When the head of the human genome department identified himself as an evangelical Christian, penning this well meaning (and well selling) book about the relationship between his science and his faith, he attracted scathing criticism from people with scientistic and irreligious persuasions. But the mocking derision of so many of his understandably skeptical interlocutors is undeserved, given what I think is this book's fairly modest goal—namely, to present to a variety of readers how faith and science work together in forming Collins' worldview. His views should instead be engaged critically and dispassionately, which is what this review intends to do.
First, Collins is an amateur theologian at best. He allows C. S. Lewis to make most of his theological arguments for him, which is at once charmingly naïve and disappointing. Therefore, his arguments for God's existence come across as unstudied, revolving primarily around the perceived existence of a nebulous (but universal) Moral Law (which, if fact, may well be something genetic and in any case must not be confused with a comprehensive set of moral guidelines that a religion would prescribe) and the apparently universal human desire for the sacred (which in most traditions is not identified with Lewis' and Collins' God; furthermore, this assertion completely disregards the interface of knowledge and power that gives the sacred its sacredness). Collins' insistence on following Lewis causes him to miss a great opportunity in his appendix about bioethics. Instead of framing his discussion of bioethics as a concrete way in which religious teachings can inform science, he uses it as a platform to again offer the concept of universal moral law as an argument for God's existence.
These criticisms aside, other aspects of his book show that Collins' ideas have some potential. While his summary of the modern scientific understanding of the universe is readily available in a variety of other books, Collins takes a tentative step toward relating scientific understanding to philosophical worldview—though this is a link he curiously does not make altogether explicit when he transitions from his discussion of the former to the latter. Potent questions about the function of scientific discovery within a worldview and the concurrent application of scientific knowledge outside that worldview are mostly left unconsidered.
By far Collins' most important contribution to the discussion is the way he dismantles the “arguments” for Creationism and Intelligent Design by supplying incontrovertible evidence from his work as a geneticist (of course, if the archeological record and logic hasn't convinced Creationists and ID supporters, the genetic code is unlikely to change their minds); Collins is less successful in pointing out the inconsistencies of atheism and agnosticism. His counter-proposal BioLogos (essentially a new and [to him] slightly less problematic name for theistic evolution) is promising in that it could allow an authentic dialogue between science and religion to occur, but once identifying his stance, Collins is content to ignore these possibilities and move on.
Collins is unlikely to convert any disbelievers (and I for one would be more than a little disappointed in any atheist who was convinced by the flimsy theology of Collins' book), but perhaps some fundamentalists and Intelligent Designers might be moved to abandon their scientifically indefensible beliefs in favor of Collins' "BioLogos," which is a much more considered and reasonable incorporation of the language of evolution into the language of religion.
January 17, 2011
January 14, 2011
Promoted
I am now 22 years old, and thank God for that. It was rough being 21. People kept asking me to go get drunk and other such nonsense, as if just because I can legally drink will change my deeply held convictions about imbibing intoxicants. And maybe it's just me, but it seems like there's something more reassuring about being an even numbered age.
January 13, 2011
Film reviews: Harold Lloyd double feature
The Freshman (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1925); The Kid Brother (dir. Ted Wilde, 1927). Free of the occasionally irritating self-consciousness of Charles Chaplin, the silent comedy star Harold Lloyd was closer in spirit and aesthetic to Buster Keaton. But if Buster Keaton was an everyman capable of triumphant heroism, Harold Lloyd's character is even more human; in these two films, Lloyd is portrayed as a sensitive, awkward man whose insecurity and loneliness cause him to seek approval in all the wrong places. When thrust into unfavorable circumstances, he responds admirably, but his courage is always coupled with his very real weaknesses.
The Freshman offers a variation of a familiar silent comedy trope: a mousy, athletically challenged guy goes to college and at first is mercilessly ridiculed though he remains oblivious, but by the end of the semester, he naturally wins the major sporting event, the admiration of his peers, and the affection of a beautiful girl. Though not as iconic as Safety Last, it is immediately accessible because of the tenderness with which Lloyd composes many of the scenes. The Kid Brother is a magnificently sustained film and is probably Lloyd's best, despite the overlong and shockingly violent climactic scene (which, to be fair, does have some of the greatest comedic use of a spider monkey this side of Keaton's The Cameraman).
Both films are available on DVD with extraordinarily good print quality for the era, thanks largely to Lloyd's insistence on personally preserving the original negatives of his films.
The Freshman: A-. The Kid Brother: A.
The Freshman offers a variation of a familiar silent comedy trope: a mousy, athletically challenged guy goes to college and at first is mercilessly ridiculed though he remains oblivious, but by the end of the semester, he naturally wins the major sporting event, the admiration of his peers, and the affection of a beautiful girl. Though not as iconic as Safety Last, it is immediately accessible because of the tenderness with which Lloyd composes many of the scenes. The Kid Brother is a magnificently sustained film and is probably Lloyd's best, despite the overlong and shockingly violent climactic scene (which, to be fair, does have some of the greatest comedic use of a spider monkey this side of Keaton's The Cameraman).
Both films are available on DVD with extraordinarily good print quality for the era, thanks largely to Lloyd's insistence on personally preserving the original negatives of his films.
The Freshman: A-. The Kid Brother: A.
January 12, 2011
Ozarks Fundamentalism: Part 2
The rest of the essay. The line in the second to last paragraph with the phrase “deranged country polka” is on general principle one of the best sentences I’ve ever written.
Before discussing the content that made up [the pastor’s] sermon, it would be helpful to describe its form. Though [the pastor] was a confident speaker, his delivery was generally unpolished, and his sermon at first seemed to follow no definite narrative structure. Instead of a logical organization, [the pastor] used his sermon to deliver a series of thematically (rather than topically) linked arguments. He would accompany each argument with a relevant illustration, usually a slice of life story with an obvious moral that he would explicate, before circling back to a refrain, usually a verse from the Bible. This haphazard approach to structure could be contrasted with Ammerman’s description of Ronald Thompson, the pastor of Southside, who tempered his improvisatory approach by sticking to a specific topic that would be “organized around three or four easy-to-remember points” (38). While more difficult to follow, [the pastor’s] stream of consciousness approach allowed him to cover a broad range of topics that fell under his thematic umbrella and allowed me a closer look into the mind of an Ozarks fundamentalist.
[The pastor’s] theme this Sunday was the uncertainty of life, coupled with the certainty of death. Through expounding on the uncertainty of life, he demonstrated how to construct and maintain a world of certainty in the face of chaos and suffering without posing the complex questions of theodicy. [The pastor] unconsciously followed the two-step plan to certainty outlined by Ammerman: first, one must be saved, which allows the believer to find meaning within his or her life, thus constructing a world of certainty; second, one must join the church, which allows the believer to maintain this world in concert with fellow believers (47).
To construct and maintain a world necessarily entails drawing boundaries, and [the pastor] closely scrutinized doctrinal differences. He argued that, regardless of the existence of numerous denominations, only one salvation exists, and his church openly offers that salvation, implying that his is the standard against which all other churches must be judged. Perhaps this issue is pressing because the Ozarks is home to so many denominations of Christianity. While he never evoked the names “modernist” or “liberal,” as Ammerman does (76-77), [the pastor] was clearly differentiating these branches from “true” Christianity, the Christianity that sticks to the fundamentals--namely, the Bible. Because all fundamentalists accept the Bible as the perfect, inerrant word of God (51), [the pastor] seemed compelled to use Bible verses to authenticate every point. In addition, [the pastor] viewed the Bible synchronically, jumping from book to book indiscriminately (38)--though the main reading of the day was from Romans, he directed the congregation to relevant verses from Hebrews, John, Luke, Proverbs, and James before the sermon was over. While this view of the Bible separated [this church] from non-fundamentalist denominations of Christianity, there was a conspicuous absence of political boundary drawing. In Ammerman, the members of Southside were carefully conscious of the outside world, looking at current events in the light of biblical prophecies (44). Perhaps the Ozarks, with its geographical remove from the capital, is hearkening back to the apolitical fundamentalism of pre-Falwell days that emphasized moral boundaries above political ones--or perhaps [the pastor] was having an off day.
In addition to what [the pastor’s] sermon revealed about the church’s essential beliefs, music was also an integral aspect of the church’s religious communication. The appropriately if unexceptionally titled The Hymnal was filled with simple folk and gospel songs such as “I’ll Fly Away,” which were legitimized by their spiritual implication and a Bible verse printed under each title. While the song titles and lyrics clearly echoed the music of Southside congregation that Ammerman described (38), there is a deeper cultural connection to this music in the Ozarks, as evidenced by a distinctive instrumentation. The musical accompaniment of a baby grand piano, an electric bass, and an accordion produced an eccentric sound that blended with the congregation’s enthusiastic (though clearly untrained) voices to create some kind of deranged country polka. There was no percussion, but there was a definite rhythm to the songs; I even noticed the pastor and several members around me keeping time with their hands or feet. Despite the fact that Ammerman’s congregation considered “music with a strong beat” as “inherently seductive” and a tool of the devil (85), my visit showed a church in the middle of an ongoing process of acceptance and incorporation of modern musical vocabulary. While their music was stylistically conservative compared to anything on the radio in the last half century, “the beat” has somehow wriggled free from the devil’s grasp in some fundamentalist minds.
As Ozarks fundamentalism evolves and unburdens itself of less desirable traits, one might question whether fundamentalism has a coherent identity any more. Yet fundamentalism, with its fantastic promises of meaning and a blueprint for daily life, does not appear to be vanishing, for fundamentalism has not lost its ability to provide certainty for uncertain people and boundaries that the believers experience as if they were something tangible. Though the fundamentalism presented in Ammerman’s Bible Believers has undergone a reformative process, my visit to [this church] has convinced me that fundamentalism has retained and maintained a discrete identity in the Ozarks.
Before discussing the content that made up [the pastor’s] sermon, it would be helpful to describe its form. Though [the pastor] was a confident speaker, his delivery was generally unpolished, and his sermon at first seemed to follow no definite narrative structure. Instead of a logical organization, [the pastor] used his sermon to deliver a series of thematically (rather than topically) linked arguments. He would accompany each argument with a relevant illustration, usually a slice of life story with an obvious moral that he would explicate, before circling back to a refrain, usually a verse from the Bible. This haphazard approach to structure could be contrasted with Ammerman’s description of Ronald Thompson, the pastor of Southside, who tempered his improvisatory approach by sticking to a specific topic that would be “organized around three or four easy-to-remember points” (38). While more difficult to follow, [the pastor’s] stream of consciousness approach allowed him to cover a broad range of topics that fell under his thematic umbrella and allowed me a closer look into the mind of an Ozarks fundamentalist.
[The pastor’s] theme this Sunday was the uncertainty of life, coupled with the certainty of death. Through expounding on the uncertainty of life, he demonstrated how to construct and maintain a world of certainty in the face of chaos and suffering without posing the complex questions of theodicy. [The pastor] unconsciously followed the two-step plan to certainty outlined by Ammerman: first, one must be saved, which allows the believer to find meaning within his or her life, thus constructing a world of certainty; second, one must join the church, which allows the believer to maintain this world in concert with fellow believers (47).
To construct and maintain a world necessarily entails drawing boundaries, and [the pastor] closely scrutinized doctrinal differences. He argued that, regardless of the existence of numerous denominations, only one salvation exists, and his church openly offers that salvation, implying that his is the standard against which all other churches must be judged. Perhaps this issue is pressing because the Ozarks is home to so many denominations of Christianity. While he never evoked the names “modernist” or “liberal,” as Ammerman does (76-77), [the pastor] was clearly differentiating these branches from “true” Christianity, the Christianity that sticks to the fundamentals--namely, the Bible. Because all fundamentalists accept the Bible as the perfect, inerrant word of God (51), [the pastor] seemed compelled to use Bible verses to authenticate every point. In addition, [the pastor] viewed the Bible synchronically, jumping from book to book indiscriminately (38)--though the main reading of the day was from Romans, he directed the congregation to relevant verses from Hebrews, John, Luke, Proverbs, and James before the sermon was over. While this view of the Bible separated [this church] from non-fundamentalist denominations of Christianity, there was a conspicuous absence of political boundary drawing. In Ammerman, the members of Southside were carefully conscious of the outside world, looking at current events in the light of biblical prophecies (44). Perhaps the Ozarks, with its geographical remove from the capital, is hearkening back to the apolitical fundamentalism of pre-Falwell days that emphasized moral boundaries above political ones--or perhaps [the pastor] was having an off day.
In addition to what [the pastor’s] sermon revealed about the church’s essential beliefs, music was also an integral aspect of the church’s religious communication. The appropriately if unexceptionally titled The Hymnal was filled with simple folk and gospel songs such as “I’ll Fly Away,” which were legitimized by their spiritual implication and a Bible verse printed under each title. While the song titles and lyrics clearly echoed the music of Southside congregation that Ammerman described (38), there is a deeper cultural connection to this music in the Ozarks, as evidenced by a distinctive instrumentation. The musical accompaniment of a baby grand piano, an electric bass, and an accordion produced an eccentric sound that blended with the congregation’s enthusiastic (though clearly untrained) voices to create some kind of deranged country polka. There was no percussion, but there was a definite rhythm to the songs; I even noticed the pastor and several members around me keeping time with their hands or feet. Despite the fact that Ammerman’s congregation considered “music with a strong beat” as “inherently seductive” and a tool of the devil (85), my visit showed a church in the middle of an ongoing process of acceptance and incorporation of modern musical vocabulary. While their music was stylistically conservative compared to anything on the radio in the last half century, “the beat” has somehow wriggled free from the devil’s grasp in some fundamentalist minds.
As Ozarks fundamentalism evolves and unburdens itself of less desirable traits, one might question whether fundamentalism has a coherent identity any more. Yet fundamentalism, with its fantastic promises of meaning and a blueprint for daily life, does not appear to be vanishing, for fundamentalism has not lost its ability to provide certainty for uncertain people and boundaries that the believers experience as if they were something tangible. Though the fundamentalism presented in Ammerman’s Bible Believers has undergone a reformative process, my visit to [this church] has convinced me that fundamentalism has retained and maintained a discrete identity in the Ozarks.
January 11, 2011
Ozarks Fundamentalism: Part 1
An essay I wrote about a fundamentalist church I visited for my Sociology of Religion class, fall 2010. Out of respect for the church and its congregation (who were extraordinarily welcoming and wonderful), I have deleted all specific references to them. The essay was supposed to relate our experience to Nancy Ammerman’s ethnography Bible Believers, which you should really read if you have any interest in this topic.
Easily accessible and highly visible, [name of church] on [street name] operates in a quaint and unassuming building. After observing the worship service on September 19, I felt that those same two words--quaint and unassuming--also perfectly characterized [the pastor], his congregation, and their mode of worship. Instead of the charismatic forcefulness of fundamentalist preaching and worship described by many sociologists, I found a more reflective and emotionally centered sort of fundamentalism. However, there was no identity crisis facing this church; the boundaries were as clearly defined and stringently maintained as ever, and though the emerging influence of modernity and social change has clearly shaped the religious identity of fundamentalism in the Ozarks, the church’s worldview exhibited a profound indebtedness to traditional fundamentalist thought as portrayed in Ammerman’s Bible Believers.
The internal architecture and aesthetic of the building provided clues to the congregation’s core values. The lobby was minimally furnished with only a table, plastic plants, and a stack of bulletins--the walls were bare, and the carpet was noticeably worn down and discolored in spots. It would be tempting to call this unpretentious arrangement accidental, as if the church was so focused on their message that the image they presented did not concern them, but I could not help but feel that the modesty of the lobby was in fact a calculated statement about priority. The decorators wanted to send a clear message to any who might visit their church that this was above all a house of worship. The worship area, all set under a steep arched ceiling, was similarly modest. The pastor’s lectern was front and center, directly facing but elevated above the pews, and few superfluities were provided to distract the worshipper from it. As in Ammerman’s Southside congregation, the church belonged to the pastor, and in his audience, he had a group of captivated listeners (123).
According to the church bulletin, 36 people attended the previous week’s Sunday afternoon service. After finding a seat, I swept my eyes over the church and came up with a similar number. Compared to Southside, with nearly 250 adult attendants (27), this congregation provided a more intimate, close-knit atmosphere. This communal atmosphere was reinforced by the seeming antipathy for any kind of official, permanently held position by any church member. People came forward and stepped down as necessary to fulfill whatever roles were required--from playing musical instruments and singing to carrying the offering plate, and so on. According to Ammerman, in Southside and other archetypal fundamentalist churches, the pastor assumed a monarchic role and assigned positions to people based upon accountability and social standing (123). The temporality of the official roles (except for, of course, the pastor himself) implies that some fundamentalist congregations are moving away from internal hierarchies to a more collective approach.
The social background of this congregation had predictable similarities to and shocking differences from the church Ammerman studied. Like Ammerman’s congregation, the church I visited was racially homogenous, and the economical cars in the parking lot, all kept in excellent condition, suggested that the majority of the worshippers fit squarely into the middle class (27). Also like Ammerman’s congregation, women outnumbered men, in this case two to one (26). However, whereas Southside tended to be a relatively young congregation--according to Ammerman’s table, only 13% of the entire congregation was over 55 years old (27)--most of the members of [the church] were hovering around retirement age. Since the majority of attendants were elderly, only one family fit Ammerman’s “young family pattern” (111) of “households with two Christian parents and one or more children” (135). Correlatively, [the pastor] seemed to shy away from family topics such as gender roles and obedience during his sermon, whereas in Southside the nuclear family is an integral facet of not only rhetoric but also identity (134-135).
NEXT UP: On drawing boundaries, fundamentalist music, and the state of fundamentalism in the Ozarks.
Easily accessible and highly visible, [name of church] on [street name] operates in a quaint and unassuming building. After observing the worship service on September 19, I felt that those same two words--quaint and unassuming--also perfectly characterized [the pastor], his congregation, and their mode of worship. Instead of the charismatic forcefulness of fundamentalist preaching and worship described by many sociologists, I found a more reflective and emotionally centered sort of fundamentalism. However, there was no identity crisis facing this church; the boundaries were as clearly defined and stringently maintained as ever, and though the emerging influence of modernity and social change has clearly shaped the religious identity of fundamentalism in the Ozarks, the church’s worldview exhibited a profound indebtedness to traditional fundamentalist thought as portrayed in Ammerman’s Bible Believers.
The internal architecture and aesthetic of the building provided clues to the congregation’s core values. The lobby was minimally furnished with only a table, plastic plants, and a stack of bulletins--the walls were bare, and the carpet was noticeably worn down and discolored in spots. It would be tempting to call this unpretentious arrangement accidental, as if the church was so focused on their message that the image they presented did not concern them, but I could not help but feel that the modesty of the lobby was in fact a calculated statement about priority. The decorators wanted to send a clear message to any who might visit their church that this was above all a house of worship. The worship area, all set under a steep arched ceiling, was similarly modest. The pastor’s lectern was front and center, directly facing but elevated above the pews, and few superfluities were provided to distract the worshipper from it. As in Ammerman’s Southside congregation, the church belonged to the pastor, and in his audience, he had a group of captivated listeners (123).
According to the church bulletin, 36 people attended the previous week’s Sunday afternoon service. After finding a seat, I swept my eyes over the church and came up with a similar number. Compared to Southside, with nearly 250 adult attendants (27), this congregation provided a more intimate, close-knit atmosphere. This communal atmosphere was reinforced by the seeming antipathy for any kind of official, permanently held position by any church member. People came forward and stepped down as necessary to fulfill whatever roles were required--from playing musical instruments and singing to carrying the offering plate, and so on. According to Ammerman, in Southside and other archetypal fundamentalist churches, the pastor assumed a monarchic role and assigned positions to people based upon accountability and social standing (123). The temporality of the official roles (except for, of course, the pastor himself) implies that some fundamentalist congregations are moving away from internal hierarchies to a more collective approach.
The social background of this congregation had predictable similarities to and shocking differences from the church Ammerman studied. Like Ammerman’s congregation, the church I visited was racially homogenous, and the economical cars in the parking lot, all kept in excellent condition, suggested that the majority of the worshippers fit squarely into the middle class (27). Also like Ammerman’s congregation, women outnumbered men, in this case two to one (26). However, whereas Southside tended to be a relatively young congregation--according to Ammerman’s table, only 13% of the entire congregation was over 55 years old (27)--most of the members of [the church] were hovering around retirement age. Since the majority of attendants were elderly, only one family fit Ammerman’s “young family pattern” (111) of “households with two Christian parents and one or more children” (135). Correlatively, [the pastor] seemed to shy away from family topics such as gender roles and obedience during his sermon, whereas in Southside the nuclear family is an integral facet of not only rhetoric but also identity (134-135).
NEXT UP: On drawing boundaries, fundamentalist music, and the state of fundamentalism in the Ozarks.
January 10, 2011
Film reviews: About time
Dolls (dir. Takeshi Kitano, 2002). Though disturbingly sentimental coming from a man who has directed such films as Hana-Bi (which, I feel obligated to mention, features a scene where a man gets stabbed in the eye with chopsticks), Dolls is a masterpiece of editing even if it is a little underdeveloped and unfocused. Time, memory, and regret lie at the elegiac intersection of three tangentially related love stories, which finally collapse into failed (re)connection and denied redemption. The deliberate pace conveys a sense of surmounting hopelessness and also emphasizes Katsumi Yanagishima's delicate photography and the vivid, expressive palette. Though not Kitano's best work, it opens up new avenues for his future work to explore with (hopefully) more precision and control. B.
Cafe Lumiere (dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003). Hou's film was dedicated to the memory of Yasujiro Ozu and released at the centenary of his birth. Like the esteemed master, mono no aware has clearly informed Hou's aesthetic, but beyond their shared preoccupation with the passage of time, a few minor plot elements (specifically recalling Ozu's Tokyo Story and Tokyo Twilight), and a few paraphrased shots, no one is going to mistake Hou's homage for one of Ozu's own films. The key difference (in addition to mise-en-scene) is that Ozu's films took place as Japan was negotiating its future between modernization and tradition, while Hou's film takes place after the negotiation in a firmly modern, Westernized country. Hou's characters tentatively use technology to cope with their alienation from a vanished culture and loss of meaning, while knowing that it cannot replace their need for human connection. Instead, they are adrift in an empty world where time marks not progress but missed opportunities and disappointment. A-.
Cafe Lumiere (dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003). Hou's film was dedicated to the memory of Yasujiro Ozu and released at the centenary of his birth. Like the esteemed master, mono no aware has clearly informed Hou's aesthetic, but beyond their shared preoccupation with the passage of time, a few minor plot elements (specifically recalling Ozu's Tokyo Story and Tokyo Twilight), and a few paraphrased shots, no one is going to mistake Hou's homage for one of Ozu's own films. The key difference (in addition to mise-en-scene) is that Ozu's films took place as Japan was negotiating its future between modernization and tradition, while Hou's film takes place after the negotiation in a firmly modern, Westernized country. Hou's characters tentatively use technology to cope with their alienation from a vanished culture and loss of meaning, while knowing that it cannot replace their need for human connection. Instead, they are adrift in an empty world where time marks not progress but missed opportunities and disappointment. A-.
January 7, 2011
Dialogue
Me: Or you could log onto your AIM, and I could send you a list of the films I need.
He: I don't have an AIM since I reformatted my computer.
Me: So just download it again.
He: I'm not going to download AIM for this single instance.
Me: No, you'll get plenty of mileage out of it. If you log in, I will send you all kinds of lists and links. When I have random thoughts, I AIM people them.
He: I have a facebook; why would I want to use AIM?
Me: Because I don't have a facebook.
He: Just get a facebook then. That's so much easier than me downloading AIM.
Me: I disagree. Because there are political considerations with facebook that I don't think you can really appreciate. If I got a facebook now, I would be under the obligation to tell people why it took me so long to get a facebook, and I'm not ready for that. Maybe when I get my bachelor's degree.
He: [Sighs] Then e-mail it to me.
Me: You don't check your e-mail.
He: I know.
Me: Because you have a facebook.
He: Exactly.
Me: So that doesn't help me at all.
He: Just get a facebook.
Me: Just get an AIM.
He: Why don't you just type up the list of movies you need me to download, and give them to me on Sunday?
Me: That seems like a lot of trouble.
He: More trouble than this entire conversation?
Me: I find that unlikely.
He: Alright, I've gotta go.
Me: OK, so I'll just AIM that list over to you tonight, then.
He:
Me: See you Sunday.
[He exits]
He: I don't have an AIM since I reformatted my computer.
Me: So just download it again.
He: I'm not going to download AIM for this single instance.
Me: No, you'll get plenty of mileage out of it. If you log in, I will send you all kinds of lists and links. When I have random thoughts, I AIM people them.
He: I have a facebook; why would I want to use AIM?
Me: Because I don't have a facebook.
He: Just get a facebook then. That's so much easier than me downloading AIM.
Me: I disagree. Because there are political considerations with facebook that I don't think you can really appreciate. If I got a facebook now, I would be under the obligation to tell people why it took me so long to get a facebook, and I'm not ready for that. Maybe when I get my bachelor's degree.
He: [Sighs] Then e-mail it to me.
Me: You don't check your e-mail.
He: I know.
Me: Because you have a facebook.
He: Exactly.
Me: So that doesn't help me at all.
He: Just get a facebook.
Me: Just get an AIM.
He: Why don't you just type up the list of movies you need me to download, and give them to me on Sunday?
Me: That seems like a lot of trouble.
He: More trouble than this entire conversation?
Me: I find that unlikely.
He: Alright, I've gotta go.
Me: OK, so I'll just AIM that list over to you tonight, then.
He:
Me: See you Sunday.
[He exits]
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