what the --?

Ontario Christian Schools in California reportedly has expelled a student because her parents are gay.

Not all that surprisingly, the school has a FAQ posted about the situation where they expelled her. Having read their FAQ, I suppose I can understand where they're coming from -- they say it's because they're partners with the family in educating the child, and a same-sex couple is contrary to what they want from their partner, morally and spiritually speakings -- but I have to say I disagree with the decision. Not just because it appears as though they're treating homosexuality as a worse sin than others, but because I feel they're missing something essential in the character of Christ. He was someone who welcomed sinners freely to his company, and I can't see any evidence in the gospels that he insisted they start cleaning up their act either before they came to him, or afterward. People did that on their own.

Ontario Christian School has chosen to set a purity bar for people to be members of their school community, and they've defined it in such a way that they're saying the parents are members of the community as much as the child, and therefore the decision is made to remove them from the community. Although I'm sure this is a legally defensible position, I don't think it's particularly Christlike, especially since the punishment is being meted out on the student. They can regret that the parents' behavior forced the school into this action, but unless that regret finds outward expression in action, I don't think it counts as more than a semantics exercise, similar to the president's "I take full responsibility."

A private school is free to set criteria for admission, of course; usually these are academic in nature, although I'm aware that some Christian schools use a faith-based screen in order to minimize secular or un-Christian influences. That, I suppose, depends on the guiding philosophy of the individual school, which may or may not be hideously flawed.

But basing a student's enrollment on the PARENTS' morality seems wrongheaded to me. Expelling a student already admitted because of something that hasn't changed is just plain wrong.

still sick

I wonder if I have walking pneumonia. Dawn Goodwin had that once, down in Haiti, for about three months and never knew until she finally went and got it checked.

I've been sick about a week now. Physically I feel much better, but the amount of phlegm is driving me insane. I ended up having to skip a tremendous business networking opportunity last night because I was feeling awful all afternoon and evening, and ended up throwing up about a football's worth of mucus into the sink. (And isn't that a pleasant image?)

And today, it feels like it's back, but worse. My ears feel like they're stuffed with cotton, and I feel like sometimes I'm coughing so hard that I can't breathe and feel like I'm going to pass out. It's impossible to get to sleep at night, because as soon as I lie down I start coughing so hard the room shakes.

Enough is enough. I'm going to the doctor's on Monday.

it's the little things in life

Stat Counter, the Internet service I use to measure the traffic on my blog, just revealed to me that for the past 100 web searches that led people to my site, about 25 percent were done by people looking for information on rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem.

tom delay

So ABC News is reporting that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted as part of a campaign finance probe. Wow, what a shock. You mean a prominent politician may have been engaged in something unethical that was meant to raise money for his political party? I'll bet everyone was surprised by this.

Seriously, isn't this fairly old news in a sense? The indictment may be new, but I remember allegations about this surfacing quite some time ago. If memory serves, the GOP majority even rewrote the ethics rules so DeLay could could stay on as House majority leader, even amid the lingering questions about his alleged involvement in questionable practices. Now someone'll probably say they should rewrite them to allow him to stay on until something's actually proved.

Nothing's been proven, of course, although I can't help but note that the Republican response so far appears to have been to resort to ad hominen attacks on the prosecutor, rather than addressing the substance of the charges.

When the municipal GOP chairman in Clark was formally accused of using his position to get a job and pay increases for his girlfriend, he gave me a blow-by-blow account of his side of the story, provided me with documentation and gave me a person who could corroborate his story or shoot holes in it.

But even if DeLay is guilty of a crime here, I don't think it's appropriate to gloat, as MSNBC quotes prominent Democrats as doing. It's more a cause of mourning, because the rot at the heart of our political system is so widespread and the people caught in it are so quick to deny or sugarcoat it.

down and out

Evangeline, Rachel and I have caught the flu or some other sort of cold that has had us laid up the past few days. yesterday was especially brutal. Evangeline and I developed fevers, with hers reaching 102.5 degrees in part because (I discovered) she wasn't drinking enough. We were sluggish and lethargic all day, and kept taking naps. (I very shamelessly seized the opportunity for a quick siesta while they watched "Lilo and Stitch."

liberals, unite!

Your country needs you. (Someone has to slap some sense into it.)

Or does the idea of taking the Christian fish symbol and putting the president's name in it not seem like a really idiotic thing to do? That's exactly what the folks at Bushfish.org have done.

I don't think they're claiming that Bush is God, but they sure are co-opting the religious imagery to shore up Bush and make supporting him not just a moral obligation for all Americans, but a religious observance for Christians. Infusing religion with such rank nationalism leaves me fit to be tied.

One friend of mine described it as the most offensive thing he's ever seen on the Internet, so I guess he agrees with me. And another friend said, "That is wrong in so many ways," which about sums it up.

But you know, since they seem to be sharing all the comments they get,whether positive or negative (and kudos to them for that), I decided to send them the following compliment on their most amusing product web site. I don't know if it'll make them reconsider the wisdom of their position, but I'd like to think it will.

Hey, I have to hand it to you for having an absolutely sublime sense of humor. You obviously put a lot of work into this joke, not just creating a fake product but creating pictures of people apparently using the product on their vehicles too. I'm impressed when I think of the amount of work you must have put into this. (You ought to consider doing some stuff for www.WittenburgDoor.com -- they love religious humor like this.)

I doubt anyone on the Left could have skewered the Fringe Religious Right better than this -- sometimes it really does seem as though people believe that supporting President Bush is an act of religous devotion, and assume that those who criticize his policies are bad Americans and bad Christians too.

Infusing religion with that sort of nationalism (what C.S. Lewis called "Christianity and") can be a frightening and dangerous thing, since it often leads to Christians putting their faith and hope in the kingdoms of this world, expecting them to bring the deliverance that will come only when Christ returns.

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on like that. Like I said, it's an amusing site, and I've shared the URL with a number of other Christians who I thought would get a kick out of it.

Keep the laughs coming,


David Learn

Moments like this make me yearn for the good old days of the Evil Christian Fellowship back at college.

The saga of the visualization exercise continues

Just thought I would keep everyone posted on the visualization exercises Evangeline's class is doing at school.

At Back to School Night on Monday, I managed to get a minute with the teacher and asked her about the meditation exercise Evangeline had told me about. Evangeline's description was fairly simple, but essentially correct. After lunch and recess, the children are supposed to settle down and relax as the teacher reads to them from a book of meditation exercises for children.

During this exercise -- Evangeline told me they didn't finish it Monday, because some of the boys kept talking and couldn't keep their hands to themselves -- they visualize a ball of pure light filling their bodies, and then their guardian angel takes them to their special garden as described, where they hang their worries on a worry tree.

I thought it was amusing that the teacher, obviously aware that I was concerned but not yet knowing why, tried to reassure me that there was nothing religious about the exercise. There can't be, since it's a public school. Still, as I responded, it's undeniably spiritual, and it's a fallacy of our generation that you can be spiritual without being religious. (Though I'll definitely grant there are plenty of religious people who aren't at all spiritual.)

She showed me the story they're using right now, and is going to make me a photocopy so I can read it more in-depth at my leisure. She also offered to remove Evangeline from the class exercise if I was concerned, but as I pointed out, that can cause other problems.

What it boils down to is the teacher is trying to provide the children with the skills they need to relax and settle down, and meditation is a fairly ancient way to do that. I joked, "Well, at least you're not having them write down the messages they get from their guardian angels" -- and regretted it almost immediately as she said, "Well, that's next."

Of course it is. That's the step I'd have next too. Not the messages from guardian angels, which isn't what she meant, but the idea of writing down what they visualize. It's a school. The kids are supposed to learn how to express themselves through writing.

In the meantime, my interpretation holds, and I told the teacher I had provided Evangeline with that understanding of the exercise, but I still feel a little uneasy about this. 

Almost everyone else I've spoken with or heard from does too, including non-Christians who are bothered by the use of the guardian angel. I'm going to hold off saying anything else until I've had a chance to read the exercise for myself and decide based on that information if it's worth pressing the issue, and how.

Did I mention I'd rather be homeschooling? At least then I only have to worry about racism in Bob Jones University textbooks, the lack of critical thinking in A Beka books, and other problems you find in homeschooling curricula.

When your daughter's school awakens your inner Pentecostal

Okay, tell me if I'm overreacting.

As Evangeline was winding down at bedtime tonight, we talked a little about her experiences at the charter school, where she started first grade two weeks ago. Since I homeschooled her last year, I'm understandably interested in how things are going and how they're ranking her academic abilities. (For the record, she'll be doing second-grade level math and something similar for reading and writing, I think. Her art skills are also way above grade level.) Tonight she told me they've been doing some sort meditation exercise.

Now I realize that meditation is a biblical concept, but I can't help it. As soon as I hear a word like "meditation" coming from the mouth of my 5-year-old, the slumbering Pentecostal within me begins to stir uneasily. I can't help it. Whether it's from reading Frank Peretti novels when I was 19, indoctrination against ideas perceived as ungodly when I was in the Assemblies of God, or legitimate concern over occultic concepts, it lights the first step on the path to what could become a full-fledged wigout.

Here's the exercise as Evangeline described it to me: The children lie down on the floor and look up at the ceiling, and then close their eyes. As their teacher reads a story, the children are supposed to imagine their own special star, which comes down into them and fills their whole bodies. Then their guardian angel takes them to their own special garden, where there's a worry tree that they can leave all their worries on.

Is this harmless imagination stuff or am I right in thinking it's a little creepy?

The good stuff I see: It helps the kids relax, it encourages their imagination (Evangeline explained her own star is speckled), and it may even give them coping skills for when life seems kind of rough.

The bad stuff: This whole idea of a star filling their bodies, and a special guardian angel just seems uncomfortably occulty to me.

I didn't want to let on to Evangeline , since she was about to go to sleep, that her father was having a Pentecostal anxiety moment, so I did what I once did with Easter eggs and jack-o'-lanterns. I reinterpreted everything as christocentrically as I could on the spot. That worry tree? It's the Cross, where Jesus died. He tells us to take all our worries to him and leave them there. The Garden? This was a stretch, probably, but I reminded her that when Jesus died, he reopened the way back to Paradise, the Garden of Eden, and that when we get there, it will be beyond our imaginings.

The star I just said was her imagination (weak), which is always a good thing to use, and that she should feel free to use her imagination with everything she's got. And while Evangeline understood the idea that God does ask angels -- or, "people with wings," as she put it -- to protect us, she said that she knows Jesus is watching over her too.

So I encouraged her to use these meditation times to pray to Jesus, and talk with him about anything that's bothering her, but man, this definitely gave me a case of the spiritual willies.

So what's the vote: Am I overreacting to this, or should I ask the teacher about this on Monday? And if I do, what do I say? "So what's with this weird channeling stuff you're teaching my kid? I want her out of this exercise for religious reasons!" That'd be just brilliant.

Natasha, whose feathers generally get ruffled less obviously than mine over such things, also thought this was a weird classroom exercise, and felt that it would get uneasy reactions from other parents too, regardless of their religious background.

And of course, the added irony to all this is that if it wasn't "spiritual warfare," it probably is going to be on Monday. Evangeline thought my explanation of the worry tree was really neat, and said she wants to tell her classmates all about it when she sees them again.

So, one way or another, I've managed to become a trouble maker already, and we're not even at the end of September.

not all his fault

Hadn't thought of it before, but there really has been a lot of crap coming down out of the rafters during Bush's presidency, hasn't there?

Not to say it's all his fault: 9-11 is owed primarily to Clinton's lousy performance on foreign policy and his failure to deal with al Qaeda well in Somalia, after the embassy bombings and after the U.S.S. Cole (though Bush did a good job of ignoring terrorism until 9-11).

Invading Iraq was his decision. To an extent, perhaps that can be blamed on faulty intelligence, but there's been plenty of testimony that Bush wanted early on to invade Iraq.

The hurricane, though, I can't see what he could have done to prevent that, aside from a) appointing a FEMA chief with actual disaster management experience, and b) doing whatever he could have done as chief executive to ensure that relief was ready to go once the hurricane hit.

President resigns amid Katrina scandal

Bush resigns amid Katrina scandal

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Grinn News Service) - His face heavy with remorse, a somber George Bush today announced his resignation from the presidency amid accusations that his administration had bungled relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

A palpable aura of grief and stunned disbelief blanketed the capital as news of the announcement spread. Bush, who has enjoyed record approval ratings in the wake of his largely successful war on terror, which has resulted in a free, democratic Iraq and the stabilization of the Middle East, said his resignation will be effective Nov. 20, when Vice President Dick Cheney will replace Bush as president.

"I take full responsibility for the federal government's failure to bring aid and relief to the New Orleans victims of Katrina," Bush said in a televised address from the Oval Office. "Our failed efforts to provide relief stem from decisions and appointments made during my presidency, and I believe it is essential that the right person be held accountable at times like this, and not a scapegoat. I am that person. The fault is mine.

"Therefore, I hereby resign as president of the United States. I will work closely with incoming President Dick Cheney to ensure that the transition is a smooth one and that the people of the United States and the people of the world will have no need to fear instability or an unsteady hand at the nation's helm."

Political analysts nationwide were stunned by the day's events. Bush's willingness to admit mistakes and his forthrightness in humbly taking responsibility for those errors have been hallmarks of his administration, but evidently few expected such drastic action.

Across the capital, political figures on each side of the aisle confessed themselves stunned by the gravity of the president's response, even considering the horrifying delays in the federal response to Katrina, which caused billions of dollars of damage in New Orleans, reduced the city to anarchy, claimed an estimated thousand lives and left thousands of others stranded with no food, water or medical attention.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic Party, wished Bush good fortune in the twilight days of his administration.

"I wish he really wouldn't go," said Dean, who sought but failed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. "President Bush has been a uniter and not a divider all five years he's been in office, and it's hardly fair to place all the blame on his shoulders. He's being made a scapegoat."

Some political analysts believe Bush's resignation was inevitable once the news reports started rolling in about the situation in New Orleans. Jonathan Hanks, a professor of political science at Princeton University, said the pressure of precedent weighed too heavily upon Bush for any other decision to be possible.

"Just look at the spate of high-profile resignations in the past 20 or so years," Hanks said. "Clinton resigned after admitting to perjuring himself about the Lewinsky affair, and before that, Janet Reno took full responsibility for the Branch Davidian deaths in Waco, Texas, and resigned from being attorney general. Ronald Reagan, held as the example of what a Republican president should be, took full responsibility for the Iran-Contra scandal and resigned.

"The only president in recent history to take 'full responsibility' for something without taking any sort of redemptive action was President Nixon. Nixon acknowledged a role in the Watergate coverup, but refused to resign. True, he was able to complete the remainder of his term, but his legacy was tainted forever," said Hanks.

"Bush could follow that example and claim to take responsibility without actually doing anything, in the hopes that the American people will be satisfied with mere semantics," Hanks allowed. "But doing that would make a mockery of honor, responsibility and integrity. Who could respect himself after doing something like that?"

le phantom de l'opera

Well, my wife and I finally saw the "Phantom of the Opera" on DVD, and I have to say that, despite my initial concerns when I saw it was a Joel Schumacher film, I was impressed.

"Phantom" is arguably one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's finest musicals, along with "Jesus Christ Superstar." It tells the story of an impressionable chorus girl named Christine Daae who receives musical instruction from an unseen Angel of Music who turns out to be a brilliant but dangerous man who lives inside the Opera Populaire, and whose presence and actions have given birth to the legends of a ghost who haunts the opera. Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux, the musical is a neat blend of the Faust legend with the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast.

I read Leroux's novel in September 1992, when I was living in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and saw the musical at Pantages Theater in Toronto in 1994 with my family. Lloyd Webber made some drastic changes to the story (as is to be expected), moving a few scenes around, eliminating Raoul's older brother, and combining the character of the Persian detective with Madame Giry, who manages the chorus girls.

Still, even though Lloyd Webber eliminated Leroux's twists and turns as Raoul descends into the opera house to find Christine, he made one hell of a musical. Despite my initial disappointment at the changes in the story, the soundtrack became one of my favorites pretty quickly, enough that my wife knew the soundtrack long before she ever saw the musical performed. (Which would be the other night, incidentally, on DVD.)

I'm usually leery of watching musicals put on film. The two media don't blend well, in my opinion; you can suspend your disbelief in Jean Valjean's singing his innermost thoughts on stage, but it's kind of hard when you see him do it on screen. One of film's great strengths is its illusion of realism, just as the stage excels at provoking the imagination.

Well, Schumacher got around that problem somewhat by adding a few bits of dialogue, such as when the old manager of the opera house introduces Carlotta to the new owners of the opera house, or other character-building bits that come out in snippets of dialogue. A few of the shorter exchanges that in the libretto are done to music, like when Christine begs Raoul not to make her play the bait in a mousetrap they're setting for the Phantom, Schumacher instead had delivered as dialogue. Unfortunately, I thought these came off as kind of weak, since the words have a lyrical rhythm to them that remained, so they sounded like lyrics being recited rather than lines delivered.

That was pretty minor, though. The casting was excellent, and the woman who played Christine absolutely blew the rest of the cast away, with the two fortunate exceptions of the actors playing Raoul and the Phantom. Schumacher also moved a few scenes around -- such as Christine's visit to her father's grave, which in the movie comes right after the Phantom delivers his opera score during the Masquerade, and not right before the performance of the opera -- and did it in such a way that I felt it actually enhanced the flow of the story.

The biggest change of all, though, was the falling chandelier. In Leroux's novel, the Phantom drops it about halfway through the book, a lead that Lloyd Webber followed, since it corresponds with the end of the first act. Schumacher followed the lead of the other cinematic adaptations of Leroux's novel, though, and moved the chandelier-dropping scene to a more climactic moment, namely, the abduction of Christine.

In other words, everything happens all at once. The Phanton kills the tenor Piangi and takes his place on stage, where no one in their right mind would expect him to be. Christine unmasks him at the end of a very racy "Past the Point of No Return," and he drops the chandelier and makes his escape as the theater catches fire and Raoul chases. It's much more intense this way, and it makes Firmin's lament "We're ruined, André, ruined!" less comical than it's always seemed to me in the musical.

The woman who played Christine in the movie was absolutely tremendous. It's not just the vocals, which are understandably a challenge for any soprano, it's her acting too. She absolutely nailed Christine's characterization dead-on, with the wavering between Raoul and the Phantom, and the powerful draw she feels for each man.

Excellent movie, really. I suppose we shall have to buy a copy at some point.

scripture paraphrased

A great paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 4:7-11:

We're dying. Life is full of pain and perplexity. We have Christ, and so, in the future, his life will manifest in us in resurrection and glory. In the present, that life manifests in us in this very odd, contradictory experience. We are dying, afflicted, broken, hurting, confused...yet we hold on to Jesus in all these things, and continue to love him and believe in him. The power of God is in us, not in making us above the human, but allowing us to be merely human, yet part of a new creation in Jesus.

It's from another essay at Internet Monk.

still messy, still faithful

Got some pretty nice feedback today on my "A Messy Faith" mailing list, owing to the most recent entry, "Trapeze Act." In that particular piece, I write about realizing that I've reached a turning point in my faith, principally that it's gone from being something dogmatic or intellectual in nature to one where it's matured into that relationship thing we talked about in college but I don't think I ever really understood at the time.

I remember in particular how nuts it used to drive me when someone said the Bible was inconsistent. When I was a member of the Assemblies of God, I remember hearing several times from the pulpit that the Bible is not a history text, a science text or what have you, but when it speaks on those points, it is infallible and inerrant. I can't buy that, I'm afraid; the Bible is a collection of stories about God, and there's little evidence that the ancient Hebrews regarded it in the vein of infallibility that American fundamentalists, evangelicals and Pentecostals do.

There's enough inconsistency in the details -- how many angels were at Christ's tomb, how many demoniacs went by the name Legion, whether it was a Canaanite or a Syrophoenician woman whose daughter was afflicted with a demon -- that I can't believe it's completely accurate as a historical document, down to every detail, as it's often presented by believers. Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for instance, describe the same exact sacrifice and each one specifically says that the other's way of preparing the sacrifice is wrong. (One says the meat must be boiled, the other says it must be baked.)

We're right to point out that these are small things, and they don't contradict anysignificant doctrines about God, Christ or anything big like that -- but they're still there, and that raises questions about more fantastic elements of Scripture. What about Noah's Ark? What about Jonah? I don't know. By faith, I'm a creationist, but I no longer feel a need to pretend that creationism is scientific; it's just something I accept on faith, even though I can present you with intelligent arguments about how a creation model fits data that evolution doesn't, as well as much of the data that is held up as support for proof of evolution.

I choose on faith to believe that the events of the Fall, however mythic, still happened. Death entering the world through the sin of Adam is an important point as Paul relates it in Romans. If death already existed as part of the pre-Fallen world, I can't see that there's much hope for a world without death after the Second Coming, since it's already part of God's creation. But that's a faith-based argument rather than one based on science.

I think I really reached the turning point when it was obvious we were going to lose Chris. I was on the phone with my best friend, a total bonehead named David McCandless, and I was in tears I was so upset. I said point-blank that if this was how God treated kids like Chris, I really wasn't sure I wanted any part of him. David asked, without any judgment or rancor in his voice, where I would go then, and I realized just how thoroughly screwed I was -- there was nowhere else I could go. I'd seen enough of the real thing, and had enough of full-contact Christianity to know that even if this wasn't as bad as it could get, Christ was still worth following.

But I've never viewed Christ the same way since. He's grown inestimably bigger in my sight.

One of the lessons that's stuck with me since has been the role of community. The entire experience with Christian was rougher on my wife than on me in part because our church fell apart and she was left without a real community to support us as we were going through everything. I still had McCandless and my fellow weirdoes over at CHRefugee, though even then things like my job at WCN became a way to escape the pain (which of course made things worse for my wife).

There were mercifully few people who told me to buck up and have faith that God would work things out -- although there are always a couple people like that waiting in the wings.

One of the holiest responses I received was that September or October, just before the ax fell. We were trying out/helping out a little at a new church in the Princeton area, and a friend of ours from our old church was also there. Maura asked how things were, and when I started to tell her, she must have seen some of the pain in my face even though I kept it from my voice, because her heart broke right then and she gave me a hug. I started bawling on the spot because of the honest compassion and concern she was expressing. That, I think is what Christ does. He doesn't tell us how to behave or give us proper perspective. He sees that we're in pain, even if we won't admit it to ourselves, and he lets us cry.

McCandless, whose opinion of my writing I hold in tremendous estimation, writes, "Just wanted to let you know that you are doing an excellent job writing your articles... They're very good. Perhaps someday you'll have enough that you could compile them and see if my agent wants to market it as a book."

Actually, as I admitted to him, that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this as a blog/mailing sort of thing. I'm hoping that the writing will market itself to an extent, as people forward links and articles to one another. I put the link in my signature file, but that's about the extent of the marketing I'm doing. When I started this, I invited about fifteen people to sign on,and that was about the extent of the promotion. Only seven people signed up right away, and one person has joined since. I've pretty much taken the view that if God intends to use it, he will, and trying to push it is more likely to bring frustration to myself and other people. I'm reminded somewhat of David, who ran from Saul with no intention of building an army to fight him, but soon found himself surrounded by men who would prove to be the basis of his army when he became king later on. He just hid in the wilderness, and people flocked to him.

So far, it's paying off a little. I'm keeping track of the traffic through Stat Counter, and I'm noticing that there are a few people coming to the site through links in their e-mail, and a number of people are taking the time to read more than one blog entry at a time. And when they leave comments on the blog, I make sure I keep them there. Later on, I figure I can use those posted comments as evidence that I have a readership/platform/audience.

i love writing humor

This is from an upcoming Brothers Grinn mailing, pending any changes or additions by my co-smartass. I can almost imagine someone in the oil industry trying to put this sort of spin on the current state of gas prices:

POLL: AMERICANS LIKE HIGH GAS PRICES

Americans not only enjoy paying $3 or more per gallon at the pump, many of them would like to pay more, a recent survey has found.

The survey, conducted by ExxonMobil, asked viewers if they would prefer to spend their life savings on gas over the course of six months, or if they would rather be locked in a closet overnight with Ernest Borgnine while he recites his lines from "McHale's Navy" using the voice of Miss Piggy.

The survey showed that 84 percent of all male motorists prefer to spend their extra money on gas, with the number dropping significantly, to 4 percent, if they were locked in the closet with Scarlet Johannsen instead of with Ernest Borgnine.

The number of women who preferred to spend their money on gas hovered around 80 percent whether they were locked in a closet with Ernest Borgnine or with Scarlett Johannsen. The number of women who would rather pay at the pump rose sharply to 98 percent when the alternative was to be locked up with Ashton Kuchner.

"America will never allow itself to be locked in a closet with anyone," said analyst Ron Milton of Catasauqua University in eastern Pennsylvania. "It's our right to squander natural resources, waste our wealth and poison the air. Buy more SUVs! We're Americans."

Survey results have a margin of error of plus or minus 50 percent.

BICYCLISTS JOIN EVOLUTION DEBATE

A group of Kansas bicyclists have joined the debate in that state over whether to teach Intelligent Design as a viable scientific theory alongside evolution.

The group, a wide mix of professionals who have decided to save gas by riding their bikes to work, have rallied together under the banner "Natural Selection, not Intelligent Design." The bicyclists are taking their message to the state's hoghways, where they expect to get the widest possible audience.

"It's the only way I know how to get to work anyway," explained Robin O'Connor, as she pedaled her bike onto a busy interstate and was immediately hit by a tractor trailer going 90 mph.

So far, about 40 percent of the group's founders have given their lives for the cause. The remaining members explain that they will continue to carry the mission forward until they have proven that natural selection has guided the human evolutionary process by eliminating those unfit for survival, such as those who ride their bikes on highways with no shoulders.

Despite their unorthodox method of argument, their efforts have received attention from the Kansas State Board of Education, and caused a few members to reconsider their position.

"I had always thought that life was so complex and wonderful that it had to be the work of an intelligent designer," said one board member who has supported the Intelligent Design position in the past. "But these idiots sure are making a good argument against any intelligence being involved in any way in their origin."

another stupid "gas out" idea

Remember the stupidity behind the Gas Out six years ago? The idea at the time, when gas was probably temporarily around $1.20 a gallon, was that if everyone went one whole day without buying gas, it would force the oil companies to drastically lower their prices. There was no actual change in people's gasoline consumption or driving habits, mind you. There was just one day when everyone was supposed to avoid buying gas, and either fill up the day before or the day after.

Well, I guess it's still easier to blame Big Oil for gas prices rather than making changes in our driving habits. A friend of mine named David McCandless, who found the idea about as ridiculous as I do, forwarded me the latest Gas Out idea. What's appalling about this is that it almost contains a modicum of understanding about market forces, but not enough to actually create an intelligent plan.

The new Gas Out involves boycotting ExxonMobil, which may or may not be a bad idea, but certainly would be useless for driving down the cost of gas. True, ExxonMobil is the biggest of Big Oil, and a major boycott might drive down the price of a gallon of gas at the local Exxon and Mobil stations, because the decreased demand (for those brands) will force them to lower their prices in order to remain competitive with other brands.

Unfortunately, the decreased demand at ExxonMobil would lead to an increased demand for other brands of gas, whether they be Lukoil, Sunoco, Amoco, Chevron or Sheetz, and therefore theoretically would drive up their costs slightly. At best, ExxonMobil prices would drop a few pennies, everyone else's would go up a few pennies, then people would switch back to ExxonMobil because of the lower prices there, thereby leveling out the artifically increased demand at the other stations.

Since the overall appetite for oil would remain the same, I think we could expect the price of gasoline to remain fairly steady.

Is this what's passing for logic these days? No wonder America's falling so far behind the other nations in terms of academic achievement, and losing its edge in the sciences. This is really stupid. Whoever came up with it definitely has a rudimentary understanding of supply and demand, and how they affect economics. Unfortunately, he's not applying the rule properly. To lower gasoline prices, we need to use a lot less of it, period. Not just buy less of it from ExxonMobil, but buy and burn less of it overall.

I read that for hybrids to meaningfully affect gas consumption (demand), 20 percent of our cars need to be hybrids. Right now we're closer to 2 percent. The high price of gas is forcing people to eschew gas-guzzling vehicles in favor of hybrids, but we have a long way to go before we're at the one-in-five mark. Maybe more people should just actually ride their bikes to work, even if it means a longer commute.

"footprints" revised

I still like the version I wrote for Chicken Soup for the Soulless about five years ago, but this one is also excellent. I received it via e-mail from someone who found it on a livejournal blog:

One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to him and the other to the LORD.

When the last scene flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that for many times in his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened to be at the very lowest and saddest times in his life. At still other times in his life he could see only a single footprint, with a circle-print where the other foot should be, and a straight line between them. This really bothered him and he questioned the LORD about it.

"LORD, you said that once I decided to follow You, You'd walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only ONE set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed You the most You would leave me."

The LORD replied:

"My son, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

The man felt much better, but was still perplexed. He asked: "But what of the footprints with the line and the circles? Where did they come from?"

"My son," said the Lord, with compassion in His voice, "that was when we were joined by a one-legged pirate with a wheelbarrow."

if thine ear offends thee

So I'm one of the organizers of Arts in The Park, an upcoming arts festival over in Highland Park.

Last night, at one of our nearly-there meetings, we had a brief discussion about the live entertainment we're trying to schedule for two stages. We're down at least one, possibly two, acts because of a cancellation, and we're trying to find some bands to perform on the day of the festival. During the meeting, one of the other committee members mentioned that an R&B/gospel band had expressed interest in performing, and there ensued an awkward discussion about whether an explicity religious band would be appropriate.

Now I'll be the first to admit that most Christian bands aren't appropriate for concerts outside church, mostly because they stink. The melodies are flat and uninteresting, the choruses are uninspiring and dull, and the time spent listening to them could be put to better use weeding the garden. That's not what we were discussing -- in fact, I have no idea if anyone on the committee even know what the band sounds like -- no, what was expressed was concern that a religious band might offend festival attendees.

This may seem appalling since I'm so deeply religious, but I really didn't say much at the time. Having given it some thought now that I'm home, I wrote an e-mail to the group's Yahoo! list to voice my concern that we are considering not going with a group just because their lyrics are religious.

I can understand the concern about people taking offense, but I don't think the reactions people might have should be a consideration in whom we invite to perform and who we do not. It may sound a bit facile to put it this way, but no one is being forced to listen to any particular band; except for vendors and some of the volunteers, people will be free to come and go from the festival as they wish, to move around the festival, and to do any number of other things that will remove them from earshot of any bands they don't want to hear.

And really, using a person's beliefs, rather than the quality and nature of their music, as a litmus test for acceptability seems especially odious to me. It's the nature of art to explore themes and to express the artist's inner beliefs and thoughts; I hope it would be unthinkable for anyone to ask someone not to display artwork that expresses her faith, whether in God, Christ, Buddha or the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables. By the same token, I would hope that we would not want to discriminate against hiring a live performer simply because their lyrics or musical structures reflect their beliefs.

There are, of course, any number of other perfectly legitimate reasons to reject a band, some of which may apply in this case. What concerns me, though, is that we were actually discussing making that decision based on the religious content of their songs.

back on the bike

I got the bike out of the basement this evening to go to an arts festival committee meeting in Hoover Point.

I've been taking the car to the Wednesday meetings, but since gas is now past $3 a gallon, I'm trying to use the bike more. I'll be taking it to Bible study tomorrow night too. It's a great feeling, but I honestly can't believe how out of shape I've become in the past several years. I used to commute to Hillsborough, about 15 miles away from here, on my bike back when I was the editor of the the local newspaper there.

It was an odd feeling at first, being back on the bike after about four years off it. I was a little unsteady with my balance, and kept braking because I would wobble when I went too fast. When I got down to the highway, I walked it across and then rode on the bike path that goes through the park by the river. That was a nice trip, and even though it was a little off-roadish at a few points, I did all right.

Actually, the whole trip went pretty smoothly. There were a few points where I felt a little tight up against the cars in traffic, but I never had to get off the bike and walk it up the hill like I had to do back in college when I rode up the hill past the AGD house toward Easton Hall. Despite leaving the house only fifteen minutes before the meeting started, I managed to get there just five minutes late, maybe less, and before the meeting had even started.

I was a little winded, but not worn out. This is definitely something I need to do more of. Plans call for using the bike to make trips to the supermarket for one or two items, to Target for a couple returns and to buy a bike lock, and other short trips around town. I'm trying to figure out a way I can use the bike to get Evangeline to school in the morning so we can save the gas there too, since the trips to her school and Rachel's preschool are likely to be our biggest regular gas uses.

Thankfully, I didn't take a spill on my bike this time, and I didn't have any near-death experiences either. (That's what the next few months will be for.)

Brothers Grinn: back in business?

I sent out the first Chicken Soup for the Soulless piece for the first time in over a year, yesterday. It feels good to be back in the saddle.

Chicken Soup for the Soulless grew out of those annoyingly saccharine e-mails that people forward to everyone in their mailbox, about the meaning of life, footprints in the sand, and how God loves America more than any other nation in the world. I started making improvements and sending them back to the people who had first shared them with me, sold a few to The Wittenburg Door, and soon found myself running a mailing list with my friend.

The highlight of our run when was when Chicken Soup for the Soul threatened us with a lawsuit.

In addition to the lawsuit (which got us attention from The Home News-Tribune, The Times of Trenton, NJ Biz, the About.com Christian Humor site, and a Trenton-based legal journal), we were getting links from all over. We had readers in the military, the government, Youth Specialities, and God only knows where else. Plus, we had readers in Cambodia, China, Singapore, Russian, the United Kingdom, Australia and probably more than a dozen other countries with Internet access.

For various reasons, having to do rather somewhat with the labor-intensive nature of the list -- we wrote all our own stuff, and never made any money on it -- we took a long break, starting about two or two-and-a-half years ago. We wrote a few and distributed a few things during that period, but mostly the list was silent.

Not surprisingly, we lost about 250 readers during the most recent hiatus, an attrition due simply to people changing their e-mail addresses. I'm wondering if we'll take an even bigger hit when people check their e-mail and find themselves subscribed to a list they barely remember, if at all.

Well, I have hopes of getting the list's momentum back. I sent out a new mailing on Sunday evening, a little piece that turned an inspirational vignette about how heaven wouldn't be heaven without your dog, into a piece about SUVs and the people who drive them.

I'm working on a mailing for Tuesday or Wednesday about the Bush administration's solution to the growing energy crisis. After that I have plans for a murder mystery that I might be able to stretch into a couple weeks. We'll see.

My job at WCN was a bitch, and really ruined writing for me. It's good to be getting past that at last. I hope I can stay the course this time and get over them.


By the way, if you want to subscribe to the Brothers Grinn, we're hosted by Topica.


Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.

chief justice roberts?

So, according to ABC News and dozens of other news outlets, President Bush has nominated Roberts to replace the recently deceased Rehnquist as chief justice.

What the heck is up with that? He's not even on the Supreme Court, and he's already being considered for the top post? It doesn't really bother me that Roberts is considered a conservative, as long as he's qualified to be on the Supreme Court, but it really seems over the top to be nominating him for the chief justice spot. His experience on the Supreme Court is nonexistent. What makes him more qualified than the other justices, all of whom have been sitting there for more than a decade?

That's just crazy.

Still, give Bush credit for sheer ballsiness. Roberts generally has been considered a shoe-in for the court, with virtually no objections lodged so far from the Democrats in the Senate. Now that there are two justices to replace, since O'Connor is retiring, he may have made it unpalatable for the Democrats to fight him on this appointment, since there's another, potentially bruising confirmation hearing coming once a new replacement for O'Connor surfaces. If the appointment goes through, Bush's legacy on the nation will be considerable because of the hearings his justices will hand down.

But I'd still feel slighted if I were Scalia or one of the other justices being passed over.

hurricane katrina

One of the other things that just bites about this is the inhumanity of the authorities. People at the Superdome discovered that there was a supply of food and water there, and broke in to prepare it and distribute it. The National Guard showed up and they were ordered out of the kitchens, at gunpoint, with the stated threat that they would be shot if they didn't go.

I heard a guy showed up with 500 hot dogs at the Superdome to give them, and he was turned away, because police said they had no way of knowing whether the hot dogs were safe to consume.

Or there's the kid who was being evacuated, and they made him leave behind his dog because there was a no-animals policy. The kid begged, pleaded and cried so hard he started to throw up, and they wouldn't budge. Gee, do you think the kid might have lost everything else he had and was clinging to the one shred of his own life that was left? Would it have been so unthinkable to have some basic human compassion? Had the kid suffered so little that they had to take even this from him?

Disasters always bring out the best in humanity, but they also bring out the worst.

I hope to God that these and the other bureaucrat-from-hell stories I've heard are false, because they're making me furious. I know we shouldn't resent petty people for their pettiness, just as we shouldn't resent the bee for stinging us -- each acts according to its nature -- but that's just awful.

pain at the pump

Gas prices here in New Jersey and throughout the United States have been positively painful latelyevels. I filled my car's gas tank on Tuesday, even though it was three-quarters full, because I was passing a gas station where regular fuel was $2.55 and I had no idea when I would see gas that cheaply again. Since then, when I took the car out on Wednesday, I saw gas going for as high as $3.19. I'm sure it's even worse in other states.

So, in a fit of civic-mindedness, I actually wrote to my elected officials Thursday night and asked them, not to lower gasoline prices, but to encourage greater conservation efforts and, more importantly, to encourage our nation's auto manufacturers to produce the alternative-fuel vehicles we have heard much about but seen little of.

On the first front, I believe Congress could do much to encourage greater conservation simply with an appeal to our nation's industries to allow telecommuting when possible, and even providing a financial incentive such as a tax credit or other recognition for businesses that encourage telecommuting. They also could prevail upon Bush to stop flying to Crawford, Texas, all the time, ground their limosines, and encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles, like hybrids, for starters.

It would also be nice to see more options in terms of fuel. Internal combustion engines can be modified fairly easily to run on natural gas, as I witnessed firsthand in New Zealand in 1987, and again in Haiti during the ill-conceived embargo of the previous Bush and Clinton administrations. Aside from the post office trucks and a few other government-type vehicles, I'm aware of no such vehicles here in the United States, let alone places for people to fuel them.

More to the point, I've heard reports of prototype fuel cell vehicles for years, but I'm not aware of any efforts to put them into mass production. It would be nice if our elected officials exerted some effort to encourage these alternatives. Left to the market, these changes are going to be disastrously slow in coming and horrendously expensive when they do.

This current presidential administration has been extremely friendly to the automotive and oil industries, through measures such as relaxing fuel-economy standards in early 2001. It's past time we as a nation took seriously our obligation to consider the environment and the economy we will be leaving our children. Any incentive the government can give the auto industry to break our dependence on imported oil can only be a good thing.

gas

I was at three-quarters of a tank the other day, and filled up anyway because gas was selling for $2.55 a gallon and I didn't know when I would see it that low again.

I've seen it ranging from $2.61 to $3.19, all on the same day, at stations no more than five miles from another. It's bad, and it's getting worse. Between Bush's war in Iraq, the disruption in supply lines caused by the hurricane, and the world getting close to peak output just as China and India are coming online to consume gas in record quantities, the piper's fee is coming due. We're well past the point that we should be using alternative fuels for cars, but no one wanted to hear that for years. It may be my imagination, but I think I've been seeing fewer cars on the road the last few days.

I'm planning to take my bike to get places by myself that I would have taken the car for other days, and I'm trying to convince Natasha that we can walk to church instead of driving. (We already dropped the church that was 20 minutes away, but we were going to do that anyway.)

Honestly, I've no idea how this is going to pan out for us as far as travel goes. Natasha walks to work, which helps tremendously. We use natural gas for heat in the winter, which I'm extremely grateful for.

I've read of some gas stations that are selling gas at a loss just to stay competitive with the other stations -- the price depends on when you got your last shipment, see -- only to still be accused of price gouging.

It's a wake-up call to responsibility. Gas-electric hybrids, biodiesel, hydrogen-powered and natural gas engines are long past due not just to be available but to be in widespread use. But for years we've been deluding ourselves that oil is the second most abundant liquid in the world, and shortages are all manufactured by OPEC in order to enrich the Arab world. Yeah, there's undoubtedly some manufactured element to shortages, but it should have been obvious years ago that our levels of consumption were past ridiculous.

I'm wondering if Bush is going to enact rationing like Carter did, or if he's going to stand by his policy of letting the market deal with it. (Gas prices are supposed to correct themselves somewhat and drop back down 50 cents in another month or so, to the mid-$2 range, once the supply routes get straightened out, supposedly, but we're talking major disruption of the transportation setup in the meantime, with prices for EVERYTHING going through the roof. I see massive cutbacks in retail spending, leading to job layoffs and a shrinking economy. If this goes on long enough, we're looking at a recession or another depression, with more mortgage foreclosures. And it's not like people have oodles of savings they can tap. ...)

Not all of this is Bush's fault, but he's lucky he's not running for re-election this year. Even Doug Forrester could beat him in a run-off.

telemarketing bastards

Dear American Fidelity:

I'd just like it if you people would just take a clue from the Federal Trade Commission and STOP CALLING ME. I signed up for the federal Do Not Call list when it was launched, well over a year ago, and your New Jersey office (908-364-0496) has been amazing in its disregard for federal law. We have received three phone calls in the last three days from that office.

Rest assured that if we should decide to refinance our mortgage, American Fidelity is the LAST brokerage we would consider doing it with. Any firm with that little regard for federal law, a family's stated desire to be left alone, and just basic human decency is not fit to be in business, let alone to receive our hard-earned money.

We've been keeping track of the phone calls. If they continue, I will be filing a harassment suit.

Yours truly,
Me

P.S. You'll note that I didn't provide you with valid contact information. That's because I don't want you to take this as a legitimization of your business tactics. Chances are good that I'm not the only person being harassed. Maybe you should just crack down on the entire office and discipline your telemarketers. (Actually you'd be doing your firm a tremendous favor in terms of publicity if you gave everyone in telemarketing a more useful, and publicly acceptable job. Annoying the public is a lousy way to build your clientele.)

new orleans

Things are really bad in New Orleans. People are dying now, infants and the elderly, because there's no drinking water, and no effort to get it to them. People are being tossed out of the Superdome with nowhere to go, since people are unwilling or afraid to drive buses into that part of the city to help evacuate refugees. It's going to be even worse in the next two days if there is no water taken to them. To quote Harlan Ellison, "We're going to see people eating their own babies, for chrissake."

There's going to be disease and hunger and loads of terrible things we can't even imagine yet. A friend of mine said, he was thinking, "Wake up, America, this is what the rest of the world encounters daily." No. Not like this, it doesn't. This is a wholesale disruption of the entire social structure down there, worse than you find in many third world countries. There are looters entering stores just to get food and water, there are anarchists pillaging because they can and shooting at police, rescue workers have been slow to get there, there has been rising tension in the refugee camp at the Superdome, and relief/evacuation efforts have been hideously slow, with no food or water brought in to help these people. We knew the hurricane was coming, and people were told to go to the Superdome, and there was nothing done to prepare for when they got there.

What the fuck were the civil leaders thinking?

My aunt lives in Louisiana. She's now with her son in Atlanta, but I'm sure her house is gone now, and it wouldn't surprise me if my late uncle was exhumed by the flood. (What a cheery, uplifting thought.) My brother-in-law also escaped, but we've no idea what condition his house is in right now. I suspect it's ruined. News reports are saying that more than a thousand people are dead, the survivors who didn't evacuate are being removed, and that it will be more than three months before the city will be inhabitable again. Property damage is in the billions, which is going to affect everyone's insurance premiums. My own prediction is that the New Orleans area is pretty much finished; there will still be a New Orleans, but many of the evacuees are not going to start over again in that area because there is so little to start over with.

My wife is torn between despair and fury over the situation there, and I've told her if she wants to, to call the American Red Cross and see if she can volunteer in any way.

By the way, if you're reading this, visit the Mercy Corps web site and see what you can give. Yeah, it's money and not yourself, but it's something, and Mercy Corps is one of the best nonprofit organizations I'm aware of.

states picking up feds' slack

I read something yesterday that I found utterly fascinating. According to a recent article in The New York Times, nine Northeastern states have taken the initiative of enacting new restrictions on emissions. In doing so, they have joined a number of the larger U.S. metropolitan areas in getting on board with the goals of the Kyoto accord, which President Bush refused to ratify on the grounds that it would be inimical to American interests.

Air pollution in general and emissions specifically are the most significant items of interest in the ongoing discussion on global warming and what to do about it. Virtually everyone except the president and his administration acknowledge that manmade pollution is heating up the earth's atmosphere and effecting climate change on a massive scale.

It's ironic that this movement is happening now, during the Bush administration, not just because it shows how out of step Bush is with a large segment of the voting population, but because he unintentionally or inadvertantly has reminded us of a great truth I think most politicians would rather we forgot: We have the power within ourselves to effect change, even when they won't do it for us.

Bush, whose administration has more ties to the oil and energy industry than I have unmatched socks in my drawer, has been about as unsupportive of the environmental movement as you can be without actually clubbing baby seals. He's expanded the timber industry's access to the forests in our national parks, targeted the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve for oil drilling, put oil industry executives on the task force that helped develop our national energy policy, loosened the fuel efficiency requirements for auto manufacturers, refused to ratify the aforementioned Kyoto accord, and has granted coal-burning power plants leave not to clean up their acts, leaving East Coast states like New Jersey to deal with the acid rain caused by Midwest power plants. Oh, and he also issued an executive order countermanding one by President Clinton that would have required toilet manufacturers to design commodes that use fewer gallons per flush.

All told, while the Bush administration has been a boon to business and industry, it's been quite the opposite to the environmental movement. It's been bad enough that former New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman, who could hardly be described as an environmentalist for her eight years as that state's chief executive, resigned as head of the Environmental Protection Agency when she could no longer support his environmentally unfriendly policies.

But Bush is out of step with much of America on this issue, and I think we're going to see more evidence of this as time goes on. Environmental groups are applauding the Northeastern states' actions, because they think other states are going to follow their initiative and take similar steps to curb emissions from power plants, industry, and automobiles.

ant problems

Does anyone know how to get rid of ants with boric acid?

I ask because we're having a continuing ant problem in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Usually they're the itty-bitty ants I've heard called water ants, but on occasion I've seen larger models too. When we had an apparent nest inside a potted plant, it was easy to wipe them out with some dish detergent in water, but I can scarcely do that here.

I used the boric acid to great effect with a flea problem we were having earlier this summer, but my attempts at ant control weren't as successful. (I was told to mix it with sugar, get it wet, and soak cotton balls in the mixture. The ant would be drawn to the sugar and killed by the boric acid.) Ant traps also have been ineffective.

Raid and other sprays work on ants where we can see them, but I'm after something the ants can take back to the nests with them and kill the queen, so the whole colony will die. I'd also rather not spray poison around the kitchen.

So, any suggestions?

Happy birthday to me

We had a wonderful time on my birthday yesterday. My wife gave me a couple cardboard boxes and newspaper that the girls put presents inside, and they thought it was tremendous when I put a bubblewrap mailing envelope on my head for a "birthday hat."

The presents from the girls included a JMS Spider-Man trade paperback that reinterprets the death of Gwen Stacy, and reveals that she had children before she died, and a Simpsons Seaon 5 DVD set. Very nice, though I've been thinking lately how much I don't need more CDs or particularly need birthday presents.

Being married to my wife and having those two girls made this one of the best birthdays I can imagine.

And, as is customary for our marriage, I made dinner and baked my own birthday cake.

the rise and fall of the american empire

A friend of mine from my biweekly D&D sessions sent me a lengthy piece from CTheory that analyzes political, social and economic trends in the United States today, and looks ahead to the next fifty years. It's a fascinating essay, but I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure what to make of it either. It's fairly lengthy and not as readable as one would wish for something this complex. I definitely see the power to what the author is saying, though, on several points:

• America has become a nation of consumers rather than producers. Our industry has been outsourced to other countries, and many "American" businesses are, more truthfully, multinational companies with assets so widely scattered it's hardly fair to say that they're American in the sense that originally would have meant. Our factories are in Mexico and China, our tech support comes from India, and plenty of other intellectual services, such as architecture, have been outsourced to places like Egypt, where the knowledge comes more cheaply than from a place here in the U.S.; and even our food is grown all over the world. It makes shareholders happy when the bottom line is blacker, but it makes us progressively less capable to provide for ourselves. As fuel costs continue to soar, we can expect the price of the goods we consume to rise also, and we'll have little alternative,since we've shut down our factories, developed our farms, and outsourced everything else.
• Our economy is riding an inflated bubble, and we're probably facing another Depression in the next ten years. Savings reached zero percent this year, and people are borrowing like crazy to get everything. It's a "standard of living" issue, but our standard of living is preposterous, with the things we "need." The writer notes -- and I agree -- that we've inverted the Protestant work ethic that made our nation what it is (or was). Instead of working hard with a delayed gratification, we've opted for a model of instant gratification where we get what we want now, even if we don't need it, and spend the next twenty or thirty years working our way out of debt. We do this not just with houses, but with cars, education, appliances, entertainment and pretty much everything else we buy. That's unsound economics, as anyone who remembers Black Friday in 1987 will attest.
• We're ignoramuses of our own history and culture. I actually thought this was an interesting stament in the piece you sent, since the author makes the point that our pop culture is recycling itself, with remakes of old TV shows, movies and TV shows as movies, a la "Dukes of Hazard." Part of this is the dimming of the American mind, to be sure, but it also hearkens back to the lost tradition of storytelling, where people would retell familiar stories from one generation to the next. What I gleaned from this point was that our new mass storytelling isn't connecting to our cultural heritage -- our history, Shakespeare, antiquity, the Bible -- it's connecting to recent stuff instead, and most of it fairly lightweight, like superhero movies or "Dukes of Hazzard." Rather than wrestling with the deep and troubling stories told by Shakespeare, Victor Hugo or Moses, we're going for the simple-minded morality tales of Batman fighting the Scarecrow, and the Duke boys getting the upper hand on Roscoe P. Coaltrain.

I'd have to say that I think a lot of the analysis here is dead-on, and it makes me think of a line from Alex Ross' "Uncle Sam" comic with Vertigo a few years back. Brittania, talking to Sam, recalls when she fell from glory and then adds: "Of course, when you fall, it's going to make what I went through look like a bloody cricket match."

And as the writer interprets from current events, it's not that the United States is going to fall. We've already started to topple.

alan moore's "swamp thing"

I don't know if you've ever read Alan Moore's run on "Swamp Thing," but if you haven't, I recommend it. In fact, even if it's available at the library, I'd go out and buy a copy. It's that good.

The only other Moore work I know from the 1980s is his "Watchmen," which I've never been able to submerge myself in completely, even though I recognize its importance to the medium and even though I can enjoy the artistry in some ways. (I'm guessing I don't have enough angst and despair to enjoy the darkening tone of the pirate comic, especially when it's buoyed up by Dreyburg's depression, the Comedian's nihilism, Rorshach's endless hostility and Dr. Manhattan's disinterest.)

"Swamp Thing" is just incredible. As the D.C. Universe goes, he's probably a C-string character, slightly more interesting than the Elongated Man, but not as engaging as Green Arrow or Etrigan. I know him mostly from the movie, where Alec Holland was working on some sort of growth formula to enhance plant growth, got covered in the stuff and became the anthropomorphic embodiment of swamp plants. Plus he had a guest shot in "Aquaman" while Peter David was writing it, and Neil Gaiman wrote a couple Swamp Thing-related stories that appeared in "Midnight Days."

In his first issue on "Swamp Thing" -- and it always feels funny to write about a personally new discovery that's actual twenty years old -- Moore reinterpreted the Swamp Thing's origin, much in the way that JMS later reinterpreted Spider-Man. I don't want to say much about it if you haven't read the volume in question, but it's fascinating. It completely redefines the character without really violating anything you've understood about him, and in some ways it even explains some of the impossibilities of his origins -- although as I noted to Natasha, you can't really do that without creating more absurdities, since you're trying to make the impossible seem believable.

Still, he redefines the character, and then follows that through brilliantly, creating a four-part horror story that works precisely because it deals with real horrors like the environmental devastation we've perpetrated in the last several decades. After that comes another three-part horror story that is also good, partly because of the thematic elements, but mostly because of those freaking twists and turns Moore puts his stories through in terms of expectation and plot. His stories can get so complex, it's fun to go back and re-read them just to see all the pieces lining up ahead of time.

I wish I could write that well. (Come to think of it, I wish Moore still wrote that well, but the "Tom Strong" books I've read have been a disappointment, and even "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" wasn't as good as this.)

And of course, as a "Sandman" fan, I got a kick out of realizing that Matthew Cable is none other than the pre-deceased Matthew, who became Dream's Raven in "The Doll's House." I had read that somewhere else, I think on an annotated Sandman web site I visited a couple years ago, but it was still neat to make the connection, and also to recognize a quote that Gaiman borrowed for "The Wake": "The night can make a man more brave, but not more sober." Ironic, I thought, that a comic book character was quoting to Matthew a line from a comic book where Matthew nearly killed himself while driving drunk.

Anyway, "Swamp Thing" is good stuff. I must remember to use my Barnes & Noble card to snag a copy at 20 percent off if the opportunity presents itself. (And for another good horror comic, check out "30 Days of Night," one of the all-time chillingest horror comics I've read, although it didn't give me nightmares.)

attack of the macrocephalites

I took the girls to the pediatrician on Tuesday. Evangeline needed a chicken pox vaccination before school starts, and Rachel needed a couple vaccinations herself before she can start preschool. That went fairly easily, despite their trepidation over getting shots -- Evangeline had just had four shots the previous week, one of them quite painful, and my attempts to get her in a positive state of mind by having her sing "I want to get a shot / Right in the butt" to the tune of "You Can't Get to Heaven" were ultimately unsuccessful.

I don't remember our last pediatrician doing this, but the nurse on Tuesday took a tape measure and measured the circumference of Rachel's head. When the doctor came in a few minutes later, she had a worried look on her face, and measured Rachel's head again herself.

"Let me guess," I said, "her head is bigger than normal."
"Well, yes," she said.
"In fact, it's off the chart."
"Yes," she said.
"And you're worried that she might have hydroencephalitis," I said.

The doctor started to laugh a little, since this was obviously familiar territory for me. Maybe she had noticed the size of my own head, which has been mistaken in the past for a three-story building.

"Well, hydroencephalitis or other related problems," she said. "Has her head always been large?"

"My wife thinks so," I said. "And she would know best. She calls it the Learn family head, and it is big enough for an entire family. She gets that from her father."

It turns out that Rachel, while she is only in the 25th percentile or so for height, is off the charts for head size. The doctor showed me the standard distribution for head size on children her age, and Rachel was well outside the norm, meaning she looks something like MODOK in the old Captain America comics. Still, as the doctor noted in the exam, Rachel was engaging in healthy imaginative play, responded to complex requests, had tremendous fine and gross motor skills, and was in no way impaired in her language ability.

In other words, she's a macrocephalite -- a fancy way of saying she has a big head, just like her father. Let's just hope she doesn't get the figurative big head that goes with it.

Also, as of Wednesday afternoon, I am one tooth lighter than I used to be. Now I'll agree I need to lose weight, but my mouth is not where I would like to lose it. Still, I had a broken molar and the dentists decided either they couldn't repair it or (I think more likely) my insurance company or their DMO policy said they couldn't repair it because they could just remove it instead, more cheaply. Worst of all, the smegheads wouldn't let me keep the tooth to put under the pillow and get a lousy 25 cents from the tooth fairy.

So now my mouth is lopsided because I have no lower right rear molar, but on the upside, my head is as big as ever.

a cardinal sin

Well, I did it again -- I have committed a cardinal sin in the world of homeschoolers, by failing to show proper solidarity with the party line. (And I bet you thought that happened only when teachers opposed the National Educators Association.)

I broke the first rule last year, when we decided to enroll Evangeline at an area charter school for first grade. I get a little touchy about this because I've encountered not once but several times a pervasive, defensive attitude among homeschoolers. We have to believe that homeschooling is better than school education, that our children are smarter, better adjusted socially, happier and just plain better off. With a few exceptions, there's a lot of resentment toward any insinuation that homeschooling is anything less than the best choice for every parent. Starting out as a homeschooler and then stopping -- that's just unacceptable. (I usually handle such reponses by asking them if they agree that the fundamental tenet of homeschooling is that parents know what is best for their children's education. Once they agree to that, I ask them to explain why they're faulting my decision when I'm the parent in question.)

Well, Thursday afternoon, I broke the second rule. I was at a park get-together with other homeschoolers, and somehow discussion turned toward the regulations in different states. New Jersey is one of the most generous states where homeschoolers are concerned. If I were to educate Evangeline all the way through 12th grade, all I have to do is send a letter to the school district, saying that we intend to educate her at home, and at that point, the burden of proof lies on the district to prove that I'm not educating her rather on me to prove that I am. There are no rules governing training or certification for me to homeschool, no rules stipulating what curricula I must use, and no evaluations of what my children actually do learn. I said that I think New Jersey is probably a little too lax on the rules.

About half the other parents there either took it in stride, or silently agreed with me. Who can tell, when they say nothing? The other half, though, wanted to know what I thought was wrong with the way things are, why I thought it would be good to have any sort of oversight, whose business was it what people teach their kids, and so on.

The thing is, I wasn't even discussing regulation as a means of catching people like the Jacksons, who allegedly abused or neglected foster children in their Collingswood home and used "homeschooling" as a means of avoiding detection at school. I did cite the Jacksons example, because they claimed to be homeschooling their kids and weren't. The alleged abuse is a different story, and the state Division of Youth and Family Services should have caught that abuse when its caseworkers supposedly visited the house. I'd say we have an obligation as a society to look out for the welfare of our children, and that includes making sure they're being educated. "Am I brother's keeper?" (Yes, Cain, you are.)

How you would evaluate, I don't know. I can't think anyone should object to a child mastering concepts faster than they would at school, and as noted, that's one of the biggest points of pride where homeschoolers are concerned -- how advanced our kids are, compared to the public school kids. So maybe there should be some sort of evaluation done -- though of course you run the risk of bias affecting how the evaluation is performed, and there's also the variation among children regarding their progress and development. Evangeline knew how to read before she was 5; other children don't want to learn until they're 6 or 7, which an anti-homeschooling administrator could see as a parent's failure. And of course there are "unschoolers," although I have to admit I'm a little suspicious of a Summerhill approach to education myself.

Part of the reaction -- and I'm speculating wildly here, so this part shouldn't be taken too seriously -- could stem from the individual's reason for homeschooling. Some people have a separatist motivation for homeschooling, a sort of "The district will teach my child horrible values and lead them away from the truth" thinking. Others, and I believe I lie more in this area than in the former, see it simply as a better means of education; i.e., "Public schools are going to fail my kids badly. They'll be better off if I homeschool them."

So I am falling rapidly from grace. The only thing left to do is to join the NEA.

getting feedback, and other events

I was talking to a friend last night who's on my "A Messy Faith" mailing list, and he told me had found my story about Daedalos to be haunting.

I was intrigued, since I haven't been getting much in the way of feedback on the list lately, and its membership hasn't swelled considerably yet. Not completely surprisingly, Brian didn't quite get the idea behind the story. He saw it as being about a man who had been courageous, lost his courage when he realized that he wasn't as in control of his life as he had thought, and then finally committed suicide.

That wasn't quite what I was aiming at. The ending was meant to be at least a little jarring, since you really don't know what's going to happen next, whether the wind carries Daedalos away from where he's been languishing, or if he's going to plunge to his death. I can see where he could get that interpretation, though I had thought the wind was a rather obvious symbol for what I had in mind.

Ah well.

Things continue as they have been, otherwise. We just got back from a weekend trip to visit family in Atlantic City, and are taking a slightly longer trip to D.C. this Friday afternoon, where we will visit my brother and take in the sights of the capital. We won't be going to visit the White House, alas, but we will see some of the other monuments, and let the girls see their first-ever protests outside the White House, I'm sure.

Just checked out a bunch of graphic novels from the library. As predicted, most of the Batman graphic novels were a disappointment. They've replaced Jim Gordon with a new police commissioner (Gordon retired), which makes for an interesting tension between Batman and the Gotham police; and for a few issues at least Batman had a female Robin sidekick, since Timothy Drake was grounded from superheroics once his father found out. A couple of interesting developments and changes, but the comics still lack any vision or drive that made Miller's Batman stand out. Heck, they're not even as well developed as Jeph Loeb's Batman, and I never thought he was that interesting.

On the other hand, I also checked out Alan Moore's "Saga of the Swamp Thing." First time I've ever read a Swamp Thing story (aside from a short story or two by Neil Gaiman), and it's by Moore, too. Does it get any better than this? It's an interesting read, and from what I can tell, it completely reinvented the Swamp Thing story, with a whole new interpretation of its origin. I'm still processing it, and will undoubtedly reread it a few more times before I return it. It's not due until the end of the month, like the others, but they're going back tomorrow.

Been re-reading Straczynski's "Rising Stars," too. More on that later.

Can we develop those alternate fuels now?

Dear Mr. President,

Maybe you haven't noticed, but the price of gas is getting cripplingly high for many of us in America.

It's reaching the point where we're reassessing not just recreational travel plans, but how much we use the car at all. It's driving up the costs of food, clothes and everything else that has to be transported from somewhere else to here.

It's bad enough for the middle class. I shudder to think of what it must be like for the working class and the unemployed who already are struggling to pay their bills. This isn't the time to drill for oil in the Arctic, or time to hope that freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein so that Shi'a clerics can establish a harsh theocracy is going to bring new fuel into the country.

We're at the point that we should be using heavily fuel sources that require fewer fossil fuels or none at all.

Think you could spare a thought for us working families, instead of for your friends and campaign donors in the oil industry?

concering church membership

I had the following e-mail exchange today with the good people at The Wittenburg Door:

Dear Doorkeepers:

I am hoping you can help me resolve a quandary I am in, regarding church membership.

I recently talked with the pastor of a church I am interested in possibly attending. The last time I applied The Wittenburg Door litmus test to a pastor, he was excited to learn that you were still publishing, and it ended up being the best church I ever belonged to.

To my dismay, this new pastor has never heard of The Wittenburg Door. Should I rule out attending his church?

I await your response.

David Learn


Very slowly, so as not to arouse a fight or flight quandry, place a copy of the magazine in his cage and see if he:
(A.) tears it to shreds
(B.) urinates on it
(C.) Doesn't notice it
(D.) smiles

If it's anything other than (D.) go back to your old church.

In all seriousness, this new church seems intriguing -- for starters, it's based right here in the city where we live, so it'd be easier to get involved -- and I plan to attend one of their small groups next week, to see how it goes. If it doesn't seem like a good place, we'll stick with Zarephath Community Church a while longer.

But I hope The Door publishes my letter.