Some more book news: Last week I was browsing through the book aisle of my local grocery store, and to my astonishment, I saw the new book by a friend of mine.

No Excuses is the autobiography of Kyle Maynard, a congenital amputee -- he was born with no arms past his elbows and no legs past his thighs. He never let that stop him, though -- he played football in sixth grade and proceeded to become a Georgia state wrestling champion in high school, as well as setting a world record in weightlifting.

I met Kyle a couple of months ago at the HardCore Gym, my martial arts school. When he showed up, I was a little surprised -- I didn't imagine a quadruple amputee would consider starting martial arts. But the instructors had met him earlier and welcomed him on the mat. He held out a stump of an arm and asked me, "Do you want to roll?" (which is an invitation to wrestle.) I shrugged and said, "Sure," and slapped his stump to indicate the match had begun.

Kyle proceeded, without any hands, to throw me down, climb on top of me, and choke me into submission. And then do it again. And again.

I was pretty depressed that I got beaten by a quadruple amputee -- that's not the sort of thing one goes around bragging about. I only found out later that he was a Georgia state wrestling champion.

Since then, we've wrestled a lot -- he's probably the person closest to my weight in the school. (He'd probably around 190 with his arms and legs.) He's one of the friendliest persons I've met, a dedicated Christian, and I'm honored to know him.

I got some books today that are too hot for our Christian college library.

Last semester, I had some students asking me about Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club. On request, I lent Fight Club to one of them. Moreover, all the non-Christians I knew were reading Fight Club. (Admittedly, most all the non-Christians I know are professional or amateur cage fighters.) Since Fight Club has been made into a major movie with Brad Pitt, and since three other Palahniuk novels are being made into movies, I thought it would be good for our library to add them to the shelves.

Today I get a call from one of the librarians that read a little in a couple of the books and was concerned that there would be a controversy. Well, yes. I completely admit that there is a lot in Palahniuk's books that is disgusting, even obscene. For instance, a brief sample from Fight Club:

". . . his head pinched between the concrete floor and the knee of a two-hundred-pound stock boy who kept slamming a fist into the bridge of [his] nose again and again in flat hard packing sounds you could hear over all the yelling until [he] caught enough breath and sprayed blood to say, stop."

And the books get worse from there.

The librarians felt that putting these books on the shelves would cause needless controversy. Now, this same library has copies of the Kama Sutra (ancient Hindu sex manual) on the shelves, and covers itself by putting a small sticker on the cover saying, "The views expressed in this book are not necessarily those of this college." I thought that would suffice for the Palahniuk books. While librarians may be organized, rational, and fair, though, the general reading public is not -- and the librarians have to worry about what (for lack of a better term) could be called our "constituency" -- those who are enrolled here, send their children here, and send us donations -- and the constituency is not necessarily consistent in their literary evaluations.

The end result (which they suggested) was that they give me the books to "keep in my office," so that I could give warnings about the books before I lent them out, and make sure the contents of the book are actively contextualized in a Christian worldview. On their end, they would not enter the books into the school's computer system, so they won't come up on an online card catalog search.

I was satisfied. Basically, I just got five books for free. I understand the position the librarians are in, and I'm a little sorry they spent some of their (very limited) budget on books they feel they can't put on the shelves. I'm also sorry we can't simply all act in a mature manner and not read books we are not emotionally or spiritually capable of handling. (There are plenty of books that fall into this category for me. One of them is the Kama Sutra.) On the other hand, this school is small enough that if there are any Chuck Palahniuk fans on campus, I'm sure they'll eventually find their way to me.

It's amazing how something that starts out bad can suddenly turn completely around.

Yesterday was the best day I've had in a long, long time. It started out awful (as I related in the last post). It started to turn around a little when the offended student came by my office to talk and we were able to iron out some misunderstandings. It still wasn't great, though, because that evening I was sitting in my office with nothing to look forward to but a lonely evening at home.

Then a couple of my former students dropped by my office to ask for help with their papers. That certainly didn't excite me. (I had a huge stack of papers to grade as it was, and I don't like to help students with their papers -- either for my class or another professor's.) But then they invited me to the local coffee house, where they were dragging their laptops to work on their papers, so I accepted. As I expected, very little actual work got done, but there was a lot of laughing, cutting up, and having fun.

And I'm always happy to help students have fun.

What a cruddy day.

1. I spent all day yesterday preparing to speak to a small group of intercessors on spiritual warfare. When the time came, nobody showed up. Each of them thought, "Well, I'm snowed under with schoolwork, and it won't really matter if I don't show up this one time." Except that none of them showed up, and I was really disappointed.

2. The head of campus security chewed me out this morning for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign.

3. An African-American student walked out of class because she was hurt and offended at Flannery O’Connor’s use of the word “Negro.” I should have addressed the issue of the language at the beginning of class, or even before I assigned the reading, but I didn't.

On top of that, I got a huge stack of papers to grade this weekend.

Last night our the students put on "Singled Out," a dating game show. Contestants were separated by a screen from the prospective date and answered questions. All of them were really funny, some of them were really hard. The questions were definitely weighted towards those who were creative and could think on their feet. For instance, one question: "Rap a song about your favorite breakfast cereal and me." So they had to make up a rap right there and do it into the microphone. Needless to say, some of the contestants got the "deer in the headlights look" as they were being watched by a hundred or so cheering students.

Some of my students were contestants, and two of them won dates! I got the lowdown from them this morning. One of them said, "It was the culmination of all of my romantic dreams!" Then she told me the "date" had been a hamburger in the lobby of the dorm.

Yeah, well, I've had worse dates.

Neighbors helping neighbors . . . yeah . . . now, see, about that . . .

There are four apartments in my apartment building, two upstairs and two downstairs. I live upstairs. At the beginning of the summer, the tenants across from my (both upstairs and down) moved out. This weekend, the lady that lived below me left.

See, remember her boyfriend? The one I helped out by driving him to a "job interview" last Thursday? Well, he had stolen some of her jewelry -- some expensive stuff with sentimental value. Sometime that day he pawned or traded it for drugs. That was the last straw -- apparently, he'd been stealing from her and abusing her for some time, and she finally called it quits. She talked to the apartment manager and decided to move out. She took his stuff (just some clothes) with her, claiming she'd burn it.

Where is he now? Not around here. He doesn't have a car, and he's locked out of the apartment. I know he has family in town; he's probably with them.

Am I weirded out? You betcha. I mean, the walls are pretty thin here, but I never heard screaming or anything from down below. The neighborhood is a nicer neighborhood than most of the other apartments around town -- but that's no guarantee of safety.

And I can guess who broke into my neighbor's apartment now.

Yes, how does everybody like the new look? The old look was a little . . . plain. The look is just a side change, though; what motivated me to start messing with the template was the "comments" section. I was using HaloScan, a third-party commenting system. While scanning through my archives, I realized that the old comments were not being kept -- they were discarded after a certain length of time. I did a little research, and discovered that Blogger, my blog service provider, has started offering a commenting system that does not discard older comments. Since the comments was one of the best parts of the blog, I decided to switch.

During the switch, I noticed that they had a lot of new templates developed. I picked one I liked, transferred my links over, and hey presto! A new look for an old blog.

One downside is that my comments section gets targeted by spam now. Just ignore it; I can delete the posts.

Yesterday evening I went to visit the new Japanese restaurant in town. I didn't really like it.

1. Their menu was limited. Only 18 items, 11 of them were "Hibachi"-style grilled steak, chicken or seafood. No sushi.
2. The restaurant took over the old Wendy's restaraunt. Everything inside screams, "This is a fast food restaurant." No ambiance, privacy, or mood lighting -- just plastic chairs, formica tables, and glaring flourescent lights overhead. Not even fake potted plants.
3. Yet it is not a fast food restaurant. I sat at a table, looked over a menu whose prices ranged from $4.95 (vegetable appetizer) to $11.95 (Hibachi Filet Mignon & Shrimp), and gave the waitress my order (Hibachi Steak & Shrimp, $8.95)
4. If I have a waitress, and am expected to tip, I should not be served my meal on a DISPOSABLE PLASTIC PLATE and be given a DISPOSABLE PLASTIC FORK to eat with.

The food was good, but compare it to the Chinese restaurant -- for a couple of bucks less, I can have an all-you-can-eat buffet, with a wider selection of choices (including Teriyaki chicken), in a nicer atmosphere, and eat off a ceramic plate with a real metal fork.

Yesterday I was interviewed by some kids in the Communications department, asking me about what effect the new dress code has had on class behavior. They videorecorded the interview for class. This is my one shot at the big time! I'll be famous! Yesss!

This morning, my neighbor knocked on my door and asked me for a favor: he needed a ride to a job interview. (He lives with his girlfriend in the apartment below mine.) We've exchanged greetings before, but I'd never gotten his name. Now I did: Derrik. Whether he gets the job or not (and I hope he does), I always enjoy opportunities to get to know my neighbors. Neighbors look out for each other.

Just three days ago, for instance, a neighbor (in an apartment in the building next to mine) warned me that her apartment had been broken into and her car stolen. The car was recovered with only a dent (so it could have been much worse), but she came by to warn me. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about -- neighbors looking out for each other.

Would you be my . . .
Could you be my . . .
Won't you be . . .
My neighbor?

(Hello out there, little blog neighbor!)

I had a kid in class today who claimed never to have seen the plural possessive formed by s-apostrophe before. I just wanted to share that with all of you.

Last Friday I acquired the hardcover 10-volume set of Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament for $100. It normally sells for $700. If I ever decide to finish my seminary degree, this'll be invaluable.

I'm fighting off a cold of some type. Friday I had a sore throat, and I've been trying to stave it off all weekend with Vitamin C, cough drops, and elderberry extract. I taught all my classes in a loud whisper to save my voice. I think it worked. At any rate, I won't have to speak loudly until Wednesday, so I hope I heal up by then.