So I guess Americans have read 6 out of the following 100 books. I've read 38. That's what happens when you're an English major.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (read it in 4^th grade; hated it)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So my mom made me go to church with her and my grandparents today. They were in Madison a day early for my graduation; I found a church w/ a convenient time, location and religion (Catholic; has to be Catholic. If there isn't a Catholic church within 20 miles, they'll drive 20 miles).

I was raised Catholic, but I don't believe in god.

So anyway, we got there late. The homily starts (where the priest tells you what the gospel means). And he's talking about evolution vs. intelligent design. His basic argument is "you know who believed in evolution? The Nazis."

Stop.

The Nazis were into eugenics, or racial superiority coupled with a ridiculously poor understanding of genetics. They already believed that certain people were "better" than others, and searched for evidence to support that. That so-called evidence kind-of included evolution, but not exactly. The natural selection part is the same, but the Nazis interpreted that differently. According to the Nazis, blond haired, blue eyed people where better than brown haired, brown eyed people. Why? Because most Nazis had blond hair and blue eyes. There was no other reason, whatsoever. They found a theory and manipulated it to support their cause; it's called propaganda.

Resume.

The next part of the homily (and I have no idea how these two are related), he starts talking about muslims, and how they have "lost their way" and believe in a god who "is not the god of love" and how "they don't believe in Jesus" therefore "they cannot be saved."

Stop.

1. One cannot assume that another has lost their way just because they have chosen another path. Everyone who believes in something believes that that something is right; who are you to tell them their wrong, just because it's different? And ultimately, how can you tell who's right? Besides that, if you are to compare all three abrahamic religions, the morals are pretty much the same; it's the way of worship that differs.

2. The islamic god IS THE SAME GOD as the christian god. The exact same. Islam developed from Christianity.

3. They DO believe in Jesus, just not in the same way that Christianity does. In Islam, Jesus is a prophet, and a fairly important one, but not The Important One, Mohammed.

You know who doesn't believe in Jesus? Jewish people. They don't even acknowledge him as a prophet, to them, he was a heretic. So in the second argument, he's actually targeting the same people who's persecution he used to his advantage in the previous argument. If the sermon were an English paper, he'd be docked a grade. At least if I were grading it.

I think he was trying to use Nazis and vague threats of terrorism to make the parish renounce evolution and to reaffirm their own faith. Unfortunately for him, his logic is again flawed, for muslims, as a whole, are not terrorists. Some muslims are fundamentalists, just as some christians are fundamentalists, and both sometimes use violence to make a point (when was the last abortion clinic bombing?? Not that long ago). As a whole, neither is really terrorism. Some fundamentalists are also very political, and when they are not in power of their own country's government, and/or when their "enemy" lies outside of their own geo-political and cultural spheres, they may use terrorism to achieve their goals. STILL, most muslims are no more terrorists than most christians are.

Another flaw, in the first argument he's using anti-Semitism, in the second he is being anti-semitic. A semite is "a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, in particular Jews and Arabs" (Oxford American Dictionaries). Anti-Semitism can be against jews as well as arabs.

The only reason I didn't walk out was because my Grandpa was sitting between me and the exit. I was pissed. So I wrote this, and now I feel a little better.

1. Great lunch/afternoon w/ Eva and Melanie.
2. I finished the theater paper.
3. I finished the THESIS!
4. Spent the last hour and a half mediating a hairy resident situation, where resident B didn't want to have any contact whatsoever with resident A.
5. Had a beer, because of numbers 3 and 4.

So the pope is in the state's this week, he gave mass in DC today, in a basilica on the campus of the Catholic University of America, where my friend Katie is a student. Katie and I had a history class together in France, the semester John Paul (Roman Numeral for Whatever) died. I had just moved in with my new host family, and was unpacking while watching the news. I didn't really understand, so I went downstairs, where the girls were watching the news while the parents got ready to go out, JP was in the hospital, and he was dead, but then he wasn't (someone spoke to soon) and then he was dead again.

The bishops went into conclave, and while the media and devout catholics camped out for weeks, watching for the telltale white smoke, every grammar exercise in my grammar class had something to do with the pope dying, or the papal election, or what the new pope may do:

Le pape est mort.                  
On m'a dit que le pape est mort.
Sous prétexte d'un sécrèt saint, les evêques ne parlent qu'entre eux.
À fur et à mésure, les evêques sont arrivés à une décision.
Autrefois, le pape était Nazi; l'on doute qu'il y aie été forcé. 

Translation:
The pope died. ("to die" takes the verb "être" (to be) in the past, whereas most verbs take "avoir" (to have)
I was told that the pope died. (indirect discourse changes things)
Under the excuse of a holy secret, the bishops only talk to each other. (expressing excuses)
Finally, the bishops reached a decision. (something with the phrase "à fur et à mesure"
The pope used to be a Nazi, it is doubted that he was forced. (past subjunctive, even though it is never used anymore, combined with passive voice)

So yeah. I was looking at Katie's photos from today, that's what sparked the memory lane.

I'm debating the merits of sleeping over staying up all night... I've been so stressed with the play, I've barely gotten anything else done. On the other hand, if I don't get enough sleep tonight, I'm bound to fuck up at the preview tomorrow night--though I guess that's tonight now. But if I go to bed, I'd have to take a shower first so I can get the hair paint out (otherwise it'll all end up on my pillow), but I don't have the motivation to shower. Or to climb up to bed.

Anyway, the play is officially Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 at Music Hall. The preview is invite-only, and you folks are invited. It's in French, though non-French speakers should be able to follow the gist, and laugh a few times to boot. Please come! There are few things sadder than looking for people you know and not knowing anyone :(.

I'm working in the French-Bemidji kitchen 2nd half this summer.

I'm working in the german kitchen first half this summer!

So I'm watching Nightline, and they're doing a story about a recently transitioned MTF Microsoft exec. The reporter has talked to many people, including her wife, assistant, boss, and employees. The first question he asks everyone is, "is ____________ a man or a woman." Why the fuck is he asking this question and why is he asking everyone? She is a woman, she has the legal documents to prove it; everyone answers that she is a woman, but that's beside the point. Now he just asked, "is she your husband or your wife?"

The segment came across as extremely poorly researched, it only scratched the surface of the story and in the most offensive way. Congrats, Nightline, on taking a golden opportunity and seriously fucking it up.

So I was watching the History Channel the other night, really late, like 2am-ish. They were broadcasting this show about stand up comedy, and there was a segment about women not being as funny as men (ps: not true). Kathy what's-her-face, red curly hair--she commented that women have to deal with hecklers, like men do, except when it's a woman on it's more like, "you suck! show us your jugs!." My question is, why don't they yell that at the men as well. It's not like men don't have boobs. And here's proof:

1. The Bro. Remember that Seinfeld episode, where George and his Dad invented the man bra? That's right, the bro. If men didn't have boobs, they wouldn't need a bro. AND that episode would not have been funny.
2. Men, if you lift up your shirts and examine your chests, you will find two circular disks on top of your pecks, with a tip that gets hard when you're cold. Those are nipples. If one has nipples, one also has boobs.
3. Men get breast cancer. Case in point: my dad. And Uncle Paul.

So I'm in bed. With green zit cream on. The board outside my room, that says where I am, is on "sleeping." Lights are off. I just got comfortable. Very comfortable.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

I get out of bed, unlock the door and there's this guy standing there, whom I've never seen before. "The washer stopped mid-cycle," as he stares at the zit cream. No "Hi," no "I'm so and so," no "sorry to get you out of bed," just, "this is the problem." Doesn't say please, doesn't even ask anything. I tell him I'll page maintenance and someone will meet him in the laundry room shortly. That's his cue to leave, right? Apparently not. He's standing awkwardly outside my door. I call. He's still standing there. I hang up ('cuz I'm calling a pager, you call, enter your number, hang up, they call you back, that's how it works). He's still standing there. "Someone will be down there shortly."

"Oh." He leaves. No "thank you," no "sorry to bother you."

Arg.

Lesson:
1. If you need something from someone you don't know, introduce yourself.
2. Be polite. Say please and thank you. Apologize for disturbing him/her.
3. Ask for what you need.
4. Don't be awkward.
5. Be polite. Say please and thank you. Apologize for disturbing him/her.