:: The Ruminant ::

The Ruminant's first visitor, amayamaya, left a nice comment requesting more posts. Just as retailers often display their first dollar, I am going to display this first comment for a while. Rest assured, amayamaya, when I get my thirty minutes of fame, you will have your fifteen. I hope I'm not too selfish to keep some of the fame for myself.

:: Friday, February 21, 2003 ::

Intervention

I went down to the subway station today to catch the train to school. While I was waiting, a teenage girl stormed in, sobbing loudly (almost comically). She walked over to the pay phone on the train platform and began making calls. After several failed attempts and a lot of melodramatic sobbing, she evidently reached her boyfriend and informed him (very loudly) that he would never see her again because she was going to throw herself in front of the train. I figured it was an idle threat, an attention-getting device. I looked around and no one else on the platform even seemed to raise an eyebrow. She repeated her threat. The train was coming, so I casually moved to stand between her and the tracks, just in case. I was disturbed when no one else did the same. I would feel quite responsible if I watched a girl throw herself in front of a train just a few feet in front of me. You can at least try to stand in the way. Of course she didn't seem serious, but why gamble with the whims of a teenage girl? She ultimately didn't try anything. But what a disconcerting way to start the day.


:: Chris 1:26 PM [+] ::
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I, Gatsby

E-Trade reported to me today that I have been paid dividends in the amount of $3.29. I don't know what happened with Bush's big tax cut plan, but if he succeeded in eliminating taxes on dividends I'm going to fly all of my friends up to Edmonton for a champaign gala. You can all bring your significant others/domestic partners, and you'll fly here in the finest charter jet. No cost is too great for my friends. I am an investor!


:: Chris 1:51 PM [+] ::
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Jesus Freaks

I swear to God, Jesus is stalking me. It was irrationally warm yesterday, and when a slow old man blocked me from catching the train to the University, I decided to walk. As I approached the campus, I decided it was such a nice day that I should keep on walking. I eventually came upon the fabled Whyte Ave, which is rumored to be full of interesting things. After passing a block of frat houses, I came to a block of musical instrument shops, followed by a block of cafes. I went into a cyber-cafe called "Dabar," got some coffee and sat down to do some work.

I looked around the shop, and a frightening realization dawned on me: I had stumbled onto yet another Jesus freak coffee shop. The barista had a Bible open behind the counter. A couple of girls were doing a Bible study at a table in the back. There was a bookshelf filled with religious stuff, including "Evidence That Demands a Verdict," "In the Beginning," "Families of Faith," and of course "The Holy Bible," which has a note on it stating that it is "not for sale." A newspaper article hangs on the wall titled "A Whyte Ave cafe even Christ would love." The article's box quote says "Dabar isn't out to save the world, but it might save your soul."

How do I keep finding these places? The coffee was good (Seattle's Best), the decor was nice, the atmosphere tolerable (they seem to have the same CD collection as the Salt Lake Roasting Company). They have nice furniture, solid tables, good-looking food, good new computers, and Jesus freaks. I should note that no one actually bothered me or tried to convert me while I was in there (in fact no one has ever bothered me at any Jesus-Freak coffee shop). It just gives me the creeps that I can't seem to find a coffee shop that doesn't have an evangelical mission.

Now that I've covered the Jesus-freaky aspect, I'd like to gripe about cyber-cafes in general. No one seems to get it right when they set up these cafes. They are seldom inviting to laptop users (there was a cafe up the street from me called "the Bohemian" which had a laptop bar, but they recently removed it). They never think to offer WiFi services, and they seldom have ethernet jacks that you can plug into. There must be a solution to offering billed WiFi access in short-range venues! They could charge $1 per hour and have minimal setup costs (they're already a cyber-cafe -- they just need to buy a wireless router for a couple hundred bucks). These places always fail because not one damn company ever does it right. Ever.


:: Chris 11:28 AM [+] ::
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Proselyte 2

(Read Part 1)

   I thought nothing of the Space Mormons for several hours. They didn't concern me, until I started bumping into the elders in strange places. Almost everywhere I went, Elder Buzz would appear. At the bank: "Hi! Making a deposit there?" At the engineering building: "Well, fancy meeting you here! Are you an engineering student?" At the train station in front of my house: "Well hello again! Do you live near here too!?" I was running out of ways to elude them.
   On day two I was snaking through the library in a desperate bid to avoid any place where I had seen the elders before, when I was stopped in my tracks by a group of five beautiful women in the stair well. "What are you doing tonight," asked one of them. "We're having a party, and we'd love it if you could come." I was aroused and alarmed.
   "Well," I said, "I think I have plans to do some very entertaining things with or in the vicinity of my wife. That's right; I'm married -- so, um, sorry." Do married men attend super-model parties? I figured it would be easier not to find out. I tried half-heartedly to get past the girls and continue up the stairs.
   "Oh, please," said one of them, "there's a lot we'd like to show you." I was blushing until I saw that one of them was carrying a Book of Space Mormon. 'Damn them,' I thought. 'They're pulling out every damn trick in the book.'
   "No thank you, ladies, but I'm a comitted non-Space-Mormon." I started boldly marching away, when one of them grabbed me from behind. I fell into a trance-like state of pure bliss. They'd slipped me something strange that made every sensation feel really good. I liked having their hands on me or not on me. I liked feeling the floor on my feet through my very comfortable shoes. I enjoyed it when one of the girls seemed to kiss me, and I enjoyed when a strange prickling, numbing sensation went into my mouth, down my throat, and into my stomach. I passed out.
   I awoke curled on a couch in the library, and felt sick as a dog. I thought perhaps I should report this incident to the police, but I wasn't sure how to explain it without looking schizophrenic. So I nervously headed for home. When I came up from the train station in front of my house, there were two policemen waiting for me. "Sir," said one of them, "we need you to come with us."
   "What's wrong," I asked. He answered: "Just come this way." They led me to a car, threw a bag over my head, handcuffed me and threw me into the back seat. "We're sorry about this inconvenience," said the officer, "We won't take too much of your time." We drove on for several minutes. When the car stopped, they pulled me out and led me through a doorway. They sat me in a chair and removed the bag from my head. I sat facing two clergymen.
   "Hello," said the larger of the two. "I am Bishop Toledo and this is Father O'Keefe. We understand you've had a run-in with some Space Mormons?"
   "Yeah," I said, "they've been following me around for a few days. And they did something wierd to me today. Who are you?"
   "We represent the Roman Catholic Church. We've been keeping an eye on the Space Mormons for the past century. We know exactly what they did to you today."
   "You monitor other churches?" I asked, "Why? I thought the Catholics didn't proselytize from other Christianish denominations."
   "Well," replied Father O'Keefe, "Yes and no. Publically, the Catholic Church prefers an image of harmonious coexistence. The Space-Mormons hate us. They see the Roman Catholic Church as their arch-nemesis, for some reason. We try not to acknowledge them at all in public. But privately--" Bishop Toledo interrupted: "Privately, we want to keep them from proselytizing our followers, and from doing other ungodly things."
   "What sort of ungodly things," I asked. "What did they do to me?"
   "Well," said Bishop Toledo, "you may or may not know that the Space Mormons have long had an interest in cloning. In particular, they've been trying to produce a clone of their prophet, Yosef Jung. They haven't had much success with a direct clone. But they have developed a retroviral delivery mechanism for haploid genetic material. Today, they delivered that to you."
   "Haploid?" I asked.
   Father O'Keefe answered: "Yes, the retrovirus replaces the DNA in your sperm cells with that of Yosef Jung. Their current goal is to produce new offsrping of Yosef Jung. We brought you here to warn you: Do not have sex with your wife. Any children you have will not be your own. They will be Yosef Jung's, and the Space Mormons will try to take them from you."
   "Well," I responded, "we use birth control. We won't be having kids any time soon..."
   The Father and Bishop looked at each other, surprised. They hadn't expected that. "Of course..." said Father O'Keefe, "you're not Catholic. Right. Ehem. Nevertheless, you'll want to avoid having any children for some time, until DNA tests verify that your sperm is your own again."
   "Okay," I said. "I'm not Catholic, so why are you guys so interested in helping me?"
   "Because," answered Bishop Toledo, "we, as Catholics, believe in the sanctity of human reproduction. Nobody messes with sperm."
   With that, the police re-entered the room and walked toward me with the bag. "Hey," I said to the Bishop. "These aren't real cops are they? Abduction, impersonating officers; aren't these things illegal?"
   "Illegal?" Bishop Toledo acted like he hadn't heard the word before. "We're God's Holy Church! Goodbye now, and good luck. We'll keep in touch." The bag went back over my head and they marched me to the car. After ten minutes or so I was released in front of my building. I went inside and up to my apartment, where I found Erin (my wife) watching television.
   "Hey," I said. I didn't know how to tell her about my day, so I skipped to the end: "You haven't missed any birth control pills or anything lately, have you? Do you need any more? Just let me know when you need them and I can go get them refilled."
   "No," she said. "I can keep track of it myself. Why are you so worried about it all of a sudden?"
   "Well," I paused and gestured erratically. "Because I'm filled with the sperm of a Space Mormon prophet."
   "Oh." she said. "American Idol is on. You wanna watch?"
   "Oh yeah, I almost forgot!" I hopped onto the couch to watch. The painful singing of would-be pop stars helped me forget about Mormons and Catholics for a while. Lurking under the surface, though, was the nagging and disquieting knowledge that my body housed the sperm of another man.


:: Chris 11:18 AM [+] ::
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