Are you there God? It's me, James

by James Christie

As many of you have noticed, this column, "Are you there God? It’s me James" (or whatever my bloody column is called. I didn’t name it. One of my editors slapped the title on one day and it stuck), hasn’t appeared in the last two issues of the Log. In response to this, many of you have come up to me and complained.

"Where was your column, James?" these people have said to me in high-pitched voices of utter suffering. "I looked all over the Log for it and instead of discovering your beautiful column that serves as a spiritual iron lung to my pain-filled soul." I found the crap one usually finds in the Pioneer Log. What gives! I want to read James bloody Christie!??

[By the way, I personally don’t think what the Log usually prints is crap. This is just what people told me. I would never use the word "crap" to describe the Log’s content. Instead I’d use the words, "Erin Haick"]

First off, I would like to apologize for the incalculable suffering (or joy) my column’s absence has caused you.

Secondly, I would like to explain to you the reasons behind its absence.

For starters, two weeks ago I submitted a column to the Log. In that piece I requested that our school library start carrying pornography. In it, I made many clichéd jokes about Dean Curtis Johnson, the Womyn’s Center and gangbangs. But lo and behold, the Log decided not to print it.

This broke my heart into a thousand tiny pieces - much like how your heart was broken, two weeks ago, when you excitedly took the Pioneer Log from out of your mailbox, and flipped to the forum section to get your weekly dose of spiritual Zoloft a la reading "Are you there God? Its me, James" only to find it missing.

And like me, this piercing in your heart caused you to weep. You, like I did, cried, sobbed, whimpered, moaned, panted, sweated, sniffled, and licked the bottom of an ice cube tray so your tongue could get stuck on it. The pain for us was unbearable. It even got to a certain point where we asked ourselves if we would ever be able to use our tongue again appropriately, be it to talk, lick an ice cream cone, or pleasure someone. But then the kind fireman removed the ice cube tray and we soon forgot the source of our inner despair.

Life can be like that sometimes. You’re suffering and then a fireman, an "A" on a midterm, or a smile from a physically attractive member of the opposite sex (or same sex or gerbil) rescues your disheartened spirits. This causes you to put aside for the time being, the unbearable lightness of being alive (oh when will it end!) so that for a few brief fleeting moments you’re able to savor the petty joys of life. You prance through fields of sunshine, try on pairs of exciting underwear while giggling with your friends, or use your tongue to cause another person to make funny noises and clamp their thighs tighter around thy crown.

Friday comes again and you open you your mailbox to find the Pio Log waiting for you. You tear it open like a Jewish four-year-old on the eighth night of Chanukah knowing that, unlike last week, there has to be a column by James Christie inside just waiting for you to consume.

But nooooooo.

The column isn’t there.

"Did those evil bastards at the Pio Log, refuse to print James’ column for a second time in a row?" you ask yourself full of rage.

Actually, no.

Last week’s absence of James’ column was caused by a horror much greater than a Pio Log editor. It was caused by an affliction that haunts or will one day torment many of us.

This great demon is called - Thesis!

I, James Christie, am writing a thesis for sociology/anthropology this semester. And oh, let me tell you, how horrible it is. You work, work, work, and feel like you’re getting nowhere. You research, research, research, and feel like you’re not learning anything. You write, write, write, but feel like you’re repeating yourself over and over again.

Thesis is a demon that never leaves you alone. It’s just like herpes. It’s all fine and dormant when you’re calm and you thinking you’

re doing great! But then you get stressed thinking about how you haven’t written about the ethic of consumption or the work ethic in the 19th and 20th century yet and you start blistering up all over again.

So instead of writing a column last week, I wrote 20 or 30 or I don’t know how many pages on the colonial American work ethic and I’m not even near where I want to be in my thesis!

I need to get back to writing about how the ethic of consumption lay dormant within the colonial American work ethic now. Wish me luck. I’ll try to keep on finding time in between my thesis to write these columns. But I’m not promising anything.