tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193081352024-03-13T10:03:58.341-07:00The Realm of Pseudo-ProfunditiesLeopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.comBlogger133125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-24987391945141117092007-09-09T20:56:00.000-07:002007-09-09T21:11:03.732-07:00Life After Graduate School?Since I have received a recent inquiry whether I am still alive, I would like to answer the question. To clarify, I would <em>like </em>to answer the question. I believe the answer is "Yes," but how can one be sure? Presumably, if one is dead, one does not feel tired, so if one feels tired, then is one not alive? Since classes started, I'm spending about 70 hours a week either in class or prepping for it, so I'm afraid I won't have much time for blog postings (for those of you who have not yet guessed). I love this blog, and the word "Pseudo-profundities" has been very good to me, but I just don't anticipate being able to write much in the near future. Anyway. Faulkner is calling me.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-54644869685571872012007-07-17T14:49:00.000-07:002007-07-17T21:36:04.553-07:00A Roswellian Future?As we've been getting ready to leave to the undisclosed location which houses our university employer, we've realized how many resources are available to us here that won't be available in our new home. Sure, our new home will have smoothies, but will they have the special garlic pizza recipe that's available here? Probably not. When I visited, a person didn't know what a Panera is, so I'm a little broken up about that, too. I'm sure there will be some carryover, but part of the difficulty in planning your last few meals/errands before moving is that you don't always know which places you can never see again.<br /><br />One of the places we have already begun to miss is the local library, which has an incredible DVD collection. You can rent half a season of a show for just $1.00! Admittedly, you must watch that half a season in three days, but let's see the 75% full glass here, people! Admittedly, we have an account with Blockbuster Online, so they can send us television shows by mail; the problem is that the shows we get through Blockbuster Online are inevitably those shows that we both want to see, meaning that much quality programming gets neglected, such as <em>Babylon 5</em>. Anyway, upon one of my raiding expeditions at the local library, I found <em>Roswell,</em> a show I never got around to watching back when it was on the WB. Believing it would probably be "non-wife watching material," I took it out, only to discover that my wife was at least willing to give it a try (her <em>X-Files</em> affections won out).<br /><br />There is a lot to like about the series. From the very first episode there was good conflict and a sense of an overarching plot (there's another alien out there too? he's killing people? And the sheriff wants to bring you in?). And even though these aliens were not of the <em>Smallville</em> butt-kicking variety, they still had some pretty cool powers.<br /><br />However, there is something really not to like about the series: relationships. The dialogue is painful. For instance, when human Elizabeth (who loves alien Max) is talking with her boyfriend Kyle, she asks him if he "feels things" about her. He hesitantly affirms that he does indeed "feel things." I thought only George Lucas wrote dialogue like this! Where's Anakin Skywalker pleading, "Please don't let the kiss become a scar." (What did he mean, anyway? A hickey? By the way, at one point in the series Elizabeth <em>does</em> get a glowing alien hickey from Max, which eventually turns into a wound, so the kiss quite literally becomes a scar. I'm not making this up, people!)<br /><br />I understand that some teenagers might talk this way. I understand one could argue that it is important in creating a show to represent teenagers realistically--I seem to remember hearing that in the scripts of <em>My So-Called Life</em>, writers would actually include the word "like" (e.g., "that's so, like, true") to give it that feeling of authenticity. But you know, I feel things about that kind of dialogue--things like rage and vitriol. So when Elizabeth writes in her journal about how there's something so perfect about driving in a car with the boy you like and the wind blowing through your hair, I am delighted that the car crashes, but disappointed that her journal was not also destroyed in the crash.<br /><br />The characters in relationships do incredibly stupid things: for example, aliens are basically indestructible (Max has never been sick a day in his life); however, they learn that if they engage in Indian sweat ceremonies (don't ask), they might possibly die. The incident frightens Liz because it teaches her aliens are mortal (duh!). Max resolves from this incident--an incident that didn't even affect him, but another alien!--that they need to break up, because he can't risk accidentally dying on her. If you had to compare survival rates between people who are never sick but are vulnerable to sweat ceremonies and people who get sick, I think the former has better odds.<br /><br />The problem is not simply that characters do incredibly stupid things, but they talk about them. They have to analyze "What is Max thinking?" and "Why doesn't Michael just let me in?" I find myself asking, "Why don't they just <em>stop</em> letting me in?" and "Do you really need to show me them getting back together and making out again?" The scene where Max was tortured by alien-hunters was almost a relief because it did not involve Liz looking "meaningfully" at him again.<br /><br />So, even though the show did have good parts--parts I haven't really written about--we don't know if the teenager aspects of the show are too painful for us to make it to season 2. We may have to leave the local library behind, but we have not yet decided on whether we will leave behind <em>Roswell</em>. I guess we'll have to figure out if we feel things.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-77808571972623156992007-07-07T12:21:00.000-07:002007-07-07T12:50:03.211-07:00Warning: This Mailbox is Harmful to Your HealthThere are very many dangers to the existence of humanity. <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19214818/">Cereal</a>, for example. The difficulty is that, as dangers proliferate and we are forced to write more warning labels, we might get a little lazy. Now, in the beginning, warning labels were very clear about what bad things might happen to you: for example, "Surgeon General's Warning: cigarettes contain carbon monoxide." Granted, children probably wouldn't know what that actually is, but it sure sounds bad. After all, children know how painful "hydrogen peroxide" is, so any word that rhymes with it is just inviting trouble.<br /><br />Well, now that my wife and I are finished our dissertations and going to teach at university (yeah!), we went to look into housing. Something that we found slightly disturbing--both at our hotel and at some of the apartments we visited--is that there was a warning (I do not remember the exact words), "This contains substances that are harmful." Now, I'm perfectly happy that they informed me that I might possibly die if I stayed in the hotel or lived in their apartment. However, I would have liked to know more about how I would die--would it be in my sleep? Would my intestines simply liquify? And it also would have been nice to know what "this" is. In one particular case, we saw the notice posted in front of the group mailbox at the apartment complex. So, did this mean that I was safe so long as I never visited "this" mailbox? Or, since the mailboxes were near the swimming pool, perhaps it was referring to the pool area itself? Perhaps the oddest thing is that, when we asked the apartment complex person didn't even realize there was a notice posted. (Or, at least, she pretended not to know.) She remarked that the signs were so ubiquitous that one didn't even notice they were there anymore. And really, what would be the point of paying them if they aren't even telling you <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> you're endangering your life? What's the point of printing a notice that is hopelessly vague and useless? I wish the notice said something that I could actually understand, like, "Warning: laboratory experiments have determined that this notice harms the environment by wasting paper."Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-72547922694980819272007-06-29T15:00:00.000-07:002007-06-29T16:32:14.919-07:00Academic Calendar Unfairly Privileges Saturnalia WorshippersIn "Understanding Christian privilege: Managing the tensions of spiritual plurality," published in <em>About Campus</em>, Tricia Seifert argues that Christian students benefit from "Christian privilege," defined as "the conscious and subconscious advantages often afforded the Christian faith in America's colleges and universities." Now, I have not actually read the article, since I cannot find it available for free on the web--fight the power, man!--but I've read the description of her argument in <a href="http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/06/2007062901j.htm"><em>Chronicle of Higher Education</em></a>. <em>The Chronicle</em> describes one of her arguments: "The design of the academic calendar is perhaps the most obvious example of this phenomenon, according to Ms. Seifert. It is no coincidence, she writes, that campuses shut down just in time for the Christmas holiday, leaving non-Christian students forced to 'negotiate conflicts between their studies and their spiritual observances.' In some years, for instance, the Muslim holiday of Ramadan coincides with many campuses' week of midterm exams."<br /><br />To the best of my knowledge, however, Seifert does not single out perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of these academic calendar policies: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia">Saturnalia worshippers</a>. Are you telling me that it is "coincidence" that campuses shut down in December, just in time for students to engage in pagan saturnalia orgies? I think not. Why is there so much rampant sex on college campuses? Is it not because we treat the non-Saturnalia worshipper as a second class citizen? As wikipedia remarks, "During Saturnalia ... there was drinking, gambling, and singing, and even public nudity." Spring break, anyone? Our entire academic system is implicitly structured to encourage students to worship the Roman pantheon!<br /><br />So, how do we encourage non-Saturnalia worshippers to exercise their beliefs in non-Saturn? The problem is that the Saturnalia season is so much a part of our culture that we cannot escape it. So, let's take a lesson from the early Christians: when the pagans around them were all like, "Ho, praise to Saturn!" and "Rock on, December 25th, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas">birthday of the unconquered sun</a>," Christians said, "Okay, I'm going to celebrate your little 'December 25th holiday,' but instead of calling it 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,' I'm simply going to call it 'The birthday of Jesus, who, by the way, kicked your god's butt.'" To put it another way, perhaps one can find a way to accomodate the religious system to work around the calendar which the culture is already observing--maybe make December 25th "National Jesus appeared to Mohammed in a vision and said 'My Disciples got it Wrong' Day," or for the less religious hedonist, perhaps "The first time Epicurus got laid day."Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-25232776930581034882007-05-14T12:14:00.000-07:002007-05-14T13:23:00.724-07:00We Demand Non-Demon Follower RepresentationWhat do you do if you really hate a television show or its message? There might seem to be a simple answer to your dilemma: don't watch the show. The problem is, when you're at home alone, even if you walk around the house making loud proclamations such as "I'm not gonna watch that show!" or "It's 8:00, who's in front of the tv? Not me! Unless it's to hurl tomatoes!" your protest doesn't have much impact, especially if the show is popular among other consumers. So how can we penalize the show without physically killing its writers or producers? We boycott the advertisers, and the show loses money and is cancelled.<br /><br />It is in this spirit that I call attention to last week’s episode of <em>Supernatural</em>. The television story is about two brothers, Sam and Dean, who hunt demons and try to save people. “Sounds like the sort of show I could watch without throwing tomatoes,” you say? Think again. In this most recent episode, Sam, who is gifted with psychic powers, is abducted and placed in a deserted town with four other psychics. We discover that apparently a demon has taken them to the town with the intention that they will kill each other, and the winner will be rewarded with super powers and get to serve demons. Sam laudably determines that it would be better to flee the town and not kill his fellow psychics. After various deaths, there are finally just two psychics left: Sam, and a U.S. soldier stationed in Afghanistan. Sam entreats the soldier (whose super powers include benchpressing 800 pounds) that they should work together. Sam puts down his knife. The U.S. soldier puts down his less pointy weapon. And then … the soldier sneak attacks him! After a brawlfest, Sam defeats the soldier, has the chance to kill him … and doesn’t. Sam turns his back, and the U.S. soldier cowardly stabs him in the back and then goes running off to become a demon minion.<br /><br />It should go without saying that this is an uncharitable way of representing the U.S. military. To the best of my knowledge, U.S. military training does not encourage its soldiers to serve demons or kill unarmed American civilians when their backs are turned. The producers of the show are not simply criticizing U.S. foreign policy but demonizing our troops … quite literally. The producers are not simply anti-military, but un-American.<br /><br />What kind of fiendish advertisers could support such a show, you ask? Perhaps Moveon.org? Hamas? I was rather astonished to see the Sam-stabbing incident was followed by an advertisement for the U.S. army itself. Forget the NEA! Our tax dollars are going to support artistic works that demonize the military, such as those artists supported by the U.S. army!<br /><br />We need to send advertisers such as the U.S. Army a clear message: we have a zero tolerance policy for undermining troop morale. If U.S. troops were supernaturally transported to a ghost town, they probably would not obey demons, and we have to be willing to boycott advertisers who suggest otherwise. The clearest way to show we support our troops is by not joining the army.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-45106042544217315802007-04-19T08:00:00.001-07:002007-05-10T09:17:27.464-07:00K-MartyrWhen last I chronicled my adventures, I was dutifully searching amazon.com on a daily basis simply to confirm the fact that they had no wiis available, except by wii ebay scalpers. Well, I have finally purchased a wii, and sadly, I did capitulate and buy a wii via ebay. How did I rationalize my capitulation into supporting villains? After all, did I not compose "The Wii Poem":<br /><br />My money: spendable<br />availability: undependable<br />Production slowness: indefensible<br />Ebay sellers: reprehensible<br /><br />Am I not turning my back on principle, you ask? Is this not like the Iran-Contra affair and selling arms for hostages? Admittedly, even though there were neither weapons nor hostages involved <em>per se</em>, I see why you might see similarities with my own situation. In my attempt to set free a wii—to liberate it from the wicked ebayers who took it prisoner—am I not giving the ebayers more financial weapons, enabling them to take even more wiis hostage? In the end, I decided to give money to these evildoers not because their evil seems less evilly evil in my eyes, but because my eyes have been opened to the fact that “the establishment” is just as wicked.<br /><br />Let me explain. A few weeks ago, K-Mart’s circular revealed that they would be selling wiis! Resolved to own a wii, I got up in the wii hours of the morning so that I could be the first in line. Sadly, the weather was what one would expect on an April morning in the Midwest: freezing cold. As I stood in front of the store an hour before opening, it dawned upon me that, since no one else was actually waiting there, no one could steal my place in line. With a shiver of triumph, I left the store to sit in my car, eyes diligently scanning the parking lot. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, a newcomer drove up, so I jumped out of the car and ran to the front of the store to mark my territory. In a non-urinary way. Even so, I had a partial fear that when employees came to open the store, the newcomer would claim he got here before me, and then I’d have to beat him up. In fact, a few other people came around and got dangerously close to the door, so I struck a heroic pose to make it clear that I was there first. It turned out that they were just going in to work, so it didn’t have to come to blows.<br /><br />Well, five minutes before opening time, the manager came out to let me and the newcomer (who knew what was good for him and didn’t pretend that he was there first) that they had not actually received any wiis. However, she offered us a ray of hope. There was another K-Mart, just 40 minutes away, and she had just called there: apparently, the manager was able to confirm the fact that she had not gotten around to opening the shipments for that day, which is virtually a guarantee (in the mind of the wii-hungry) that wiis must be in the shipment!<br /><br />Sadly, I did not actually know the way to get to this K-Mart. However, the newcomer offered to let me follow him. I was a little suspicious, but when I realized that, if he tried to take me the wrong way, he would just be thwarting his own wii-purchasing desires, I agreed to follow. And to tell the truth, there was a kind of solidarity: no longer were we two strangers competing against each other for the prize of the wii. Now, we were two comrades competing against the villainous K-Mart corporation, who had tricked us into going to the wrong K-Mart building in an effort to sabotage our hopes and dreams.<br /><br />After driving 40 minutes to the other K-Mart (and frantically hoping that other people—smarter people who knew which K-Mart was actually selling wiis--had not bought them all), we discovered that this K-Mart hadn’t received them, either. The K-Mart employee who delivered the bad news even remarked that it was somewhat shameful, given that K-Mart had done the same bait and switch tactic ad campaign with the X-Box last year. It seems counterintuitive, but corporations can apparently mail circulars claiming to have a “limited quantity” of a product that they will not actually have when the doors first open.<br /><br />Sleep-deprived, time-deprived, gas-deprived, disappointed, and lacking any concrete villains at which to shake my fist, I determined to blame all corporations that sold the wii. At least when ebayers advertise that a wii is available, you can actually buy it. If I had happened to go to one of the rare K-Marts that actually <em>had</em> a wii as advertised, would I want my hard-earned money to help them produce more circulars to sucker more people? When you stop and think about it, wouldn’t that be <em>worse</em> than the Iran-Contra affair? And if it was clear that K-Mart had done this, how could I ever know that Walmart, Target, and Circuit City were not similarly depraved? Having convinced myself that K-Mart was irredeemably evil, I was gradually persuaded that ebayers were the lesser of two evils. After all, K-Mart was habitually wicked. They had used the same bait and switch tricks with the X-Box, and they would surely do the same thing again. Many ebayers, on the other hand, are only going to be wicked for as long as there is a wii shortage. Perhaps some of them are trapped in poverty, and that $125 profit they made off of me will give them enough to buy textbooks for college—perhaps even textbooks for an ethics class, in which they learn how wicked they are, and then they repent and send me my money back. My money would actually help them be redeemed! Buying an ebayers’ wii was actually a ministry: now now I have my wii, and now they know how bad they are.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-19832474713349177012007-04-13T14:11:00.000-07:002007-04-13T17:15:57.784-07:00What Happens to a Wii Deferred?I was going to title this entry "A Wii Bit of Trouble," but then I discovered the title's already been taken.<br /><br />For the past several months now, I have been laboring under a weight which sags like a heavy load, i.e., my dissertation. But through the struggle, through the clenched fists, a dream has kept me going: after I turn in my dissertation, I told myself, I will buy a wii. You may remember that <a href="http://pseudoprofundities.blogspot.com/2006/11/passion-without-precision-or-why-i.html">I blogged about the wii back </a>in November. At that time, it was very difficult to obtain a Wii. In my naivete, I believed that by the time I turned my dissertation into my committee--which was yesterday, over four and a half months since I had first played the wii--I could just walk into a store, and a wii would be there! Nope.<br /><br />Sadly, I am but a Wii novice, and unskilled in the art of obtaining a wii. "Aren't all people wii novices?" you might well ask. The answer is "No." A "Wii novice" is "someone who wants to buy just one wii to share with his family." A wii professional, by contrast, is"someone who wants to buy as many wiis as possible so he/she can sell them on ebay for $150 more than he/she paid for them."<br /><br />What has been fascinating to me as I have lurked in the wii discussion board on amazon is the number of ebay sellers who don't feel for beating out people waiting in line for their first wii. On the discussion board, members share various tips on what store will next be selling a wii, but on how to amass as many of them as possible: for example, it is my understanding that, even though you can only buy one wii at a time from amazon.com when they sell them, as soon as you have purchased one, you can go right back and purchase another until they are sold out (which happens in 8-30 minutes). One writes, "2 computers, 2 $15000 limit credit cards, 2 accounts, here i wait." As another remarks, "Also here to sell. Seems like there are more EBAYERS than actual customers." On one thread, an ebayer remarked how, after beating out several people who wanted a wii, he told them where there was going to be another sale that day, and how good it made him feel that he saw several of them at the next store.<br /><br />In reading these thread, it feels like I am entering another world. People understand themselves not to be greedy jerks but providing a helpful service--they sit patiently at their computers so that others don't have to. Given how thoroughly absorbed I am in my own perspective--that I also am sitting patiently at my computer but not getting any because "there are more EBAYERS than actual customers"--they seem like jerks.<br /><br />In person, of course, many of them aren't "jerks." Some of them might be in it for the thrill of the chase--buying as many wiis in a short space of time becomes a kind of competitive 100 meter dash (a "wii sport," if you will). One dealer's bragging that he "made $1892.00 (profit) last week off 10 units" is perhaps not substantially different from bragging about one's corporate portfolio, or perhaps the size of one's thingie. And let's face it, once you've had to go to all the trouble of buying a wii for yourself--of having rss feeds sent to you from wiihunter.com and wiitracker.com any time there's a wii sale--do you really want to let all of your learning go to waste?<br /><br />In reality, I pity these people. The price of progress is that, one day, "everyone will have a wii," and the services of the wii master tradesman will no longer be required. I am reminded of the words in a Flogging Molly song,<br /><br />My name it is Sean Dempsey as Dublin as could be./ Born hard and late in Pimlico in a house that owned a Wii./ My trade I was a cooper, lost out to redundancy/ Like my house that fell to progress my trade's a memory."<br /><br />(Okay, the real line was, "in a house that ceased to be.")Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-31742453307253627032007-03-20T16:58:00.000-07:002007-03-20T17:07:48.257-07:00GooglePictureLast week, I went for an on-campus visit to a school that should remain nameless because I try to keep my anonymity. (If you want details, you can e-mail me at <a href="mailto:Leopoldtulip@yahoo.com">Leopoldtulip@yahoo.com</a>, and I'll try to answer someday.) I ended up accepting the job, and now I'm trying to get the dissertation done (which is why I've been so bad about blogging).<br /><br />Anyway, I was preparing to guest-teach a class on <em>Gulliver's Travels</em>, and I had a really great picture illustration from <em>Gulliver's Travels</em> that I wanted to use. The problem? I didn't know where the illustration came from. One of my professors had used it in a class, and even though I found the handout he had given, the picture gave no information on the illustrator.<br /><br />Now, Google's really helpful if you want to track down a quote. The problem is, I didn't want to track down who said a quote; I wanted to track down who drew an unnamed picture. Google's pretty good on the word front, but not so helpful on the "worth a thousand words" front. Somehow, it didn't seem that simply listing things in the picture would really be helpful ("Gulliver," "great big eye," "the letter m inside the eye").<br /><br />I then began to realize how nice it would be if google had a searchable engine where you didn't have to type in words at all. Maybe I could just hold up the picture to the computer, and google would scan all its digital images. Or, if I couldn't actually find a copy of the unnamed picture, perhaps they could invent a sort of "doodle recognizer" where google tries to match up your own chicken-scratchings with famous masterpieces.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-21716476652274180022007-02-21T12:37:00.000-08:002007-02-21T13:36:31.651-08:00Narrative Closure and JesusNow that my dissertation is getting into full hobble, I'm working on the "Introduction" in which I attempt to make the mental meanderings of my four chapters be integrated into one seamless whole. My topic engages with issues of narrative "closure" and whether endings actually do cohere (and, implicitly, whether dissertations do). Well, I got to thinking that since I was using the word "closure" so much, it would be nice to know how the word functioned in eighteenth-century writings. So, I decided to use Eighteenth-Century Collections Online to do a word-search on "closure." In this search, I came across the following odd excerpt from John Barnard's <em>A Zeal for Good Works Excited and Directed</em> (1742):<br /><br />"Would it not look more like the workings of the Spirit of God, upon the Hearts of People, for them, under a deep Concern of Soul for their eternal Salvation, to retire to their secret Devotions, and humble themselves before God, in a Sense of their Sins, and earnestly beg Help from him, that they may be led to a saving Closure with the Lord Jesus Christ, by a true and lively Faith, and to an unfeigned Repentance, and Life of Holiness, and go to their Minister to direct them wherein they need Direction, and improve their most serious Thoughts upon what they shall do to be saved, and immediately set upon the doing of it?" (38)<br /><br />Now, perhaps your first thought is, "That is a rather long sentence." But the bit I found rather interesting is the phrase, "a saving Closure with the Lord Jesus Christ." Despite how odd the phrase sounds to twenty-first century ears, the phrase did show up a number of times in my search.<br /><br />My point is not to say, "Ewww, they were weird back then!" It is interesting, however, how rhetoric alters through time. Nowadays, one method people often use to determine whether someone is "really" a Christian is to inquire whether someone is "saved" or if they have a "close, personal relationship with Jesus Christ." I can't help wondering, if we asked an eighteenth-century Christian if they had this "close personal relationship," would their response be, "What the heck are you talking about?" (If they used the word "Heck," of course.) My brow would certainly furrow in puzzlement if they tried to ascertain my spiritual state by querying whether I sought a saving closure with Jesus Christ. Both parties may have established different linguistic norms for describing Christian experience, and these expressions may sound foreign and intuitively "wrong" to Christians from a different era or religious community.<br /><br />It's also interesting to speculate whether these language norms are being used to express the same "essence" of what it means to be a Christian, or whether using different language modifes our understanding of Christianity. For example, "Close personal relationship" might lead us to thinking of God as warm and fuzzy; at the very least, it emphasizes his immanence more than His transcendence. It focuses on "relationship" rather than, say, a set of beliefs (e.g., believe that Jesus rose from the dead, Romans 10:9). "Close" (in close personal) suggests proximity to God, but "closure" may suggest distancing from sin--it is a definitive break. Or, "closure" may emphasize the sense of completion--the "closure" that comes when one's entire life has been judged. The emphasis becomes on future closure (the end of one's life) rather than a past moment (e.g., "conversion"). To what extent are these two different expressions complementary or contradictory?<br /><br />Anyway, to be more ecumenical, and so that we don't offend eighteenth-century Christians, perhaps it would be best to just combine the two. Just ask people, "Do you have a close, personal closure with the Lord Jesus Christ?" If they do not immediately respond "yes," you can be sure that they are neither an eighteenth-century Christian nor a twenty-first century one.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-62156720075120697022007-02-14T20:14:00.000-08:002007-02-14T21:16:19.509-08:00The Kinda Juvenile VersionThis year, my wife and I are doing a “Bible Through the Two Years” program (the wimpy version of the "Bible Through the Year" program). We've been reading the Bible aloud, and so far, we've actually kept up.<br /><br />Although neither one of us is really familiar with the King James Version (I grew up on the NIV myself), we decided we’d give it a try this time—after all, it’s the Bible they were using in the time periods that we study. Maybe we would now be able to pick up literary allusions we wouldn’t have recognized because of translation differences. We could be devotional and study for our time period at the same time! What could be finer?<br /><br />The difficulty that I had never really apprehended before is that the King James Version is … well … weird. The language often seems cumbersome and disorienting. And let me tell you, once you’ve read the Book of Romans in the KJV translation, Peter's remark that Paul writes things that are "difficult to understand" suggests Peter must have been reading the KJV!<br /><br />The difficulty with the KJV is not simply that we might be baffled by an odd translation. The problem is that the translation's language might sound so foreign or carry different connotations that we end up erupting in laughter. Take this KJV selection from Gen. 44:34. "And he [Joseph] took and sent messes unto them from before him: but Benjamin's mess was five times so much as any of theirs." I'm sorry, but the only context in which I hear "messes" in the plural is in scatological contexts. I couldn't prevent a rather disturbing image of paired messes coming to mind, and, like Abraham's wife Sarah, I laughed (Gen. 18:12). I felt dirty afterwards, but that's what happens when a newcomer reads the KJV.<br /><br />Apparently, however, we were not the only ones who misunderstood Genesis 44. While we were reading the Bible aloud, our cat Pippin was listening. When we heard the sounds of a cat barfing behind us, we briefly noted that it was a highly inappropriate way of responding to God's Word; however, we were comforted with the knowledge that Pippin couldn't have been demon-possessed, as we learned from my <a href="http://pseudoprofundities.blogspot.com/2006/03/kitty-angels.html">Kitty Angels post</a>.<br /><br />I'm only mentioning Pippin's rather gross actions to bring up (no pun intended) something rather odd we noticed after our Bible reading. Pippin vomited in two different places. Here, however, is the creepy part: the one pile was about five times the size of the other! Or possibly seven times (we didn't have reliable instruments of measurement ... of course, neither did Pippin). It's as if the Bible passage and Pippin's actions were somehow coordinated. I won't go so far as to say the symmetry was "beautiful," but it did seem kind of cool. A little like "found art." Except, you know, only if the art were a fossilized turd. (The 18th century writer Christopher Smart actually describes a fossilized turd in his newspaper <em>The Midwife</em>. But I digress.)<br /><br />Anyway, I promise that my next blog entry will not be about cat dandruff or cat vomit. Unless y'all want me to. Got to keep my peeps happy!Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1170911846847368912007-02-07T20:59:00.000-08:002007-02-07T21:17:26.866-08:00A Sentimental Moment with a CatThis past weekend, I had an on-campus visit at a college. But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about our cat, Cricket.<br /><br />The night before my departure, our cat Cricket was cuddling with me. I was thinking, "I'm gonna miss the little guy over the next couple of days. Look how cute he is, as I pet him with wild abandon."<br /><br />And then ...<br /><br />I noticed his dandruff.<br /><br />You see, before the cuddling had commenced, I had just gotten out of the shower. Consequently, my torso was completely shirtless. And as I was petting Cricket, I watched in horror as little flakes of kitty dandruff roved free of their furry moorings and sought to attach themselves to my skin. I suppose it's a little bit of a double-standard, since I am not actually "horrified" when little flakes of my <em>own</em> dandruff are attaching themselves to my skin. Come to think of it, since dandruff <em>is </em>skin, that would be like saying that I'm not horrified when my skin is attached together. I would, of course, be rather horrified if my skin <em>weren't</em> attached to the rest of my skin.<br /><br />Anyway, the point of this entry wasn't so much to gross people out as to reflect on how a truly poignant moment can be ruined when truth, in all of its matter of fact about dandruff, broke in. And that I really wish there were a way to communicate to cats that they needed to work on the dandruff--cats are very lacking in self-awareness. There used to be those helpful <em>Head & Shoulders </em>commercials with various "friends" dusting off their friends' collars and saying, "Whoa, Nellie! You got some problems!" (Loose quotation.) You can't do that with cats. Or rather, you can do it, but they stare at you blankly. I suppose they are like ancient Israel,<br /><br />"Though seeing, they do not see;<br />Though hearing, they do not understand."<br /><br />And as the proverb goes,<br /><br />"The leopard cannot change its spots,<br />Nor can the kitty its seborrheic scurf."Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1169521896615224582007-01-22T19:11:00.000-08:002007-01-28T22:13:26.180-08:001 Degree of SeparationI have not been particularly proactive on the blogging front lately--I blame my dissertation. It's not so much that I have been writing as that I have been thinking about the fact that there is a dissertation, and that it is sapping me of the will to live. But enough about that.<br /><br />This entry sprang from the novel idea of experimenting with the "six degrees of separation" idea--you know, that theoretically, you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows Bin Laden. That is, our world is deeply interconnected. It also proves without a doubt that Hussein is tied to Al Qaeda--so there! (Of course, then so is Bush ...)<br /><br />So, my idea was to pick an item on Amazon and use the "Explore Similar Items" function. My intent was to wade through the function until I found two completely dissimilar movies that were separated by a mere six degrees of separation. It was an exciting challenge, and with rampant giddiness, I typed in the phrase "Monty Python." With shaking fingers, I clicked on "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." With wanton tremblingness, I clicked on "explore similar items" and found ...<br /><br />The movie <em>Seven</em>.<br /><br />For those of you unfamiliar with <em>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</em>, I recommend you get a life. However, for those of you unfamiliar with <em>Seven</em>, let's just say that it involves a serial killer. Now, let's just say that <em>Holy Grail</em> involves coconuts. I cannot really figure out what coconuts and serial killers have in common. Granted, according to the Amazon description, in Seven, "green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer," and in <em>Holy Grail</em>, bad guys scoff with outrageous French accents, but that also seems too tenuous a connection.<br /><br />All in all, the experience left me feeling cheated and hollow inside. I expected only to have six searches to come up with a completely weird relation, and I have it at the first try. Where's the challenge? Quite frankly, some of the one degree of separations are downright disturbing--why is it that if you search for similar items to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/explorer/0061042579/2/ref=pd_cp_b_expl/002-8932376-1708023">this standard Bible</a>, one of the hits on the first page is <em>The Satanic Bible?</em> Yes, Satan does show up in both books, and they do both have the word "bible" in their titles, but still ...Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1169138722843381932007-01-18T08:09:00.000-08:002007-01-18T11:06:56.270-08:00Art AttackThey say that "the pen is mightier than the sword," and so too, the easel is mightier than the uzi. Art has the power to move us ... and perhaps also to kill us. According to an article in <em><a href="http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=dc4baf13-afda-4939-9f50-1990f4f646b3">Ottawa Citizen</a></em>, the Ottawa Heart Institute has had to remove several paintings hanging in their hypertension waiting room after they learned that patients were afraid of the paintings. As Jacques Guerette, the vice-president of communications at the heart institute, said, "The queens [in the paintings] had very intense eyes and they were triggering that feeling that they were watching you as you walked around and they were blowing all our hypertension results." Mother England is watching you, my son.<br /><br />There were some other minor setbacks in the Heart Institute's attempt to use art to soothe the savage breast. As the <em>Ottawa Citizen </em>article remarks, "there was also the painting that looked like the gateway to heaven that was put, only briefly, at the entrance to the critical care unit -- a place where not every patient survives." I suppose the painting suggests that there are many different roads to heaven, and one of them is through the ICU.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1168639093735599222007-01-12T13:58:00.000-08:002007-01-18T08:08:13.980-08:00Canadian Conspiracy RevisitedThanks to my wife for calling my attention to the <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16572783/">warning</a>, issued just yesterday (Jan. 11), about "Canadian spy coins." Apparently, there are Canadian coins out there "with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside," designed to spy on the movements of key American leaders. As I mentioned in my <a href="http://pseudoprofundities.blogspot.com/2007/01/counterfeit-canadian-coins.html">last blog entry</a> (six days before this scandal broke), I thought I had recently been the victim of a cruel Canadian plot to steal my valuable Lincoln pennies in exchange for pennies with a transvestited Lincoln on it.<br /><br />Now, I learn the plot is far more sinister. At first, I had thought that being left with transvestite Lincoln pennies was merely a side effect of their ploy: in order to get my money at no cost to themselves, they had to exchange my money for something that is worthless to me here (i.e., I cannot sell a Canadian penny for an American penny). Now, I learn that <em>the point was not to get my money </em>so much as to <em>leave me with a tiny radio frequency transmitter that I cannot get rid of! </em>They gave me Canadian pennies because they believed there was no way I could get rid of them!<br /><br />This raises a number of problems, of course, such as 1. what governmental secret do I apparently hold that the Canadians are trying to keep tabs on me? and 2. how do I get rid of these Canadian coins so that America's future is secure? After my wife read my last blog entry, she suggested that it was "immoral" for me to get rid of the Canadian coins by sneaking them into the bank as regular coins. And, to be honest, I was being hyperbolic in the last entry; it wasn't so much that I was trying to "sneak" the Canadian coins in as that they had gotten mixed in with the American coins, and I wasn't about to search through the whole pile to find them. However, in light of this article, I can say that my wife was wrong: not only is it quite "moral" for me to sneak in Canadian coins, but it is my <em>patriotic duty</em>. I cannot risk the precious governmental secrets my brain holds ever falling into the wrong hands--it is my duty to get rid of the coins as soon as possible, "by any means necessary," as Malcolm X would have said, if he were working for the Bush administration. Sure, you might suggest I try leaving the pennies in places such as the "trash can" or "an ancient Indian burial ground," but I believe that God wants me to be a good steward of the resources He has given me, especially if those resources include cutting-edge surveillance technology. To do anything less would be criminal.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1168057529352295762007-01-05T20:06:00.000-08:002007-01-07T15:33:11.376-08:00Counterfeit Canadian Coins<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6838/1908/1600/723173/150px-Cdn-penny-obverse.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6838/1908/320/493242/150px-Cdn-penny-obverse.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />I have been a coin-collector for a number of years, but sadly, some of my albums only went up to the year 1990 or so. Rather than getting new books or pages to put my coins in, I have simply horded post-1990 coins on the off chance that, someday, they will neatly divide themselves into chronological order. Even though this didn't actually happen, over Christmas, my parents got me pages to put cents/nickels/dimes/quarters/half dollars in! So, over the past couple of days, I have sorted through a rather daunting pile of coins and gotten my collection up to date.<br /><br />But as they say, behind every happy rainbow, there are a bunch of people who are drowned and aren't named Noah. Likewise, behind every huge pile of happy coins, there is also a story deeply laden with tragedy and greed. That story is called, "Evil Victimizing Counterfeiters." As you might guess, in going through spare change in the hopes of finding a valuable coin, you have to look very closely for certain distinguishing features. For example, the difference between the aptly-named 1999 Wide "AM" Reverse Lincoln Cent and your run-of-the-mill 1999 Lincoln cent is that the former has the "AM" in America separated, the latter has them touching. (See <a href="http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/tp/errorvarieties.htm">here</a> for "The Top 10 Most Valuable U.S. Coins found in Pocket Change.") Now while I was looking very closely at a number of my coins, I noticed a few ... anomalies. Apparently, a small quantity of recently struck Lincoln pennies depict our famous president as ... a woman! At first, I was surprised that these freakishly weird transvestite coins have been widely unobserved in the recent numismatic literature. Had I discovered an all-new irregular coin?<br /><br />As you might have guessed, no, I did not find a penny that would be worth hundreds of dollars. I found a penny that is, in fact, worth <em>less </em>than a penny. Apparently, I fell victim to an elite group of trained counterfeitors operating in Canada, who call themselves, "The Canadian government." Their sole purpose is to create counterfeit coins that they can exchange for U.S. currency: these deviously cleverly designed coins are even more deceptive than the $<a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushbill1.html">200 dollar George Bush bill</a>. Sure, we're all "pre-emptive strike on Iraq," but we ignoring the festering danger lurking on our own borders! Let's work on the <em>northern</em> "border fence," people.<br /><br />The sad thing is, there is no real recourse for the U.S. victim of the Canadian government. For one thing, the Canadian government is a monolithic establishment, so there is no system of accountability: "Oh, it must have been somebody else who gave you that coin!" they say. "Oh, you should go bleep yourself," they say.<br /><br />So, I did what anyone would do. I tried to pass the counterfeit money off to the bank. Naturally, I didn't just say, "Hey, can I exchange this penny for another penny?" That would be suspicious. Instead, I took my huge pile of money--<em>including sneakily integrated counterfeit Canadian coins</em>--and said, "Can you exchange this for me?"<br /><br />Sadly, my greed undid me. You see, I did not merely try to exchange counterfeit Canadian pennies--I also tried to sneak in a Canadian quarter. Sure enough, after turning in the money, the bank teller called me to the desk minutes later to say that there was a problem with my deposit. "Here, we do not take Canadian money," she said, judgingly. Like they were cursed Aztec zinc or something. She was acting like it was <em>my</em> fault that the coins were Canadian! Admittedly, I had knowingly put them in there, but if I had had <em>my </em>way, the coins never would have been Canadian in the first place! I was the victim here! Sure, my deposits would be federally insured up to $100000--so long as they were not Canadian counterfeit!<br /><br />Well, Mr. Snide Higher Moral Ground Equal Housing Lender--the joke is on you! Sure, you "caught" my Canadian quarter and made me stuck with it--<em>but my Canadian pennies got past you! </em>So whatcha gonna do now? Accept your looses--or simply victimize more innocent consumers, tricking them into taking counterfeit money that you will promptly refuse to accept back from them? Like me, you will be inexorably drawn to moral depravity. All because of Canada.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1167603211281874522006-12-31T13:52:00.000-08:002007-01-01T19:15:05.340-08:00To Live or Die at MLAIn Philadelphia this year, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soon to be unemployed academics, meet at the MLA (Modern Language Association) conference in the hope of finding academic employment in the coming year. Wanna-be-jean-wearers like me are forced to re-discover inventions such as the "comb" and the "business suit." No matter how counter-cultural and anti-big business English studies becomes, it shall still reward people who dress like CEOs. No matter how Marxist English studies gets, it still prizes intellectual property above all, especially that lovely little thing called the published article. And at MLA, scores of English departments interview prospective applicants to determine which candidates are worthy enough to receive that glittering gee gaw, the on-campus visit.<br /><br />This year, my wife and I are both on the job market for the first time. Finally, we are no longer "MLA virgins." That's right. I have now officially had to prostitute myself at job interviews: "Hey baby, you want an 18th centurist who can also teach the classics? You bring your Longus, I'll bring the Apuleius."<br /><br />Notably, the word "hypocrite" comes from the Greek word for "actor." Going out on the job market has attuned me to just how slippery the categories of "hypocrite" and "actor" can be: where does the "acting" end and the "flat-out lying" begin (especially when asked how much of your dissertation is left to write)? <br /><br />Although the conference is scheduled for four days (in this case, Dec. 27-30), most schools schedule their interviews on just two days: the 28th and 29th (Thursday and Friday).<br />Anyway, I have a couple of comments that might have been mildly helpful to me if I had thought of them beforehand.<br /><br />1. Know what time it is. I don't just mean that you ought to know when your interview is scheduled; I mean, you need to have a readily accessible way of knowing the time at a given moment. The way most interviews work is that a school conducts interviews in a hotel room. Promptly, at the time the interview is scheduled, the interviewee is supposed to knock on the door. If he/she does not knock on time, it means that he/she is undependable scum. If he/she knocks early, it means that he/she is trying to cause trouble and must be punished by being offered no job. It was only as I was about to knock on the door for my first interview that I began thinking, "I haven't called the talking clock for several years now ... what if my watch is too fast? Or, what if a Modernist is in there right now thinking, 'Hurry up, please, it's time?'" So, set your watch before you leave, so that you can be anxiety-ridden about more important matters than whether your watch conforms to that eternal, objective thingy, Time with a capital T. No chrono-relativism here!<br /><br />2. Schedule the schools you are most excited about on the second day, rather than the first. Of course, you often don't know which one this will be until it's too late anyway ("Sorry, you can't have that time; Harvard's going to call any day now"), but if your scheduling powers have not dwindled into comic impotence, see what you can do.<br /><br />Keep in mind that on the first day of interviews, you will probably fail miserably to answer a question, and you can spend the entire night in bed thinking about what you should have said and how thoroughly jobless you are. This means that, on the second day, after you take something to get rid of the bloodshot eyes (get rid of the bloodshot part, of course; it's probably best not to remove the eyes themselves), you will have another interview, this time <em>with a school you really want to go to. </em>Now, initially, you may be thinking, "I am <em>so </em>tired! Why didn't I sleep? I hate myself!" But then, serendipity strikes: <em>The school asks you the very same </em><em>question you figured out how to answer at 3 am last night! </em>Insomnia deserves a much better rap than it gets in the popular literature.<br /><br />3.Come up with practice questions that are actually germane to the schools with which you will be interviewing. One of the really cool things about my graduate program in English here at "Anonymous University" is that we get to do a mock job interview where our faculty give us a sense of the sort of questions we might be asked. The difficulty is that, since our mock interviewers were asking the sort of questions that a search committee at prestigious "Anonymous University" would ask, we don't necessarily learn what a search committee at "Joe College" would ask. I spent hours preparing for questions about my dissertation or about describing current trends in 18th century studies, but such topics didn't really come up much at my interviews. Since I do not yet have a doctorate or a book contract or exude mad smarty-pants skills, "Anonymous University" schools are not the type to be interested in me at this point.<br /><br />4. Bring extra materials. Someone advised me I should bring along a sample syllabus or a writing sample, and I did. I didn't really think they would be of much use, but whenever I offered them at the end of an interview, the committee members' faces visibly brightened, like, "How nice, I am happy now." In retrospect, it's actually a little scary--I mean, if I brought them homemade cookies, I'd understand the excitement, but--a syllabus? If only my students got that happy.<br /><br />5. Elevators are Slow; or, Hotels are Tall. Keep in mind that Philadelphia hotels tend to have a lot of floors, and elevators often work long hours without adequate compensation. They often go on strike, around floor 25 or so. As a result, you might spend ten minutes before your interview shaking your fist in impotent rage at the elevator that taunts you by not coming down to the ground floor. It's like a scene from Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where you are ever chasing the job, but never landing it: "Bold interviewer, never, never canst thou go up,/Though winning near the 'vator--yet, do not grieve;/It cannot arrive, and thou hast no more time,/For ever wilt thou be jobless, and stuck down here!" When people told me to leave a lot of time, I assumed it was just to make sure I wouldn't get lost on the way to a hotel--not that I would spend ten minutes waiting for the elevator! Just remember not to underestimate the elevator wait.<br /><br />6. Have back-up questions. One of the ways most interviews end is with the committees asking, "Do you have any questions for us?" The right answer is, "Yes." But to get ruthlessly pragmatic for a second, how do you answer the follow-up question, "Well, what are they?" That one is trickier to answer. One person recommended asking, "Tell me about your master's program," especially because smaller universities are often proud of their graduate students. Now, it might be a no-brainer that this question only works for schools that actually <em>have</em> a master's program. What you might not have realized is the subtle point that this question also only works <em>if the school has not already mentioned their master's program earlier in the interview</em>. In one of my interviews, I went in without much to ask (I didn't really want to ask, "So, what's the salary? So, when's the sabbatical?"--one must ask questions that aren't too intrusive). I was planning to showcase how incredibly carefully I'd researched the school, such as that I knew they had a master's program. I thus felt rather cheated when one of the people interviewing me introduced the topic, "We have a great master's program," and then proceeded to describe it <em>before my questioning period</em>. I wanted to yell at her, "You stinker! That was going to be <em>my</em> question for you, do you hear me? You have taken something precious and meaningful and turned it into nothingness. I was supposed to get points for knowing you had a master's program!" So, then I had to come up with a substitute question, and it just wasn't as good. I really hate that portion of the interview. I don't have any practical advice about questions to ask. I just want you to know that it's okay to let yourself give in to the hate.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1166681115894358962006-12-20T21:46:00.000-08:002006-12-24T13:30:21.680-08:00I'm Just an EssayGrowing up, I thrilled to the daring exploits of ... a bill! You see, he was just a bill. Yes, only a bill. And he was sitting there on Capitol Hill. There is a famous <a href="http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/Bill.html">Schoolhouse Rock song</a> which dramatizes his sisyphus-like journey. Our heroic piece of paper begins as a little idea. After the bill exists in material form, it seeks the patronage of the local congressperson deity, who says, "You're right! There oughta be a law!" Next, the bill is debated about in committee. It must navigate various obstacles, such as the evil twin houses of Congress, which, like Scylla and Charybdis, seek its destruction on both sides. Even after sailing through these treacherous waters, if the President vetoes the bill, it is sent back to Congress yet again, at which point there's very little chance that it will ever become a law. It's amazing how the song manages to be so cheery, given how traumatizing the experience must be.<br /><br />Writing an essay is much like that. It begins as a little idea, often something that you write for a class. Your professor says, "There oughta be an article," and then you write it. And then you submit it to a respected journal. And then you wait several months, as it is reviewed by two readers. You wait several moments. Eventually, the desperation might grow so great that you send a tentative email to the editor, "Uh, eons ago I sent you an article ... I know your reply probably just got lost in the mail or something, but I just figured I'd follow up on it ..." Then, the editors sends your essay back to you, either rejecting it, asking you to revise and re-submit it, or accepting it immediately (if you are ubermensch). Sometimes, you revise and re-submit it, only to have the revised essay rejected anyway, so you have to send it to a different journal (it hasn't happened to me personally, but I've heard it happens). The two readers then offer their final comments, and you have to send a new revision, which will be published at least several months from then. All the while, you keep hoping in the meantime that nobody publishes a similar article that steals your thunder. ("My essay was really innovative when I first submitted it, five years ago! Honest!")<br /><br />Anyway, these reflections were sparked by the first ever acceptance of an article! I actually submitted the article back in summer 2005. After endless waiting and revising, it is tentatively scheduled for publication in fall 2007. It will only have taken over two years after writing the thing! Yes, I am being purposely vague in the effort to retain my anonymity!<br /><br />Nevertheless, when I am tempted to speculate on the incredible impact that my article will have on the entire scholarly community, I am reminded of a rather humbling fact: statistically speaking, the typical published article has a readership of fewer than two people (presumably, this does not include the editor and the two reviewers). This means that an individual has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than reading my article. Still, I could have written a text that was even <em>more </em>useless and irrelevant to society--I mean, how many people ever read a bill? Probably not even the Senators who are voting on it!Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1166397440877672932006-12-17T13:58:00.000-08:002006-12-17T18:41:24.880-08:00Unhappy Scottish FeetOn Friday, my wife and I saw <em>Happy Feet</em>. It is a coming to age story about a young penguin, Mumbles, whose feet do not fit into the local penguin community, because they are happy. Even though his penguin community has a vibrant culture that expresses itself in word and in song, the Scottish-accented elders are rather dour when it comes to dancing feet, which implicitly advocate "paganism" and encourage "backsliding." (Of course, since it is harder to do the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalk_(dance)">"moonwalk" (or "backslide") </a>without any feet, perhaps they have a point.) According to the Scottish elders, the recent drop in the fish food supply comes as a punishment from their god due to the gratuitous movement of Mumble's feet. (It is odd to note that the Scottish band, the Benachally Ceilidh Band, has an album entitled <a href="http://www.musicinscotland.com/BenachallyCeilidhBand/HappyFeet.htm">Happy Feet</a>. Of course, it might simply be a protest album <em>against </em>happy feet. I don't know.) So, Mumbles goes on a journey where he meets a different breed of penguins who are short, have Latino accents and, best of all, value his feet in all their tappiness!<br /><br />There is, of course, more to the story, but I suppose what I find particularly fascinating is the strange cultural/religious associations surrounding the penguins. There is something rather surreal about Scottish-accented penguins disclaiming against dancing. Why choose for them to be Scottish? Why are they so religious? Why are the Latino penguins so much more accepting of feet? Now, some film critics have already explored the "happy feet" as an allegory for "<a href="http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/5094f586-fed7-4cf4-872c-d20b94c78024">gay identity</a>," because the movie's message is that Mumbles's parents must learn to accept him as he is: a penguin who can dance. Given that Mumbles is heterosexual, it's a bit difficulty for me to see the "gay identity" bit, but perhaps I'm just naive and unsophisticated. However, while discussing the movie with my wife on the way back, it seemed that the "happy feet" could just as well be read as an allegory for religious identity: the movie can in fact be read as anti-Presbyterian and crypto-Catholic.<br /><br />Let me oversimplify. Historically, Scotland (not counting the highlands) is <em>very</em> Protestant and Presbyterian: preaching of the word is central. Word has priority over the image. Presbyterianism is against frills in worship and has an established reputation for iconoclasm. This is also not a religious community famous for its liturgical dance. Hispanic culture, on the other hand, has Catholic roots. In Catholicism, there is more emphasis on the Lord's Supper/Eucharist, the incarnation and "the Lord's body" (not just during His earthly ministry, but received in the Eucharist).<br /><br />So, in the movie, our group of Scottish penguins place a high value on the word and singing (each penguin has a "heart song"), but they are opposed to forms of bodily expression. The movie suggests that Presbyterianism is ultimately gnostic, opposed to physicality and incarnational reality. The Latino penguins, on the other hand, are represented as both good dancers <em>and </em>good singers, perfectly harmonizing song and<em> </em>dance, i.e., correctly integrating Word and sacrament. In the movie, it is not so much that Scottish and Spanish religious cultures can learn from each other so much as that Scottish culture, to be complete, <em>must become like Latino culture</em>. The movie suggests that Presbyterians can never have happy feet unless they become Catholic and/or Latino! Since becoming Latino is not a viable possibility for many Presbyterians, the movie suggests that the only way for us to be happy not just with our heads, but with our feet, is to be Catholic.<br /><br /><em>Disclaimer: </em>I am not seriously arguing this interpretation. For one thing, it attributes more knowledge about Scottish religious history to the writers than they actually have.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1165643434163315562006-12-08T21:50:00.000-08:002006-12-09T14:36:51.070-08:00Bleh and WoifIt's important to have useful interjections to employ for certain situations. For example, I recall going roller-skating back in college. I was not particularly skilled in the arcane arts of balancing, so whenever it seemed like the top half of my body was about to join my bottom half on the floor, I would spontaneously say, "Woif." I do not know where this word/sound came from. It sounds vaguely Klingon-like, but since I did not have a Klingon wetnurse, its unique brain-chemistry origins remain shrouded in mystery. I do not even know why I felt obliged to make a sound at all: perhaps I subconsciously believed that the soundwaves would bounce off the floor and bounce back, correcting my trajectory and returning me to an upright and locked position. Regardless, the world is quite useful in situations which involve me falling, or involving me about to fall, and the word has stuck with me.<br /><br />I also often employ the interjection "Bleh!" While "Woif" is a word I use to express a lack of balance, "Bleh" describes the feeling of general ickiness. We often use interjections like "darn" or "crap" to refer to something concrete and immediate: I accidentally stubbed my toe, darn it! "Bleh" is sort of like saying, "I am completely sapped of strength by all the bad things that have happened in my life. I will expend all my remaining energy in this one desperate cry of exhaustion: Bleh!" It is often brought about by stress. I didn't used to say the word a whole lot, but I think the whole job market/getting my dissertation done is getting to me, so now I just find myself walking into empty rooms in our apartment and saying, "Bleh!"<br /><br />Normally, this wouldn't be so bad. But my usage of the word is intruding into awkward social situations. I've been chairing a socializing committee for our department, and this past Tuesday, we put on a big party for the grad students and faculty. Various last-minute problems arose, I was running late, and literally ran back into a school building. Unable to take the cold, the running, and the stress, without thinking, I just blurted out, "Bleh!" I did not realize it at the time, but a student in my line of sight undoubtedly took this as a noise directed at herself. I suppose it's understandable: here's this strange guy, wearing a peacoat, sweaty, and apparently shouting "Bleh!" at you. As I started running up the stairs, I began thinking, "I often read those reports in the school newspaper about how some strange, middle-aged man is on campus and sexually harrassing students. What if there's going to be an article about me? 'Be on the lookout for a man, about in his 30's, wearing a peacoat. Man is known to go up to female students and shout sexually suggestive grunting noises at them. Witnesses do not know if he is fully clothed beneath his peacoat. Witnesses said his hair appeared greasy, and he was panting leeringly.'"<br /><br />So, does anyone out there have their own little pet interjections?Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1164840095446667182006-11-29T14:31:00.000-08:002006-12-01T11:42:58.463-08:00Passion Without Precision: Or, Why I like the WiiI am a citizen of klutzville. I've never really gotten the hang of the whole "fine motor skill development" thing, which made sports one of those activities to which I vaguely aspired but didn't want to be known as "Mr. Lose us the game" Leo. I suppose part of what drew me to Cross-country in high school is that no coordination was required, so I couldn't drag the team down with me. Besides, since it didn't involve my hands or a ball, there were fewer potential body parts to maim. Heck, even with Cross-Country, I constantly managed to sprain my right ankle.<br /><br />Over Thanksgiving, we visited my wife's side of the family, where I got to engage in all sorts of sports--bowling, baseball, and tennis--all within the comfort of someone else's home. As some of you might remember, one of my fondest activities when visiting my wife's family is to play their video games, so I can reap the full benefits of a game without ever paying for it, in a non-piracy non-immoral kind of way. As an indication of how out of touch I am with the outside world, when my brother-in-law announced he was bringing over his Wii, I had no idea what it was.<br /><br />What is a wii? It's a motion-sensitive game system. No longer do you play "baseball" simply by hitting a button at the right time: now, you have to swing the controller at the right time as well! Now, I do have a few quibbles about the wii, but they mostly revolve around their name. When I hear the sound "wii," I think adjective, as in, "wee little beastie." To the degree that I associate the sound "wii" with being a noun, it is only when you say the word twice and are talking about the bathroom. I guess there's no reason why we can't simply rehabilitate the phoneme so it has fewer associations with natural functions, but it would have been easier just to pick a different name. <br /><br />One of the most impressive features of the wii is it refutes the common objection that computer game systems encourage people to be couch potatoes. I haven't had such a good workout in ages! I was so sore from playing the wii that it was only through sheer strength of will that I successfully lifted my arm in the air to brush my teeth. Even so, my tongue had to come to my aid and spread the toothpaste around a bit.<br /><br />I suppose what I like best about the wii, however, is that I don't have to be good at sports. I was very hyperactive as a kid, accidentally kicking people at mealtime because I couldn't sit still. I had had the energy to run around doing sports, but I didn't actually have any skill. In real life baseball, it doesn't matter how energetically you swing a bat if all you are hitting is the air--the air currents just aren't enough to make the ball reverse directions. In real-life bowling, it doesn't matter how hard you throw the ball if you aimed it directly at the gutter. <em>However, </em>the wii often rewards such exhibitions of energy! I, who am virtually incapable of actually hitting a ball in real life, hit nine home runs out of ten possible on the wii! On the wii, I have consistently got bowling totals that were actually three digit numbers! I don't have to aim, I just have to move my hand at the right time and with enthusiasm! Now, occasionally my bursts of exuberance have unfortunate consequences in real life, such as accidentally swinging my controller so high that I hit the ceiling with it. Still, no one was injured, and I think I convinced people that the whole thing was intentional on my part.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1163798428420201092006-11-17T12:51:00.000-08:002006-11-18T08:59:51.686-08:00Super-Hero Eating DisordersAs you might have heard, a couple of months ago, Madrid's Fashion Week tried to combat super model eating disorders by banning participants who fell below a certain <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/18/earlyshow/main2016638.shtml">body mass index</a>. While there has been a great deal of speculation about whether other nations will follow Madrid's lead in their treatment of super models, there has not been widespread speculation on how this might affect other industries, such as super-heroing.<br /><br />The implications first came to my attention while reading <em>Essential Luke Cage, Power Man</em>, Volume 1, which contains the first 27 issues of the comic. Power Man, according to the back cover of the book, is "comics' first and foremost black superstar of the seventies." Imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, Luke agreed to participate in dangerous scientific experiments which would reduce his sentence, but through an accident, he was endowed with superhuman strength and, more importantly, weight.<br /><br />At first, I thought the weight detail was relatively insignificant in comparison to the huge biceps. The first reference to his weight seemed circumstantial enough in issue #3, p. 12: While Luke is tearing off a fire-escape ladder, he muses, "Keep learnin' more 'bout what doc's experiment did to me--like my weight. Still look 180...But hit 300 on the scales!" Seems like an innocent enough thought for a super-hero while he's tearing off a ladder.<br /><br />But in the issues that follow, I soon discovered that Luke Cage is rather obsessed about his weight. In the first 26 issues, there are <em>18 </em>explicit references to his weighing approximately 300 pounds. For the interests of posterity, they occur in: issue #3, p. 12; #5, p. 12; #6, p. 11; #8, p. 4; #8, p. 7; #9, p. 15; #11, p. 6; #12, cover; #12, p. 10; #14, p. 8; # 15, p. 5 (three different times on the same page!--I only count this as one reference); #17, p. 6; #17, p. 17; #18, p. 8; #18, p. 13; #23, p. 6; #24, p. 4; #26, p. 2.<br /><br />Am I alone in thinking this is weird? Now, I know someone could say, "Perhaps it's not Luke Cage's obsession--he just happen to fall victim to a writer who happened to be dieting at the time, and transferred his own anxieties to his writing." However, during these 26 issues, <em>Power Man </em>had <em>four </em>different writers, <em>each </em>of whom made reference to his 300 pounds of weight! And apparently, it is not simply the case that Luke Cage was himself obsessed about his weight: so is the narrator/caption-writer, and so are his enemies! For instance, when Georgie escapes Power Man, he says to himself, "Oooo, mama! Ol' Georgie done won out again! That Cage boy can't even scramble with a 300-pound body!" I suppose it's understandable that Power Man would be self-conscious about his weight, if his enemies make fun of him for weighing 300 pounds and being slow.<br /><br />Power Man brings up his weight upon rather odd occasions. For example, when he fights a space-alien who is trying to kill Dr. Doom, Power Man remarks, "Murder's a gig I don't take kindly to ... all 300 pounds o' me!" I guess I understand why he might say something like, "Murder's a gig I don't take kindly to ... nor do my powerpunching fists!" Somehow, I find the prospect of powerpunching fists far more threatening than 300 pounds. The sad thing is, perhaps to Power Man, 300 pounds <em>is </em>more threatening ... to himself. He often blames his failures on weighing three hundred pounds. For example, he thinks to himself, "those motherless jokers are splitin'--an' I don't know if I can move my three-hundred pound bod fast enough to nab 'em." Why not just say, "They're too fast?" No. If only his bod were less than three-hundred pounds, he could have caught up to them. The super-hero Quicksilver never would have had this problem.<br /><br />The narrator constantly calls our attention to Power Man's weight, demanding we take it seriously as a formative aspect of his identity. For example, take this description of Power Man jumping from a roof-top: "Cage backs up, then races toward the edge of the Crayton building ... three hundred pounds of human power rockets across the deserted avenue ... three hundred pounds leaps from the sixteen-story structure to a twelve-story structure across the wide expanse ... three hundred pounds hits the roof of police headquarters and although that roof shudders and cracks--mama, it holds!" Given that narrators do not often use phrases like, "mama, it holds," it is quite probable that Marvel intends for us to think that the <em>narrator</em> is African-American (or at least employing slang that is supposed to be African-American). So, I ask, why is it that there are <em>so many </em>African-American characters--Power Man, his African-American enemies, his African-American narrator--all obsessed with weight? Are the writers trying to say that the African-American community wrestles with weight gain in the way that whites just cannot understand? Even the Marvel Comics characters who tend to struggle a lot with weight-related issues--say, Kingpin or the Blob (both white characters)--are not constantly informing us about how much they weigh.<br /><br />I suppose the point is that, just as we need to encourage super-models not to be too skinny, we need to encourage super-heroes that it's okay to weigh 300 pounds, regardless of their race. In repartee with super-villains, it's okay to mention other things than their weight, like their mammoth fists or their bullet-bouncing chests. It is tragic when 300 pounds weighs heavier on a hero's mind than on his or her body.Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1163395563383301262006-11-12T20:54:00.000-08:002006-11-12T21:26:15.486-08:00Wicked-pediaI just came across a great blog called the <a href="http://wikidumper.blogspot.com/">Wikipedia Knowledge Dump</a>. You might be familiar with wikipedia as a kind of democratic internet encyclopedia, where anyone can write an entry and edit an entry (with some external oversight). Sadly, the oversight can sometimes become totalitarian, as editors try to remove valuable material just because it is untrue, silly, or baffling. Wikipedia Knowledge Dump valuably calls your attention to Wikipedia articles that are in danger of becoming extinct because people, for various reasons, want them destroyed. For example, the Knowledge Dump provides the text of his fascinating article on "exophilia": "Exophilia is an attraction, generally sexual in nature, to new, strange, or otherworldly things, such as extraterrestrial lifeforms, supernatural beings, and robots." Knowledge Dump provides a link to the wikipedia article, so you can see <em>why </em>people want to delete the article--for example, one person gives the rather frivolous cause for ethnic cleansing, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Exophilia">I hate aliens.</a>" Superman was an alien, would you kill him too?<br /><br />Wikipedia deleters also have a prejudice against the silly and the wacky. Again, thanks to the Knowledge Dump for listing this article on the "beard theorem," which is in danger of deletion. "The Beard Theorem is a political theorem that relates to the Communist Party and its members. The Beard Theorem is a theory that suggests that the size of one's Beard, whether it be a puff, French Fork or Mutton Chop, has a direct correlation to the radicality of a person's Socialist views. If one was to have a large, beard, that person has a higher chance of being a communist revolutionary than one other person who has only as moustache, or worse: no facial hair at all. This theorem is proved by many of the communist Russian revolutionaries of the 1900's, those like Karl Marx, who has a massive, beard and, in accordance to the theorem, is a great communist. V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, had a beard, yet it was not as profound, thus he is not as truly communist as Marx or Engels, as he has a relatively small beard, but it is still present and is truth of his communisity. Josef Stalin, the leader of the Communist Vanguard Party in Russia from the mid 1920's to 1952, has no beard, yet has a moustache. Stalin, in accordance to the theorem thus has very little Communist Blood in him, as he is a Stalinist, and a social fascist. Exceptions to the rule is most East Asian Communist leaders." <br /><br />Now, Several people suggest removing the "beard theorem" article because it is "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_beard_theorum">nonsense</a>." Well, is the theory that the sun revolves around the earth "nonsense" too? Okay, yes it is! But why then do these same naysayers <em>not</em> object to the Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric">geocentric models of the solar system</a>, even though such a model is clearly nonsensical? Hypocrisy, thy name is anti-beard person! Besides, evolution's just a theory, too, but they teach it in the public schools, so why don't we give equal time to the beard theorem? Perhaps the two theories may even be mutually informative (e.g., would bearded or non-bearded people be better adapted for survival in Communist Russia?).Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1163134110732327152006-11-09T20:37:00.000-08:002006-11-09T20:48:30.756-08:00Celebrate the FigThe Dull Men's Club has declared November "<a href="http://www.dullmen.com/november.htm">Fig Month</a>." Take time out of your busy schedule to observe this holimonth with your loved ones, or to sample figs in the privacy of your own home. Remember, the fig does not just have high fiber and nutritional content; it is also <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=40&chapter=4&verse=4&version=31&context=verse">eschatological</a>. Enjoy!Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1162753118654197022006-11-05T09:26:00.000-08:002006-11-06T07:30:31.293-08:00The Rogaine SongAccording to Energy Australia, the Australian energy supplier, people can help stop an energy crisis by taking shorter showers, and <a href="http://www.ncbuy.com/news/2006-10-23/1013366.html">by singing shorter songs in the shower</a>. But what sort of song should they sing?<br /><br />Well, I woke up this morning in my traditionally incoherent fashion, and, per usual, I had a song in my head. It was Paula Abdul's "Promise of a New Day." Before I knew it, I was singing the wrong words to myself. Serendipitously, I think these incorrect lyrics suggest a solution to the energy crisis. Now, one of the reasons for taking a longer shower is that, <em>Psycho</em> aside, bad things tend not to happen there. Showers are generally peaceful places, and even if we are getting batted in the face with steaming water, it is masochistically soothing water. So what we need to do is make the shower a place of despair and wretchedness. I have been trying to think of the <em>Psycho</em> equivalent for guys, and I think I have it: baldness. Imagine blithely lathering a liberal dose of shampoo on your head, and then staring in stunned silence at a liberal helping of loose hair stuck to your hand. Who wants to be reminded that one's hair is going the way of the Antarctic's ozone layer? We will do all we can to escape such a reminder, even if it involves jumping out of the shower with shampoo still on. Therefore, I recommend that Energy Australia not simply encourage guys to sing "shorter songs" in the shower, but to sing songs about baldness.<br /><br />I recognize that my recommendation may have some drawbacks. On the negative side, a guy might become so scared of baldness that he will never shampoo or comb his hair again in the fear that more fragile follicles will be doomed by his actions; this might result in a rise in household smelliness and, consequently, divorce. But on the plus side, if guys associate showers with baldness and sorrow, they'll finish up more quickly, and future generations of energy-users will be saved!<br /><br />It is in that spirit that I submit my parody of Paula Abdul's chorus to "Promise of a New Day." I am only writing the chorus because, if the song is truly effective, guys will not have time in the shower to sing the rest of the lyrics. Paula Abdul's original chorus is as follows:<br /><br />"Eagle's calling and he's calling your name<br />Tides are turning bringing winds of change<br />Why do I feel this way?<br />The promise of a new day.<br />The promise<br />The promise of a new day."<br /><br />The revised chorus is as follows:<br /><br />"Hairs are falling out, I'm calling Rogaine.<br />Tufts are tumbling down and clogging drains.<br />Will they all fall away?<br />Then I must get a toupee.<br />Then I must<br />Think I must get a toupee."Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19308135.post-1162247263056029842006-10-30T14:15:00.000-08:002006-11-01T07:46:45.906-08:00Wouldn't it be nice if he were older? (with apologies to the Beach Boys)The lament, "The kids're growin' up so fast these days," has become almost proverbial. It may be important to keep in mind that kids <em>often </em>seem to grow up fast "these days," no matter which century we live in. Below, I am reproducing the romantic/sexualized poem, "To Ethelinda, on her doing my Verses the honour of wearing them in her bosom," written by the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart.<br /><br />"Happy verses! that were prest<br />In fair Ethelinda's breast!<br />Happy muse, that didst embrace<br />The sweet, the heav'nly-fragrant place!<br />Tell me, is the omen true,<br />Shall the bard arrive there too?<br /><br />"Oft thro' my eyes my soul has flown,<br />And wanton'd on that ivory throne:<br />There with ecstatic transport burn'd,<br />And thought it was to heav'n return'd.<br />Tell me, is the omen true,<br />Shall the body follow too?<br /><br />"When first at nature's early birth,<br />Heav'n sent a man upon the earth,<br />Ev'n Eden was more fruitful found,<br />When Adam came to till the ground:<br />Shall then those breasts be fair in vain,<br />And only rise to fall again?<br /><br />"No, no, fair nymph--for no such end<br />Did heav'n to tee its bounty lend;<br />That breast was ne'er design'd by fate,<br />For verse, or things inanimate;<br />Then throw them from that downy bed,<br />And take the poet in their stead."<br /><br />Yes, as you might immediately observe, the author is indeed somewhat obsessed about certain anatomical features. Despite some myopia in artistic vision, however, it's a very well-written poem: there's some nice playing with body/soul metaphors, space (poet and poems occupying the same place), etc.. While I might have picked a loftier theme, all in all, I'd have been pretty impressed by my own poetic ability if I wrote such a poem at the age of 29.<br /><br />The weirdness factor is that Christopher Smart apparently did not write this poem at the age of 29, nor even at the hormonally-charged age of 18. At least according to him, he wrote it at 13. And Ethelinda, the subject of his poetic fancy, was <strong>9!</strong> at the time. (Not 9! as in "9 factorial," which would be disturbing for the opposite reason; instead, I mean "9!" in the sense of "What are you thinking, this is a 9-year-old! There is no excuse for your eyes to be wantoning on her ivory throne!")<br /><br />This leads to a strange aesthetic situation. Traditionally, we more highly respect an artistic work when we know the artist is younger: for example, some of Mozart's pieces are most noted not because of their craftsmanship and brilliance, but because Mozart was only five at the time he composed them. But in this case ... I just keep thinking, "Smart, couldn't you have at least waited to write this until you were 22? Then she'd at least be old enough to vote!" I don't want naively to presume that just because the age thing grosses me personally out, it's intrinsically icky--I recognize Smart was living in a different culture, and at a different time--but dang it, I want to say it conforms to objective standards of ickiness!Leopoldtuliphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05373438146681921395noreply@blogger.com3