My dad's playing the guitar in the other room right now---I'd forgotten how much I missed that. I want to be a little girl again, so he can sing me to sleep with The Pony Man...

I'd love to write another long post right now, but I'm swamped.

Over the last three days, I have had nine phone conversations with Wayne State's Music Department--one with Professor Markou, one with Professor Hill, and seven with the receptionist.

I have emailed Professor Markou twice, Professor Hill once, and am now in the process of emailing at least six other professors.

I have called the University Advising Center over a dozen times, without once finding that magic time where a student advisor is available to talk to me.

I've sent my financial paperwork in twice to the Financial Aid Department, because they lost it the first time. I've called and cleared up a miscommunication that caused them to send me a bill for $450.

I have registered for a Critical Thinking Competency test and two placement tests.

I have revised my class schedule four times, and still not found a way to include UGE100, which I absolutely without-question MUST take this semester. I can't reach my student advisor to ask his/her advice.

I'm still waiting for my refund check from the Financial Aid department so I'll have money to buy my textbooks.


I love college.

My 7-year-old brother's reaction to the Olympics: "He's not American, is he? I hope he falls."

For half the year I’d like to live in a rambling, two-story country house, built smack-dab in the middle of a hundred acres that belongs solely to me. I would know that I could get up early in the morning, and watch the sun rise, and take a long hike, and meet nobody. I could walk far enough away from my country house that I couldn’t see it any longer, only trees and sky and waving grass. I could go out at night, and lay on my stomach on a hill, and watch the stars and the big yellow moon—the moon that always looks bigger in the country.

The other half-year, I’d like to live in a big city, possibly New York City, in a very modern apartment. I could walk down busy streets and admire the skyline, and window-shop. I could eat at smart little cafes, and stop at a bagel shop for lunch. I could be surrounded by thousands of pleasant, grumpy, smiling, sad, busy, brisk, disinterested people. I could sit on my balcony at night, near the potted geraniums on my window sill, and listen to the night-noises of the city.

Instead I live in a four-bedroom, one-story house in what is really a very nice suburb, with lots of big trees, no fences, and pleasant neighbors. If I time it right, I can sit in my half-acre backyard, and none of the neighbor children will come over and interrupt me. I can bike down well-kept streets (down Ingleside, turn right on Mulberry, pass two streets, and make another right, and then another, back to Ingleside), and there will be just enough people to be too many when I want to be alone, and not enough for when I want the companionship of a crowd of strangers.

But it is, after all, a nice house, and a nice neighborhood, and the neighbor kids don’t come around too often, and—I guess people will always want just a little more than they have. Just because.

Jesus, Dem.

How would Jesus vote? It’s an intriguing question to which, apparently, everybody has an answer; and that means a lot of answers. Michael Jinkins says that Jesus’ vote would surprise us religious people, and Derek Davis says Jesus would not vote at all. James More, on the other hand, is confident that Jesus is a Democrat. "If ever there were a bleeding-heart liberal," stated James Moore, confidently, "it was Jesus Christ."

But the truly revealing (though not as specific as we could all wish) answer comes from Bud Tutt, who squirms at the suggestion that "people of faith" (this apparently including Jesus) have only one viable option in the voting booth: George W. Bush. "As I read the Scriptures and as I understand faith," says Mr. Tutt, "God’s side [read Democrats] is the group that’s feeding the poor, caring about children, making sure that people have enough food to eat," and, (most importantly) "not killing others," by which he means the Iraq war, which the Republicans (not God’s side) support.

John Moyers, too, is concerned about the way people of faith view politics. Conservatives (probably even those Republicans, too) "would have us believe that morality is all about where you stand on abortion," he says, and this is "simply wrong." And that’s that.

Well, taking care of the poor and caring about children is wonderful, of course, but I find it hard to accept that it’s really all about giving food to little children with your right hand, while you’re helping to murder little children with your left. However, I guess God will have to overlook that part of it, being too busy praising the Democrats for their newest welfare program.

Yes, I can definitely see Jesus as a beaming Democrat, waving to the multitudes as his followers pass out bag lunches. Probably (though this isn’t actually recorded), he spent his free time touring the slums of Galilee, saying "We really must have a go at this overpopulation problem, Peter. It’s getting out of hand—-take this money and go donate it to the local abortion clinic, and shake hands with the women as you go out—every vote counts, you know."

"Many analysts have criticized Democrats for failing to more effectively reach religious voters," says this article. Now it seems the critics will have to recant; the Democrats have won their religious majority at last—Jesus, Democrat.

Here's a post I forgot about. I started it quite a while back, and then promptly lost it. I finished it today, because it was a relatively good post, and came easily, and I don't write many of those:

They've Stolen Our Freedom! Or Have They?

[My original intro, which has nothing to do with this post. However, it seemed to belong by right of association, so I left it in. Skip it if you want.] You know, if I had any suspicion that anyone besides Pieter regularly read my weblog, I'd actually write more often. It's the security of having a following-of-one (and that one not following as closely as he used to) that stifles my budding genius and hampers the flow of literary verbosity. Please don't disillusion me--I like being lazy.

I read an article about income tax today by my sometime-friend (don’t smack me, Pieter!). He argues that the income tax imposed on him amounts to nothing less than slavery. True freedom, he implies, entails the ability to do whatever you want with all of your money; not to be forced to spend it on someone else's public-education, or to pay for government-funded abortions, or to fund the private vacations of congressmen.

Of course, much as we all hate to admit it, that sort of freedom cannot exist except in a vacuum. If we want the security and (even) the benefits of living in an orderly civilization, we have to expect a price. That price takes the form of taxes, laws that hinder us even while they protect us, and, yes, sometimes even an unconstitutional amendment allowing Government to take our income. Not that I’m arguing that any of this is ideal—only that it’s to be expected.

You want security, you give up freedom. That’s the rule of thumb, and it’s a livable rule. Sure, I hate income tax too. Nothing inherently gives Government the right to snatch nearly half my income to spend at its discretion. It is, however, a right that I relinquished in favor of personal and economic security.

Which is not to say I won’t be ready to take that right back again if and when someone gets up enough gumption and national support to work towards another amendment repealing the income theft.

So...what are you waiting for, Pieter?

After two weeks of shivering in jeans and a sweatshirt, yesterday was heaven on earth; both my temperature and the weather’s having regulated themselves at long last.

The sunshine and the fluffy clouds and the cheerful blue sky united in the sort of heady combination that spells doom to wanna-be poets, who naively produce stuff about meadows and little birdies and other such rubbish. I’m a wanna-be too, but no longer that naïve.

Still, it was a perfect day, and I had forgotten that any such existed, what with begrudging the necessity of sweatshirts in tank-top weather, gulping disgustly hot tea, and generally feeling sorry for myself.

I’m glad to find that humanity and God’s green earth are still here where I left them.