Things I Like About The Republican Led House (so far)

I like the idea of reading the constitution before every session.

I like the idea of requiring each bill that is passed to demonstrate what area of the constitution sanctions it.

I also like John Boehner better than Nancy Pelosi. I disagree with some of Boehner's proposals, but he strikes me as a decent guy, and generally sincere in his political stances. It was touching the other night during the State Of the Union when he allowed himself to become emotional when President Obama paid tribute to his rise from 'sweeping floors in his father's Cincinnati shop' to speaker of the house.

I am often critical of republicans and republican ideas, so I wanted to make sure I wrote about a few points of agreement and approval.

Hopefully, I'll be able to add to this list quite a bit over the next few years.

You've Got to Keep It Sexy

My number 2 most popular post of all time, according to blogger's stats function, is the following image of my receding hairline:

Apparently, a lot of insecure guys google the term 'receding hairline', and end up at my page. I sympathize with this impulse (as you can see from the above photo).  In the name of earning this post even more hits than the last one featuring my funky recess, here are a few more terms that insecure guys will flock to: penis size. back hair. love handles. Mariah Carey.

You know; whatever keeps'em coming back.

And just for the record: my first most popular post was a response I made to an itchy conservative dogmatist who challenged my claim that there was an underlying racial component to the tea party movement. Not only did I provide ample evidence in my rebuttal to him, I also provided one of his colleagues (or possibly him, using a pseudonym), one of the more unequivocal intellectual ass-kickings that I've had the pleasure of handing out since I've been a blogger. In order to encourage more google hits from folks like Bill Stevens, I offer the following searchable terms: Ronald Reagan in a wet t-shirt, gun porn, and, you're not racist if you went to high school with a black guy, right?

my third most popular post thus far has been a fairly recent one: 'How Atheism Led Me to Social Work'.

What do I learn from all of this, other than the fact that guys are worried about their hairlines, Saul Alinsky was right about the humorlessness of ideologues, and that atheism and social work are not two topics you typically find being addressed at the same time?

It's difficult to say, but I might sum it up this way: you've got to keep it sexy.

Are You Scared?

Laying in bed the other night, my wife and I talked about my movement away from religion. My wife, since I met her, had always held religion at something of a distance, and only engaged in church going to indulge me (I was pretty religious in the beginning). On the subject of God, she has consistently said she thinks there is something to it; on the subject of organized religion and the divinity of holy books, she has always been highly doubtful. If she is the middle, I have traveled from her far right, to her far left during the course of our marriage.

After a moment of silence, she asked me, 'Are you ever scared to say and write the things you do about religion?'

'No', I said after a second of consideration. 'I used to be sometimes, but not anymore'.

There was a time when I would worry--those 3am moments when you're the only one awake and your mind is flooded with 'what ifs'--but that time has passed. The religion I was raised around smelled vaguely of fire and brimstone. As  I grew older, my religion became more liberal--more about 'thou shalt' than 'thou shalt not'--and God seemed more compassionate to me. Kurt Vonnegut's Jesus became my own eventually, and that Jesus wasn't here to condemn as much as he was to point the way. Once I tossed the whole thing out the window, I was pretty far removed from that easy-to-caricature, old-time-religion God anyway.

Strangely, part of the reason that I am not afraid of the reprisal of any possible god for my current unbelief is that I expect that a good god--the religious folk who would condemn me to hell as a heretic and atheist always say that their god is ultimately good--wouldn't punish me for my honest dissent. I find Christianity to be inherently immoral. I have known many, many, wonderful Christians, but my claim is not that it is their religion that makes them good. They are good. If they use their religion to express their goodness, that is fine, but I can't believe that they derive the source of their goodness from the holy bible, which is a mixed bag at best.

The other religions aren't even an option for me. I was raised in a Christian nation, surrounded by Christians.  There is no chance that I would ever be tempted to internalize the myths of any other culture as literally true.  I don't believe in any of the Gods that have been proposed to me, because of lack of evidence, lack of credibility, or both. I am not afraid of the reprisal of any of these possible gods because the gods that I have heard of have either been vindictive, snot-nosed little tyrants, or perfectly reasonable libertarians who seem to trust their creation to get on without too much intervention from them. There's no point in even trying to appease the first kind of god, and the second is already hip to' all that is the case'.

So, no, I'm not scared. I have too much faith for that.

Langston!

It just occurred to me that I haven't blogged about the newest arrival to our family yet.

Langston James Troxell, born December 20th:

(Langston, throwing a militant baby fist into the air)

So far, he's a pretty laid back baby. We've taken to calling him 'The Dude', because he only cries when he's hungry, or when he wants to be held, and then not very intensely.

Jack, our middle son, is very loving towards Langston, and spends a lot of time doting on him. Jack is a natural caretaker, and will be a very good big brother. He sings to Langston, throws away diapers for us, and spends a lot of time just looking at him, and laughing at the little baby faces he makes.

Spencer likes Langston too, although he is not as persistently interested in him as Jack is. He will hold Langston from time to time, and even walk around with him, but is mostly business-as-usual. He's a cerebral guy, and usually has his own thing going on. He's nine years older than Langston, and I expect him to be a good resource for Jack and Langston both when they (inevitably) find themselves not in the mood to talk to Abby or I about any of life's inevitable problems. Also, what better way to stay plugged into the zeitgeist than through a cool older brother?

Abby and I are very happy, and feel like our family is complete. For now...It has occurred to me that we're pretty good parents, and that family life is something that we both enjoy. So, I'm not opposed to swelling the brood a little bit more, at some future date.

Stay tuned.

How Atheism Led Me To Social Work

More often than not, when you ask a person in my field--I work in a homeless shelter--what motivated them to join up, it is reasonable to expect some variation on the following answer: I was called to it.

Without a doubt, the religious faith of folks in my line of work is a factor. Whether it was a person who has 'been there' and wanted to give back, or a person full of empathy and awareness of the shortcomings of our system, and got the little nudge that they needed from their respective church, mosque or synagogue, religious faith tends to motivate; That is wonderful, that is fine. We need as many good people as we can get, whatever the motivation (and there are many inspiring religious folk in this field: try to maintain a disdain for the faithful when you see all of the wonderful services the faithful offer in the homeless community; it's near impossible).

I offer my own testimony as both that of an interesting exception, and in the hopes that other secular folk might be inspired to get involved as well.

The spirit that led me to my current station was the realization that there was no other kingdom, and there was no greater glory to be found in the needless suffering of my fellow primates.Learning that there was probably no hereafter moderated many known (and unknown) masochistic tendencies I possessed in my religious life. To know that 'this is probably it' lit a fire under my ass to do something good with my life, to hell with treasures in heaven.

Homelessness offends me on different levels. On one level, I'm offended by the sheer callousness with which mankind can treat his fellows. In a society with a supposed safety net, an awful lot of people end up hitting the concrete pretty hard. I am also offended for selfish reasons. Isn't it obvious to everyone, that if you want yourself and the people you love to be safe and sound and free from the twin sins of want and ignorance, maybe it would be a good idea to make sure our neighbors are safe from them as well?

I feel a sense of urgency compelling me to try to contribute positively to our current (and only guaranteed) situation, and since I am able to do this kind of work, why shouldn't I?

Ideas have different effects on different people. Religion encouraged in me--as I believe it encourages in many people--an acceptance of suffering as part of god's plan, and--sickly--as a gift in some cases. As an atheist, I assure you that I don't look for divine meaning in the suffering of sentient beings. I look to find ways to minimize suffering for myself, and for others, and to maximize general well-being. I'm not working towards a utopia in the sky, or a utopia here on earth: I don't believe in either thing. I do believe in optimal states, however, and think that is an attainable goal worth working towards.

I have met many great people of faith working in this field. It's softened me, and has opened my mind to the possibilities of collaboration with people of different viewpoints and belief systems. Something that has saddened me, however, is how under-represented secular groups and individuals are in homeless service. This is something that I would very much like to see change. If you're an atheist, agnostic, non-theist, bright, or free-thinker, or have some connection to such a group, why not think of a way to volunteer in this field that could definitely use your time, money, and creativity?

cross posted at KOS.

Because I Have Spent All Of My Blogging Time This Week

discussing the social cause and effect of the recent events in Arizona with my blogger pals, I haven't had time to finish my planned Thursday essay. That essay, entitled 'How Atheism Led Me To Social Work', will now appear on Monday.

Until then, please enjoy this picture of quite possibly the cutest kitten ever:

And a song that is appropriate for any occasion:



And, finally, the coolest news story of the week:

NASA has found a giant, 'somehow living', green blob in outerspace. Awesome.

I'll see y'all on Monday.

Spencer

Andrew David King Weighs In

on the 'obligatory mudslinging' that has followed the crimes of Jared "in-dire-need-of-execution" Loughner.

excerpts:

"But the point remains that it’s more a matter of readily available and early treatment for mentally unstable individuals like Loughner that’s needed–not further restrictions on the tools by which he committed the atrocity. You can keep chopping off all the dead leaves, or you can water the plant for once."

and,

"I don’t have any use for populist rage and witch-hunts, whether they’re of the Beck and Palin sort or the liberal sort, and neither do any other independent thinkers. Just because speech is offensive– or crass, or hateful–does not make it illegal. There is no constitutional right to never be offended, and for that we can thank the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, those supposed poster children for the Tea Party’s principles, for ensuring this holds true on both sides of the fence, regardless of what misguided journalists and pundits have to say."

While I heartily endorse King's 'water the plant for once' point, I do have to disagree with him regarding the restriction of automatic weapon purchases. It's undeniable that we would probably have had a few less bodies on our hands if Loughner had needed to reload more often. More gun regulation may also have prevented someone with a sketchy past and mental health record like Loughner from purchasing these weapons in the first place...but then, if the laws regarding the confinement and treatment of mentally disturbed individuals weren't such in this country that a person almost needs to be in the middle of committing a horrendous act before they can be removed from the general population (or forced to receive treatment), maybe Loughner wouldn't have been able to buy any guns in the first place.

But the overall point--that many liberals are being just as reactive as members of what Bill Maher rightly calls 'The Pee Party' (tea party activists are always peeing their pants over some oversold 'threat to liberty')--is spot on, and needs to be heeded.

What I Take Away From Saturday's Arizona Rampage

I vented my initial reaction to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords on facebook:

'Alright, I've changed my mind on the border fence: I'll support it, just so long as it goes around Arizona too.'

Viscerally, this was satisfying. It's easy to look for scapegoats, and it's very easy to pin calamity on out-groups, especially when there's--at least--a loose connection. After sleeping on it however, this is where I'm at:

Even if it turns out that this lunatic was a huge Glenn Beck fan, I don’t think it’s appropriate to blame the tea party for this. Crazy, violent people will do crazy, violent things: if it wasn’t some weird ‘currency’ fixation, maybe a Katy Perry song would’ve done it.

If anything should be learned from this incident, it should be the following 3 things:

1) automatic weapons are way to easy to get a hold of in the U.S.
2) We need better mental health services in this country.
3) American students shouldn’t be able to leave high school without some training in psychology and critical thinking: If more members of our society were able to reason clearly, maybe fewer folks would be willing to offer up these ready-made John Birch fantasies for the mentally ill in our society to cling onto, and maybe there would be fewer folks out there ready to cling onto them.

There will be incidents like this in any society. The best thing to do is to figure out ways to make them happen as infrequently as possible.

The Sound Of One Hand (In A Fashionable Leather Glove) Clapping

Spencer Troxell: So, the question remains: How many hats does a man need?

Lodo Grdzak: And what is the sound of one hand clapping?

So, that's like, what, seven?

My relationship with fashion has been very casual. In elementary school, I liked to wear t-shirts and underoos with my favorite cartoon characters on them. When I was in a church play in 5th grade, and all of the guys in the play went into the church locker room to change into our costumes--and I realized that I was the only person with the Tazmanian Devil on his underwear--I abruptly changed my style, and began to wear button up shirts more often, and plain old boxer shorts.

Then I read Jurassic Park in 6th grade, fell in love with the character of Ian Malcolm, and because of the following snippet of text, I decided to adopt his fashion philosophy:

"Ellie said, "Isn't it a little warm for black?"

You're extremely pretty, Dr. Sattler," he said. "I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray."

Ellie was staring at him, her mouth open. "These colors are appropriate for any occasion," Malcolm continued, and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers."

But don't you find it boring to wear only two colors?"

Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing," Malcolm said. "I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports."

Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions."

And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought."

Wearing all black and gray in middle school was both a boon and a curse: It was a boon in the sense that my decision to wear all black made it easier to make due with only a couple of pair of pants, t-shirts, and big black boots, and because (I thought) it made me look mysterious. My fashion choice also coincided with the rise of Goth-rock, so I became a de-facto member of that clique for awhile (until they realized that I was really just a big, happy-go-lucky nerd, and promplty ejected me).

My next conscious fashion decision came around mid-high school. There was a guy a year or two older than me named Dan Puckett that I thought was profoundly cool: he liked good music, and yet was popular. He had a distinct style of his own, and yet wasn't shunned by the herd. On top of all of these things, he seemed to like me, which was exceedingly rare among the cool kids. He liked to wear crazy, shiny shirts, and--hero-worshipper that I was--I decided to copy him. I don't know how much he minded being copycatted. I distinctly remember asking him one day whether or not he was going to change his style now that a handful of kids (I wasn't the only one) were copying him. His response: 'What, am I going to wear a fucking toga?'

I was still in the end stages of this style when I met my wife. She was a manager at a movie theater that I was working at. I purposefully made sure to wear each one of my five or six shiny shirts each time I came in to watch a free movie in the evenings that she worked, just to display my stylish versatility. She liked them--or at least she said she did because she liked me--and it encouraged me to buy more.

After we got married at the age of 19, I decided my attire needed to grow up a little bit. I began wearing white t-shirts and khakis a lot, and a lot of button up department store shirts. I was also--in an attempt to both elevate myself above other folks and find some kind of workable life philosophy--reading up on buddhism and aesthetic christianity, and thought the more plan look suited this more contemplative lifestyle. What we read and talk about is also part of our personal fashion.

Then I went to college, and stopped really paying attention to how I dressed too much. Function was key. I wore whatever clothes were in my closet, and didn't think too much about it. I stayed in the fashion desert for about 8 years; that's how long it took me to graduate.

Now, I'm graduated, and I find myself thinking about clothes more. I bought a derby, and have recently acquired a pretty nice trench coat and a nice pair of leather gloves. I wear vests, button up shirts and ties, and blue jeans a lot. My favorite footwear is a big, brown pair of wolverine boots. This ensemble may sound like it clashes, but I think it works for me.

I am paying more attention to the way I dress as I grow older. I don't think it's because I'm becoming shallower (although that could be the case), but I think it's because I'm feeling calmer. And more confident. I'm only twenty-nine. The frontal lobes are finished developing somewhere around the twenty-fifth year, so I'm only recently in possession of a complete brain. The hormones have calmed down, and most of the bodies that they left on the battlefield of my late teens and early twenties have been swept up and either buried, or ground up into decent summer sausages. Clothing is fun. Wearing a suit is fun. Because I am still a subversive at heart, the more dressed up I get, the more iconoclastic I feel: I am not someone who should be dressed respectably. Putting on a tie is like going undercover.

So, who knows how many hats a person should own? My guess is that you should either own none, or quite a few.

But that could just be my demon talking.

Everything In the Medicine Cabinet Has Expired

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."-Karl Marx, a.k.a. 'the serious Marx brother'

For years, my medicine cabinet was full of many useful painkillers. I could use these drugs to assuage fears, narrow my focus, and bat away unwanted thoughts and feelings.

Chief among my drugs of choice was religion, and I am currently two years clean. Most Americans are recreational users of religion. I however, was a junkie. What's worse, as an evangelical christian, I was selling on the streets. Like all lucky users however, I bottomed out, and decided some things had to change.

Much like a heroin addict will use methadone to kill some of the separation anxiety from their preferred (but much deadlier) drug of choice, I guess I turned to deism to help me cope with the loss of a personal god and the promise of heaven; at least in deism, you still have some divine oversight (deism is to emerging atheism what training wheels is to your child's bicycle). But, as Kanye West so brilliantly puts it on his latest album, 'We said we'd drink until the pain's over; but what's worse, the pain or the hangover?' Eventually I had to face down my transitional drug as well. It wasn't nearly as bad as the religion. Once I realized that I was using deism to cope with my divine separation anxiety, I soon got that much subtler beast back under control as well.

And now I'm clean. Totally clean. It's a new feeling. I feel like life I'm a new employee at a new job, in a new town. Yes, from time to time the religious equivalent of my 'booze brain' does come calling, asking me to consider various magical solutions to any number of personal issues. Ultimately, I say no. That atavistic part of my soul, looking for patterns and signs where none exist, is an unnecessary burden. I'm born-again in a sense. These past few years have been my first attempts to look at life through a non-supernatural prism. It's been wonderful. Things that had been dulled by repetitive sacramental consideration have received a new sheen when appreciated for their own sake. Filtering everything you see through the lenses of religion may be exciting for some folks, but I object to it for the same reason Roger Ebert objects to 3-D: It's unnecessary, and so much of the color is filtered out.

Once, I asked a guy that I used to work with--a recovering addict--how many hats I should have. I had just bought a derby, and was a little self conscious about wearing the same one all the time. This guy had tons of hats, so I thought he'd be a good person to put me straight on the subject.

'Spencer,' he said, 'I'm a recovering addict. I don't do the drugs anymore, but the thing that led me to do the drugs is the same thing that leads me to buy hats. It's the compulsion. Instead of feeding it with dope, I'm giving it hats.'

That wasn't the answer I expected, but I think I needed to hear it. I suppose that as a person in a different kind of recovery, I should be on the lookout for what kind of hats I'm feeding my compulsion with. I'll let you know what it is when I find it, but until then, here's to a life without unnecessary sedatives and 3-D glasses.

10 Commandments for 2011

 I posted this list of commandments as my New Year's Resolution for last year. Since I still think it's a good set of instructions (and I didn't manage to follow all of the commandments last year), I think I'll re-up. Happy New Year, everyone!

1. Thou Shalt Not eat at any restaurant that has a drive-thru.

2. Thous Shalt Not listen to talk radio, nor shalt thou buy gold.

3. Thou Shalt read at least one piece of literature per month by an author who died before your father was born.

4. Thou Shalt Not drink alone.

5. Thou Shalt express thy patriotism not through the medium of bumper stickers, but through volunteering your time.

6. Thou Shalt learn how to ride a unicycle.

7. Thou Shalt add as many words to thine vocabulary as there are months in the year.

8. Thou Shalt Not receive revealed wisdom, nor shalt thou bow to the dictates of any authority without submitting said dictates and/or wisdom to rigorous empirical inquiry.

9. Thou shalt eat more Greek food. It's delicious!

10. Thou Shalt modify this list of commandments as needed to better fit your life.

When We Were Boys

When we were boys
We peed on everything
Anywhere, anytime.

We peed on trees
In the woods
On tires flowers dogs
Fences;
Most pleasantly,
We peed in public pools.
Shamefacedly,
We peed in our beds
And in our good church
pants.

When we were boys
We peed on everything.
Anywhere, anytime.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I think that sums my feelings up pretty well.

Maybe the Dingo Ate Your Baby Jesus

Christmas was a big deal at our small Southern Baptist church when I was a little boy. It was, in fact, the event of the year. Understandable, when you consider that John 3:16 (for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.) was the bible verse that practically under girded our entire theology.

Christmas was a big deal: wreaths, gatherings, revivals, plays in full costume, activities, feasts (no dancing or drinking), cinnamon and merriment; all with only a slight whiff of brimstone. There was a huge Christmas tree that stood in front of the baptismal behind the preacher’s podium. Little girls wore emerald dresses with white stockings and red ribbons to services, and the preacher’s nose and cheeks were rosy and red like Santa’s, which seemed festive around Christmas time, but were (in actuality) that color all year round.

Our church’s biggest point of pride was our nativity scene. We were a suburban church, and thus were not immune to the arms race of Christmas yard decorations that only escalated year after year. The secular stuff was easy: Neon reindeer, giant blow-up snowmen. Strobe lit sleighs. The religious stuff took a little more tact.

Our nativity scene was the biggest & most detailed of all the churches in the area. A large, hand built manger. There was a thick bed of yellow, welcoming hay. All of the figures were made of realistic looking wax, and the whole scene was lit up from below by three well placed spotlights. A small fence had been built around the display, and on the weekends--when the church offered free hot chocolate to anyone who attended bible study, member or non-member--one of the parishioners brought in an alpaca from his farm to lend some realism to the scene. Subtle organ music piped in through two speakers at either corner of the set up, and the conservative, white lights that adorned the outline of the church created a perfect frame for our little attraction.

It was a sight to behold. Cars would stop to look at it. It was even featured in the community journal one year. Our whole congregation pitched in with maintenance. We were very proud of our nativity scene.

That’s why it was such a big deal when our baby Jesus went missing.

The pastor called a church meeting to see if anyone knew anything. He had arrived at church one morning earlier in the week, and it was just gone. No one could imagine who would’ve stole the baby Jesus.

Some of the teenagers in the church suggested that maybe it was a couple of Goth kids that lived down the street. No doubt if they took it, it was in the woods somewhere; probably hanging by it’s neck from a tree, graffitied with lewd words and Marilyn Manson makeup.

Unfortunately, the Goth kids down the street were the son and daughter of the local Unitarian minister, so it would do no good to confront them over any part they may have had in the disappearance of our infant savior. The Unitarian minister would say that his children were being unfairly singled out because of their chosen style of dress, and it would create unneeded tension in the community. So that option was out.

But let me digress.

My whole life, I have been a cat owner. I like that they mind their own business, and that you can forget they are there if you want to. Every now and then you will seek them out and pet them, and every now and then they will sit on your lap. Other than that, cats are virtually invisible roommates.

Recently I bought a dog for my kids, and it was a big adjustment for me: Dogs are very needy, and very active. They want your attention constantly. They bark, they need to be taken for walks, and taken outside early in the morning and late at night to relieve themselves. Also, if you don’t want your house to smell like them, you have to give them frequent baths (which is harder than it sounds).

But my kids love the dog, and I like the dog, so I adjusted. I also learned a few things:

1.) If I were single right now, having a dog would be the best way to meet women. Even more so than when you are walking around with a newborn, strangers will come up to you and talk to you about your dog. They will even bend down and pet your dog, and not mind if your dog licks their face. I’ve never seen anyone bend down and pet a baby, and I can only imagine what would happen if they did and the baby licked their face.

Many attractive women have approached me while I walk my dog, in a park or on a trail, and started warm, familiar conversations with me, simply because I had a dog. It’s true. If I were single, my dog would be bringing home the strange.

2.) Everyone’s dog is good with kids. When you’re at a park where there are dogs and kids, and the dog people are communing with one another, inevitably in the description an owner will give of their pet will include some variation on the following: ‘Oh, and Blue is great with kids.’ I hear this all the time. Sometimes people will ask if a person’s dog is good with kids, other times an owner will volunteer the information for no reason. There doesn’t have to be a kid around for miles. It can be two sterile couples who hate kids and have never seen a kid in their life standing around talking about a dog, and the owner will say, ‘Oh, Blue loves kids.’ and the person listening will nod approvingly.

I have never heard a person say,‘oh man, Blue is great, but she hates kids. Actually, I’m surprised she hasn’t killed your little toddler over there already. Great dog, but it sure loves to disfigure kids.’I haven’t heard that yet, but surely, somewhere out there is a dog that hates kids.

I would even be happy to hear about a dog that only humors kids. ‘Oh yeah, Blue is great with kids, but he/she doesn’t really like them. But don't worry. She's really polite about it.

Kurt Vonnegut (whose novels are a big blur to me now) wrote somewhere about a woman who left her kid alone with a starving Doberman pincher, and the dog ate the kid. Edward Gorey made a little book about a woman who dresses her newborn up in a realistic looking bunny outfit, and watches with terror as a pack of dogs tear the little thing to pieces. There are all kinds of horror stories, in both the news and in literature, about dogs. But you never encounter some place in between Dog Loves Kids<--->Dog Kills Kids. Where are the people with dogs in the middle of that spectrum?

I mention all of this dog stuff in the middle of my Christmas reflection, because thinking about this strange relationship between dogs and kids is what brought that Christmas crime scene of my past back into my conscious mind.

The church members shook their heads about the theft of the baby Jesus, but did nothing. We all just assumed it was the Unitarian Goth kids, and left it at that. The pastor put a jar in the foyer to raise money to order a new baby Jesus for the nativity next year, and perhaps some closed circuit cameras. We moved on with our lives.

But thinking about dogs just now got me thinking about another suspect.

The pastor had a German Shepherd named Sheltzie. While the pastor was upstairs in his office, Sheltzie was permitted to prowl through the church, and around the property. Sometimes some of us kids would go up to the church after school to play on the swingset, and to toss a ball to Sheltzie. Sheltzie was really good with kids.

But I remember one day, not long after the baby Jesus went missing, that one of my friends was throwing a ball at Sheltzie in the yard while I was laying in the sandbox staring up at the sky.
“Hey Spencer!” He called.
“Yeah?”
“Help me find the ball! It just rolled off into the woods!”
“Okay!” I said, and I got up and headed towards the woods. My friend was there at the outskirts of the little wooded area at the edge of the property, standing on his tippy-toes looking for his ball. I ran towards him to help out, but slipped on something and came crashing down to the ground. I stood up, brushed myself off, and looked at what I had slipped on. I picked it up.

I was going to yell, “Hey, I found your ball!” when my friend called out, “Never mind! I found it!”

I looked down at the thing that I held in my hand. It was roundish, colorful, and kind of waxy. There was a strange, earthy odor to it.

I looked at it, looked at Sheltzie; so innocently jumping up around and chasing after my friend, who was holding a tennis ball above his head and running in circles.

I shrugged, and dropped the weird little ball of wax, and ran to join my friend and Sheltzie in the field. I made no connections between the object and our disappeared lord. In fact, I soon forgot the incident.

That is, until now.

The Parachutist In Love

For E.G.

The Parachutist’s ripcord is malfunctioning. He is aware of this piece of information, and finds it duly disturbing.
You see, were the Parachutist on ground, in his plane, lying in his bed, sitting on the toilet, eating eggplant parmesan at his favorite Italian restaurant, bedding a young vixen, bedding a few young vixens (one slightly older than the other), practicing the clarinet, making a shopping list, or even playing volleyball at the beach (again with young vixens), becoming aware of such a piece of information would be easily resolvable. Being however that he is currently falling from a very great height, the information about the ripcord is pertinent.

His instinct is to curse, but not being the swearing type, he decides to pray instead: Praying turns out to be harder to do mid-free fall than one might expect, so he curses.
Being a person who has read a book or two by Deepak Chopra, he attempts meditation: He is going to die. This is evident. He attempts to clear his mind by focusing on the snowy mountain tops that cap the quickly disappearing horizon. Also difficult: Consider G-forces.

What about the man in the colored jumpsuit with goggles and helmet?

The Parachutist’s favorite joke is one that usually only garners polite laughs when he tells it:
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two: one to hold the giraffe by the neck, the other to fill the bathtub up with clocks.

He has a picture of his nephew riding a horse on his coffee table at home. The picture was taken by his brother, on the boy’s twelfth birthday. The boy’s name is Cody. The Parachutist has tried to teach the boy how to play chess several times and has failed. Once, when Cody was about six, a little marble pawn showed up in his stool. The Parachutist has quit trying to teach the boy chess.

The Parachutist closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then opens them back up again. The earth is very beautiful, and very small from where he is. It is getting larger quickly, which is vaguely alarming. The Parachutist decides it would be better to misinterpret this alarm as exhilaration. ‘Whoop!’ he says.

He’s over a piney region of Alaska. The tree line spreads far and wide, and there are mountains in the distance. The Parachutist tries to imagine himself crashing down through the evergreens. Every snapping twig that he foresees, were he to write a blog about this episode, he may call it ‘Returning to the Earth in a very real way’, and the post would be very spiritual. The Parachutist is a very spiritual person in his own way. He has read books by Deepak Chopra, and always plays Prince music when he beds young vixens.

The Parachutist is pleased with how easily he turned the whole tragic affair into something more philosophical.

He imagines the earth wrapping around him, his body becoming thin and embedded, and he begins to relax his muscles as it all becomes very near, the whistling becoming increased, and the mountain view becoming out of sight. He thinks about the terrain, and tries to picture it without trees. A parking lot. A desert. An ocean. A pile of feathers.

To the ordinary wild porcupine, the grass is gentle and high, and the soil is agreeably moist. It easily absorbs the creature’s small footprints as it pads and sniffs it’s way through the sweet smelling forest, looking for whatever it is that porcupines look for.

Some kind of small bug, I would imagine.

Only David Bowie Can Be Trusted

to get this week off in the right way.

My Dad Hates the Beatles

[re-posted in honor of John Lennon, and the pending arrival of our third son, Langston the Lion.]

I can’t get over what a great rendition of ‘Stand By Me’ John Lennon does. It nearly makes me cry every time I hear it. Same goes for ‘All You Need Is Love’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’. What wonderful sentiments. The following lines tug at my heart especially hard:

“I can hardly wait,
To see you to come of age,
But I guess we'll both,
Just have to be patient”

They’re real tear-jerkers, for one because I know that Mr. Lennon didn’t get the opportunity to see his son ‘come of age’, and two, because I am anxious to be there for my sons as long as they need me, and I am very excited to see the men that they become.

I’m nearing the age of 30, and I’ve only recently discovered the Beatles. The reason for this is that my father had an active hatred of the Beatles as I grew up, and of all the other little iconoclasms I committed against his worldview as I struggled to become my own person, it never occurred to me not to disregard the Beatles. That is, until I had a son of my own.

One day, while my wife and four year old son and I were shopping in our local Meijer grocery store, the song ‘Free as a Bird’ came on the musak, and my son started swaying his head back and forth and singing along with the music. He said, ‘who is singing this, daddy?’ and the whole scene melted my heart. We immediately went over to the electronics department and picked up a copy of The Beatles ‘1’ album (the CD with ‘Free As A Bird’ wasn’t in the store), and it was an instant hit with my son. I recognized most of the songs on the CD, but hadn’t realized that they were Beatles songs. On one level, I was very happy that my son had found a particular musical group to be excited about. This was the most important level. On a second level (I’m a little embarrassed to mention it), I was excited to have found yet another way to rebel against my father, who loves me, who is mystified by my detractions and detestations.

My father has given me something precious that he may not realize. He may think that I've rejected all of his values, but this is not the case. Children learn what they live is the title of a famous book about child-rearing, and I have surely learned what I lived growing up in my father’s house. What I learned from my father is to ‘hate the Beatles’ even if I learn to love The Beatles. I learned to be skeptical of popular opinion and received wisdom, and to feel uncomfortable in a mental crowd. That’s why you’ll never see me in a tea party parade, gleefully hoisting a homemade protest sign with the world ‘soshulism’ scrawled indignantly across it. That’s why I’ll never be at home in church, because there’s just too much that you’re supposed to swallow without first chewing, and you know that none of what they offer you is FDA approved.

My father, a black sheep, taught me how to be a black sheep, and I believe that I’ve improved the art. When in school, I was led to believe that much of what my teachers were telling me was liberal bunk, and even thought that was the case, I was to remember what they were teaching and to spit it back out at them in order to get a good grade. So, going into school, an important authority group was already undermined. My family didn’t go to church until I dragged them to a local Baptist church when I was in third grade. We went there for a couple of years, and again, my parents helped me to understand that not even our pastor had a direct line to God. We left sermons with my parents making fun of my Sunday school teacher’s end time prophecies, our pastor’s complaints against Rock and Roll (my dad loved Van Halen, and was not letting that go, not even for Jesus), and the pastor’s wife’s exhortations against alcohol use.

It was also my father that introduced me to George Carlin.

So, it was only a matter of time before I turned my well learned skepticism of tradition and unbelief in the infallibility of authority against the conservative, modified christian belief system that I was brought up in. I regret that this period in my relationship with him was so messy, and I know that I was often unnecessarily inflammatory and less than respectful in my exploration of ideas at this point. But, so it goes. We’re in a better place now, but it took us a while to get there.

I don’t know if my dad sought out to teach me this skepticism and unwillingness to move with the herd, but it’s been an invaluable tool for me. I know he wasn’t the only one who helped me learn this lesson; I was very much not welcome in almost every peer group I sought out in school (partially for my unusual interest in ideas, and partially because I possessed a weird cocktail of interest in doing whatever I needed to do to fit in with that group and conversely doing anything I could to sabotage the group’s aesthetic at the same time). This experience in school surely helped reinforce my isolation and need to think for myself. But my father gave me the tool, whether he sought to or not, and I am glad for it. I hope my kids are able to learn skepticism and the value of being as fully themselves as they can easier than I did, but I want them to have it. I want them to hesitate when joining groups. I want them to probe their intentions if they ever find their entire worldview lining up perfectly with some party platform. I don’t want them to be fearful if they feel the call to dissent. But, I don’t think they should feel too terrible if their honest inquiry and passion leads them into a group or a community.

After all, we are communal animals. That’s one of the parts I have trouble with that I don’t want to pass down to them. I want them to be as fiercely themselves as they can be, but if they ever find themselves in honest awe of one of the various edifices that have been erected by our (or any) culture, like, say, The Beatles, I want them to enjoy themselves. Because, Christ. You know it ain’t easy.


cross posted at The Daily Kos

Hitchens On Assange

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne rightfully agrees with Richard Dawkins that Christopher Hitchens is a heroic figure. As an aside, Coyne linked to Hitchens' most recent piece (on Julian Assange) at the bottom of his post.

Julian Assange is also someone that I find heroic, and I said as much in the comment section, which prompted the following reply from Russell Blackford:

"I don’t think that Assange is especially heroic – some of his actions seem at least questionable – but I do want to see the rule of law applied to him. In this context, that means no retrospective criminal laws, no extra-territorial laws, no arrests on trumped up charges.

What’s coming across at the moment is that the US authorities, aided by those of other countries, are out to get him, come what may, whether or not he actually broke any laws that were in operation at the time in the jurisdiction where he was located at the time. In particular, it’s coming across that the authorities of his own country are happy to hang him out to dry."

to which I replied:

"I think that it is heroic to put your personal freedom and safety at risk to further the cause of an open society, which is something I believe in personally. For all of the anti-authoritarian/totalitarian talk that Hitchens injects into his public case against God, I think it’s interesting that he’s not an Assange supporter. I also agree with you that the charges against him seem fishy. Personally, I find it hard not to sympathize with a man who has managed to turn many of the world’s governments against him simply by disseminating information.

One of the interesting reactions to Assange that I’ve noticed among lower and middle class liberals and conservatives in the U.S. midwest is that they all seem to be generally in favor of what he has done. The big complaints seem to come from government officials of all political stripes.

This is not so much a left/right issue as it is a top/bottom one."

What do you think of Julian Assange and the response that he's gotten?


PS, leave it to Politico to ask the important question in all of this: Who will play Assange in the movie?

UPDATE

After some reading, talking, and reflection, I think I’m going to have to adjust my position on Julian Assange and wikileaks. The two best arguments against my position that I have encountered have been as follows:

1)some of the disclosed documents put people’s lives in danger.

2)a totally open society would lead to total government dysfunction.

The only argument that I can concoct to support putting lives at risk in order to force the world into an open society is an ugly, utilitarian one. I’m not an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of person, so I can’t put forward that argument in good faith.

I can’t answer the government dysfunction challenge either. Imagine trying to broker a deal with someone as macho and paranoid as Vladmir Putin: Obviously, He’s not going to give any ground publicly, and with the threat that his private communications with various diplomats and middle-men may come sensationally to light via wikileaks or some such organization, it becomes more doubtful that he’ll give any ground behind closed doors either (after all, in an open society there are no closed doors).

So, I have to cede those points.

The Archaic Smile

A piece of jewelry on a nude
Accentuates the nakedness,
Like the heavy smell of smoke on your jacket
Reminds us you are lonely.

Smoking in bowling alleys,
Coffee splashing against teeth
Like time-dried papyrus.

You breathe smoke into the receiver
With no one on the other end,
And you tap your cigarettes on the pool table,
Purposeful, thoughtful, fingertips chalky blue;
Quickening the onset of death.



originally appeared at Thieves Jargon

Doomed To Humanism

 [this piece originally appeared on 5/14/2010]

I often give credit to Sesame Street and my own epicurean libido for my lack of racial prejudice. Growing up in a white, lower-class, rural area in the Midwest, there were plenty of racist attitudes flying around, but when you’re receiving steady doses of ‘I’m okay you’re okay’ philosophy from Big Bird and the gang, and finding yourself deeply enamored with Lt. Uhura from the old Star Trek series, the hate is bound to lose. Pabst Blue Ribbon and Lynard Skynard will lose out to muppets and the starship enterprise every time.

The Sesame Street (and Star Trek) message of the potential of mankind and our inherent decency has always rung true with me. It has certainly rung far truer than the cynical view of mankind that is embedded in the Christianity that I grew up with, and tried desperately to reconcile with my own natural philosophical inclinations. Christianity is ugly. It tells us evil things about our nature (and not only are the things it tells us about ourselves evil, they are generally unfounded!). It says that we are born with a sin debt, that we are paying for the sins of our ancestors, that the only chance we had of redemption was God sending a man to be murdered on our behalf (explain the logic of that one to me), that anything bad we do is our fault and anything good we do is only because we allowed god to work through us. Ugly stuff. I always cringe inside when I hear someone say, ‘oh, god is good because I accomplished X.’ I want to grab the person by their lapels and shout, ‘no, god is not good. You are good. You made this happen’.

I should’ve known from the start that I was doomed to humanism. It has always been things that secular people said about Jesus that moved me. Kurt Vonnegut musing on the beatitudes is a thing to behold. If there were a writer in the Christian bible that wrote like Vonnegut, I may have had a chance at remaining a believer.

Vonnegut:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, you've got to be kind."

-Eliot Rosewater, from God Bless You Mr. Rosewater.

If that’s not nice, I don’t know what is. There’s nothing that nice in the bible, and Vonnegut is just a man. I find it damning that the lord of the universe didn’t even have the good sense to hire a decent ghost writer when he was putting out his self-help program.

Even the symbols that were supposed to scare me away from leaving the fold only drew me farther out of it. Satan, very frightening and tricky as he seemed to be in a more fundamentalist imagination becomes eminently more sympathetic when you think about him for just a minute on your own. Read Arthur Miller’s ‘The Creation Of The World And Other Business’ for the best interpretation of things as they must’ve gone down. In spite of all of the scary stuff I heard in church, the Satan I ended up with was more Prometheus than Loki.

Faith is about shutting off your brain and basing your life and values on stale dogmas and outmoded fairy tales. Faith is a refusal to use your…god given faculties. Faith says, ‘I will claim to believe x and behave x because I have been told to do so’. The humanism which I have been doomed to leaves me with the tools of skepticism and reason to make my conclusions with. In one sense, this is harder than making choices through faith, because I am wholly accountable for my decisions, and it is upon my own faculties that praise or blame can be pinned. In another way it is easier, because I don’t have to constantly try to rationalize away my suspicions about the soundness of this or that dictate, and I don’t have to do all of that unnecessary heavy lifting to justify downright evil shit like the doctrine of hell, original sin, or weird prohibitions about how I use my naughty bits.

Humanism is exciting. Humanism is romantic. Humanism is rational. Humanism is brave in the face of the stories of gods and hell that we are programmed to believe. It’s infinitely appealing, because--to paraphrase Terry Pratchett--we begin life as rising apes rather than falling angels. Not only that, we are more responsible for our actions. We can’t follow the line of the religious and say to ourselves and others that we were ‘merely following orders’ when we go wrong. We have empirical tools to make decisions with, and our ultimate authority is our own conscience. There’s no passing the buck to a higher power. Humanism is intimidating on some levels, but it is also freeing.

I seemed to have been destined to this conclusion. I can’t in good faith vouch for faith, but I can vouch for our potential, collectively and as individuals. I can vouch for the thought that maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain for oneself and others is a simple and decent way to live, and I can see both the cold logic and the basic decency of a philosophy that considers the well being of our neighbors and our societies, and seeks to further human knowledge and understanding.

More Vonnegut:

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

Amen.