"A Different World Cannot Be Built By Indifferent People"

Today is the Egyptian feast of Hathor-Sekhmet. As in, Egyptian celebration of the fertility goddess Hathor. So pretty standard fertility rites. Knock yourselves out.

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I have this really bad habit of eavesdropping, which is to say that I have a bad habit of not not listening, and consequently overhearing stuff that was not intended for my ears. This is especially true for when my roommates have phone conversations in the room when I'm studying. It's not that I'm trying to overhear, I just do.

Anyway, normally nothing of interest is said, but last night Loquatia was talking on the phone with her mother, and she described this movie she'd seen in sociology about transgendered people, and I got the distinct impression that she was seriously questioning the tenets of her Christian faith regarding them. She was calling to ask her mother what Christians were supposed to think about people who despite their biological gender, considered themselves the opposite gender from a very young age. As in, long before it could be a result of rebelliousness or something.

This struck me for two reasons: first, that she needed to call her mother to know what to think. That's the only problem I have with religion: some followers believe that all their thoughts have to be dictated by the faith. But more important, I think, is that she was thinking about transgenderation to begin with. That's why we're at college- to learn and to broaden our horizons. If Loquatia could come out of school with doubts about the validity of anti-transgender claims, then clearly her education was worth it. Whatever the pastor may say.

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Countdown to Christmas Break: 17 Days.

I'm working on my final project for Myth, the epic poem in iambic pentameter. It's due Now, "And you did in distress no more sing sweet" may be iambic pentameter (or close), but it's lousy grammar... See, I wrote the whole thing first, a seventy-line poem about Orpheus and Eurydice, in something vaguely resembling pentameter, at least, if not iambs. Now I'm going through and carefully correcting each line to the proper meter. So "Who swiftly to Hades Hermes did take" becomes "Who swift to Hades Hermes Guide did take" and the aforementioned line was originally the much more logical-sounding "And you in sadness no more did sing sweet."

Writing seventy lines of poetry in rhyming couplets took me half an hour. Correcting the first nine of those lines to something close to iambic pentameter took me an hour and a half.

It's gonna be a fun week.

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Some bright individual has either abandoned an egg salad sandwich in a particularly secretive spot, or exploded a stink bomb on the main stairwell. It smells SO BAD. Nasty. I really hope they live in this dorm, so they have to deal with the effects of this prank like the rest of us...

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Loquatia is listening to a Christian Radio talk show, right now, and they're telling a story- it's for kids, but she grew up on it and she loves it. It's weird, though. They're telling the story of this family that gets robbed on Christmas Eve and how they "pull together with the spirit of Christmas" and sit around reading the Bible about the birth of Jesus.

Now, I dunno about you, but if I had a family and was robbed on Christmas Day, I'd give my kids a hug and call up Auntie Shrewd or someone, tell her what happened, get the turkey out of the fridge (because no one would steal a raw turkey, I mean, come on) and go celebrate at her house, then replace the gifts a few days later. I certainly wouldn't expect my kids to sit around while I told them Nativity stories.

This is why I don't like Christian talk radio.

Speaking of the birth of Jesus, I have decided that I want to see The Nativity Story, when it comes out in theaters. I'm not Christian but I like that story, and it looks like they took an interesting approach to it, focusing on Joseph and Mary's views of the situation rather than rambling on about the glory of God. The problem is that I haven't a clue who I'd go with: I don't go to movies alone, and my usual movie buddy, Shrewd, most likely doesn't want to go to a Christmas movie. Also, whoever I go with would have to deal with my after-movie discussion, so that rules out anyone who is particularly sensitive to having a heathen discuss their faith. Which rules out my dad, who is just now starting to regret not raising us Congregationalist. I think it was the conversation Shrewd and I had about selling our souls to the Devil.

Maybe my mom would go with me.

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Now I have to go read for Myth. We're supposed to read Book 1, 2, and 3 in the Iliad. One problem: We weren't given the Iliad. We were given the Odyssey. So I have to go buy a book. And I'm doing that now, because the talk radio has switched to someone ranting about how we'd all go to hell if not for the grace of God, and we don't deserve anything that God gives us, and how we're all inherently a bunch of lustful, slothful, greedy liars. The latter part may be true, but honestly, I can only take so much preaching...