Tags...I'm it

What tags do I use most frequently, and what do they each say about me?

• 8Tracks (117) - I've been making mixtapes and playing DJ for a very long time. 8Tracks is the newest incarnation of this urge to share music with people. Seeqpod went away, and I miss its lack of restrictions (playlists of all one artists aren't allowed on 8Tracks), but I've apparently moved on just fine.
• blogs (87) - I loves me some internet, and there's so much content out there to find. Most of these blogs are ones I don't follow religiously, but they're ones I've enjoyed for at least a moment somewhere along the way.
• Cincinnati (69) - It's my adopted hometown (not The Hometown), and there's a lot of stuff to enjoy out there from the best steaks and burgers to tennis tourneys and awesome parks.
• comics (169) - I like comic books in case you hadn't noticed.
• education (72) - The Pater Familias is a teacher. My sister is a teacher. The Girl started as a teacher, and her mom still is a teacher. I teach. Most of my friends teach. It's not a surprise that I'm kind of interested in education.
• food (118) - I like to eat, and I don't mind sharing that fact with you folks - especially if it saves you from eating some of the crap I've eaten along the way.
• games (105) - From Vectrex onward, I've always loved video games. The shift from console-based games to flash games in browsers is an interesting movement to me, as is the use of our bodies as controllers.
• links (233) - I browse a whole lot of internet time, and each week I present you folks with a few highlights. The links posts are those posts.
• movies (274) - There are very few things that I enjoy more than seeing a good movie on the big screen. Yeah, I'm cheap enough to wait for most of them to come to the library so I can see them for free, but some just need to be seen in the huge format.
• music (446) - Interestingly, The Pater Familias couldn't possibly care less about music. He vaguely enjoys cowboy music, but mostly he doesn't care about any tunes, singers, or songs. He doesn't turn his truck's radio on unless he's listening to sports. Mom, on the other hand, would have music playing most anytime when we grew up. She played the guitar and sang us lullabies. She's seen probably a hundred concerts - Bob Dylan makes up half of them, I'm sure. I inherited her love of music.
• narcissism (146) - If this isn't the essence of blogging, I don't know what is.
• oddities (107) - A lot of the blog's content doesn't fit into any particular category, but it's just weird stuff.
• politics (121) - The music comes from mom, but the interest in politics comes more from The Pater Familias, a high school government teacher. I tend to vacillate between feeling hopeful and hopeless about our current political situation, but I still find it interesting.
• Princeton (101) - I've been at Princeton longer than I've been anywhere but in the New Albany Floyd County School system. It's been my home for nearly a dozen years, and it's the place where I've most truly found myself. I'll probably end my career there.
• science (149) - I can't honestly say where the science gene came from. Neither of my parents seem particularly scientifically curious, but it's my chosen interest and what I teach.
• television (177) - I watch too much television. Actually, of late, I haven't been watching very much television at all.
• update (70) - You guys should know that anything I find and that I learn more about will be updated. I'm committed to giving you folks the best of what I have to offer - even if that means updating you when I learn more. I try not to use updates as full daily posts unless there's a big update.
• YouTube (287) - I think I've mentioned enjoying the internet?

Update: Lithium Oxygen Nitrogen Nickel Electron

At Grace's suggestion, here's the title of the blog done up using Theodore Grey's custom element banner maker.

It's a little long, I think...might require some modifications...

or, with slightly better layout, I think...

I don't particularly like that My has to be faked with magnesium and the Idols faked with lithium over there. I'm okay with tritium, dueterium, and electron where they're needed, especially because the green looks good.

I think I'll stay with the same old banner for a while longer.

Hiatus coming

I'm gonna take the month of January off from the blog.

I'll be back in February...probably.

 
Image source - Ravi M Vasavan

Update: In Case You're Curious

Wait...lemme recalculate...

In case you're curious

If you were wondering, yes, at the current 2011 rate of posting (343 posts in 264 days), I will break my own record for most posts in a calendar year. The record currently is 430 posts in 2006, and my current pace is 474 posts.

Playing around...again...

Yeah, new template...may stay, may not...

Since the computer crash of a few weeks back, I don't have Fireworks at home, so I'll have to get that before I start playing around with the header again - probably back to the random rotating header before school's back in session.

Feedback if you wanna.  No biggie...

Why 2K?

Just wanted to point out that this is post #2000 on In Deference to My Idols.

I have absolutely nothing prophetic or substantial to say about this quasi-momentous event.

Still working...

Let's try darker wood...

And I figured out how to hack the html and use my own photo...

Feedback, please

Ok, I gotta ask.

I'm the lone vote for "like it" in the poll.

Everybody is is either in "not feeling it" or "it sucks".

What're your issues with the wooden blog design?

Trying again

Okay, another blog design - wooden this time.

I just threw the thing up, and I already have one "it sucks" vote.

Give feedback here, folks.

Li'l feedback, please

I'm really down with the concept of the new blog design editor (as I mentioned yesterday), but I'm struggling with finding a blog design I like.

Gimme some feedback on the current design, please (feel free to use the poll to the left).  I have another couple of designs I was playing with that I'll try over the next few weeks.

Blogger Buzz Brings It

In case you hadn't noticed, new theme on the blog.

Nice new Template Designer over on blogger, so I spent Friday night playing around.

This one may or may not stay; it may or may not have some color adjustment.

Header is dead...long live the header

Thanks to a little snooping at how New School had his header images saved, I managed to get the rotating header images back up and working.  Plus I added in a dozen new images.

Enjoy 'em one at a time or check 'em all over at the new Flickr account.

Header issues

I'd forgotten that the headers here were stored on the old PHS website.

Since that website went down for good on Friday, I'm going to have to come back and somehow reload the header images.

Give a few days.  They'll be back and hopefully better than ever.

Whoring out this blog

So, the time has come when I have to take down the Ad-Free Blog icon down in the bottom right.

I have succumbed to the man, to the greater corporate machine and turned this blog into a money-making venture.

Admittedly, it's because Blogger Buzz announced a new gadget teamed with SocialVibe. The new gadget - which has been up since Thursday morning - allows you to click through, rate a clip or do some other thing that engages you with the advertisers (my first click through made me choose which Melrose Place character I am - I didn't have to watch the clips, just picked one). Once that engagement is made, the advertisers make a small donation - and I'm not really sure how much they're making, need to check on that - to the charity of my choosing.

I, of course, chose the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and I'd ask you to take a minute from time to time and click through on the gadget. It's a minute or so out of your time, but any donation can do an amazing amount of good through the Society.

The Title of the Blog - Part 13

No matter what you're doing, there's a time when you have to stop. This, the thirteenth column of my time writing for The Bachelor was that time because it was time for me to graduate and head out into the world of teaching.

Nuts...now I'm gonna have to find something else to do with my Saturday posts...

You can’t kill an idea… - Bob Dylan

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
-Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare

When the Bard’s Puck reads these lines, he asks his audience not to take any affront from the words that have been sounded upon his stage in the past while. He then asks for the audience to “Give me your hands, if we be friends,” so that he will know their true feelings before he departs. For me, these lines could be a very easy, very conciliatory opening to a close. I, however, choose not to let them be that.

I am not in the mood to apologize to those whom I have offended. In my previous bakers dozen of articles, I have attacked and chastised, poked and prodded, but have always tried to say my piece and get out. If you have taken the time to read my articles – from rant to rage to manifesto – then I thank you. If, even more rarely it seems, you took the time to formulate an intelligent response to that article, then I and the rest of our campus are forever in your debt, for you have helped me carry my torch. For the rest of you – those who quit on me or who chose to call my voice mail to leave obscene and idiotic messages, I wish we could have talked face to face.

I say that because face-to-face is the truest choice of those of us who wish to engage in open, honest debate. If you have a grievance with me, then I invite you to call me or to stop by the Lambda Chi house and talk to me in person. Or, if you don’t want to do that, then please pick up a pen and take my column’s space for next year. Lord knows they’ll need the space filled up.

If you do choose this last manner, then I shall charge you with a great duty. You will be a writer. True, your job will not demand the same objectivity that perhaps a good news writer must have, but you have responsibilities none the less. You must search your heart and the world around you, for the truest words come from both of them together. Rarely can you carry the shield or the sword for a cause in which you have no faith. Rarely will your words ever strike true in the hearts of your enemies if you do not wield them with the weight of conviction. And never will you convince someone else if you have not convinced yourself.

Having said this, I also charge you to choose your topics well. Some battles are lost before they are even begun. You may never convert a single soul if you choose only the fight on a battleground of faith. If you argue a side that some consider morally wrong – be it abortion, religion, or the Indy Star – your words will have to be more then perfect to win, and that is a very difficult thing to muster.

Thirdly and finally, I charge you to fight in the manner prescribed by Basil Henry Liddell Hart. I know nothing of the man other than his name and these few words, but I love what I know…

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes - so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil – nothing is so self– blinding.

I will not try to improve upon his words, they are far better than mine could be.

I also know that I have no moral high ground when any of these charges are considered. I have called people names, have chosen religious battle grounds, and have contradicted myself in the same article. I am about to do that last again, for I do not think I was wrong in breaking these charges that I give for you. My articles, you see, fall under the opinion section, and that is assuredly where they belonged. These are not to be taken as gospel, accepted without challenge. Nor are they to be attacked because they were wrong in some way. They never have been wrong, for the opinions expressed herein have been right for me – no more, no less.

And, if am lucky, they have sparked something in you. Perhaps you have never thought of that point in quite that light. Maybe you have never realized that someone else was unsure of his place in the world. Possible you saw an issue never before raised to you – whether you agreed with it or not. And certainly, some of you felt confident enough to challenge me on my opinions. Thanks, I hope I did the same for you. Hell, sometimes we just need somebody to say something difference so we can reaffirm our faith in a cause. If I’ve even done that, I leave this space happy.

But please, do not stop challenging the writers in the paper, the professors in your classes, the politicians in your government. If we stop checking them, then we should start being afraid, for then we have given up our power over ourselves and have handed it over to them. Don’t do that…ever…
~ ~ ~
Oh, as it seems I’m usually given free reign, I’m gonna thank a couple of folks before signing off completely. Thanks, JJ, for asking. You may not have expected what you got, but you sure got it anyways. And thanks also to Burr, Smack, Karlen, Keith, and Eric for being wonderful proof-readers, great sounding boards, and occasional inspirations…

Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead. – Scottish Proverb

The Title of the Blog - Part 11

Hah! Found column #1. Turns out I had just mislabeled it as a second column 10.

So, here's the deal...

In the fall of my senior year, I took an English course called something like "Essay Writing". Sort of stupid to take that late in a college career, but it wasn't about writing a non-fiction essay for class, it was about writing a two-page essay just for the sake of writing an essay.

We read a bunch of essays in various styles and had to try on each of the styles. Maybe those will make up the next series of Saturday reads.

In one of the essays, we were to use a natural phenomenon as an analogy for some human phenomenon. I remember using the impending spring storms that I loved watching so much (and that I enjoy much less now that I'm a homeowner myself) as an analogy for falling in love.

This column echoes that essay rather strongly, and I'll have to admit that it's a little more poetic than the other columns that I wrote. I think, however, that I still really like it.

In case you were curious, I got an A- in the essay class, and my professor commented to me that my first drafts were probably the best in the class. He wished, however, that I would've turned in a few second drafts.

The smell of fire was on the air. So was that of rain. As often happens during this time of the year, the weather couldn’t make up its mind. Each morning of the weekend that just passed saw Crawfordsville wake up to a blanket of new fallen snow. Somewhere in the neighborhood behind the Lambda Chi house, a home was still clinging to these reminders and remainders of winter. The scent of their fire – warm, slightly acrid, and home – came to me through a window that I had thrown open in rejoice.

Spring was come at last. The sky held in its blue expanse promises of warmth, of rain, and of a few clouds. All usual suspects for an impending spring in the Midwest. I had my window open for the same reason I’d walked to campus without a jacket, for the same reason I had driven with the window down, for the hope of a spring newly born. Ready for that glorious rebirth that comes with the first thunderstorm and the first softball game of the year.

We were caught in the middle. The warm front – passing through and driving away dark clouds of winter- still lingered above our heads. Telling us our past and showing us our future. I saw them both but could find my place with neither one alone.

From the window of room 233 at Crawfordsville High School, I watched the rain roll in and then out. That’s Prue Phillips’s room and mine as well. I teach there from about 8:30 in the morning until about 2:40 in the afternoon. I don’t take classes at Wabash anymore. Teaching is my job, and Mrs. Phillips’s classroom is my classroom. I am now a student of students.

I am in my apprenticeship and must act as such. I wear slacks and shirts to my classes instead of jeans and sweatshirts. Not that I don’t wear those in my off hours, though.

Therein lies the analogy. I am not a suit. I’m not ready, damnit, to play real world, to be an adult, to apply for jobs. I still spend my weekends on college campuses either around or engaged in drunken frat boy activities. I’m still in school. I play practical jokes and revel in locker room humor that Wabash seemingly breeds. Hell, I’m not even old enough yet to drink legally.

But I feel a warm front coming through. Instead of my weather outlook being steady - college degree, calling for a rain of juvenile humor and a 50% chance of asinine amounts of alcohol-induced fog – the front is dragging with it a change of season. Welcome to the real world, baby. Hope you brought your umbrella.

But then again, it’s nothing more terrifying that the same thing we go up against every time our friends visit, every time we head home to see Mom and Dad, or ditch town to visit the girlfriend. Whenever we do that, we slip out of our Wabash mode – hide the beer cans behind the couch, pull the clean shirt off its hanger, and maybe even shower. We leave behind the person who attends Wabash, who works all week and drinks all weekend. And we slip into something more suited for the occasion. We become the Old High School Buddy, The Triumphant Son, or the Loyal Boyfriend. Each of these is just another mask we slip on and off as the situation suits us. Just this time, I’m not going to be able to change back.

And I’ll be honest; sometimes it scares the hell out of me. But my fear of the storm front that the winds of time are pushing towards us is nothing different from the same combination of the electric fear and excitement that hangs heavily in the air when a real storm is brewing, when the clouds are heavy with rain, and when the wind that whips the pines suddenly dies.

Actually, its more like the first time you were up to bat in little league. Sure, Dad had thrown pitches to you before, and you’d even smacked a couple of those things over the backyard fence. But that wasn’t this, and now you’re alone. Everybody’s pulling for you – your sister, your best friend, even your parents. They all want to see you do well, but they can’t help you anymore. Don’t worry, though, its not home run derby. You don’t have to make it all the way around on your first swing. Just keep your head down and your eyes on the ball. You’ll do okay…won’t you?

Sure you will. Because no matter how badly the doubts mount up sometimes, you’ll be ready to scream them back into whatever hole they came from. You’re a man, a Wabash man no less. Just because you’re not ready to grow up doesn’t mean you can’t. It just means that your storm front hasn’t moved all the way through yet. But it will, and you’ll be fine – nah, you’ll be wonderful.

Oh, but don’t forget your umbrella just in case rain comes down instead of sunshine.

The Title of the Blog - Part 12

I know, this should be part eleven, in the string, but I don't seem to have part eleven saved on my home computer. Might have it at school, might just have things mislabeled - who knows. If eleven is at school, I'll post it next week. If this one's really eleven, such is the way of the world.

When today's column was originally published in The Bachelor, it was subtitled as Dusch's manifesto, having come out just after the Unabomber's manifesto was published in the NY Times & the Washington Post. Guess my environmental ideas echoed his in the eyes of The Bachelor's editors.

So be it...

We are being neutered. If you’ve picked up Time or Newsweek or watched the nightly news recently, you knew this, though. Lately scientists have been finding that our better life through chemical living might just lead to an infertile life through lowered sperm counts. In Finland and New York City and France and other places around the world, average sperm counts in males have dropped almost fifty percent in the last few decades. If they drop like that again man will be nearly infertile in thirty years. Those are your sons and mine. No grandkids to expect or even to hope for after that. Ever…and it’s our own faults. Most of those scientists are now thinking that this reduction is due to massive amount of chemicals in our lives, closer living quarters in large cities, and raised aggression levels due to the stress in our lives.

Simple enough then to solve the problem. All we have to do is move back the countries, get rid of our deodorants, pills, and hair sprays, and live happy, peaceful lives. Yeah right, I imagine that’ll happen about as soon as Rush Limbaugh throws a birthday party for Al Franken. And I’m not even suggesting we should try to do any of that. Why give up what we have worked so damn hard to achieve. We have dragged ourselves out from the waters, from the swamps, down form the trees, and in from the cities. Mankind has built the greatest artificial monuments ever seen on this planet. We have created the pyramids and raised the Hoover Dam. But in the process, we also have raped the land, poisoned the air, and killed many of the planet’s other inhabitants.

We are the greatest creation or either some Creator or some creative process, and we are also its greatest failure. Form the words of the Bible through those of Mark Twain, by way of paintings on French caves and from Picasso’s brush, we have forged an intellectual legacy never to be forgotten as long as there are men to read and to look. Through the genocides of Adolf Hitler and wholesale burnings of rainforests, however, we will also leave an inheritance of hatred and murder. Our time has come, and, with a combined effort form ourselves and Mother Nature, it too shall pass.

For the past four or five million years, we, as a species, have ruled the roost. We have been the most dominant animal in a vast web of life on this planet. We have made and massacred gods by the score, and have dared to challenge even Nature herself. But she will not be so easily brought low. Before us She watched the reign of lizards and of fish, both coming to ends by way of disasters to huge to be prepared for. Comets came and darkened the sky, freezing out those who were then masters. Volcanic eruptions covered the planet in lava, warming the very waters in which the rulers did swim. And yet life went on. The slate was beginning to get too crowded, so She came along and wiped it clean, only to see the new creatures write anew. For now we have covered the board until we live on top of one another in our cities, reaching and stretching for every available bit of space and air. It is our time to be washed away.

And we might just be the one doing the washing. We spent much of our time her in small skirmishes, armies marching and tanks rolling along as we killed each other by the thousands. But our numbers continued to grow. And then we found the ability to kill by the millions and then by the hundreds of millions. We tapped the power of the sun, and encased it in shells that we aimed at our own kind. We gave ourselves the ability to end it all, then we grew the anger to do it and, thankfully, the fear not to.

But for more than a generation now, we have pointed these unholy and evil weapons at each other and have bemoaned the fact that we are doing it. Others have fought to end this fatalistic posturing, and perhaps now they have it under control. But we have not been silent and lazy the whole time. We have designed ways to kill the fish and the fowl, the trees and those tramping along below them. In the air we have put chemicals that may slowly be boiling us alive. Into the waters we have dumped oils that poison our foods. Onto the grounds we have buried things that will glow for as long as we have been on this planet. And we have been stupid and blind the whole time.

But now we begin to realize that we will pay for our short-sightedness. And part of me hopes that we do. In mankind I believe the greatest of beauties has been realized. We have made wonderful things, have conquered the tyranny of genes to now let the sick and the lame lead healthy lives, and we have created as none other have ever done. I have to believe this because it s the only way that I can ever justify the rise of our kind. Yet I see the other side, the one that has killed others of our kind, has murdered those we never even got to know, has burned the trees, poisoned the world, and deserved to be cleansed. For these actions sometimes I wish for the destruction of us. Of an end for everything that we ever wrote, drew, or built. We must have wiped away so that someone else can begin anew.

But we must have no fear. Even if we so sicken our world that we can no longer live upon it, something else will be able to. Next, perhaps, will be the time of the rats, or of the cockroaches, or the insects, or the bugs. Out of the very ashes of our cities will rise afresh something that Nature sees every few millennia: the next big thing. She saw the dinosaurs rule for more than a hundred million years, and then they went. So far we have not spent one one-hundredth of that time on Earth as this big thing, and She won’t give a damn about us when we are gone.

So why should we even bother to keep the air clean or to stop killing anything that is less than we are? Roughly ninety-nine percent of the species that have ever existed on our world are now extinct, and we shall join that number some day. So should we not flaunt out moment of glory, grasp the short time that we have the throne, and live our lives as selfishly as we can?

Yes, by all means, we should, and yet I hope we do not. The world is still beautiful, the forests still thick and teaming with lives yet to be explored or lived, the sunsets still draw me to the sea. For these beauties, for your wives yet loved, and for our children unborn, we should protect that in which we find beauty. We must ensure that they will someday be faced with this same choice. Will we – and someday they – pluck flowers from the ground, pave over their fields, and build skyward, or will they cherish, preserve, and enjoy only to give the next generation a chance to choose again?

Only one of those choices allows us to choose again. The other takes the choice away from our children and ensures that Nature will take the choice away from us and us away from our world. Unless we take ourselves away before She has the chance…

I'm not so sure that my ideas found here are very much different from others that I've expressed before. Interesting how little the brain changes sometimes...

The Title of the Blog - Part 10

I love Wabash like almost no other place that I've ever known. My years at Wabash were amazing, and I do everything that I can to pay Wabash back for those years by recruiting in any way that I can manage.

But Wabash isn't for everybody. It's a tiny, all-male school where the students are pushed to do a lot of original thinking and not so much wrote memorization. It's not an amazing party school, and we don't have a hundred thousand students at the football stadium every weekend in the fall.

In the spring of every Wabash year, we host a bunch of high school students for what we call Honor Scholar Weekend. Most of the high schoolers there are taking written tests to earn big, big scholarships. On Friday and Saturday nights and all-day Sunday, the Honor Scholars get free reign to wander the campus and get to know the various fraternities.

We put our best face forward and try to sell the place as much as we possibly can, because not every one of those honor scholars is going to come to Wabash, so we're still selling the school and our own fraternities.

And The Bachelor didn't even ask me to write a negative column. So I offered it on my own.

Let me caution you, good Honor Scholars, for you are about to take a very grave step… ~ Paraphrasing a fraternity brother of mine

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. We’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside… ~ Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – “Karn Evil #9” – first impression, part two

Welcome, welcome, welcome…to the greatest show on earth. This weekend, we present for your approval the greatest circus viewed by any pair of high school eyes. Behind every next curtain lie feats of magic greater than any you could even imagine. Inside each tent awaits a creature previously only seen in sagas and stories, but now ready to be shown to you and you alone – for a small fee, of course. And along the paths lie a multitude of performers willing to astound and amaze you as you travel from tent to tent, from tantalizing trick to terrifying treat…pause a moment., deposit whatever small bit of coinage you may feel required to, and relax…for you are about to see things you never dreamed of…

I think that’s about the best introduction to Honor Scholar weekend that I could ever manage to give you folks. This is the weekend when Wabash spit-shines the bust of old Eli in the library, begs the frat boys to be good for a while, and prays for sunshine, sociability, and silence. We, in turn, clean up the houses and dorms the best we can, try to seem a little more controlled and cultured that we do the rest of the time and try to sell out school, our fraternities, and ourselves to a bunch of high school seniors. You may never get this kind of treatment again in your lives, guys, so enjoy it while you can.

And take it all with a grain of salt. Some of us will lie to you, telling you that every weekend we bus women from Purdue, IU, and Butler to party with us. Others will tell you that we barely miss women around here anyway. We work like dogs all week long and party all weekend long. It’s the best college in the world, and it’s gonna be perfect for you.

And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll find someone who will sit down with you and talk for a while. He might be honest, and he might be brutal, but listen to him. In fact, listen to everything that you hear, and make your own decision. This place is not for everyone. This place probably isn’t even for one percent of the people who have ever heard of it. The pressure here can sometimes be enough to break men far better than me. The work load at times is insanely heavy, demanding you to push yourself to – and beyond – limits that you never knew you had. As our recruitment flyers said once if not still, “It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.” What they forgot to add was “for some of you.”

Four years ago, I showed up at Wabash knowing one person, and not even liking him all that much. I stayed in a fraternity that I hoped would like me enough to ask me to join, and I made a friend. Nate was the first student at Wabash I could really talk to. Kenny was a little abrasive, but an okay guy. But Nate was to become a friend of mine. As a sophomore Nate wasn’t too far removed from the troubles that I was going through, and I felt that he could help me make it through, and I felt he could help me make it through because he had. That first semester we spent quite a few late nights talking over problems that one of us was having at the time. And Nate became my best friend in the house.

He snapped late in that semester, never finished taking his finals, and wasn’t back after Christmas break for anything more than a visit. It took Nate a year and a half to realize that Wabash was not the place for him. That what he saw in Wabash wasn’t quite really was in Wabash. The next year we lost a couple more people from my fraternity, and in the years since then, we’ve probably said goodbyes to half a dozen guys who decided that this place wasn’t right for them in some way. Others have been miserable but have stayed because they saw no way out for themselves.

And quite a few of us have complained whined, cherished, and enjoyed this place thoroughly and are now a short time from leaving it forever. We have jumped through every hoop that Wabash has set up for us. We have given as much as $80,000 to kill ourselves with work and stress. We have fallen asleep in lectures and discussions because of too many late nights needed just to keep our heads above water. And we have made great friends who have done it all right along side us the whole time.

Many of you will end up going somewhere else, to DePauw, to Ball State, to Evansville, to Ivy Tech. And for that, I am glad. Because this place is not for you. You are no less for choosing to avoid a place that would cause you four years of misery and heartache, and I wish you the best. Some of you will come here, stay a while, and then will leave. For you I am sorry that we could not have let you see all that we demand before you signed on. And for the rest of you, welcome to a small group of men, bound by a common hell and joy that we call Wabash.

Of the last group, Wabash will ask many things. It will demand your trouble, your time, and your toil. It will demand also your money while you are here and will ask for it when you no longer are around. Your fraternity brothers – or friends – or hall mates – or whatevers – will ask of you your heart and your soul and your help. And you damn well better give it to them, because if any of us had to go through all of this alone, then none of us would make it.

But for now, I ask you very little. Have fun, play volleyball, eat the food that we offer you. Promise nothing in haste – if the Lambda Chi’s want you desperately enough, then they’ll wait until you’re back in the fall. Get to know somebody who seems honest with you, get his phone number, and call him when you have questions. (Mine is 361-7042, if you have any for me.) He might not able to answer them all, but he’ll know someone who can. Above all listen to everything that anyone tells you, and take it all with a grain of salt. We want to be honest with you, but sometimes we try a little harder than we should in order to make ourselves look good. Is that evil? Nah, just little imperfect. Kind of like Wabash itself…

And The Bachelor editors felt it was negative enough that they printed an editorial/opinion piece saying how cool Wabash was just to balance out my column.

PS - It was pointed out to me that I've never actually pointed out why this blog - and the originating column in The Bachelor - is called In Deference to My Idols. I don't know that the story is going to live up to any of the curiosity that you folks might have, but I might as well throw down the brief story.

I'd written my first column for The Bachelor - the column about Jerry Garcia - and JJ told me that I needed a title for my column. The first column was a clear shot across the bow of anybody who was sticking to their old idolization of the sixties icons - Garcia, Dylan, and the rest. And the phrase In Deference to My Idols popped fully-formed into my brain, partially because it wasn't remotely appropriate for the first column and partially because it wasn't anything that I was planning on showing.

I'm not the kind to have idols. I don't want to meet the people who make the music that I love, and I don't want their autographs or anything that touched their person or whatever. So I'm certainly not going to hold a lot of deference for the idols of others, either, or to the idols I don't have.

I do hold certain folks in pretty high regard, and I recognize the influence of certain folks on me. I wouldn't call them idols - not exactly, no - but I do respect a whole bunch of folks.

Deference for my idols?

Not so much, though I do like the turn of phrase.

Countdown to 1000: Four posts to the magic number. That's fewer posts than IU has won national titles. Shouldn't be a challenge.

The Title of the Blog - Part 9

I'm not a religious man.

I wasn't raised in a religious family. My parents weren't the kind to get up every Sunday morning - or every Saturday for those of you in the Cathloci or Jewish persuasion - to head to the local house of worship.

We didn't even stop by for Christmas and Easter. The closest I ever came to being a church-going young sort was during summer bible school at Mt Tabor Presbyterian Curch, and that was mostly for the Kool-Aid and cookies.

Nowadays, I claim the simplicity of being an apathesist, but I do tend to be a bit a-religious.

And it tends to bubble forth from time to time, as it appears to have done back then...

A few years ago, a fraternity brother of mine was questioning his faith. He was a pretty religious guy in a conservative, west central Indiana small town. He’d been going to church for all of his life, and sometimes during his high school years, he began to doubt whether everything he’d been hearing all the time was still going down quite right with his thoughts at the time. Doesn’t seem to radical a notion to me.

Well, this fraternity brother of mine – we’ll call him Jimmy Chitwood,, thought that’s not his real name – decided to be open and honest with people about his doubts. He told his parents and his youth pastor about his situation and told them he wasn’t going to be coming to church for a while, just until he could his thoughts straight in his own mind. Until then, he wished them well and tried to go about his way. Little did he know the arsenal that the pastor had at his calling…

The pastor drew Jimmy aside and related to him the following story…

“Jimmy,” she said, “I remember another young man about your age, who was also questioning his faith. He too had decided not to come to church and explore what else was out there. That young man started hanging out with his friends a little more, and even started swearing – just to be cool. It wasn’t any religious problem to him anymore, so he thought it wouldn’t hurt him.

“After that didn’t bring lightning down from the sky on him, Jimmy, the young man tried smoking with his friends too – just to be cool Even though he had learned that it was wrong, some of his friends did it, and he was just exploring anyway. Again, no lightning, so they boy even tried smoking. Nothing big, just tobacco at first. Heck, his friends were doing it and they seemed okay. So he tried it – just to be cool.

“Everything’s going along fine for this boy, Jimmy, and so he tried smoking some other things too. Some illegal drugs. Nothing too heavy, just marijuana here and there – just to be cool. He kind of liked it even, and it wasn’t hurting him.

“Well one day, his friends and he were just hanging out, and somebody suggested that they go up to Lover’s Point. (I made up that name because I can’t remember the real name in their town) and maybe rattle a few cars, maybe shine flashlights in a few window, you know – just to be cool. Sounded good to him Jimmy, so they went.

“They rattled a few doors, shined a few lights, and then one of the guys pulled a girl out of a car and put a bag over her head. You know, just to be cool. That boy started raping the girl and called the young man who was questioning his faith – just like you Jimmy – over and told him to have a go with her. The young man was a little reluctant, but – just to be cool – he went ahead and did it. After all, his friends were doing it.

“Jimmy, the bag fell off the girl’s head, and it was his sister Jimmy. Well I just don’t want to see that happen to you.” The pastor ended the tale then and there.

Now, I am far from condoning sister-raping or anything of that sort. That’s the kind of crime that rates right there with beer-mooching in my book, and it simply shouldn’t be tolerated. Nope, not at all. What I am a bit curious about, however, is what sort of pastor would use a blatant tactic like fear to keep one of his young sheep in the flock. That’s pretty sick, if you ask me. I would hope instead that someone in a position to guide young people, to steer them clear of dangers and the like would instead allow that young person to make up their own mind, would encourage them to explore other avenues in hopes of finding the faith that is right for them.

I would go so far, even, to say that a religion that has to scare people into its beliefs is in a pretty sad state. If the threat of hellfire and damnation is the only reason to follow in your religion, then perhaps you should rethink a bit. In my two psychology classes, we learned that punishment is the least effective means of getting someone to do what you want them to do, but maybe psychologists should take a gander at some of the cults around the world – the Jim Jones, David Koreshes, and Pope John Pauls of the world. Each man claimed to be the chosen one, to be the conveyor of the messages of “Heaven” in some way. They were all infallible, and each has lead his flock into some frightening decisions.

Perhaps Pope John Paul is not the most despicable of the men that have held his office – an elected one, remember. He was not the one who decreed that nations of people should take up arms to reclaim a city deemed holy. He was not the one to call for the inquisition of millions of Europeans in various countries. No, is merely the man most responsible for the failure of a gathering of world leaders in trying to solve the crisis of overpopulation two years ago. He is an old, frail man who leads the single most powerful political force in the world. He is the latest, most successful in a long line of cult leaders.

What would you do if a man came up to you and claimed to have known the son of god? He might have long, black hair, and a fairly short beard, or he might be a black man, or someone from the Middle East. He claims that the man walked on water and was raised from the dead. You have no proof of this other than what the man and his eleven fellow vagrants have said. They look a little shaky and seem to be delirious with their ‘faith.’ Would you cross mountains with them? Would you pledge your life to them? Would you give them a tithe from your wages? How much, and what’s your credit card number…?