A Student's Random Musings

Here it is, my last Daily Nebraskan column.


A Student’s Random Musings

Jeremy Patrick

(jhaeman@hotmail.com)

The Daily Nebraskan

April 23, 2001

"NOTICE: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author."
--Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

I'm interrupting my regularly scheduled atheist-vegetarian-socialist-bisexual-existentialist rantings in order to bring you a special edition of worthless pap.
When one is a columnist long enough, one starts to pay attention to the work of the big boys - syndicated columnists. For example, one learns to admire the thoughtfulness and wit of certain columnists (such as that cunning linguist, Bill Buckley) and deplores the intellectual laziness of others (such as Thomas Sowell). I read Sowell's column for the pleasure its rich irony brings to me: Every other column includes a paragraph condemning the evils of the "liberal media," but Sowell never seems to realize that this is the very same media that provides a forum for conservatives such as himself, Cal Thomas, Buckley, O'Reilly and others.
Additionally, for all his condemnation of our educational system, Sowell frequently substitutes for an actual coherent column that he calls "Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene." That is a set of completely unrelated thoughts with a pretty asterisk between each paragraph.
I dream of someday being paid to write such pieces and see them published in hundreds of newspapers across the country. In honor of Mr. Sowell, and in recognition of my own intellectual laziness, I now present my "Incoherent Ramblings on Nothing in Particular."
***
People who don't read comic books should. We have beautiful museums devoted to art (pictures) and grand libraries devoted to books (words), but for some reason people seem to think that books with both words and pictures belong in the children's section. Granted, many comics are for kids, but anyone who's read "The Sandman," "Strangers in Paradise" or the Pulitzer-prize winning "Maus," knows that they're for adults, too.
***
My boyfriend and I have a pug. He (the pug) sleeps on the bed, sneezes in my face constantly and suffers from occasional bouts of anal leakage. However, I love the bug-eyed creature dearly and just the other night had a dream where I paid $313 in order to save him from a mobster-type who was shaking us down for money. I don't know quite what the dream means, but I speculate Freud would have a hissy fit.
***
I love Guyla Mills. If it were my responsibility to choose the head of Nebraska's largest anti-gay group, I could not choose better (except for perhaps Fred Phelps). Having Guyla's inane quotations appear in every newspaper article on gay issues does more to help our cause than all of the Teach Tolerance campaigns in the world.
I love the sheer irony of the fact that she often proudly proclaims that she once had an abortion and now sees the error of her ways, without acknowledging that if the abortion laws back then were the way she wants them now, she would be guilty of first-degree, premeditated murder and likely sitting on death row. Or, for example, take her recent response to Ernie Chambers' attempt to add sexual orientation to a nondiscrimination clause in housing legislation: "It will teach children that homosexuality is okay."
So let's do a thought experiment. Picture a 16-year-old high school student (we'll call her Mary) sitting on her bed doing algebra homework. She glances at her friend Kimmi, who is sitting on the floor doing social studies. Now, Mary is thinking to herself that her friend is rather attractive.
She thinks to herself, "Due to the Nebraska Unicameral's recent passage of legislation prohibiting real estate agencies from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, I feel justified in engaging in hot lesbian sexcapades with my friend." I don't think it happens that way either, but then again, I'm not a teenage girl or a potential lesbian. Fortunately, I'm also not Guyla Mills.
***
Christians should read Kierkegaard. I am not a Christian, but if I were, I would adopt Kierkegaard's position. He makes clear that the very definition of faith, a belief in something without evidence, undermines any attempts to prove the existence of Christ through reason.
Real faith is a leap without looking, a chance taken without consideration of the consequences.
Thus, by attempting to argue His existence through science or logic, Christians deny the need for faith. Since faith and reason are mutually incompatible, one cannot have it both ways. Either faith is not needed or reason is not needed. Thus, Kierkegaard's famous line "Yea, Christianity: He who defends it has never believed in it."
***
I love quotations, and I'm not sure why.
I think part of it is that I constantly find out that someone who lived 200 years ago has said exactly what I want to say and (unfortunately) much better. I also like the idea of integrating the works of others into my own and giving a sense of continuity between writings of such different eras.
Aside from the DN's Quotes of the Week, to my knowledge I've only been quoted once. A little newspaper called the Sun Advocate in Utah plagiarized heavily from a paper I did on same-sex marriage, and I had to force them to print a retraction.
I'm working on thinking up great quotes for posterity. This is what I'm working on right now; if you see it in Bartlett's "Quotations" someday, remember that you saw it here first:
"Great writing is the art of tying together excellent quotations from people long dead with passable transitions."

--Jeremy Patrick, American essayist and pretentious bastard (1977- )