Chan's Room Quotes

You don’t like romantic shit,” Luke remarks and frowns at me. “I don’t like watching you lay the romantic shit on my best friend, pal. It’s disgusting. This,” I gesture around the room with my hands, “is not a movie. But I do like watching Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, and a number of other hot actors lay on the romantic shit in a movie. I have a vagina.” “I’m aware,” Luke remarks earning a glare from Nate. “Although, not first-hand,” he quickly adds.

God is compassionate and just, loving and holy, wrathful and forgiving. WE can't sideline His more difficult attributes to make room for the palatable ones.

You can be happy about anything. You can be happy about life. You can be happy about music. You can be happy about food. You can be happy about sleep. You can be happy about others, and I can be happy about STAY.

I am finally awarded selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for all my hard work as a depressed person. I am waiting for the pharmacist to fill my prescription, and to present me with my medal. Thank you to Dr. Chan for nominating me for this honor, and my brain for burdening me.

And when we talk about race today, with all the pain packed into that conversation, the Holy Spirit remains in the room, This doesn't mean the conversations aren't painful, aren't personal, aren't charged with emotion. But it does mean we can survive. We can survive honest discussions about slavery, about convict leasing, about stolen land, deportation, discrimination, and exclusion. We can identify the harmful politics of gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminal justice laws, and policies that disproportionately affect people of color negatively. And we can expose the actions of white flight, the real impact of all-white leadership, the racial disparity in wages, and opportunities for advancement. We can lament and mourn. We can be livid and enraged. We can be honest. We can tell the truth. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is here. We must. For only by being truthful about how we got here can we begin to imagine another way.

But rather than my race being the elephant in the room, it seemed instead to be my secret knowledge. I knew all about the world of my white teachers and peers, but they didn’t seem to know a thing about mine.

In another important area of church life, the worship life of the congregation, the Western priority of the individual determines the approach to worship over the biblical guidelines for worship. Worship in the white captivity of the church is oftentimes a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same room. Worship is just between the individual and God, and the church service exists to help facilitate that individual communion.

Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. ‘Groovy’ Bruce Channing attaches a form to a file. Ann Williams turns a page. Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound. David Cusk turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages of two separate files at the same time. Ken Wax turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Chris Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ann Williams sniffs slightly and turns a page. Meredith Rand does something to a cuticle. ‘Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Kenneth ‘Type of Thing’ Hindle detaches a Memo 402-C(1) from a file. ‘Second-Knuckle’ Bob McKenzie looks up briefly while turning a page. David Cusk turns a page. A yawn proceeds across one Chalk’s row by unconscious influence. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Rotes Group Room 2 hushed and brightly lit, half a football field in length. Howard Cardwell shifts slightly in his chair and turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. traces his jaw’s outline with his ring finger. Ed Shackleford turns a page. Elpidia Carter turns a page. Ken Wax attaches a Memo 20 to a file. Anand Singh turns a page. Jay Landauer and Ann Williams turn a page almost precisely in sync although they are in different rows and cannot see each other. Boris Kratz bobs with a slight Hassidic motion as he crosschecks a page with a column of figures. Ken Wax turns a page. Harriet Candelaria turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. Ambient room temperature 80° F. Sandra Pounder makes a minute adjustment to a file so that the page she is looking at is at a slightly different angle to her. ‘Irrelevant’ Chris Fogle turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Each Tingle’s two-tiered hemisphere of boxes. ‘Groovy’ Bruce Channing turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Six wigglers per Chalk, four Chalks per Team, six Teams per group. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Plus administration and support. Bob McKenzie turns a page. Anand Singh turns a page and then almost instantly turns another page. Ken Wax turns a page. Chris ‘The Maestro’ Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Harriet Candelaria turns a page. Boris Kratz turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages. Anand Singh turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown uncrosses his legs and turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. The slow squeak of the cart boy’s cart at the back of the room. Ken Wax places a file on top of the stack in the Cart-Out box to his upper right. Jay Landauer turns a page. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page and then folds over the page of a computer printout that’s lined up next to the original file he just turned a page of. Ken Wax turns a page. Bob Mc-Kenzie turns a page. Ellis Ross turns a page. Joe ‘The Bastard’ Biron-Maint turns a page. Ed Shackleford opens a drawer and takes a moment to select just the right paperclip. Olive Borden turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page and then almost instantly turns another page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Paul Howe turns a page and then sniffs circumspectly at the green rubber sock on his pinkie’s tip. Olive Borden turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Devils are actually angels. Elpidia Carter and Harriet Candelaria reach up to their Cart-In boxes at exactly the same time. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. ‘Type of Thing’ Ken Hindle looks up a routing code. Some with their chin in their hand. Robert Atkins turns a page even as he’s crosschecking something on that page. Ann Williams turns a page. Ed Shackleford searches a file for a supporting document. Joe Biron-Maint turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page.

It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of the task which it is performing, and survey what it has done; it is always looking for, and often finding, patterns. Now I said that an intelligence canjump out of its task, but that does not mean that it always will. However, a little prompt- ing will often suffice. For example, a human being who is reading a book may grow sleepy. Instead of continuing to read until the book is finished, he is just as likely to put the book aside and turn off the light. He has stepped "out of the system" and yet it seems the most natural thing in the world to us. Or, suppose person A is watching television when person B comes in the room, and shows evident displeasure with the situation. Person A may think he understands the problem, and try to remedy it by exiting the present system (that television program), and flipping the chan- nel knob, looking for a better show. Person B may have a more radical concept of what it is to "exit the system"-namely to turn the television off! Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples' lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from!

I spent a few hours with Mercedes. She was, on the surface, quite troll-like—a lover of jubilant online chaos. She told me about her favorite 4chan thread. It was started by "a guy who's genuinely in love with his dog, and his dog went in heat, and so he went around collecting samples and injecting them into his penis and he fucked his dog and got her pregnant and they're his puppies." Mercedes laughed. "That's the thread I told the FBI about when they asked me about 4chan, and some of the officers actually got up and left the room.

These are the daily annoyances, the subtle messages of whiteness. But we bear other scars, too. Over and over I have seen white men and women get praise for their gifts and skills while women of color are told only about their potential for leadership. When white people end up being terrible at their jobs, I have seen supervisors move mountains to give them new positions more suited to their talents, while people of color are told to master their positions or be let go. I have been in the room when promises were made to diversify boardrooms, leadership teams, pastoral staff, faculty and staff positions, only to watch committees appoint a white man in the end. It's difficult to express how these incidents accumulate, making you feel undervalued, underappreciated, and ultimately expendable.

Yorick's Used and Rare Books had a small storefront on Channing but a deep interior shaded by tall bookcases crammed with history, poetry, theology, antiquated anthologies. There was no open wall space to hang the framed prints for sale, so Hogarth's scenes of lust, pride, and debauchery leaned rakishly against piles of novels, folk tales, and literary theory. In the back room these piles were so tall and dusty that they took on a geological air, rising like stalagmites. Jess often felt her workplace was a secret mine or quarry where she could pry crystals from crevices and sweep precious jewels straight off the floor. As she tended crowded shelves, she opened one volume and then another, turning pages on the history of gardens, perusing Edna St. Vincent Millay: "We were very tired, were very merry, / We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry..." dipping into Gibbon: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay..." and old translations of Grimm's Fairy Tales: "They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and stony places. And when it rained, the little sister said, 'Heaven and our hearts are weeping together...

Why then had he felt that damned tug on his heart when she’d stepped into the room? Granted, it wasn’t the only part of him he’d felt a tug in, but that he could understand.

They’d been up off and on since 4:00 a.m. Frida’s article was due last week. All morning, she went back and forth between Harriet’s play corner and back to the living room sofa, where she had her notes spread out on the coffee table. She wrote the same paragraph over and over, trying to explain Bayesian modeling in layman’s terms.

I have been in the room when promises were made to diversify boardrooms, leadership teams, pastoral staff, faculty and staff positions, only to watch committees appoint a white man in the end. It's difficult to express how these incidences accumulate, making you feel undervalued, unappreciated, and ultimately...expendable.

Our only chance at dismantling racial injustice is being more curious about its origins than we are worried about our comfort. It’s not a comfortable conversation for any of us. It is risky and messy. It is haunting work to recall the sins of our past. But is this not the work we have been called to anyway? Is this not the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate truth and inspire transformation? It’s haunting. But it’s also holy. And when we talk about race today, with all the pain packed into that conversation, the Holy Spirit remains in the room. This doesn’t mean the conversations aren’t painful, aren’t personal, aren’t charged with emotion. But it does mean we can survive. We can survive honest discussions about slavery, about convict leasing, about stolen land, deportation, discrimination, and exclusion. We can identify the harmful politics of gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminal justice laws, and policies that disproportionately affect people of color negatively. And we can expose the actions of white institutions—the history of segregation and white flight, the real impact of all-white leadership, the racial disparity in wages, and opportunities for advancement. We can lament and mourn. We can be livid and enraged. We can be honest. We can tell the truth. We can trust that the Holy Spirit is here. We must. For only by being truthful about how we got here can we begin to imagine another way.

Worship in the white captivity of the church is oftentimes a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same room. Worship is just between the individual and God, and the church service exists to help facilitate that individual communion.

Our collective silence was shattered by a trembling white female voice: “I just can’t believe it. This is so much to take in. I mean, I had no idea.” Inhale. “This is just unbelievable. Why didn’t anyone teach us this? I feel so cheated, deceived. I mean, really.” Inhale. “This is going to sound crazy. I know it sounds crazy, but I really didn’t know that slavery happened on purpose. Like on purpose.” Inhale. “I don’t know. I just kinda thought that it just…happened.” Inhale. Her sobbing then filled the room as she grappled for the first time with our country’s real history. Slavery was no accident. We didn’t trip and fall into black subjugation. Racism wasn’t a bad joke that just never went away. It was all on purpose.

Thank you to Dr. Chan for nominating me for this honor, and my brain for burdening me.

《Dungeon, dungeon! Yippee!》 Fel’s massive tail was wagging up a storm, Dora-chan was taking advantage of the room’s tall ceiling to do dramatic flips and spins in the air, and Sui was jumping for joy at an incredibly high speed.

Day’s thoughts were interrupted when Detective Johnson strolled into the conference room and announced proudly, “Detective Day, you are going to love me, handsome.” “Oh yeah, you finally got me that date with Channing Tatum?” Day quipped. Day heard God huff with annoyance, not bothering to turn around and face them.

God designed Communion to be an intimate act of remembering His flesh and blood. More than just an exercise of the mind, He wanted us to actually eat of the bread and drink of the cup. And Communion is not just about intimacy with Jesus; it’s also about intimacy with one another. Remember that Jesus had just washed the disciples’ feet and commanded them to love one another just as He loved them. It was after this that He taught them to stare at His broken body and blood to remind them of how He loved them. As we consider the cross and look around the room, we should be asking ourselves, “Am I willing to love the people in this room to that extent?” This probably sounds impossible to most churchgoers, yet it’s what Christ asks for. Just imagine if the Church was made up of people who would literally go to the cross for one another. How could people shrug their shoulders as they witnessed that kind of love? This is what unbelievers should see when they watch us break bread with one another. If Communion feels like a curious add-on to our church services rather than the very core of everything we’re about, then we’re missing the point of the Church.

In the midst of our failed attempts at loving Jesus, His grace covers us. Each of us has lukewarm elements and practices in our life; therein lies the senseless, extravagant grace of it all. The Scriptures demonstrate clearly that there is room for our failure and sin in our pursuit of God. His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3). His grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). I’m not saying that when you mess up, it means you were never really a genuine Christian in the first place. If that were true, no one could follow Christ. The distinction is perfection (which none will attain on this earth) and a posture of obedience and surrender, where a person perpetually moves toward Christ. To call someone a Christian simply because he does some Christian-y things is giving false comfort to the unsaved. But to declare anyone who sins “unsaved” is to deny the reality and truth of God’s grace.

When this happens, people of color in the organization get saddled with the task of constantly fixing the harm done by halfhearted diversity efforts. We find ourselves challenging hiring decisions that don't reflect the company's stated commitment to diversity, pushing allies to speak up in rooms where marginalized voices aren't represented, responding to events or sermons that didn't go far enough (or worse, sermons that perpetuated harmful ideas). But must we always be the prophetic voice, the dissenter, the corrector, the fixer? Organizations would be wise to tap Black women in helping to craft the direction of the organization, the vision of the publication, the purpose of the ministry. When our voices are truly desired, numbers will cease to be the sole mark of achievement.

She said I made it to the papers as your domestic partner.” Channing threw back his head and grimaced. “Oh God. I’m sorry, Tino. I don’t know where they got that impression.” Tino wrinkled his nose. “From two guys running around in their underwear, smelling like come, and from the fact that I wasn’t in the room that was supposed to be mine. Don’t be dense, Channing. And she wasn’t mad. There were no offers—no serious offers—to come down and defend my reputation.” Channing cocked his head and regarded Tino skeptically. “Doesn’t living in a domestic partnership with me reduce the number of cows your father can get for you in marriage?” Tino crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue. “The only way he gets cows in that exchange is for someone to check my maidenhead. If some town elder tries to stick a finger up my butt to see if it’s still tight, I’m borrowing your old Dell and taking off his head.