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Anyone who knows me knows that I have four obsessions. Here they are in increasing order:

• Kathy Sabine — Weather lady on KUSA Denver
• Catherine Zeta-Jones — Welsh actress and T-Mobile spokesperson
• Norah Jones — Classy, Texan blues singer and pianist
• Maria Sharapova — Hot, beautiful, Russian tennis player¹

Just yesterday, I found a full-page advertisement in Peter's copy of USA Today featuring none other then the sexiest item on the list above: Maria Sharapova.² I took advantage of the opportunity to turn the newspaper page into a poster in my dorm room. It's convienently located about a metre to the left of my computer where I can and do gaze at the poster for what seems to be hours on end. However, as I am looking at the picture of this sexy, Russian athlete, I'm overcome with a sort of depression. I see a perfect, beautifully constructed by the Good Lord Himself configuration of His creation. The problem? That poster on the wall will probably be the closest that I will ever come to actually being with Maria Sharapova. It happens to be the same issue with others on the list. I read on the EagleNET forums about others who really want the same for Norah Jones, and I know that we are all just wishful thinkers sitting, wishing and waiting. Again, I'm sadened about our failures to get what we want. However, I have to deal with it. The poster is staying up, but I have to set myself up for disappointment.

Some of you are probably thinking that women tennis players are freaky anyway. Just shut up. I happen to find the screaming to be sexy.

1. http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/Maria_Sharapova/main.html
2. http://www.usa.canon.com/app/images/d_camera/Maria_Sharapova_Ad.pdf

Well, I'm back at college now. I was pretty eager to get back to the ol' Confederacy. However, the area around my university is not really a bastion of the rebs. The people all around the area are normal people just like you and me. I love the humid climate of the South were one can be outside at midnight and still be warm. However, the another good thing about being back at college is the learning. I'm stoked to be able to learn useless topics such as Latin and linguistics and such. Being at college, I often told myself that I was in an institution of higher learning and felt a feeling of warmth entering the academic buildings. The library was probably the best place on campus. I pratically moved into the library during the first semester because of the wi-fi and Ozfest happening back in my dorm. Having all of that time in the library exposed me to the beauty of literature. If residing in the library wasn't enough, the class in literature was. Several times throught the year, I pressured myself to read some of the masterpieces of literature. I read Beowulf the first semester for no particular reason only to have to read it again for the second semester. I tried to tackle War And Peace, but the sheer size of the book discouraged me before I ever began. It's too bad too. I would have loved to be able to have the time to read a book of such magnitude, but with the other time commitments that I'm involved in, reading for pleasure just isn't an option. However, what's great about college is the ability to other cheap activities for fun. Just last night, I jumped off of a railroad bridge in Oklahoma fifteen metres (that's about fifty feet!) into a murky river. Now, I'm awating rugby practice as one of my suitemates has talked me into at least trying out rugby. I've been told that rugby needs small people, but more people tell me that I'm going to get killed.

Going to a quasi-Christian (and mostly pro-American) school, I knew firsthand of the type of cultural hypocrisy that such an institution can sink to. Basically, the school made it a point to avoid any sort of cultural fad that might have been prevalent at the time. You name it; it was prohibited. Of course, the school couldn't really enforce this when the students weren't at the school, but the school would try to influence the parents with literature in the front of the student handbook warning of what worldly things will do.

Now, I said hypocrisy earlier. I can think of my classic example: Shakespere. Let's face it: some of Shakespere's material is a little off colour, but yet the school permitted a Shakespere night where I played a seducing womaniser. Shakespere's plays were considered bad enough that they were banned from being performed in London, but yet today, this material is what's taught in a quasi-Christian school. Let's remember that Shakespere was one of those fads at one time. One hundred years from now, what are the quasi-Christian and Christian schools going to be teaching in literature class? Will it be the fads of next century or the classics like Friends, Seinfeld, Star Wars or perhaps… Family Guy?

Does reading about a viewpoint that differs from our own make us subscribe to that viewpoint or does it make us understand it better? Depending on the person, it could do either one. The point is that people will not know that we're Christians by our literature. So, what will they know us by? Just remember that the sun shines on the good and bad; God blesses the righteous and the unrighteous with certain gifts. Let's remember that the world's greatest scientist was an atheist. Let's remember that who many consider the nation's greatest president (unless you live in the South) was a deist. Let's remember that of all the people who build our roads, handle our money, prepare our food, drill for our oil, protect our lives and rights, probably most will not be Christians. Does that mean that we should distance ourselves from society by moving to some far-off corner of the world to live in separation? Does that mean that (to borrow an example from a worldly television show) we should wear figurative plastic bubbles to protect ourselves from the world's diseases like we have no immune system and can't determine fiction from reality? By all means, I hope not.