Conference Thoughts, Day 1

I am at a conference this week. So I plan to include my thoughts as they come in the following pages. I will update this page each time I have a new thought (please, no jokes about my inability to do so).

So I just ate my introductory lunch and it was interesting to watch the hierarchical structure of things. First and foremost, you had the administrators. These are the guys (and they are all men, so don’t assume that I’m using the indefinite article in this instance) who have somehow risen to the top of their perspective organizations and rest high on the hog of all that the taxpayers and various and sundry supporters of higher education can offer. They wax poetic about their self importance and contain within their minds a simplified idea of how their organizations are structured, the intricacies of the inner workings of colleges and universities, and the bloated assumption that those around them actually care what they think. These guys jumped to the front of the buffet line, no questions asked and no apologies given. They attacked the front two tables so they could be seen laughing at each presenters vapid jokes and cajoling with their brethren over the alleged levity of this afternoon’s endeavors. In conversation, they whisper vague generalities and eye the room in a mad sweep in search of somebody of greater importance than you. Faced with a conversant well versed in the art of ass kissing, they will talk for hours about their successes. Faced with a person capable of seeing through their thin veneer of intelligence, however, they take personal offense at each criticism and quickly extricate themselves from the tense situation.


Next, we have the posers. These people are the upper crust of management. They are of reasonable intelligence and at one point in their pathetic careers, they knew what they were doing and possessed a zeal and a work ethic that drove them to produce great things. But after early success, they traded in their intellectual prowess for vain grabs and large stacks of dollars, which they use to purchase large homes, fancy cars, and trophy wives/husbands. Unlike the administrators, these people know that their status in life is overvalued and that, had the driving force in their lives been truth as opposed to greed, they may have achieved a more fulfilling state. This produces a sadness that, while cleverly masked with shiny suits and polished teeth, is still plainly visible in the eyes. They sit two or three to a table near the back of the auditorium, blithely engaging in pointless conversation, forever seeking out the hotel bar or the attractive, young newcomer, whom they plan to use to fulfill self indulgent fantasies about a life that could have been.

After this we have the cynics. These people come from the same stock as the posers, but chose an alternate route. Unfortunately, their lives have been dominated by a large and unwieldy stroke of bad luck that has provided them none of the extravagant comforts of poserdom along with no intellectual opportunities. Their once bright eyed exuberance has faded, replaced by a hatred for what they do and those with whom they work. They are usually unshaven, dressed in cheap clothes fro Meijer and Target, and they spend most of their time either in quiet solitude or on long rants to coworkers about the relative stupidity of the world in comparison to themselves. This is my category, in case you were wondering.

Finally, we have the young and the restless. These are the people who graduated less than a year ago, and have finally got their claws into what they believe will be a career as opposed to just another job. Their minds are still blinded by an idealism that has been with them since birth and which was only bolstered in the façade of collegiate schoolwork. They believe that banality is beneath them and that they will reach the stratosphere of both intellectual and moral pursuits in short order. They actually believe that the remaining members of the conference are as enthusiastic as them, and they engage in conversation under this precept, allowing themselves to be sullied by the dark hearted cynicism and psychopathic tendencies of everyone else. Don’t feel bad for them, though. They will quickly realize the truth. They will soon see that all of this action today is a mere moment of the strutting and fretting Bill Shakespeare mentioned when he spoke the world as a stage and the moment each of us has in the limelight. They will realize this and then they will join the rest of us in pursuit of something we know not for reasons we can never fathom.

Our lunches finished, the master of ceremonies takes the stage. The crowd cheers. Let the game begin!

* * * *

There is a large, fat man sitting on a chair, sweating buckets. His cell phone rings incessantly and every time he answers it, he sighs with exasperation. He pops a new piece of Orbit gum in his mouth every five minutes and looks around the room as though in search of a clock which will give him a time different from that which his wristwatch states. He wants out of here as fast as he can. I feel his pain, and I hope that I am not in his position when I am nearing the end of my career. I hope that I’m on a beach somewhere warm, thinking back to a life well spent and people I loved. Either that, or I hope to find myself cut down in a hail of gunfire from some nameless thug who tried to kill the children who cower behind me and then run away, my death having given them another shot at survival.

One or the other.

* * * *

Reading through the guest list of this conference, I noticed three people with whom I used to work at a different state university in Ohio. One of these people has the unfortunate last name of “Fish,” and the equally unfortunate appearance thereof. I remember, back when I was still in their employ, I offered greater assistance to their respective offices, proposing all sorts of interesting projects and activities I could undertake. They turned me down cold. Now I am their equals. And not only that, but my position (at the larger state university in Ohio) is not in jeopardy of being cut due to the extreme budget crunch in Ohio’s collegiate system (thank you Bob Taft. No, really). I cannot say the same for them.

Revenge is dish best served, regardless of the temperature.

* * * *

There is a guy standing in the corner wearing blue jeans and a baseball cap with the logo of a large tractor trailer distributorship in eastern Ohio. Nobody wants to talk to this guy. He’s wearing the nametag and cheap lanyard they give to everyone, so we know he’s here for the conference and he’s standing next to the clock (at which everyone steals furtive glances), so we all see him. But his demeanor is of one who does not understand even the minimum décor of professionalism and he is thus banished to the realm of freaks and losers. Still, this man has a job and, given the percentage of BigWig™ attendees at this little shindig, chances are he’s relatively well versed in the information technology field and relatively well paid as well (at least, as well paid as you can be in the academic arena). This proves once and for all that, even though we pretend to be corporate, we still make room for those who think and live outside what is traditionally considered “normal.” Were that not the case, I would likely be unemployed. Or worse, I’d be flipping burgers for minimum wage at the local Burger hut.

* * * *

So the rest of the conference wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I actually learned something. And when I got tired of learning something, I gave up and worked on the next round of plays I hope to write. Everybody wins!

There was one funny moment, however. I sat in on a Microsoft demonstration of the new Windows Vista operating system. The guy, a born and bred Microsoft junkie, went on and on about how Vista makes vast improvements over XP in both usability and stability. He made particular mention of the new searching functions and file management system. Shortly thereafter, he meant to show us how the new file management / searching function works … and the machine crashed … and he couldn’t get it working again.

That was pretty damn funny, and I can just hear Nate laughing at me as I type this.

weeeeee!

Quicktime Video. Click at own risk.

What the?

In a recent prep sheet for mathematics exam at Washington State Community College, students found the following question:

"25: Condoleeza holds a watermelon just over the edge of roof of the 300-ft Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second. The height of the watermelon above the ground t seconds later is given by the formula h=-16t^2 + 20t + 300."

Are you as outraged over this question as I am? I mean, seriously, what is the professor thinking? What could have possibly been going through his mind when he made that question? Come on! Everybody knows that the acceleration due to gravity is 32 feet per second, not 16! The equation should have been h=-32t^2 + 20t + 300. What the hell are they teaching kids these days?

ADDENDUM:
It turns out that I am an idiot. It would seem that the equation in question is (g/2)*t^2 + vt + h. This is why I am not an engineer.

So i was wrong. And this professor IS a racist.

artistic endeavors

Thanks to this guy for the design.

Recalling History

Last week I had the privilege of attending a neat historical reading from the memoirs of Bill Yenofsky, a World War II veteran who's tour of duty took him through Africa to Rome and Germany and many points in between. Bill’s daughter Susan read her father’s words while he added a few extra words of explanation and apology throughout. You can listen to the whole thing, if you like, right here.

CACCC Update

Pat Robertson: "The problem is not that you have asthma. The problem is that you haven't been having enough sex!" [link]

More words of interest

Today is “African Tribal Drum” day in the dance studio beneath my office. Only now it has more of a Middle Eastern feel to it. Like a strange combination of some as-yet-unreleased song from Sting and a Muslim call to prayer screamed from the top of a minaret. The bass shakes the floor beneath me and the bongos provide a running rat-a-tat-tat which dances over the singers, who belt out melodious soprano melodies in strange languages I don’t understand.

It’s really quite cool.

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In response to yesterday’s missive on the dualistic nature of Christ, I received this happy e-mail:

“I hate it when you creationists try to pretend you know what you’re talking about. Adam didn’t live with God in the garden of Eden. There is no God. Darwin was right and you are wrong.”

I was shocked when I received this, mostly because I had no idea that people actually read this site. At best, I had hoped that a few of you might print it out and use the pages to line the bottoms of your bird cages. But even that requires work, and I assumed it was probably just too much to handle.

Seriously, though. I wasn’t talking about creation versus evolution. I was talking about God’s relationship with man as it is described in the Bible. It’s a story, and as with any story you can include descriptions that are factual, metaphorical, symbolic, and a whole bunch of other literary terms I never bothered to learn. In the case of evolution and creation, I have to say that it doesn’t matter to me whether it was strict creationism as some believe or some subset of the standard opinions on evolution as others, myself included, will state. Either way, the creation versus evolution debate says nothing about the existence of God or his interaction with humanity unless you either have an overvalued perspective of the significance of your scientific opinion or a strict, formulaic understanding of scripture.

Granted, there are a few things about evolution I don’t understand; macroevolution, in particular. I believe Kurt Vonnegut said it best in his book Timequake when he said, “Believing in evolution is like believing a tornado could rip through a junkyard and build a Boeing 747.” Some of it just seems a bit far fetched. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And I am more than man enough to admit that I’m too stupid to figure it out.

With respect to religion, however, there are only two types of people who have problems with evolution and Christianity. There are those who have been taught the tenets of strict creationism since birth and have never questioned its validity, and there are those who believe in a strict, literal, and formulaic interpretation of scripture. I reject both ways of thinking, so lumping me in with that crowd is small minded. You should have asked a question first, instead of jumping to conclusions.

My interpretation of scripture, that relational story I mentioned in my last post, leaves room for both evolution and God. And if it ultimately isn’t evolution, I think it’s obvious that there will be some sort of scientific explanation for how the world developed from the Big Bang to where we are now. After all, there seems to be a scientific explanation for almost everything else, right? Science doesn’t preclude God and God doesn’t preclude science. I believe that God, being the definition of truth and logic (and many many other things) would likely use science in his creation schema. And if not evolution, then something else equally as confusing.

Like I said, I’m too stupid to figure it out.

My main point in the previous post was not to claim that evolution is wrong. It was to claim that when you look at scripture with the idea of a story in mind, you can contemplate the deeper meanings the authors intended. When you look at things literally, without respect to the whole of human nature and how we view the world, it doesn’t make sense. And you envision a lot of useless debates that need not exist.

With regard to your second statement, “God does not exist,” I have only this to say. What reason(s) lead you to this conclusion? I welcome your response.

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I’m ready for the weekend. So here’s a picture of a sad pickle.

Pointless Essay #2: Humanity and Divinity (and my lack of understanding)

A friend of mine asked the following question of me today:

How do you understand Jesus' humanity and divinity?

Not having much to do today, I crafted a simple answer. And here it is:

"There are a multitude of ways to think about this issue. It doesn’t seem to make much sense that Jesus could be both fully God and fully man at the same time. And there is that part of me that wonders why God even needed to become human to begin with. If he’s God, why can’t he just make things the way that he wants?

Right?

When I look at the Bible, I think of it in terms of a story. I know that a lot of people like to focus on the laws and traditions contained within. I do that to a certain extent as well. I was raised Southern Baptist, remember. But now I can’t help but look at all of history in terms of a story. That’s why there’s so much poetry and singing and exclamations of rage and hate and love and heartbreak.

If you were to tell [name deleted to protect the semi-innocent] all the things about [him/her] that you liked in a philosophical format, [he/she] would likely be unimpressed. “I really like your hair. Your eyes are attractive. Your figure is pleasing,” you’d say. And [he/she] would respond, “Whatever, freak.” But if you say the same thing in poetry, expressing your feelings in a relational format, the meaning changes. It deepens.

Take Shakespeare for example. In Romeo and Juliet, the two lovers speak of and to each other in poetic, iambic pentameter, but they speak to their friends in regular language. The language they use for each other, the language they use to speak of their love, has much deeper meaning than everyday speech or what you find in a generalized accounting of things. Even if all you’re doing is saying, “you are a very pretty woman,” it carries greater meaning for both parties to communicate relationally when Romeo says, “’Tis the east and Juliet is the sun.” (she is the first and brightest thing he sees in the morning) or when Juliet quips, “Be but sworn my love and I’ll no longer be a Capulet” (tell me you love me and I’ll give up everything I am just for you).

Or better yet, go back and read some of Moses’ writings in the Torah. Or David’s Psalms. Read them out loud. Read them in their original Hebrew. Listen to the ebb and flow of the words. Sometimes Moses states the facts and other times he breaks out into song. When you hear these songs as they were meant to be, not as a collection of theological ideas as most people consider them today and not as simple emotions as others have taken them, but as an expression of width and breadth of thought and emotion that comes with an exhaustive description of relationship, they gain significant depth.

God’s word is not merely a systematic theology. It is an expression of his love for us and his repeated attempts to restore the break we cause with our sin. It is the story of our relationship. In Genesis, this story goes from creation to the fall of man in just a few paragraphs. But take a minute and think of what that meant. God created the universe for us. When he was done with all of that, THEN he created man. Man was his greatest creation. And he didn’t mean for us to be as we now are, but as beings that could fully stand in his presence and be with him every moment of every day. Back then, we didn’t know what it meant to fail. We didn’t know what it meant to be disobedient. We didn’t know what it was like to have doubt or to fear death or to harbor ill will. All we knew was happiness and a perfect relationship with God.

This went on for a long time, too. Genesis says that Adam named every animal and living thing in all of creation. That had to take a while; years, maybe even hundreds of years of communion between Adam and God. Then God gave Adam his wife Eve. And they existed in the Garden of Eden for a time.

Then came the fall. But the fall was not just like sinning is to us nowadays. When you or I sin it is serious business, rest assured, but we can convince ourselves that it really isn’t. You ask for forgiveness and it goes away, but you can repeat it the next day. Follow this cycle and, after a while, sin becomes almost esoteric, like something that doesn’t really exist outside of an idea.

At least, until God kicks your ass about it anyway.

But for Adam, things were different. When he sinned, his very nature changed. He understood death and separation. He understood shame. He understood hatred, selfishness, and disobedience. He understood the vastness of the human capacity for evil. He was no longer God’s definition of human. He was … something else. He became our definition of human. For us, this would be like sprouting ten extra legs and suddenly existing in a four dimensional universe where everybody spoke binary and wore fez hats. It’s completely inconceivable.

When we sinned, we became different creatures entirely. And these creatures could not comprehend God. We could not interact with him properly. We became trapped in our selfish ways and there was no place for us but the death we had brought into the world. This should sound familiar, because this is how we currently are.

Fast forward a few thousand years. God has given humanity the law as a start towards learning how to come back from the depths of our existence. But like I said earlier, a list of rules is not nearly enough. A list of rules doesn’t change a person’s soul any more than baseball statistics are the reasons I enjoy the game or the daily routine that [married couple] undertake is the reason they love each other the way that they do. There is an unseen depth.

In one of his dialogues, Socrates describes a cave. He says man’s understanding from birth is like prisoners chained to a wall in a cave with their eyes covered. After time, one prisoner learns to uncover his eyes and he sees shadows on the wall. This shadow makes no sense to him because all he knows is darkness. But can you imagine the joy this person must have felt in realizing that there was more to life than just the darkness he had known since birth. You can imagine his thrill at realizing there were others around him and that, even though he was in a terrible situation, he knew there was more. Even this dim movement on a dark wall in a deep cave would seem like waking from a deep sleep to find that the world did not go away while you rested, and that the greatest joy waited at your fingertips.

Slowly, however, the man comes to the realization that these shadows are not reality. There is something else, something he cannot see. So he works his way out of his chains and turns around. Before him is a long and treacherous tunnel, the end of which is engulfed in a bright light that moves in the strange patterns he saw reflected on the walls. His heart leaps again. This is true reality. The shadows on the wall were a mere reflection.

He climbs towards the light, slipping here and there and sometimes having nasty falls. But he keeps going. Always, he keeps going, setting the moving light as his. The moving objects become clearer as he approaches. And as he reaches the entrance to this cave, this darkness that once defined every aspect of his reality, he finds crowds of people, former prisoners like himself, dancing in the bright sunlight.

The difference between the darkness of the cave and the bright reality of the former prisoners is an apt metaphor, I think, for the difference between humanity as God intends it and humanity as it is. The prisoners have only known their darkness and their solitude. They may even be perfectly happy in that existence. But there is something greater, and that thing is inconceivable to the prisoner as he sits in the cave with the blindfold over his eyes. He was meant to be in the light, but he cannot comprehend it. He was meant to dance, but he cannot move his legs. He was meant to experience the joy of interaction with others and with God, but all he knows is solitude.
Socrates goes on to say that the only way to free these people is to go down into the cave, help them remove their blindfolds and bring them into the light. The only way to reach those people is to meet them on their level, in the lonely, dark cave.

Now let’s look at the Bible again. Humanity is in the cave. We cannot conceive of life as god intended it. All we know is our current existence. We cannot bring ourselves out of this because we cannot conceive of anything different than what we already know. God saw this and said, “I have to meet them where they are,” He acted relationally. He became human. He faced the darkness of the cave.

He had to be fully God because that was the only way he could be the definition of justice and thus provide the standard by which sin is judged. And he had to be fully human because that was the only way he could pay the price that was demanded for justice. He had to be both, because otherwise there would be no way to remain fully loving (omnibenevolent) all powerful (omnipotent) and completely just (omnijust? Is that even a word?), which are several of the defining characteristics of his nature, and still have a relationship with us in a way that we could understand.

Yes, there are parts of it I do not understand. But that’s what makes it all the more real. We’re talking about the nature of God here. If I were capable of understanding everything there was to know about him, he would cease to be God and become something less than human. Given that I understand parts of it (the thought aspect of a relationship) and that I have experienced others (the emotional aspect), it makes perfect sense that there would be things I didn’t understand. As with any relationship there are things we don’t understand. The fact that it is moreso in our relationship with Jesus only further supports his existence and both his divinity and humanity.

The Bible tells the story of God’s relationship with man, and Jesus in his complete humanity and divinity, is the fullness of that expression. "

What the ... ?

Showering after sex washes away the AIDS, and marriage makes rape okay!" says (former) heir apparent to the office of South African Prime Minister. [source].

Great. Just Great

This is exactly how I hoped The Reds would start their season. It's gonna be a long summer.

Is the Republican Party a Theocracy?

Moo Cow over at Dilatoryaction posted this in response to a Washington Post article outlining the many ways in which the Republican party has become nothing short of a Christian theocracy. She shares a simplistic and admittedly wacky version of a few Christian beliefs, assumes that all religious conservatives believe this way, and concludes that today's Republican party is disgusting based on this evidence.

A quick and easy response would be to claim that I am equally as disgusted with the Democratic party, which is merely a front for Socialist/Communist organizations who wish to bring the downfall of Capitalism and Democracy. I am joking, of course. But seriously. Since when did pointing out the worst members of an opposing political party become the standard for political discourse? You can provide many examples of conservatives who act like idiots, and I can counter with just as many stories of Democratic morons. This doesn't mean that everybody on the opposite side of the fence believes that way. How's about a little bit of common sense for a change?

Yes, there is a contingent of conservatives whose opinions on the Middle East are a bit nutso. But I'm not too sure that calling the Republicans a theocratic party is correct. I don’t believe that politics or religion can be so easily categorized and labeled. The contingent - and that's all it is: a contingent - openly uses religion as a means of wooing voters and staying in power. This, however, is distinctly different from a Christian theocracy. This group isn't interested in proffering any particular set of beliefs outside those which will keep them in power. They pay attention to those aspects of Christianity which speak of the power of Christ and his followers, but leave out the parts that speak of a necessary humility in action. They speak of the need to ward off evil and fight the hand of Satan, but they neglect the beatitudes which speak of the need to pay particular attention to the poor and the broken and the downtrodden. In short, they are modern day Pharisees intent only on attaining and keeping power at all costs. To claim that this is merely a theocracy is dangerous in and of itself because it assumes first that there is no Christianity outside that which you (and I as well) find contemptible, it assumes that all Christians are as easily manipulated as the suburban left behinders you mentioned, and it dulls the poisonous affect of the actions of these political bastards into “just another group of blind, religious nuts” as opposed to the truth, which is much more malevolent.

I, too, was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and while there were some things that I liked, on the whole it was far too legalistic. There were a whole lot of rules and not a lot of grace. That’s why I go to a hippie church, where we believe in the credo that God loves you no matter how f'ed up you are, and that we should make every effort to be all kinds of groovy to everybody we meet.

The problem for some sections of the Democratic party is that they have seemingly adopted a religion of their own. Their hurry to disassociate themselves from the wacko evangelicals has resulted in a tacit acceptance and predominance of secularism above all other forms of religious thought. There is almost no room in the Democratic party for a person who believes in God. We Christians who actively work to make the world a better place for the poor and who oppose governmental interests in foreign nations that support genocide and who argue for reasoned discourse in all matters of political and religious thought, even those with which we disagree, are laughed out the door not because we disagree with the larger percentage of the party platform, but merely because we believe in God. This from the party that preaches cultural diversity and tolerance.

I agree wholeheartedly that some contingents of the Republican party have aligned themselves with some bad folks in order to obtain power, and i believe that this problem is much worse than most conservatives would like to believe. The sad truth is that the Democrats are just as bad. And the nature of politics today is such that you either accept each and every tenet of your respective party, or you are an evil person worthy of the worst sort of humiliation. There is no reason. There is no discussion. There is only popularity and polar opposition to generalized ideas that nobody can accept in total unless they check their brains at the door.

This is why I voted for Curt Schilling in the last election. I figured that, all things being equal, I’d rather have a president who can throw a good fastball than the two clowns who ran. I don’t know who I plan to support in ’08, but the early money is on Dontrelle Willis.

I hear he has a wicked splitter.

Opening Day

Today is opening day for Major League Baseball. In celebration of that, here’s a story about the great American pastime. Parts of it are true. Parts of it are fiction. I'll leave it up to you decide which is which. Enjoy!

* * * *

There’s a field down by the Mill Creek where we used to play ball. It was not unlike many you’d find scattered across the United States. There was a large worn patch in the center where the pitcher stood, an outfield fence comprised of a collection of bushes and neighborhood backyard fences, and three small craters for the bases connected by a path of dirt that had been trod over so many times throughout the years, it seemed not to fade even through the toughest of winters

It was here that my friends and I spent the majority of our time as children. We were always there. During the summer, of course, we’d be at it from sunup to sundown, sweating it through the hottest parts of the day, always trying to squeeze in an extra inning or two before the sun finally caught up with the western horizon. When school was in session, we’d hurry home, do whatever chores there were to do, and then we’d hurry to the field. I even remember playing once on Christmas morning. My friend Adam called everybody to tell us he’d got a brand new glove, and we thought there was no better time like the present to test it out.

There were no particular teams, no umpires, and the score always seemed to change from inning to inning whether or not there were actually any runs. We didn’t care. We were playing ball and that’s what mattered. And we were always on the lookout for another player. So when, late in the summer of 1990, Chris Stoppard asked us if he could play, we agreed.

Chris was the new guy in town. He was a little taller than the rest of us, and from the looks of him, I’d guess he was a good twenty or thirty pounds heavier as well. He made up for this advantage, though, with a complete lack of athleticism. If having two left feet is the curse of the clumsy, this guy must’ve had three. Normally we’d love to have a new kid play – the more the merrier and all – but you could just tell by the way he walked, the way he moved, that God hadn’t graced him with the skills necessary to handle a bat much less run down the occasional fly ball.

He’d moved into the old duplex on Bachman Rd. about mid-July. We’d all seen him around the neighborhood at least once or twice, sitting out on his porch in the evening or walking his dog around the block, always making sure not to let it take a dump in the Meadows’ yard. Mrs. Meadows was proud of her landscaping and was always on the lookout to test the strength of her broom handle on some punk kid who made an errant step in the wrong direction.

As July turned to August, he started hanging out around our field. At first, he just sat with his dog in the shade behind third and watched. But, after a while, he grew bold, sitting behind the fence and even talking to some of the players as they warmed up. He didn’t have any friends; that much we knew, because anybody that was anybody was already at our field. Like most people in our neighborhood, both of his parents worked full time jobs, so all he had to keep himself company that summer were his dog and his thoughts.

That and his three left feet.

On this particular day, we were short a player. Josh Paoletti, a short, toe-headed kid from Bayham Drive, was sick with the flu. His older brother Jeff had spent most of the summer working at a Boy Scout Camp but had to come home early when he threw up in the pool, and the whole family ended up getting it. We stood around home plate, trying to decided whether to call Tim from Pritchard St. or play with a ghost man, when Chris spoke up.

“You…you guys mind if I play?” He sounded like a little kid asking his mother for a cookie he knew he’d never get.

I hesitated, hoping I’d imagined it. We were genial enough in most situations, but this was baseball. This was serious business to the kids from Burley Circle. After a full minute of silence, I answered him. “Can you hit?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can you field?”

“Yeah.”

I looked around at the other guys, hoping for some excuse to turn him away, but when I found nothing, I told him to grab his glove and come on.

The first couple innings went by easily. Both teams scored a few runs here and there, and besides Scott Woods twisting his ankle on a slide into third base, it was an uneventful game. After he shanked a few easy grounders, it was obvious that Chris had lied about his abilities, so we stuck him in right field and hoped that anything in his direction would be short enough for the Brandon at second base to get on a long run. Things seemed to be going along nicely, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t stay that way. When you’re dealing with kids, social dynamics have a way of changing on a dime.

Sean Hinken was pitching for the other team, and while he was a great guy off of the field, on the field, he as nasty as they came. He constantly talked trash about whoever was batting, calling them names to their faces and making announcements to the infield about how they didn’t need to worry about fielding anything from this guy.

“Don’t worry about this one boys,” he’d say. “This guy couldn’t hit the nuts off of a dead dog. The inning’s as good as over.”

What really got you, though, was that he had the skills to back it all up. He was very good at making a person take a wild swing at an inside fastball or a nasty splitter. He’d then follow it with a big, “Shitchyeah!” which made it that much worse.

When Chris came up to bat in the sixth inning, Sean threw a bean ball right at his head. Of course it hit him, and of course we all charged the mound.

“What’re you doing, fatass? You threw it right at his head.” said Adam.

“He was crowding my plate.” Sean replied with a grin. “I had to show him who was boss. Got tired of watching him strike out each time. You guys are making it too easy for me. I gotta challenge myself somehow.”

Adam leapt at Sean, who sidestepped just in time to watch Adam go face first into the dirt on pitcher’s mound. The fight would have gone further if Brian Woods and I hadn’t held them back.

“I’m gonna kick your ass,” said Adam.

“I’d like to see you try,” said Sean.

“I wouldn’t,” somebody yelled in the background, “you'll probably lose your foot.” We all laughed at that except for Sean, who turned and threw the ball in the direction of the voice, and ended up hitting Scott Woods in the temple. Scott just wasn’t having a good day.

The joke brought a little bit of lightheartedness back to the game, but the tension still remained. Each at-bat was more important than the last, and we argued over every close play. Neither team wanted to lose the game at this point. It was honor. It was bragging rights. It was war, as much as can be had with fifth graders, anyway.

Chris stood in the background the whole time, watching us with a bit of a smile on his face. I think he was just glad to be there.

We started the ninth inning down by three runs. After Tim and Andy went down on routine groundballs, we got a rally going, and scored two to bring us within a run with two men out and one man on. The tide was turning, and I thought we might just pull it off until I saw the next batter. Like the Mighty Casey from Mudville, Chris Stoppard approached the plate, bat in hand.

Sean breezed the first two pitches past a visibly nervous Chris, then missed outside and then in the dirt to bring the count to two balls and two strikes. As he walked back to the mound he was laughing and making his usual snide comments, but you could see the sweat standing on his fat forehead. He’d missed two straight pitches to a guy who, by all rights, should have struck out on three. There was no way in hell he was gonna miss again. No way.

“Keep your eye on the ball, Chris,” I yelled from second base. “Just watch the ball and swing as hard as you can. You can do it!”

I was excited, because if Chris could just hit it, I'd score. Then we could either hope for a single from Adam or at least a trip into extra innings with the top of our order due up the next time around. Things would be okay if only he could just hit the ball. The chances of this happening were slim, of course. He would likely either miss completely or hit a dribbler back to the pitcher’s mound, which Sean could toss to the first for the final out and the victor.. Our game would end, and that night we’d have to listen to Sean go on and on about how much we sucked. That was an idea that didn’t sit well in my mind. It didn’t sit well at all.

But a peculiar thing happened. Shawn, not wanting to walk the worst player on the field and risk giving Adam a chance to win the game, threw what is known in baseball circles as a “meatball.” It’s a pitch right down the middle of the plate that even moderately skilled players could crush into the stratosphere. Chris, knowing that Sean would not miss again, closed his eyes and swung as hard as he could. So much for keeping your eye on the ball, I thought.

To everyone’s surprise, especially the one holding the bat, the ball flew out towards center field. Sean had just enough time to say, “What the…” before the ball was bouncing next to the sunflowers in the Jones’ yard. I took off for third, rounded into home, and turned to watch Chris. He must have been surprised at his success, because he was just rounding first as I scored, and I’m not exactly a speed-demon. I saw two things very clearly at that moment. The first was Aaron Stewart getting to the ball in center, and the second was the look of determination on Chris’s face. He meant to go all the way, his athleticism (or lack thereof) be damned.

“No, Chris. No!” I yelled. Why couldn’t he just be content with a triple? At least then we’d have a chance at winning. He must not have heard, though, because he hit third and kept coming. Meanwhile, Aaron, who had a very good arm for a ten year old, had already released the ball.

“Slide!” I yelled, “Slide you bastard!”

In the movies and on television, you always root for the loveable loser, the kid who never gets the girl and always gets picked last for dodgeball. In the movies and on television, the loser always has his moment in the sun. He always hits the game winning homerun, and both teams carry him off the field on their shoulders. One of the difficult things about growing up, though, is the knowledge that movies and television all too often depict life as it should be, not life as it is. More often than not, the losers don’t quite make it. More often than not, they get the shit kicked out of them

I knew we were in trouble before it happened. Chris must have thought he’d hit the ball farther than he did, because I don’t think he was expecting a play. And judging from the look on his face, you could tell he didn't know how to slide, either. Still, the determination was there. He probably hoped that whatever god had graced him with momentary athletic prowess would continue the blessing for another minute or two and allow him this one moment of glory.

As Chris lowered the top half of his body to make the final descent towards home, his left leg remembered its old tricks, and got in the way of his right. Instead of a slide, Chris tumbled over himself, and rolled. The hem of his pants caught on a tree root, and when he stopped rolling, Chris’s pants were a good five or six feet behind him. In that instant, you could see his face change from unbelievable joy to inexplicable horror. He sat there in his underwear two feet short of his goal as the catcher tagged him out.

Nobody said anything for a minute or two. Not even Sean. We watched in silence as Chris stayed there, almost bare-assed, and tried our best not to laugh. No laugh, no matter how hearty, is worth that humiliation. Kids, however, are not adept at controlling their emotions, and the small spits and spirts of laughter quickly turned into a snicker, a grumble, and an all-out riot. We felt sorry for the guy, we really did, but seeing him there in his underwear halfway between third and home was just too much. Amidst the laughter, Chris stood up, put on his pants, and quietly walked away from the field. He never asked to play again, and his parents moved away at the end of the summer. Apparently his father was in the military.

I think I saw Chris again about a year or two ago. I was watching my nephew play a little league game in the new park behind the shopping center. The one with the brand-new chain link fences and the stands behind home plate. Our field has since succumbed to the passage of time. A city building project diverted the creek through the middle of the field, past second base, and into where Mrs. Jones used to keep her prized sunflowers. I sat with my sister behind third base, watching her son pitch in the last inning of a close game. As I looked across the field, I noticed a tall man get up to watch his son bat. When he stood, his foot caught in the chair and he spilled a bit of his drink on the lady in front of him.

The pitch came in. I watched the little kid smack a hard liner just past the center fielder’s glove. He rounded the bases like a gazelle, and, despite his coach’s warnings, took a turn at third and headed for home with the same intensity I had seen on Chris that day so many years ago. The relay from the shortstop was right on, but it didn’t matter. The kid beat it by a full step. He didn’t even have to slide.

The bench exploded with cheers, and everybody ran out to greet him, but the kid ran past his teammates, and headed straight for his father. The man who may or may not have been the three-footed kid I knew several years ago picked up his son, hugged him, and carried him to the parking lot on his shoulders with his team following in his wake.

Sometimes the losers win after all. Life’s funny like that.

Just to get up that hill

I'm working really hard today.





















Update...

















Update again! America's future, folks, wasting time rhashing '70s sitcom theme songs. If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Do you know where my keys are?

How sad is it that, in the play my friends and I are currently working on, I am nowhere near finished memorizing my lines, despite the fact that I wrote the damn thing and have been reading and re-reading (and re-reading again) each and every line since last October? And the final nail in the coffin of my memorization skills? I can recite, from memory, each and every line from Back to the Future parts 1 - 3.

What the hell?

-------------------------------

(interior of a garage. We see a collection of clocks which show the time as 8:10. A radio blares to life)

Radio Announcer: October is inventory time at Stafford Toyota, and ...

(the radio cuts out and the camera pans across a few more clocks and several complicated pieces of household machinery. We come to a television set, which turns on to a news show, starring the lady who played the mother in "Just the Ten of Us")

Lady: ..The Senate is expected to vote on this today. In other news, officials from the nuclear researchfacility have stated that a case of missing plutonium was, in fact, stolen from their vault two weeks ago. A Libyan terrorist group has clained responsibility for the alleged theft, however, officials now assume ...

(the camera pans across a coffee machine which turns on and begins brewing coffee, despite the fact that the pot is not there. The camera continues, crossing several more clocks and stops next to a leverl arm, which beings moving resolutely. The arm makes loud, mechanical noises as it swings left, grabs a can of Alpo dog food, and swings right to a can opener, which opens the can. The arm swings back to the middle, leaving the lid affixed to the can opener. The arm rotates 180 degrees, turning the can upside down, which empties its contents into a dog bowl labeled "Einstein," that is overflowing with what appears to be several day's worht of uneaten dog food. The arm rotates back to its original position, moves left, and drops the empty can into a trash bin. We pan left even furhter to the door, which opens. We see a pair of white tennis shoes holding a doormat aloft. A key drops to the concrete and the mat covers it. The feet enter the room and we hear our hero, MARTY MCFLY, speaks).

MARTY: Hello, Doc?

-------------------------------------------------------

I am a loser, aren't I?

Weekend

Have a great weekend. And remember. If you can see Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris can see you. But if you can't see Chuck Norris, you are mere seconds away from death.

Before and After

It’s cold outside today. It’s the second day of Spring after a long but relatively mild winter, and the wind that blows across the Oval cuts through my jacket to the interior no matter how closely I press my arms against my side. The sky is light blue and the sun is bright, but for some reason it feels grey. The songs on the radio play a kaleidoscope of dark hues as the clock tower beats a long, slow knell in the distance.

Potential bad news on the horizon for some friends. One of those moments that splits life into the period of time known as Before and that which comes Afterwards. If you’re reading this, and if you're the sort, spend a moment in prayer asking that everything would come out alright.

And if it doesn’t, ask that they would find comfort in the afterward.

coolness

So I'm sitting here in what is soon to be a classroom at the large state university in Ohio where I work, when I glanced to my left and happened upon a collection of bound Atlantic Monthly magazines from 1860 - 1890. This means that somewhere within the dusty pages at my left exists a first run printing of The Adventures of Mark Twain in its original, serial form.

Once again. Something you woulnd't find in a normal corporate office.

Happy Monday

Here it is 11:30am and I just now got back to my office after a morning of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I had a morning meeting with Team Cynical™, wherein the interim manager attempted to extol the virtues of MSI packet updates as opposed to having students manually install them (at every machine across campus). Naturally, Team Cynical™ was completely comfortable with the old method, which takes several weeks to do and is unpredictable in efficiency, and felt that that the new system, which is already in place in other labs across campus and which takes a total of maybe a half hour, would not work because “we haven’t done it before.”

It’s a wonder anything gets done.

After the meeting I got to sit down with somebody to learn how they do imaging for a particular workgroup. This is how it works: put disc in machine -> run program -> wait -> restart machine -> tada! New image! Seriously, it’s like they think I’m an idiot or something. But that’s Team Cynical™ for you.

After that, I procured some AV hardware for a professor who is planning a “graphics intensive” class next quarter and wanted my assistance testing everything out before the quarter starts. Basically, he plans to use PowerPoint presentations. That isn’t really “graphics intensive” in my book, but I don’t get upset over semantics. The guy needs help and I am more than willing to fill that role. Besides, it means I get to traipse across campus twice a week to set things up for him, and Spring Quarter is a damn fine month to be outside.

Later this afternoon, I plan to design some more blog layouts for faculty members at the main library of the large state university in Ohio where I work, and then I’ll probably write up that proposal for a new style of Library Catalog I outlined last week in my meeting with the assistant director of the large state university in Ohio where I work.

No work Mondays are a thing of the past. And you know what? I’m glad.

Hypocritical

We had the grove this evening, and for all intents and purposes, things went well. Chad and I were lazy this week, choosing to go with the same format of the previous gatherings. We re-ran several old bumps, so I only had to write one this time around. I was starting to get scared, thinking that we might run out of material, when Chad happened upon a treasure trove of at least three bumps I had written back in February and never used. I added six more to these during the week, which means that all we have left to do for this entire series are a few small things. This should give me time to get some real work done on memorizing lines for the play, writing those three or four skits I’ve been planning to write, and maybe get started on The Book™. I figured since all the cool kids were writing books these days, I might as well join the fray. It’ll never get published (because it has to be written first, and that is likely to never happen), but it makes me feel intellectual and somewhat bohemian to perpetually be in the process of crafting the next great American novel.

After the grove, a large group of us (probably everybody that was there this evening), retired to a local pub and eatery to hang out, relax, and celebrate [enter couple here]’s good news (I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t heard). While we were there, I had the chance to sit down and talk with Bill, Katie, Nate, and Mike. Bill does the sound for the grove, Katie is in charge of all the kids, Nate doesn’t do anything (because he sucks!), and Mike is the young adult pastor at my church. That means he does a bunch of pastor-y things.

In the course of the conversation, I mentioned something about this blog ‘o mine (because my life is so exciting that I actually have to tell other people about it in order to fill the vast lapses of quietness that exist in my conversations), and Mike asked for the address of my site. I gave it to him of course (which means, if he’s really bored, he’s reading this … and thinking “I thought I was bored until I started reading this. Now I understand the depths of boredom. And, lo, I am depressed.”), and I followed this statement with the caveat, “you’ll have to watch out for all the swear words in there.”

One of the things that I have never understood is why so many people believe they have to handle Christians with kid gloves. Every once in a while, friends of mine will catch themselves swearing or making references to what they believe are unchristian things. They inevitably apologize, thinking I was horribly offended. For some, this apology is genuine, but for others it is thinly veiled condescension. I want to grab these people by the shoulders, shake the shit out of them and say, “I can recite ‘Pulp Fuction’ from memory and have done so, unprovoked, in large crowds for no good reason. I’m the guy who, in college, guzzeled five (or maybe 6 ..or 7?) beer bongs in a row and then attempted to chase down a team of midgets dressed as oompa loompas. And I would have succeeded, too, if my friends hadn’t tackled me in the middle of the street. So don’t pretend that your pathetic use of the word ‘bitch’ is going to offend my sensitive little Christian ears, alright!!”

It doesn’t make me mad. It just confuses me. It’s like people think Christians live in a bubble universe, plugging their eyes and ears to the world around them. Some do, but not all; and certainly not me (for the most part). They think we are so shocked by Reality™, that any encounter with such with either send us into a rage of self righteous indignation or cause us to spontaneously combust in a cloud of sawdust and holy water.

I strive to be as honest and authentically human with everyone I meet; not merely a collection of loosely-related morals that others define as Christian. And yet there I was this evening, pretending as though a few semi-creative uses of profanity might make Mike’s head explode. As if he’s never heard anybody say “fuck” before (that’s impossible. He’s met Chad). He’s a pastor, not an idiot, and he likely has to deal with a lot more Reality™ than I do on a daily basis. I’d like to believe I was being genuine, but the truth is probably different. The truth is that I exhibited my own bit of idiotic condescension. And that pisses me off.

No, I probably shouldn’t swear as much as I do. But I have not yet mastered the ability to correctly express the rage I experience when I accidentally hit myself in the face with a large shovel. And “fiddlesticks” just doesn’t make the grade in that scenario, mister.

I hope I don’t do that again. It really makes me mad when I do stuff like that. And if Mike or anybody else thinks less of me for this fault, that’s a good thing. They probably had too high an opinion of me to begin with.

The Economics of Dummies

I realized something the other day. I drink way too damn much pop. I’d guess that I spend roughly eighty to one hundred dollars per month on soda alone, and that doesn’t include what I drink when I go out to dinner with friends (which I also do way too damn much). These numbers come directly from the Sasquatchinc Thin Air Statistical Generator™ by the way. So I had an idea. I am going to scale down the amount of pop that I drink by one half for two months, and then try again to cut it out completely after two months. During the scale down process, I plan to purchase only generic brands so as to further save money.

Here’s the kicker. Rather than spend that extra money on some other completely worthless endeavor (like movies or charity), I plan to invest it in international currencies. But rather than purchase Yen and Franks willy nilly, I plan to employ the Graham value added method of investing with my own relative GDP analysis thrown in on top for good measure (not from the Thin Air Generator, by the way). This way, I get to analyze things like political upheaval, social acceptance of capitalistic endeavors and other social things I don’t understand as opposed to balance sheets, cash statements, and other accounting tricks I never cared to learn.

It’s almost like a game! Except here there’s a chance I might actually make some money in the process. And even if I don’t, so what? It’s better than pouring it all down my throat in the form of the sweet, divine nectar of Diet Mountain Dew. And in the process, I finally get to put my other degree (International Strategic Management) to use.

Whether that use can be categorized as “good” remains to be seen. Given that the degree in question is from the prestigious University of Cincinnati school of business, it probably won’t be.

Excitation

Are you as excited about the new week as I am?

Public Indecency

Good news everyone. The library system of the state university where I work has agreed to let me take part in their weekly read aloud event at the end of the month. Basically, they invite staff and faculty to read their favorite works to large (or sometimes not so large) crowds of people who have nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon. This is part of an effort to get people interested in the library. You'd think a college library wouldn't have to do that. But you'd be wrong; terribly wrong.

I'll be reading "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne on March 30 from roughly 3:00 - 3:30pm. However long it takes to slaver through the thee's and thou's and t'weren't's. If you're interested in joining the tens of people who might walk by on their way to the computer labs, let me know and I'll give you the exact location of the main library of the large state university in Ohio where I work.

Come, watch as I assault the masses with my dulcet tones! Huzzah!

A womb in my coffee

“I’ll take a large house,” I said to the attractive young woman behind the coffee stand. I visit this stand a couple of times a week and each visit finds a new woman working the station; she is nearly always tired and is, without doubt, lost in the juxtaposition of education and American consumerism. Each of these women is attractive however - terribly attractive - and this is likely the primary reason the stand remains in business. Because it certainly isn't the quality of their product.

“Would you like a little womb in yo coffee?” she asked politely.

“Please?” I asked.

“Ok,” she said and proceed to the back. I had to stop her for two reasons. The first is that the phrase, “Please” uttered in the questioning fashion is a habit of those from the Cincinnati, Ohio area. The upturned phrase means “I don’t understand what you are saying,” not “I agree with your statement. Please proceed.” The other reason was, of course, that I in no way wished to have a womb placed lovingly in my morning coffee.

“I’m sorry miss,” I said. “I didn’t mean to say that I wanted a … well … what was it you said?”

“I asked you if you wanted womb,” she said, starting to get mad. The line piled up behind me and her homework, a play by Thornton Wilder, sat unread in the background next to the espresso machine.

“I hate to sound like an idiot,” I said, “but why would I want a womb in my coffee?” She blushed and lowered her head in the universal fashion of those who are unpracticed at being embarrassed in front of large groups of people.

“What is it?” I asked.

She squared her shoulders, closed her eyes, and fashioned her mouth in the shape of the letter R. Then she spoke.

“ROOM,” she said, blushing futher. “Would you like a little ... ROOM in yo coffee? Foh milk?”

We shared a couple seconds of laughter with each other and with the rest of the people in line. I apologized for my misinterpretation, and the blush left her face almost as quickly as it had come.

“Sowwy,” she said.

Racism

In response to the recent announcement that George Bush signed an executive order allowing a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the Department of Homeland Security, Pam Spaulding of Pandagon had this to say:

"My question — how soon before some of the all-too-familiar black pastors step up to the trough with some proposals for Dear Leader so they can cash in on this tip?"

I don't like it either, Pam. But at least I'm not racist about it!

Weekend

It's the weekend! Let's party like the cool kids!

Funny.

Sometimes the comedy just writes itself:

"Colon family upset over exploding toilet."

Bad Fiction and Good Steak

We had play practice this evening, and every time I spoke I couldn’t help but think that my play feels like a glorified soap opera. Or worse. Just a regular soap opera. I get the impression that while the thing might not suck completely, there are large portions of it which indeed blow chunks. But I felt the same way about the last play during rehearsals and people ended up liking it. At least that’s what they told me. So who knows? Maybe I’m just hypercritical.

Afterwards, several of us retired to a local pub and eatery to consume mass quantities and discuss whatever happened across our minds. Abbie was there, along with Silas and Ben. The Poindexters (who did an amazing job performing a Sara Groves song at this past weekend’s Grove, by the way. You should check it out as soon as Chad gets off his lazy ass and posts the show).

We had a halfway decent discussion going this evening. For a while, we discussed postmodernism in literature as described by T.S. Elliot in his essays on literary criticism. I’d like to be smart and claim that it was I who brought this to everyone’s attention, but I can’t. Tim’s the smart guy of the group, and he deserves all the credit.

Shortly thereafter, Tim brought up a recent story about an Austrian man who was convicted of denying the holocaust and sentenced to three years in prison (I think). He asked us what we thought of this conviction, and each of us had our say. I think it is definitely a tough line to paint. One the one hand, you have people screaming about the necessity of free speech, regardless of how stupid that speech is. They say the government has no right to infringe upon people’s right to speak their minds. But on the other hand, you have those who claim that potentially damaging speech can and should be infringed. These are the people who would be quick to point out the “screaming fire in a movie theater” example of where free speech actually causes harm. If you go too far and limit speech the point where nothing offensive escapes, you become a politically correct totalitarian state. But if you go the other way and allow anything and everything in all circumstances, you inherently infringe upon a great deal of other rights, qhich brings in the question of how important free speech is relative to other rights such as equality, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to life. I said that when questioning how to limit speech, you have to look at a person’s intent. If somebody questions the holocaust, are they doing so to make an academic point in pursuit of truth or do they merely hate Jews? If it is the former, then I say allow it. The latter, however, should result in prosecution. Yes, intent is a difficult thing to prove, but I think that if we plan tot take error into account with this, I would rather err on the side of the individual since it’s a government that gets away with something can cause a lot more damage than an individual. Plus, I’m an anti-authoritarian hippie. Like I said, it’s a fine line and if there is a definitive way in which a statute of this ilk can work, I don’t see it. I think the points beyond which I have already described lie in what I like to call “lawyerly territory,” and by that I mean they rely heavily upon what is legal versus what is right or true. Most people, including me, don’t care about law to that extent. Tim, however, plans to go to law school. So this is probably why he asked the question.

Next, Ben brought up a movie he saw not too long ago in which the main characters invited different people over to their houses for a night of drink and discussion. If they disagreed with the person’s philosophy, they killed them. Abbie mentioned that it sounded a lot like Arsenic and Old Lace to her, and I had to agree. Ben continued, asking what was apparently one of the questions from the movie.

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was still just a failed artist in Vienna, would you? Would you try to convince him to change his ways? Or would you merely leave him alone (and perhaps attempt to purchase an early Picasso painting for the return trip). This sparked the only real “debate” of the evening in which Abbie, Tim, Silas, Brit, and I all agreed that we would not kill Hitler and Ben said that he would.

Tim went off on the philosophy of history he discovered in War and Peace which states (more eloquently than me) that history is not a series of events and people driven by singular, important men but rather men driven by events and people. He said that the thrust of the novel (one of them, anyway) was that Napoleon was not actually a necessary character in the Napoleonic wars. He said that large events such as this, or World War II for example, would have taken place regardless of those who appear to have steered them. The reason, he said, was that man’s free will wasn’t as all-encompassing as many of us thought. It is hindered by our nature and our character, and our ability to change vents, much like the case with Napoleon, is limited as well. If not Napoleon, then somebody else (perhaps a descendant of Robespierre). If not Stalin, then perhaps Trotsky or Kamenev. If not Hitler, perhaps Goebbels. Or worse, perhaps the growing anti-Semitism in Germany spreads to all of Europe, the United States doesn’t pull itself out of depression and in 1960 we fall to a European Union that actually “succeeds” where Hitler failed.

The possibilities are endless. It reminded me of a movie I saw not too long ago, The Fog of War. In it, Robert Macnamara, the former Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ, spoke about those who question whether we were right to firebomb Dresden or drop the bomb on Hiroshima. He speaks about those who say we never should have been involved in Viet Nam. He argued that the motivations and actions the underlie war, and by extension all of history, are so muddled and confused that it makes little sense to claim that we were always in the right and They were always in the wrong. We were both right and we were both wrong. He wasn’t arguing for postmodernity either. He was saying that truth lies under a fog, and we have no way of knowing the reality of our own history due to personal opinions, political agendas, obfuscation, and large gaps in information and that questions of that sort are useless. He said all that really mattered was our intent, whether we acted in line with our core philosophy, whether we were prepared to accept the consequences of those actions no matter what they are, and whether we were humble enough to learn from our mistakes.

This thought reminded me of the line from that Rage Against the Machine song (which I have now forgotten) which states, “Who controls the past now controls the future. Who controls the present now controls the past.” The questions we should be asking are not whether we should or should not have done a particular thing. We cannot know what all went into making a particular decision or action. What we should ask is how we deal with the problems we currently face and are those decisions just.

So I said I would not have killed Hitler. Because my mind was blinded by the fog of time and of war and I had no way of knowing whether the outcome would have been better or worse. The outcome as it stands was good, even though millions had to suffer, and the world is a halfway decent place because of it. That is not to say that I agree with Hitler’s actions. It is to say that even clearsightedness in the past does not guarantee perfect vision for the future consequences. And what matters most is the morality of the present situation. To do otherwise would be to advocate relativistic postmodernism and I don’t want to do that.

Ironically enough, I am going to see Kurt Vonnegut, an alleged hero of postmodernism, speak tomorrow at the large state university of Ohio where I work. I say alleged, because I don’t believe he actually agrees with that interpretation of his thought. How anybody can read Mother Night or his essays in defense of socialism and believe that his approach to life is in any way relativistic is beyond me. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that, even though he is an avowed atheist and secular humanist, we will see him in heaven when all is said and done. If for no other reason than, after Carl Sagan's death, he stood in front of the American Humanist society and, in a deeply somber voice said, "Well ... Carl's in Heaven now."

But that is another discussion. And so on.

Question Mark

I have no idea what to do today. So here's a picture of a rabbit with a pancake on its head.

More Confusion

So it turns out that even though I was hired to do web development, supervise student technical assistants, and provide technological consultation to various faculty across campus, I am, in fact, not supposed to do these things. This is the word from top management. Also, I am not to have access to the database servers or the development servers. I am not to have sys admin rights to the computer labs, which I am now not supposed to be in charge of. This is not due to any mishap on my part. This was allegedly part of the plan all along. This leaves me with one major question: what the hell AM I supposed to do?

Nothing, apparently. Which is what I did all day and will likely do for the remainder of the week.

I am listening to this, by the way. It's really good. I should have majored in music or English or something artistic like I wanted to. C'est la vie. La vie n'est pas grande.

an update on goings on

We had the first meeting for the play yesterday. Abbie printed off copies for everybody and we had a read through with all the cast members who could make it. There's something about listening to other people read the words you have written. Sometimes it comes out like you expected. Other times they mess it up completely. And sometimes, in rare instances, people take a different interpretation of your words and somehow make it better than you thought it could be.

The bad thing about a reading like this is that I always get terribly embarrassed. My face turned red, my hands started to shake, and I had to keep my head down to avoid looking at people. It's a strange combination of happy excitedness and strange fear. And its the same thing every time.

Christy's sister Aimee was there to read all the open parts and its amazing to see her at work. She is definitely a very gifted actor and its a shame she can't be a part of this. Assuming she would even want to.

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Today is Monday and for some reason I'm in a really good mood. It's cold as hell, but the sun is out, so the campus has a crispness to it that you can only see in winter. Normally I am not a big fan of the colder months, but today is an exception to the rule.

I just got out of a meeting with the main IT group, which I will call Team Cynical(TM). Team Cynical(TM) consists of computer guys in their mid thirties who couldn't quite hack it in the real world and have thus resorted to careers in academia. I don't like to use this popular maxim when it comes to teachers since I know several who could run circles around the majority of people in the "real" world (including my sister and this guy), but in the case of the non-educational roles, the description is apt. And, yes, I am well aware that the description covers my job as well. I tried for years to get a job in the "real" world and met only with frustration. Academia is not very challenging, at least not yet, but it is comfortable. So at least I have that going for me.

The majority of the meeting with Team Cynical(TM) consisted of them complaining about a faculty member's request to purchase a certain piece of unnecessary hardware. Yes, they are correct in their belief that the hardware is unnecessary and that her request is due primarily to her inability to understand basic technology. But here's the rub. The hardware only costs $20, and they'be been fighting it since the Fall. This lady is faculty. She will fight tooth and nail to get what she wants, because that is what faculty do. In speaking with jimi this weekend, I learned that part of a phd education is learning how to outlast the lessers when it comes to the acquisiton of resources. And if jimi's story is the norm, this lady hasn't even begun to fight.

It was neat to see the guys from Team Cynical(TM) in action, though. They elevated profanity to an art form. It was beautiful. One guy was not merely "working on the new application," he was "fucking up that shitty software that basdtard sonofabitch from the fucking rare books department had requested five fucking months ago." I'm a big fan of profanity, and even I had to sit back in awe of these people. Rather than come up with workable plans to complete the projects that had been given them, they chose instead to spend an abudnant amount of time complaining about how much work they had to do followed by an equally overabundant amount of time coming up with new ways to avoid this work in the future.

Perpetual procrasination is the name of the game, apprently.

I don't begrudge them, though. I've played that role in other positions; some of which you've read about here. But I don't want to be like that any more. So it's a good thing I don't have to work with them too closely. It is also a good thing that my boss and my boss's boss are apparently behind me 100%.

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I've got the itch again. I currently have a plethora of writing projects I'm working on. Two short skits, a little one act, and a monster of a play that would put my last project to shame when it comes to scope and complexity. Don't tell Christy or Abbie about that last one, though. They'll kill me if they find out!

There's also that book idea I've been mulling over for a while. Perhaps I should get started on that.

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Have you noticed that everybody seems to be in the process of writing a book recently? It's like its a fucking trend or something. This week its writing a book and next week it'll be investing in time shares. After that, maybe everybody will pick up nuclear physics as a hobby and then our energy problems will be no more!

Either that or somebody will accidentally explode a nuclear device in a large city and send the Ameircan way of life to a bitter and ugly end. Given our declining performance in math and science over the years, the former scenario seems much more likely.

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I wonder if the previous section has landed me on a government watch list. If so, goody goody. It means some poor schulb in the CIA has to read this blog over and over in search of scandalous material. And when he finally makes his report, he'll have to say, "All I found was crappy writing and lots of references to burritos."

I feel sorry for the guy. Or girl. Or whatever.

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Pitchers and catchers are currently working out at camps all over the United States. No, this is not a gay joke. This is major league baseball! Spring training is soon to start and that means real, live, American baseball is soon to follow. For those of you who dislike baseball, it all means warmer weather. So shut the hell up.

I'm not too keen on the Reds chances this year. I always said that the new owners would like to take a year to get to knwo the organization and learn the strengths and weaknesses from personal experience rather than reports from past coaches. And this is exactly what appears to be happening. I was sad to see Sean Casey go. I don't care if he wasn't the prototypical first baseman who mashes homeruns and lumbers around the bases so slow they have to time him with a calendar. He was a consistent 300 hitter and he made hitting a double to the gap in close, late inning games his speciality. He'll do well in Pittsburgh, especially since he'll likely hit in front of Jason Bay.

Yes, I was sad to see him go. But it was good to hear that the Reds had made the move in the hopes they could lure Matt Morris away from St. Louis. The deal eventually fell through and Morris went to Frisco, but it shows that the new management has recognized the team's bigesst weakness. Pitching. And, really, when you look at the lineup, there were only three big name players you could loose in order to make that deal. Adam Dunn, Ken Griffey Jr, or Sean Casey. Adam Dunn can play both outfield and first base, and he is still relatively young. His patience at the plate (evidneced by his high walk total) tells me that one of these days he's going to learn how NOT to strike out so damn much. When that happens, watch out. Griffey would not have garnered the kind of revenue the Reds needed in order to get a pitcher like Matt Morris, despite his resurrective 2005 season. Casey's glove was easily replacable and the Reds had a glut of outfielders. It was the smart move. Had they pulled it off, they Reds might actually have had a shot at contending this season. As things stand, they don't. But at least management is thinking about the right things. Finally.

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One of the fun things about MY library's proximity to the dance school is that, on days like today, I get to work to the sound of african drum beats that seep through the walls at strange intervals. You don't get this kind of fun in the corporate world.

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The return of baseball means that I get to take part in yet another failed season of fantasy baseball online. For the past few seasons I've been in a league with people who used to live on my floor when I was a CA back at Wright State University. It's a keeper league, which means that at the beginning of each season you get to choose 10-12 people from your previous roster to keep before the draft that kicks off the start of the season. This means that your ability to recognize talent early on will eventually pay off in perenial success. It also means that if, like me, you are a terrible judge of young talent, your team will be whipped like sick rats year in a year out. Here are a few of the marquee players I have traded away in the past two seasons for what I thought would either be young talent or veteran resurgents...Todd Helton, Bartolo Colon, Michael Young, Jake Peavy, Barry Bonds, Joe Mauer, and many many others. I take part in the league only to assure that somebody else will not finish in last place. But it's fun! So I keep doing it. And you never know. Maybe Barry Zito will finally pull his head out of his ass, and maybe Curt Schilling's foot won't fall off. You never know. It could happen.

One of my friends once said that the defition of faith was the ability to persist in belief when all the available evidence spoke otherwise. This, he said, is why faith is so close to (if not the same thing as) stupidity. I'm beginning to see his point; at least in this instance.

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Enough for now. There is work to do! Sorta.

update from the fat front

I had a very groovy, very artistic post for you today. It had all kind sof funky linguistic rhythms and turns of phrase. You would have liked it. Unfortunately, I deleted it before I got the chance to post it. So you'll have to settle with this.

The Fat Project is now on day 46. This morning I arrived at the gym, expecting to see Nate's ugly face, but instead I saw an empty waiting room and a gym full of stupid college kids. I waited a while longer, but he never showed. Apparently Nate needs a bit more beauty sleep than the rest of us, because he called later to apologize, claiming he'd "accidentally" slept in.

Sure, Nate. We all know what's going on.

content in the knowledge that I could move much faster on my own, I proceeded onward, setting up shop at a bench next to a tiny girl who was struggling under 5 pound hand weights.

"Don't laugh at me," she said, a little embarrased.

"Don't worry," I said as I pulled out the 25 pound hand weights to start bench presses. For those of you who don't know, if you're a guy, 25 pound hand weights should never enter into the conversation when discussing pectoral muscles. Never. She smiled at me and then strained to push her weights skyward.

Things went well this morning, although not as well as I'd hoped. I bumped up a lot of my weights this time around and, as such, was unable to meet the requisite number of repetitions on the later sets.

Look at me ... talking like I know what I'm doing.

_________________________________________

the funny thing about losing weight is that you never know where you're going to notice the signs. Sure, you have the big signs like moving down a notch on your belt or waking up one morning to discover that you are literally half the man you used to be. But the little things that happen along the way - those daily occurances that confirm your overall success - are strange.

For instnace, when I lost 120 pounds back in 2001 - 2003, I noticed it in my legs and my forearms. I'd stand in the shower and marvel at muscle definition I have never before seen. I'd run my hands through my hair (this was back when I had hair), and notices muscles in my forearm. One morning, early on, i remember putting on my jeans and thinking, "these feel a bit loose." It never occured to me until later that this was probably the first sign that I had lost weight.

This time around, I'm noticing it in my hands. The skin around my fingers droops a little and the little v-shaped indentation between the thumb and forefinger is a bit more pronounced every day. My knuckles stick out more; especially the Muhammad Ali knucke. I've also noticed my neck getting smaller. The large signs are still there. Don't get me wrong. I lift up my shirt and the skin roll from previous fat projects (which shrank significantly, but never left) has begun to grow at an alarming rate.

It's strange, but I like it. It's good to be going in the right direction again.

Follow along as the sasquatch transforms himself from flabby freak to a still flabby but slightly smaller freak. The numbers and stats of his endeavor are located here.

Fleecing The Stupid

From Catholic's Apologetics International:

CAI will write a check for $1,000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. (If you lose, then we ask that you make a donation to the apostolate of CAI). Obviously, we at CAI don't think anyone CAN prove it, and thus we can offer such a generous reward. In fact, we may up the ante in the near future.

Easy money!

No Words

Today has been a very long day, and I can't think of anything fun to say. So here's a picture of Abraham Lincoln in Fubu.

Ain't Got No Alibi

I took a few minutes out of my otherwise dull morning to help some of the guys from another IT office plan setup for a new computer lab which is slated to open at my library (MY library) in just under two weeks. While we were there, one of the managers walked by and said, “Hey let's get some pictures of the setup for campus ads.”

And then he said, “Hey Joe! You’re the new guy. You get to be in the ads!”

Now normally it’s a good idea to put “action” shots in your advertisements. Nothing turns people away faster than the idea that nobody will be in the shiny new lab but them. Well, you will get some people, naturally, but they’re usually the kind of people who prefer solitude and privacy when computing. These are not the kind of people to whom you would like to cater unless you charge a steep by the minute fee. And even then you want to make sure you’ve got a good deal of industrial strength cleaning supplies.

They took the pics with me as the star, and I was truly amazed at how ugly I am. Most people, even those with self esteem problems, have at least a little bit of confidence in their looks. Nobody expects to glance in the mirror and see Lurch from the Addams Family glaring back at them. Or this.

Click the pic for a sexier Sasquatch

DAMN! The baldness. The Quasimodo lump on my back. The turkey neck. I am one UGLY sonofabitch! The massive gut (hidden by Isaac’s head). No wonder I can’t get a date.

(eagle-eyed sasquatch fans will notice that the man sitting just behind me is none other than Tim Timbermann, aka “Felty,”, who went missing several years ago and has since returned to civilization. He works a few buildings over from MY library).

Survey Says

Survey Says
By Joe Shaw (c) 2006

(A large, hairy man walks across a wide lawn at a large college campus in the Midwest. He notices a group of people standing ahead with clipboards. He lowers his head and dons a mean look, but the people approach anyway. The hairy man tries to pass but is immediately accosted by one of the clipboard-bearing group members. Clipboard-boy speaks and moves with effeminate mannerisms)

CLIPBOARD BOY: Do you have a moment for equal rights?
LARGE HAIRY MAN: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I’d like to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Oooh. I’m not interested. Thank you.
CB: Why, because you hate gay people?
LHM: No. No … I hate married people!

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I’d like to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Ok.
CB: Did you know that the religious right is trying to criminalize our rights to marriage?
LHM: They are?
CB: Yes.
LHM: That’s terrible. Well, I’ll see you later.
CB: What? Where are you going?
LHM: Bible Study. And after that I’m meeting with the College Republicans.

(ding)

CB: Do have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: No. I only have thirty seconds.
CB: Ok, well I’m with the gay and lesbian…
LHM: ... twenty five …
CB: uh … the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I …
LHM: …twenty…
CB: What?
LHM: I said you had thirty seconds. Now you have fifteen seconds … fourteen … thirteen…
CB: Well I wanted to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Can you do it in eight seconds?
CB: No.
LHM: Oh, well. Sorry. (walks away)
CB: Don’t you care about equal rights.
LHM: Sure, but next time it needs to be more efficient.

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for civil rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus.
(ding)
CB: the gay, lesbian, and bisexual
(ding)
CB: the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered
(ding)
CB: the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning.
(ding)
CB: the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning college students of America.
LHM: I bet that’s one hell of an acronym.
CB: You have no idea.

(ding)

CB: Hi, I’m with the GLBTQCSOA.
LHM: That sounds like a mouthful.
CB: It’s not that bad once you get used to it.

(ding)

CB: Hi, I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus!
LHM: Hi, I’m with the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!
CB: Oh boy. This is awkward.
LHM: Yeah, it kinda is, isn’t it?
CB: Nice tie.
LHM: Thanks.

(ding)

LHM: Excuse me, what are you doing here?
CB: I’m telling people about gay rights.
LHM: Don’t you want to talk to me?
CB: No.
LHM: Why not?
CB: Because you’re not interested.
LHM: How do you know?
CB: Because we have radar, too.

(ding)

CB: Hi, do have a minute for me to berate your religious and political beliefs?
LHM: As long as you’re willing to accept that I couldn’t care less about what you’re saying, sure!

(ding)

CB: Hi, do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: Well I’m from the …
LHM: Damn, dude! Check out that chick.
CB: What?
LHM: Check her out, dude. Right over there. The one with the huge rack!
CB: Uh …
(LHM smiles and watches her as she passes, then turns towards CB again)
LHM: Sorry about that. Now, what did you want to say?

(ding)

CB: Hi, I’m from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered group on campus. Do you have a minute to talk about equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the … what’s wrong.
LHM: Nothing
CB: Am I making you nervous?
LHM: No.
(ding)
LHM: Yes.
CB: Why, because I’m gay?
LHM: No, because I don’t like surveys?
(ding)
LHM: Ok, it’s because you’re gay, but I like gay people!
(ding)
LHM: I mean I have lots of gay friends!
(ding)
LHM: I have one gay friend.
(ding)
LHM: I knew a gay guy once.
(ding)
LHM: (ashamed) But I made fun of him behind his back.
CB: Nevermind.

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I’d like to talk to you about marriage.
LHM: Ok.
CB: Did you know that the religious right is trying to criminalize our marriage rights?
LHM: They are?
CB: Yes, they sure are. They don’t want gay people to get married.
LHM: Whew. That’s a relief.
CB: What?
LHM: Well I’m not gay, so I don’t have anything to worry about.

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I’d like to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Ok.
CB: Did you know that the religious right is trying to criminalize our marriage rights?
LHM: I didn’t know gay marriage was legal.
CB: It isn’t.
LHM: Why did you say the religious right was trying to criminalize it?
CB: It just sounds catchier that way.
LHM: Hey, yeah, it does!

(ding)

CB: Do you have a moment for equal rights?
LHM: You mean gay rights.
CB: How did you know?
LHM: Because, dude, you’re wearing an ascot and a pink jacket with a feather boa.

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for gay rights?
LHM: Yes.
CB: Did you know that George Bush doesn’t care about gay people?
LHM: I didn’t know Kanye West was gay.

(ding)

CB: Hi, do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Yes.
CB: I’m from the gay, lesbian, and bisexual group here on campus.
LHM: Yes.
CB: And I wanted to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Yes.
CB: Did you know the religious right is trying to criminalize homosexuality?
LHM: Yes.
CB: We think gay rights are important and we would like you to sign up to become member for the human rights campaign.
LHM: Yes.
CB: Great! Our members usually donate anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars per months to support our campaign and keep overhead costs low. How much would you like to donate?
LHM: Yes.
CB: What? You need to tell me how much you want to donate.
LHM: Oh, I sorry. I no speak English.

(ding)

CB: Hi, do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m from the gay and lesbian group here on campus.
LHM: Really? Could you hookme up with some of your lesbian friends?
CB: ---
LHM: Oooh, but make sure they're hot, ok?

(ding)

CB: Hi, do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: It depends on what you mean by “equal” and “rights.”
CB: I use the generally accepted terms.
LHM: Well if we’re going for exactness we should strive for truth ahead of popularity.
CB: I don’t think we need to be that exact.
LHM: Well I’m assuming this is an important issue we’re about to discuss.
CB: True.
LHM: I don’t what there to be any ambiguity.
CB: There won’t be.
LHM: How do you know?
CB: Most people understand what those words mean.
LHM: Do you have statistics to back this up or is it merely your opinion?

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m from the gay and lesbian group and I’d like to talk to you about marriage.
LHM: Sorry, I’m not gay.
CB: That doesn’t matter.
LHM: It sure does!
CB: No it doesn’t. Marriage rights affect us all.
LHM: Oh! Marriage RIGHTS. I thought you were proposing to me.

(ding)

CB: Hi, do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure. Fine. Whatever.
CB: I’m from the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered group here on campus.
LHM: (sighs)
CB: And I’d like to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Go ahead.
CB: Did you know the religious right is trying to criminalize gay marriage?
LHM: No they’re not. They’re trying to stop you people from changing the laws in this country to fit your sick behavior.
CB: Only because you dumb asses aren’t capable of opening your minds to consider anybody but yourself.
LHM: There you go again, unwilling to engage in conversation, forcing your beliefs down everybody else’s throats.
CB: You’re the one forcing his beliefs. I’m just trying to get equal rights.
LHM: Special rights is more like it.
CB: Listen here, you …

(ding)
CB: brain dead redneck.
(ding)
LHM: Limp-wristed pillow-biter.
(ding)
CB: Homophobe.
(ding)
LHM: Faggot.

(ding) (ding) (ding) (ding) (ding)

---

(ding)

CB: Do you have a minute for equal rights?
LHM: Sure.
CB: I’m with the gay and lesbian group here on campus, and I’d like to talk to you about gay marriage.
LHM: Good to meet you.
CB: Did you know that the religious right is trying to criminalize our rights to marriage?
LHM: Well, actually, since there is currently no right to gay marriage, they aren’t trying to criminalize it.
CB: That’s true, I guess.
LHM: And it’s not just the religious right. Strict constitutionalists, even some who are for gay rights, oppose it as well.
CB: That may be the case, but the fact remains that, regardless of your beliefs on religion, from a legal standpoint gay marriage and straight marriage are the same.
LHM: I can see that. For the most part, at least.
CB: And anybody who disagrees is a bigot.
LHM: Having differing opinions doesn't make you a bigot.
CB: That's what the religious right says.
LHM: Opponents to gay marriage are not so easily defined.
CB: Oh?
LHM: While many religious conservatives disagree with homosexuality as a lifestyle, the vast majority support a “live and let live” mentality. They might disagree with it for religious reasons, but they don’t hate homosexuals. They don’t believe in forcing other to accept their beliefs. It’s only those who speak out the loudest who do.
CB: But, regardless of a person’s level of involvement in politics, isn’t a belief in the inequality of marriage rights akin to hate?
LHM: It isn’t exactly an inequality in many people’s minds.
CB: Oh, really? How is that?
LHM: They believe that the constitution defines marriage as an act involving a man and a woman and they do not believe in redefining the constitution . It’s disagreement based on constitutional means, not sexual orientation.
CB: That sounds like an excuse to me. It sounds like they use this argument instead of saying what they really want to say.
LHM: That might be true for some, but not for all. With the former, if you can give them a good reason to change the constitution, then you would likely convince them that gay marriage is ok.
CB: How about the 19th amendment, or the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Topka Board of Education?
LHM: That’s a good place to start, I think, and like I said, I agree with you from the legal standpoint for the most part. But like all important discussions there are specific issues that require hashing out in order to come to some consensus. And I’m not sure we have the time or the ability to do so here, in the middle of campus.
CB: Maybe you’re right. But I have another question if you don’t mind.
LHM: Shoot.
CB: Isn’t the belief that homosexuality is a sin also a form of hate?
LHM: Well from the Christian standpoint, we all sin. So, no. It isn’t hate. It’s just the recognition of God’s law. Being a Christian and being homosexual are not mutually exclusive.
CB: The religious right seems to think so.
LHM: Now, wait a minute. Just because somebody is conservative and a Christian doesn’t mean they’re also hateful or that they believe God doesn’t love homosexuals. That’s like saying all men with tight jeans and well manicured fingernails are gay. Or that all jocks are not.
CB: Yeah. Sorry. But this still sounds pretty hateful to me.
LHM: What?
CB: Homosexuality as a sin.
LHM: I understand what you mean. But it’s really just a semantic.
CB: A semantic?
LH: Listen. There are Christians who believe that homosexuality is a sin and there are those who believe it is not. We disagree about rules and regs all the time. It’s only through a relationship with God that we can truly understand the nature of sin. And even then, we only understand a bit of the sin in our own lives. When that happens, sin takes on a whole new meaning. It isn’t as simple as whether or not you said your prayers before you went to bed at night.
CB: Are you saying there’s no right and wrong? That we define what is right for our own lives.
LHM: No, not at all. I’m saying God defines it for us. And our understanding of that nature matures the closer we come to Him. Sin is a personal thing between you and God; not you and God and another person. It’s only when somebody thinks they are somehow “better” because they do not partake in this one particular sin that it becomes hate.
CB: That’s the whole “deal with the plank in your eye before you deal with the speck in your brother’s eye” thing, right?
LHM: Yeah. The point is the relationship with God. And that’s open to everybody, regardless of which sins weight us down.
CB: Well there certainly are a lot of Christians who forget that verse when it comes to homosexuality. At least, that’s how it seems to me.
LHM: No, you’re right. There are probably more than you know.
(pause)
CB: Well, if you’re looking to get involved with our group, we’re accepting memberships.
LHM: What’s involved?
CB: We act politically to ensure the rights of homosexuals across the country.
LHM: To be honest, I don’t like to donate to political groups. They’re usually too broad for my taste and even if I agree with the main point, I end up funding another action with which I disagree.
CB: (dejected) Oh.
LHM: But I’ll take a look at your group’s website and if they seem legit, I’ll give them a call.
CB: Well, thanks.
LHM: You’re welcome.
CB: Have a nice day.
LHM: You too.

(ding)