Daily Update

Weight: 215

Currently Reading (fiction): That’s right, you guessed it. Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence. I’ve gotten into Part II of the book, where the real "love stories" really start, and the pace is much better. This just isn’t the kind of book you can breeze through.

Currently Reading (non-fiction): Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller. This is a Christian spirituality book, written by a guy who is, I believe, very accurately described by one critic as "Anne Lamott with testosterone." He’s a very liberal, progressive-minded Christian, writing a sort of personal spiritual odyssey book about his struggles with traditional, fundamentalist Christianity, attempting to reframe a Christian lifestyle for a post-modern world. Already in the second chapter he’s talked negatively about the false piety of the Republican party, described a Bush protest he attended and took part in, and spoken negatively about fundamentalism. However, the unusual thing is that he seems to have a typically evangelical image of God, Jesus, and the devil. Despite painting himself as a liberal Democrat and a progressive Christian, he has a paragraph where he refers to God as being "a person" and describes God with human attributes, he uses capitalized masculine pronouns to refer to God, he talks about Jesus as though he is alive and well and dictating things in people’s lives, and he speaks of the devil as though he is a real being, living down in hell, directing all the bad things and evil that go on in our personal lives. So it seems that despite his progressive, liberal leanings, he still clings to evangelical images of God, Jesus, and Satan.

Currently Listening To: Heaven, Warrant (off of Monster Ballads, YES!!)

Rush Lyric of the Day: We will call you Cygnus, God of Balance you shall be.

Guns n’ Roses Lyric of the Day: Found a head and an arm in the garbage can, don’t know why I’m here.

Food Update: Binge ate at about 12:30 last night. I had only had a couple of cheese sandwiches for lunch, then only rice and beans for dinner. So I guess I hadn’t had enough calories or something because around midnight, I got extremely hungry with the munchies. I ended up eating another meal’s worth of food. Not necessarily unhealthy food, but then again nothing is healthy at 12:30 in the morning, right before bed.

School Update: I’m leaning more and more toward radiology technology for furthering my education, as opposed to graduate school in Creative Writing or History. Melanie and I have been discussing my dedication to teaching, and the more I think about it, the more I think that I don’t really want to teach. I want to write. I don’t want to be the professor discovering and tutoring future writers, I want to be the writer. I don’t want to do the discovering, I want to be the one discovered. And I really don’t feel that dedicating two years of my life to graduate school in Creative Writing is necessarily going to help me get published any more than if I just keep writing on my own and submitting my work. So maybe it was fortuitous that I didn’t get accepted to graduate school for this fall. If I study to do radiology tech, I can make very, very good money, have a very high-demand degree, and flexibility of hours such that I can still have plenty of time to write. It would also allow me to keep from being chained to a desk and do something that would be interesting and unpredictable. Working in a hospital setting would also help me to fulfill my urge to help people. Melanie talked to one of the local tech colleges and they have a very good program that qualifies you to go directly into hospital work after getting your degree (as opposed to the limited medical radiography degree that only qualifies you to work in doctor’s offices, etc), and it’s in the hospitals where you can really make the money. The program is 33 months, but would only be 27 for me since I have a degree already. It’s quite expensive, though. That’s the only snag. I’ll end spending almost as much for this 2 year degree as I did for my undergraduate from Georgetown!! Obviously I’ll have to get school loans again, but if I can get out in 2 years and be making 35 or 40 dollars an hour, I’ll be able to afford to pay the loans off. And you can take classes in the daytime, evening, or weekends, so it’s very flexible.

Well, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you are truly dedicated to the cause of my blog. So thank you. You also need to get a life.

Today in History, June 28:

767 – Death of Pope Paul I, who actually had the balls to call himself Pope Paul I. Wouldn't that be akin to calling yourself Pope Jesus I, or something? "Hi, I'm Pope God the First. Bless you, my child."

1243 – Birth of Emperor Go-Fukakusa of Japan. [Note: I wish to be referred to from here forward as Scott Go-Fukakusa. Thank you.]

1476 – Birth of Pope Paul IV, who was openly and stringently anti-Semitic, decreeing that Jews were "unworthy of Christian love" and creating the first Jewish Ghetto in Rome, where Jews were required to live, required to where distinctive clothes, and locked into their homes at night. Those ghettos would remain in existence until the middle of the 19th century.

1491 – Birth of Henry VIII, second son of Henry VII. His older brother Arthur, heir to the throne, died at age 18, and thus Henry became the Prince of Wales. Interesting to consider how British history would have differed had Arthur (who was named after the hero of Arthurian legend) ruled during the 1500’s instead of Henry VIII.

1577 – Birth of Peter Paul Rubens, Belgian painter and creater of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, who was later arrested for jacking off in a porno movie house. Oh wait...maybe that was a different Paul Rubens.

1703 – Birth of John Wesley, founder of Methodism.

1776 – Thomas Hinkey, one of George Washington’s bodyguards, is hanged for plotting to kidnap Washington.

1838 – Queen Victoria’s coronation ceremony is held in London. She wants to have a rave and do a little crystal meth afterwards, but Albert says no. He never did want to have any fun.

1914 – Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, precipitating the start of World War I.

1914 – About the same time Franz and Sophia are swallowing lead in Sarajevo, Anna Irene Lyle is passing through the birth canal and entering life halfway across the world, somewhere in rural western Kentucky.

[Actually, I think I’ve always mistakenly thought that Grandmother was born the same day that Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, but I think she was actually born on the 26th, not the 28th. Mom can confirm this. Still, it makes for a good story, don’t you think?]

1919 – The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending World War I on the 5th anniversary of its start.

1919 – The Treaty of Versailles, Kentucky is signed, ending the feud between Billy Joe Busby and Jim Bob Dumfart, which started when the former accidentally hit the latter in the ass with a dart at the Dew Drop Inn.

1938 – A 450 ton meteorite lands in an empty field in Pennsylvania. Why can't a 450 ton meteorite land on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2006?

1997 – Mike Tyson gets hungry during a title fight and bites off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear.