Apparently I will feel rejected if I am not included in the Senior Scramble

Have I mentioned yet how fantastic it is that I am spending my last semester of Calvin off campus? This is because of something called the senior scramble, in which all seniors that have even a slight semblance  of a serious relationship get engaged in a hurry before graduation. This is because there are no CRC Christian people outside of Calvin college (if we ignore the Pella, Iowa area, all of Grand Rapids and all the other feeder areas/schools around the country). But the boy who makes me food is bravely enduring all the questions involving our relationship. I swear, questions are buzzing more around our relationship than anything else I have ever done in my life (which may mean I need to start pole dancing or swollowing swords). Why people are so concerned with my relationship status I shall never know, I never thought we were too terribly interesting as a couple (more fun than your typical high-stress Calvin relationship though).

The exchanges typically go something like this:

Typical Calvin person: I haven’t seen Katie in awhile…are you two still together?
Boy: Yes, but she is in the UK right now.
Calvie: Oh, ok, you engaged yet?
Boy: No
Calvie: Are you going to fly over?
Boy: No
Calvie: You have a ring, right?
Boy: No
Calvie: So she is not the one.
Boy: I never said that
Calvie: So you are getting a ring and going to propose right before graduation?
Boy: No
Calvie: Kinda a risk taker then?
Boy: What??
Calvie: What if she thinks you don’t want her?
[boy walks away]

Why I shall feel rejected if I do not recieve a shiny rock before graduation (which I won’t even be around for) is beyond me.

But if I were planning a wedding here is how it would go:

This, with the headpiece below, a veil and some gloves would guarentee that I would be like a white ninja at my wedding

the headpiece

Oh, and did I mention that they make dresses with LED lights in them? I will work those into the entire ensemble.

Dear Bridesmaids, do you hate me yet?

Alernative dress idea

And since every event needs a soundtrack, here is the list for the dinosaur/boy-who-makes-food wedding of doom (soundtrack also available as the table favor):

Crazy Daisy- Neon Horse
Its so cold in the D-Tbaby
Low-Flo Rida
I Still got you Ice Cream-Pissed Jeans
I can never be your lover-Still Remains (for the RA and myself)

This is why I can never have a proper wedding

Britain is so…post something!

Alright, so a few weeks ago I posted on my other blog that I had not met one atheist in my three weeks in big, scary post-Christian England. That has now changed, I met one. But regardless of the lack of atheists it is still a fact that people over here are a far cry from your typical Calvin kid back in GR…like, way different.

This has been pointed out several times in devotionals before our Calvin classes here that there is no way of even knowing that the people we engage in conversation here at YSJ even come from a Christian background! *shock! horrors!* To be honest, I only listened to one devotional and it was like that, I am too busy staring out at the ever-overcast skies to take heed of religious posturing and talk about being the minority (have I mentioned there’s not even any bloody seperation of church and state over here? Minority my ass!).

Also, I don’t have to sit through a load of creation, fall, redemption, apologetics, or gross misunderstandings of other religions in the religion classes everyday! Holy cow, fancy that, learning about Pagan and New Age beliefs from guest lecturing Pagans and New Agers! I was telling one of my Calvin profs about my Paganism and New Age class during our excursion this weekend and she was amazed, and then proceeded to ask me if they were going to have a token Christian come in and talk about his/her religion…. whut?

Also, there is a bar on campus.

I love it here. And I’m sorry for not posting more often, right now I’m dealing with being fucked up the ass by incompetent old Calvin College, and the stress is killing me.

How to become an epic RA: Phil

While I’m on the topic of RAs, I should say that not all RAs get burned out after a year and sent out to pasture at the apartments. In fact, a select few continue on being RAs in the dorms for two years and in one particularly rare case, three years. Behold the story of Phil, epic and RA enthusiast!

Phil was a mainstay in my dorm when I lived there. He had become an RA his sophomore year, not because of any shortage of qualified applicants (that never happens) but because he was deemed mature enough b/c of several trying events he had gone through freshman year. He got in and never left.

You’d think eventually one might want to leave the cramped conditions of the dorms…but epic RAs are not natural humans, for they never had the normal urge to strike out on their own and to do awesome things like host parties in their house/apartment/duplex, not have to share your kitchen with 30-40 other dudes or to just head out to the bar w/ friends and not have to worry about campus safety.

But no, these peculiar souls are content to host Halo tourtaments and be the object of adoration among the freshman girls in the three sister halls of the dorms. Life just wouldn’t be the same without them.

An Update on “A Story to Help You Sleep”

Our main character is now engaged. It seems that she felt that her bf wasn’t taking the realtionship seriously enough, so she broke it off. But having every single class with her was taking it’s toll, so he bought a ring.

Now she doesn’t have to transfer. Aw, lab partners for life!

A story to help you sleep

Gather round, y’all, as I tell you a story about an incident that once happened at a CRC school to some non-dutch kids. It is a tale of desperation, woe and bizarreness. I kinda wish I had never learned it myself, but it might amuse or be somehow moralizing, so I tell it.

I was living in the dorms and there was a girl down the hall (oooooo, now y’all know my gender dontcha?) who was still going out with her boyfriend from home (which, you might remember from Passport, is discouraged). But they broke up and everything started spiralling downhill.  I mean, her bf was the only reason she picked her major in the first place, as he was also intending to do some form of engineering and they were both good at math. And then there she was, a girl who was ambivalent towards her major, pretty and single. Not a good place to be if you are a good conservative girl in a Christian college.

To make things worse, her roommate whom she always narced on (another story entirely) got engaged over Christmas break.

So what’s a single Calvin girl to do then? Transfer of course. She made her plans, she was going to transfer to Taylor, which was closer to her home and still a large enough Christian college to ensure a decent dating pool. She was even going to change her major to ministerial drama to  give her more time to date.

But then she met a boy. A nice boy in her classes. Not only could she then have a boyfriend, she also had a lab partner for life!

So she stayed at Calvin.

They recently broke up. No word yet on whether she’ll transfer for her last semester.

The end.

The Calvin Walk

The Calvin walk is nothing more than a nighttime walk around campus with your significant other, I’m quite sure it has equivelants at most other colleges. But at Calvin it is also deadly serious and oftentimes take as an opportinity to do somethings that you would commonly not do.

It also makes for a great DTR moment as well. The boy-who-makes-me-food related recently that he had seen a couple having a DTR on the benches by the bridge. It’s a good spot for a DTR or any serious discussion; well lighted and not too secluded, just too bad that one half of the couple used that well-lighted very public spot as the location to break the other one’s heart. Its just not cool to see anyone openly weeping when you are coming home from a long shift at your on-campus job. [this is also an example of a Calvin walk gone wrong]

A Calvin walk also functions as a cheap, informal date. But one should remember that at Calvin any and all personal, one-on-one contact with the opposite sex is a date and therefore deadly serious (as you might remember, there is no such thing as informal dating at Calvin).

Good Dutch Reformed boys and girls will also take a Calvin date as an opportunity to participate in activities that they would feel uncomfortable doing in their well-lit dorm rooms and might not want to admit doing to their Barnabus. At one point during most Calvin walks there will be a bit of making out. Many Calvin walks consitst entirely of walking to a dark and secluded place and then making out for an hour or two. Also, word on the street is that the nature preserve is a great place for feeling up your significant other or getting back to nature entirely and going all the way (that is why it is a bad idea to frequent the preserve after dark).

Popular Places to visit/popular desinations for a Calvin walk:

Johnny’s: If your walk ends early enough, why not cap it off with some coffee and a serious discussion about predestination?

The Sem. Pond: Duh, water, waterfalls, cute ducks, a bridge you can lay upon and gaze up at the stars(or have a serious discussion concerning predestination) …

Nature Preserve: See above (not so good for discussions about predestination)

The Pond by the baseball fields: very secluded and dark. I have it on good authority that it is an ideal make-out spot (and thus probably not idea; for discussions revolving around predestination).

Important reminder: Don’t invite someone on a Calvin walk if you are merely interested in getting to know them better or if you are only interested in casual dating. This will incur much heartache and that might be you on that bench by the bridge in the future sobbing because some seemingly mild-mannered Dutch girl ripped you a new-one.

Fun Factoid: You can tell how much the couple has dated before by the amount of eye contact they maintain throughout the walk and how close they walk next to each other.

First/second/third date: will walk on opposite sides of the sidewalk and stare at the ground

going out three months to a year: hips are side-by-side and they stare deeply into each others eyes (they will run you over and hardly notice it if you don’t get out of their way)

one year and up: hold hands and prefer to glance around to see what everybody else out at that time is doing

Kaydon_the_dinosaur (at any stage in the relationship): “Boy? What boy? I have cider!”

Useless factoid: Kaydon_the_dinosaur has only been on one Calvin walk in her life. This occured a few hours ago for the purpose of further research/cider.

This bridge is just dying to have a happy couple upon it

The Rosetta Stone kid

Its seems as though every history class I will ever take will be ripe with nutcases. Why this is I have no idea, maybe this crucial area is where homeschooling fails the most.

But I’m in the process currently of tracking down Disney Movie Girl because I think they would make a great couple (because neither of them have any historical knowledge and in each class I had with them I prayed that they were just freshmen because any other possible would have led me to weep endlessly for humanity and opening my veins).

Necessary Background Info:

Class: History of Greece and Rome. Pretty self-explanatory, history with a smattering of important cultural things like mythology, religion and art. This class, like many other courses in the Classics dept. can be taken for core, so it is quite large and filled with all kinds of people.

How he got his name and other *headdesk* moments:

The first time he burst into the limelight in this class he had to stop the class because he was confused about the reading we had done in the Iliad. Not just any sort of confusion however, he didn’t even know who was fighting who (ok, who by now has not seen the shit fest starring Brad Pitt named “Troy”?) and was trying to figure out whether Achilles was part of the 300 Spartans. All in all, nothing too major, except that all his queries could have been easily answered in a matter of minutes on Wikipedia.

After a brief description of the Rosetta Stone and how it allowed scholars to translate Egyptian Hieroglyphics (which went along the lines of, “The stone had three languages carved onto it; Greek, Demotic and Heiroglyphics. Scholars presumed it was the same text written three times, and since they knew how to read the Greek and some of the Demotic they could then use that info to translate the heiroglyiphics”).

But he had to stop class because he couldn’t understand that. It was the most painful thing in the world to hear him for ten minutes carefully work through the Rosetta stone mystery outloud. In the end he finally exclaimed, “Oh! You mean that since they knew two languages they could then figure out the third?”

Once suggested that that the tomb of Alexander never existed since we don’t know where it was, all the first-hand witnesses be damned!

Upon being shown an artist’s rendering of what the Mausoleum of Helicarnassas may have looked like he exclaimed, “Wow! That’s huge!” Then, when the prof had begun talking about it exclaimed loudly again, “That’s freakin’ HUGE!” About three more similar outbursts followed.

He also can’t seem to quite figure out how armies work, as he had a fair bit of trouble figuring out how Alexander the Great conquered much of the then-known world.

How he benefits the rest of the class:

He makes everyone else look like a genius and he is the most amusing thing in my mornings.

Apparently the concept is really hard

The Woman Who Stole a Piece of My Lung

Every year Calvin has one of two festivals on a rotating basis, the Festival of Faith and Music (FFM) and the Festival of Faith and Writing (FFW). The FFM is by far the most pretentious and painful one to attend (due to the amount of self-congratulation for liking the “right” type of obscure and bad music that one must sit through, as well as a plethera of unwashed indie scum), the FFW is by far the more down to earth of the two festivals.

Unlike the obscure artists invited to play FFm, the Festival of Faith and Writing oftentimes will invite popular  authors and unlike how FFM tries to divorce itself from the “Christian” subculture, FFW will often invite such authors as Ted Dekker and Phillip Yancy.

Last year the Festival of Faith and Writing reached out to the WASP housewife who has a love/hate relationship with bodice rippers demographic by inviting Chrstian romance author Francine Rivers to give a talk in the chapel. Guess who was ushering that event?

The audience was exactly as you would expect, with exceptions being few and far between, it was exclusively white females over 40 (the exceptions were the white, college-aged females). They were, at least, an honest bunch. They had no pretensions about going to her talk b/c of how great a writer she was, as many other audiences try to concince themselves, but they were there to see their favorite author and were quite giddy about it.

I didn’t know who the author was until I arrived and I recalled that I had seen my mom reading a few of her books. Since I’m a good daughter and mother’s day was coming up I decided to stick around until after the talk to get a book signed for my mom. After my shift was over and the talk had started I approached the bookstore representative to buy her most current book, as I figured there wasa less of a chance of my mom having read it.

I was shocked that the pretty, young rep. was Esther. Most members of the Calvin community are familiar with her, at least in the fact that all the e-mails from the bookstore come from her. Funny, I had always pictured her as a kindly, old grandmother who wuld make me cookies if I hung around the bookstore long enough.

Esther gushed to me about how “powerful” River’s latest called The Atonement Child was.
“It’s so very powerful!” she gushed.

So I bought it and walked out to the patio to flip through it until the talk was done. i wanted to get a sense of such a “powerful” work. I really wish that I hadn’t. If you enjoy your literature to be full of cliched phrases strung into cliches sentences, which then form cliched paragraphs on and on ad infinitum et ad nauseum; and if you think that this qualifies as “powerful” then, by all means, I would recommend this book to you. Also, if you like stereotypes like “all girls who go to public universities are sluts and their professors hate Christianity with a passion” then you will LOVE this book.

Flipping through that book stole an hour of my life away that I will never, ever get back. And this caused me some grief at the time.

But eventually the talk wound down and the boy-who-makes-me-food (who had shown up a few minutes before this and whom I had tortured by reading excerpts of the book outloud) and I got a position at the front of the book signing line.

Francine Rivers did not look happy. Maybe talking about being a Christian romance author is really hard or maybe she had finally realized that smashing together cliches and stereotypes did not make quality literature, I don’t know.

I handed her the book and blurted out how much my mum liked her. She signed it and then glared at me for a second or two.

Mike and I rushed out of the chapel, in case she had laser vision or had an AK-47 hidden in her giant handbag and was going to start shooting the place up. I made it a few feet outside the doors when I stopped, doubled over and realized that something was very wrong.

“My lung, a piece of it is definitely gone!” I shouted to the Boy. He disbelieved, but I could feel that one of them was flapping around like a plastic bag in the wind.

My theory is that Rivers went for my soul, but finding none she grabbed the nearest available thing (it is true that I do not have a soul), which apparently is the lung. Next time Francine Rivers is in town I am getting the piece of my lung back, goddammit!

Moral of the story: Christian romance authors are terrible writers and will use their powers for evil whenever possible. And that not only does Kaydonthedinosaur not have a soul, but now one of my lungs is also disabled.

The evil wraith who stole part of my lung!

[expletive] Rob Bell

A very basic thing that probably everyone should know about me is that I hate Rob Bell. Actually, hate is too mild so let me go Biblical on you: I abhor Rob Bell.

It has nothing to do with theology.

It has everything to do with him bastardizing two languages.

It all started with a cool Greek word used rather frequently in the New Testament, pneuma (it means breath). The infatuation with using words from other languages to make yourself seem smarter (especially when talking about Jesus) isn’t just limiting to Calvin College. But Rob, a native English speaker who probably handles words like pneumonia, pneumatic and eugenics perfectly fine, decided that the world was just not ready for the awesomeness that was a translitterated Greek word (and that English speakers are retarded) so he changed the spelling to NOOMA.

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

But really? A) This is insulting to English speakers everywhere. Most English speakers can handle “Pn” and “eu” sounds in their words. To think otherwise is kinda arrogant.       B) Greek is my language of choice and I just want to start punching people when they try to mess with it. It’s the language of the freakin’ gods, people!       C) Mega Churches are way creepy.

This man makes baby Jesus cry

So Fuck Rob Bell. Srsly.

Plus, his brother has a totally retarded “ministry.”

Case Study: Creeper Luke

I first met creeper Luke at Passport, the summer before my first semester here at Calvin. During the tour of campus (my first ever) I happened to be decending some stairs and Creeper was at the bottom visibly checking me out. And no, he was asn’t trying to be subtle about it.

The basic rules for checking out people is this: Out of the corner of your eye, peripheral vision or if you absolutely must stare straight on at the person at least do so behind them so that they will not see you.

It was a rather disturbing experience but I later found out that he was homeschooled, so I let it go figuring that he would eventually learn how to behave correctly in social situations.

It has been several years later and this has not happened. As always happens at Calvin, you can never honestly think that you are ever done with a person. With a little over 4,000 students you would think that the chances of continually running into the same person over and over again would be somewhat small, but this is nowhere close to the truth. As a general rule, you should count on your least favorite people from either of the orientations living in the same dorm, being in all the same classes as you and frequenting your place of employment.

When I became a deskie, Creeper Luke lived in that dorm. I played a sport and Creeper Luke played it too right alongside me. I live in Hiemenga Hall and so does Creeper Luke, etc, etc. As with most former homeschooled males, he has problems with personal hygiene and wahing his clothes.

I thought I had broken free of him this year but no such luck, I saw him the other day in the hallway, staring at my hips for a good few minutes until I finally turned the corner.