if, you cannot guess from the last, slightly garbled post, this new year has brought a significant personality change. it's hard to blog when i really don't understand why exactly i'm blogging (the inveterate sorrow of the purpose-driven life).
(the real issue is that my writing style is sickeningly stale, inspite of incessant thesaurical expeditions for adjectives).
but, good news breaks the gloom. My brother just got a job! At an international school, to boot! In TANZANIA!. To quote said brother, "We're shaking the dust of this continent off our feet come August!"
This lends itself to several cheerful conclusions:
1. Holcombs are internationally desireable workers.
2. Dreams can happen!
3. ...if you diligently work on making them happen, and...
4. you patiently fish for the right connection.
5. God makes things happen through surprises
6. According to the standard laws of kinship and sharing, I now have a place to crash in Moshi, Tanzania! :)
31 January 2005
20 January 2005
having bloggered consistently for over a year and consistently tired of my stylistic quirks and quibbles tendencies and influences not to mention grammatical constraints
i almost decided to quit blogging altogether
because even stream-of-consciousness blogging has become self-aware
--it seems i have created a monster
temptation strikes&%)#resort to DADAism
from a text"all that was left to the intellectual was sardonic laughter."
Brunel and Dali cooperate on a film: Le Chien Andalusian (The Andalusian Dog), a series of random unrelated shots whose guiding principle: no shot, sequence or placement could be logically explained
no dogs, andalusian or otherwise, are featured
assauling a paper god of reason
a rebellion against the bare logic of Metternich, Clausevitz
?the beginning of postmodernism
burning idols to the human mind
i almost decided to quit blogging altogether
because even stream-of-consciousness blogging has become self-aware
--it seems i have created a monster
temptation strikes&%)#resort to DADAism
from a text"all that was left to the intellectual was sardonic laughter."
Brunel and Dali cooperate on a film: Le Chien Andalusian (The Andalusian Dog), a series of random unrelated shots whose guiding principle: no shot, sequence or placement could be logically explained
no dogs, andalusian or otherwise, are featured
assauling a paper god of reason
a rebellion against the bare logic of Metternich, Clausevitz
?the beginning of postmodernism
burning idols to the human mind
11 January 2005
so I was in the checkout line at Wal-Mart tonight, sheepishly holding a bottle of Suave Passion FLower Extract Shampoo and a pink loofah, and I look over at the magazine rack, and what do I see?
A headline reading: "First Humans were Gay!" accompanied by a picture labeled "Adam and...Ed?"
Now, these sorts of magazines are known for stretching credulity, but, really...think about this for a second. Just for a second. I mean, it really, really, really REALLY doesn't make sense. At all. Even allowing the sort of suspended disbelief enjoyed by the X Files. I think perhaps even Mulder would have taken umbrage at that one...
A headline reading: "First Humans were Gay!" accompanied by a picture labeled "Adam and...Ed?"
Now, these sorts of magazines are known for stretching credulity, but, really...think about this for a second. Just for a second. I mean, it really, really, really REALLY doesn't make sense. At all. Even allowing the sort of suspended disbelief enjoyed by the X Files. I think perhaps even Mulder would have taken umbrage at that one...
06 January 2005
So I've had this conversation several times with various friends over the course of the past few months. It generally degenerates into discussions as to the relative hotness/homeliness of British actors and the fact that Keira Knightley is an amazingly gorgeous exception.
The discussion starts out like this: British people are homelier than American ones (to all of my British friends--I apologize for the crassness of this statement. it will perhaps make more sense later). I back up this assertion with a simple test: name three British actors and three British actresses who are unquestionably good-looking. Then name three Americans for each. It's quite simple...British cimena is strangely (in comparison to America's tendency to cast models in ugly duckling roles and the corresponding legitimacy crisis) full of realistically imperfect people. Gap-teeth, normal body weight for women, moles, less-than-impressive hairlines...REAL people!
Imagine my horror, then, at reading the following from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz.
"Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that. Somebody told me that in London people don't judge you as much by the way you look, and I think it is true because late night on PBS they play shows out of England and the actors aren't good looking, and I sit there wondering if anybody else is watching and asking the same question: why aren't the actors in London good looking? And I already know the answer to that question, it is that America is one of the most immoral countries in the world and that our media has reduced humans to slabs of meat."
Crazy! Where does this Miller go off stealing my idea? Ooooh...vindication...someone who had that same idea published it. Hmmmm.....
The discussion starts out like this: British people are homelier than American ones (to all of my British friends--I apologize for the crassness of this statement. it will perhaps make more sense later). I back up this assertion with a simple test: name three British actors and three British actresses who are unquestionably good-looking. Then name three Americans for each. It's quite simple...British cimena is strangely (in comparison to America's tendency to cast models in ugly duckling roles and the corresponding legitimacy crisis) full of realistically imperfect people. Gap-teeth, normal body weight for women, moles, less-than-impressive hairlines...REAL people!
Imagine my horror, then, at reading the following from Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz.
"Television drives me crazy sometimes because everybody is so good-looking, and yet you walk through the aisles of the grocery stores, and nobody looks like that. Somebody told me that in London people don't judge you as much by the way you look, and I think it is true because late night on PBS they play shows out of England and the actors aren't good looking, and I sit there wondering if anybody else is watching and asking the same question: why aren't the actors in London good looking? And I already know the answer to that question, it is that America is one of the most immoral countries in the world and that our media has reduced humans to slabs of meat."
Crazy! Where does this Miller go off stealing my idea? Ooooh...vindication...someone who had that same idea published it. Hmmmm.....
05 January 2005
"The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love. Sure, er called it unconditional, but it wasn't. There were bad people in the world and good people in the world. We were raised to believe this. If people were bad, we treated them as though they were either evil or charity: If they were bad and rich, they were evil. If they were bad and poor, they were charity. Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on everybody else...
"Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God...
"On the other hand, however, I felt by loving liberal people, I mean by really endorsing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God...I felt like there was this war going on between us, the Christians, and them, the homosexuals and hippies and feminists...By going to a Unitarian church and truly loving those people, I was helping them, I was giving joy to their life and that didn't feel right. It was a terrible place to be..."
"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things. My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College...
"Mr. Spencer asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships? We value people, I shouted out. Yes, he said, and wrote it on his little white board. We invest in people, another person added. And soon enough we had listed an entire white board of economic metaphor. Relationships could be bankrupt, we said. People are priceless, we said.
"The problem with Christian culture is that we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless...
"With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did."
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
"Hatred seemed, to me, the product of ignorance. I was tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them. I was tired of Christian leaders using biblical principles to protect their power, to draw a line in the sand separating the good army from the bad one. The truth is I had met the enemy in the woods and discovered they were not the enemy. I wondered whether any human being could be an enemy of God...
"On the other hand, however, I felt by loving liberal people, I mean by really endorsing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God...I felt like there was this war going on between us, the Christians, and them, the homosexuals and hippies and feminists...By going to a Unitarian church and truly loving those people, I was helping them, I was giving joy to their life and that didn't feel right. It was a terrible place to be..."
"It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things. My realization came while attending an alumni social for Westmont College...
"Mr. Spencer asked us about another area in which he felt metaphors cause trouble. He asked us to consider relationships. What metaphors do we use when we think of relationships? We value people, I shouted out. Yes, he said, and wrote it on his little white board. We invest in people, another person added. And soon enough we had listed an entire white board of economic metaphor. Relationships could be bankrupt, we said. People are priceless, we said.
"The problem with Christian culture is that we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money...If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and, perhaps, we feel they are priceless...
"With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did."
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
17 December 2004
15 December 2004
"Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted-and few have been able to resist the temptation for long-to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.
"The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations-in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself.
"On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and promoting those of our own. Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment."
--Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations
or in the name of democratic capitalism.
"The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations-in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself.
"On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and promoting those of our own. Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment."
--Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations
or in the name of democratic capitalism.
have just rediscovered grits. amazing. am currently bobbing head like an idiot and tapping my foot. and mouthing the lyrics at blazing speed. in the middle of the coffee house. boo yah! also found street-brit hip hop group The Streets. good stuff.
six pages of my last fifteen pager done. i'm going to bed. tomorrow is writing day. and after that comes a lot of finals. i am very tired.
six pages of my last fifteen pager done. i'm going to bed. tomorrow is writing day. and after that comes a lot of finals. i am very tired.
12 December 2004
i want to eat real bananas. do you?
i want to fly to tanzania. do you?
i want to swim in might rivers. do you?
i want to sit on a warm rock. do you?
i want to talk about hippos. do you?
i want to jump off waterfalls. do you?
i want to sip chai with maziwa. do you?
i want to eat at the HastyTasty. do you?
i want to make music with Mike. you too?
let's go!
sigh...why did we let it go by so fast?
---
p.s. but...!
i'm sitting in Houghton's brand-new and very charming coffee house, listening to my friends Jon and Jon and Alan and Blaine and Mike and Aileen play improv jass Christmas tunes. that's incredibly cool :) now all i need is some caramel apple cider...who wants to buy me a caramel apple cider?
i want to fly to tanzania. do you?
i want to swim in might rivers. do you?
i want to sit on a warm rock. do you?
i want to talk about hippos. do you?
i want to jump off waterfalls. do you?
i want to sip chai with maziwa. do you?
i want to eat at the HastyTasty. do you?
i want to make music with Mike. you too?
let's go!
sigh...why did we let it go by so fast?
---
p.s. but...!
i'm sitting in Houghton's brand-new and very charming coffee house, listening to my friends Jon and Jon and Alan and Blaine and Mike and Aileen play improv jass Christmas tunes. that's incredibly cool :) now all i need is some caramel apple cider...who wants to buy me a caramel apple cider?
11 December 2004
Went and saw the Nutcracker last night, performed by a rather impressive Russian ballet troupe. Very cool. The world is full of beauty. Sometimes that beauty takes the form of fairy tales, and the beauty is the excitement of mystery and possibility that fills every day.
In another note, a friend of a friend double majored in ballet and AIDS relief and education at a major ivy league school. good grief.
I am listening to Five For Fighting's "America Town" album. In spite of all the scorn certain women have heaped upon the band in general and "Superman" in particular, I'm increasingly impressed and thinking, hmmm...
I think I'd like to buy this CD. Perhaps its the stress...
--Recipe for Futility:
One 15 page case-study on Imperial Japan through the eyes of Robert Jervis' Security Dilemma.
One 5 page paper on political theory in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, for the charming and harsh Herr Doktor Meilaender.
One 8 page paper on East African Folklore, for my favorite professor. Except it's several months overdue.
One 8 page paper. For my senior seminar. hmmmmmmm...
And four finals. Four blue-book finals.
An ominously sore throat and swollen lymph nodes and achy head.
Blurred vision.
I am going to die...
but not yet. not today. today, Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer are on my side. and if not, Thomas Merton will always be my friend.
In another note, a friend of a friend double majored in ballet and AIDS relief and education at a major ivy league school. good grief.
I am listening to Five For Fighting's "America Town" album. In spite of all the scorn certain women have heaped upon the band in general and "Superman" in particular, I'm increasingly impressed and thinking, hmmm...
I think I'd like to buy this CD. Perhaps its the stress...
--Recipe for Futility:
One 15 page case-study on Imperial Japan through the eyes of Robert Jervis' Security Dilemma.
One 5 page paper on political theory in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, for the charming and harsh Herr Doktor Meilaender.
One 8 page paper on East African Folklore, for my favorite professor. Except it's several months overdue.
One 8 page paper. For my senior seminar. hmmmmmmm...
And four finals. Four blue-book finals.
An ominously sore throat and swollen lymph nodes and achy head.
Blurred vision.
I am going to die...
but not yet. not today. today, Hans Morgenthau and John Mearsheimer are on my side. and if not, Thomas Merton will always be my friend.
10 December 2004
"Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste
with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those
things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets..."
-Lady Olivia, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare may have been a dirty man, but he was brilliant too, and he knew human nature. Nothing makes you a prisoner like self-centered pride or arrogance, and nothing makes you free like laughter.
with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those
things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets..."
-Lady Olivia, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare may have been a dirty man, but he was brilliant too, and he knew human nature. Nothing makes you a prisoner like self-centered pride or arrogance, and nothing makes you free like laughter.
09 December 2004
with a satisfied smile, i clicked the little spell-check button at the top of the night's effort. i wrote nine pages of reflection on Tanzania and me and philosophy about life and culture and it was a pleasure to write and hopefully just as pleasant to read. oh, i am immensely satisfied. it's good to write something and feel like a competent writer again.
i was skipping along quite nicely, telling the dictionary to ignore words like "Arensen" and "homestay" and "Wasafwa" and "intercultural studies" when suddenly my spell checker popped up the word "Kenote" which is really strange because Anne Kenote had absolutely nothing to do with my Tanzania experience; she hadn't even learned to say "Hujambo" and kupiga "Hodi! Hodi!" yet. How did she get into my paper? and then I remembered seeing her near my computer with that mischevious little smile on and I thought, wait a minute...
and here's what I read smack in the middle of a paragraph about Dr. Arensen's old friend the Commissionary (and his wife) in the Sudan and his avid love for checkers:
"Right in the middle of important, pressing business or entertaining visitors they would stop for an hour of games and tea and cheerful, inane banter. Then they would up and get back to business, filling both with ample gusto. And I think that Anne Kenote is the coolest, whatever I was writing about, I now count as rubbish because the thought of the illustrious Anne takes over all previous thoughts a man can entertain. So that’s all. Grade me as you will but I refuse to recant. I will die with these last words on my lips..."
And I'm very glad that I spell-checked this document before printing it up and handing it in. And Anne Kenote is a hilarious and creative individual (by the way, in case you run into Anne, make sure you say it like "Comma", not "Can" or "Fanny." She hates that.
i was skipping along quite nicely, telling the dictionary to ignore words like "Arensen" and "homestay" and "Wasafwa" and "intercultural studies" when suddenly my spell checker popped up the word "Kenote" which is really strange because Anne Kenote had absolutely nothing to do with my Tanzania experience; she hadn't even learned to say "Hujambo" and kupiga "Hodi! Hodi!" yet. How did she get into my paper? and then I remembered seeing her near my computer with that mischevious little smile on and I thought, wait a minute...
and here's what I read smack in the middle of a paragraph about Dr. Arensen's old friend the Commissionary (and his wife) in the Sudan and his avid love for checkers:
"Right in the middle of important, pressing business or entertaining visitors they would stop for an hour of games and tea and cheerful, inane banter. Then they would up and get back to business, filling both with ample gusto. And I think that Anne Kenote is the coolest, whatever I was writing about, I now count as rubbish because the thought of the illustrious Anne takes over all previous thoughts a man can entertain. So that’s all. Grade me as you will but I refuse to recant. I will die with these last words on my lips..."
And I'm very glad that I spell-checked this document before printing it up and handing it in. And Anne Kenote is a hilarious and creative individual (by the way, in case you run into Anne, make sure you say it like "Comma", not "Can" or "Fanny." She hates that.
Josh Miller got up and read this poem at tonight's poetry reading in the beautiful atmosphere of our new coffee house. It's beautiful. It's a fight every day to try and reach out past the common alienation and loneliness and make the connection and find some sense of shared humanity, and some days the fight goes better than others.
Tigger's Lament
No one understands me, I tell you
I'd quit bouncing if I had the choice;
but I'm imbalanced, hyperactive
why don't you try being
the sole representative of your species, and see
how you turn out?
Instead of sympathy
I get Owl's platitudes, Rabbit's constant nagging
Pooh's too stupid, and Piglet's too worried
to really listen; Gopher's too busy,
Eeyore's depressing, and I'm tired
of invading Roo's family life.
Sometimes I wish
Christopher Robin would take me out
of the Hundred-Acre Wood
and put me back where I belong
where the gods weren't so cruel to leave me
isolated--a place with she-Tiggers to marry
that feels like home.
But that's just story-book thinking.
So I'll keep bouncing through fields and trees,
trample Rabbit's garden, singing my songs
of feigned happiness hoping that someday
the lie becomes truth.
by Josh Miller
Tigger's Lament
No one understands me, I tell you
I'd quit bouncing if I had the choice;
but I'm imbalanced, hyperactive
why don't you try being
the sole representative of your species, and see
how you turn out?
Instead of sympathy
I get Owl's platitudes, Rabbit's constant nagging
Pooh's too stupid, and Piglet's too worried
to really listen; Gopher's too busy,
Eeyore's depressing, and I'm tired
of invading Roo's family life.
Sometimes I wish
Christopher Robin would take me out
of the Hundred-Acre Wood
and put me back where I belong
where the gods weren't so cruel to leave me
isolated--a place with she-Tiggers to marry
that feels like home.
But that's just story-book thinking.
So I'll keep bouncing through fields and trees,
trample Rabbit's garden, singing my songs
of feigned happiness hoping that someday
the lie becomes truth.
by Josh Miller
07 December 2004
04 December 2004
Here's an interesting thought from my old friend Tracy's blog:
"Saturday, December 04, 2004
We went to see The Gondoliers yesterday because our friend Dan Walter was performing in it. Janelle makes these signs that spell out "SEXY DAN" so we could hold it up during curtain call. However, I lost the "N" that I was supposed to be holding during the second act. Next thing you know, we were jumping up and cheering and holding up a huge sign spanning an entire row that spelled out 'SEXY DA!!!' "
hmm...as some of you know, I'm performing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night tonight...just a thought.
:)
"Saturday, December 04, 2004
We went to see The Gondoliers yesterday because our friend Dan Walter was performing in it. Janelle makes these signs that spell out "SEXY DAN" so we could hold it up during curtain call. However, I lost the "N" that I was supposed to be holding during the second act. Next thing you know, we were jumping up and cheering and holding up a huge sign spanning an entire row that spelled out 'SEXY DA!!!' "
hmm...as some of you know, I'm performing in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night tonight...just a thought.
:)
30 November 2004
John Leo, in "The Loudmouth Emmys" (US News and World Report, December 6th, 2004 edition), a hilarious and yet very, very sad synopsis of the worst in American political rhetoric.
"Natalie Mains, apparently surprised that many Dixie Chicks fans hated her famous anti-Bush comments of 2003, said, 'I realize I'm just supposed to sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting small animals.' Then she complained that the political climate is 'so the opposite of me as a person and what I believe in.' It's just about opposite my personhood too, Natalie."
"Natalie Mains, apparently surprised that many Dixie Chicks fans hated her famous anti-Bush comments of 2003, said, 'I realize I'm just supposed to sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting small animals.' Then she complained that the political climate is 'so the opposite of me as a person and what I believe in.' It's just about opposite my personhood too, Natalie."
29 November 2004
28 November 2004
Dustin
Lindsay
Chris Jones
Cheryl
Rachel :)
me
for the rest
much thanks to jonathon gitelson
now...who do you think of?
Lindsay
Chris Jones
Cheryl
Rachel :)
me
for the rest
much thanks to jonathon gitelson
now...who do you think of?
27 November 2004
'Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day' ... that is how long the Aiel say they'll fight.
-- Ingtar, The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan
and that's how long, it seems, i'll be writing this paper.
-- Ingtar, The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan
and that's how long, it seems, i'll be writing this paper.
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