Bringing nerdy back

If you haven't seen Aliens in America on the CW, I recommend checking it out. Filled with hysterical and awkward teen moments along with witty social commentary, it's like The Office set in high school. Starring Justin Tolchuk aka posterchild for uncool and his foreign exchange student friend Raja from Pakistan. Justin's mom is relentless in her quest to make him one of the cool kids and dresses him in skinny jeans and a tshirt that says "Computers Rock!" Justin however, tells her that the kids at school will only believe that he thinks computers really do rock. In other words, he really couldn't pull it off.

Nerdy really is subjective, and it depends so much on the individual. We've heard Hollywood stars proclaim how nerdy they were in high school only to find out that they were voted "Best Smile."

Recently a group of us decided that everybody is at least nerdy, dorky, geeky, or some combination of the three. Nerdy and dorky aren't so bad... it's geeky you want to stay away from.

Bryan disagrees with me. About two years ago I made it my personal mission to get Bryan to embrace his inner nerd. I'm still at it. I told Bryan that I thought he was 70% nerd and he protested most violently. I figured the PHD in Chemical Engineering qualified him for at least 50% nerd. We had seen some high school robotics competition on the news and the contestants being interviewed were wearing capes, qualifying them as 100% something. Bryan couldn't believe that he was only 30% from wearing a cape! I think the 3 categories can help clarify the situation. The cape wearing folks are 70% geeky and 30% nerdy. Bryan is 70% nerdy, 20% dorky, and perhaps 10% geeky. Problem solved.

Personally I think I'm 55% nerdy, 40% dorky, 5% geeky. I'm a big nerd about a lot of things. I'm a self-proclaimed word nerd and there's a closeted computer nerd lurking around too. And of course, I'm a dork like all people can be dorks. I can be awkward and act in ways that cause others to look at me funny. I jump around when others are quiet. I am incredibly clumsy.

I'll cop to the 5% geek but I don't deny that perhaps there's more geek than I would dare profess.

New year, new changes

If you have already read my first post, you may notice the subject I tackled is a departure from the usual frivolous, silly musings from livejournal. For as long as I've been blogging, a pet peeve of mine was the amount of word vomit on others' blogs. Ranting, raving, un-edited ideas spewed on the screen. I learned to skim through those posts.

I never liked to tackle meaty, controversial topics because I was afraid that I would be misunderstood. Many blog ideas fell by the wayside.

In the last couple of years, I have realized that I'm a people pleaser. Not your run-of-the-mill "as you wish" people pleaser, but a people pleaser nonetheless. I can't stand it if people don't like me or are offended by something I've said or done. I make every effort to fix the relationship, backing down and becoming pleasant to re-establish the friendship.

It has held me back from being bold and has reduced me to another "nice" person. I don't have a bucket list, but there are a few things I feel I would love to do if it weren't for this inconvenient habit.

I realized that part of becoming more like Jesus is becoming misunderstood and disliked. You read about it throughout the gospels. At times Jesus was extremely popular but he was attacked and villified many other times. And he didn't care as long as he knew he was doing what the Father wanted of him.

So my new blog is my attempt to put my musings out there for others to scrutinize, to disagree with, to judge, to misunderstand. Yet it will be my creative outlet for what I consider interesting, perhaps insignificant ideas working itself out in my head.

Is God Pro-Choice?

When I was young, being a Christian meant that you were pro-life. God wouldn't want us to kill anybody, much less babies. It violates one of the ten commandments. Life however, is not as black and white as it used to be. And growing in this thing called "critical thinking" makes it all rather inconvenient at times.

I find the argument between pro-choice and pro-life rather moot because they're not even arguing about the same thing. Intense emotions aside, I think maybe they might even agree on certain points.

The opposite of pro-life isn't pro-choice and vice versa. The opposite of pro-life is pro-death. If you ask the pro-choice camp whether or not they were pro-death, I'm guessing they would say no. They're concerned about the right for a woman to decide what course of action to take. Pro-lifers may say that in this case it shouldn't be a choice, but I'm guessing these pro-life folks are probably big into choice in other areas of their lives. After all, a big part of the contingency are right wing Christians, and don't Christians believe in free will? Don't we believe that God gave us the ability to choose between good and bad, and then deal with the consequences of those choices?

I don't imagine that pro-choicers think that having an abortion is a great decision. Go ahead, have irresponsible sex, have an abortion. For them it may be trying to help people make the best choice based on given circumstances. I wish every decision to have an abortion could be educated and well thought out. However, that is neither the case for many human decisions nor can the educators be completely neutral.

Some might say that I'm misrepresenting the idea of free will. Maybe I am, but what I'm most concerned with is how God can enter into people's brokenness. I'm under the theological belief that the unborn babies go to heaven immediately, and I think that's a great place to be. Sometimes I long for heaven. In my longings, I want to be there already rather than deal with all the events that make feel like I'm "growing up."

God takes care of the babies. What we're left with are women who can't ever forget their decision and are deeply wounded because of it. Those who say they aren't are in denial and they would deny my assertion. In an abortion situation, my concern is not for the babies but for the women. It saddens me that they are the ones the pro-lifers end up attacking and alienating. Making someone feel worse about a difficult decision seems so far from the compassion that Jesus teaches.

I no longer know where I land on the pro-choice/pro-life debate. I guess you who are reading are along for the ride. I can see where my thought process may be taking me, and even I feel somewhat heretical.