Electrotonus

e•lec•tro•to•nus (noun)
the event that is described as the diffusion of an electrical charge that permeates the fibre of a nerve cell that has been depolarizsed.
Origin: Neo-latin (electro = electric, tonus = tention)

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It sounds like you have pretty great flat mates! I remember hearing about everyone except Mr. Business; I'm glad that you found so many great guys to room with this year. I remember you telling me about the asian guy; I'm glad that you'll at least be eating well this year, instead of that god-forsaken caf food. You can expect me to judge you on your cooking skill when the year is over ;P

School is starting to pick up on my end; I'm taking 19 credits this term, which is more than I've ever taken at once before, which is a lot, but at the same time, two of them are relatively easy arts courses (PHIL 120: Introduction to Logic and Critical Analysis and ASIA 100: Introduction to Early South and East Asia i.e. India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Korea) and another is STAT 200, which should be relatively easy because I did a ton a stats in my Analytical Chem course last year, but on the other hand I'm also taking PHYL 303: Honours Physiology Lab and the pure Biochem lecture and lab, so this could either be a really, really dreadful term, or a manageable one.

On the social side of life, things are both going well and not well at the same time. The BBQ was absolutely fantastic; it was a lot of fun, and we had a good time. The problems that I was having before are now completely resolved as well (the two of us had decided about 1.5 weeks earlier that we both needed a breather from each other, and so during the party everything was like before again, and after everyone else had left, we sat down and had a quiet chat together. We didn't talk about anything that had happened between us, but we did talk about some serious things, and when I asked about how things were going, I got some rather personal answers back; nothing too detailed, but personal/private enough to reassure me that I am as trusted as I was before. The fact that I am as trusted as I was before restores my own trust in our friendship, and everything is back to the way they were before the whole mess, for which I am glad. Everything is forgiven, and it's all in the past now).

On the other hand, because school has started again, I once again find myself plunged into a state of emotional neutrality, which is a such a contrast for how this summer has been. My life went from an emotional chaos to an emotional desert in a matter of days, and it's taking a while to adjust; this sense of detachment is especially hard after the humongous sense of belonging, love, and family I had over the summer with everyone. Even though we all hung out on Saturday, by Tuesday evening I was already feeling very lonely, and I so desperately wanted to hand out with the Twins, or you, or Froless Soul Boy, or my Old Wrinkly Wifey. The week just seems to have dragged on, and I just can't wait to see people this weekend.

I'm also struggling a little bit with the future. The last three years, this summer especially, has taught me just how dependent I am on my friends for my happiness and well being. I can't imagine life without you guys, and it's really freaking me out because in two years' time, I have to leave this city to complete my graduate studies at a different University. I think I would be able to survive a two years Masters degree, but I don't think I could handle being away for any longer than that. I love you all so much, I can't bear to be away from you all, and I especially don't want to miss out on this part of our lives. I'm trying to work out a way for me to get into the career that I want without having to be away for long periods of time. I'm thinking about the different options that are open to me, and I'm having trouble making a decision. I know that I don't really have to make one for another year or so, and I acknowledge the fact that there are many, many variable that I am unable to account for at the moment, but I still think it's important to think about these things anyways. These things are sometimes so polemical. I'll just keep praying about it and keep my heart open to the possibilities.

Regardless, I don't want to bother you too much with my rantings; sometimes I feel like I'm always just talking about myself and I fear that I am being selfish or inconsiderate.

I hope things are going well out at TWU! I can see that you are having fun writing for the Mars Hill and are excited to be back on campus. What courses are you taking this year? Any interesting electives? Your mini library in the hall made me giggle a bit; perhaps I may be able to contribute a tome or two.

I better get back to my work; I have to do some last minute prep for my Honours Physio lab this afternoon.
Take care and chat soon,
Tim

Polemical

po•lem•i•cal (adjective)
of, relating to, or involving strongly critical, controversial, or disputatious writing or speech

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Tim, I'm glad to hear you're putting all that behind you. It shows both wisdom and courage to be able to set aside the past to focus on what's ahead. We can't change the past, but we have control over how it affects the present.

Actually, I think I said that before. Oh well.

Anyway, I hope you have a great semester and meet some real cool people in all your classes! I know you will rock it because you're a genius. You have brain power that makes mere uneducated mortals crap themselves in awe!

So, I thought I would just give you an update on my first few weeks at TWU, now that I'm living in an apartment now!

I've moved in with three real real cool dudes who, in Vonerdculary tradition, shall remain nameless. I will refer to them by their majors. I'm living with Mr. Human Kinetics who I knew from my dorm last year. He's a fun guy with great taste in music and an even greater sense of humour. He's currently working as the Trainer on the Spartans soccer team, so he's always at practices, ready to jump in to save the day if anyone gets hurt. He also has this thing that looks like it's covered in marshmallows that he uses to give massages to the team.



He gave me one and it hurt like a female dog, but I felt SOOOOOO good afterwards! It was crazy!

Anyways, down the hall in the apartment, we have Mr. International Studies and Mr. Business. Mr. IS was my RA from last year and he's a super cool dude. Together, we have assembled one of the greatest libraries known to man (that is placed next to a bathroom). It's such a cool experience to go to the bathroom and be greeted by my old friends Lewis, Tennyson, Austen, and Norton . . . Anthology of Literature. Also Nietzsche is there.

Mr. IS is also dating B's RA from last year, who is now the CF for B's building, while B is now RA in 4/5U while the RA turned CF GF is now living in F. All initializations aside, the bottom line is: B and this other girl now have weekly meetings together and afterward they are going to come over to our place for late dinner/snacks. I'm really excited!

Mr. Business only moved in a few days ago, but he's really cool! Apparently, he was in my brother's dorm three years ago when S was an RA and the first thing he said to me was that I looked like my brother, without even knowing we were related. He's from China in a town I know I will butcher the spelling of here. He's brought a whole bunch of awesome Asian food and he and I now have a deal where he cooks amazing Asian meals so long as I do the dishes. This is a pretty cool deal, except that I will have few opportunities to actually learn how to cook some sweet Chinese food.

So yeah, that's my apartment full of some cool guys!

Have a great week Tim!

I hope you guys had fun at the last weekend at The Wright's before school really starts!

See ya!

-Clayton

Germination

ger•min•a•tion (noun)
to begin/commence growth and/or development; to come into existence, to begin
Origin: Latin (germinatus = to sprout/begin)

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're back! The Vonerdculary returns for its second year after a long summer haitus! Clay and I decided that since we started this to keep in touch during school, and since we were both home for the summer months, continuing the blog would be rather redundant, seeing as we would be seeing each other all summer long.

Here we are at the beginning of yet another September, the beginning of yet another long school year, fraught with learning, exams, and more grueling work. It's time for part three, my friends!

Clay, to be honest, I was a little hesitant going into this September because of how stressful this summer has been, and I wasn't sure how I was going to fare this term with all of that weighing down on me, but in the past few days, I've just sort of said "You know what, this is ridiculous; I really just could not care less anymore." and I'm just not going to think about it anymore because it's going to cause more harm than good.

So being on Campus for orientation stuff today was rather refreshing, and I'm rather exciting to go back. Of course, I'm not looking forwards to the stress or the exams and stuff, but I'm excited to be learning again, to be exercising my brain, to be thinking about important things and issues; no more of this frivolous personal drama. I'm tired of waiting, because frankly at this point in our lives, we should all me mature young adults; I strongly believe that high school is the time of a person's life in which one should be doing their soul-searching; discovering who you are, who you've been, and who you want to be. It's the time of life when you're supposed to get to know yourself and the people around you.

It's just frustrating to know that there is one among us who did not do this in high school, and as a consequence, there are now high school-esque problems permeating our group when there really should be none at this point in our lives. Emotional immaturity at this age is intolerable, but unfortunately many people in this day in age go through their teens and enter their twenties without ever doing what they're supposed to do, and they go their entire lives with the emotion/mental maturity of a ten year old. I'm very disappointed that one of our friends has turned out to be one of these people.

Regardless, there is not much that we can do at this point, so there really is no point in my fretting over something I have very little control over, so whatever. At this point in time, I'm just going to try to be pleasant and wait and see what happens. Hopefully, the person in question takes this time to do the soul searching that should have been done several years ago, and if that happens, I will be very happy to resume where we have left off. If not, I'm just going to have to wait a bit longer.

The truth of the matter is that the events that occurred over the summer have been a gross betrayal of my trust, and if things are ever going to go back to normal, that trust needs to be earned back, and you are familiar with the extent to which my trust issues extend, so you very well know that it won't be easy. I mean, it's not like we're starting from scratch, because regardless of how I feel now, I can't deny that we've been friends for a very long time and that friendship has been a big part of my life. Because of that, I owe this friendship a second chance, in the name of our past; honestly, if it weren't for our past history, I wouldn't have given it a second chance in the first place.

Anyways, that's my little rant for today. I hope you are well out at Trinity, and that everything is going well. Good luck with your courses and commitments this term!

I can't wait to hear from you! Say Hi to B for me!
Tim.

Gastropod

gas•tro•pod (noun)
a group of animals, more formally known as Class Gastropoda under the phylum Mollusca, that are characterized by their slimy foot. Gastropods are invertebrate animals and, as the phylum suggests, belong to the larger group known as mollusks. Creatures in this class include snails, slugs, and nudibranchs (OMG SO CUTE! I love nudibrachs <3).
Origin: Greek (gastros = stomach, pod = foot; gastropod = stomach foot; named thusly for the slimy "foot" they use to move across substrate which leaves behind a slimy trail)

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I was trying to look for a good word that would work with my topic today, but this is the closest I could come without using endocytosis, pinocytosis, pr phagocytotsis, which I've already sort of touched on. But first, comments about your last post.

Thanks for agreeing to put the blog and Thread on haitus for the exam season; I really needed to hunker down and concentrate on my studies. This past semester has been really wonky for me. Now that I'm done (and you're finishing in less than a week) I feel like we can start things up again.

Your last post was interesting; I have always found the banjo quite, as you say, twangy, but it can be a very nice sounding instrument. I never played Banjo Kazoie, frankly because the characters looks like rednecks, which really freaked me out as a kid (and to be honest, still freak me out), but the intro was fun. Sufjan Stevens' (which, btw, is quite an interesting name; I wonder from which language does it originate?) song was nice, but I felt that the banjo was a tad too twangy for the song, and I couldn't hear the lyrics. I quite enjoyed the Mumford and Sons song, but I really didn't like the last one. For reasons which will be made apparent over the course of our lives, I really have an aversion to these sorts of songs; another topic to add to the long list of things about which we have to converse over the summer.

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So today, I want to talk about this:

I want to talk about food.

Yes, food.

Being an Asian, food is a very big part of my life. As you know, food is so ingrained into Asian culture that a traditional greeting is to ask not "How are you doing?" but to ask (loosely translated as) "Have you eaten yet?" or "Is your stomach full?" implying that one who is well fed is one whose life is happy/going well.

Food (and tea) is a major part of my life, one of the greatest joys I have in living. The list of (non-living) things that I will never get enough of goes 1) Food 2) Sleep 3) Pokemon 4) Math. Allow me to explain myself.

Food has become the central focus of Asian culture. There are two major reasons for this.

First of all, food was (and still is) a sign of wealth. It makes sense when you consider the historical context: China has one quarter of the world's population yet only about a tenth of the world's arable land, so food has always been relatively expensive. One must be relatively well off to be able to feed one's family well. When it came to the Emperor and the royal family, there are special dishes that are only known to the imperial chefs, passed down in secret from generation to generation. The royal family even ate on special porcelain with special imperial designs that were only allowed to be printed on porcelain used by the royal family; archeologists have found mounds of smashed porcelain in ancient potters' workshops consisting of all the dinnerware painted with imperial designs that developed impurities during the baking/kiln/firing process.

Secondly, and most importantly of all, food is tied to the family.

Asian culture values family very, very highly. In ancient China, one of the only ways for a family to climb the social ladder was to become a government official (such as a judge or a magistrate or a doctor), which was only possible if you were educated and passed government exams. Entire peasant  families would work very hard to pay for a tutor so that one family member could be educated in the hopes that if he passed the government exams, the entire family would rise in status (which is also the reason why Asians value education: in old times - and even not so old times; this was still being done in my grandfather's generation) and the entire family would lead a better life. It interesting to note that the government issued many levels of examination, the highest of which was invigilated in the Forbidden City by the Emperor himself.

I speak for Asian culture when I say that to me, food does not hold value JUST in its taste or JUST in its nutritional value; food is valuable to me not because I find pleasure in gluttony. Food is very important to me because it is the vehicle that brings me happiness; it is the unifying factor that brings me closer to the people I love; it is the thing that facilitates the strengthening of bonds.

Of the fondest memories that I have of my family, easily more than half of them occur in the kitchen, at the dinner table, or just before or just after a meal. Easily the majority of the best conversations I've ever been a part of have taken place over a meal or just following a meal. Food is not just something I prepare or eat: it is something I experience. It is not just the act of eating good food, it is the act of eating good food together, the act of sharing good food. I just find that it is much easier to get along with people and talk to people over a meal. Of course, the fact that food stimulates the release of endorphins (chemicals in the brain that signal happiness) helps. But still, I find myself more relaxed and able to enjoy myself while eating or on a full stomach. Conversely, I can be very irritable when hungry.

 Food does this in two ways: in both its preparation and its consumption.

The preparation of food is in many ways just as important as the consumption of  food, especially for the large dinner events throughout the year. As they say, cooking is a labor of love.

For normal, daily dinners, in my family, cooking is usually done by one, maybe two, seldomly three people. It is usually a quiet affair, but having the house smell like good food puts everyone in a good mood. Cooking for large family events is a whole different story.

When we do family dinners, and we are cooking, we go all out. This year, we celebrated Chinese New Year's on a Saturday. My father began cooking for it on the Wednesday. The day before Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, he begins cooking at about 9/10 pm, cooks until the wee hours of the morning, sleeps for maybe five hours, gets up, and starts cooking again until dinnertime, and even when we have started to eat, he is still in the kitchen cooking for a good 20 minutes, finishing off some of the other dishes while we start on what's already finished.

But cooking is not a solitary activity. At these large dinners and parties, the host will be cooking in the kitchen, and as the other families, arrive, everyone bee-lines into the kitchen: those who can cook (usually the Aunties and myself) begin helping with the preparations, and those who cannot, linger around. There is always a crowd in the kitchen, and there is always a conversation to join. Whether it is because you are preparing the same dish together, or using the same facilities (sink, stove, counter, etc.) there is always someone to converse with, and people who are not cooking usually join these conversations. While white people may quilt together, asian people cook together. It is a great time to catch up with people's lives or discuss recent events. It gives us something to do with our hands while we chat. I find that cooking brings us closer together as a family.

The other factor, of course, is the meal itself.

In the context of normal dinner with my parents and sister, it is a quiet affair. We all sit together and eat and talk about our day/lives. It is a chance for us to bond as a family, to laugh together and be happy together. It is so easy to be home as a family, but not interact with each other that dinner becomes a time when we are together as a family, which is increasingly rare as we get older. I remember that growing up, it was an unspoken rule that the family eat together, and that it was very disrespectful to leave the table in the middle of a meal (the ONLY exception was to get up to get condiments from the cooking area). It was also an unspoken rule that we sat together at the table until the everyone was finished eating. Of course, as I said earlier, the consumption of the food makes it that much easier to get along.

In the context of large dinners with extended families, food, be it lunch or dinner (breakfast is a smaller affair because we, being Asians, are night people and usually not everyone is awake until it is near lunch time) is an extravagant pageant. One the food is served and Grace said, we eat. We cook not only good tasting, food, but very large amounts of food. We will sit down and eat one serving, then two, all the while talking and laughing, sharing stories, our lives, connecting, bonding. The initial meal portion lasts about an hour, followed by about an hour of nibbling at the food, followed by about another hour of just sitting at the table with our empty plates and leftovers on the table in front of us, still chatting, still laughing. Then, after clean up, if we just ate dinner, about an hour later, we get together for dessert, which is just as extravagant as the dinner itself. We usually like making fruit and gelatinous "cake" (for the lack of a better term; they are more like pudding than anything else) dishes. Usually there are three, four, maybe five dessert dishes in all. Sometimes there will be actual cake. And then we all gather and sit for another hour or so to eat dessert.

Family meals are a long, drawn out spectacle. As you can see, easily four hours or more of our gathering is spent revolving around food. Like I said, it is the mode that brings us together; it is the thing over which our family becomes a family, not just a bunch of people who share genetics.

This is something that I've tried to bring to our group of friends. I want to share this kind of experience with you - the wonder and the sheer joy that comes out of cooking and eating together, of working together to create something that we can then all enjoy and experience together. This is why I love food, and why I will never get enough of it. It is not the taste or flavour that I crave - it is the feeling of belonging and the joy of being together with people I love that comes with food: that is what I will never be able to get enough of.

I'm tired and it's midnight, so my writing may not be superb, but it'll do for a blog post. Good luck with the rest of your exams, Clay! I can't wait to see you again (I'm almost going into withdrawal XD).

Chat soon,
Tim

PS - I find it funny that you came back from Trinity for Easter and I left Ladner to spend Easter with my extended family in Chiliwak =P

Chordophone

chor•do•phone (noun)

a stringed instrument

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OK, I do want to share my thoughts and hear some more of yours on what you talked about in your last post, but I'd prefer to do that face-to-face, which won't be so long seeing as school is almost over. I liked hearing all of your insightful thoughts on the subject and I'd love to talk to you about it in person.

For now, I'm just going to put in some filler material about something I have recently developed an attachment to:



BANJOS!!!

Yes, this is another musical post, but this time it's specifically geared towards an instrument that I believe is widely underrated. I was inspired by the Sufjan video I posted last time and realized I wanted to focus on this instrument. It's the kind that usually doesn't fit into a group ensemble, but on those strange occasions when banjo playing is appropriate, it's amazing! While the banjo is usually associated with hillbillies, rednecks, yokels, hicks, bumpkins, and all manner of country-dwellin' folk, the banjo can also be used in some fairly creative and unique genres.

For starters, there's one of my favorite video-game intros of all time. I wish all video-games started out this way, especially the more violent ones we play on Xbox and Fatty and Sissy's house.



It's so cute!!!
It reminds me of much simpler time of video-games when you collected puzzle pieces instead of other people's guns and instead of a flame-thrower tank on your back, all you had was a giant bird that pecked people who got in your way. Not that I think about it, this isn't really any less violent . . .

Anyway, I mentioned Sufjan Stevens above and it would be an absolute desecration to write post about the banjo without mentioning him. For me, Sufjan opened up the possibilities of the banjo and what it could be used for. He is able to perform such melodiously beautiful songs with a rather twangy instrument, which to me is amazing.
This song is called "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti".



He plays other instruments as well, but I whenever I think of Sufjan, I always picture him with a banjo, just because of the skill and heart he puts into that one instrument.

Another band that I have recently become attached to is Mumford and Sons, a folk-rock band from England. The also have so much heart and soul in their music, and they deal with some fairly difficult spiritual issues in their music. This song is my favorite of theirs. but unfortunately, the language is a little strong. I felt I should just warn you so it doesn't take you off guard.



If it doesn't let you watch it here, there should be a direct link to Youtube there. The song is called "Little Lion Man" if you want to look it up yourself.

This last one is by David Crowder*Band. They took an old southern revival song by a guy called Hank Williams and adapted it with a few modern changes. The song is a good ol' fashioned hoedown song about being born again in Christ. What I appreciate about the song is that whenever David Crowder plays it anywhere but the south, he always asks if it would be "socially acceptable" for them to break out in a hoedown. It's a fun song and they always get the audience into it. It's so much fun to be a part of a giant group of people all singing and worshipping in the most ridiculous way possible, which is probably why this is my favorite banjo song. Despite the diversity of the instrument, it's always best when used in a classic hootenanny style.




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So you may have noticed that most of the songs were either about God, or with some sort of religious issue. I'm not sure why that is to be honest, but I think it's so interesting that the banjo is so closely related to worship and spiritual experience.

Anyway, wish you bonne chance and buena suerte on your next exams and hope all the best for you in the last few days of school! This summer, I'll be more available because I'll probably be working more for my Dad. That means we can have more group parties, late night movie-watching, and even later night discussions. And I'll talk to you about pastoral stuff very soon, don't worry.

Have a great night Tim!
See you soon!

Attachment

attachment (noun)
(virology) the event/process of the viral infection cycle where the virus particles adheres to the host cell. This process is mediated by the anti-receptor that binds to the corresponding receptor on the host cell.

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Hey Clay! Sorry I haven't posted for a while; exams are coming up and last week I came down with a sore throat (possibly caused by streptococcus?) so I didn't have the time or energy to do so.

I enjoyed listening to the music you posted; it gave me an insight to the kind of music you like to listen to, and none of it was sibilant. The songs were nice; I didn't dislike any of them, but I didn't love any of them either. I guess ils ne sont pas de mon gout (I think I totally phrased that incorrectly >_> that doesn't bode well for my French exam next wednesday), which is (theoretically) the French way of saying that they don't suit my tastes. In Hokkien, we would say that I don't know how to listen to that kind of music. The only one that I could easily get used to is the Lakes of Canada one; that was quite nice.

So as you can see by today's Vonerdword, I'm currently really, really into Virology right now. It's really interesting and relevant and its just a really fun thing to study. My virology prof is WAYYYYY better than my Bacteriology prof, and the material is much more coherent, so I really like it. Also: I've sort of developed a bit of a liking for Agusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron, commonly referred to as Ada Lovelace, who is credited by popular science as the first computer programmer (this accreditation is widely contested among the academic historians, mathematicians, and computer scientists because 1. her program was designed for a machine, not an electronic device, 2. the machine that the algorithm was written for was never completely built in her lifetime and thus never actually performed in her lifetime and 3. there are ambiguities pertaining to how much of the algorithm she herself wrote; some people believe that she was aided by mathematician Charles Babbage, some believe that she amended and improved upon an algorithm originally written by Babbage, and some believe it is entirely of her own doing).

Countess Lovelace was the daughter of the renowned poet Lord Byron, and the story of her life is quite fascinating. She is not the feature of this blog post, so I'll try my best to summarize it very briefly: Her mother separated from Lord Byron one month after her birth. She hated Lord Byron because of his poetry and resolved to raise Ada to oppose him and everything that he stood for. This meant that Ada was educated from an early age in the Sciences, Mathematics, Logic, and Music, and it turns out that she was quite the mathematic prodigy. Some believe this comes from her mother, who is rumoured to have been good at science as well. However, as gifted as Ada was in the sciences, she also inherited her father's flair for words; her good friend the mathematician Charles Babbage called her in one of his letters the "Enchantress of Numbers" for both her brilliance in the mathematical arts as well as the mastery of language that enabled her to articulate her ideas and the ideas of others in ways that others could not. Her most notable work was the translation of the lecture memoirs written by the Italian Louis Menebrea on one of Babbage's lectures on the Analytical Machine from French into English, which includes a set of notes written by Ada herself, upon Babbage's request. I find it quite humorous that Ada's notes on the lecture are longer than the translation of the lecture itself.

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In today's post, I want to talk about something that's been on my mind since Saturday night. By the by, it was absolutely phenomenally fantastic seeing and hanging out with everyone on Saturday! It was a much needed breather from UBC life and it was so much fun!

Anyways, on Saturday, you had mentioned that there was a bit of turmoil in your church at the moment pertaining to the pastoral staff, and I had also briefly mentioned that my church has also experienced something of the sort.

I kind of wanted to elaborate on that here, because it's something that I've been sort of coming back to every once in a blue moon since it happened several years ago.

My family attended a chinese church; it is the same church at which my parents first met when they were in university, and they were very active as young adults in the church, so practically everyone there that is about older than 40 knows my family (also because three of my dad's sisters were also very active in the church, so my sister and I are known as being related to four prominent church figures in their day). Being a predominantly assimilated chinese congregation in Canada, our church offers two services every Sunday: an English service and a Mandarin service, and although there is much overlap between the two services, there two different pastoral staffs: one for each service. I'm not completely sure of the political details governing the administration at our church, so I'm likely to be wrong on several points, but the main parts of the story I know are correct, having heard them from several different times from several of my relatives who are (relatively) high ranking members of the church.

Back when we still attended church, I was in elementary school (we sort of stopped attending when I entered high school, the reasons for which are a completely different story for another time) and at that time, there were two members of the English pastoral staff that were exceptionally good. For privacy's sake, I will not be using their names.

Pastor P and Pastor G were my two favourite speakers. Their sermons were very powerful and very well written. I remember as a kid being in awe of their sermons. I still remember the clarity and finesse of Pastor G's sermons; his sermon on anger still resonates with me to this day, almost ten years after. I really, really enjoyed his sermons because, looking back on them now, I realize that they were structured like essays: he's open his sermon on the topic, and then he'd read parts of the Scriptures with us, examine their context and meaning, outline his interpretation of the excerpt, and then explain what God was saying about the topic at hand, and then at the end summarize his interpretation and give suggestions for how to apply them to our own lives. He did it in such a clear, concise manor and his logic, I now realize, is very similar to the logic that I now use to work through my own faith.

Using his sermon on anger as an example, Pastor G wanted to discuss anger and how we as Christians should go about dealing with this emotion. Some people believe that anger is a sin; if I'm not mistaken, is considered one of the so called Seven Deadly Sins under that name of Wrath. Pastor G began by talking about why some people might think this, and then proceeded to look at several parts of the Scriptures that give examples of the Lord's actions. He used several different instances to illustrate that the Lord reprimands people for getting angry, and other instances where the Lord himself gets angry in the Bible; the greatest of them being the time when Jesus visits the temple in one of the major cities (Jerusalem? I think? It's been a while since I looked at that section... >_>) and he finds there are merchants in the courtyard selling animals for sacrifice, and Jesus gets very angry and very upset, to the point where he upturns their tables and basically rages and makes a mess. Using these examples, Pastor G argued that if the Lord, being a perfect being, can get angry, then getting angry is not necessarily a sin. Pastor G then goes on to say that if anger is not inherently a bad thing, then when is it okay to be angry and when is it not okay to be angry, as Christians, and then proceeds to cite several more parts of Scripture (the temple incident being one of the most prominent ones), and then concludes that we should follow God's example, and his interpretation was that it is okay to be angry if something or someone has broken one of God's rules and they have sinned; if you are angry and this is not the reason, they your anger is not justified (in the case of the temple, Jesus' anger was justified because the merchants had defiled the sanctity of the church; they were greedy and had taken advantage of the people there to make money off of their suffering by selling them sacrificial animals in the church's own courtyard).

Pastor P was an elderly pastor; not an old man, but not a young one either; I'd say he was about in his last 50's or early 60's back then, and he MIGHT have also been a part of the Mandarin pastoral staff; I'm not quite sure. Regardless, he was a very conservative, old fashioned asian, with ver conservative, old fashion asian-style views and hopes for the congregation. Pastor G, on the other hand, is my parents age, and he is more modern in his views, more in line with our sort of perspective on Christianity. It is not unreasonable, then, for us to learn that behind the scenes, at the administrative meetings, Pastor P and Pastor G often disagreed on points pertaining to the congregation, the hiring of our Youth Pastors, allocation of funding, etcetera. Many people in the congregation were unaware of this.

Then, after what I believe to be years and years of going head to head, Pastor G decided that it would be better for the congregation if its pastoral staff was not always fighting amongst themselves, so he decided to resign from the administration; he would go back to school, to complete some certificates for a higher degree in real estate, and work in business instead. When this was announced, the entire congregation was, naturally, deeply saddened. Pastor G was very, very popular, and very well loved. In his "official statement" to the congregation, Pastor G cited the need to spend more time with his family as the reason for his leaving his post, but many people began to speculate that the real reason for his departure was due to the internal conflict with Pastor P. It caused so much upset that the church elders decided to hold a public forum with the congregation so that people could talk to Pastor G and the other pastors and get answers, to resolve their issues.

From what I've heard (seeing as this occurred after we had stopped attending church regularly), the public forum began quite well; everyone was civil and considerate. But then, part way through the evening (some say it was near the middle, some say it was near the end), someone yelled out and blamed Pastor P for Pastor G's resignation, and that was the trigger that basically turned the forum into a bloodbath (or so I've heard). There was apparently lots of finger pointing and name calling. By the end of the night, the congregated lashed out emotionally by not only blaming Pastor P for Pastor G's departure, but by demanding Pastor P's own resignation in an attempt to get Pastor G to stay. People were saying things like "Why should Pastor G resign when Pastor P is the one causing all the conflict?"

In the end, due to all of the ruckus, Pastor P gave in to the congregation's pressure resigned. Pastor G, having already announced his resignation, never had any plans to un-resign (it would have also been extremely disrespectful and a very big insult to Pastor P if Pastor G had un-resigned). So, in this way, our church lost two of its best speakers. In the aftermath, one of our older pastors that had been in retirement for almost a decade had to come out of retirement to fill the gaping void while the administration scrambled to find replacements, as the pastoral staff was now two short.

And this, right here, is one of the problems I have with organized religion (I have several, of which this is one). Church is supposed to be a place where Christians gather to rejoice in the glory of God, where we share and learn about God together, as a community, and, as a community, become better people. Usually, the complaint with organized religion like this is criticized for its leadership (for example, the retarded Pastor in Florida who decided to video himself burning a copy of the Qu'ran and put it on the internet, which has sparked huge anti-american riots in the Middle East resulting the death of at least two americans within the first day). But in this case, its not the leadership of the church that is at fault, it was the congregation itself. One would expect that a group of adult Christians would know better than to act like five year olds who've had their favourite toys taken away from them. If this is how we, as a community, act, then I argue that perhaps this whole thing isn't as effective as it should be. Shouldn't we, as adult Christians, be able to handle situations like this with more maturity? Or have these people actually learned nothing from their own religion? Perhaps some people value the church more for its social aspect than its spiritual aspects. I don't know, because I'm only one person; I can't read minds, and I don't know how other people think.

I'm not trying to downplay the benefits of church; I believe that being part of a congregation is an amazing experience and it is a very powerful (and essential) way to become close to God, both personally and as a part of a group. But when things like this happen, it makes me wonder, how many people out there sit in church and actually actively LISTEN and then THINK about what they're being told.

As Ghandi once said, "I do not like your Christians; they are so unlike your Christ."

Anyways, that's my story and some of my thoughts on the issue; I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Chat soon,
~Tim~

Sibilant

sib•i•lant (adj)


Of, characterized by, or producing a hissing sound like that of (s) or (sh)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Hi Tim! I really enjoyed listening to your music (yes all of it).


I love Vivaldi's Winter and I feel bad for having never heard it before. I like Spring, although it is not my favorite piece of classical music, but I think I much prefer Winter because of the darker tone that you mentioned. It was very beautiful.


Ok, so I did listen to this and I'll just say that I didn't think it was bad. J. Bib-wearer, I mean Bieber, isn't really for my tastes, but I can understand his appeal . . . well, the appeal that he has in his music, lyrics, and vocal skills, not so much the orgasmic crush everyone born after 1998 seems to have on him. But a catchy song, I do confess.


OK, I freakin' LOVED this video! Those guys are SUCH good singers! And they're both awesome at piano! Such a good rendition! And I love how the guy in the tux is playing Mario Kart in the background and then he loses! AND THE AWKWARD HAND!!!! And then they beatbox at the end and the guys with the popped collar throws his bottle away and the other guy picks it up afterward! SO FUNNY!!!


YES! Videogame music! I haven't even played that game and it takes me back to days of battling! I love how there is this distinct nature to any videogame music that no matter what game it's from, you can picture playing it for hours on end. Great stuff!


That music was all brilliant and really showcased your love of both excellent music and music that connects to something important in your life. It's a good selection and all of them are worth listening too (even Mr. Bieberection himself)
HOWEVER!


Did you really think you could do a post about your favorite songs and have no retribution!


To that I say Pfft! Pfthththttht! Pffthtt! Pth! Pfth! Ph! 
Anyway, I should stop getting spit on my screen. 


Your list has inspired me to share some of favorite music with you. It's hard to choose, so I just looked at my most played list on my computer and chose my top 5 from there. This isn't really a list of my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE MUSIC, but it's a list of the music I have been drawn back to time and time again. Some of them mean something to me, others I just think are catchy, but all of them are good tunes that I will continually listen to again and again.


1. Haiti - Arcade Fire


This song has snuck to the very top of my list by a long shot. To put the difference in mathematical terms, the number of listens that the number 2 song makes up only 64% of the number of times I've listened to this song.
I really have no idea how this happened. I know I like the song, but I had no idea how much. It's kind of weird. But I still love it and can't stop listening to it. Sometimes I'll have it stuck in my head for weeks on end, which is sad because I can only sing along to half of it because it's in both English and French. But maybe you can to translate it for me!



2. Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Radiohead


My love for this song is hard to describe, but I know that on my brother's computer, it is still his most listened to song. Personally, I love the driving bass line and the tight percussion. I'm also a big fan of Thom Yorke's distinct vocal style and how it hovers between jarring and trance-like. But what really draws me back to this song over and over again is how all the parts of the song come together to make something completely unique. This song is quick-paced, but slow; really loud but quite soft. To me, the beautiful sound of this song and the overall unity required to make it so entrancing is what music is all about. Music is able to show us something that we know we cannot achieve on our own; a beauty of soul and of art that is ultimately fleeting, but forever transcendent. 



3. Lakes of Canada - Sufjan Stevens


This song I only started listening to in the past few months, but it has quickly become one my favorite songs. It's so calming and beautiful. It does really remind me of being out in the Canadian outdoors, driving along the prairies, skating on the Rideau canal, kayaking on the shore of Nova Scotia, and especially hiking atop Whistler Mountain. I listened to this song once on repeat for I think about an hour straight and enjoyed every minute of it.



4. Strawberry Swing - Coldplay


Another song that my brother and I love. It was favorite song off of Viva La Vida when it first came out and I still think it is one the best songs by Coldplay to date. This song reminds me so much of Grade 12, but I can't exactly figure out why. I know I listened to it a lot during that time, but there also a feeling of nostalgia that the song gives off. It reminds me of those special singular  moments in your life; the ones you never forget. They may be an entire day or only a few seconds, but they mean a lot to you and can't be diminished by time. I think this song reminds me of all those special moments in the last couple of years of high school that meant so much to me because I spent them with such a great group of friends.



5. Goodnight Moon - Said the Whale


This is the first song B. played for me. I had heard of the band before, but had never appreciated them until that point. The song to me represents both a significant point in my life and a very significant person in my life. This song is cute and playful, but still deep and inspired. I love the adorable beginning and the fun-loving ending. It makes me laugh and it makes me cry.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


So there you have it. This isn't a definitive list and it may be subject to change later on, but right now these are some of the songs that mean the most to me.
I didn't know about your chest pains, but I'm glad to hear they've subsided. Keep yourself healthy and get lots of sleep and enough food (what am I saying, you're Asian). Just get enough sleep!


I'm doing pretty well right now. I've been worrying myself about my GPA and about getting a summer job a lot over the past few weeks, but I had a good chat with my parents and I feel like I don't have to worry so much. I'm still anxious, but I'm not beating myself up over this stuff . .  at least for now.


And I can't wait to see you either Tim! I know what you mean about the semester! I just finished a 3000 word paper and I have three more major papers to finish before the semester ends. I was so happy for the warm weather today, but it's hard to truly enjoy when you know you should be doing work. I can't wait to just hang out outside and spend an entire day not worrying about when things are due. But school is finishing up soon! It's the longest slog, but we've done it before and we can do it again! 


Have a great day Tim! Keep on rockin' and a-rollin'!


-Clayton

pH

p•H (noun)
(Chemistry) a scale of measurement that describes the acidity or alkalinity of a liquid solution. Mathematically, the pH is found by taking the negative logarithm of the activity of Hydrogen ions in the solution [i.e. pH = -log(activity of Hydrogen ions)]. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning that every whole increment indicates a ten-fold change (meaning that pH 1 has ten times more hydrogen ions than pH 2). Other logarithmic scales include the Richter scale for earthquakes.

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SO... I have midterms this week (one chemistry and one french), and that plus the fact that I haven't done a fun post in a while, I thought I'd do a post on something lighter.

Today, I would like to just list five songs that (regardless of quality) I love and can't get enough of right now.

So, in no particular order whatsoever:

1) I begin with my favourite piece of classical music: Winter, Movement I by Vivaldi, from his infamous The Four Seasons. Spring Movement I, I must admit, has become a rather cliché piece of classical music, to the point where when people say they like it, I tend to get the idea that they really aren't a connoisseur of classical music. Winter Movement I, however, is a completely different story. Seeing as Spring Movement I has garnered so much success, it seems to have eclipsed the other seasons and movements in Vivaldi's quartet of seasons, which is fine by me, because it means I can openly love this song without much ridicule from the classical music community.

I can honestly say that this is by far my most favourite piece of classic music in the world. Period. It's got the perfect combination of eerie, tense, exciting, explosive, harsh, frigid, and heartbreaking emotions. (the version I have on my CD has a little bit more "umph" to it; the dynamics are a little bit more pronounced, but its still good.)


2) Next, is this. I won't force you to listen to it, because I know how much of a reputation he has, and you can ridicule me all you want, because all I have to say is this:
1) you can't deny that he has talent.
2) No matter how bad the lyrics may be (because I admit it: most the lyrics really aren't so good) I can't seem to stop listening to this song. Like actually. It's just so... CATCHY... T_T

...Yea... *dies of embarassment*
Although, I must say, this part of the song really resonates with me: "my heart is blind, but I don't care, 'cause when I'm with you, everything else just disappears, and every time I hold you near, I never want to let you go, no-oh no... tell me you love me." You might or might not know why.



3) This next one you already know I also have an unhealthy obsession with... I could try to explain why, but I don't think I could properly. I don't think even I fully understand my obsession with this song...

4) I love song number four because it's so pop-py and fun and they lyrics are a bit bizarre but I love every minute of it. It's another song I can't get enough of, period.

I really really love this rendition of it; the guys are so talented and the video (background) is so funny too! Technically, this video has two songs by Owl City: the first one is Meteor Shower, which I was unaware of until I saw this video, but now that I've listened to it, I love it just as much as I love Fireflies (which is the song I was talking about in the blurb above).



5) The last song here is from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald versions. Of course, you know I had to have a pokemon song in here somewhere. There are so many good classics that it's hard to choose just one. I have so many favourites and I love all of them; they've just been such a huge part of my childhood/life that I can't just choose one, but if I had to at this particular moment right now, I'd choose this one: the theme for Mount Pyre. It's fantastically catchy and eerie yet fun at the same time. I love it.

~~~~~~~~~~

*sigh* I just really really want this term to be over. I've been having a really rough term. I had that breakdown in February, and my marks have been rather abysmal, and I've just been perpetually exhausted. I just want a break from all this, you know? The good news is that the term is almost over, and I haven't as depressed as I was during my breakdown. Yea, I've been rather moody and a bit sad, but I haven't had any sharp chest pains since Feb, so I think I'm doing okay. I just need to power through the next month or so, and everything should be fine =)

I hope you're doing well and everything is going well out there at TWU. I can't wait to see you and everyone again in a few weeks =)

Chat soon,
~Tim~

Resonance

re•so•nan•ce (noun)
the ability to oscillate between different positions, appearing to "resonate" between two or more states. Resonance can be applied to science in such areas as chemistry in the positioning of electrons in pi bonds for chemical structures, or physics in the oscillation of particles and waves.
Origin: Latin (resonantia = echo or resonare = resound)

~~~~~~~~~~

So, I want to take the time here to apologize for freaking out during my last post two weeks ago. Looking back on it, I don't think I've publicly posted something so morbid in quite a while. I also want to take to time to explain myself, to the best of my ability.

From knowing me for so long, you already know that I struggled with depression during high school, especially in  the first three years, but still significantly during the senior two. Since graduation, I've had the time to really think about those five years in secondary school and I've really been trying to understand what went on and everything.

For the past year or so, I've had a theory about myself that was pretty much confirmed during my brief bout of self deprecation two weeks ago, and it goes something like this:

I was really depressed during high school (for really personal reasons that you may know), and life was really getting difficult to bear, but I was able to survive because I had really great friends. I knew even back then that my friends were all important to me, and they were important because when I was with my friends, I was able to be really and truly happy. Being in their presence immediately put me in a good mood, and having fun together completely obliterated all of the ubiquitous negative feelings I had. My friends made me forget about all of the crap that I had going in in my life; I could forget about all of my pernicious troubles and all of my teenage angsty woes. They liberated me from my depression and allowed me to be free to be happy.

Most importantly, my friends made me laugh. I think my laugh has a reputation, but its only because my laugh really incarnates my feelings. If something makes me feel bursting with joy, my laugh will be bursting with joy and its volume and duration are directly proportional to the amount of happiness I am feeling, and since (when with friends) I am ravingly happy, my laugh is ravingly obnoxious.

During high school, I was laughing every day. Seeing you and Froface (btw I love the way you're referring to our friends specifically not in a way that still protects their anonymity) and Drummerkid and everyone else in Band, the Overlord, Old Wrinkly Wife, others in my other classes, and Mme in French, I was never short of a good laugh at school. During the senior years, I was even guaranteed to laugh so hard I would start crying at least once a month in Mme's french class. Yes, I was going through a very difficult period in my life, personally, but I know that I was also very fortunate to have the misery combated by a healthy portion of laughter.

That laughter is something that I'm missing out on here at UBC. As there is nobody here in any of my classes that I can really truly be myself around, I can never really laugh the way I'd like to; the laughter has all but left my life, if you will. The only times I really get a taste of that laughter is when I'm laughing at the comics you send me on the thread, or on Fridays when I get together with people at home. I've realized this past two weeks that the laughter impacts my health much more than I thought it did. I think the reason I have such a general state of passivity at UBC is because there really isn't anything there that sparks my eccentricity, and when I'm feeling upset over poor midterm marks, there really isn't anything that helps me forget about it or get over it; I'm kinda forced to just sit there and mope about it.

But that isn't to say that I'm anywhere near where I was before in high school. I may be moody, upset, and depressed, but really its not as bad as it once was, at least not yet. I'm older, I'm able to endure it for longer periods of time, I've found things that can distract me from it long enough to keep going, and the Lord will always be there when I need Him.

Yes, high school was a very, very trying time for me, but if I had a choice to go through it or not, I would choose to do so. I believe that everything I learned about myself, the world, and the people around me are worth the suffering. I'm no longer a neophyte to the emotional curve balls that life can throw.

The Lord challenges us constantly, but gives us the strength to over come them. This is something that is hard to remember, but its something that He's proven to me countless times over, most recently, in the past two weeks. You kinda get a sense of how upset I was in my last blog post, and I was even very angry as I drove over to your house on that Friday (I don't think I've ever driven across town in less than five minutes before) but as soon as I saw you guys, everything evaporated. Any lingering negative feelings after Friday were totally expunged over the next week because of one thing: DSS.

As you know, the DSS drama department presented A Flea in Her Ear throughout last week. I had originally planned not to go, but when I got home on Thursday, my sister came up to me and said "Tim are you free tonight??? Crazy German Friend is working as stage crew and she got me two tickets to the DSS play tonight, so you should come with me!" and I did and it was fantastic and I don't think I've laughed that hard for a very long time.

It was not just that the play was hilarious, but I got to see lots of friends from band and some of the teachers and it was amazingly fun and really it was all the best parts of high school rolled into one night. And it was so invigorating that I needed another hit of it, so I went to see it again with Souless Fro Boy on Friday. And it was just as amazing. Seriously, I can't remember the last time I jumped up and down shrieking my face off with excitement in the middle of a crowd of strangers. And then on Saturday since my sister hasn't seen Crazy German Friend and Crazy Asian Friend from DSS in AGES, they had a sleepover and we had a blast.

I love how my sister gets along and is friends with my friends, and vice versa. It's awesome.

Anyways, I'm feeling a lot better and when I have time, I'll be ranting about Pokémon because FIFTH GEN WAS JUST RELEASED TO THE WORLD! OMG YAY!

Also: thanks for the support and awesomeness, Clay. I can't think of enough (positive) adjectives to attach to the word Friend when thanking you.

Also: I enjoyed your thoughts on n00bs; I think it's very noble of to want to use your prowess to decrease world suck like that; there aren't many people who would.

Also: would it be violating your Lent if we continued the Thread here on Vonerdculary, because the Thread turns two years old in just over a month, and I'd hate for it to be put on haitus... (so cute!~ http://www.exocomics.com/170 ; only awkward if you make it so http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/bizarro/28/ ; I LOVE COMMANDER DATA! SO AWESOME! Also: only nerds would do what is suggested in the last panel http://2tothe5th.com/default.aspx#244_-_Commander_Data)

Chat soon,
~Tim~

Neophyte

ne•o•phyte (noun)

a person who is new to a subject, skill, or belief.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I'mma talk about neophytes, or, as the majority of our age bracket would call them,

n00bs.



Now this particular word has a lot of different connotations which is fascinating to me because it has only entered common parlance in the past few years. It is usually used as a derogatory to insult people. It's intended to have a pernicious effect, lowering people's self esteem, while elevating the insulter to feel superior. Mr. Fro himself has called me one more times than there are hairs on his size-fluctuating head.

But like a lot of derogatory words, it is usually employed by people low self-worth to depreciate others to exalt themselves at least one peg above utterly deplorable. By this I mean that the kind of people who usually call people n00bs are those who are already n00bs at life.
To me, this word (and other similar words like amateur, neophyte, novice,etc.) illustrates a really important truth about life.

When I worked at the day camp, the kids playing Super Smash Bros. would usually call one another n00bs.



This was funny to me because they would insult each other for lacking skill, but from my perspective, they were all terrible at the game. As I watched each kid self-destruct and fall of the stage more times then they actually were able to hit one another, all the while calling each other 'n00bs', I laughed to myself, thinking how I could beat each and every one of them with one Control Stick tied behind my pack. Actually, I don't know how that would work . . .

Anyway, I suddenly remembered that I had once been just as bad. I remember vividly the first times I had played SSB with Froface and how he had beaten the ever-loving tar out of me as I tried desperately to land a blow while frantically moving my character from falling off the edge. It was awful to watch, I was embarrassingly bad at that game. But, even JoeFro was terrible at videogames once upon a time. I remember him being beaten by a friend of ours from elementary school just as badly as he beats me nowadays. I thought about how we were all once inexperience novices at one point or another.

I realized while watching the kids that we're all n00bs at some point in our lives. In fact, no one's good at everything, so we're all n00bs at something or other. Whenever kids make fun of each other for being unskilled, it reminds me of my own days growing up and being made fun of (and also making fun of others) for lack of talent. And no matter how much I think I have grown up, I know that I'm really not that different of a person than I was when I was a child. I still suck at a lot of things and I still chastise others for not being as smart or skilled as I am. But as I grow older, I have to acknowledge that I am by no means perfect at everything and while others may appear inadequate to me, I too was once a novice, or a n00b.

It doesn't matter how 'good' we are at anything. God doesn't care how skilled we are, and neither should we. What does matter is that we recognize what talents we have learned and what things we have become skilled at so that we can do those things to the best of our ability in improving the world around us. I would much rather be mildly adequate at something and use that skill to help people, than be amazing at something and use it only for my own selfish purposes. God has given us skill and talent so that we can use them to make the world a better place, or, as the Green Brothers put it, "Decrease World Suck".



So, going back to my original example, I may have felt smug watching the kids playing videogames, but instead of just acting superior towards them, I used my talents to help the kids earn more characters and levels in the game, so that we could all have more fun playing together.

So this is why people who call other n00bs are actually the biggest n00bs: If we spend our whole lives tearing each other down, we lose the ability to use the talents and gifts we've been given to help out one another and make the world a less-horrible place to inhabit. If you live your life with the inability to love other people and make their lives as well as your own better, you are a n00b at living.

We are all neophytes, but when we, as amateurs, come together, with the help of a higher power, we can accomplish something truly great that we could never do on our own. I like using my talents to help out people, whether it be in ministry or just by listening to people's problems. I know that I still have a lot that I can learn while I'm here on Earth, but I still want to use what knowledge and abilities I have acquired to help others learn to use their own talents they have been given.

Anyway, that's what I have to say about being a neophyte.

Oh, and on a side-note, I would like to note that Quid-Pro-Fro has never used the word n00b in a negative way to me. He says it to people that frustrate him (especially on CoD), but when he calls me one, it's in a joking way that means no real harm. It makes me laugh and I love him for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So anyway, I just wanted to apologize for not being able to update the thread for a while! I should have told you earlier that I was thinking about giving up Facebook for Lent! It's been something that's been on my mind for a while as Facepage and other websites can really distract me from getting my work done. I also wanted to follow my Youth Pastor's example of making Lent an annual cumulative thing. I like the idea that every year, I challenge myself to give up something new in addition to what I gave up last year. It gets exponentially challenging, but I want to give it all I've got!

However, this doesn't mean that I don't want to talk to you!!!! Never never never never never never ever fornever ever!!!! In fact, what I was thinking was that we could skype more in the next few months. I really enjoyed that time we talked together in January (even though I had dorm meeting then) and I was wondering if there is a time of day or week that works best for you. We can ever talk while we're studying or doing papers if, like our spare block together. They were incredibly unproductive yes, but some of the best times I had in high school.

So does that work for you? Let me know via text or on my email, which is just my name @gmail.com. Or you can skypechat me when you get time!

Have a great day Tim! Keep on catching 'em all!

See ya,


-Clayton

Pernicious

per•ni•cious (adjective)

having harmful effects, especially in a gradual or subtle way

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Tim,
when I read your last post about being normal, I was worried if too many pernicious things had cropped up in your life. I can't say I "know" how you feel, but I can empathize and sypathize with your predicament. I know I have a few of them myself. They can be big things, like self-inflicted guilt trips. Or they can be little things, like an addiction to Facebook. I deal with both of those things on and off. But that's part of being human.

The human condition is that state where we are constantly in a state of imperfection and unfulfilled desire. This condition is defined by suffering, both little and big. We suffer under the oppression of others, under the judgment of others, and worst of all, under the oppression and judgment we inflict on ourselves. We beat ourselves up over not being perfect and visualize and fantasize ideals that are so impractical that we will never see them in fruition in this lifetime. I believe that this is where a lot of our boredom and dissatisfaction comes from in our modern world.

We watch TV, see movies, and play videogames where the ideal is to have that perfect group of friends, the ideal partner, to one day get that perfect job that never feels like work. Fantasy takes this one step further as we lose ourselves in non-existent worlds where limitations our thrown off and our normal everyday issues are put aside for romantic battles against over-the-top villains and monsters.

Don't get me wrong, I love fantasy and Sci-fi. But I've seen the way it affects people and the pernicious effect it has one someone's view of what the "real" world should be like. It's not like people walk around going, "Man if only I had a lightsaber," or "All my problems would be solved if I could use a magic wand," or "My life would be so much better if I lived on a different planet". Well, some do.
But when we attach our notions of how people should act to the characters we see and read about in fiction, we lose the essential part of being human that every artist strives to fully capture, but ultimately fails every time. I know this because it's something I dealt with a lot. I spent so much of my adolescent life indoors watching screens. I got so used to living my life with so little interaction with others other than my friends and family that it became harder and harder for me to reach out to people. Alone time is a good thing, absolutely. God has given us solitude as a gift to relax, re-energize, and think deep thoughts. But this can also be pernicious like anything in excess.

There is some je ne sais quoi about being human that cannot be beat by any of our own human inventions. God has given us a form of life and existence that amazingly special that cannot be reproduced.

Right now, it's still a struggle to force myself to get my papers done, to study for things, to go interact with people I don't know very well, and to run Youth Drop-In every week. But I want to keep working at becoming a better person and improving the lives of those around me just as much as I want to improve my own life.

I'm not saying this is your own struggle, because I know you have a lot of other very different things on your mind right now. I know that because of the time of year, as you said, things are tough, but I just want to do whatever I can to help you get through it. Now is the time of year that can be stressful for a lot of people. There's papers and exams and all types of crazy stuff piling up. I've talked to a few people today who are having unforeseen crisis back home. These things happen and we all suffer in different, but no less significant ways. Don't add on to your suffering with more suffering. Don't beat yourself up and don't be afraid to do things and talk to people that you never have before. I'll pray for you Tim!

Don't forget to be Tim!

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On another note, I got an A+ on my History Midterm! And my Shakespeare Prof said that presentation that B and I were apart of was the best rendition of Antony and Cleopatra she had ever seen! Also, my RA got an Apartment Rep position and he, I, and two other guys get first pick of apartments for next year! We went scouting in the apartments and talked to Spencer in the middle of his dinner about the best picks. We're still debating, but we're probably going to take the one that had a renovation done on the shower and has a bush in front of the window so we can spy on people but still get some privacy.

We'll see soon enough!

-Clayton

Normal

nor•mal (verb)
(physics & mathematics) pertaining to vectors, a vector or surface is said to be "normal to" another vector or surface if they intersect at an angle of 90 degrees (i.e. are perpendicular to one another)
Origin: Latin (normalis = conforming to the rules/a carpenter's square)

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Back from Reading Break. Clocked in ~50 hours of Pokémon. Didn't really do much else. Super tired to be back at school.

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Pertaining to Homestuck trolls: HOLY CRAP THAT'S COMPLICATED! (I read the linked article) But it seems amazingly awesome and very entertaining. I can see myself getting lost in it sometime in the future, for sure. I just need to find the time for it.

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I guess that's what I'm going to be talking about today. It's rather personal, I guess, but it's all that's really on my mind lately, and I don't have 3-4 hours it would take to try and cram all of my Pokémon obsessions (the only other topic on my mind atm) into one post today, so here goes.

Finding the time for stuff.

I dunno, but motivation and self discipline have always been huge problems for me; I'm (usually) hard pressed to do class work or really any work in general unless I feel like it. Sometimes everything seems like such a drag, completely dull, and wholly uninteresting. It really does have to do with my mood; if I'm in a good mood, I'm usually very productive and I find I learn more effectively, but if I'm in a bad mood or I'm upset, everything just disintegrates.

Lately, I've found that I'm not able to concentrate on anything like I used to be able to. I'm not very productive, I'm doing poorly in all my classes (I just got all my midterms back and all of them are B's or worse), and my hair is thinning (which is enormously alarming). I guess I'm just getting tired of living such a mundane life.

With all this fogginess, I haven't been able to find time for everything that I really want to do, because I feel guilty for not studying more because I'm not doing well in my studies, but I'm not doing well in school because I'm generally not very alert or motivated, which is generally because every day is just so depressing.

As I sit here, absently staring at the computer screen and keyboard in front of me, I wonder, am I really still here? Because how do I know that I'm really still living if I'm too numb to feel anything? To quote Hank Green's brilliant Anglerfish Song, "You simply do not feel what is always there/I ask my brain to entertain that pain is the same/that if I feel it all the time can I really call it pain?"

 I used to say that sometimes the greatest battle is to keep on living. Some people would agree, saying "well that totally makes sense: there are people living poverty who have to fight for every single meal; they have to work their entire lives, just to meet their basic needs," and it's true, for these people, the greatest battle is indeed to keep on living: to find the next meal, to find another place to sleep, to make sure that you're not left behind as life keeps moving forwards. But sometimes life is not physically difficult, but emotionally difficult. Sometimes the greatest battle is to keep on living a life that gives you little to no satisfaction, when the joy seems to be sucked right out of the very air you breathe.

Someone once famously said that happiness is found not in the seldom moments of immense glory and triumph, but in the little graces in every day life. In biochemistry, we learned that for many proteins, only a very small percentage of its size is dedicated to performing its function; the reason why it has to be so big is because a protein's stability is the sum of a large number of tiny forces. That is, over 95% of a protein enzyme's amino acids have nothing to do with its function and everything to do with making sure it doesn't fall apart. In other words, a protein is only stable because a very large number of tiny forces/weak interactions between its amino acids hold it together; if proteins were small and had just the amino acids involved in performing its function (i.e. their size reduced by over 95%), because the weak interactions are so much fewer in number, it would not be enough to hold the protein together, and everything would just fall apart.

~Tim~

Ubiquitous

u•biq•ui•tous (adjective)

present, appearing, or found everywhere

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Tim, the residue of your penultimate post still resonates with me and continues to make noises in my head, but you already ranted about FE so now I have to catch up with you!

Anyway, I really liked what you had to say about FE and your devotion to it. I do take issue with something you said in the post before that, but first things first.

The fact that you care so much about the characters of FE above all else resonates with me not just because one of the differentiating factors of literature from escapist fiction is the fact that escapist fiction is primarily plot-focused, whereas literature is almost entirely Character-driven. I remember you telling me that John Green had trouble with plot but was great at character development, which is what makes him such a great writer. I'm not saying that plot isn't important (without it, we'd just be reading/watching/playing a psychological analysis), but without any real dynamic and rounded characters, the story falls flat and ultimately forgettable.
It's like looking at a picture of a mountain. Sure it's nice and pretty, but without any people in the picture, a history related to it, or a story to attach to it, it means nothing.

Anyway, so because of what you wrote, I felt compelled to explain my interest in Homestuck.



The format of Homestuck is interesting to say the least as it is presented in internet comic style, but every page link to the next frame/series of frames/animation (for special plot advancements) is preceded by a text command (eg. John: Look Out Window). The idea is to imitate the old-style text command games and give the reader a sense of being involved in the happenstances of the story, which is all written by the guy below.



There's so much self-insertion and fourth-wall breaking in the comic that it would make even post-modernist deconstructionists cringe. However, that's part of the fun of reading it, because the text commands and the plot-twists psyche you out and you never know what is really going to happen next.

However, what I really love about Homestuck is the characters, seen below:






The story revolves around these four kids who all play a game that leads to the destruction of Earth and their teleportation into the Incipisphere where they must be challenged by the constructs of the game to build their houses (which teleported with them) through the Seven Gates to reach Skaia, a crucible of unlimited potential. The Medium they enter is in the midst of a giant war between light and dark forces on the four planets they end up on and on Skaia itself.



Despite the numerous plot details of the game constructs, the politics of the two Kingdoms and the subplot of the Skaian exiles sent to Earth to repopulate it, the main focus is on the four kids and their development throughout the game.



It's kind of like The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe, but set in 2009 and with a dramatically secularized viewpoint. However, the story gets more complicated as the kids are trolled by a race of aliens who also played the game, but were thwarted at the last second by a rift in space which they blame the kids for.

The aliens, coincidentally, are a race of literal Trolls from a planet that was also decimated by the game and eventually repopulated by a group of exiles that tangentially assisted the trolls via secret underground computer labs planted by the game for that exact purpose.



The trolls become central to the plot and the complications of their relationships and interactions (with the kids as well as with one another) adds a fourfold layer to the story. I say fourfold for two reasons, one being the fact that there are 12 Trolls as opposed to 4 kids (Yes I know 12 ÷ 4 isn't 4, but just wait).



So the other thing about trolls is the fact that Troll romance works on Four Quadrants instead of just one. They are symbolized by a Heart (<3), a Diamond (<>), some Clubs (o8<) and a Spade (<3<). It's ridiculously complicated and it makes it very challenging as a reader to keep track of all the different relationships. Furthermore . . .

Actually, if you're really curious, just go here:

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?game=delete&s=6&p=004395

Anyway, so the whole direction with the Troll characters adds more depth to both the original characters as well as the whole concept of young teens trying to relate to each other while engrossed in life or death situations. The real story of Homestuck is about the people (and trolls) and how they interact with one another, which the creator has stated many times is his intention all along.



So it's a story of love, loss, friendship, betrayal, aliens, exiles, space, time, and above all growing up. The story has been updated daily for the past year and a half and although the ark of the story has only taken up one day so far, it feels like the characters have aged by many years, maturing alongside the complexity of the world(s) they traverse.



That's why I think it's so brilliant, but as with anything created by humans, there are some downsides.

We've talked a little bit in the past about how the fans of something can really alter whether you want to be apart of it. For example, looking at the fans of Twilight gives me a good indication of the subject matter in the books and whether I should read them or not. But that's not always the case (just because a lot of cereal killers liked The Catcher in the Rye doesn't mean I shouldn't have read it).



With Homestuck, there's a great mix of fans, from the passive to the passionate. And because it's on the internet, the dynamic goes deep into both extremes. There's a lot of fans of Homestuck that are really great and I would like to meet someday. On the other hand, there's also a lot of people who take the story far too seriously and raise a huge stink any time the plot takes a turn they don't care for. There's also this, which I won't comment on:



I would also like to point out as a warning that Rule 34 is VERY much applicable for nearly every aspect of Homestuck. I say this to warn you NOT TO IMAGE SEARCH ANY OF THE THINGS I MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG. Please, just don't do it. The internet is a scary, disturbing, and unsettling place.



But all that aside, it's still a well-crafted story that I enjoy every page of. Its main intention is humour and there are times when I've laughed out loud reading it (much to the confusion of my dorm mates). I'm invested in the characters and can't wait to see where the story goes next.



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So there you have it.

And I haven't forgotten what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I'm super happy that we agree theologically about what I said in the last post and I just want to clarify that you may totally disagree with me here and I completely respect you for that, that's why I talk to you in the first place (plus I love you!).
But I just wanted to point out that I do believe that the truth of God and His Kingdom is very much Absolute. Not by scientific and by effect, human, understanding, but because His Kingdom is not just something we believe in, but it is a reality of the whole universe. I'm not poo-pooing any sort of scientific observation or the scientific method; I think it is absolutely essential that we do all that we can to have a clear, unbiased understanding of the universe around us. I still want to assert that God's power is by no means dependent upon our ability to worship Him or by our faith in Him. God doesn't need us to believe in Him, He is the master of the entire universe. Faith is only important to Him as it pertains to our understanding of Him.

And that's what I think you were trying to say: that our faith is not an absolute truth in terms of how we are able to define "absolute" (seeing as we can prove nothing of our faith with scientific or mathematical means). Yes, we need faith and belief, but we can never be 100% sure based on any empirical methods that we have at our disposal. But the reality of God is more real than anything we perceive by our extremely limited sensory perceptions. He is absolute. Our understanding of Him is not. He is ubiquitous and appears in all things; we just can't prove of validate that by our own fishbowl understanding.

So yes, you were right, I just wanted to clarify and qualify that.

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Glad to here your midterms went so well! I have one coming up and one after the break, with a bunch of presentations and papers thrown in there, so I'm going to be up to my ears in work this week. But I have next week off! B's Mom is coming to visit, so they're going to be staying over for a few days, but I plan to do some much needed visiting and hanging out throughout that week if you're available!

See you soon Tim,

-Clayton