palin, where he was hiking around Bhutan, and he was introduced to this poet dude living up in the mountains. There was this super-old Buddhist guy, who apparantly wrote one of the hit Bhutanese songs, and Palin got the guy to sing for him. After the guy sings for him, he goes, "That was really good! I could sing a song for you about lumberjacks, but I don't think you'd like it very much." But the guy insists, so he sings "I cut down trees. I eat my lunch, I go to the lavatory. On Wednesdays I go shoppin', and have buttered scones for tea!" Oh, dear Michael Palin, you who hike the Himalayas and sing to old men about cross-dressing lumberjacks.

Last night, some friends and I went to the Cinéfranco film fest and saw Lila dit ça (Lila Says). I wish I could find a script somewhere, there were some quotable lines. There was a lot of sexual talk in the movie, and not much actual sex. Lots of interplay between Lila's power to drive all the boys crazy with lust simply by being open about her sexuality, and their varying reactions (love, hatred, violence). Interesting.

Today I bought sweet potatoes, a big bag of pears, six sweet oranges, chocolate wafer things, red miso soup with tofu, big bag of grapes, broccoli, and coconut buns. The grand total? $8.57. Who, deep down in her cheap Dutch heart, absolutely loves Chinatown? Oh! Oh, it's me! Hey Mom, remember when I told you that when I moved out I was going to live on Kraft Dinner and Cool Whip? Pretty good trick, eh?

Also: Who's considering going vegetarian for the summer because she loves animals meat is expensive? Oh! Oh, it's me!

Engrish instructions for Red Miso Soup:

From the selection of raw meterials to remain original deliciousness of flavors, sterilized under hygienic food processing technology. It gives a good taste and can be used easily at all the time. Directions: Empty the contents of one can of Red Miso Soup into a bowl, heat to simmer and serve.

Oh, and the French list of ingredients is PASTED OVER the Nutrition Information. Beautiful!

Well, that'll be the end of Charlie photos. She's gone. The Other Roommate took her away. I have no idea if she'll be back, but I suspect not. I suspect she's been given away. The Other Roommate didn't bother telling us, just asked us where Charlie was, put her in a cat carrier, and that was it. Argh.

And it was just the other day that Charlie was actually IN the kitchen, even putting her paws up on my shelf and sniffing my spice collection! Such bravery from such a timid kitty! We had made such progress, Charlie and I. She actually let boys pet her! She stuck around when my friends came over! She would playfight with me without using her claws! She cuddled with me UNDER THE COVERS! I'm going to miss that crazy little thing, random hissing and all.

Now this fine old story of Dutch courage can be told to you by Lie Bot, of Achewood fame! Speaking of Achewood, yesterday I bought this shirt in celebration of the Great Outdoor Fight!

CAKE PONY: WARNING: Cake Pony is a Free Site for Mares and Stallions only!
Disclaimer: It is assumed that if you enter this site you are 12 months or older (depending on what the legal age is for viewing adult material as required by your local laws) and are not offended by the graphic depiction of cakes and ponies contained in this site or contained in sites to which this site is linked. If you are not of legal age as defined by your community, if you have strict community standards, or if you feel that any material in this site may offend you, please, you must leave now. But if you like FILLIES WHO ARE BARELY FOALS, take a look inside.

TODAY IS MY LAST DAY OF UNIVERSITY CLASSES! THE VERY LAST DAY! EVER! I THINK!

I'm addressing this only because it came up in the comments on my last post.

Can atheists be moral? Why the hell should they? If there's no God, what's to stop us from raping and pillaging and eating babies?

Well, frankly, babies just don't taste that good. But seriously, I haven't found this to be a problem. I'll spin it around for you, though: if your only reason not to rape, pillage, and cannibalize is that there's a big scary God who's going to throw down the axe and banish you to hell forever... is that good? That's your only reason? I have my own reasons for being good. I would hope that you have your own, and that your impulses towards the good are not completely driven by fear. I would hope that you are kind to me not JUST because Jesus said you have to be. I suspect that you would have been kind even if you lived before Jesus, even if *gasp* you had grown up without the Christian narrative. I suspect that you DO have your own reasons, but have located these impulses within the Christian narrative and thus understand them that way. That's fine! But the fact that I no longer follow that narrative does not mean that I no longer have those impulses. This is like saying that the sole reason that you don't stab people in the mall is because it's against the law. This is to suggest that Christians have a monopoly on kindness, on meaning, on reasons to get up in the morning, on anything good in the world. Take a look around you. There are billions of non-Christians in the world, and we have the same average of great people and jerks as you do. Surprise!

I haven't studied the long LONG debates on this, but if you want to, I'll direct you here:

Infidels Library: Atheism and Morality

This index links to 9 questions relevant to the relationship between morality and atheism:

(1) On average, are atheists as moral as theists?
(2) On naturalism, why do we have particular moral sentiments or dispositions?
(3) Does atheism entail a certain view on specific moral questions?
(4) How should atheists live?
(5) Why should atheists be moral?
(6) Without God, how do we determine what's right and wrong?
(7) Without God, what grounds right and wrong?
(8) On naturalism, are we free and morally responsible for our actions?
(9) Can life have meaning without God?

As far as the last question goes, I do have a short answer for that. Life doesn't have meaning. And that's okay. What's The Meaning of eating ice-cream? Of falling in love? Of volunteering? Of tickling five-year-olds? Of sitting on the grass in the summer with bare feet with the sun shining down? Of playing tricks on your parents and making them laugh? There is no Grand Meaning to these things. They are what they are, and I enjoy them, and that's how I approach life.

I had a conversation last week that set me off thinking about death, so I'm going to blog a few thoughts on it. Conversation:

What's scary?
Well, not existing.
Why?
What do you mean?
What's scary about it?
It's just... I don't know, isn't that a really basic biological thing to be scared of? You seriously don't find it scary?
No.
Really?
It's never seemed scary. It's just the way it is.

Of course it's scary. At least, it's scary when applied to me. I don't like the idea of stopping, of never knowing what will happen in the world, of not learning any new music, never reading another book. I have trouble comprehending it. I don't know how to think about a world in which I don't exist.

One of my favourite profs in bible college once said, "Those who think we die like dogs have never really thought about it." I liked him at the time and still thought that was an incredibly arrogant thing to say. Now that I do think that we die "like dogs" (with no afterlife), it irks me even more. Of course I have thought about it. It's not an unreasonable conclusion to come to.

At my uncle's funeral, I sat with my sister and cousin, both of whom are not Christian, and listened to my former pastor tell us that we are blessed because we do not mourn like those who have no hope. This thought is drawn from 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (NIV): "Brothers*, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men*, who have no hope." This thought, meant to comfort, only served to alienate us from the rest of our family, because we were the ones "with no hope." The comparison bothers me. Why is it so important in a funeral to affirm that Christians do not mourn like those other pitiful people who don't believe as they do? Why the need to explicitly say, "This sucks, but at least we're not like you"? Is the funeral service not a space for us to mourn too?

That thought is not even really that helpful for Christians.

And poor C. quotes to me, 'Do not mourn like those that have no hope.' It astonishes me, the way we are invited to apply to ourselves words so obviously addressed to our betters. What St. Paul says can comfort only those who love God better than the dead, and the dead better than themselves. If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. (C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed)

This is an important point. When my uncle died, I believe that he simply stopped. He is not there anymore, not any part of him, and this way of thinking requires me to actually mourn it. I can't mask it with thoughts that I'll see him again or that he's happy now or that he's better off, because he's not, he's just done. Not only that, he's not in hell. Depression does not affect him anymore.

While I am disturbed at the thought of dying, I don't feel like an afterlife is any more comforting. I don't know what people think lives on. The idea of 'spirit' or 'soul' is really sketchy. I know enough about brain disorders and injuries to know that a lot of what we consider personality is packed into your brain matter. When you have a stroke, that stuff is damaged and your personality can change. What happens when your brain decomposes altogether?

I've heard some people suggest that it's not your personality that lives on, but if it's not your personality, then as far as I'm concerned, it's not you. It makes no sense to me to find comfort in the idea that the part of my uncle that wasn't his body and wasn't his personality lives on. I don't know that part of him. I don't even know what that is. In a practical sense, there's no difference between saying that and saying that he is just dead and there is nothing more to him.

There is another idea, which is that we continue to have some sort of awareness, but no interaction. I think that would be ultimately very depressing. What could be more lonely than to be ever-observing the world but never a part of it?

In the end, I think we do "die like dogs." This thought does not disturb us when applied to flies or squirrels or plants. It only becomes disturbing when applied to humans, because it taps into our fear of death. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that "He [God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men*," but I'm not sure that it's eternity so much as self-awareness. We are introspective, and since we think of the world with ourselves as the main character, it's disturbing to imagine the world going on without us. We solve this by inventing ways that we can live on. It's the only way our personal narrative makes any sense.

The secret fear is that there is no overarching narrative. We live and die and most of those who have lived are totally forgotten, and that is okay, just like it is okay for cats and badgers and trees. Scary, eh?

*That's right. The bible is written by, to, and about men. But you already know that rant, right?