The original. What else is there to say?

The CPDRC ( Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines) rendition of Thriller went viral on the web. It was launched  in April 2007 and referenced over 35 million times by November 2009 (Wiki).

Which was later referenced in this *brilliant* all peeps tribute from the Washington Post Peeps Show II in 2007. This is my favorite cultural reference of all time.

Finally, a recent find that brings all facets of my life together, is this rendition on wheels by Les Miss’iles.

The question “how is life?” has an entirely different connotation and meaning than the inquisition “how are you doing?” or “how are you today?”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I....

It is my belief that the former has taken on a role, more comfortably used between two long lasted friends and that the latter usually prefaces a daily, brief encounter with an individual with whom we rarely have open dialogue with or are just being friendly toward.

It is no surprise to me that “how are you?” has been the phrase which we root our interests to others because it is reflective of the culture that we live in. Too frequently, someone will answer the question by simply saying “I’m fine, you?” Showing quick and efficient response time and care, but no real connection with the individual asking the question. Sit down with someone and ask them “how is life?” and I am positive the conversation will be one of the most exciting and rewarding discussions you will ever have.

Often times we have made excuses for ourselves to have only few meaningful relationships in our busy lives and we believe that by putting time and effort into anything that doesn’t concern ourselves is too much of an effort incentivized by too little of a return on the investment.

Today’s interconnected world of technology, as stated by one of my undergraduate professors, “allows businesses to thrive and compete globally”. Technology is obviously an amazing aspect of the culture we live in and an aspect that is worth dissecting.

Not being restricted to business interactions, technology has expanded to dominate human ‘socializing’ as well. Twitter, Facebook, and online social networking sites boast millions of users, and are growing faster every day. But these interactions seem to have strained the unique human element of communication. I use the term strained in an ambiguous manner. For one, these tools perform many positive functions that allow person to person interaction, a good thing. For example, Facebook allows us to re-connect with old high school friends, Skype enables us to see the person we are talking with, and twitter enables millions of people to stay in the loop with up to the minute tweets. So, in this regard, technology has accomplished a world of good for the advancement of human interaction

But the uniqueness that humans possess-above all other creation- is the ability to communicate in our own unique manner. By nature, human beings are social animals, and creatures that require interaction to help shape their perception of the world around them. Remember the old nature v nurture argument? It is still true today as it was when you first heard it in your high school science class.

We need to realize that our purpose is to reclaim our community and dismiss the era of individualism. Individualism, in a sense that a person can sit at their house; tweet, send Facebook messages, and make a couple forum posts, and still consider themselves apart of the community which the rest of us live in; the human community.

This is in no regard meaning to dismiss the entrepreneurial spirit of innovation or technological advances, but that we should realize the negative aspects and potential of becoming apathetic toward human to human interaction.

It should be-then- no surprise that humans rarely interact on a deeper level than the question “How are you today?”

In the second year of my Arts degree, I did a unit on postmodernism. I didn’t understand a word of the theory at the time, but one of the books from that course continues to resonate with me for its novelty and its ingenuity is Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler”. Calvino defies everything we expect of a novel even to the point of lead the reader to become completely uncertain as to which novel is actually being read.

As a teacher, I love the opening of this novel because it shows students that the second person point of view can be used in a sophisticated way without falling into the “Choose Your Own Adventure” of their childhood.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dis­pel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always, on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—”I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.

Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your, back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.

Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at, a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse’s mane, or maybe tied to the horse’s ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for read­ing; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.

Well what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion, on two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don’t stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.

Adjust the light so you won’t strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you’re absorbed in reading there will be no budging you. Make sure the page isn’t in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn’t too strong, doesn’t glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.

It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on prin­ciple, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what to­morrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclu­sion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappoint­ment isn’t serious.

So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a win­ter’s night a traveler had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn’t published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you.

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,

the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,

the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,

the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,

the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,

the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,

the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

Low income workers, specifically those employed at minimum wage jobs, rarely have control over the time or day that they are required to work.

As opposed to those who have a college degree, individuals who seek employment at a local fast food place or sub shop, are at the mercy of the store manager. After all, working on Saturday afternoon and Sunday night, are not the ideal times that someone wants to work.

Case in point.

As a Catholic, my faith instructs me that I honor the Lord by resting on Sunday. During my entire life, I may have worked on a Sunday only once or twice. And these were circumstances when it was an absolute necessity.

Yesterday, I received a phone call around noon. The caller was a co-worker at Jimmy Johns and the 28^th street store was apparently short staffed. Seeing how I have a 5 year reunion coming up and definitely could use the extra cash, I obliged.

But here’s the catch. The shift was scheduled between 4 and 9 o’clock. This was the absolute worst time to work because I attend weekly mass at St Andrews Cathedral at 6:00pm.

So, I had a choice; to worship? Or to work?

Then why attend mass?

As a question that- I believe- rarely gets asked (as I assume that over 90% of people who are confronted with this situation, would choose the obvious answer) I had to take a moment before I answered.

Of course, I ended up saying yes, but I have to admit I felt very guilty.

Choosing to increase my monetary value over worshipping God has left an indelible mark on me. The minute I knew I was choosing labor over love, was the minute I knew I made the wrong decision.

But stepping back for a moment, I think the fact that I am writing about this is a very fitting snapshot of the present state of our society.

On one hand, businesses are forcing individuals to choose between feeding their families and their faith. But on the other hand, didn’t these individuals allow themselves to be put in this situation by not pursuing a job that has a typical 9-5 shift?

I understand there are uncontrollable circumstances that some people simply cannot overcome. When talking to progressives, you will hear about economic injustice, racism, sexism, and discrimination as the reasons why minorities are left behind.

There is of course some truth to this, but isn’t everything in life a choice? (Read this if you dont agree with that statement) I believe it is. For those who are reading this, you have made a conscious effort to make the most of what you have. Obviously, you have access to the internet, a computer, and I assume a house to live in. So who is to blame?

Don’t they choose not to try hard at school? Didn’t they choose not to have ambition? In essence, they did choose when they work.

So, should we feel compassion for those minimum wage employees? Should we even care that they have to work these types of inconvenient hours?

I worked hard in grade school, high school, and college to maintain a strong GPA and pursue a life that I think would be rewarding. Why am I the victim? Why is it that those who have made the most of their situation are looked down upon? And why is it that the minorities who have become the underbelly of society-are always the ones demanding justice for their so called “discrimination”?

I certainly understand that I am called to lighten the load of the downtrodden- seeing how  there will always be poor people- but not even Jesus fed the thousands on the mountain with fish and bread everyday!

There was a reciprocity element that required everyone to follow and participate with the Lord before they could enter the Kingdom.

People need to realize the social contract of the American government is not a one way street. It requires action, commitment, and responsibility. Not inaction, excuses, and the expectation of more free entitlements.

Below is a interesting quote from physicist Steven Weinberg on the religious liberals of our day.  Upon reading I can’t help but wonder if an atheist pre-dating the 20th century would have ever even considered this sort of thing…

Religious liberals are in one sense even farther in spirit from scientists than are fundamentalists and other religious conservatives. At least the conservatives, like the scientists, tell you that they believe in what they believe because it is true, rather than because it makes them good or happy. Many religious liberals today seem to think that different people can believe in different mutually exclusive things without any of them being wrong, as long as their beliefs “work for them.” This one believes in reincarnation, that one in heaven and hell; a third believes in the extinction of the soul at death, but no one can be said to be wrong as long as everyone gets a satisfying spiritual rush from what they believe. To borrow a phrase from Susan Sontag, we are surrounded by “piety without content.”

Wolfgang Pauli was once asked whether he thought that a particularly ill-conceived physics paper was wrong. He replied that such a description would be too kind–the paper was not even wrong. I happen to think that the religious conservatives are wrong in what they believe, but at least they have not forgotten what it means really to believe something. The religious liberals seem to me to be not even wrong.

A Brief History of Everything

I just completed, finally, A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilbur. This book is so long and there’s so much information to process its almost numbing. It really needs to be read more than once but that ain’t going to happen for awhile.

Ken Wilbur is popular in the ‘think tank’ area of spiritual, New Age, progressive and many religious circles, usually not pro-Christian in any way. Wilbur is a historian/philosopher who writes and comments on human psychological development, world culture and religious evolution.

I completed it more out of curiosity since so many notable people and a few pastors(!) have reference his work. I figured I should have some familiarity with it for some reason. He appears very pro feminist in his outlook and the statement that puzzled me the most was his claim that the idea of God as Father was limiting. He’s pretty good with supporting evidence for his views but this one he wasn’t in my opinion. A worthy but long read.

I’ve been thinking a bit more about how binaries function in societies. I’m especially interested in the way our misguided faith in the notion of opposites combines with the many rhetorical claims with which we’re bombarded to effectively limit our choices when faced with a decision.

Consumer culture is essentially built on this error. Consider, for example, the many kinds of television available on the American market at the moment. We agonize over whether we should buy an HDTV, and whether the difference between 720p and 1080p is really sufficient to warrant spending hundreds of dollars more for the greater resolution of the 1080p set. It doesn’t even occur to most of us that we can choose not to own a television.

Further examples surround us in dizzying proliferation. Given our acculturation to accepting the choices offered us, it’s little wonder that the two-party political system enjoys such strength in the US. Most citizens, while they may be aware of other parties, don’t really see those parties as viable options–not because third parties’ political platforms are so unreasonable or radical (though some are) but because any third party’s first hurdle is to overcome decades of conditioning of the American psyche. And that conditioning is profound.

The ideas of Postmodernism could be useful to people in general (and not just to artists and academics) if the power of its questioning stance were fully applied to more mundane decision making. It isn’t just that we ought to beware of false binaries, but that we ought to be questioning the terms of the myriad choices we face in our daily lives.

As in martial conflict, when the fighter who is able to dictate the style and pace of the encounter is almost certain to emerge victorious, so also the rhetor who is able to define the options in a decision-making forum establishes an enormous advantage.

Both as rhetors ourselves and as those toward whom rhetorical claims are made, the most powerful tactic we can employ is to refuse to accept the terms of the decision until we have determined that all–or at least most–of the options are truly clear to us.

This is a reply to comment by Mr. Alex Reynolds in a previous blog entry explaining my position as a fan of the Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek. The introduction to the said blog entry was, of course, something of a joke, a play on the postmodernist commonplace of how no narrative can be privileged to explain the complexity of life and history anymore. Thus the juxtaposition of Žižek’s cultural theory and Maria Ozawa’s pornographic videography. Consequently, an excess meaning can be traced in the demonstration of how in this era of late capitalism what has been described as the condition of postmodernity inaugurates a multiplicity of (and often contradictory) identities.

Coming from a university with a culture of student activism, I join immersions in impoverished communities, protest actions on various issues, and espouse a “nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented culture” in the Maoist mold. But then as a student of Literature in the Humanities Department, I study The Illiad, Oedipus Rex and other artifacts of Western “high culture” in the classroom. But then I also keep myself updated on the latest Korean pop songs from my classmates and friends and listen to these songs while reading on Said or the latest by Žižek in the dormitory. And in facebook, I got hit for watching the latest Harry Potter without reading the book version first.

Seriously though, I don’t think it would be fruitful to dismiss Derrida, Lacan, Žižek, and much of Post-Saussurean theory on the premise that the language these theorists use in expounding their texts lack clarity. The aim of their theoretical projects is precisely to demonstrate that what we perceive as “natural,” “obvious,” and “commonsensical” are ideologically constructed. Common sense, as Catherine Belsey notes in her book Critical Practice (London: Methuen, 1980), is “rooted in a specific historical situation and operating in conjunction with a particular social formation”[1] and is thus “produced in a specific society by ways in which that society talks and thinks about itself and its experience.”[2] And since “Common sense appears obvious because it is inscribed in the language we speak,”[3] a critique of ideology necessitates a reappraisal of the concept of language as “merely the medium in which autonomous individuals transmit messages to each other about an independently constituted world of things… transparency of language is an illusion.”[4] Belsey explains:

Partly as a consequence of this theory, the language used by its practitioners is usually far from transparent. The effect of this is to alert the reader to the opacity of language, and to avoid the “tyranny of lucidity,” the impression that what is being said must be true because it is obvious, clear and familiar… New concepts, new theories, necessitate new, unfamiliar and therefore intially difficult discourses. [5]

As Adorno and Horkheimer already pointed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947): “False clarity is only another name for myth; and myth has always been obscure and enlightening at one and the same time: always using the devices of familiarity and straightforward dismissal to avoid the labor of conceptualization.” [6] Of course, there is a proper place for everything. I don’t use Lacanese when writing for the student paper or speak in Derridean aporias to my classmates. Anyhow, my position vis-a-vis Žižek is perhaps better captured by Filipino literary critic and poet Edel E. Garcellano:

It is not surprising that Žižek would find resonance in the heart of young scholars: The Elvis Presley of philo is a veritable compendium of film, music, philo & lit giants that are intertwined in a new light: this bestiary that would dazzle the Socratic flaneurs in MTV mix. At this point of historical flux when Marxism is a god that failed & the future isn’t even privy to Benjamin’s angel, anyone who emerges from the ruins of despair would find Žižek a comforting figure that survived the first wave of socialism but wouldn’t denounce it, assaying also as unacceptable the triumphalistic chest beating of capitalism. Which exactly fills the bill for a generation of Filipino activists who devours Žižek as a feast of texts: he represents a positive despair in view of the promise yet unfulfilled by the revolutionists of the ’70s, its deflection in the ’80s, & the subsequent rectification in the past decades to keep their hopes alive.[7]

As I’ve pointed out before, I do have reservations about Žižek. But it has nothing to do with his lack of clarity or his compulsion to be original, which as Mr. Alex Reynolds points out, leads him to cling to the most unoriginal and orthodox Leninist positions (which for me is one of the good things about Žižek!). My primary reservation would be, apart from those I already pointed out in my previous blog entry, Filipino Marxist scholar E. San Juan Jr.’s observation that Žižek does not go beyond questioning the coordinates of the present order:

Armed with Žižek’s apercus disseminated in numerous books and articles circulated all over the world, are we any wiser or more fully informed of the total picture of the world today after his brilliant disclosure? Are we more adequately mobilized to confront Obama’s imperial mission in Afghanistan and all over the world, including the Philippines, via the subservient neocolonial Arroyo regime? Can the Lacanian-Freudian theoretical framework clarify the root and solution to the unprecedented global economic crisis started by the financial collapse of 2008? Is US hegemony still standing after the powerful Žižek diagnosis of self-deception, seduction, and traumatic cathexes?[8] ■

1. As cited in Isagani R. Cruz, “Ang Wika bilang Ideolohiya o ang Wika ng Teorya bilang Teorya ng Wika” in Bukod na Bukod: Mga Piling Sanaysay, edited by David Jonathan Y. Bayot (Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press, 2003), 133.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., 134.

5. Ibid.

6. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (London: Verso, 1979), xiv.

7. Edel E. Garcellano, “Theory, Theory, Theory,” Edel Garcellano: Poems Old and New, 9 May 2008, http://theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/theory-theory-theory

8. E. San Juan Jr., “On Zizek’s Popularity in Diliman, Philippines, and the Problem of Freudian and Lacanian Speculations for Social Change in the Philippines and Elsewhere: A Brief Comment,” The E. San Juan Jr. Archive, 5 April 2009, http://rizalarchive.blogspot.com/2009/04/who-is-afraid-of-zizek.html

“BB: Is this what you mean when you speak of “general interaction”?

JFL: Yes, that’s what that means, and it will be one of the two major themes of the exhibition. It’s the first theme, and I see it as the basis of the entire discussion of the postmodern, which is a subject the French don’t yet know very well, since they’re always turned so completely in upon themselves.

[...]

The exhibition also has another theme that tries to give legitimacy to this “monstrous neologism – the immaterials”; we make the point, obviously enough, that all of the progress that has been accomplished in the sciences, and perhaps in the arts as well, is strictly connected to an ever closer knowledge of what we generally call objects. [...], they are only a question of complex agglomerates of tiny packets of energy, or of particles that can’t possibly be grasped as such. Finally, there’s no such thing as matter, and the only thing that exists is energy; we no longer have any such thing as materials, in the old sense of the word that implied an object that offered resistance to any kind of project that attempted to alienate it from it primary finalities.”

A Conversation with Jean-François Lyotard with Bernard Blistène, auf: http://www.kether.com/words/lyotard/index.html

This is an email I sent to someone in my life that I love and respect. It is honest, raw, and may not be something you agree with, but know this: it’s my journey…I’m seeking His heart. And I will find it. This note is meant to produce a conversation about these questions and how we answer them. I love you all and reserve the right to delete any of your commentary that is not productive  

I want to begin by saying thank you for being willing to hear my thoughts and questions. I recognize the busyness of life and ministry for you and am very conscious of how dear your time is. 

The journey I find myself on is one of beauty and discovery, but is to some degree rather frightening. For the first time in my life I feel that I have permission to come to the Word for just what it has to say to me, not looking for scriptures to “back up” my “beliefs.” In this change of perspective has come new understanding of the Word and in some cases interpretation that is vastly different from thoughts that were pounded (I use that positively, not in a negative sense) into my head since birth. I have just recently come to understand His grace and for the first time, I must repeat, the FIRST TIME since receiving the Holy Ghost at five, have realized that there is nothing I can do that will make Him love me more or less than what He does right now. I have entered into this passionate love affair with Jesus Christ and am finding that it is changing everything. Ministry has always been my heartbeat, but now I am being challenged by Him to quit trying to save people and just love them. He’s showing me that through my love, He will shine and opportunities to introduce them to Him will arise.

In all of this beauty, I’m experiencing a new sense of freedom in my relationship with Him. In much study of the Word, I’m finding that so many of the things that I have been taught as “heaven or hell” issues are clearly not that. They appear archaic and seem to breed a belief that “if I can just do this or not do that I’ll make it, barely, but make it.” Let me state that I am grateful for my heritage and have no bitterness towards it. However, I desire that every action I take, the words that I speak, how I present myself to the world to be firmly rooted in the Word of God. Doing something for traditions sake does not appeal to me, in fact it chafes against the passion of my heart. I can understand the idea of “limiting one’s freedom, in order to expand one’s ministry,” but it seems counterintuitive to me. The calling that I possess transcends organizational and denominational lines. It is to love God, love people, teach, preach, write and speak this love. I hold tightly to Truth, tightly to the Word, but desire to reach the whole world, not just one sect of it. 

This is not only the cry of my heart, but of so many others of my generation. At the place where God has currently placed me, these conversations arise,daily. Younger men and women are asking, “What do we do? Is this organization obsolete? We don’t want to fight the UPCI in order to reach the world. We want to be able to be real, not just doing things because if we don’t we won’t be accepted. What do we do?” And I find that these are the questions I have as well. My response has been to begin encouraging them that we pray this: “God, show us what we can do right now to further Your Kingdom on earth. Show us what that looks like individually and corporately.”

At this point in my life more than ever before I feel the need for wisdom to speak into my life and guide me. However, I need real guidance, not just “do it because it’s the way it’s always been done…” that is not enough. My question for you is how do I maintain balance in this transformation? How do I know when it is time to incorporate some of the freedoms that I feel at liberty to practice? And how do I even begin to answer these questions for others knowing my words carry weight that I never imagined possible? 

Thank you once again for hearing me out and for any wisdom, thoughts, prayers, admonitions that you desire to pass along. Your voice has been one that has spoken into my life since I was a small child, but I look forward to the wisdom it possesses for today.

Following His Heart,

Melissa

As a graduate student in the Humanities, it’s been drummed into my head for years to beware the binary. Question! Challenge! Deconstruct!

I want to suggest–after much thought–that we may be taking things a bit too far. It’s not as if there are no opposites. Black is really the opposite of white, at least as far as our perception of the visible spectrum is concerned (though my crayons never seem to duplicate the things we learned in 7th-grade science classes). Up really is the opposite of down, assuming that we’re under the influence of gravity.

I don’t want to suggest the opposite of the Postmodern/Deconstructive approach though, either. While oppositions (A = A, not ~A) are useful in describing sense perceptions and measurements and all those lovely sciences that make our cars run and our planes fly and our computers compute, we do have a serious problem when binary logics are applied to people and their activities.

The question is: how can we acknowledge and harness the descriptive power of binaries without allowing them to become reified? I think the biggest problem is that when someone suggests a human related binary, like men vs. women (not the same as male vs. female), those opposing poles are presented as the only possibilities.

Instead of just defying all human-related binaries, I suggest insisting on representing whatever opposites have been identified as anchor points in tension, with all the myriad possibilities in between imagined as ever-shifting points or fields along the imaginary (vibrating?) string between them.

I plan to spend several posts playing with this concept.

So I have been surfing the world wide web again. I mainly surf Youtube, Facebook, last.fm, wikipedia and some no’no pages. Other than that I walk around talking to people, I even have some friends (se picture below).

When I don’t browse the web, I could watch some tv, and sometimes (being unemployed) I can watch some daytime entertainment. On the daytime shows you have the cheap soaps and the talk shows. These shows are probably not meant for me, but beggars can’t be choosers. So I have sometimes watched Oprah, Dr. Phil, Rachel Ray and Ellen.

I hate Oprah and Dr. Phil. They are so awful it should have been illegal. Especially the last one where a… never mind.

The point is; sometimes my three pastimes (internet, friends and tv) cross into each other. I have seen Rachel Ray on tv, and found her to be a happy, whimsical woman that I easily could have dated. She cooks food, my imagination would have taste great, and she has a cheery persona. Yeah, a woman that seems joyful and happy. Who want that when you can have so much more?

I get happy when I watch her (and in smaller doses Ellen). Then some of my friends show a dis taint for her, and suddenly I see brain-dead (I love that word!) teens making fun of her on Youtube. I just don’t get it! Isn’t Rachel Ray the very essence of what any man would want in a woman? She seems stable, happy and can fucking cook!!! Here’s one example of making fun out of her:

When I saw this clip I got goosebumps. That laughter of those two kids went straight to my spine. You know their planing something nasty to feel alive. They could have needed a rachel ray mother… What I saw was a mother smoking crack to forget sucking strangers for crack (the white trash circle) and those two children growing envious of anything reeking of value and thus hating a woman who seems wholesome and nice.

To comfort them; Rachel Ray is probably not that nice. She is acting nicer than she is. But what she represents my dear lost boys is a down to earthiness, a loving motherliness, you probably never experienced and for that I feel sorry for you.

Here’s another Rachel Ray bashing:

Haha, it’s funny because it’s kids mocking someone who does something else than playing Modern Warfare 2 (shooting civilian stage) on their Xboxs or PS3’s and later going on different threads mocking how stupid everyone else is because they like something that they don’t!

IT’S TIME TO TAKE A STAND! Everyone who is tiered of everything having to be EXTREME unite! Let’s all watch rachel ray, and pretend that everything is nice for a change! Let’s stop cutting ourself, tattooing obscenities on our bodies, watching freaks scream nonsense and other vomit unto weed smoking emotionally numb and brain-dead (there’s that word again!) teens and…

Relax...

…

Relax…

…

Relax with some family oriented shows. And feel peace. I LOVE RACHEL RAY… I wish real life could be like that.

It’s really not.

Catholic Universities are not just for Catholics, says Jesuit Gianfranco Ghirlanda, rector of the Gregorian University. Catholic Universities must offer the Truth to anybody who seeks it, whether Catholic or non-Catholic. Catholic education is aimed “to all men and women who wish to receive an integral education for the development of a free and responsible personality.”

This is something that hits home for me. Being involved in Catholic education (although not at the University level), I know the struggles to reach out to non-Catholics while maintaining a strong Catholic identity. Some (perhaps most) schools that are seeing their non-Catholic enrollment rise aren’t doing a good job of keeping their Catholic identity, that is for sure, but that does not mean it is not possible. I think if we are doing the right things, our schools can be places that are thoroughly Catholic, yet that also attract truth seeking young men and women. In a way, we should be glad that our schools are seeing more non-Catholic kids. I mean, heck, we need young people  in the Church.  And I am not saying this as one who believes we should water-down our faith and worship to  “attract youth”; rather I say this as someone who would rather see more baptisms than funerals at my local parish. Jesus does not wish to see anybody lost, and we have a chance to seriously evangelize and catechize  students who may yearn for the Truth, and yet not know where to seek it. And if students don’t have a yearning for the Truth? Then, it is our job to help foster a search for the Truth among Cath0lics and non-Catholics. Is this a lot of work? Yes, perhaps, but 12 men going out to spread the good news across the known world was a little daunting as well!

I know firsthand the progress I see in non-Catholic students and parents. When someone dismisses these students and parents out-of-hand, or suggests they don’t deserve to be at a Catholic school, I have to stand up against this.

I know the responses I may hear: “but David, Catholic schools and Universities aren’t doing this; they are just becoming less and less non-Catholic with every non-Catholic kid…why bother?” My answer would be “what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it?” I have to remind some of my Catholic friends, as Nicene Hobbit has pointed out to me before, that the opposite of misuses is correct use, not necessarily disuse. Just because Catholic Universities and schools may not be doing very well at educating non-Catholic (and Catholics!) in the Faith doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good idea.