Snow + Football: A Match Made In Hell, After It Froze Over.

There's just something about blizzards that really makes a person want to blog.* I only know this because today, after thinking to myself, "Why don't I brush the dust (or snow, as the case may be) of the ol' internet and say some things?" I realized that snow was the thing I talked about last time I brushed the dust or snow off the internet and said some things. Well, I'm afraid that's just how things happen. And in case anyone was curious, I have, since my narrow escape from the student clinic which eclipsed with its scale all the year's other feats of daring and bravado, run into the radiologist and she is doing well. She did not remember me, however. I fear she's been brainwashed by the university.

I am led to believe that brainwashing is the University's preferred method of communicating its message, simply because of the vast scale of its economy. Efficiency is maximized by force; force is easy to come by when you are a gigantic, mulit-million dollar institution. Yesterday, David Boren called me three times to say the same thing. The first two times, he called me twice at once. Repetition, persistance. Persistance is the key; repetition is the lock. No, repetition is the key. Persistance is the other key. Perhaps persistance is the knocker. Sometimes, persistance is a many-hundred-pound knocker made of iron that you bring along with you when you want to be absolutely sure whoever is inside will hear you knocking and will promptly get the door. That way, if they don't, you're sure to have saved yourself a trip, not to mention the unease of conscience that comes with peering into people's windows, trying door-handles, and the like.

Do not misunderstand. I am not saying that brainwashing is permissible. (I have been taught emphatically since childhood that it is a vile practice!) I am merely mentioning its merits on the grounds of plain reason. The banner of knowledge ought to be flown high for everyone to see, if they're looking toward it, and for those who aren't, a little tweaking of the head this way or that will surely do more good than harm, provided they pay to see the Banner of Knowledge just like everyone else. Oh, my soap box is getting off on a tangent again. Or is it the other way around?

It is the other way around.

Now, soap box and I are lost in a frigid wasteland of the tangential and irrelevant, with no hope of finding our way back to the habitable climes of relevance, rationality, and wit. While we're here, I think we might as well play some football.

Does this make sense? No! This sentiment is utterly unfounded in any grounds save for the utmost paragon of lunacy! Then again, what other grounds can a person expect from those poor souls ensnared in irrelevance's bitter clutches, those poor souls who have no hope of extrication from their wanderings in an icy country of "Oh! That reminds me...?" What grounds, indeed?*

Suddenly, everything makes sense.

I've learned something, and that is not to dust off the ol' internet without having first established a thesis. Dear reader, I hope to not let you down again.

*boredom

My Narrow Escape from the Student Health Clinic.

I am fond of snow. I have a few problems with it, of course, as with anything in life. It's cold, or it's wet. Often it's both. That can be problematic for people like me. But never mind the problems. Let's move on to its merits.

1. It's pretty. It's pretty all by itself, and almost everything else is prettier when covered with it.
2. It's soft. Falling into snow is more pleasant than falling into almost any other naturally occurring substance, excepting perhaps warm water on the occasion that one is not wearing many layers of clothing, and naturally occurring deposits of down left by geese who have died of natural causes, though these are extremely rare.
3. It's cohesive, allowing one to make snowmen, snow angels, and snowballs.
4. It's slippery. Sledding, not to mention skiing and other types of sliding around in it are super fun.
5. I could really keep going for some time, but I won't because everybody knows that snow is awesome. Right.

In January, it snowed. I played football in the snow with some people, per the urging of a certain Doug Serven, who vehemently maintained that I wouldn't injure myself. Well, he doesn't know everything. I didn't injure myself, but the next day I woke up with one of my feet swollen to a ghastly degree with severe bruising and pain and a limited range of motion. And I don't think it had anything to do with my having gotten kicked really hard in the same ankle the night before while playing snow football.

I mean, it was fine. It healed right up. The only problem was as it healed, it didn't stop hurting, the swelling didn't go down, and I didn't regain my ability to move my toes.

So I decided to seek medical attention. This isn't really important; none of the story has been so far. Really it's all just a means of arriving at the important part of the story: the radiologist. I was at Goddard and I chatted with the doctor for a bit and predictably she sent me to have my foot shot with deadly radiation. And arriving in the x-ray room, the radiologist said: "Take off your shoe and sock and lie down on the table."

Needless to say, this statement made my day. As such, I exulted and explained just how happy she'd made me by not saying "lay down on the table." And she explained that she had learned as a youngster from a particularly caring and skillful grammar teacher that "you lay an object down. You lie on the x-ray table." Needless to say, we were friends by this point, and as such, she decided against killing me with radiation, though it may have cost her her job. Of course, not many people know that Goddard is really a front for a black market organ-harvesting ring that operates upon the principle that naïve college students go in thinking they will come out again. Instead of blasting me with microwaves like she was supposed to, she gave me an x-ray. Needless to say, I was very grateful. As such, I left.

On Happiness.

Can we suppose, just for the course of this relatively insignificant blog post, that the chief end of man is to pursue happiness and to find it?

Obviously we can't because that's a lie.

Happiness is a strange animal. Elusive, beautiful, capricious, extremely dangerous, like a giant golden-egg-laying peacock with fangs and eagle talons and ivory tusks for which one is often tempted to kill the thing despite the knowledge that not only will he forfeit the steady supply of golden eggs but also probably run into some technical difficulties involving the fangs and talons. That is to say, it can be a blessing. Also it can be really, really bad.

I live in a culture that teaches me to regard happiness as the highest goal that exists, to believe that there is nothing more worth striving for. Furthermore, I am taught that I am entitled to it for reasons that are inescapably vague. I am owed happiness because I'm an American. Because I succeed academically. Because succeeding academically leads to succeeding financially, every success leading to another greater one that ultimately yields happiness. Interestingly, it didn't occur to me until fairly recently that all this is a lie. For one, the best happiness doesn't have its roots in success as we perceive it here in America. But that's really neither here nor there. People could sit around and argue about that all day, and they do, and that's fine with me, and I also don't care. The important thing is that happiness is not everything. It's just one thing, one nice thing, that sometimes God sees fit to bless us with. Just like any other good thing that he can give and take away. It's not the same as contentment, and it's not the same as joy. We are commanded to be content and to have joy, but we are not commanded to be happy. Sometimes we are commanded to mourn.

My problem is with contentment. When I'm not happy, I scream at my heavenly father with tears in my eyes and pound my insignificant fists against the unyielding walls of providence, decrying how unfair it is that he hasn't given me the happiness I saw in the shop window. How I deserve it. How he clearly is cheating me by withholding it. How I don't just want it but need it. How, as such, he is a patently hateful God. Being unhappy isn't the problem; being discontent is. Fortunately, my heavenly father is patient with me. He forgives me for my temper tantrums. He loves me in spite of my vile ingratitude. And this is not sufficient proof that having him is better than having happiness.

Not that they're mutually exclusive, or that the proof really isn't sufficient, in case anyone wants to argue. The proof is abundantly sufficient, and I (acting as the judge in this case) have the understanding of a toddler.

The thing I'm trying to learn how to do is take blessing with thanks when it is given and take a lack of it with thanks when it is denied. Once I get that down, I'll move on to being grateful amid cursings and then I'll pretty much be good enough to save myself. I'll probably be happy by then, too!

Splash! Or, An Exercise in Single-Sentence Paragraphs.

I have become convinced that there are many more things in the world that need to be avoided than there are things that ought to be pursued, and meanwhile, it can become easy to get so wrapped up in avoiding things that there is nothing left to do, in which case one finds oneself doing nothing; nothing, that is, but reflecting, rather like a couple of mirrors sending goodness knows what information back and forth and back and forth until imperfection renders whatever reality there might have been utterly meaningless, sending sense and reason spiraling into a dark abyss of theoretical impossibility.

However, in such quandaries, one need only ponder the concrete, take a gander at the to-do list, consider the urgency of the mundane tasks that demand one's attention, and one will be safe and sound, back on the terra firma of overwhelming despair.

And once there, what ought a person do?

I find myself constantly in the midst of this internal debate, trying to find a balance between functioning and philosophizing, reprimanding myself ceaselessly for losing focus and letting the goal fall by the wayside, sometimes pausing to realize that I was never quite sure what the goal had been, other than perhaps to find out what the goal should be.

Invariably, such musings mature into anxiety which ferments into angst, which coupled with anger at the fact that my thoughts seem to yield only negative emotions beginning in a-, curdles regrettably into bitterness.

And only after having rehearsed this routine of alliterated afflictions do I finally find myself (maybe) in a position to ponder the stunning significance of the Gospel of grace.

I apologize for the previous sentence.

In all seriousness, however, I do not find myself able to arrive at any semblance of humility by any other means; that is, being shown in gruesome detail the futility of my own thinking and my abject inability to sanctify myself, which has been unendingly my temptation and a veritable millstone about my figurative neck in the freezing lake that is the planet Earth with all its allurements above which spans the metaphorical bridge of righteousness, off of which I daily hurl myself with reckless abandon.

Parsimoniously, (a word that here is used to indicate that the author spent time (almost undoubtedly too much) waffling over whether the initial word of this paragraph ought to be "fortunately" or "unfortunately," though in nearly every other context it would mean something entirely different) it is at the bottom of this freezing lake that sinners find grace, and it is through a figurative death of suffocation, hypothermia, or some combination of the two that they find themselves able to say perhaps with increasing frequency as they hurdle headlong into sin, "maybe this isn't a good idea..." and eventually even realize that God loves them.

Maybe that's the goal that fell out of my pocket several miles back.

No, surely not.

Maybe this isn't a good idea...

I Have No Way of Knowing.

The unprecedented magnitude of the degree to which I am currently uninspired is, I must say, so overwhelming that it almost inspires me. Of course, for that to actually happen would be impossible. A travesty. Nonetheless, I wonder if such a paradoxical sham could be redeemed - by me, that is, excluding the certainty that it will inevitably be redeemed by Christ - with the gradual clarification of ideas into something truly inane.

No, certainly not.

Today I realized that my heart is unlikely ever to be broken by a dead man. Of course, there are downsides and sacrifices one has to make. At least I would imagine so, though I have no way of knowing.

And really, I have no way of knowing almost anything. It serves me well to be asked regular questions to which the answer is, "I have no way of knowing." It aids in the preservation of what humility I've managed to scrape together (though more likely it is another travesty and also not I but another who has graciously scraped it together for me; however, I have no way of knowing) and hopefully leads to truth that can actually be known.

As for the dead men, I believe the joys afforded me by my dear Johann Sebastian are so great and so untarnished that it would not be fitting even if I had the means to find his vital company, for men are capricious until they are dead. What they leave behind is more or less imperishable and any disappointment therein can almost always be avoided due to its monolithic predictability. And so all I have to do is choose which dead man will disappoint me the least and see how miserable I can make myself.

The problem with this, of course, is that I shall be miserable, which was very near the opposite of my original goal. But naturally this is not certain, as it, being a thing, is a mystery to me and I, as usual, have no way of knowing.

But misery is my companion regardless, and my misery, if such a thing were possible, does not let me down. If I could find a way to fall in love with misery, I'm sure I would do it, except that I have a suspicion that for one thing it would be impossible (a travesty!), and furthermore that I would not cease to be miserable although I might enjoy it, or perhaps that misery would find a way to shed its steadiness and let me down.

Also, I find it unfair that when my face is downcast with sadness, the fallen acorns jeer at me from the ground. It will be good when they have all been run over, or trodden underfoot, or eaten by squirrels or carried away by greedy birds and children. Then, they will fall again and it is anyone's guess as to whether they will taunt me a second time.

The Cake Is Not a Lie.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am aware that many of you may be under the impression that the cake is a lie. But I am here to tell you with near certainty that the cake is, in fact, the truth.

Well, there's this computer game. In it, there are lies. There are empty promises of cake. There are calculated intentions of murder. That's not really what I'm talking about.

But perhaps it is not a bad way to represent more weighty things, things that pertain to life. The kind of life that happens outside of computer games. Anyhow, most games are a commentary on if not an outright metaphor for (if not a blatant simulation of) life. The game is one wherein the player is supposedly taking an aptitude test for some manner of scientific research company. At least that was the impression I got. You see, I haven't actually played the game. I have merely spent some time watching someone else play it while making (senseless, thoughtless) applications to actual human interaction.

In the game, you are told that there will be cake. In real life, you are told something similar (for now, we will disregard the fact that in real life you are often told so many things at once that they might in fact seem to cancel each other out), but of course in both simulation and reality there is disappointment. But never mind all that. I want to get on to the good part.

However, I feel I can't get to the good part without at least mentioning that eventually, expectations can shift toward the disappointed end of the disappointment spectrum, and they often do. We expect the cake to be a lie most of the time. Maybe this is wise, but I am not wise so I have no way of knowing if it is or it isn't.

In high school, I used to work at a stable. It was owned by an older couple who were the kindest people I would ever expect to meet (in the spirit of this post, they were kinder than any person I would expect to meet,) and I don't doubt that I will be much older indeed by the time I will have liked a job half as much as I liked that one. Since they are so sweet, I usually visit them when I am home from school and listen to them talk about things. (An aside: listening to people talk who have lived longer than I have is one of my favorite things. If you haven't tried it, you should.) The last two or three times I came home, though, I was unable to visit them, and hadn't seen them for some time.

On Christmas eve, I got a phone call from Gail. She said, "Hi! I just wanted to call and wish you a merry Christmas!" Needless to say, I was happy to receive the call. Also, I had not been expecting it. I expressed these sentiments as well as returning her greeting. And then she said, "And I baked you a cake!"

I really didn't know what to do with this information, but on the most explicable level of discourse, I'd say it pretty much made my life.

That's really all I wanted to say. There are times when you don't even expect a phone call and you get a cake. The cake is not a lie.

On Christmas Shopping.

Yesterday, three things occurred to me.

First, there is nothing quite like the ambiguity of a honking car horn.

I was doing my Christmas shopping (yes, all of it.) and the streets surrounding the mall entrances were, as could be expected, packed with people who, like me, had procrastinated a great deal about buying gifts for their loved ones. As an aside, my general philosophy is that if you subscribe to this method of gift-buying, you should be prepared to be very patient and preferably even cheerful on the day you chose to cross off your friends and family members like so many items on a to-do list. Nevertheless, most other seasonal procrastinators do not share my view on the matter, and it became apparent as I made the man in the car behind me very, very angry.

I was waiting to turn left. We all were, actually. Together. We, the people of the left turn lanes, were waiting communally. To turn left. And as everyone knows, a group of people in relatively close proximity who share a common goal will almost always do everything they can to be angry at each other. So there was a green arrow, and some cars ahead of me, as is their wont, turned left. The light turned yellow and the intersection was completely choked with cars. I stopped, as is my wont. The man in the truck behind me gesticulated wildly out his window and shouted and honked. Someone else honked. The two of them honked back and forth for the entire duration of the red light in what I would if ignorant of the circumstances assume to be a jocular exercise in musical improvisation using such limited means as they had. Since I had already resolved, given my philosophy, to be patient and possibly even cheerful, I pretended this was the case.

Second, if your luck is bad enough, intelligence actually works to your disadvantage. I worked that one out myself.

Third, never buy anything from a Yankee candle shop. I left "candle" uncapitalized on purpose as a play on words, because there seems to be some kind of cultural consensus that makes me think people dislike Yankees and things associated with Yankees, and furthermore that Yankees are known for doing dishonest things with your money. So that statement includes not just candle shops operated by the Yankee Candle Company, but any candle shop run by a Yankee.

I was in the mall, after having arrived there in a manner previously discussed, looking for my last gift, which I resolved should be something that smelled good, for my dad and stepmom. I was hoping to find a tea shop, or even a chocolatier, but the first place I stumbled upon was the afforementioned Yankee candle shop. I went in and was warmly greeted by a cheerful, if not patient, salesman. Our banter went like this:

"Hello, how are you doing today?"

"I'm doing reasonably well, thanks. How are you?"

"I'm doing pretty well. Are you finding everything all right?"

"Well, I suppose so. Actually I just walked in, and don't exactly know what I'm looking for."

"Oh, so you'll have two of everything?"

"Yes. Wonderful."

"It'll last your whole life!"

"Which is how long I will spend paying off the student loan I'll need to take out!"

"Hahaha."

I probably wouldn't have made this joke had I known how close to true it was, and I didn't know because the prices, in true Yankee fashion, were nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, I looked around briefly and selected a modestly sized scented candle. I carried it to the register, where a considerably less jovial employee waited to take my money. He asked me if anyone had helped me, and I told him yes, the jovial chap in the front, and he mentioned that for only three dollars more I could have the bigger candle. That's all right, I said. The small one will do. But the bigger one has twice the burn time, he informed me. It didn't make sense to me that he was giving me this information since I had very plainly just told him that the small candle was the one I wanted to buy. Nevertheless, I humored him and reiterated that I was in fact going to purchase the candle that I had selected and brought to the counter. It seemed really obvious to me, though. He then asked for my phone number so that "they" (who?) could send me coupons. "There is no part of me that wants coupons," is the first thing that came to mind. Secondly, "How does knowing my phone number allow you to send me things that are traditionally made of paper?" As all this was swirling about my suspicious but still patient brain, I told him that's all right, I have no need of or desire for coupons. He respnded by informing me that they would not call or sell my information. Once again, his comments were not high ranking on the relevance scale. I had not expressed any kind of concern about being called or having my information sold, and in fact had not expected either of those things to happen. So, looking more quizzical than before, I declined for the second time. For the second time. And then he said, "okay, that'll be $23.80."

By far the worst thing that happened yesterday was my purchase of that exorbitant candle. Their sales technique worked. (I think it should be illegal.) Leaving the mall, I would have ridiculed myself harshly, but since I was steadfastly patient and cheerful, I could only laugh at myself, which was in itself a little humiliating.

The moral of the story, if you were paying attention, was actually very clearly stated at the very beginning, so there is no use repeating it.