Soc. & Poli Phil. so far

Aristotle with femnist critique, Aquinas with feminist critique, Hobbes, feminist critique to come. Oh deliciousness!

On all the weight that isn’t

On my shoulders any more. You see I just, about three hours ago, completely finished school. At this time. I have no obligations other than the sort of vague general ones about hoping to start it all over again at some point in the not too distant future. and of course needing to find a job.
Right at this moment I am so close to completely free, poised like the fool on the edge of the abyss with that yappy little dog nipping at my arse.

“Chills run up and down my spine”

O’ man! I am sitting here trying to write a ten page research paper on “Miracles, revelation and the nature of personal reality”, MLA style, for my Philosophy of Religion class.
I actually have had the TV off all day, as there was not one, single, thing worth turning it on for (since I missed Soul Train) today! So I thought I would run a little music on the iTunes since I’m working on the computer anyway. Well, the best thing on my iTunes right now is the Swim Club Radio comp I made for ya’ll. On it goes, and now I can’t concentrate on David Hume’s arguments “Against Miracles” for nothing!

I fricking love this comp!!!

I must think I’m a bloody genius. It makes the hair raise up on my arms to hear it, because every song on it, I love down to the very roots of my toenails.

So because I am being torturously slow with it anywise, because I’m trying to flippin’ graduate and maintain my GPA simultaneously here! I’m going to give you a couple of mischievous hints:
It starts with The Avengers Theme, it ends with Salt Of The Earth. The in-between is cuts from the likes of Nina Simone, X-ray Spex, Afrika Bambaata, John Lydon, Nilsson, The Vogues and Flirt.
Does that wet your whistle?

I need to give some serious time to the ones from you’all that are new to me as well... I can’t wait to really learn something new (as soon as I’m done learning all this other new stuff for grades.)

Edit: I had to switch to Chopin Nocturnes to be able to get any work done

The Good News Bible

Ha. Didya think I was gonna come back and explain my absence by saying I just got out of a camp and I’m ready to spread the good word? Not a prayer.

I think that whole “good news” movement was an offshoot of the weird, christian, “go thou amongst the hippies and convert” thing that happened in the 60’s and 70’s. “Oh you feel lost? Confused? Well did you notice how much like a hippie Jesus was? No? Well let me tell you.....”
I think that that is a devilish part of some of the “religious issues” we are experiencing these days. A lot of those people got evangeled pretty hard core and became pretty hard core themselves, then married hardcore and bred hardcore and there you are, right down the line to Jesus Camp.

Anyway, no, it’s finals and that’s all the excuse I have.
But I thought I would drop by and relay that I just got word that I received an A in Poli. Sci. Which means that technically I earned my degree today.

I know there are plenty of other people, with plenty of way better sounding letters after their names from plenty of way prestigious universities, but, it feels real weird, tingly, exciting, pretentious and slightly embarrassing to be a little giddy about saying to myself, “hey! I’ve earned a degree”. Oh and I earned hell out of it Honey.

The other thing that is noteworthy is that today I am trying to make a major inroad in the reduction of the amount of nicotine my body expects daily. Having stressed myself up to over a pack, something aggressive needs to be done. So I got me some Zyban and a kitchen timer and I’m pulling serious Mrs. Lafayette DuBois action. 1/2 a cigarette every 50 minutes today, then only every hour tomorrow. Then Weds. I am in class or on the bus for almost 12 hours straight anyway. So by Thurs. I might be able to get it down to 10 a day. I bin watchin’ that timer so far today though....

Psuedo-Snobbery

Well, perhaps not so psuedo, it’s actually pretty straight up.
I have been thinking recently about the phrase “pseudo-intellectual”. I have to say that a primary failing in this epithet is that unless it’s hurled at me by, say, a street person or maybe someone who has worked at Ford’s for 20 years straight out of high school or something similar, it loses much veracity. Someone from U-M calling me a pseudo-intellectual is pretty much like me calling someone a heifer.

Secondarily, I think someone who would use it in the pejorative sense has probably just spent too much time in a university town. The kind of place where people are sadly bright enough to level an insult that is pretty much saying “how dare you attempt to think”. Yep, happy enough to reap the financial rewards of the bidness of higher education, all those lovely monies accrued from people attempting, theoretically, to think, (but perhaps, more likely, to be merely trying to guarantee a specific income level if I’m any judge), but if that person doesn’t think like they’re “spozed”* to, they’re really just a mere pseudo-thinker. That is so laughable. If you translate it into that very language, “oh, you are just an incorrigible psuedo-thinker” the ridiculousness and pindickery of it suddenly becomes apparent and I will hazard a guess that the motivation becomes fairly transparent.

So what is it then that qualifies one as having the bona fides? The actual living, breathing, tower of power, pinnacle-ness of intellect? It simply can’t, please tell me you don't, have the unmitigated nerve, to measure it by a degree. Because I’ll have one soon, neither of my house mates has one, and thank God, for once, everyone in the house is naturally smarter, and far kinder, than I am. So that would be an invalid and therefore unsound, argument.

Myself, I actually prefer people who make the attempt, be it ever so feeble, to think.
As well as that thing His Holiness says about how “his religion is kindness?” Yah, I think you could be dumb as dirt and probably be far better off well on, down that road.

So I will herein make a vow: That having racked my brain and not being able to recall any instance where I have called anyone either a pseudo-intellectual or a heifer, I will dearly attempt to continue to not use those two particular, hypocritical, epithets in my future life. However because I am, not so very kind in my heart of hearts, I will probably continue to call a spade a spade, and a snob a snob.

* “The Way It Spozed To Be” James Herndon

I think

I officially quit Poetry Club. I am really convinced there is a funk there. Some kind of reverse snobbery thing. Go figure! Snobbery at POETRY Club?

Yup

Skool seems so far so ok.
I read terrible things about the psych. teacher on “rate my professor”, but he seems all right so far.
Interesting system in Poli Sci. Grading based solely on the 3 exams. If you get an A on the first 2 and donate an hour a week after the first one as a study group leader, you get an automatic A on the third. I think I’m going to have to try for that.

Today is field geology. Tomorrow I start Philosophy of Religion. Time will tell.

Meanwhile I had some Robert Palmer earwurmage today. “Some Like It Hot”. Apparently it’s the attack of the 70’s and 80’s. There was, however, a Dead Meadow morning a few days ago but since I don’t know the names of any of the songs I couldn’t document it.

Wow

The energy MUST have really changed, I actually started cleaning, a lot. My meditation room had been a wreck ever since I stored a desk in the middle of it, then the cat puked in a festive cascade from the very top of my altar, and I cleaned out a closet in the only out of the way floor space in the house. But no more, the altar cloths are clean and fresh, its almost all dusted and vacuumed and its totally walkable, sittable, whatever.

The cat looked a little crazed sniffing about. I broke her water dish in the process, she was unhappy about that. ( I got her a new one no fear). Then the hallway got vacuumed and now I’m about to hit my room.

Or maybe it’s because I would rather do anything than fill out my student financial aid forms.