Synagogues and Street Corners

Since when did the honors floor become the right-wing fundamentalist Christian floor? Blech. Seriously, I came here because I thought this place would be full of little geeky kids (I certainly didn't come for the four flights of stairs). Instead I get deeply religious Christian people who are freaking out about the abortion referendum and deal with it by posting pictures of bloody fetuses on their doors.

It would be one thing if they were religious. That wouldn't be a problem. But they're So Damned Vocal. One girl posts the "Bible Verse of the Day" on her door. I don't want to see that. I'm Catholic, for god's sake, and I still don't want to see that. A "verse of the day" is fine, but it belongs in an e-mail, not on a public thoroughfare. I like Jesus. I do. We're buds. But damn, I don't want to see and talk about all my friends all the time. There's a poster up on the schedule wall that says "Ashamed to be a Christian on Campus?" There's not a damned Christian who's ashamed to be one here. Except possibly me, and that's because I didn't realize that it was a requirement of the faith to be sanctimonious, morbidly conservative, and unable to ever shut up about Jesus.

Don't get me wrong. Jesus is fine, Christianity is fine, conservativism is fine. Just shut up about it once in awhile. I was always raised to believe that faith is a private matter; it belongs only where people want to hear about it. It's too deeply divisive to be screamed from the walls as somebody trudges to the bathroom. If I want to hear about it, believe me, I'll ask. Until then, I personally think that it's a matter of your heart, not your lungs.

The Nicest Guy You'll Ever Meet

It seemed like it should have been obvious, but it just occurred to me today that no story is fact. It was strange to realize that nothing on the television news shows or in the media is actual fact; it's all been handed down and processed and turned and taped and altered. Bias, my foot--it's really just the different ways that people tell stories.

Case in point: today I saw a girl from my high school. I haven't seen her in years. She's the daughter of one of my father's friends, who also happened to be my teacher. She was maybe three years older than me, went to my church. The story that goes with her is that she joined the army after high school and ended up doing a tour of duty in Iraq as a medic. One day, while her company was riding around in a truck, they hit an IUD. A baby-faced soldier, the darling of the group and one of those Nicest Guys You'll Ever Meet, took the blast in the face and died. Everyone in the truck watched the NGYEM's face get torn off. A few days later, the sergeant, distraught by the loss of this kid, blew his own face off with his firearm.

Anyway, the most basic parts of that story are as true as it gets. The kid did get killed by an IUD, and the officer did commit suicide a few days later. I don't know how many of the details are fact and how many I just remember that way. Technically, my telling is wrong, but because it's unintentional...it's just a story. It's the story the way I know it.

As for the girl, the story the way I know it has her sitting right next to the kid. I don't know if it's true. What I do know is that this whole story flashed into my head the instant I saw the haunted look on her face, something she can't quite cover up, something that no one would notice unless they knew the story.

La Cucaracha en Mis Calcetines

This is what I love about textbook publishers: I pay $130 for a Spanish book, and then get confused when I try to do my homework and the workbook directs me to a CD-ROM that I don't have. I check the textbook, and it, too, claims that I received a CD in the package. I make a frenzied search through my desk and bags only to conclude that I, The Eternal Scatterbrain, must have thrown the CD out with the packaging. I go to the book's website and find that the layout is damn near incomprehensible, especially when I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for. So I e-mail my instructor, and she tells me that she'll find one for me. Later that day (but I don't check the e-mail for two more days, which leads to more absentminded worry), she e-mails me and tells me that she's talked to other instructors, and the situation is this:

It's a new edition. There is no CD-ROM. It's all on the website.

They charge me a hundred and freaking thirty dollars for this book, and they can't even bother to change the instructions in the workbook or the print on the back cover that says that part of my $130 goes toward a fancy-schmancy CD-ROM.

For this, I knee Vista Higher Learning Publishing in the collective testicles.

(Okay, I'm not actually that worked up about it. But I needed something to post other than, "My Spanish textbook is stupid.")