3:27 am
MOOD: My mood? Now there's a good question. I feel like i haven't been very expressive with this slot here, lately. I think i need to dig into my vocabulary (i have one, you know) for some real words that tell how i actually feel. Instead of canned answers like in John Q or Kepler or King Robert, i ought to have more expressive things like in Retrospect. Seriously folks. So lets take this bad boy from the top.
MOOD: Really relaxed. Today was so fun, so enjoyable.
It is the end of the day. You know how that is.
MUSIC: Everybody's Going to the Moon (Jamiroquai)

Yo, so like, today was symposium day, and that means there were little programs to go around and attend if you wanted to, instead of classes. Why go? for chapel credit; every student needs 30 credits and you could get up to 3 a week until today, where you could get 6, and a whole variety of stuff was there to choose from.. Yesterday there was a couple things, a Health and Wellness fair, where they discussed things like aerobics and holistic health, and 5-a-day nutrition, and dental care, and massaging.

Then in Ferrin lounge there was a Passion and Civility Forum, which was interesting, it was this place where people of all kinds of passions could meet and discuss their differences with civility. Cool huh? So most of the time we talked about the impact of entertainment on the Christian, such as should we watch such and such a movie, what about crudeness, how do we make the decision not to see or play such and such a movie or game, what effect does gratuitous violence have on the mind, what kind of setting should things like that be seen in, all kinds of issues.

So yeah this morning, there was karate at 11, in Bennett, and i went and we all stood in lines and i think his name is Joel? Yeah Joel and Amanda and Lauren demonstrated lots of techniques, 3 kinds of kicks, a few punches and blocks, a couple combination moves, and escapes. Grant is easy to escape from, let me tell you. All i gotta do is drop to the floor and i'm out of his grasp like *snap* that! So moving on,

There also was a lecture and video in the star trek room (Jenks 211), by Sarah Benton, about the problems of third world non-capitalist countries. I learned a few things.. The average pound of food travels 1300 miles before it reaches your plate.. and the reason societies find it so hard to switch to capitalism is that they have no property right laws. Think about it. If you want to run a business, you have to own your own land, it's that basic.

Then at 3 in Jenks 237, the big new testament room, they showed 3 separate adaptations of the shakespeare play As You Like It, one from the sixties, that dicaprio moulin-rougeish one, and the new one, romeo must die. They just showed little clips though of course. Then we discussed entertainment and timelessness, and how we can re-interpret shakespeare 'correctly' so as to put the story in places and terms we can understand, yet not lose the essentials, like contrast and theme and humor, and such.

Lastly in the Barrington theater, we had some hilarious acting by: Kristen! Birdsall! Chelsea! Jessica! Luke! Holly! They played the characters from Act V of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play-within-a-play, and i can't tell you how great and funny it was! you'd had to have seen it. Specially since some people ahem, hadn't looked at their lines till that morning :-P The moon, she was this girl with twin blue headlamps on her head, and a teddy bear and a blankey, and there was ketchup for blood, and it was a riot :-D

So after that, I went down to the Mac lab and mod'ed my project to conform to prof Bjork's dumb specifications... has to use his java class instead of the one i'd already made that was perfectly fine.. sigh, i'll stop whining about that i guess. It's just a stupid godforsaken Macintosh problem. No worries.

Excerpt from IM exchange:

and hm? is this a bad thing? :-D i dunno. oh wait i do know. no it's not.

The Amish Rule!
by Jared Kitchen (and his B.F.F. Ally Cat) originally appearing in the Tartan, April 10, 2003; Vol. XLVI No. 20

Fact: The Amish rule. They should have their own sports team called "The Lancaster Fighting Amish". Their uniforms and helmet-hats would be all black so the other team would know how much they rule.

I wonder how old an Amish teenager has to be before they get their carriage license. Sometimes I sit and wonder how long it must take the women to make those most righteous quilts. I bet it takes the men less time to build a house.

Weird Al wasn't joking when he wrote that song "Amish Paradise". I saw him in concert, he rules. I wonder how they watch TV without electricity. I bet they must be rich since they have no electrical bills to pay or even telephone bills. At first I didn't think it was very cool that they dissed and dismissed Alexander Graham Bell and his greatest invention of all time, but then i thought about it, and realized that they still rule.

My friend Ash thinks they rule so much, he is growing a burly Amish beard in their honor. He told me that he used to live near some Amish folk, and walked past them every day on the way to school, and he would wave to them, and they waved back every time. How rad is that?

One time this Amish guy asked my grandfather what size his silo was because he wanted to buy the roof of it (they like to collect old stuff) but it wasn't for sale, so he offered to sell him an old rusty combine instead. I don't know what that is, but it sure sounds Amish. He thought about it for a minute, then said no.

It seems to me that the Amish aren't getting nearly enought credit these days, I mean, you gotta hand it to 'em - who else could get so much attention for being so plain? Lancaster Fighting Amish football rules!"