More Mixed and Mixing News

The horse-naming contest results are in. None of my entries show among the hundred sampled, tho some bear a resemblance and IMO were an improvement. My mom and her coworkers think the new contest judge must have overlooked some of mine, but I'm content to enjoy the lucky ones, only about three of which elude my getting. Besides, the next contest, with its deadline a ways off, looks more up my alley. Ah, the animal kingdom...

Bad news: I've been feeling sick lately, and only during or immediately after meals. Yesternight I skipped almost half my dinner, today part of my lunch. Is the dining hall in worse shape than usual? (Breakfast is in another hall.) Have I had too much of the same-old-same-old, due to few appetizing options? Something in the grains, which I'm most likely to skip? Have I eaten too fast without noticing? I'm not hungrier than usual later.

Dunno if I've caught an internal bug, but I'm finding ants in my room more than ever before. It's not particularly hot out, I haven't dropped food anywhere, and the Japanese attack beetles are laying low, so what gives? An ironic cosmic connection to that monster movie discussion with "Them!" and similar festivities? Last summer I felt funny about using primarily C.S. Lewis's "The Problem of Pain" and Peter Kreeft's "Making Sense out of Suffering" to crush beetles; now I'm using Scripture itself.

Good news: Much as I hate the worldwide worm -- and today a couple power outages, which hopefully do not connect to it -- it has given me a much-needed extension on an assignment or two. Also, it turns out that "Literature of the Fantastic" does not demand four papers in the semester but two; four was the plan if we could get two credit hours' worth. That explains the puzzlement at my second story submission, which mercifully spanned a page and a half.

Now off to dinner and the philosophy session I've most dreaded: a debate on abortion rights.

Looking at our works, and His

I didn't expect to write here until Thursday, after some major assignments, but I'm in the mood with my longest almost done. I even agreed to 2-3 hours' worth of editing on contract -- but the 9-10 hours' work on a proposal for Thursday by 10 PM must go to someone else. Reason would dictate that I should not have so positive a mood right now, but I laugh in the face of reason. At the moment.

The infamous worm taught me that sometimes it pays to be still using my frosh-year computer with Windows 98 (not that it beats modern Macs). Nevertheless, it has slowed my college's network: this morning I couldn't access even the local stuff that's normally intact when the rest is down. Seems to have gotten gradually better, and it's up to par now.

My "Literature of the Fantastic" class talked about monster movies this evening, so it seems appropriate that wormmongers came up. In pondering the evils of my heart, I've thought that the only offenses I could never see myself committing are genocide and slavery, what I consider the biggest human atrocities in history -- but this may be another. It requires a villany I can barely conceive, since the culprit can gain nothing but a vicarious pride of dark accomplishment...and quite frequently, negative attention. I hear the government catches most such criminals thru their chatroom boasts. I should thank my parents for raising me such that I can never understand the desire for negative attention.

Little network connection did give me the incentive to pick up my Scripture for next week's reading. I have less than half a book in the New Testament left! James refreshed me today by sounding more poetic than any other epistle I can remember, and Revelations, tho indecipherable, makes me envision automatically the coolest stained-glass images. Ah, required reading...the single best thing about my course in the New Testament and Christian Origins.