The world as it occurs to me
Nothing much exciting thus far in the year, way less intense (whatever) than last year, thankfully.
Classes are going decently well. I'm still not really sure if I like my Women and Religion class. The title is quite misleading as the class is in fact feminism and religion, which seems to range from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some of it really makes 0 sense to me, but that’s because I'm a male, and white or so I would be lead to believe in class. I understand the need for some of the changes feminists advocate, equality of pay/opportunity/the ability to be clergy, things like that. Where I turned off is the apparent need to make everything politically correct gendering. I can deal with most of it, but two things really really tick me off when it comes things like this; changing historical texts to they're gender sensitive and most vertical language which would include re-writing the Bible so all references to God are gender neutral. Some people suggest that insensitive parts of history should be removed from textbooks etc so that history conforms to a modern sense of political correctness. Being an ex-history major, I’m absolutely horrified by this. History is written with biases and written in the manner of the culture, if you change it you’re destroying it….I honestly have no idea how people can advocate it.
As far as vertical language goes…I just don’t see the need to change it. The Bible is a patriarchal book, that’s just the way it’s written by a patriarchal book between 3000 and 2000 years ago. I don’t see the threat to women because the Bible advocates God in a male sense. If the bible were re-written, everything would have to change because most likely the term God(yeah definitely male) would be replaced by something like Adonai, Elohim, or Yahweh…now I don’t claim to be any sort of scholar on Hebrew but I’d be willing to bet that those are male in nature so they’d be out too. I don’t know about you but crossing myself and saying something like “In the name of the Holy One, Son, and Holy Spirit” wouldn’t feel right. I just wouldn’t be comfortable with the change because I don’t understand the necessity. And to those who would argue with me by saying referring to God in a male sense is derogatory to women in some way, you’d should have an answer better than “because it is”, that’s the kind of answer parents give their children when they don’t feel like explaining something not a way to express intelligent conversation. I thought it was always understood that God was an asexual being referred to in human terms to make the concept easier to grasp.
On the opposite side of the coin, I really like Religion and the Arts. It’s a really strange class where we really do nothing but personal reflection on poetry and the like. I wouldn’t say it has made me more religious but it’s been a very different/refreshing/cool class. Creek is never ever quiet and Kensey is always always arguing with the prof, who was my childhood choir director so that makes it very interesting.
The rest of life is going okay this past week was my first show back with the marching band (bum knee). I think it went pretty well despite not moving a whole lot in the show. My knee didn’t hurt to much after the show, though my shoulder hurt like hell since I haven’t spent all season destroying all feeling in it. I went to both parties this weekend and had a good time at both. I even saw Will and Michele walking around outside the one Saturday night. Been a while since I’ve seen Will, the real world just kinda sucked him up. The band trip is coming up…uh sometime in the next two weeks I think. I’m looking forward to it though I don’t think its going to be as much fun as last years. We’re doing 3 high school shows one of the days and sleeping on a gym floor one night….wow that night’s gonna feel like high school ::shudder:: I’ve had a lot of fun this year in band but I don’t really know how much of it has been actual band and how much has been goofing around being underling to the equipment manager. That seriously is a 2 person job, I think I’ll recommend making it such at the end of the season, and maybe just do that next year. Pep Band is starting up again, I thought I wanted to play mellophone this year, but it just didn’t feel right, stupid sousaphone. Oh and the first time Morris didn’t have enough sousaphone players it would have been “Hey Todd, go get your sousaphone”. Learning new parts for a bunch of those songs would have sucked, and I know I would have just started randomly playing Sousa parts.
I’ve met a decent number of new people this year. Yay for the newest one Lindsey the quint player who knew engineers could be cool. I see the people I hung out with freshman year (was it really that long ago????!!!) on occasionally except for the ones in band. Most of them live on Irving or else where far away and I still live on the Darkside. I see Simon occasionally for Magic but that’s about it, now that a new set came out maybe I’ll start doing more things with him, but I dunno when I’ll have the time with band going on, maybe next semester. The number of band parties this year is drastically down, and I’m not really complaining too much. If they hadn’t changed, I’d prolly never have started the weekly bowling pilgrimage to Capri, and I’m really enjoy those. Eh not much else, work’s going fine. Livin on the darkside is still sweet and I really don’t see a reason to move over to the Ghetto next year.
I really can’t think of much to end with, and the overwhelming number of recent LJ posts with people answer questions has amused me so… if you have some sort of question for me whatever the nature, leave a comment (their being screened for this one) and I’ll get back to you on AIM or in person, or something.
Classes are going decently well. I'm still not really sure if I like my Women and Religion class. The title is quite misleading as the class is in fact feminism and religion, which seems to range from one end of the spectrum to the other. Some of it really makes 0 sense to me, but that’s because I'm a male, and white or so I would be lead to believe in class. I understand the need for some of the changes feminists advocate, equality of pay/opportunity/the ability to be clergy, things like that. Where I turned off is the apparent need to make everything politically correct gendering. I can deal with most of it, but two things really really tick me off when it comes things like this; changing historical texts to they're gender sensitive and most vertical language which would include re-writing the Bible so all references to God are gender neutral. Some people suggest that insensitive parts of history should be removed from textbooks etc so that history conforms to a modern sense of political correctness. Being an ex-history major, I’m absolutely horrified by this. History is written with biases and written in the manner of the culture, if you change it you’re destroying it….I honestly have no idea how people can advocate it.
As far as vertical language goes…I just don’t see the need to change it. The Bible is a patriarchal book, that’s just the way it’s written by a patriarchal book between 3000 and 2000 years ago. I don’t see the threat to women because the Bible advocates God in a male sense. If the bible were re-written, everything would have to change because most likely the term God(yeah definitely male) would be replaced by something like Adonai, Elohim, or Yahweh…now I don’t claim to be any sort of scholar on Hebrew but I’d be willing to bet that those are male in nature so they’d be out too. I don’t know about you but crossing myself and saying something like “In the name of the Holy One, Son, and Holy Spirit” wouldn’t feel right. I just wouldn’t be comfortable with the change because I don’t understand the necessity. And to those who would argue with me by saying referring to God in a male sense is derogatory to women in some way, you’d should have an answer better than “because it is”, that’s the kind of answer parents give their children when they don’t feel like explaining something not a way to express intelligent conversation. I thought it was always understood that God was an asexual being referred to in human terms to make the concept easier to grasp.
On the opposite side of the coin, I really like Religion and the Arts. It’s a really strange class where we really do nothing but personal reflection on poetry and the like. I wouldn’t say it has made me more religious but it’s been a very different/refreshing/cool class. Creek is never ever quiet and Kensey is always always arguing with the prof, who was my childhood choir director so that makes it very interesting.
The rest of life is going okay this past week was my first show back with the marching band (bum knee). I think it went pretty well despite not moving a whole lot in the show. My knee didn’t hurt to much after the show, though my shoulder hurt like hell since I haven’t spent all season destroying all feeling in it. I went to both parties this weekend and had a good time at both. I even saw Will and Michele walking around outside the one Saturday night. Been a while since I’ve seen Will, the real world just kinda sucked him up. The band trip is coming up…uh sometime in the next two weeks I think. I’m looking forward to it though I don’t think its going to be as much fun as last years. We’re doing 3 high school shows one of the days and sleeping on a gym floor one night….wow that night’s gonna feel like high school ::shudder:: I’ve had a lot of fun this year in band but I don’t really know how much of it has been actual band and how much has been goofing around being underling to the equipment manager. That seriously is a 2 person job, I think I’ll recommend making it such at the end of the season, and maybe just do that next year. Pep Band is starting up again, I thought I wanted to play mellophone this year, but it just didn’t feel right, stupid sousaphone. Oh and the first time Morris didn’t have enough sousaphone players it would have been “Hey Todd, go get your sousaphone”. Learning new parts for a bunch of those songs would have sucked, and I know I would have just started randomly playing Sousa parts.
I’ve met a decent number of new people this year. Yay for the newest one Lindsey the quint player who knew engineers could be cool. I see the people I hung out with freshman year (was it really that long ago????!!!) on occasionally except for the ones in band. Most of them live on Irving or else where far away and I still live on the Darkside. I see Simon occasionally for Magic but that’s about it, now that a new set came out maybe I’ll start doing more things with him, but I dunno when I’ll have the time with band going on, maybe next semester. The number of band parties this year is drastically down, and I’m not really complaining too much. If they hadn’t changed, I’d prolly never have started the weekly bowling pilgrimage to Capri, and I’m really enjoy those. Eh not much else, work’s going fine. Livin on the darkside is still sweet and I really don’t see a reason to move over to the Ghetto next year.
I really can’t think of much to end with, and the overwhelming number of recent LJ posts with people answer questions has amused me so… if you have some sort of question for me whatever the nature, leave a comment (their being screened for this one) and I’ll get back to you on AIM or in person, or something.