They're not after you.

How to prepare for a philosophy exam:

- Smile and say hello to your lecturer.
- Write out all the arguments in a little exercise book. Write out counterarguments. Write out countercounterarguments. Ad infinitum.
- Chuck in a few "begs the question"s and "catagory error" and some Latin terms. Stir.
- Wear your spanky pants and a pink top.

One down. Three to go.

On Apprentice last night, there was a witch hunt. All the girls gang-bitched this kinda quirky girl, Stacie, sorority style, and accused her of craziness. Thier evidence was teneous at best - something to do with an eightball and parinoia. I think Trump fired her so that the girls would turn on each other and their faux-bonds based on their Stacie hate would break. The guys won, which is great. I quite like Raj and his bow ties. He's a bit of a character.

As you can tell, my life pretty stodgy at the moment - I haven't posted in two weeks and I'm resorting to television shows as subject matter.

Church was ace on Sunday. Mikey talked about excommunication - from 1Cor. He gave good reasons for church discipline - that God's name shouldn't be blasphemed, that the gospel must be adorned with good works, and salvation of those in the church who are immoral. Claims all backed up biblically - not pulled out of his dreadlocks.

Before the sermon started, Mikey qualified by saying, "Some people here are a bit parinoid. I just want to say that I'm not refering to you when I talk about expelling the immoral brother." At the end of the service a lady who suffers from depression and anxiety, said "I worry about things a lot. Jesus says don't worry. Does that mean I should be excommunicated?" Mikey replies "When I said some people are parinoid, I meant you." And she's like "That makes me even more parinoid." She wasn't offended and Mikey wasn't being offensive - it was all in good humour. The dialouge started to grow in complexity - layers of parinoia - pretty funny.

I'm writing my essays for Ideas & Faiths exam. It's putting me to sleep. Usually philosophy raises my pulse, but learning about other religions, even from my lecturess's obscure phenomenological approach is unphilosophical. Instead it's encyclopedial. As usual, I'm trying to get to the heart of it all, but the electic-ness of it just wont let me.

Here's something I'm sick of: non-narrative, empty arthouse flicks. I saw the beginning of this Japanese movie ...Lily Chou Chou. Spliced images, backtracking, anti-heroes... Maybe I'm too West-centric too appreciate it. Or maybe it was just rubbish.

Telly

Last night I watched a fair bit of television. All of it made me think, which is usually not a good idea just before bedtime.

Australian Idol: Two out of the five remaining contestants are chubby! How great is that? Half of Australians are over weight so it's quite democratic, really. I'm going for Chanel, because she's a great performer and she's beautiful and normal sized. But I'd be happy if one of the fat people won because that'd be kind of subversive.

John Safran: WTF?! It was the final episode and he went to an exorcist. The guy was a "Christian" minister who's slogan was "Do What Jesus Did"; he enabled other people to perform exorcisms. Safran had to fill out a questionaire asking him questions like about his involvment in various religions and the occult. The minister was suprised that Safran had dabbled in so much and I think the way he handled himself was unprofessional. Anyway, the freakiest thing was when the minister performed the exorcisms. Safran actually writhed and kicked whilst the priest was saying things like "Get out you whore of Babylon!" and pressing the Bible against him. And he kept bringing up the whole Jewish thing and even made Safran "forgive Hitler", which I thought was quite icky. Anyhow, the whole episode was the exorcism - no commentry by Safran, just at one point the director says of Safran "We've never seen him like this before." At the end, the demons finally come out of him and he gives the minister a big hug. And the minister says "I'm going to come over to Australia and together we're going to preach the gospel!" Well, I'd like to see that.

This, of course, made me question the reality of what occured. Was Safran demon possesed? After all, he has been involved in an awful lot of rituals possibly involving evil spirits. If he was posessed, did the exorcism work? Did that Christian minister have authority to drive out demons? Did the congregation (the "African Americans" have who drove out the African demons) have authority too? Was Safran just playing the goat to make good television? Could both be true?

I also felt uncomfortable with the way the minister conducted himself - I thought he was a bit of a nob at times. Also, just a minor thing, but he blamed the 9/11 bombings on demon possesion, saying the purportrators were "just nice kids". You can go too far with the demon posession thing and forget the sin in the heart of humankind.

Sluts in the City: Hmm, I probably don't need to say more, except maybe that the four have terrible taste in a) clothes and b) men (except maybe the Colin Farrell lookalike who was dating Carrie). I like how the show is maturing a bit and Miranda got married and Charlotte is thinking about it and they're all realising that sex isn't just sex (except for Samantha, who must be a nymphomaniac).

Lateline: Interview with Proff Lovelock, the origional green activist and scientist. He's a cluey, articulate little old man who was talking about global warming. It's hard to know who to believe in the global warming debate since I'm not a scientist so I don't really have the tools of empirical research in order to decide who is right (I could use philosophy, but that would just show that they're all wrong ;-)). Lovelock was saying that measurements show that the sea is warming. This causes ovean convection to stop such that the algae living on the surface can't get to the nutrients that would otherwise be coming up from below. So the alge dies. They procude gases which produce the rain bearing clouds above the ocean, especially in the tropics. When the clouds disapear the tropics will become deserts. Also, the clouds act to reflect soalr radiation. So the tropics will become like the inside of your car when you forget to put the silver sungaurd up. These two consequences will lead to a global warming of six degrees by the end of the century! I think I might have to retire to the Foroe Islands. More importantly, there is a critical temperature that we are rapidly approaching. Once we hit this global temp rise of about 3 degrees, there is no turning back and glaciers will start to melt significantly.

Lovelock wasn't too worried about the survival of human beings (he thinks as a species, we're invincable) but he was more worried about civilisation which he regards as fragile. When the sea levels rise, many cities will be submerged. I'm not so sure we won't be able to recover. Personally, I think as a civilisation, we've reached a point of robustness. For instance - you can't take away electricity as someone can always build a generator. Actually, this kind of frustrates me, but Lovelock dreads the idea of returning to the Stone Age. I have a wierd post-apocolyptic fetish. I'd love to see a complacancy destroyed and I'd love to see our personal survival returned to our own hands.

Letters

Bike riding amazes me like jet areoplanes. Why don't they fall over? In the case of bikes, I don't even know the physics of it - it seems so contrary to ordinary experience. Anyhow, it's great fun. I love powering up steep hills and then zooming down.

I just baked some anzac cookies. Mum says they're moorish. I used to think that when people said that some food was "moorish", they meant that it came from North Africa.

Goats are sheep from an alternate universe. They're so funny. When they bleat, they sound like children crying.

The other night we watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico. The Mexicans say "Mekiko" which I think sounds so much cooler and sexier. Especially when it's Antonio Bandares saying it. The film also has that foxy maiden (probably not) Salma Hayek in it for about ten minutes and then she dies. That's not a spoiler - just about everyone dies. Actually that's pretty much all the movie is - lots of people being killed in a very cool mythic modern Mekiko. Two and a half stars, David.

Two embaressing things happened at work yesterday. 1 I was reading the specials out and I pronounced ratotouille "ratoleenie". 2 Much more embaressing, I was bending over to pick up some wine glasses and my cheapo plastic bra clip snapped! We were really busy but I dropped everything (not literally) and rushed off to the tiolets. Thankfully I was wearing my responsible alcohol serving pin so I ripped that off my shirt and used that as a makeshift clasp. Ingenious, eh?

Since I'm studying for exams, I did the requisite rifling around randomly in my draws. I found three old letters that moved me. The first, dating back five years ago, is confession of love, sin and vulnerability from a young man I rejected. As usual, it made me nostalgic - a tinge of sadness that a rich, significant part of life has vaporised and nothing of it is left.

The second letter is about four years old. It's from a girl I shared a friendship with. The letter is bubbly and optimistic, reflecting her character - or at least the character she wore to school. But really, she was a lovely, beautiful, encouraging Christian. Since then, I've lost touch. Reading the letter, I was saddened at loosing the friendship - perhaps more so since it was not out of hate and irrevocable estrangement but mere parting of ways through travel (with the latter I had the chance to keep in touch but didn't). Last I heard she was in Israel possibly studying at Bible College and possibly dating an Israeli soldier. I'd like to get back in touch with her but I googled her with no avail. (Okay, who hasn't stalked with google? ;))

The last letter, from three years ago sadened me the most. It the testimony of a Christian friend. She had a beautiful story of the experience of grace from God. Sadly she has since fallen away.

After a walk on the common...

Swoop and die, sky rats.
I'm a small boy with a sling.
Vengence is all mine.

And Don't Be Disturbed!

Yay! People are having a debate on my blog and it's not with me. Even better. /evil grin/

As I said earlier, I'm a bad speller. It can't be helped, I'm sorry. Try to see the forest.

When I said "argument to be continued", I didn't necessarily mean in the next post. ;-) Stay tuned...

Here's an ethical dilema for a Christian. Suppose you write an essay the night before (as you do) it's due. You hand it in knowing that your arguments are pov and your structure wobbly. It couldn't possibly deserve more than a credit. You get the essay back and you've got a distinction. I have a friend who used to bargin her marks up. I've never had the confidence to do that - the lecturer knows best. In this case, should you stay after class and show the tutor that the essay is rubbish and that he ought to mark you down? Or would you be offending his discretion if you did that?

I feel a little like a charlaton at the end of my degree - I've just fed them cake, really. The other day I found out that one of my lecturers is gay. This sounds really dodgy, but in one respect I was glad... I got a good mark for that subject!

Category amusing: The other day at the pool, a teen couple were snogging in the lane next to me. There was a large primary school group watching - gawking - from the side of the pool. That was funny enough. One little smartie yelled out "Get a room!" To which the young lad replied "We've got a pool." Heh. That wasn't that funny.

Survivor is soo disapointing. The sexy FBI agent, Brady, got booted. :-( So far, they have only booted young people. If the trend continues, I have to stop watching my favorite show.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Rights?

I just exercised my "right" as a citizen of a democracy. I voted more conservatively than I did last time, politically, but probably me more radically than the majority. (At least I like to think I am more radical than the majority ;-) )

Is voting really a "right"? I suppose it's a right if you already live in a democratic country, but that's just a tautology. People talk of human rights and you're immediatly thrown in the Pol-Pot/Sadam/Stalin bin if you question the term "rights". I'm asking an epistemic question, not asking to breech human rights. We call them rights to imply self evident truth, because we want those who violate them to belive that they making a moral contradiction. But the very fact that these so called "self evident" truths have counterexamples in haneous attrocoties makes the term "right" false.

We need, therefore, a real reason for "rights". I believe that God commands that we love one another and this means that we care for one another. I don't think rights come into it. Rights are conditional after all. If we make a pact, we write conditions into it and these can be expressed in terms of rights. Argument to be continued...

Can't We All Just Get Along?

In the parralell universe where my parents don't leave America, I'm a cheerleader. It looks so much fun. And a good excuse to dance. In that parralell universe I might actually have been popular in high school, and dated some hunky jock. Hmmm, that last part doesn't sound so appealing. I think I prefer the Cliff (Bring it On) or the Lucious (The Village) type.

Anyhow, I liked The Village. Themes: Innosence, fear, justice and knowledge. There seems to be a bout of recent movies following that age old epistemological (Plato, Descartes, Kant, Foucault) theme: The Matrix, The Recruit, Momento, The 13th Floor, The Truman Show and eXistenze. Methinks it's one of those universal themes, like redemption, that are characteristic of the Human Condition.

I worked impromptu today. Business is picking up, which is good. (dollar signs pop up in my eyes ;-)) But I sure don't want to be a waitress for the rest of my life. Highlight of the day was a good looking customer.... But you don't really care.

I'm having my mid young adult crisis: What the hell am I going to do with my life? These days, no career is certain and most jobs don't even have a name. I'm thinking I might go on NewStart once I finish honours that way I can pursue my completely non-money making aspirations of studying philosophy and drawing and painting. I think I might do arty evangelistic tracts that are quirky and leave them around universities. Arts Students sit around avoiding work and being literate, they'll pick up any flier in front of them. I just have to trust God about this. The main thing is that I won't starve because God promises to give us our daily bread. So even if I'm sleeping in a dumpster and eating bakery leftovers - I'll still be taken care of. And it doesn't matter in the end anyway... Christ will return so what happens in the meantime is nothing to stress about.