my Christmas list is pretty much one thing: an ipod. a 40 gb ipod is my dream come true. i will be able take all of my music with me anywhere, all the time. the primary place would use the ipod would be in my car so i need an iTrip too, which broadcasts the music on your ipod to a radio station of your choice. the itrip attaches onto the ipod so you can take them both with you wherever you want as well and broadcast your music to any working radio. the final thing id like is a car charger for the thing since i drive 15 hours to and from school and home and battery life is only 8 hours. a three item list. i better get it or i'll be pissed.
the only thing that worries me about the ipod is having to deal with itunes or whatever software comes with it. everyother jukebox ipod wannabe uses musicmatch, which i also use so i hope the transition isnt too difficult. thats really the only downfall from my perspective. i think ive researched them all pretty thoroughly, but if anyone disagrees and thinks or has heard that something else is better, please comment and let me know.
or the covenant mail ladies did. but i tend to think it was the magazine. you see, i subscribe to rollingstone, or rather, i received a subscription from a person or company i dont know sometime last year. the last issue was the top 500 albums of all time and i never got it. i thought maybe my subscription was up, but no, today i spied a rollingstone in my mailbox and i said to myself "i finally got it!" but as i pulled it out, i quickly discovered justin timberlake on the front cover instead of "the top 500 greatest albums." it was painful, but im getting over it.
as i began writing this, the author of the article im about to critique was sitting two rows in front of me. well life is tough for her, but here we go. I will direct my subsequent comments to "Jason" when referring to the hypothetical editor or writer who may have written this headline. I will refer to "Tami" as the hypothetical writer who may have written this article. These names may or may not be purely hypothetical.
today's target is the front page headline of the latest Bagpipe edition, which reads "Men's Spirituality Receives Long Neglected Attention." That alone should be enough to make us familiar with Covenant laugh. So, "jason" are you really implying that men's spirituality is really neglected by those "in charge"? that's a sad thought at covenant college where Christ is supposed to be "pre-eminent." (no i dont understand the hyphen either, but its in there on all school mottos. dont ask why cuz you wont get an answer.) maybe you mean the men here simply arent spiritual enough? or "jason" is this your attempt to be the "liberal media" at covenant college by criticizing something that really isnt a problem? well let's take a brief look at the article and find out, shall we? o-kay!
The lead sentence reads, "This year an old opportunity for male spiritual growth is being revived." the next sentence gives a location of a camp where a men's retreat will be held hopefully to rejuvenate my spirituality as a covenant male. (i dont mean to make fun of this idea, just the tone of the article.) nothing really to answer our query thus far.
the next sentence is a real doozy, but doesnt help us. it reads, "The Covenant College Men's Retreat is expected to be a time when the men of the college can covenant as a community..." Whoa, "Tami," i like alliteration too, but 2 separate occasions where the alliterative letter is "c" in one sentence? jeez. and four consecutive words is really too much for one sentence. its at that point we start to sound too much like dr. seuss, whose writings were never to my knowledge published in a college level newspaper as informative reading. but we press on.
skip to what i think is supposed to be paragraph 4, but i cant tell since theres no indentation... do we really have an r.a. here named doug mcnutt? do they sell him at mcdonalds? can we invent a dance called the "dirty mcnutt?" please, someone, do it for me. you know where to reach me.
it's in this paragraph that we begin to find our answer, "{the} hope is that the retreat will serve as a catalyst to something that has been lacking in the men's ministry on campus for some time." ok so what is it that's lacking? next sentence; "{the retreat is not intended} to be an isolated mountaintop experience, but rather a time that has a lasting effect on the spiritual lives of men at Covenant." but "Tami" what is the intended "lasting effect?"
the next paragraph states that the Kaleo center is funding "this much needed event." i may not be the most spiritual person on campus, "tami," but i don't need you to point that out to me, thanks. i'll leave that to my pastor or my parents, at least someone who's not my "peer."
the article does go on to indicate that the director of the Kaleo center felt that "Biblical manhood" is often neglected at the expense of Biblical womanhood, but that doesn't explain "tami's" or "jason's" tone in the article/headline in my mind. they seem to say that because there hasn't been a men's retreat for sometime, that male spirituality at Covenant has been neglected all the while. thank you guys for my extra daily dose of Puritan self-loathing.