the point

I think I have figured out what I am going to do on this blog.  In my first post I made a list of all the things I am, the things I do or am doing and the things I am interested in (for a composition teacher, that was a lousy sentence...I digress.) Since my wife keeps everyone updated on her blog with the goings on in the less-than-wild world of our life I do not feel any pressure to do a running autobiography here.  Instead I am going to apply antithetical thinking to each of those things one at a time.  Sine I have adult ADD, these posts will probably be short and poorly argued (i.e. overgeneralizations, anecdotal evidence, massive presuppositions on first principles, etc... in other words, all the things I will try to beat out of my Critical Thinking students) but hopefully mildly entertaining.  

I will make my first post a little description of what "antithesis" actually is and what it isn't.  I will also outline a few of the presuppositions I am working with.  I will not argue for them, I will just assume them.  I figure that if the modern intellectual establishment gets to take all sorts of things for granted, why can't I?  After all, it wasn't until about 200 years ago that my presuppositions that ruled the world for a few dozen millennium, were cast aside for a series of ephemeral fads (fads that had changed every three month or so ever since.) Alas, I am jumping ahead of myself.  More on all of that later.

Chet

another blog

I think I have started about 8 blogs at this point in my illustrious blogging career. Only one has lasted and really only because it is a group blog. This will probably see a flurry of action for a month or two and go down as Jon Bon Jovi has so eloquently put it, "in a blaze of glory." Oh well, low expectations begets blessed satisfaction....or so I've heard. I suppose I ought to introduce myself:

I am Chet. I live in a little slice heaven called Somis, California. Also know as "God's County," where indeed milk and honey flows.

I am a husband to a pretty little lady. She smells like coconut and finds me mildly humorous. We have travelled to a bunch of places and are planning on travelling quite a bit more but still find Somis better than anywhere.

I am a high school teacher at a Christian school. I use to teach the Bible but now I am teaching Critical Thinking and Composition. Not because I don't like the Bible anymore...because I do...

I am going to grad school. I am getting a Master of Studies in Classical Christian Studies from New St. Andrews College. I start in August and just got my 1000+ pages of books today. Latin, Plato and Aquinas...Fun stuff.

I am a photographer (for a little extra coin.) I do all sorts of different types of pictures. If you look at the Proctor Surfboards ad in the latest Surfer Magazine, you can see one of them.

I am a surfboard maker. Accumulating a legion of surfboards would be too expensive if I did not make them myself. Not to mention that my neighbors love the smell of resin wafting through the air as it mingles with the smell of their pot roast at dinner time.

I am a farmer (of sorts.) I actually have a modest garden that I derive entirely too much pleasure out of tending. I am growing tomatoes, which I do not like. I am also growing corn, which I love. I was growing strawberries until my dogs ate them. I was also growing radishes until the local Somis rabbit posse ate them. I plan on planting a vineyard and making my own wine.

I am a builder (again, of sorts.) I am building an addition onto my house. Mostly learning as I go and bribing people who know already with beer and surfboards.

I am interested in: theology, beer, philosophy, dachshunds, Notre Dame football, G.K. Chesterton, music, poetry, ukuleles, 1965 Dodge Darts, surfing, The Reformation, agrarianism, the hookah, spy novels, Mexico, the kinesiology of ankles, the Middle Ages, the NHL, barbecuing, satire, Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, hummingbirds, old Bibles, mowing my lawn, The Great Books, and collecting and drinking wine...the list goes on and on.

To tell you the truth, I don't have any real goal in mind for this blog. It'll probably have something to do with, or at least relate back to the title of blog. "Living in Antithesis" is basically the desire to live by principles from God's Word. As these principles are more often than not set in direct opposition to the world, Christians ought to find themselves living in antithesis. I want to do that.

Chet