Where thieves break in and steal

Originally posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008 at 3:53am

I had my last performance in the opera chorus for Lakme on Sunday, and I am finally done with it. I mean, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 one being not even started yet and 10 being totally done, you can't even imagine how done I am.
Actually, I'm probably about a 9. I still need to go to the music library, look up an English translation of the opera, and figure out what we were singing this whole time. I'm hoping it was something good.
You may be wondering to yourself, "But Tim, didn't you study French in high school?" And the answer is yes, I did, but you are overlooking four factors, 1) operatic singing is inherently hard to understand, 2) I never had the libretto for the entire show, 3) I'm incredibly lazy, and 4) total depravity. I'm not sure how that fourth one factors in there, but I think that it probably does.

So it has recently come to my attention that there is an important presidential election going on in the United States. I actually cast my absentee ballot on Monday for this election. And I just think it's interesting how writers with different political leanings can put a completely different perspective on things. For example, I read one pro-Sarah Palin article that referred to her as the governor of the largest state in the U.S. (by land area). I also read one anti-Palin article, which described her as the governor of a state with more reindeer than people.

Speaking of reindeer, I recently spoke with my good friend Christopher concerning the subject of unicorns. And because I apparently take requests now, I will yield to his demand and paint you the picture of our conversation. You see, dear reader, we had commented on the fact that the word "unicorn" literally means "one horn," and so I decided that that's really the most appropriate name for a unicorn horn, and if I were a unicorn, what I would do is basically sort of canter about goring people I didn't particularly care for with my keratinous protuberance, and then be like, "You just done gone got impaled by my unicorn! What now. Oh snap." And if I were a unicorn, that is exactly how I would talk.

Now, as we all know, at a university, a lot of buildings and things get named after people who make sizable donations to the university's treasure coffers. In fact, just the other day I heard that the college of education at OU had been renamed after some woman who shall here remain nameless because I don't feel like looking it up. Now, I've often thought about the passage in Matthew 6 where we are instructed to do acts of righteousness in secret, so that we can have our reward in heaven and not before men, and its implications for this sort of phenomenon, and really what I'm trying to say is that if, in your travels, you should ever stumble upon a very large, very opulent Christian cathedral named after me, I didn't do it. And also, thinking back to another philosophical conversation I had with Christopher about whether a vodka bottle would remain a vodka bottle if I emptied it out and filled it with ketchup, I would just like to say that should Chris ever stumble upon a small mountain of ketchup bottles stacked outside his office door, I didn't do that either.

Speaking of philosophy, my history of ethics class is just starting to read Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals." In fact, I might be reading Kant right now if I could adequately understand Kant at 2 am, but I believe I am quite unable to do so. Although a towering intellect and a huge figure in philosophy, he is not known as a bastion of clarity. When I remarked in a previous class that I thought he was a good writer based on what I had read so far, the professor and graduate assistant promptly informed me that I had not read enough Kant.

Lastly, dear reader, I would like to share with you a slight paraphrase of something my RA friend Cody said today after finishing up with an RA event: "I'm going to check and see if I have to do anything else, and if not, I'm going to do something else."

Matthew 6:1-4

1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.