Originally published in The Gonzaga Bulletin's 'Rear End', February 1, 2002.
It has come to my attention that your school is going through somewhat of an identity crisis. "Are we Catholic, are we not Catholic, should we be, and why?" seem to be the questions swirling about in your undergraduate noggins. Well, being nothing but my helpful self I decided I'd lend ol' GU a hand and clear things up a bit. I like to give back, that's all.
Anyway I think the best way to find out what a Catholic university is will be to take a look at what a Catholic university is not and go from there. This age-old debate has become a skid mark on the underwear of Catholic education, and since I now go to a "public" school in a lawless state, I believe I can shed some light on this greasy party and maybe even clear out some of the stench.
I go to law school at a large state university, and it is anything but Catholic. Each and every day at any given time there are hundreds and thousands of students having sex with each other. Not only that, but they are having protected sex. A shuddering thought, I know. Yes, there are condoms in the classrooms, birth control pills in the bathrooms and diaphragms in the depositories. Each day in the dorms gallons of bodily fluids are loosed upon the populace with reckless abandon. Saddening, yes. Shocking, yes. Real? Unfortunately, yes. Truly, this is a place of fornicating heathens.
But the saturnalia of sinfulness doesn't end there. Sometimes, and there are documented cases, students skip class to participate in sinful behavior. A friend of mine, let's call him Lucky Stiff, received a note in a psychology class from a girl who said she "was feeling horny" and to meet her outside of class. They then proceeded to use the remainder of the class period to perform a critically acclaimed re-enactment of the scene in Titanic where Jack and Rose get sweaty in a model T. He never even knew her name. Outrageous!
Here, dorm life is that of cheap '70s porn flicks. The RAs promote community not through service projects, but "service" projects, if you get my drift. The halls are lined with shag carpeting and mirrors on the ceiling. Clean-up rags hang from the bathroom walls disguised as "paper towel dispensers." The orgies have become epidemic and the STDs are rampant. Here, people get Hepatitis shots instead of Flu vaccines and an awkward silence is heard campus-wide every time that Aldera commercial comes on. Sure there's SEARCH, but from what I've heard they revolve around a search for someone known only as Poon and I'm told I have to sign up before I can learn any more details. All I know is that most people come away from the weekend looking extremely satisfied.
Then there are the retreats. Apparently these retreats are nothing more than a tag-team sex-a-thon, complete with mud wrestling and jello puddin' perversion. The sad part is that students are encouraged in these endeavors by past participants in an endless cycle of cult-like cants.
The student newspaper is nothing but a porn rag. Graphic depictions of campus life abound with reckless disregard as to who might be viewing it. Full spreads of the "Be Nude to Be Free" rally and "Co-ed Naked Twister" highlight the debauchery. Almost as dirty as the pictures are the words themselves: Words like (censored) and (censored) litter the pages of the campus publication.
The hardcover yearbook is a masterpiece in smut-gathering. An entire year's worth of sin is compiled for the perverted voyeur to drool over all summer long. In class, "group projects" become a swinger's paradise as students are selected at random to "work together" for a semester, a month, or sometimes just one class period. Shameful. Don't think the professors aren't in on it too. Just what do you think "office hours" here are all about? "See me one at a time, or in groups," one professor said. "My door is always open." Despicable! Some professors even go so far as to induce students to come talk to them "about their grade." I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
Then there are the weekends. Oh, the weekends, when the true hedonism begins. On Saturday, of course, are the day-long sacrifices to Satan and drinking of blood from pigs' heads, but that's no different than GU so I guess we can rest easy there. On Sundays a great many students do the unthinkable: They work! And of those many, a percentage of them work for heretical organizations like Planned Parenthood, Victoria's Secret and Starbucks. Some even work for a coffee stand called "The Loose Caboose". Unbelievable.
Here, anyone can come to campus and say what they want about anything. Abortions are mentioned along with the day's weather. Gays frequent the same facilities as the rest of the students and sometimes even gather to — gasp — sponsor campus activities!
Yes, being a Catholic at a "public" school sure has my mind reeling. The drugs, the sex and the orgies have taken their toll. It's a little hard to concentrate when you're sitting next to a Protestant in study hall and your professor is Taoist. What really sucks is when I'm headed for a drinking fountain and all of a sudden one of these heathens cuts right in front of me and takes a big swig. Then I have to go all the way home with cotton mouth rather than drink from the tainted spigot. The same thing happens in the bathroom, though the consequences can be a bit more dire.
The bottom line is there is no escaping these sinners and their sinful ways. They have infiltrated the entire campus, from the administrators right down to the food and beverage people. Can I eat beef stew if it's stirred by a Hindu? Can I really eat a hamburger cooked by a Jew? Can I sit in the dark with a Buddhist named Clark?
These are questions that I grapple with day in and day out but that, hopefully, you all won't have to answer until you enter the horrible, secular shock that is "the real world". Well, I hope this helped you in your noble quest for truth and Catholicity. Until next time, kids, don't forget to shun the heathens!
Copyright 2006 The Gonzaga Bulletin
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
Opinions
Originally published in The Gonzaga Bulletin, Fall 1999.
I hate opinions, and I'll tell you why. Actually, it's not so much that I hate opinions, I just get tired of people trying to argue them as if they're going to persuade me to see it "their way" or something. Like maybe I'll be enlightened because of their cool way of looking at things.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for standing up for what you believe in, but sometimes I just wish some people wouldn't try so hard to make me feel guilty for not thinking and acting just like them. Besides, most people feel guilty enough as it is without someone spouting a bunch of nonsense and then claiming it would make the world a better place.
"More understanding and openness to creatures of all kinds will keep the world smiling," and sentiments such as these are the kinds of things that give opinion its bad reputation. Statements like these are completely meaningless. Am I supposed to think long and hard the next time I'm going to step on an ant? Yeah, I guess I'll consider things from the ant's point of view next time.
You might think that trees shriek each time chain saws cut into their bark, which is fine until you try to say that logging is one of the world's great evils because of it. That's no good for two reasons: The first is that you're treating your opinion as fact, which will never work, and the second is that trees shrieking might not be an altogether bad thing. As far as I know, there are an equal number of shrieks from pleasure as there are from pain. Who knows, maybe certain trees would rather be made into sturdy table legs than live in overcrowded and oppressive forests.
Opinions, furthermore, are so much harder to deal with. Facts are easy, which makes them wonderful. Facts don't make me feel bad about myself, or ask me to change and grow as a person. The fact that the earth is round means little to me during my daily living. It's not like I'm thinking about the roundness of our planet when debating how I should treat someone. In fact, facts rarely force us to make decisions about anything.
Presuppose, for a moment, that we could actually hear the trees shriek. For most people that would mean it is a fact. Nothing would change, because we would be arguing whether they shriek in agony or ecstasy. Most likely we would hear both types of shrieks with some giggling and chortling thrown in to really complicate things. The loggers would buy earplugs and we'd all get on with our lives.
It should be noted here that I've only heard a tree shriek once, and that was because it was being used as a bathroom. At any rate, facts are just so much better at avoiding confrontation. Opinions have a tendency to start arguments, and arguments tend to waste a lot of people's time. Arguments about facts are short lived, for the most part, and in this world of sound bites and instant pleasure, that's all for the better.
Nevertheless, there will be countless people "expressing" their opinions all over the place, and most of the time they do so in such a way as to prove that they possess the "right" opinion. This is as laughable as shrieking trees or crying bunnies. An opinion is just that: Someone's point of view. It is neither right nor wrong. If you agree with it, you might call it "right" and if you disagree you might think it's "wrong," but be aware that just because it's your opinion doesn't mean it's "right"' it simply means it's yours.
If you think that bunnies cry when they are blown to smithereens by a shotgun, then don't shoot bunnies with shotguns. But don't try to get everyone in the world to stop shooting bunnies with shotguns without first convincing them that these bunnies indeed cry. You would then have to convince them that bunnies crying is a bad thing, and so on. It never ends. But telling people to stop shooting bunnies because you think it's horrible is poor motivation and a dreadful waste to the person shooting bunnies.
On the other hand, you might be a giant rock star or athlete/role model, and that would mean that you have a whole slew of fans that don't think for themselves. Then, everything you say constitutes their moral guide to life, and all you have to do to keep them from shooting bunnies or violating trees would be to simply say, "Bunnies cry and trees shriek when you hurt them. But I can't tell you why."
Nobody does this better than advertising companies. They get Michael Jordan to endorse something, and it's automatically superior simply because he says so. And it works because we are gullible and they know it. Thank God MJ is voting for Bill Bradley, now I won't have to decide for myself. So please, give people some credit and don't just state your opinion but live it. And if the mood strikes you, hug a tree or take a bullet for a bunny, because we've got more than enough people talking about it. And that's my opinion.
Copyright 1999 The Gonzaga Bulletin
I hate opinions, and I'll tell you why. Actually, it's not so much that I hate opinions, I just get tired of people trying to argue them as if they're going to persuade me to see it "their way" or something. Like maybe I'll be enlightened because of their cool way of looking at things.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for standing up for what you believe in, but sometimes I just wish some people wouldn't try so hard to make me feel guilty for not thinking and acting just like them. Besides, most people feel guilty enough as it is without someone spouting a bunch of nonsense and then claiming it would make the world a better place.
"More understanding and openness to creatures of all kinds will keep the world smiling," and sentiments such as these are the kinds of things that give opinion its bad reputation. Statements like these are completely meaningless. Am I supposed to think long and hard the next time I'm going to step on an ant? Yeah, I guess I'll consider things from the ant's point of view next time.
You might think that trees shriek each time chain saws cut into their bark, which is fine until you try to say that logging is one of the world's great evils because of it. That's no good for two reasons: The first is that you're treating your opinion as fact, which will never work, and the second is that trees shrieking might not be an altogether bad thing. As far as I know, there are an equal number of shrieks from pleasure as there are from pain. Who knows, maybe certain trees would rather be made into sturdy table legs than live in overcrowded and oppressive forests.
Opinions, furthermore, are so much harder to deal with. Facts are easy, which makes them wonderful. Facts don't make me feel bad about myself, or ask me to change and grow as a person. The fact that the earth is round means little to me during my daily living. It's not like I'm thinking about the roundness of our planet when debating how I should treat someone. In fact, facts rarely force us to make decisions about anything.
Presuppose, for a moment, that we could actually hear the trees shriek. For most people that would mean it is a fact. Nothing would change, because we would be arguing whether they shriek in agony or ecstasy. Most likely we would hear both types of shrieks with some giggling and chortling thrown in to really complicate things. The loggers would buy earplugs and we'd all get on with our lives.
It should be noted here that I've only heard a tree shriek once, and that was because it was being used as a bathroom. At any rate, facts are just so much better at avoiding confrontation. Opinions have a tendency to start arguments, and arguments tend to waste a lot of people's time. Arguments about facts are short lived, for the most part, and in this world of sound bites and instant pleasure, that's all for the better.
Nevertheless, there will be countless people "expressing" their opinions all over the place, and most of the time they do so in such a way as to prove that they possess the "right" opinion. This is as laughable as shrieking trees or crying bunnies. An opinion is just that: Someone's point of view. It is neither right nor wrong. If you agree with it, you might call it "right" and if you disagree you might think it's "wrong," but be aware that just because it's your opinion doesn't mean it's "right"' it simply means it's yours.
If you think that bunnies cry when they are blown to smithereens by a shotgun, then don't shoot bunnies with shotguns. But don't try to get everyone in the world to stop shooting bunnies with shotguns without first convincing them that these bunnies indeed cry. You would then have to convince them that bunnies crying is a bad thing, and so on. It never ends. But telling people to stop shooting bunnies because you think it's horrible is poor motivation and a dreadful waste to the person shooting bunnies.
On the other hand, you might be a giant rock star or athlete/role model, and that would mean that you have a whole slew of fans that don't think for themselves. Then, everything you say constitutes their moral guide to life, and all you have to do to keep them from shooting bunnies or violating trees would be to simply say, "Bunnies cry and trees shriek when you hurt them. But I can't tell you why."
Nobody does this better than advertising companies. They get Michael Jordan to endorse something, and it's automatically superior simply because he says so. And it works because we are gullible and they know it. Thank God MJ is voting for Bill Bradley, now I won't have to decide for myself. So please, give people some credit and don't just state your opinion but live it. And if the mood strikes you, hug a tree or take a bullet for a bunny, because we've got more than enough people talking about it. And that's my opinion.
Copyright 1999 The Gonzaga Bulletin
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Philosophy is Bunk, and I Can Prove It.
Originally published in The Gonzaga Bulletin, Fall 1999.
Philosophy is bunk, and I can prove it. You see, I have a real problem feeling subordinate to those hailed as "great thinkers" when all they really did was lie, both to themselves and to others.
How is it that someone comes to be dubbed a "great thinker"? How can someone be better at thinking than someone else? Who decides this anyway? If it were up to me, I would consider the majority of philosophers to be the absolute worst thinkers of all time simply because they waste so much time "pondering" subjects that by their very nature have little or no chance of having any resolution whatsoever.
Ultimately, all these "thinkers" do is start century-long arguments that have no right or wrong answers. A good balance of these arguments are nothing but a colossal waste of thought-- and my mama always said never to waste my thoughts. The analogy she always used, which I thought was brilliant, was to compare knowledge to a tube of toothpaste. She would say, "Son, if this tube of paste was your brain, and you wanted to squeeze all that goo out of it that you could, would you just squeeze from any old place on the tube? Of course you wouldn't. You would start from the bottom, and press all of that stuff out to the top until it was plum empty." Someone should give her some kind of an award for that one.
Consider this: The only proof we have that we exist is that we think. Some philosopher said that once. He was just as wrong as all the rest of them, and I can prove it. You see, to say thinking causes existence, we first have to decide what has the capacity for thought. For example, what if something didn’t exist, but still thought? Would that mean we don’t exist? It's like asking how many babies can fit in an elevator on an abnormally humid day between July and November. What's the point? It could go on forever.
Kermit the frog says it's not easy being green, but who's to say he's really a frog, and aren't there plenty of frogs that aren't green? Isn't it harder for these un-green frogs to live than the green frogs? I mean, at least the green frogs have something in common with each other. These un-green frogs face ridicule and oppression wherever they go because it's like, "Hey, you're not a frog. Stop hopping around like that."
Put yourself in a philosopher's shoes for a moment. You have to ask yourself a couple of questions: Why do you have so much free time on your hands, and what happened to all of your friends? You've got to be able to admit that you might not know something.
Have a look at the sciences. They aren't afraid to admit when something cannot be explained. If they have an idea that they can't prove, they simply say, "It has yet to be proven." They don’t end up huddled in a ball in the corner rocking back and forth crying over it either. They move on, and they don't worry if someone thinks otherwise. They don't need to play logic games and have intense dialogues. Just show them a picture of it and they'll be happy. Tell a philosopher about a discovery of some sort, and you start getting questions like, "Can we really believe what we perceive," or "Is something real because it's what we feel," and other rhyming nonsense of cheerleading caliber.
I think it is really a matter of faith, and I can prove it. The essence of faith is that you believe something that you can't possibly prove. If you can prove it then you don't need to believe it because it already is, and therefore requires no effort on your part to believe that it is true. The big problem, the one that everyone thinks they have an answer to, is how to prove God exists.
Let's take a look at how many philosophers have claimed that they could prove God existed. Well, that would be work, so let's just say there have been a lot. To my knowledge, only a few have stood up and said, "You know what, you just can't prove God exists." I think that it is a weak, shallow person that needs everything to be proven for them to believe it. Faith means so much more when what you believe can never be proven.
Ontological discussion aside, I think that it's better to believe in something even if only because you believe in it, not because a million other people have agreed with you. I feel sorry for all of the people who drool on themselves when they watch a movie like "The Matrix" and whine things like, "we were right, we were right-- the world really is fabricated and true reality exists outside the realm of sense and perception! Ha ha, log on so we can chat about it!" I don't feel sorry because they are wrong, but I feel sorry because they paid seven bucks to let Hollywood boost their self-esteem a little.
So what it comes down to is the amount of proof required by the average idiot to believe in something. My mama always said that the proof is in the puddin'. Well my tapioca reserves are going dry, and despite what Bill Cosby says, there's not much more room left in this world for J-E-L-L-O, and I can prove it.
Only two things need to happen before I believe in something. The first is that I have to think of it myself, and the second is that there has to be no way on earth to prove it. Then and only then will I lend credence to a theory. Wait a minute, that almost sounds like a philosophy. I better revise: If I believe in something, I don't have to tell you why, and in fact, I will never tell you why. How's that?
Proof shouldn't have anything to do with it. One of my favorite lines from the movie "Contact" is when Matthew McConaughy says to Jodie Foster, "Do you love your dad," and she says, "Yes," and he says, "Prove it." She knows she loves her Dad better than you do. Are you going to tell her she's crazy? I'm not.
Having to prove such abstractions of thought and emotion is ludicrous. Are you going to ask Jesus to prove that he loves you? I'm not. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That's all the proof I need. No wasted thought here.
You can go ahead and question such things until your head spins. But I will tell you this, I'm not going to be there to catch you when you hit the cold, hard, concrete floor known to the rest of us as "reality". Did I mention I can prove it?
Copyright 1999 The Gonzaga Bulletin
Philosophy is bunk, and I can prove it. You see, I have a real problem feeling subordinate to those hailed as "great thinkers" when all they really did was lie, both to themselves and to others.
How is it that someone comes to be dubbed a "great thinker"? How can someone be better at thinking than someone else? Who decides this anyway? If it were up to me, I would consider the majority of philosophers to be the absolute worst thinkers of all time simply because they waste so much time "pondering" subjects that by their very nature have little or no chance of having any resolution whatsoever.
Ultimately, all these "thinkers" do is start century-long arguments that have no right or wrong answers. A good balance of these arguments are nothing but a colossal waste of thought-- and my mama always said never to waste my thoughts. The analogy she always used, which I thought was brilliant, was to compare knowledge to a tube of toothpaste. She would say, "Son, if this tube of paste was your brain, and you wanted to squeeze all that goo out of it that you could, would you just squeeze from any old place on the tube? Of course you wouldn't. You would start from the bottom, and press all of that stuff out to the top until it was plum empty." Someone should give her some kind of an award for that one.
Consider this: The only proof we have that we exist is that we think. Some philosopher said that once. He was just as wrong as all the rest of them, and I can prove it. You see, to say thinking causes existence, we first have to decide what has the capacity for thought. For example, what if something didn’t exist, but still thought? Would that mean we don’t exist? It's like asking how many babies can fit in an elevator on an abnormally humid day between July and November. What's the point? It could go on forever.
Kermit the frog says it's not easy being green, but who's to say he's really a frog, and aren't there plenty of frogs that aren't green? Isn't it harder for these un-green frogs to live than the green frogs? I mean, at least the green frogs have something in common with each other. These un-green frogs face ridicule and oppression wherever they go because it's like, "Hey, you're not a frog. Stop hopping around like that."
Put yourself in a philosopher's shoes for a moment. You have to ask yourself a couple of questions: Why do you have so much free time on your hands, and what happened to all of your friends? You've got to be able to admit that you might not know something.
Have a look at the sciences. They aren't afraid to admit when something cannot be explained. If they have an idea that they can't prove, they simply say, "It has yet to be proven." They don’t end up huddled in a ball in the corner rocking back and forth crying over it either. They move on, and they don't worry if someone thinks otherwise. They don't need to play logic games and have intense dialogues. Just show them a picture of it and they'll be happy. Tell a philosopher about a discovery of some sort, and you start getting questions like, "Can we really believe what we perceive," or "Is something real because it's what we feel," and other rhyming nonsense of cheerleading caliber.
I think it is really a matter of faith, and I can prove it. The essence of faith is that you believe something that you can't possibly prove. If you can prove it then you don't need to believe it because it already is, and therefore requires no effort on your part to believe that it is true. The big problem, the one that everyone thinks they have an answer to, is how to prove God exists.
Let's take a look at how many philosophers have claimed that they could prove God existed. Well, that would be work, so let's just say there have been a lot. To my knowledge, only a few have stood up and said, "You know what, you just can't prove God exists." I think that it is a weak, shallow person that needs everything to be proven for them to believe it. Faith means so much more when what you believe can never be proven.
Ontological discussion aside, I think that it's better to believe in something even if only because you believe in it, not because a million other people have agreed with you. I feel sorry for all of the people who drool on themselves when they watch a movie like "The Matrix" and whine things like, "we were right, we were right-- the world really is fabricated and true reality exists outside the realm of sense and perception! Ha ha, log on so we can chat about it!" I don't feel sorry because they are wrong, but I feel sorry because they paid seven bucks to let Hollywood boost their self-esteem a little.
So what it comes down to is the amount of proof required by the average idiot to believe in something. My mama always said that the proof is in the puddin'. Well my tapioca reserves are going dry, and despite what Bill Cosby says, there's not much more room left in this world for J-E-L-L-O, and I can prove it.
Only two things need to happen before I believe in something. The first is that I have to think of it myself, and the second is that there has to be no way on earth to prove it. Then and only then will I lend credence to a theory. Wait a minute, that almost sounds like a philosophy. I better revise: If I believe in something, I don't have to tell you why, and in fact, I will never tell you why. How's that?
Proof shouldn't have anything to do with it. One of my favorite lines from the movie "Contact" is when Matthew McConaughy says to Jodie Foster, "Do you love your dad," and she says, "Yes," and he says, "Prove it." She knows she loves her Dad better than you do. Are you going to tell her she's crazy? I'm not.
Having to prove such abstractions of thought and emotion is ludicrous. Are you going to ask Jesus to prove that he loves you? I'm not. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That's all the proof I need. No wasted thought here.
You can go ahead and question such things until your head spins. But I will tell you this, I'm not going to be there to catch you when you hit the cold, hard, concrete floor known to the rest of us as "reality". Did I mention I can prove it?
Copyright 1999 The Gonzaga Bulletin
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Let the nordsense begin!
Welcome to the nordsense. For those of you out of the loop, I used to write newspaper columns and stories in college entitled "Nord's Nonsense". A very wise man then came up with the idea that a shortened title "NordSense" would be appropriate. I wholeheartedly agreed. Anyway, this spot is going to serve as an archive for some of those very columns (since the "Bulletin" couldn't pull it together to go online until after I graduated), and will also serve as a forum for stuff I've been doing since then, and will continue to do.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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