Why i'm in a good mood.

I am in a fantastic mood right now, and it's for a few different reasons. They are the following.

1. I skipped my 8:30 class and slept in a little bit.
2. I just took a test...KILLED IT!!
3. I got a new job, i'm a server at a dennies/type restaurant and will soon be saying goodbye to the dishwasher in a cafeteria where i have a slogging away.
4. I realized I may have a unnatural love for the church I go to now ( circleofhope.net ), even to the point where i have joined a small group. This may not seem like a big deal to most but it really is to me. perhaps i'll expound on this later.
5. I'm pretty sure my facial hair comes in thicker here.
6. The weather is fantastic today. It's like the sky is happy with me. It's sunny, cool and breezy. The kind of weather that makes me breath deeply a lot because i like the smell of it.
7. I got a package in the mail from my friend Jolene. AkA: jo jo, aka: itchy. When i was about to leave she went around to all the corona folk i love and got them to pur goodbye messages on tape. She then spent the last...i don't know how long...slogging over it editing. The results came in the mail today. I felt physically warm with love I don't deserve, which i'm pretty sure is grace. She's my favorite person now.

So there they are, all the reasons for my general feeling of peace and well being.

Maby there is some kind of higher power I should show gratitude to...

-mike

The picture wouldn't come out, but recently people have begun to list all the things God frees us from. Injustice, hate, apathy, bitterness, sin...it goes on.

Only at Eastern University does bathroom stall graffiti turn into a theological discussion.

SHRED IT MATIKA!!!

Situations that have NO chance of ending well: today in my african studies class one of the students brought his skateboard in. Upon seeing it, my 50+ Year old proffersor from he african nation of malawie stopped in mid sentence, walked over and said, "what is this." "It's my long board" the student replied. Wanna ride it?" Professor Matika then proceeded to tentatively step onto the shakey board.

He started rolling, almost falls, starts rolling again then exclaims in a tone of of sudden epiphany, "agh, what am i doing. I am an old man." and got off the board to resume the lecture.

He has done this for the last 3 days in a row.

Prof. Matika is my favorite teacher...even though he is actively trying to kill us with reading.

-mike

THE BIBLE!!!

This was stolen from the blog, stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com

but i still really wish i could have a convesation like this with someone some day. and that i could write this well.



If you ever ask me what my favorite book is and I say, "The Great Gatsby," I'm sorry, I just lied to you. I didn't mean to, it slipped out. I want to look smart but not weird obscure smart, so for a number of years, that was the answer I used to say.

The truth is that if favorite book is determined strictly by the number of times you have read a certain title, then mine is "Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan. It's a fantasy series that my wife takes great pleasure teasing me about because there's a white horse on the cover that looks like a unicorn. It's not a unicorn, it's a majestic white horse about to embark on an adventure of epic proportions where friends will become enemies, enemies will become friends and the fate of the world will hang in the balance of one young farm boy that … see, I'm a dork.

I should say "Bible" when someone asks me what my favorite book is. That's what you're supposed to say if you're a Christian. But everyone knows that, what about the harder questions? What do you say when people ask you the desert island question or the "who would you have dinner with" question? What then? How do you navigate that conversation? I suggest the following answers:

1. What are your two favorite books?
"The Old Testament and the New Testament."

2. Right, but what about other books?
"CS Lewis." (Regardless of if you have ever read any, just name drop Lewis. Works like a charm.)

3. OK, how about fiction?
"Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings. This Present Darkness is pretty good too."

4. What about favorite movie?
"That's a tie between the Passion of the Christ, Facing the Giants and Braveheart. The TBS edited version of course."

5. What would you take with you on a desert island?
"The Bible and CS Lewis."

6. He's dead though.
"Not on this island he isn't."

7. Fine, then what three people living or dead would you go out to dinner with? And don't say Jesus, you're going to spend eternity with him, surely you can go get baby back ribs with someone else.
"That's a tough one. How about Moses, Paul and Zack Morris."

8. Zack Morris isn't real. That's just a character played by Mark Paul-Gosselaar on the show Saved by the Bell.
"Why does that matter? In this dinner scenario you're bringing Moses and Paul back to life, why can't Zack Morris come? And not "College Years," Zack Morris, I'm talking about when he was at Bayside High. That Zack."

9. That’s absurd. This whole quiz has broken down. I'm not even sure where it's going.
"Good, then I win.

10. Win, win what?
"The Bible."

See, if you just follow those easy steps and answer the questions that way, not only will you get to look holy, you'll get to talk about CS Lewis and Zack Morris while concluding with "The Bible." It's a pretty nice little package when you think about it.


p.s. A reader, with a name I couldn't find in my old emails, suggested this idea. Thanks for the fun idea. My bad on misplacing your email.

brother!?

Debie Comacho sent me this photo, and when i first opened it i though to myself, "why did she send me a terribly uninteresting picture of myself." but upon closer inspection i realized...

holy crap! that's not me!

who is this kid? could it be that my parents have by lying to me all these years? That all this time, the jokes from my sisters and my own suspicions have been true...that i'm adopted? Perhaps were twins, separated at birth because our crack addicted mother could not care for us and decided to sell me for a bowl of cereal and another hit of smack?

This would really explain a lot of things. Like why my wrist doesn't work and i can't spell or remember anything (the crack messed up my development), why I still can't find my birth certificate, why my sisters youst to play door step baby and scream "YOUR ADOPTED!!" at me for no apparent reason other then boardroom. any why all my sisters looked like little Japanese dolls when they were born and i was just a little toe headed whitey with a short attention span. It all makes so much sense now.

other then the multiple existential conundrums and confusions that this threw me into, it make me think.

For about the first 4 months that i lived in Corona, about two time a month someone would come up to me asking if i went to (add in random corona high school) and that i looked really familiar to them. Now i know why.

I have now created a whole persona and life for him in my head...more on this later.

-mike

"your not helpful"

today I was talking to someone and in a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability i mention that i had started to become kind of lonely being here.

Their response, in this, my moment of open weakness...

"Then go and and meet people."

ya...thanks.

I have been going school here for about a month now. I spend my days wondering around moslty, trying to find a little hidden room here, a gazebo there or maby just another pleasant forested path (this place has tons of them) But yesterday i made a somewhat startling discovery
THE LIBRARY HAS A WHOLE SECOND FLOOR!! Given i probably should have realized this due to the fact that there is clearly 3 floors form the outside, but some how this fact completely escaped me. So you gotta wonder...what else is there that i've been missing.

In the magical mystery second floor there are also a number of these rooms. Each one looks slightly different ( this one, for some reason, is dedicated to an elderly black woman). These are my favorite places to be. Maby because they are quiet and peaceful and i can lay down n the floor without feeling judged. Or mabey it's because I am slowly becoming more and more antisocial misfit, fearful of all human interaction. Either way i'm glad i have this room now.

I just came back from an interview with another prospective employer. He sounded pretty posative about me working there. But then again, they always do. I guess they usually figure why crush his hopes here and now. Let the slow passing of time and silence of his phone do it for us.

BUT I'M KEEP'N HOPE ALIVE. in the mean time i will continue my on campus bid to be the sexiest damn cafeteria worker at Eastern University...it's not going well.

Stupidity of the day: While trying to walk out of the library i opened up an emergency exit door. Then while trying to decide if i should make a run for it to avoid embaresing myself further, I mowed down the poor girl who came to check on it.

I'm a disaster who should be avoided at all cost.

<
while searching around on the vortex of nothingness that is the NET i happened upon this little jewel of information posted on http://www.planetizen.com:

"Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday. The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the 'America's Favorite Cities' survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News."

this brings up a few different thoughts and feelings in me:
1. What!? I haven't noticed that. Unless...crap...i have felt like i fit in really well here.

2. Well at least i don't live in ultra pretty/stylish-vill. I think i would just be pissed at people all the time. Like people here. I like people who are dirtier anyway. Makes me feel more free to be.

3. What does "least worldly" even mean? I don't think i really want to be worldly...sounds uppity.

4. Over all i feel like this means were winning. winning what you might ask, i don't know...but were still kick'n everyone ass at it.

POWER TO THE UGGOS!!

The conflict of Kingdoms

today There was a speaker on campus. Lois Cecsarini, a U.S. Foreign Service Office for 22 years,she talked about going to Angola, South Africa and Israel Palestine to work as a mediator in the conflicts there.

And it got me thinking.

I think i would like to do that. I mean, really like to do that.

but it makes me nervous. Could i work for the government like that. could i be their representative? What if i'm told to carry out things i just don't agree with. What if I'm told to carry out things that i don't think are the way of Christ?

This whole idea warrants a lot of though. Not just in trying to choose if i would really want to pursue this, but in thinking about is this really the way of Christ.

Pros: I believe that God always takes the side of the oppressed. That he is for the meak and the unpowerful. and that He is the God of peace, bringing his people and this world to a redemption beyond the myth of redemptive violence. And if i were to work for the state department like this woman does i would mainly be doing that. Working twords an end to conflict and human rights abuses.

Cons: There are a hell of a lot of things that this country, it's government does that fall so far out of line with all of that. And my final allegiance is, and will always be, to the Kingdom of God. Not to the flag and it's government.
But can i work for them?

opinions please.

-mike

This is a porter thats around campus for cheerleading tryouts. One part says, "show your school spirit in a fun way." i immediatly thought to myself, nope. Its either violent and boaring or nothing for me. Then laughted out loud to myself. ...normal people don't think like this.

Pithy little messages in cliche little pictures

I very much like messages like this. Simple, slightly over simplistic and hyper emotional. Lacking very little realism or empirical function.

but still, i like them a lot. I have a lot of thoughts run around in my mind. like a maze of half ideas and incomplete theories. And even though they usually start out trying to find a way to the same goal...I get lost. Lost in my own head and motives.

But signs like this, though they may be pithy or cliche, they help me to remember again. I need the simplicity, i'm simple like that.



oh, and because i'm kind of an idiot.

The topics of this group of people: the movie vanhelsing, starting the karate club, the new mortal combat game, can the flash beat superman, time continuems, south park. Awsome.

a MESS!

Reasons why I'm a mess:

-I have gotten lost almost every single time I have driven to school...it's rediculas.

-Today it took me an hour and 15 min to go 10 miles.

-I seem to have lost 2 folders full of papers and notes i need for class.

-I have missed my first class 2 days in a row. It's early and like I said before, IT keep getting lost on the way here.

-I still don't know ANYONE here...and they are getting on my nerves.

-I forgot my wallet today...so i can't buy food...so I'm get grumpy. This may be the reason I'm complaining so much.

Please disregard this self pity/bitch session. I'm a little embarrassed by it.

-mike

loner-hood my old friend

I don't like meeting new people.

No, actually I just don't like greeting new people. You know, the polite verbal groping around in the social darkness, trying to find a commonality to talk about, "what do you do, where are you from, what is your major, i like your tattoo, you have ten fingers, ME TOO!" I hate that. Especially if you don't happen upon something by the time you run out of questions and there is just the strained silence as you both look around the room praying some other uncomfortable loaner will join you and they hey can be your commonality.

So most days i just choose not do it. And today was one of those days.

I enter the ridiculously over crowded lunch room.
Fill my plate with copious amounts of food, all having something to do with cheese for some reason.
Sit down in an empty table (which is of-course in the middle of the room)
and pull out my oldest of friends, a book.

It was about 30 minutes into stuffing my mouth with food and my mind with knowledge that i had a realization...

"If i were behind the library and 30lbs heavier, it would be high school." And I smiled to myself...I was so cool in highschool.

-mike

employment hopes

I found this job posting on my school's website. It's for taking care of a little girl (10 years) with some pretty serious disabilities.

Kids, disabilities? I got this gig down. this is what i do. So i am going to meet the familly and the little girl for the first time on Thursday. I was going to go swing dancing...but...sacrifices must be made.

The only hitch, the fact that i'm a guy. I think this really does make them nervous. I understand that. I mean really how many guys want to work with little kids, not to mention little kids with severe developmental disabilities. ya, i get it.

But i like them.

so i hope i can make them feel comfortable enough to decided to hire me. Or that their just extremely desperate. I'll take it either way.

-mike