Name:Rachel Li :) Metro:Hong Kong Birthday:1/16/1987
Interests:LITTLE SPARK! :) learning to multi-task! back massages. good food at the right amount. old people. sales. roger ebert's movie reviews. stocking up at costco. hong kong and anything canto. korean bbq. good books. moulin rouge, especially ewan mcgregor. Alias. guys who play guitar. hoodie sweaters. people who hug you just 'cause they're so happy to see you. people who make me laugh. peacoats. running. watering profe's plants for him when he's on vacation. christina li's wonderful parents. people who talk with lisps. cold, crunchy grapes. ipods. rainbow colored sprinkles. the pasadena public library. outdoor summer concerts. london. souplantation's wonton chicken salad. hanging out with my little sisters =D hillsong. coming home. jeans that are soft from too many times in the dryer. ppg '93. my home church. my discipler, tricia! =) gov love, especially andy, judy, and daniel. Expertise:eating my money's worth of sushi at todai. parli-ing and contro-ing con mi amiga/roommate candice! =) overthinking. worrying too much. running into teachers outside of school. smiling at people i don't know ... because they remind me people I do know. making to-do lists and then losing them. hanging out in grocery stores and looking at food. making breakfast. teaching mr. sylvia beloved! :P locking yonnan's car keys in the trunk. folding laundry. reaching into my back pocket and finding money i forgot =) being wayyy too gullible. driving on the exit ramp on the freeway and then exiting when I don't mean to! getting lost. Occupation:Student
I just annihilated an entire colony ... and I feel no remorse. Ant-icide never felt so good!
My house has been under attack for the last few days by a colony of ants that decided to make its home in our kitchen. It got to the point where I'd have to tiptoe around the kitchen and do ridiculous looking leaps across the room to avoid the multiple trails of ants going across the floor and up and down the walls.
Then David told me about this ant killer called Terro that worked wonders when his apartment came under attack a few years ago. It's this liquid ant-killer that you put around the house and the ants swarm and bring back to their colonies, thinking it's food ... and then it poisons their food supply and kills off their families!
Seriously, as I was leaving the Walgreens store, clutching my two little bottles of Terro Liquid Ant Killer, I had the HUGEST smile on my face ... kinda like this guy!! (minus the green face). I'm surprised the cashier guy didn't comment. I don't think I've ever been so blood-thirsty in my life ... this is what happens when you show mercy to an ant colony! They turn around and walk all over you (and then they eat all your food!)! Silvia had the misfortune of calling me just as I was about to go out to the store to buy ant killer, and I think I came across a little crazy ... but I was so mad by that point! I think our phone call went something like this:
Silvia: Hey, what're you doing today? Me: Can't hang out! Can't talk right now! I'm going to the store! My house is under attack! Silvia: What's going on?? Me: The ants! They're everywhere! I've had enough! I'm going after their families and their children! Silvia: That's sad! Me: You don't understand what they've done! They had their chance! I gave them three days to leave! Now they're going to die! I'm going after the queen!
We used expired Universal Studios annual passes and poured a drop of Terro onto each one and left them around the house ... it was soooo satisfying to watch them swarm the liquid droplets, knowing that they were stupidly bringing it back to their colonies.
Here's us pointing and laughing at a trail of ants helping themselves to our ant poison!
It is no secret that the kind of humor I like is the kind where people get hurt. Case in point: this preview for Stepbrothers? I've never seen the movie, but I thought this was the funniest thing ever! Especially the part where the bunk beds crash down on each other! And one of the brothers gets buried alive!
Last week, my friend Andy (who works for campus security) told me that the campus was on heightened security alert because the Animal Liberation Front had posted a call-to-arms on their official website announcing their plans to attack the UCSD labs and free the test animals. And even though I have friends who actually work in the labs and were genuinely concerned that their research would be disrupted, I still had fun imagining absurd action sequences. Like Daren in a beesuit yelling "Onward, charge!" against an onslaught of AFL soldiers. Or Rose crawling on her hands and knees as a sea of frogs colors the floor green, like one of the plagues of Egypt. I was actually extremely disappointed when the ALF attack didn't occur: all that anticipation and build-up and they don't even show!
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I found this video last week that I think is a pretty good gauge of each individual person's capacity for sadist humor (humor based on the physical/emotional pain or humiliation of others). Watch this video! Then scroll down a bit to see my analysis of your possible reactions! I did it in the style of one of those "How Sadistic isYour Sense of Humor??" magazine quizzes ... because we all know how accurate those are!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now, figure out what kind of humor YOU have based on when you started/stopped laughing:
1. You are a sadist. You laughed merrily for the entire 49-second clip ... even as the boy started to slip in his seat and it was clear he was frightened crap-less! In fact, you're sad that the ride wasn't a longer - you could've watched that kid screaming all day! (Hey, that's what Replay's for!)
Conclusion: Unabashed, unashamed enjoyment of other people's pain.
2. You are a saint You didn't laugh at all during the video (although you did cast a disapproving look at the woman seated next to the boy). What can you say - you don't delight in the pain of other people.
Conclusion: Congratulations, you are a compassionate person!
3.You enjoy good physical humor as much as the next Joe - but only when it's harmless! You laughed as heartily as the rest of 'em for the first half of the video - until the boy started to visibly slip in his roller coaster. Then you started to worry that you might be watching a video that should've been labeled "Roller Coaster Death." For you, there was never a truer phrase spoken than "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye!" But for you, that eye is crucial! It's the dividing line between humor and "Now, that's just sad!"
Conclusion: You are like Rachel! - appearing to be evil, but secretly pure of heart!
Okay, in all seriousness, this video was really self-revelatory! For a long time, I used to worry that I had a twisted sense of humor. Now I realize that even though I'm into sadist humor, it's really specifically only with pseudo-sadist humor. As soon as it passes from the hypothetical or the facetious into the realm of reality, as soon as people's feelings are getting hurt or fingers are falling off (or kids are slipping out of roller-coaster seat belts!), it stops being funny.
What is it about free stuff? Be it food, pens, paper, Internet - everything seems to taste better, write better, feel better, work better when it's free! I'm the kind of person who loves Costco not for its discounted prices and multi-pack goodness, but for the glorious row after row of carts with free samples ... the key is to go on the weekends 'cause they have more carts open than on the weekdays! David likes to make fun of me because sometimes if I find something I like, I'll go back two or three times (although by the second time I'm usually feeling embarrassed enough to grab it when the sample-lady's (have you noticed it's always a lady?) back is turned. I used to really like those Bic pens that hotel rooms have too until James Chen had to ruin it for me by telling me that those pens aren't meant to be taken out of the room so it's kinda like stealing :( It's a shame because those pens work so much better than the ones you can get at the store!
I just discovered that my apartment complex has a business lounge downstairs. The best part is the free printing and copying services - I used it to print out a 28-page court case, and afterwards I swear I felt so much more motivated to read and highlight and annotate, just because it was printed on free paper! I got that exact same comforting feeling that you get when you're holding a stack of freshly-copied paper, still warm from the machine. I dove into my homework with fresh vigor, using the lovely free La Scala Apartments pen I had grabbed from the cup by the front desk. I even got some free coffee, added milk and creamer and brought it back upstairs before I remembered that I don't even really like coffee (the paper cup looks so nice sitting on my desk though!).
p.s. Look at this Costco sample lady! Why do you think she looks so happy? It's 'cause she knows that she's bringing joy to hundreds of people, every day, just from a little Corn Husk Tilapia in a paper cup :)
The more I grow and see more and more how sinful I am, in even the smallest, littlest things, the more I really see how the gospel is SUCH good news. I'm really seeing how even the "good" things I try to do (ie: loving people, ministry-related things) are often at least partially motivated/tainted by wanting to be perceived a certain way in front of other people ... it's really horrible! Or sometimes when you're correcting someone (always a tricky thing to do), you end up doing it with an attitude of judgment MORE than genuinely desiring them to help them grow. It's really scary because on the outside, the action looks exactly the same. Lots of times, I don't even realize I'm driven by a certain motivation until God reveals it to me.
This week, I've been feeling kind of discouraged by certain attitudes I realized in myself. It wasn't until the end of the week that I woke up and kicked myself: why am I standing around condemning myself? Jesus has already been judged and condemned for me - and He's interceding for me!! I really felt like this 5,000 lb boulder had been lifted from my shoulders. Everytime I come back to the gospel, it's feels like the first time it clicked that Jesus had died for my sins: how incredibly relieving it was to know that I no longer had to feel this overwhelming sense of judgment or need to achieve an impossible standard.
Romans 8:31-39 is an oldie, but such a goodie. You get a great reminder of the gospel + God's infinite love and providence for us all in a few verses! This has been really helpful lately, as I've just been stressing out about future plans.
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
p.s. the weather in San Diego is perfect right now: 70 degrees, with clear skies and slight breeze to offset the heat. Mmmm
I feel like the core of my liberal education has been about dismantling the authority of the Bible - specifically, linking the source of oppression (gender, race, and sexual orientation-based) to Christianity. This was definitely a good thing: I'm not advocating being a mindless drone by any means. A good undergraduate education is supposed to challenge you to seriously consider the veracity of your convictions, your beliefs - your "socialization" so to speak - and I'm grateful to each of my professors for forcing me to really "own" what I believe.
After I finished the DOC series my freshman year, I walked around with my eyes open: every white, heterosexual male suddenly became suspect as a societal oppressor. As we learned about every kind of discrimination under the sun, there was definitely a "Fight the Power!" agenda being taught day in and day out - thankfully I, as a female and an Asian-American minority, was free to revel in my protective bubble of societal oppression/past + present discrimination.
My profs particularly enjoyed quoting specific verses from the Bible to back up their portrayal of Christianity as one of the dominant suppressors of free-thinking and individual rights. (In these kinds of classes, it was bad to be white. If you were white and male, that was even worse. If you were white, male, and heterosexual ... honestly, I don't know how you showed your face in class). What bothers me is that that 99.5% of the arguments made by my profs are either taken out of context or a straight-out misinterpretation of the text. I'm not sure if it's genuine misunderstanding or a more malicious attempt to present the Bible in a certain light. I'm leaning towards the former: I think your average professor employed at a liberal college doesn't have the time - or desire - to do the really do the homework necessary to understand the text. Then they end up doing a cursory study and cross their fingers, hoping the students don't know better/will be too lazy to double-check their assertions.
One of the biggest things that bothers me is the portrayal of Christian women as submissive, mindless drones. This is said with the concession that at first, it was reallyyy hard even for me, as a Christian, to see how the Bible's exhortation for women to submit to their husbands wasn't tantamount to dismissing them as the inferior sex.
It didn't click until I read Ephesians and understood that biblical gender roles have been completely misrepresented. You hear "biblical gender roles" and you automatically get an image of a woman in shackles, fanning her husband with a palm branch with adoring, glazed-over eyes . It doesn't help that there's plenty of examples of men abusing their authority, all the while using the Bible to justify their actions.
But that's not what it's supposed to look like at all! The relationship between a husband and wife is supposed to mirror the relationship between Christ and the church, in the way that Christ sacrificially loved the church - self-denial to the point of death.
Here's John Piper's take on how the relationship has gotten warped: "When sin entered the world, it ruined the harmony of marriage NOT because it brought headship (leadership) and submission into existence, but because it twisted man's humble, loving headship into hostile domination in some men and lazy indifference in others. And it twisted woman's intelligent, willing submission into manipulative obsequiousness in some women and brazen insubordination in others. Sin didn't create headship and submission; it ruined them and distorted them and made them ugly and destructive.
... headship is not a right to command and control. It's a responsibility to love like Christ: to lay down your life for your wife in servant leadership. And submission is not slavish or coerced or cowering. That's not the way Christ wants the church to respond to his leadership: he wants it to be free and willing and glad and refining and strengthening."
So Biblical womanhood doesn't mean being weaker or less valued than men! The woman doesn't submit because she is less capable, less intelligent, less worthy. Jesus was a co-equal with God Himself, equal in power and authority, and even He, as GOD, submitted to the Father as a model for our submission to Him and within our relationships.
So ... no more passing around the false rumor that Christianity's all about keepin' down women. Hey, if we're going to fight the power, let's get it right!
