8 March 2002 (Friday)
feh!
As fate would have it, I'm working late on this Friday evening, and Soren's pleasure-dome decree has been postponed until next week. This irks me. I'm actually enjoying the solitude, with the whole place silent save for the steady affable hum of computers, as well as the good progress I've made on this frantically-added last-minute change to the code. But still. I am the Loser Incarnate tonight.
I would like to take this opportunity to point to Zach's photos. So pretty.
posted by enjelani @ 10:00 PM PST [ link ]
7 March 2002 (Thursday)
prog
I'm being unusually diligent today, humming steadily through bug fixes and so forth, and I needed some appropriate music. So I popped in Soren's latest mix CD, on whose jewel case spine he'd written "prog rock, baybee, prog fuckin' ROCK!" Heheh. Yeah, King Crimson! Oh, and here's a Marillion tune too.
posted by enjelani @ 05:44 PM PST [ link ]
pick-up lines
I went to a club the other night to hear a band and kind of wallflowered for about half an hour, seeing as the only people I knew there were in the band, and they were otherwise occupied, obviously. Finally I noticed a group of five men and women dancing in a rough circle, not paired off and feeling each other up like the rest of the crowd, and on impulse I got off my bar stool and joined them. "It's about time you got here," one of the guys said, smiling. "We were worried about you."
Warm fuzzy. It would've made a good pick-up line, if I weren't already spoken for.
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posted by enjelani @ 02:29 PM PST [ link ]
6 March 2002 (Wednesday)
oh, the suspense
Soren has decided that we're going on a date this Friday. As usual, he's being very secretive about the itinerary. I've only been told that I need to read Coleridge's "Kubla Khan - Or, A Vision In a Dream: A Fragment" as preparation. Hmmm.
posted by enjelani @ 10:41 PM PST [ link ]
god, period
Wow, that got people talking. Cool.
I have to admit, though, that discussions on the truth of religion seem ultimately fruitless after a certain point. Either everyone's more or less on the same page, which is great for feeling good about oneself but not for stretching the brain, or it's a passionate disagreement that boils down to the faith vs. logic schism. You can't have a cogent debate if you're not even using the same basis for argument. The whole point of faith is setting aside one's logical misgivings. It seems to me that people who are devout Christians leave their need for proof at the church door, and trying to discredit their faith by pointing to lack of evidence is about as effective as trying to convince an atheist of the Bible's authority by quoting from it. Doesn't work.
That said, I have a rather clear idea of God. Not being a person of faith -- I plead guilty to using that well-worn claim "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual!" -- it's labeled My Current Working Theory: something to live by until new experiences make me revise it. I thought I might share it here, since I've talked a good bit about my reaction to other people's beliefs, but haven't said what my own actually are.
So here we go:
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posted by enjelani @ 05:07 PM PST [ link ]
5 March 2002 (Tuesday)
all the livelong day
Sometimes having two careers really sucks. Aside from a break to write that previous post, I was at job #1 from 10 AM to 7 PM, and at job #2 from 7:30 PM until now. Maybe it's just the one-woman-operation nature of job #2 that sucks. I am my own secretary, accountant, webmaster, graphic artist and IT crew all rolled into one. Naturally I wouldn't be doing all this if I didn't enjoy it at least somewhat, but oh my, how weary my eyes are. It's time for bed.
Then again, I'm glad that the one-woman operation is possible at all. Long live the Internet and high-DPI color ink jet printers.
posted by enjelani @ 04:00 AM PST [ link ]
god and npr
Wonder if I'll get any mail about this post.
I was riveted by the second hour of KQED's Forum yesterday morning. Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and a very controversial figure in the Anglican Church, offered the following thesis: religions can evolve (and always have evolved) alongside history, and should above all else be measured by their translation into human behavior. In other words, declaring Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior is just dangerous bullshit if it makes people hateful and violent toward one another. Education is creating an unprecedented population of thinking people, he argued, and they don't want their beliefs spoon-fed to them anymore. So why not acknowledge that the Bible, even if it does have divine inspiration behind it, is still ultimately a human document, with its share of political agendas, contradictions and antiquated notions? Why not welcome debate and questioning of the truth of the Word? Why not accept the Bible as a collection of metaphors and allegories, rather than something to take literally? If that approach eventually makes for a more charitable, ethical, forgiving, loving world...isn't that what Christianity is all about?
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posted by enjelani @ 02:24 AM PST [ link ]
4 March 2002 (Monday)
censoring
So, there are some major things going on in my life. Paradigm shifts. For now, I'm afraid, I must keep my trap tight shut, out of fairness to the people involved. Must keep mum until everything's more or less settled down.
Oh, jitters. Jitters and head-against-the-wall-banging and general eeeee-yowsa. Hell yes. But it's not an entirely bad thing. Not by a long shot. Some of this stuff has been a long time coming, in a way.
Boy, how pointless was this post? Sorry, everyone.
posted by enjelani @ 06:04 PM PST [ link ]