intellectuals + Christians

Forget-me-nots in flower under the trees by the little Anglican church.
The trees on the edge of the graveyard.

Today I went to see my history lecturer (my favourite lecturer), who also happens to be in charge of the History Honours programme at my university, as I want to find out everything about doing Honours, which I want to do in 2008. Well, all that sounds great, though a lot of work, but somehow we got talking about other things and it turns out he's a Christian. Then we talked about novels! It was so nice. I'm not quite sure why but yesterday I was feeling a bit upset and sick of life in general - not in a suicidal way or anything, just thinking about stuff. This was possibly because another lecturer made a comment in a lecture that made me feel a bit under attack. I know I should probably not react this way and usually I manage just fine, but for some reason, by yesterday, I had just had enough of being attacked for a while. I don't know how people cope who are being really and truly persecuted every day. I just get sick of insinuations that people who have faith in something higher than themselves are not intellectual enough, or are slightly deluded.

So it was so lovely to find out that someone I really respect as an intellectual, as a lecturer, and as a person in general is a Christian too. Funny how things like this can really cheer one up.

We also got to compare Pig Latin dialects in Linguistics, which could account slightly for the improved mood... :)

Photos: went for a wander yesterday in the domain near my house. Spring is a really beautiful time of year. I don't want it to end.

writing

I think that the better I get at writing, the less able I am to do it. Whenever I get an idea now, it's not long before I realise how corny it would be - or, even worse, I forget it because it was about 1am and I can't be bothered getting out of bed and writing it down. I've always thought that one day The Idea or The Character would come along, would just arrive in my head and voila! Everything would be easy. Perhaps it will but I doubt it. I've come to the conclusion that everything you love doing is hard, hard work - because you love it so much, you want it to be the best and you're not happy with okay, whether it's writing, music, photography, sports, painting, etc etc. So even if you get a great idea, it's not going to realise itself automatically. Most of the work will be done by you. Ugh. How depressing. There's a quote I've heard somewhere that goes something like this: Writing is easy. All you have to do is go over to the typewriter and open a vein.

words

Congratulate me - I have just cut 1200 words off an essay. I feel like I can do anything now.

shouting

Today in church we had a speaker who is the loudest man I have ever heard. It was very peculiar, it wasn't like he was some fire-and-brimstone speaker who shouts everything. He actually speaks everything at the volume someone else would shout, and when he gets excited about an important point his voice goes up, up in a crescendo until the crucial word exits his mouth like a torpedo. Definitely means you can't go to sleep in church. Luckily for me my ears were shielded slightly as I sit behind the piano but still it was rather awe-inspiring. He's actually a very interesting person - but what tends to stick with you is the memory of The Voice.

On the church notices today there was a quote from a little boy who thought the Lord's Prayer goes "Our Father who does art in heaven, Harold be your name. Amen." :D Kinda cute.

bad day

I am having what I am sure will turn out to be a bad day.

1) Woke up hearing scratching somewhere in or close to the vicinity of my room. Am worried it's another mouse.

2) My dad used up the whole table to read the newspaper so I had to eat breakfast standing up.

3) I ran out of real coffee.

4) On the car radio on the way to uni, they said that Richard Hammond off Top Gear has been in a car crash and is in a critical condition [see here]. I love Top Gear and I love the presenters and I am more upset about this than about Steve Irwin.

5) I forget to ask for a double shot in my flat white at the cafe, so my caffeine intake is sadly lacking.

6) I now have to go and write and write notes and develop RSI.

Let's hope my day improves from here.

now let the pessimism shine through

Things I dislike:

1) Using a public toilet someone's just walked out of. I prefer pretending they are reserved for me alone. On a similar note, I hate it when the bathrooms are so busy you can't choose which toilet you want to use.
2) People peeking at your computer screen to see what you're writing when you're in a uni computer lab. Uh-huh... that's you. Girl in the green t-shirt.
3) Narrow-mindedness or very very very strong opinions... even if I agree with them, this is likely to annoy me.
4) People who talk very loudly and make me want to shrink.
5) Name-dropping/talent-dropping/asset-dropping... except when I do it.
6) "Mature students" at university who ask too many questions and annoy everyone by sharing their "knowledge".
7) People who take the lift down one flight of stairs. I mean, even I am not that lazy.
8) People who say "Let's pray," give you about a nanosecond to drop whatever you're doing before plunging headfirst with them into what Adrian Plass has aptly named the "shampoo position" of prayer.
9) Seeing people who made me feel uncomfortable at school and still do.
10) Criticism.
11) Work. Especially the hard variety.
12) "Worship" music.
13) People who sing slightly out of tune or bang a tambourine slightly behind the beat.
14) Choir conductors who forget themselves and start yelling at/singing along with/shushing their choirs in the middle of a concert... no, actually, that's funny. I like them.
15) Preachy songs that come out every now and again from some annoying band who spend the rest of their time writing songs with titles like "Let's Get Retarded". And yes, I have a particular band in mind.
16) International students who think it's okay to talk loudly in the library at exam time just because we can't understand them.
17) The rule against bringing coffee into the university library.
18) University of Canterbury Arts department staff cuts.
19) People who always greet you the same way. "How's Alison?" "ALISON!!!" "Hiiiiiii Alliiiiiieeee!"
20) Making my bed.
21) People who don't understand the concept of personal space.
22) Songs like "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam".
23) People who say, "so you're doing Arts?..." [disapproving silence] "But what are you going to do with it?"
24) People who dance in church or raise hands with ecstatic close-eyed face and shout "Hallelujah, yes, Lord." I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. It just makes me feel all hot around the collar.
25) People who insist on telling you the story of their weekend in all its dissipated glory. "I got so pissed I couldn't walk! Haw haw haw!" Please listen to me - tell it to someone who cares! Please! I don't give a toss that you're the biggest loser since the pastel-colour-suited Richard Clayderman!
26) On a similar note: engineering students. Most of them.
27) Names like Engelbert Humperdinck. (Is that how you spell it?) Actually, that's just kind of funny. I think his parents should have bought fish instead. You can call fish anything.
28) Books like The Da Vinci Code which everyone says are works of genius and then turn out to be terribly written and bollocks.
29) People who don't get funny people/books like Flanders and Swann or Adrian Plass or Jasper Fforde and look at you like you haven't grown up yet.
30) People who tell you the tragic endings of books you haven't read yet but were planning to. Hello Dad. Hello Viv. Someday, vengeance will be mine.

That's all I could think of at the moment. Yes, this is how I spend my precious free time.

I am a studying machine

I am feeling rather efficient, useful and mechanical at the moment. It serves me right. I put off studying/researching for certain essays and tests and now I am paying for it. It was worth it, though, having that gloriously lazy holiday for two weeks... Luckily, I have tidied my desk so I can actually work at it; this is such a novelty that I actually am doing work.

If anyone who reads this is in the habit of studying for essays and taking copious notes, have you ever noticed there are a few key words that you find yourself writing again and again, and they change every essay? I don't mean words that are actually related to the essay topic, but random buzz words that all the historians who specialise in a certain subject seem to like. For me, this time around, it's words like determined.

Sorry, no photo today as the university computers are being temperamental. I'll try and add it on later tonight.

going crazy on blogthings

Okay - so I was looking at Stacy's blog, and I tried out one of the blogthings she had on there, and then I got going on a whole heap of them and couldn't stop! It was terrifying. Here are some of the results.

If you were born in 2893

Your Name Would Be: Umori Vuis And You Would Be: An Evil Space Warlord

If You Were Born in 2893

What Will Your Famous Last Words Be?

"I can pass this guy."

What Will Your Famous Last Words Be?

You Should Rule Saturn

Saturn is a mysterious planet that can rarely be seen with the naked eye. You are perfect to rule Saturn because like its rings, you don't always follow the rules of nature. And like Saturn, to really be able to understand you, someone delve beyond your appearance. You are not an easy person to befriend. However, once you enter a friendship, you'll be a friend for life. You think slowly but deeply. You only gain great understanding after a situation has past.

What Planet Should You Rule?

You Are Barney

You could have been an intellectual leader... Instead, your whole life is an homage to beer You will be remembered for: your beautiful singing voice and your burps Your life philosophy: "There's nothing like beer to give you that inflated sense of self-esteem."

The Simpsons Personality Test

What fun :)

I'm feeling pensive

I have been thinking about my mum's death. She died on the 27th of December last year. Christmas seems to be coming along pretty quickly - we're all going away for it this year, just so we can have it in a completely different setting than last time, which was really quite a surreal experience.

I have come to the conclusion that a year seems to be the acceptable, unwritten mourning period. For about a month, one is allowed to be inconsolable. After that, you start making people feel too uncomfortable, so you're allowed to have a wistful look in your eyes and command respectful silence for a few moments whenever you make a remark like "How I wish Mother were here!" - but no histrionics, please. Within a year after the death, you can explain bad moods by saying your mother died some months ago. But once a year has gone - somehow it's a thing of the past. Saying, "My mother died two years ago," or even a year and a few months, doesn't seem to command the same awe.

I'm not being bitter here, though it may sound like it. It just seems to be how things are, and it makes sense. I just never realised before I experienced a death myself that the longer someone is gone, the more you miss them. I'm not sure that grieving is something you do and it's done, over. It changes and fluctuates.

Right now I'm not unhappy. It's something more complicated than that. You're supposed to be the happiest you've ever been when you have kids or get married or things like that, but I know there will be a part of me that's really, really sad my mother's not there if that ever happens to me. I find it weird thinking that if I do ever give up my wild bachelorette lifestyle (haha) and find the proverbial One, chances are he will never have met my Mum.

How weird is life.

halfway down the stairs

As you may or may not know, I am the senior fiction editor for a writing e-zine called Halfway Down the Stairs. We have just published our third biannual issue! Yippee! The theme is "Kaleidoscope". Check it out; I like it a lot. We have a new website design that looks very cool, in my humble opinion, and of course, the writing is of the highest standard. :)

If anyone who reads this is a writer, our next issue will be themed "Earth, Air, Fire, Water" and we accept outside submissions!

trains

Some of the railway workers were very interested in the train. :)
A local boy riding his bike up and down the side of the tracks while the train waited to go.
Leaving the station, with a scream of the horn and huge puffs of black smoke.
The driver.

This morning I got up early and went with my dad to the train station to see a steam engine take off to Arthur's Pass. They've started doing this every two months, apparently, instead of the normal modern engines. I've never been into trains and machines and things like the boys in my family tend to, but steam engines are pretty cool bits of machinery really, and my grandfather used to drive one, so I found it pretty interesting! Lots of good photo opportunities too! My father was disappointed because it was a J engine and not a K engine (whatever that means) but he still enjoyed himself very much. I don't think males ever grow up in some particulars.

fanfiction

Fanfiction. I have been pondering over it. Is it something good? Or is it painful painful stuff that the original authors would tear their hair out over, wondering how on earth anyone interpreted their characters this way?

On the negative side: It is super-depressing to read when someone writes something that kills all the nice characters off or kills them figuratively, exchanging them for some sex addict/psycho feminist/other such exaggeration of character. I am thinking here of Harry Potter and Jane Austen fanfiction, the only two types I've really read much of. For example, I once read the first chapter of a Harry Potter-based fanfic in which Ron Weasley was secretly in love with Harry. How depressing and pathetic is that? Or once there was a Pride and Prejudice fanfic I read that killed Jane Bennet off two weeks after her marriage (leukaemia, apparently). What a waste of time. It is also annoying when people copy out huge chunks of the author's own writing when they cover the same events. Apart from probably being illegal, it is very uncreative and immediately stands out as a different style of writing from your own. ALSO (and let this be known), I am SICK of "modern retellings" of Pride and Prejudice, starring "Will Darcy" and "Liz Bennet", set in some American town or college.

Also, if one actually wants to be a writer in one's own right, I have a sneaking suspicion that spending all one's time on writing stories based on other people's characters is perhaps not the best way to go about getting your own stories published.

However, on the positive side: Fanfiction can, on occasion, be really good, and really fun to read. Let's face it, when my favourite author died almost 200 years ago and only wrote six novels... I crave more! This doesn't mean when I visit a site like Fanfiction, I expect to find works of genius that sound like Jane Austen has been resurrected. However, I do hope that someone out there who is an intelligent Jane Austen fan has had fun creating a sideline story with an original idea. I especially like it when they obviously have their own highly developed style yet somehow the characters seem like they should be, with very little effort.

Fanfiction is also very fun to write. You can do it to gratify your own whims about what you think happened to the characters. This doesn't mean you have a moral right to misuse the characters to push your own agendas or write trashy smutfics. It does mean you can follow where your creative instinct takes you without constantly thinking "is this publishable?" It is also very good practice. A lot of the hard work of thinking up a plot is taken away and you can concentrate on developing a plot and writing it well. I had never written a longish story that finished before I had a go at fanfiction. My first was absolutely terrible; they got better gradually as I went. As I've written a few more, I've realised I prefer fanfics that have only an obscure connection with the original story. Maybe they have one character in common, the character who sparked the idea, and this character may be seen only a small amount. This is seen as a bad thing by many fanfiction fans, I understand, but I quite like it.

Sooo, in conclusion (!): Fanfiction is horrible. Fanfiction is great. I could say anything I liked about it and it would probably be true. It is annoying sometimes, yes, but I think it's worth having.

Photo: in the park near my house, on Sundays they have miniature trains that old men run around these tracks and children ride on. They're pretty cool.

hollywood here I come

This evening at youth group we are going to be making movies! What fun. We'll be splitting into two teams, one doing a Tragedy and one a Romance. The way I've planned it, I've got six different categories they'll be given (Hero, Heroine, Problem, Setting, Props, Line) and they'll pick an option out of a hat for each, so as to get a nice random plot! These are the options I've thought of:

Hero
-a hitman
-a funeral director
-a very romantic poet
-a cowboy
-an Australian crocodile hunter

Heroine
-a supermodel
-an air hostess with a twitchy eye
-a fortune teller
-a dental nurse
-an Italian opera singer who doesn't speak much English
-a scientist who has just discovered a dangerous chemical that terrorists want

Problem
-aliens kidnap one of them
-the world is about to end
-bubonic plague/bird flu/some other deadly disease
-their families are opposed to their love
-one has been arrested for a crime they didn't do

Setting
-on a beach in the moonlight
-a bar in the Wild West
-a cruise ship
-a desert island
-an airplane heading for Madagascar
-another planet

Props (of which they have to choose three, and for the Tragedy genre, one has to be a murder weapon)
-a photograph
-a clock
-a thermos
-a suitcase
-a torch
-a box of tissues
-a cushion
-an apple
-a doll
-a handkerchief
-a cellphone
-scissors

Line (which they have to use somewhere in the movie)
-"My name is ____, you killed my father, prepare to die."
-"Go ahead, make my day."
-"Nooooooo! Why me, God, why me?!"
-"Luuuuuuke [or other such name]... I am your father..."
-"The day may come when men will faint in the face of the enemy, but it is not this day."

So yeah! I hope it works out. If everyone's feeling shy it won't work at all but if not it should be very funny.

a saga of a mouse

My father, who enjoys writing little books to send to his grandchildren, has recently been inspired by my mouse woes. Here is the result. (I hope you can read it - if not, try clicking on it to get to a larger version.)

advance australia fair?

Okay, so here is my dilemma:

My sister has invited me to skip next semester at university, and go stay with them in Perth, Australia as a kind of nanny. She's having a baby in October and she's going to have to go back to work (as a doctor) pretty soon; understandably, she's not too keen to send a little four-month-old off to daycare every morning.

I find this idea velly, velly tempting, especially as I spend this week learning what the different manner of articulation, place of articulation, etc etc of different consonants are, panicking about the test, and wondering why I need to know this stuff and why I was ever crazy enough to do this course. Also, there's something quite nice about knowing I would get to look after my little niece/nephew whom I was wondering if I would even get to see before the end of next year.

Only problem: Kirstie, a girl at my church, and I have been organising a girls' kids club for our very needy neighbourhood, starting next year. Our church just doesn't have the huge reserves of man/woman power to run things like this and it's very likely it would get put off for six months if I wasn't around. Kirstie thinks I shouldn't go. This makes me feel very very guilty, because I really want to.

Ugh, decisions.

study study study

I am having a novel experience. I am writing a History essay on whether the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was too harsh or too lenient. I am enjoying it. This has never happened before. I have found previous essays... interesting, revealing, enlightening, satisfying at the end. However, the huge amount of note-taking and getting-my-brain-around-it when I could be doing other things has always tipped the scales a little. This time, I still took lots of notes, but I am finding it so interesting.

It turns out that what we were taught about the Treaty in high school (that it was evil and harsh and caused WWII) is actually a little outdated. It isn't so black and white as I had thought before, and I think, because it is so controversial, that it makes it very very interesting. I was talking to a girl who's doing the same essay the other day who feels differently to me about it and it was so exciting having a big historical debate about something that is so crucial to twentieth century history and really quite relevant to today.

Plug: do History at uni. It's the best. English gets snobbish and postmodern, and Linguistics gets sciency and scary and hard. History is hard but you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and you're allowed to search for the truth.

Ooh ooh ooh! I got a job, and it's exactly what I've been looking for! I am very happy about it. It's with a language school in town. I will be tutoring English as a second language to school students after school; very flexible hours, very good pay, VERY good experience as I would like to go overseas in a year or two and teach English. My new boss seems really nice and really helpful and I can't wait to get started.

The photo for today is one from a few weeks ago, but this time in sepia.

aliases

Alison Grace S-----'s Aliases

Your movie star name: Quesadillas Silas Your fashion designer name is Alison Paris Your socialite name is Fish Dublin Your fly girl / guy name is A Ste Your detective name is Wolf Middleton Your barfly name is Banana Bitters Your soap opera name is Grace Cashmere Your rock star name is Snickers Cheetah Your Star Wars name is Alimit Stemit Your punk rock band name is The What The Heck Gherkin

The Amazing Meganame Generator

the animal kingdom

The mouse is now living in my bedroom. *scream!* I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday to hear scratching, turned on my light, and it was running across the floor. It must have got in my door during the day. I did not scream. Of that I am proud. Instead I took my pillow next door into the spare bedroom. Okay, so I'm a wimp... but of my sleep and my dignity, I prefer sleep.

The mouse trap sucks. It has gone off twice and failed to kill the mouse. This morning Dad looked in my door and couldn't see the trap and we decided the mouse must have got caught in it and dragged it off somewhere. Thank goodness the mouse wasn't caught; the trap had snapped shut and jumped out of sight. I would rather know the mouse is alive and well than alive and terrified and bleeding all over my room, poor little thing.

This is a story I will not be sharing with my niece Lydia. She is the most animal-obsessed girl I have ever met. She used to hit me if I killed mosquitoes - "How would you feel if you were one?" A few weeks ago she said to my sister, "Mum, when I grow up I'm going to translate the Bible into chimp." She would treat this as premeditated murder.

LATER UPDATE: The mouse is dead. Hooray!!!!

I think mice are not nice

I am alone at home. My father is on holiday in the West Coast. I love having a few days of independence so I thought this was a good thing - until...

Last night I was watching a movie in the lounge, feeling self-satisfied, but then I saw a flash of brown run across the kitchen floor! UGH! I knew there was a mouse around the house because Dad's been leaving a trap out for it for ages, but I made him put the trap away when he went on holiday because I don't want to dispose of any dead bodies! But last night the mouse was literally running all over the kitchen, for about half an hour straight while I watched a movie in the lounge! I finally freaked out entirely and went to bed at 7:30pm. I HATE MICE.

Photo: two of my nephews, Sam and Alex. We have them around on Wednesdays after school every week. Here they are playing our keyboard.

possession

As you may have seen on the index of this page, in the "Currently Reading" list, I have been reading Possession (A Romance), by A. S. Byatt, for a few weeks now. I seem to be reading it in huge marathon-like chunks and then put it down for a while before picking it up again, and today I've read a hefty chunk which has been so amazingly fantastic that I can't resist recommending it on here.

It isn't an easy read. Yet once it gets going I can scarcely put it down. It is written about two modern academics who discover some letters written by a nineteenth century poet they have devoted their lives to studying, written to a woman, also a writer. This sets them on the track of this huge story that could change the face of all the study done so far on these two poets. The novel makes these academics, in a way, into detectives, and I could never have guessed how exciting and suspenseful the book would be. It follows the story of the two poets, and at the same time follows the story of the academics, and is just so well written that it makes most other literature look like child's play.

The most amazing this about this story is that A. S. Byatt completely made up the two poets. They are absolutely fictional. Yet she has created an entire canon of works written by them, letters by them and writing or diaries by people associated with them. She has created a whole fictional modern academia devoted to studying them. And I had no idea they weren't real until my sister, who lent me the book, told me, because it all rings so true.