The Desk.

I am a history major. Even if history were not my declared concentration of study, my academic disposition and behavior woud still characterize me as the epitomy of a history major. I part my hair to the side and I wear a pencil in my ear. I take notes on a yellow legal pad. In pen. Because the pen means I'm a professional history major. It's a pride thing. It means I don't need to erase because I don't make mistakes. Because I'm a history major. I keep the pencil in my ear. Because the pencil isn't sharp and the eraser doesn't work. But I still have it there because I'm a history major. I keep my yellow legal pad, along with my other books and documents, in a black soft-sided briefcase. I use the word "documents." I talk at length about being a history major. And why it makes me better than you. And how "...you bio majors can know all the science there is to know, but if you don't know some history, then you don't know shit about a damn thing." I'm a tactless, arrogant sonofabitch. I bring up obscure historical references in the course of daily conversation. I pretend to know what I'm talking about when I don't. Especially in discussion classes. All my classes are discussion classes. I sit right in the front and say things under my breath so that the professor knows I know things but the rest of the class doesn't think I'm that jackass who has to say all the answers. Or either I sit way in the back with this smirk on my face that lets people know I know something they don't. It's called the history major smirk. I face away from the showerhead. I read history books for fun. But I can't for the life of me sit down to a novel. I watch the history channel. A lot. I grow increasingly bitter about the human condition every day. I'm painfully nostalgic for times before I was even born. I hang out in Morton outside the history office. My opinion is right, not because I've studied at length and crafted it carefully based on the historical evidence, but just because I'm a history major. I think all the other majors are for illiterate liberal sissies. I like to string big words together to coin terminology that doesn't actually mean anything but sounds important. But that's also true of psych majors. If they were as smart as history majors. Which they are not. I talk to my professors. About nothing. I just have to make sure they know who I am. I use complex sentence structure. I use slang from the 1970's. And the 1870's. I distort the historical record to prove whatever point I want. That is, whichever point you don't agree with. I play devil's advocate. More than I should. I've sat in the same seat in the same room in Morton for at least one course every semester. I read. I read till my eyes bleed. Then I read some more. And write. I write till my that little vain in my temple explodes. I think writing twenty pages is a bit of an undertaking, but perfectly reasonable. I can write a five page paper and not even get started. I am a history major. And I'm damn good at making sure that's perfectly clear.

Being a plot device is hard work. When you're playing a character, you at least get to make decisions that can affect the other characters and the course of the plot, but as a plot device, your role is pretedermined and single-fold. You are written into the story as nothing more than an afterthought explaination that makes some part of the story possible. Even stock archetype roles have more literary merit and personal freedom than the character used as a plot device. As an archetype, you are given a basic model of your personality and characteristics, but the role itself serves a particular purpose based on choices made and the course of the story. The plot device is different because it is not necessarily a character, but when it is, and when you can spot it, it means that the entire history leading up to the action of the story serves naught but to fulfill a singular purpose. Who he is or anything about him doesn't matter; what matters is his existence alone, unlike the character based on an archetype, who can be a fully dynamic character with motivation and everything.

The character I'm refering to today happens to represent the temptation of the protagonist. This is a basic model to set up the conflict of a story and is also a vignette in many journey stories, and in this particular story it happens to come in the form of a minor character. Unlike the antagonist, who perform many of the same actions, he is not given a motivation or full dynamic characterization. He is little more than a test the protagonist must pass. It is clear that his role is not merely characature because the same literary end could be attained by the use of any of the classic symbols - apple, serpent, etc, or any scenario the author cared to write in. As I said, his identity and his story are irrelevant. He could be anybody doing anything; he just happened to be the one who came across the protagonist at the right time to fill this role. Because the story revolves around the protagonist, he is not a real person, and all the influences and nuances that molded every cell of this intety, as well as his future, wherein the chance meeting with this story's protagonist will become nothing more than a footnoted plot device in itself, aren't even discussed. He exists because he has to exist in order for the protagonist's business to go as it has to. The antagonist, on the other hand, has specific motivations and reasons for his actions that help to shape the story as much as those of the protagonist, and he is very much a main character of the story because of this and not in spite of it.

Our plot device friend somehow seems to usurp a lot of screen time and have a major inpact on the psyches of the characters in spite of his functionally minimal role. I suppose that just means he's damn good at his job, though, as the purpose of his role seems to be to impair judgement and hinder the protagonists progres in a psychological way. He's sure trying damn hard to write himself into a better role, even a lead, but then again, maybe that's the very temptation he's written into this story to provide. And he's come pretty close to leading the whole cast into drowning in the well of his own pen. I suppose the final direction of this story lies in the hands of the author. The only question is, "Who's doing the writing?"

I'm very excited today. I'm excited because I got cast in the play for which I auditioned. It's a comedy and it's in the black box, and directed by the same professor as Phedre, and based on last night's call, it should be a lot of fun to work with the rest of the cast on this piece. There's a lot of other reasons I'm excited today, too, but I'll only discuss in depth the one that might be of relevance to the Desk.

Dr. Mollenaur, my HST 290 professor, approved my thesis for my research paper for the class. Let me tell you why this matters. 290 is the essential history class that is a requisite for all history majors, besides the Western Civ, US, and Global survey courses. After this class is completed, my core requirements for my major will be fulfilled, and then I just have to take a given number hours out of whatever I want within the department. The name of the course is "Methods and Practice of History," which basically means it's a course on how to be a history major - how to do research, how to write a paper, how to cite, things of this nature. Discussions of source analysis and research tools are pretty simple and boring, so the professor of each section designates a theme for their course. Ours is all about crime and punishment throughout history, and how we can look at the concept of criminality and justice, and the documents related to it, in order to get a picture of life in a particular historical context as well as a perspective on the origins of our own justice system. This theme gives us the opportunity to look at specific cases and documents in our discussions, rather than just talking about how you would analyze something when it comes along. This area of history is especially relevent when talking about the flaws of first-hand sources and the approaches to circumventing them because when using trial records as a research source, you have to take into account the inevitability of perjury. People will lie under oath to get themselves out of trouble, or the scribe may not have written every bit word for word, or the prosecutors may have purposefully tampered with the written testimonial evidence, or there's always the potential problems of translation and interpretation in any source. But more than the guilt or innocence of any particular case, we use these these sources to determine the contemporary notions of crime and justice, and by their very nature, the flaws in the evidence may themselves be peices of evidence to the historian. It hurts the case, but if a person in a position of power changes or omits part of the record somewhere down the line, we can look at that act for its own historical merit.

Anyway, I got my thesis approved for my paper, which is very nice. What is my thesis, you ask? Why, it is in regards to the effectiveness of excommunication as less a legitimate form of justice than a political tool for the papacy during the 16th century, of course. Now, you may be thinking, "Why is he so excited about writing that monstrosity?" Well, when I have to write a 20-page research paper that has prospects of taking up a great deal of my time, I'd much rather choose my own topic than have to scrape the barrel for something I may or may not be able to scratch out a paper on. The only parameters she gave us were that it had to be relevant to the crime and punishment theme, deal with a time frame between 1500 and 2000, in the West, and then some specifics about the number of sources and our research methods and citation and such that doesn't matter to you. Not that any of this matters to you. Some of the other theses students proposed were independent justice in the Reconstuction era South (lynch mobs), the questionable legality regarding the rise of the IRA, the causes and consequences of urban riots in the 1960's, and one hole shtichk about Sacco and Vanzetti, among others.

I chose this topic because I knew from the top I wanted to something regarding religion. So I got to thinking about where religion played a primary role in the decision and execution of the law. The time frame for this course is too recent to hit papal supremacy or medeival herecy square on the head there in the 12th century, but the Reformation fell right inside it. So basically with this paper, I want to explore the use of papal power to gain political and economic ends, and whether anybody could do anything about it. I will examine early modern religious law, and the role it played in inciting the Reformation, with particular respect to the exploitation of that law. My focus will be on the Church's attempts to control the spread of Protestant ideas by exerting their legal and political power, even inventing laws, and what happened to the people who broke those laws. In my mind, the most prominent and most interesting aspect of papal justice was the practice of excommunication. Only the Church could perform this rite, unlike torture, branding, or any of the other forms of justice, as it had particular meaning to a person's religious life, which in turn had effects on their whole situation. In accordance with academic integrity and the rules for the paper, I'll use and cite a sufficient number of primary sources as well as current articles on the subject. It is for this reason that I had to choose a topic broad enough and popular enough that there would be sufficient sources to be found. But by the same token, I will probably narrow down my discussion to a particular region or other variable depending on the flow of information available and the length of discourse I can provide on it. My paper will especially have to include specific cases of the excommunication of particularly influential people, why and how the Church dealt with the person in this manner, and what effects it had on the politics of the time. The excommunication of a king, for example, was both common and useful to the Church, but they often had to invent some false offense as an excuse to reach their ends. But above all, I shall answer the question in my thesis by displaying whether or not the Church's judicial flexing was actually effective in slowing the Reformation or just made passion-inspiring martyrs out of their outspoken enemies. This is going to be a big one and I want to be able to knock it out of the park. So between the play and this paper, you get some idea of where I'm going to be this semester. Should be fun.

Just a little house-cleaning today. As lord of this fief, it is my duty to lay down the law, so here come a few rules I'd like you all to be so kind as to follow. Both of you.

First off, no flooding the riotbox. If you have something you'd like to put in print that takes more than one sentence to say, then please post a thesis or summary statement in the riotbox and continue your argument in full on your own blog or whatever other means. Link it if you must, but the general concept of a blogring is that you're already linked to all the other blogs in the ring, and we assume that the community provides mutual readership and argument. Look way back in my archives to see several posts in specific reference to the blogring to which I belonged before all of them stopped blogging and I got stuck with you lot.

No anonymous rioting. This isn't the Catholic church; we're not going to banish you to the gallows for saying something somebody else doesn't agree with, so I don't know why we have people afraid to tell us who they are. To that end, I'll just say that a) since the question has come up, I know who The Pusher is and I'm allowing it because the person told me who they were in person, b) I know who Trips is and I'll thank him kindly to stop using any other handles - you've got nothing to gain by using anonymous aliases and nothing to lose by using one we know, c) I know who Wade is, of course, and that about sums that up. The rioters whose identities are currently unknown to me are as follows: Gorgon, Tarbuck, Mason. You lot have to choice to either tell me who you are or stop posting. Henceforth, if anybody uses an anonymous handle, the comment will be deleted. Regardless of how sound an argument you bring up or even if you are just kissing my ass thinking that will save you from deletion, your comment will still be deleted. In fact I won't even be reading them; if I see one of these names or some new one you come up with, I'll just delete it on sight. The reason for this is that I'm assuming that these three handles, as well as a few others that have been used once or twice, are the handywork of our friend Trips. I have piles of evidence, including not only the content itself but the sentence structure and form and even the timing of the comments from these people, that lead me to no other conclusion but this. If you'd like to prove me otherwise after being thusly offended by the accusation of being Trips, feel free to do so.

A similar problem has been posting under someone else's established handle. There's no call for immaturity of this nature. If I see a comment posted under my name that I didn't write, I will delete it. If I see a post from any individual that I have reasn to suspect that person didn't write, I will consult the person personally, and if I find that they did in fact not write it, I will delete it. This has happened on more than one occasion and I'd thank Trips kindly not to do it anymore. I know there are more people who read this than post here, so I'm aware that there are occasional posts from Morgan or Jken or whoever else wants to throw in their two cents from time to time, but I also know who does not and has never posted, so it is of these which I will be more scrutinous.

The above are just practices of courtesy and respect common throughout the internet community and should not be unfamiliar to any of you. But now onto some lesser, but still significant issues I'd like to address that are my personal rules for rioting on this site. Nobody calls anybody out but me. If you'd like to take something out against a particular person, do it on your own space. I reserve the right to drop bows on anybody who enters the premises and does something stupid, and I allow you to take any shots you want at me, but disputes between individual rioters are not allowed here. I'll also ask you to keep your riots relevent and coherent. The most recent exchanges, for example, had almost to do with what I actually wrote about in the last post, and half of them didn't even make any sense. You'll note that I'm not even offering up a challenge to religion in any way, but rather posing a discuss on how I do so when I do. The post is not even about religion, but about my style of argumentation. This is a lesson in rhetoric and approach to language more than anything; it's just that religion happens to be one possible subject I bring up a lot, so I thought it'd be an appropriate reference to display what I was talking about. And what the hell does a site about evolution have to do with that? Nothing. What does evolution have to do with anything I've ever talked about? Nothing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to talk about the ins and outs of the theory, but do it on your own space where you make the rules, or at least wait till I write a post where it might be relevent if you really want to shove your little site down our throats. And no, Mason, I'm not done talking about religion. I'll never be done talking about religion. There are always new avenues to be explored and new perspectives to experience, so as long as there's religion in the world, which there will inevitably always be, I'll never get tired of talking about what's wrong with it. What I'm tired of is all the same old tired arguments you people spit out that don't even mean anything. Pay attention to what you're reading and analyze it for its intellectual value instead of dismissing it right away just because an atheist wrote it and responding with something you copied and pasted off your Google search for falsified dogma. Quoting the Bible doesn't count as thinking, Jack, I can make it say whatever I want, too. Anyway, basically I'm just going to start cracking down on the rules from now on. And I'm not just arbitrarily deciding these rules today on a whim because you pissed me off. No, these have always been the rules; look back in the archives; you'll find several posts of this nature throughout several different transformations of the blog, and the rules have been consistent regardless of my content or my audience.

Persistent and deliberate breaking of my rules will result in deletion of any future posts you write, as well as those of any new handle you come up with because I'm smarter than that.

Is it really so unusual, Thomas, that I might be a non-religious person fascinated by the phenomenon of religion? As a Catholic unfamiliar with the term "papacy" and a boy who couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that Baptists are a sect of Christians, you are in no position to so much as fathom such a contemplation, let alone pass judgement upon it. But I'll leave the specifics of your ignorance out of this for now and only straighten out your general confusion towards atheism and my personal obsession.

It is a statistical truth that a thorough reading and understanding of religious texts like the Christian Bible is a sure path to atheism, or opposition to the established church at the very least. It is a statistical truth that devotion to the study of human religion is a sure path to atheism. At the same time, however, studying history, sociology, psychology, any of the social sciences, will reveal the distinct fact that man has always had an intrinsic and apparently necessary obsession with what is beyond his worldly perception. The very existence of religion itself, whether or not a word of his is true or even relevent, makes spirituality and religion unavoidable aspects of the human condition. This fact, in a way, brings some legitimacy to religion as a concept, and proves that it is necessary to our psychological and social functioning. So how does one approach such a situation, knowing there is not and cannot be a God, but also knowing that there are and have to be religions? The easiest answer is to look at traditions like Buddhism or Voodoo, in which there is no intety worshipped as a God, but the nature of the practices are distinctly characteristic of religion. But by that token, all religions, theistic or not, show the same effects on a society. Therefore it is not a God which inspires men to take to religion, but rather the social function having religion serves to a group. Malinowsky and Maslow both discuss this functionalist theory and depth, as I'm sure I've mentioned, and not to sound unprofessional, but I just plain really like it. So where am I going with this?

Atheism is generally assumed to be the result of a cold, calculating, scientific intellectual who has eliminated the metaphysical possibility of the existence of a God. While this is true of many atheists, this is not my brand of atheism. This may suprise a number of you, but I am essentially and by definition emotional. It is my emotional intelligence, not analytic or sensory or whatever else, but emotional intelligence, which drives my decisions and my personality, and it follows naturally that this is the source of my atheism as well. I have never devoted much thought to whether there is or is not a God, because the existence of God is not at the core of religion. Religion lies in the hearts of men. It uses emotional arguments - promises, threats, and abstract emotional concepts like faith and love - to gain followers because it assumes that the opposition, like I said, is going to use analytic arguments - scientific fact and solid sensory perception - to argue against religion. I, however, am certainly God's loyal opposition, but I use emotional arguments, often with the very same rhetoric as my religious counterparts. By using the same faith-based, emotional logic, I eliminate the primary weapon of aggressive evangelists. By talking in terms of morality, faith, sin, power, and passion, I take away the one drawing point religion has over the alternative. The so-called moral high ground becomes mine, the fear of wrath disappears, the passionate testimony of a man who's "seen the light" now testifies for me, and it doesn't hurt that all intelligent scientific and metaphysical theories are on my side, though I never use them in my arguments.

Picture, if you dare, a large barn trimmed with red neon lights. This barn resides between an indoor mini-golf course and the end of the universe, in Pidgeon Forge, Tennessee. Myrtle Beach is widely accepted to be the armpit of the South; well, now I have found the other armpit. Pidgeon Forge, which just North of Gatlinburg and the beautiful Great Smokey Mountains National Park, is home to attractions featuring the technology of 1995, combined with the fads of 1990, and the tasteful discretion of 1985. And the similarities to Myrtle Beach don't stop there. It's a place where hillbilly rednecks meet Las Vegas advertising executives, where tatoo parlors and Wings stores outnumber schools and churches. It's like one of those old Appalachian mining towns where all the factories and stores are owned by the mining company, and everybody that lives there works for the mining company, only to spend their paycheck to pay their bills straight back to the mining company, who owns all the houses, only in Pidgeon Forge, the whole town is run by carnies, and the mining company is Dolly Parton. But the parallels to Myrtle Beach are uncanny. Both are home to one of Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, a spectacle of what I like to call rednecksploitation, and each boasts that monument to marine science known as Ripley's Aquarium. Both areas have the ever-popular Tanger Outlet Mall, as well as variety of other, oddly similar outlets and stores, including those perrenial favorites, the Wings warehouses of tack. I don't think I've ever seen a place so tacky. Speaking of tack, I garauntee that you have never seen anything quite so objectionable as Pidgeon Forge (unless of course you're from Jersey, in which case you live in worse). Speaking of Jersey, I saw an aweful lot of Yankees and foreigners in and around Pidgeon Forge, and that makes me sad. So let's get back on the topic of rednecksploitation for a bit. Both Pidgeon Forge and Myrtle Beach are popular vacation spots for people who aren't from the South, and while there, they don't go anywhere but to the tourist trap places. That is why Pidgeon Forge and Myrtle Beach alone are responsible for Yankees thinking that the South is full of hooting, hollering, broke-ass, trailor-living, class-less, uneducated redneck carnie folk. If Pidgeon Forge was all I ever saw of the South, as most of the tourists from up north do, that's probably what I'd think, too. And it doesn't help that they drove past all the cotton and tobacco plantations down 95 where they don't know the slaves have been freed, either. At least neither is in North Carolina, where we have the decency to keep our name off that shit, but both are still a little too close to the border for me, the border across which they sell fireworks to little children and ride motorcycles without helmets and drive like women from Florida. Sweet God, Floridiots can't drive, especially if it's a woman. Which brings me to my next point. Some people just shouldn't be allowed out in in public. Some people should just stay at home and eat a lot less and beat their kids a lot more, 'cause damn. If visitors to Pidgeon Forge have two problems, they're morbid obesity and parenthood. Half of these people shouldn't even have children, unless they're just fattening them up to eat, in which case they'd be doing the kids a favor. Yea, I said it. I'm pissed off, damnit, and when I'm pissed off I talk about cannibalism and religion. Religion!? If there's a city with more bible factory outlets and drive-thru wedding chapels, I'd like to see it, and punch it in the face. Right after I take a bat to the temple of the combination ABC and Thomas Kinkade store. That's right, I said drive-thru wedding chapel. Yes, once you find out your slut girlfriend's pregnant with your bastard jew-baby, for only $70, you can say your vows and order 15 cheeseburgers with your father in-law in the back seat with a shotgun, you fatass hillbully. No blood test or waiting period in Tennessee, since you trailor-living rednecks can't afford to elope in Vegas. Man, I'm pissed. At least there was a hot-tub and pool table in the cabin we rented; I had to vent after so much as driving past this monstrosity.

In other news, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park is breath-takingly magnificent. Nestled between Pidgeon Forge and Gatlinburg, and one of the few untouched areas in the Appalachians, this park is a showcase for what these mountains used to be, what they're supposed to be. The park is home to over 800 miles of trails, including a section of the AT, and it's highest point at Clingman's dome, as well as trails rambling through dense rhododendron forests and rocky crags, leading to refreshing waterfalls, scenic vistas, and quiet glens. All the trails and destinations have easy access from the park's roadways, but are suprisingly secluded, making this an ideal destination for hikers of all sorts. Day hikers as well as multi-day excursionists will all be able to find many trails that suit the type, distance, level of strenuousness they desire. It is a paradise amidst a living hell, a last refuge of beauty and peace surrounded by filth and tack.

I grow weary of writing attempted religious and social commentary, so here's something simple and fun for the whole family! My first ever interactive blog post! Make up an hilarious title or caption for the picture below, and post it in the riot box! If something's wrong with your browser and you can't see the picture, I don't care! The entries will be judged by myself, and the prize for the winner will be everlasting honor and glory! And... go!

As you know, I have a real problem about control, which gives me an intense foreboding of altered states. The reason I am wary of the works of religion and government is that I believe that man alone is master of his own domain. Not surprisingly, I avoid alcohol and mind-altering drugs for the same reason. For more than my own well-being, I shun the altered state because I find it difficult to deal with a man whose mind is not rightly his own. But there is one altered state which non of us can avoid, no matter the measures we take to stay pure of body and mind, and that is the state of sleep. I don't care for dreams, especially good ones. My idea that life as we know it is our most critical charge has bled over to my crusade against religion, but it started with dreams. Like a siren song, our finest dreams draw us away from real life and brings us to despise reality. I, however, am of the belief that life, real life, is nothing short of perfection. Everything that exists does so because it has to be the way it is, functional biology shows us that; therefore it is this reality in which we must not only be satisfied, but fulfilled. To waste away your life dreaming of what you wish you had is an insult to existence. But we knew this much. There's another reason I bring it up besides to tell you what you know.

I have recently come into (and passed out of without incident), a place where I felt what I believe to be the way Christians must feel all the time. So let me tell you how I think it would feel to be a Christian for a week or two, and why I could never do it for real. It is very rare that I do not wholly enjoy every moment of my life, which is why I have never been tempted with drugs or religion. I live quite deliberately and relish in the consequences of every choice I make, whatever they may be, for what is life but the experience of all it has to offer? Indeed there is a fine line between self control and self-abuse, but I'd still rather take it all in stride, and truly live it, than tune it out with Voodoo and Tylenol. But back to what I was saying. I was living in a strange world where my dreams were more enjoyable than my waking hours (they still quite resembled reality, as they always have; I've rarely had fantastic dreams), and I began to think about being somewhere else, being someone else, even. What kept me here was the knowledge of what I knew was to come. I knew I would be going home soon, if I just let the time pass me. I hate the idea of not thinking I am where I'm supposed to be, that there is some distant, perfect place for me I cannot yet reach, just like I hate the thought of good dreams that make real life seem less, or a faith that promises something better once you're done here, or drugs that ease what's supposedly pain. What gets me through the day is not the promise of tomorrow. There is no pain, there is no paradise awaiting; there is only life. Paradise is only found in living every ounce of life, and pain is just wasting away at the prospect of wasting not being where you are. Once I remembered this, I came back to my senses and my strength, and I don't know how Christians go through their lives with their heaven hanging over them, sucking all the joy out of life. My heaven is here on Earth, a thing for us all to work towards, that we may all it enjoy here and now.

In other news, the problem with the riot board is on their end. It happens sometimes, usually works itself out it a couple days, so I don't know what's up with it this time. Frankly I'm not worried about it since the thing never really does anybody any good anyway.