"Grieving"

AUGH.

OK. Look. Most of the time I just roll my eyes at the psychology-isms that creep into Christian vocabulary, but I heard someone yesterday talking about "grieving the end of your twenties" and I just about lost it. Utter, utter crap.

Lent, Day I am a terrible blogger!

Seriously, how Type A do you have to be to blog EVERY. SINGLE. DAY? Apparently a whole lot more Type A than I am. Tomorrow I'll start posting the next academic thingo, on the inerrancy debate. It's another one for a class, so I'll break it up into pieces again.

I got the sweetest letter in the mail from one of my Aussie besties last weekend, which was so great. It's really made me grateful for the fact that the Lord gave me a whole pack of fabulous friends in Oz when I went down there the first time just to visit one person. An incalculable blessing, really. I can't wait to be able to go back -- wish I could go every year but every two seems like a pretty good balance, since, so far, in the "between" years, I have Aussie guests staying at Chez Laura! Anyway, the letter was a whopper, long and chatty and newsy, with photos enclosed and a lovely piece of bona fide 3-year-old artwork. Aren't you jealous? Everyone wants cool letters from their overseas friends!

It was a bit of a crap weekend, to be honest -- or at least a slightly roller-coaster weekend: fun times with friends intermingled with a lot of OUCH. Plus, I spent almost four hours sitting in a coffee shop on Saturday getting absolutely nothing accomplished on the aforementioned paper. Ooh, but! Highlight! There's a newish restaurant in Louisville called Hammerheads, and anyone nearby needs to go ASAP. It's ridiculously good. Amazing. It's a total dive -- low ceilings, crusty old tables and chairs, zero ambiance -- with the most delicious food, focused on smoked meat, in a kind of gastropub way. Major yum.

In other news, I'm super excited to be reading through Russ Moore's new book, Tempted and Tried (read excerpts here and here), with a good friend. We're getting together to talk about it this week and I am stoked about it. Dr. Moore is the VP of Southern Seminary, as well as being one of the sharpest, most relatable, most theologically incisive dudes alive and writing at the moment. If you don't subscribe to his weekly podcast, The Cross and the Jukebox, you are missing out. Tempted and Tried looks to be a ripping read as well as a major encouragement.

All righty, that's all I've got. Peace out.

Lent, Day 24: Fri-ee-day, Fri-ee-day!

Stuff that I liked this week:


Rebecca Black takes over FunnyOrDie!

Don Miller reviews Love Wins (epic).

A new episode of The Cross and the Jukebox.

This article by one of my pastors: See What Radiohead Sees.

36 Hours in Louisville, Ky. on the New York Times website. Don't worry. No paywall on this one.

Lent, Day 20: IT SNOWED YESTERDAY YOU GUYS

WASN'T THAT RIDICULOUS?

(At this point, you're probably saying to yourself, "Now she's just posting so she can say she's posted something." And you'd be right.)

So also yesterday, in addition to the SNOW WHAT NO WAY THAT WAS STUPID, I came across the funniest re-telling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight EVER (seriously, I was wiping tears and doing that thing where you go back and read bits of it aloud... to yourself... alone... in your living roo-- wait, that's just me, then?), and briefly considered linking to it but it was so crammed with bad language (the whole site was, too; this wasn't just a one-off and although I have a relatively high tolerance for language in humorous settings it was about 1000% too much) that I decided against it. But if you're ever in the mood for a Google adventure, you will know it by its trail of F-bombs and its ABSOLUTELY DEAD-ON assessment of Sir Gawain and basically the entire King Arthur mythos. It's like Kanye and Mitch Hedberg chillin' in their dorm room, getting blazed and ranting about their Brit Lit syllabus.

Yeah, that's about enough.

Lent, Day 17? Maybe? Anyway: FOOTBALL

I am RIGHT NOW watching the first Aussie Rules football game of the season. WOOOOOO!

Basketball will always be first in my heart when it comes to sports, but Aussie Rules is SO MUCH FUN I can't even begin to describe it. I'm a total convert. Familiarize yourself with footy here, check out the official site here, learn all about my team here, and watch games here.

Lent, Day WHATEVER IT IS NOW: Oh, Honestly.

Why do I always think I'll have LOADS of time and brain power to work on the blog while I'm on vacation? You'd think that after twenty-whatever years of writing rubbish in my spare time, I'd have learned that vacation = no desire to think any thoughts beyond, "Ooh! I wonder if I can watch reruns of America's Next Top Model online somewhere while I drink my third cup of tea?" (Answer: obviously.)

Anyway, I will get back to that Very Serious Topic I started the other day or week, soon. Sometime before Lent is over. In the meantime, please visit Angus and nag him to post some more (football season is starting, Angus, and your reading public DEMANDS a really dishy footy/gossip post), or get out some tissues and read this touching post about Dave Brubeck, or go vote in the Fug Madness Sweet Sixteen, or something. Maybe tomorrow I'll have... oh, you know what, never mind. I'll be back tomorrow with some other nonsense.

Lent, Day 15: Back From The Road Trip

Today in the car on my way back from seeing the fam in Indianapolis, I heard "The Cave" by Mumford & Sons, and then got home to find this in my blog reader. Appropriate.

Lent, Day 13: In Which I Narrowly Slide In Before The Deadline

Whew, this blogging every day thing is a trip, man. Just one day of, you know, doing stuff outside of my house with people and the whole thing almost collapses!

Rather than confuse you with some hastily-written nonsense about that thing I told you I was going to write about and still totally am I swear, I will just send you to this comic. You can thank me later. (Caution: occasional salty language ahead.) (Also, I just tried to spell "cautioin" and "occasioinal" but those are not words.)

A Weird Culture Thing

I know, that's probably the most descriptive title ever, right?  I was bumming around a friend-of-a-friend's blog yesterday and came across something that really got my blood pressure pumping.  The guy happens to be Australian, and he released the freakin' hounds on a famous American preacher for what was, to my mind, a series of totally boring and ordinary Facebook posts talking about his schedule, family life, marriage, etc.  But in thinking about it last night I remembered that there's a weird culture thing (there's that brilliant phrase again) between Americans and Aussies that we often don't recognize and that very often causes problems between us.

What is this Weird Culture Thing?  I'm so glad you asked.  (Attention: broad cultural stereotypes ahead.)

Americans are, very generally, a positive people -- I'm thinking of that sort of midwestern, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, self-reliant, I'll get by, buck up attitude.  I mean, there's a whole sub-genre of American folk/popular music dedicated to getting people to cheer up and have a positive outlook on life ("Smile, Darn Ya, Smile" "Put on a Happy Face" "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile," "The Sunny Side of the Street," etc.) -- much of which was written during the Great Depression, a period with an incalculable impact on the collective American psyche.  I like this attitude, generally; I think it shows resilience and optimism.  But there's a dark side to it as well, what we might call the Joel Osteen or Pollyanna side, that closes its eyes to the impending storm and brags about how wonderful life is.

Aussies, in my experience, often don't get that, for most Americans, this positivity is a totally natural cultural thing, ingrained in us since infancy, not a boastful put-on, not a fake-out, not an effort to belittle anyone else.  Because, generally, in my observation, Aussies are humble, hard-working people who just want to give everyone a fair shot, get on with it, and not call attention to themselves.  So they see what we think of as cheerfulness and positivity -- or just stating facts -- and read it as Pollyanna-ishness or bragging or putting others down, and feel the need to address it (just like we would want to address something we saw as major arrogance)

But unfortunately, the kind of forthrightness that your average Aussie values, unmixed with flattery, is going to come across to your average American as presumptuous and rude instead of like a much-needed dose of reality. So that gets our defenses up, and we write you off as a mean old crank, and then you write us off as xenophobic and isolationist, and then our suspicions are confirmed that Americans are the only nice people in the world (and we value "nice" a LOT), and then your suspicions are confirmed that Americans don't understand or care about anyone but themselves, and then...

See?  A Weird Culture Thing.

What's Wrong With The World?

G.K. Chesterton, when the Times posed this question to him, famously responded, "I am."

Fortunately for us, he didn't stop there.  He wrote a collection of short essays on a variety of topics, all addressing that question in one way or another.  Check it out and add to your collection.

No, I'm Not a Traditionalist.

It ticks me off that people refuse to see the difference between Traditionalism and Biblical worldview.  I kind of get it when we're talking about non-Christian folks.  But they're not where the trouble lies.

The trouble is, we haven't been bothered to separate the two.  We've been content to conflate the teachings of Scripture with Traditionalism, which is why people still think, among other things, that Christians hate women.  Um, hello?  Remember that guy Jesus chillin' with all the ladies, from the rich patroness to the prostitute?  Remember how in the Gospels the eejits who don't get it are a bunch of dudes, and the clever interlocutor, some of the few left at the cross, the one who gets to the tomb first, are women?

We're ill-equipped to encounter that nonsense.  We can't discern the absurd and wicked elements of Traditionalism because we think it's what we believe.  We've been hornswoggled by our own equivocation.

Traditionalism sucks.  Traditionalism sucks because it's an ideology that controls, that masters.  But tradition, like most ideas, is an all right servant.  Scorn for the past isn't my thing.  It isn't God's thing.  But idealizing the past, idolizing the past, that will get you nothing but 40 years of wandering in the desert while you pine for the good ol' days in Egypt, or 1955, or the Reagan years, or whatever.

We do it with politics too, we let some movement or institution or organization tell us what we believe, or at least what we can believe publicly.  Oh, you're just like us because of whatever.  Jump on board the tea party express, or the hope and change bandwagon.  Christianity is a tool that political parties can wield.  Right?

Knock it off.  The Gospel is not a talking point to be hammered on, a political agenda, a social reconstruction plan.  It's nothing to be co-opted and subsumed by a larger, another ideology.  There is no larger, no other ideology for the Christian.

Fiction.

I haven't written fiction in over a year, maybe closer to two.  I need to start again -- the observational/analytical stuff I do here (rarely... sorry about that) really cranks one part of my brain, but the creativity/fiction section of my brain seems pretty atrophied at the moment.  Hm. What to do, what to do?

Sometimes I Feel Like I Need A Vacation

From serious posts.

My pal Jamie Barnes is currently on his way back from Waco, where he was at a (by all accounts pretty sketchy) conference.  He just tweeted that he feels like he never goes through the security line quickly enough, and I replied that, if you travel often enough, you'll soon have the satisfaction of looking down on all the noobs who don't realize that they can't bring their 3 full-size bottles of shampoo in their carry-on bag; and what's more fun than derision?  I mean really!

And that got me thinking of all the funny security-line and airport stories I've amassed over the years since I started traveling.

A recent favorite, in the Sydney airport on my way home from this last trip to Australia: a full-grown woman had a nuclear-attack-siren-level temper tantrum upon being asked to do the normal stuff you have to do in the security line.  Like, you know, wait your turn.  She was trying to snatch her bag and purse off the belt and shove through the line -- and she actually did cut in front of several of us, muttering that she didn't have time for this nonsense.  The security screeners, bless 'em, were just cracking up behind their hands as she screeched, "I want to speak to a manager!  This is absolutely unbelievable!  I have a plane to catch!  You can't make me wait here!  I'm in a hurry!  Give me my things back!"

There are really only a few things you need to know when traveling, most of them variations of stuff you learned in kindergarten.  Wait your turn.  Use your manners.  Read the directions. 

Any funny or horrible stories from your travels, dear readers?

At Least It Made Me Appreciate My Students...

After going-on three years of teaching at a classical Christian school, I'm so accustomed to polite, well-trained kids that I don't know what to do anymore when faced with rude or untrained ones. 

A girl of around ten ran up to our table this afternoon (at the J-town Gaslight festival where my school has a booth), pointed at the bowl full of beads, and demanded, "What are THOSE?"  When I told her she and her friend could make bead bracelets, she ran off without another word.  No "excuse me," no "thank you," no "Oh, let me go ask my mom if it's ok," nothing.

Here's the thing: I don't think the girl was trying to be rude.  It just seemed like she'd never been taught how to talk to adults.

Why do people not think they have the responsibility to teach their kids basic manners?  How is your kid going to learn manners if you don't teach them?  The reason you teach kids to say "please" and "thank you" and "pardon me" and "oops, sorry" and all that is not so you can show off what a good parent you are, nor is it about forcing your rambunctious little darling to become a boring Stepford child who smiles and says, "Yes, ma'am" on command.  You teach manners to children so they can get along in the real world, both as they grow up and when they're adults.

/rant

Huh.

Sorry about that whole "accidental blog sabbatical" thing.  I didn't mean to ditch y'all, and I don't even have a good excuse this time (computer meltdown, insane busyness, lack of internet, etc. -- nope, none of that).  I just didn't have anything to say.  That's a symptom/side benefit of giving up Facebook for Lent, which I'll tell y'all about tomorrow.

I have a couple posts in the hopper, and then I'm going to try to get back in a routine.

Also, it's currently like 85 degrees in my condo, so if any of this doesn't make sense, blame it on the fact that I'm being slowly steamed to death.

Classroom Quotes From The Last Few Days

David: "He took a nap."
Me: "If by 'took a nap' you mean 'went crazy and killed himself,' then yes."
David: "That's exactly what I meant."

Hannah: "They tried to make me go to 'your mom' joke rehab, but I said, 'No, your mom, no.'"


Aaron: "Miss Roberts, does your dad have kids?"

Baylee: "That's not an angel, that's a llama."

Hannah Beth: "I found a fish with a transparent head."
Me: "... And that's going in the quotes."

Hey, Techie Peeps,

Is there any way to find out WHO follows me on Google reader?  I know how many people there are (when you unsubscribe it tells you how many) but I'm dying to know who.  There must be some way.  Or is this the final frontier of anonymity in our social-networking Brave New World?

You Might Have Noticed...

... that my archives just grew by about 1000%. 

I imported all the material (with a few exceptions -- the food stuff and a few irrelevancies and housekeeping details) from It's A Blog over here to A Wilderness Life.  It's A Blog's days are numbered... it's the end of an era, y'all.  I blogged there for almost four years!

If you're new (or newish), have a dig around the old material if you like.  It'll be easier to search once I get my tags all set up.

So, About That.

Yeah, turns out that a site I visited on Monday had been attacked by some lovely phishing scam/spambot folks who implanted a malicious code... in the... something something... gibberish...

Right.  My "Oh yes I shall blog everyday because I live in Perfect World la la la" has gone 100% out the window.  How about we amend that to something along the lines of "my Perfect World passport having been revoked, I shall blog whenever my internet works, my computer is not infected with malicious spybots (which sound WAY cooler than they actually are), and I have some brain capacity."  Sound good?

This section is subtitled "Stuff I Would Ordinarily Put As Status Updates If I Hadn't Given Up Facebook For Lent."

What popular dog breed is named after a Canadian peninsula?  Attention Cash Cab participants: "Golden Retriever" is not a Canadian peninsula.  But LABRADOR IS.

Can winter please be over?  Please?  Now?  Like right now?

I got to think about beautiful words, haiku, and the Music of the Spheres this morning.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I love my job.

Speaking of music, it occurred to me last night that listening to Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" is like watching a math teacher do long division.  Precise.  Boring.

Speaking of record players, should I get a record player?  I am really into analog right now.

So yeah, winter.  Begone, please?  Pretty please?

OK.  That's about all.

A Mixed Bag of Randomness

Bit of randomness #1: I rarely watch The Simpsons, but I happened to be home when this week's episode ran. It was my favorite kind of Simpsons' episode, made up of a handful of mini stories that the characters tell each other. While The Simpsons' sharp political critique has been blunted of late, this episode leveled some mid-range missiles at public education, showing the brilliant Maggie's efforts at daycare creativity being thwarted and suppressed by a mediocrity-obsessed headmaster who knocks over her block sculptures and ruthlessly enforces conformity. Good stuff.

Bit of randomness #2: Chowhound, a foodie-type message board that is priceless for seeking out info and advice about everything food-related -- grilling burgers, sourcing uni, pairing wine, finding a great Lebanese restaurant in Sydney, using an immersion blender -- you name it, you can find it on Chowhound. One of the recent topics asked what typically "foodie" foods we just will not eat. Here's what I came up with (partially):

Pate and/or liver mousses and/or meat-based terrines
Sea urchin
Raw bivalves in general
Offal (except maybe sweetbreads. MAYBE)
Raw seafood in general
Pork belly (except in bacony form)
Caviar
Blue cheese
Washed-rind cheese
Mushrooms, unless chopped so finely that I can't detect them

Now, dear friends and sharp-eyed readers will recognize a common theme here: texture! 95% of the time, if I dislike a food, it's not the flavor that puts me off, but the texture! Anybody else have texture "issues"?

Bit of randomness #3: In the last few months, I've watched a half-dozen French movies (yay, Netflix!). I couldn't tell you what any one of them was about, but I can tell you that I liked them all. What is it that is just so satisfying about French cinema? Languid, unhurried pace? A decided lack of the overwrought melodrama that pervades even the best American movies? The deliberate avoidance of the obvious? Yeah, it's probably all that, but the verdict is that French movies are teh awesome.

Bit of randomness #4: I am at last getting around to that blasted no-knead bread everyone was going on about all over the interwebz last year. I'm not what you'd call a "joiner" with the latest fads, and besides, I was pretty sure you needed a big covered enamel cast-iron pot with a lid that doesn't have a plastic handle on it, in which to bake the bread, and I was just not willing to go out and buy one. I'd love one. I'll probably get one eventually. But just so I can bake one kind of bread? Probably not.

Bit of randomness #5: Yay! School! As much as I am enjoying my summer (and I am!), I'm really feeling ready to get back in the groove of teaching. I function much better with a schedule, and I struggle to finish tasks when I have days and weeks of unscheduled time to kick around in -- I can always excuse my laziness with, "Oh, I can just do it tomorrow, right?" Strangely, when I have more to do, I can get more done at home. Hm, maybe I should get started with lesson plans? That's an idea.