The Role of the Mythical Janus

In the year 153 B.C. the Roman god Janus was placed at the head of the calendar. With two faces, he could look back on past events and forward to the future. Janus became an ancient symbol for resolutions and as a result many Romans made amends with their enemies and gave them gifts before the new year. The Romans named the first month of the year - January - after Janus, the mythical king of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. From a historical standpoint, what we call New Years Resolutions originated in an early pagan society.

I believe that every year we should briefly take on the role of Janus, the mythical man who looked at the past and then to the future. We, like the mythical king, should take a look at our accomplishments and failures of the previous year and then make resolutions and intend to reform old habits during the year to come.

During 2008, I

• received the Sacrament of Confirmation. I made a personal commitment to practice my faith regardless of my parents.
• finished the first draft of my second novel, Philosopher Kings, during NaNoWriMo 2008.
• did not change my email. No really, I didn't. I've had the same email address now since July 21, 2007.
• mourned the loss of another grandmother who passed away the day after Thanksgiving after suffering from two heart attacks.
• realized that I don't like Chemistry. I've always hated science, but I thought I'd like Chemistry. I was wrong.
• definitively decided to pursue the priesthood in a letter that I gave to the Bishop on the day of my Confirmation.
• started Philflipsnor, and wrote 70 entries. I've had this blog the longest, and I don't intend to let it go anytime soon.

During 2009, I will

• spend less time on the computer daily as there are so many more productive things I could be doing.
• increase my prayer life as the answer to all of my worries, dreads, and transgressions is prayer.
• spend more time with my family. If I go to the seminary after high school, I only have two more years living in California.
• follow my diet for the entire year. I know that this resolution is aggressive, but I believe that it is also entirely reachable.
• read two books every month. I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to lately, but that's all going to change.
• finish my second novel and write my third. I'd like to edit my second novel, and then participate in NaNoWriMo 2009.
• continue regularly posting blog entries. Whether or not it be here, I've been blogging since 2005 and want to continue.

Perhaps you have, in the past, been apart of the large percent of optimists who didn't achieve their New Years Resolutions. Well according the the Chinese zodiac, 2009 is the year of the Ox, which is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. I can tell this is going to be a good year for high hopes.

Dona eis requiem sempiternam.

In loving memory of my late grandmother, I have recorded myself singing Pie Jesu, a motet from the Requiem Mass:



Original audio source: Pie Jesu.mp3

"Pie Jesu Domine, / Dona eis requiem sempiternam." translates as "Sweet Lord Jesus, / Grant them everlasting rest."

Binary Sudoku

In my lifelong quest to uncover that which is the zenith of mental stimuli, I have discovered binary sudoku. Manifold more stimulating than regular sudoku, mastering binary sudoku may even be, dare I say, more fruitful than writing a novel.

Cold Turkey

My second cousins from Germany spent Christmas in California. While they were here, we we went to some fast food restaurant and they ordered a medium soft drink and medium french fries. When they received their food, they exclaimed "This is a medium?" They were über surprised (pun intended) that what Americans call medium is very large compared to Europe's standards.

America is a fat nation, and by no standards do I consider myself a slim person. As Emerson once proclaimed: a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I am not going to let this wound enslave me. I am going to be a nonconformist, and now that the Christmas celebrations are over with, I am beginning my diet. Beginning on January 1, here are the rules that I am holding myself to follow:

• Resolved to seldom eat from fast food restaurants.
• Resolved to never drink carbonated drinks.
• Resolved to order salads and water when dining at restaurants.
• Resolved to eat one serving when dining at home.
• Resolved to drink at least three liters of water daily.
• Resolved to eat three well-balanced meals daily.
• Resolved to eat three servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
• Resolved to cycle ten miles weekly.
• Resolved to do two minutes of push ups and sit ups daily.
• Resolved to jog for forty-five minutes tetraweekly.

I don't think this sudden want to take control of my body and of my health is just one of my many impulses because I don't want to leave this earth in the same physical state as both of my grandmothers. Both of their weights played a huge factor in their deaths, and I want to prevent the same thing from happening to me.

I went out today and bought some running clothes and a pair of running shoes with some of the money that I received for Christmas. However long this diet lasts, I want to be well-suited for it.

The Spirit of Christmas

I have recorded a short audioblog for this Christmas season commenting on "The Spirit of Christmas":



Original audio source: spiritofchristmas.mp3

Jesus reminds us that "without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" (Matthew 10:8). These words are wonderful to keep in mind as we are celebrating Christmas with our families.

Candids of Fools

Yesterday I posted a cast photograph from Fools and after seeing it on my blog, my Uncle Tony sent me seventy-two photographs that he took during the show. Here are some of the best:


The last one is just to give you a good idea what the set looked like. I am so happy at how well these photographs turned out, and I hope that you enjoy at least some them.

I just lost The Game.

Objective: avoid thinking about The Game. Here're the rules:

Rule 1: You are always playing The Game.

Everyone is playing The Game. Participation in The Game requires neither consent nor awareness of its existence.

Rule 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.

Loss is temporary. As soon as you forget about The Game, you start winning again.

Rule 3: Loss must be announced.

You must tell everyone you can that you have lost.

Fools Cast Photo

Addicted to Podcasts

It's no secret that I am addicted to podcasts. But how bad has it truly gotten? Here are the ones that I am currently subscribed to:

• Catholic Answers LIVE - a two hour, daily, call-in radio program, featuring topics that touch on every aspect of our lives as Catholics.
  
• Comedy Central: Stand-Up - videos featuring comedians plucked from the renowned Gotham Comedy Club that deliver new shots of stand-up every week.
• Ctrl+Alt+Chicken - a cooking show where the two "chefs" don't know how to cook. Each episode featured a different dish, including the history of the dish in a comedic format.
  
• Diggnation - a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top Digg social bookmarking news stories.
• Dollverse - a fan podcast devoted to Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.
  
• Good Commitment - an internet comedy show that delivered comedy sketches to an enthusiastic audience.
• The Guild - an absolutely hilarious web series about a guild of online gamers.
• Knights of the Guild - a fan podcast devoted to The Guild.
  
• MuggleCast - the number one Harry Potter podcast online.
• The Revision3 Gazette - a behind-the-scenes podcast that investigates Revision3, an Internet television company.
• The Signal - a fan podcast devoted to Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity.
  
• SHoE Podcast - a fan podcast all about Smallville.
  
• Tangent - a weekly sketch comedy podcast, where nothing is off limits as long as its off topic.
  
• That Catholic Show - a video podcast that takes you inside the Catholic Church in a fun and amusing way, while still being completely reverent.
• Web Drifter - a video podcast that looks behind the Internet's most intriguing and outlandish websites from wizards to Peter Pan wannabees.
• The WEIRD Show - a weekly roundup of the weird, strange, odd, wonderful, unusual stories that occur in the world.
  
• Word on Fire - weekly homilies posted by Roman Catholic priest Fr. Robert Barron.
  
• WrimoRadio - a companion podcast to NaNoWriMo.
• The 10th Wonder - a podcast all about NBC's Heroes.
  
• The 9th - another Heroes podcast.
  

I do my best to listen or watch the episode of each of the above podcasts when they appear in my podcatcher. I can't always keep up, of course, as over two hours of content appears in my podcatcher daily, but I enjoy every one of the above podcasts and hopefully you will enjoy a couple as a result of my posting this list.

Rainy Californian Day

I am absolutely perplexed by the chaos that breaks out when a little water starts falling from the sky. Suddenly nobody remembers how to drive, students want to watch movies or play games instead of learning, and people are freaking out because they have to put a sweater on before they leave the house. My God, it's winter and everybody is going crazy in southern California all because of a little water from the sky.

The Beginning of Phase 2

This blog entry is the sixtieth blog entry I have written on Philflipsnor and it marks the beginning of Philflipsnor's second phase. What are phases, you ask? I had always thought that web logs went through different phases, and the blog's tag line articulated what the blogger was trying to convey through his blog entries during that phase.

The first phase of my blog had the tag line "Are you a robot or an alien?". As you might expect it to be, that is a quote from Heroes. In the second season, one character explains his theory that people break down into only two categories. A person is either a robot or an alien. Robots operate out of programs and can only follow orders. Aliens, on the other hands, are more abstract thinkers, and if they have to break the rules to keep to their own paths, they do so without fear. Aliens are more leaders than anything else. I had hoped that I was an alien, and I wanted to convey that through my blog entries.

The second phase of my blog has the tag line "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." This is a famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Self-Reliance. Emerson speaks of consistency as doing the same thing day after day and not striving to make something more out of your life. He says that consistency is something that kills the mind and soul. He relates consistency to conforming to other people's thoughts and becoming the parrot of other men's ideas. Emerson says that a consistency is the object of little minds and he gives people the challenge to be nonconformist.

During the second phase of my web log, I hereby pledge to think outside of the box and not let consistency and conforming to other men's ideas transform me into a parrot.

Fools: Week 2 Roundup

Though Thursday night's performance went well, we knocked the socks off of the audience during our closing night on Friday. There wasn't a thing that I would have done differently Friday, and I am so relieved that we finished the production with a bang.

After we finished our performance on Friday and after we finished taking pictures, we shooed everyone out of the drama room, and we all sat in a circle. For two hours, one-by-one we took turns sharing what this play had meant to us. The experience of sharing our feelings was so emotional, and while I tried to say how I felt, I couldn't be as open as I wanted to because of my introverted nature.

Instead, however, I took the time this morning to write a letter expressing my feelings, and I hope each person who worked on Fools will read today at the Cast Party:

Dearest friends,

I am introverted by nature, and there are so many more things that I wanted to say to you all that I couldn't last night. Writing this letter gives me a chance to say what I had meant to say and I can do it in the comfort of my own home, at a time when I am in my pajamas drinking tea.

I take the bus home from school. Every day after rehearsal, in order to get from the theater to the bus stop, I would have to cross the football field. And every day I would experience a transcendental moment. You know those times when you are surrounded by nature and maybe you're not religious but you experience a sort of spirituality? That's what happened to me every day after rehearsal. As I made my way across the football field, I would admire the colors from the sunset that were still painted in the cloudy sky, I would admire the chilly wind and the trees that surrounded me, and all the while I would be listening to some Enya-esque music.

During these moments, I wasn't thinking of all of the homework I had that night, or what tests I had to study for the next day, or whether I had a meeting that evening, or whether my parents were mad at me. Rather, I was thinking of the experiences I have had working on Fools. Throughout my entire life, there hasn't been a period in my life when I have been so sad to leave school because from the moment I walked into the theater for rehearsal, I was walking into my home away from home. You were my second family, and there were times when I preferred you to my blood family.

At the beginning of Fools, I only knew a few of you. The rest of you were faces. I was so scared that I would not be accepted because all of the people in the Theatre classes had mostly likely formed cliques. I was also scared that your talent transcended my own, and that I wouldn't fit in. My pre-conceived ideas of you all were destroyed during the first rehearsal, where everyone accepted me for who I am and helped me germinate my talent. Those of who were were only faces took on personalities and over time turned into beautiful people who I am so happy to have gotten to know. Those of you who I had known before took on more depth and allowed me to better get to know you.

The English language is not abstruse enough to allow me to articulate how much you mean to me, and there aren't words to describe my emotions. This entire experience is indescribable, and I don't know what I am going to do with myself after school on Monday. I don't think any of us will truly know how to handle the emptiness that will consume our lives now that Fools is over. But I do know one thing: we can't do it alone. We can't go on with life like Fools never happened. If I had to give you one piece of advice, embrace the friendships that you have created over the past three months and rather than mourn because of closure, celebrate because you were a part of something great.

Vivat Fools,
Phillip Shifflet

It's over, and while life is going to resume and my sanity is going to slowly come back to me, I'm going to miss everything about this theatrical production. Everything.

Photography Abstruseness

Every time I look at this picture, I am perplexed by its abstruseness.

Thinking of My Future

Lately I have been meditating on two points regarding my future:

1. My English teacher is brilliant. In fact, save for my Freshman English teacher, she is as brilliant as all of my previous English teachers combined. I don't know how to describe her, but it's the combination of her vocabulary, and her personality, and the way she teaches. The thing is, this year she has a student teacher who is teaching us instead. And I mean this in no disrespect toward the student teacher, but I feel as if I am being deprived of a plethora of knowledge that I would have otherwise had access to. For instance, today I asked the student teacher a question on a quotation and she had the students answer it for me instead of attacking the analysis for herself. At the end of the period, the "master" teacher came over to me and told me that she would give me her interpretation of the quote. She gave me a two minute spiel, and it was frakking brilliant. In light of all of this, I am going to ask to be her student aid next year during her Junior class. That way, I can help her out as well as soak up all of her brilliance that I lost this year.

Edit: I spoke with my English teacher today and asked her if I could be her student aid for her Junior class next year and she nearly jumped out of her seat. "Are you serious? You would actually be able to grade papers!" Coming from her, that's a huge compliment and I am going to speak with the counselors to see if I can get this to work out.

2. I have also been thinking about the logistics of college, and I realize that I could do one of two things. The first route I could take is right after high school I could apply for the seminary and enter into it during my Freshman year of college. Or, I could go to a community college and take my general education classes for one or two years before I enter into the seminary. The second option, which I am heavily considering at the moment, would be advantageous for a number of reasons, namely it would give me a chance to live on my own and support myself for a while as well as it would grant me some additional time to pray to God for discernment in my vocation. I have given the second option much thought, and figured that I could take a semester at a community college for less than $500 and at the same time could get a job to support myself. There's something telling me to take a break from the end of high school to when I start the seminary, and I want to spend that time making sure my decision is a true vocation from God, you know?

I guess we'll both have to wait to find out what the future brings as it pertains to both of these points.

Can I Intercede For Myself?

All of the space and time travel in tonight's episode of Heroes reminded me of an answer Jimmy Akin gave on Catholic Answers Live a few weeks ago regarding the theory of ET-simultaneity:



Original audio source: own_intercession.mp3

The prospect of, granted I enter into heaven when I die, asking myself to pray for me is very intriguing.

End of the Calamity

The end of the calamity is near, and my life is beginning to regain order since everything that has happened throughout the past two weeks, but I desperately do not want it to. I remember when my father's mother died, I experienced a slew of emotions for a week, and then I finally came to terms with her death. Eventually, my life regained order, but when it did, my memories of my father's mother began to fade until she was absent from my mind during my day-to-day activities. Today, I still have a memory of her, but it is faded since she has been absent for the past year and a half.

Now that my mother's mother is gone and I have come to terms with her death, it is going to be hard to let go, since I spent a considerable amount of time with her when she was alive. Last Thursday, my mother asked me to compose a letter that would be cremated with her remains. I spent a long time writing my letter, and poured my heart and soul into what I wrote. It was my final goodbye. But I don't want to say goodbye, for fear that she is going to begin to fade from my memory just as my father's mother did when she died. I have a very stubborn personality, and I desperately don't want that to happen, but I realize it's inevitable and I am going to have to accept that as a fact sooner or later.

For the first time this winter, it was gloomy today. That's symbolic of closure, right? Or am I looking too into trivial things?

Fools: Week 1 Roundup

Fools is my first full theatrical production, and because of the amazing experience I have had working on it so far, I am more in love with theatre than I have ever been.

Thursday was opening night, and we received an amazing reaction from the audience. At the end of the evening, I truly felt like eight weeks of rehearsals had paid off. When we had finished, everyone was praising me for the work I had done and several people said that without me, it wouldn't have been a show. Not to mention nobody believed that it was my first theatrical production. It was such an amazing thing to have a barrage of compliments, and while I tried to remain humble during the entire thing, I was so proud of myself.

For Friday night's performance, I did not act, rather, my counterpart acted (since we have two casts) and while he did a good job, I honestly think that we got a bigger reaction from the audience on opening night than they did last night. Sill, they did very well and I was so happy for them too. After the play on Friday night, the entire cast and crew went our to Denny's for a mini-Cast party in celebration or the good work we had done during the first week.

We still have two more shows, so here's hoping we blow the socks off of the audience during both nights.

A Change in Scheduling

Since the inception of Weekly Apologetics as a series of blog entries focused on Catholic apologetics, I have not found one day during the week that is optimal for me to sit down and write a exhaustive entry. I have been so busy, and from this point forward, new chapters will be posted sporadically, while still sticking to the "weekly" aspect that the name indicates. Until then, God bless you and keep you.