Bowling without irony

Moratorium

2008-11-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

As of September 4th, my life has been officially consumed by teaching.

As a result, this blog will be on hold until that fateful (and glorious) last day in June.

To find out all the gooey details, please go to my other blog:

http://mrpratttheteacher.blogspot.com

Peace.

Obama

2008-11-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama is the president of the United States of America.

Wow.

And if you want to see something totally cool...come to a majority-black high school the day after the election. Students were yelling "OBAMA!" all day long. Plus, I had the distinct pleasure of grading many a pop quiz with the words "OBAMA '08" and "Yes we can!" written all over the margins. It's an exciting time, even though the days ahead are as uncertain as they can be for our country's place in the world.

That said, there was a really funny quote from The Stranger, Seattle's 'premiere' free newspaper--which in reality means a super-liberal publication full of advertisements, sex advice columns, porn ads (in color, of course), written from the neo-technocratic journalism of white hipsters.

Nonetheless, the following section I thought was really funny, especially the last paragraph. Enjoy.

Maybe you are one of these people with one of these shirts. If you are, it's time for me to deliver some bad news: Your shirt is awkward now. I mean, what are you going to do with it? Wear it? Wear a T-shirt with the president's huge face on it? UM! That is WEIRD. The moment Barack Obama won the presidential election, your shirt became creepy. It's weird enough that those Shepard Fairey posters are still plastered everywhere, Chairman Mao style. Like that crazy "President for Life" dude (dead now) in Turkmenistan who invented his own alphabet and banned all things that were not a giant gold statue of his own head (unverified). It's like that. Do you want that?

Please put your shirt in a drawer for 20 years, and then, if Barack Obama does all the things we want him to do (fix everything, destroy pinkeye, replace all rain clouds with money cannons), some child of the future can find it and wear it under his or her spacesuit as a symbol of dark times overcome—times when everything was broken, times when people had pinkeye.

* * *

The imagery of a world devoid of mild, topical eye disease and wet precipitation...verily, it's just beautiful. I mean, that's why I voted for Obama. Not to mention all the cool t-shirts out there. You just couldn't do that with McCain. Gosh, I'm so hip.

Muxtape

2008-07-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Remember the days when you'd record a cassette of all your favorite songs from the radio, hoping that the DJ wouldn't say any crass comments once the song began because you wanted a perfectly duplicated song? When you and your friends exchanged tapes of some of your coolest music?

...

Hold on, what's a cassette again?

Nice try, but I'm not that far removed from the antediluvian yesteryears of tape media. In fact, I was the proud owner of a radio / cassette player at 3rd grade, where I began listening to oldies until a close friend of mine revealed the secret of life: top 40 radio. Oh, the days of the Spin Doctors, Mariah Carey, and other nameless, shallow, one-hit wonder bands that graced the mid 90s airwaves. It was at this time where any glimmer of hope of discovering the immutable greatness of my mother's worn Jackson 5 or Beatles LPs would be hermetically dashed until the aesthetic wanderings of my college years banged its way into my tympanic membrane. You think I'm exaggerating, but considering I never heard 'Yesterday' until I was a junior in college will tell you just how deep I was in the din of the popular airwaves. The Doobie Brothers? Jimi Hendrix even? Nah ... just give me Usher and ... yes, even N'SYNC and The Backstreet Boys.

Why do I share these harrowing tales of chagrin and self-degradation? Well, first off, it is pretty darn funny. If I had a nickel for every time I admitted that my sophomoric older self would chuckle at my equally sophomoric younger self, I'd probably have at least four bucks. And who doesn't love the mere act of chuckling, even if it is at one self? It's healthy to laugh at yourself. That's what I learned one time in a NFL commercial where John Madden talked about the best response to pain or surviving a devastating tackle on the field was, simply, to laugh at yourself. I suppose that works, assuming you weren't hit so hard that you swallowed your tongue or your brain stem stabbed through your forehead. But, life-threatening injuries aside, the principle is true.

This brings me to my point. With my spastic love affair with top 40 radio ending sometime in college, I mailed off my 'let's just be friends' sympathy card to Clear Channel (which, after years of arresting my attention span long enough to seethe catchy pop hooks and subconscious advertising upon my most human desires, I figure a few four-letter word combinations were necessary to communicate my feelings) and thus began exploration in the unknown. 'Like, there's music that is actually not on the radio? Blasphemy! I don't believe you, witch!' I stepped into a dark night, a really dark night, like one where an overworked power grid shuts down and all the lights on the street are out, leaving people to run around and go crazy with handing out their freezer items. It was this kind of dismal, confusing cacophony where my mom let me borrow the Abbey Road CD I bought for her when I was in middle school. 'Hey, I'm making a long drive back to college...and the Beatles are supposed to be pretty good, so I'll give them a shot.' After that, I never looked back. I sold my possessions, burned my radio, and then furiously tried to put the fire out on said radio because I suddenly realized it had a CD player on it. Shoot!

caption: the world rightfully extolling
the humanitarian value of Radiohead's third album

It started with the Beatles, then it moved on to The Bends by Radiohead, then OK Computer, and then suddenly, it was like a secret of the universe was given to me: music didn't have to suck. Period. There was beautiful stuff out there, and often times, it just took asking your most-hipster-looking friend, 'Hey, what kind of music are you listening to these days?' After rolling their eyes, putting down there double-shot extra-hot 2% sugar-free vanilla latte, and tightening their skinny jeans, they'd say something prophetic, like, 'The Smiths' or 'The Decemberists' or 'The Shins' or (insert the indefinite article 'The' followed by a plural noun, pronoun, or a witty combination of two irregularly used nouns). 'Oh,' I would submissively respond. 'What do they sound like? Can I borrow a CD?' And thus a parasite-to-host, surrogate relationship is formed between guru and guruee. Soon, you're rocking out to, honestly, some amazing (and occasionally depressing / borderline emo) stuff.

Unlike our world supply of oil, I haven't even begun to tap the first eighth of the abundant reserves of music out there, so I'm still listening and constantly discovering new forms. There's hip-hop, geek rock, space rock (like Astro Boy?), glam/psychadelic rock, Eastern European folk, Casio-Keyboard-plus-record-button rock, all kinds of crazy stuff. And a lot of it isn't revolutionarily 'indie' ... it's just that I'd never heard about any of these bands because I was too distracted singing 98 Degrees to my 9th grade girlfriend.

And behold, I share with you today some of my favorite artists, signed and unsigned, major and indie, with you through an application called MuxTape. I made a playlist similar to that old 3rd grade cassette tape, except this time it is completely digital, accessible, and free...not to mention free from boy bands. Enjoy!

http://steveryanpratt.muxtape.com/

Pound It

2008-07-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a new one for the history books. A presidential candidate, now with the ever-coveted yet most-illusive title known to 21st century politik: street cred.

Gone are the Bush Sr. 'Read My Lips' or the peace sign akimbo from the Nixon era. We now have a brand new presidential mantra... the pound-it.

* * * *
An excerpt from 'The First HipHop President?' in The Stranger, July 12 2008.

'His wife came up, right? And they gave each other the pound, but when she walked away, he gave her that tap on the behind. I don't know if anybody caught that, but it gave me a lot of respect for him because what it said was: Look, this is who I am. I know how to talk to you and how to make you understand where I'm coming from, but really, this is my nature. If my wife walks out of the house, I give her a hug and when she turns around to walk away, I give her that pat on her behind to say: I'll see you when you get back. That solidified him for me.'

Commentary by Jace ECAJ, Seattle hip-hop musician from the Silent Lambs Project

Why drive? Take the bus!

2008-07-13T17:26:00.001-07:00

The Seattle Metro is one of the finest public transportation systems I have ever experienced.

[Of course, I must qualify that statement with the fact that I have only used public transportation in four cities: Chicago, New York, Madison, and Seattle. My 22 years of living in Texas wasn't altogether friendly towards hopping on a bus to go anywhere, although I did successfully ride my bike from Rockwall to my home-dizzle of Bedford, a 60-mile trek which was made possible only on four-lane highways and the DFW Airport. See, when the best public transportation one can find is taking a grueling bike ride literally through the tarmac of an airport (shady but legal), you know that there's a problem. But I digress.]

A mix of underground tunnels, a water taxi, inter-island ferries, trains, and electric buses, Seattle is as progressive as a transport network can get. And it seems this trend of public transit is on the rise in the oil-starved century we are carving out for ourselves. In 2007, ridership of our nation's subways increased 3%, for a total of 3 billions trips. Beijing projects to complete what will be the world's largest underground public transit system by 2015. And don't forget our nation's capitol, which completed its $10 billion subway system, making it the most expensive single public works program in the US since Boston broke ground with the original subway in 1897.

But public transit is just a way for the big cities to save money and draw revenue, you say. It may benefit people without cars, but does it help my personal budget?

Well, thanks to our friends at the American Public Transportation Association, you can calculate the savings down to the exact penny. Try the link below to calculate the difference you save.

http://www.apta.com/services/transit_calculator/index.cfm

Besides adjusting for gasoline prices and the cost of two-way public transit, the calculator configures for wear-and-tear on your vehicle, including maintenance as well as tire replacement. Using Kyrsten's 22 mile roundtrip drive to her school this past year, we could save $1843. If we input '$0' for the cost of public transit (since we as AmeriCorps volunteers get free bus passes), the savings are even more ridiculous...$1350.14! Now, imagine we sold the car--a viable option for living in the city where we reside--and thus jettisoned the yearly vehicle registration and auto insurance premiums. Oh geez, now my head is swelling with pompous eco-snobbery...I need a doppio of shade-grown fair-trade espresso to recover...

Alas, the savings are phenomenal. Granted, the other hand to this equation is the amount of time one spends on the bus, which can add up to be as big as three hours daily. That's a lot of riding time. But think of all the books you could read along the way. Gosh, Crime and Punishment would take two or three weeks, and you could probably balance your checkbook too.

So go! Take the bus! Have a smaller carbon footprint! And watch out for that lonely biker in Texas who is trying to save gas by riding alongside the airplanes...he just missed his fourth near-collision with a SUV, and all he wants to do is save the world, one middle school student at a time.

Is it risk or just uneasiness?

2008-07-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

Novice teachers often tell me they've been cautioned, in the same way I was, to be wary of the neighborhoods in which they teach. Physical dangers are evoked most often, but I suspect the physical risks of visiting our students' homes or walking in the streets in which they play are less significant than something more akin to an emotional uneasiness about the act of crossing lines between two worlds of race and social standing. I also think that crossing lines like these as often and as comfortably as we can will teach us more than any of those classes offered frequently to education students about 'multicultural relationships,' as useful as some of those classes are.

Jonathon Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher (2007)

Post-Christentom in America

2008-06-24T21:40:00.001-07:00

The American church (speaking for all the establishments of worship that honor Jesus as Lord) is at an interesting juncture in history, one that it isn't all too familiar with feeling. The juncture I speak of is being a cultural minority.

According to the 2007 summary of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a study which interviewed over 35,000 Americans age 18 and over, 78% of adults self-identify as Christians, which includes a mix bag from Protestant to Catholic to Mormon. Protestants squeak by as a technical majority group by representing 51% of the population, the lowest it has been since the beginning of the poll.

Globally speaking, however, the face of Christianity is no longer what critics would call the 'white man's religion.' Christianity is on the decline in the Western world, but in the Eastern Hemisphere parts of the world, such as China and India, it is soaring. Consider the charts below, which show that, concurrently as of 2005 (thus a different study), American and European (e.g. 'white' populations) Christians only make up 34% of the global faith body. That means that the Christian voice is dominantly a non-white voice...a little counter-intuitive, especially in this country.

Data: Center for the Study of Global Christianity,

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Prepared for the Pew Center's 2005 Report.

Let's return back to the 2007 report data: Those who fall into the unaffiliated category--atheist, agnostic, secular--are at 16% in the United States, and this is double the number of those who said they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. This means that there has been a sort of large exodus of people into this category, predominantly Americans between 18 - 29, where 1 in 4 report to be in unaffiliated with any religious tradition.

This fact seems to be on par with another startling statistic quoted in the New York Times last year: only 4% of teenagers will be 'Bible-believing Christians' as adults.

This statistic was the one that brought it all home for me. My sophomore through senior years of high school were rather formative for my young Christian faith, which began the summer before my sophomore year. As I recall the faces that would become acquaintances, some even close friends during those yearling days in my faith, I think about those same faces now in 2008, many of them graduated or on the cusp of college graduation. When I took some time to do a little informal research of asking questions, emailing, and--well, let's be honest here--even examining their whereabouts via Facebook (admittedly, a new low in research rigor), the finger-counting data analysis repeats this same 4% statistic. Even at the ever-transient time as a twentysomething, many of those who were ironically the most fervent, least shaken in their cornerstone of a faith during high school have as of presently become skeptical, apathetic, or cynical towards their previous Christian lifestyle.

Combine this with liberalized sexual mores, glamorization of a hypersexualized self-image via mass media, an increasing lack of parent involvement at home, the Religious Right's hijacking of pseudo-religious conservatism to serve its own political end...the list continues, with all kinds of sociological affects contributing. Simply put, though, America's culture has evolved, and the church is trying to play a game of catch up to meet teens, young adults, and the baby-boomer generation 'where they're at.' Where are they, you might ask? Well, they are where we all are: bombarded with media, caught somewhere in our post-civil rights era of strained race relations, at the crux of a post-oil economy, navigating a confusing educational system all while surviving on enough pharmaceuticals to quietly pacify our senses until the dawn of a new day. Kind of a tough spot, eh?

Personally, I think this shift will foster a painful, honest time of introspection for the American church. Since its founding as what many tote as a 'Christian nation'--a quasi-historical claim which can be legitimately debated--our country has identified Judeo-Christian values as culturally normative. When asked about one's faith, it was naturally assumed you called yourself a Christian, regardless of the private lifestyle practiced. Now, as the tides turn and adherents continually slip into the decline, those that are truly faithful will remain, and those who are disinterested will leave. This isn't a us-against-them mentality...it's simply both sides of the equation being more honest with themselves, which, I think it is a good thing. The decision to become a follower of Christ shouldn't be determined by one's parents, one's friends, or one's culture. It is, inexorably, a decision made by the individual, a response to the call of Jesus. Or, more eloquently put, as C.S. Lewis says, 'The journey with Him and to Him is not en masse but rather one by one.'

Where Europe experienced a similar phenomenon of disbelief decades ago, America is finally breaking that cusp into what is called a post-Christendom era. Where the church goes from here, though, is undecided. I'm part of the church, too, and thus it is on my shoulders, too. May I only be a wise and graceful steward of the Gospel of Christ, one daily decision at a time. Or, in the words of St. Francis of Assisi,

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to know the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Endurance

2008-06-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

"For God is a God who bears. The Son of God bore our flesh, he core the cross, he bore our sins, thus making atonement for us. In the same way his followers are also called upon to bear, and that is precisely what it means to be a Christian. Just as Christ maintained his communion with the Father by his endurance, so his followers are to maintain their communion with Christ by their endurance. We can of course shake off the burden which is laid upon us, but only find that we have a still heavier burden to carry--a yoke of our own choosing, the yoke of our self. But Jesus invites all who travail and are heavy laden to throw off their own yoke and take his yoke upon them--and his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. The yoke and the burden of Christ are his cross. To go one's way under the sign of the cross is not misery and desperation, but peace and refreshment for the soul, it is the highest joy. Then we do not walk under our self-made laws and burdens, but under the yoke of him who knows us and who walks under the yoke with us. Under his yoke we are certain of his nearness and communion. It is he whom the disciple finds as he lifts up his cross."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937)

The Tragic Blow to Hipster-dom

2008-06-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about it, I didn't think it was actually real. When I first visited, I just thought it was someone's inside-joke pet project. Finally, after reading extensively, I realized it was satire at its finest, a well-dispensed dose of social criticism for the dominant and unmistakable culture of our day.

What exactly is it?

Why, it's a blog devoted to chronicling the desires of white people, of course!

Now, before you gasp too haughtily or throw down the racist card, pause for a moment. Have you ever wondered why every time you encounter a white person on the sidewalk their glance avoids direct eye contact as their ears bloom white from the grandeur of their iPod headphones? Or that nearly every Metro bus comprised of a majority of white people is suffocatingly silent? Or how it is always white folks that threaten to move to Canada, drink expensive bottles of water from Fiji, and reap from the benefits of gentrification?

Well, you're not alone. I've noticed, you've noticed...and yes, the general world has taken notice. There is a persnickety pretentiousness that is underwriting the rules to the quirky maxims, social norms, and behaviors to our collective white culture. For decades, these unwritten rules pass almost congenitally from one generation to the next. But now, that which is whispered in secret amongst the posh living rooms of our suburbian existence is now exposed to the light. And trust me, the light hurts.

Ladies and gentlemen (who are white), our manifesto has been penned, our constitution has been created! Let us now go forth, and live our lives with the ultimate reassurance that someone just totally blew our cover on the absolutely shallow 'coolness' of our lifestyle. That someone is Christian Lander, the author and creator of the blog Stuff White People Like.

Stuff White People Like quietly began on January 18th of this year, which, compared to most of the popular blogs out there, is without a question still in its infancy stage. But, since its beginning, the blog has been a fiery source of debate back and forth from all sides of the spectrum. Little is known about the author, but one knows from his writing that he is nothing short of brilliant in delivering a succinct, coy critique of all those individual quirks we whites think are significant pieces of our multi-faceted and complex personalities...but, when we're honest with ourselves, try as hard as we might, we know we're just not that unique.

Consider the words from the movie Fight Club: 'We all grew up with the same television shows. It’s like we all have the same artificial memory implants. We remember almost none of our real childhoods, but we remember everything that happened to sitcom families. We have the same basic goals. We all have the same fears.' Perhaps, then, boiling down a list of the desires, likes, and dislikes of white America isn't a distillation of the dominant culture's true identity. It's not fair, one could say. But, if it isn't an identity, then what the heck is it and where does it come from?

Lander doesn't ever answer this question, and perhaps that is where the reader is left to draw their own conclusions. Perhaps it comes from mass media. Maybe it's a Generation Y thing. Or it could be the precipitate social reality of living in the post-oil, post-modern, post-Christendom era of American history. Every side has a point.

But, what Lander does give us is 'a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like.' The results of such an approach, he says? 'They are pretty predictable.'

At 103 entries and counting, the blog is always growing, always exposing the fecundity of absurdity in which white culture is often caught taking itself too seriously. The possibilities are endless, with nothing too off-kilter to be minced upon by a critical analysis. My favorites so far on the blog are bumper stickers, scarves, and knowing what's best for poor people.

To be fair, this critique on white culture pertains to only a certain segment of white culture, predominantly, that of the middle-class, twenty-something, college-educated, urban-dwelling folk. (For simplicity's sake, let us call this specific segment 'hipster culture'). For example, my dad doesn't necessarily fit the bill for most of the stuff on the blog's list...he doesn't shop at a grocery co-op, he doesn't like wine, has never seen the Daily Show, and will probably never watch a Wes Anderson film. Yet, my dad's culture isn't one that is out to conform others to fit the mold of his culture...it is a bit more libertarian than that. Hipster culture, though, is, subtly, at its heart a evangelical one. Nay, scratch that thought. Perhaps a better term to describe hipster culture is a viral marketing culture. See, it's not natural for a human brain to develop into full maturity desiring skinny jeans and fair-trade coffee. Rather, these desires come by careful, continual observation over a long period of time (e.g. infancy through adolescence) of other white people who fit into the 'cool' status of the hipster culture. Thus, the hipster gurus bequeath their knowledge of hipster customs, beliefs, and practices to the younger, impressionable proselytes, often through seemingly meaningless activities, such as complaining about their messy faux-hawk or extolling the virtues of fixed gear bicycles. But, if you were to question any hipster as to the hermeneutics of their lifestyle, such as why do you wear the things you wear or do the things you do, their reply would be something like, "I'm no follower, I do my own thing!" (insert other response here: I'm counter-cultural, independent, more authentic, etc. etc.) See, this is exactly why Lander chose to analyze this segment of white culture: it claims its culture's irreducibility so foolhardily and with such ribald zeal that it fails to see that, indeed, it is a culture, one that namely runs on trends (but ssshhh...don't tell them that, they'll get offended).

But I digress. If you haven't already, please check out this blog. You'll love it, hate it, or, especially if you belong to this white culture to which it speaks (myself included), you'll cringe. Why? Because the truth hurts, friends.

I'll conclude with Powell's online review of the upcoming book entitled Stuff White People Like, which will feature unreleased, unpublished analysis of yet even more things that white people like. Enjoy.

They love nothing better than sipping free-trade gourmet coffee, leafing through the Sunday "New York Times," and listening to David Sedaris on NPR (ideally all at the same time). Apple products, indie music, food co-ops, and vintage T-shirts make them weak in the knees.
They believe they're unique, yet somehow they're all exactly the same, talking about how they "get" Sarah Silverman's "subversive" comedy and Wes Anderson's "droll" films. They're also down with diversity and up on all the best microbrews, breakfast spots, foreign cinema, and authentic sushi. They're organic, ironic, and do not own TVs.
You know who they are: They're white people. And they're here, and you're gonna have to deal. Fortunately, here's a book that investigates, explains, and offers advice for finding social success with the Caucasian persuasion. So kick back on your IKEA couch and lose yourself in the ultimate guide to the unbearable whiteness of being.

Humans

2008-06-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

The following free verse poetry is written by an 8th grade student at Meany Middle School. The poem was selected for the Meany literary journal that my friend Jason and I helped put together. And, it is one of my favorites.

Note: The student's name has been changed for privacy reasons.

And now, bask in the rays of existential reflection as a fourteen year old breaks down the totality of human history into poetry. Enjoy.

* * *

Human
by Thao Wen

Humans are idiots
We live our lives in wealth while the rest of us live our lives of poverty
Humans are idiots
We wrote down and made our history but we didn't learn from it
Humans are idiots
We waste our food while somewhere out in the world there are people dying of malnourishment

Humans are idiots
Just 400 years ago we thought the planet was flat and that puss meant a sign of healing
We live our lives knowing about global warming and hardly do anything about it!
We have scientists who invented attack mules for the army but can't invent a better fuel for our economy!

Humans are idiots
We spent millions on B-2 bombers but won't realize that a kid in Africa can survive on a dollar a day!
We spent years tracking down a man in the Middle East but won't a spend a minute looking at what the war is doing to us!

Humans are idiots,
We are all idiots.

Giving thanks

2008-06-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

AmeriCorps meetings are, generallyspeaking, a good time. Occurring weekly, the meetings happen on a Friday, which gives everyone the extra grace of having an added day off from their school site. Plus, as surely as the sun rises each morning, these meetings never start on-time, meaning I can snag up to an hour extra of snooze time before coming in to socialize a bit with fellow work friends. Booya.

Yet, on the other hand, Friday meetings are a sort of 'Potemkin village:' despite the altruistic facade, therein hides a gritty, often enervating underbelly of frustration to the purpose of these gatherings. Gratuitous disorganization, sporadic direction, inconsistent start times, and irrelevant trainings can plague a good gathering of AmeriCorps folks. The psychological toil experienced by the said underbelly of meetings can lead one to pound one's head into the table while loudly singing selections from a circus repertoire.

This past Friday, we had session two of what was a group therapy series led by a life coach. The purpose of having the life coach was to help all of us in the transition from AmeriCorps to 'real-life jobs' in the upcoming month. While I agreed that such a transition is difficult to sort out, I didn't agree that so much meeting time needed to be devoted towards picking out my life passion. Is it cynical to disagree completely with her assertion that the energy of the entire universe is positively behind every step that I take, thus I only need to think enough positive thoughts to improve my current situation? It seems like a dangerous cocktail of the health-wealth gospel (a theology increasing in popularity in many of our nation's megachurches) with a little New Age pop-psychology and white bourgeoisie social theory thrown in to rationalize it 'scientifically.'

Like a stale poppyseed bagel, the training wasn't that fun. But, rather than doing the circus-song-head-table bang as mentioned previously, I invented a new game. I call it the Turning Heads game. In this game, I would slowly turn my head as far as it would extend from right to left, similar to an oscillating fan. I would do all this while maintaining eye contact with the life coach lecture. What gave the game high stakes was that I was seated on the front row, and the fact that the life coach continuously looked me in the eye while giving her speech. The goals of the game: to not lose myself in laughter, to throw off the life coach's rhtyhm, and to prevent myself from succumbing to the circus-song-head-table bang. Good times, indeed.

But enough of my cleverly disguised complaining. Allow me to redeem this emo-themed post with what I found valuable from our lecturer's life coaching.

During the group session, she asked everyone to make a list of what we are thankful for. We had five minutes for this assignment.

I give to you what was a valuable exercise of being appreciative of the many gifts and blessings from God. I present to you my list, in order of how I listed them, verbatim. (Make note that this list is by no means sorted by significance...but you'll probably realize that as you read the list.)

purpose in my life
Victrola Coffee Roasters
health
a teaching job for next year
the ability to hear
having an apartment
Kyrsten
the YMCA
the ability to walk and run
a mild winter
a functioning bike
the ability to dream at night
a supportive, encouraging upbringing
public transportation
a sense of humor
Jason Sposeto
Jason Sposeto's wealth of music knowledge
sugar-free gum
living a short distance from all immediate needs
weekends off
the students @ Meany Middle School
Mars Hill Church and the community we've been involved with
a high metabolism
a refrigerator full of food
fresh, clean drinking water
a drivable car
the Kyoto Protocol
Obama's nomination
CityTeam Ministries and their work in New Orleans
the Agape Center
People's Institute Northwest
gel pens
the ability to grow fresh basil in our apartment
the loving favor of the in-laws
Al Gore's work in spreading the scientific knowledge behind global warming
somewhat of a musical ability
the reassuring sense of safety at night
a supportive AmeriCorps community
Odwalla, Inc.
a recovering, stronger lower back
my friend Corey
Blackhawk Church in Madison, WI
Dave and Ellen Blust
access to locally grown produce
increasing dexterity with a frisbee
God's grace
safety and protection on our long hike out to Seattle
the phrase "existential peripheral vision"

and, last but not least...

friction

Honestly, this was a great exercise, one that I don't do enough. Maybe I can make it a habit to make a 'giving thanks' list more regularly. Even when life is in the doldrums, there is much to be thankful for.

So, all the hub-bub aside, I guess I should say thanks, Ms. Life Coach, for reminding me to stop being critical and start being more appreciative. Hey, this is a blog devoted to adventures in irony, is it not?

The Cheap-Energy Mind

2008-05-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

Stephen Levitt's Freakonomics created such a nationwide brouhaha in both popular and academic circles namely for its counter-intuitive, cunning spin on what we considered classical cases of cause-and-effect. True, some of his correlative exercises may be a bit of a stretch, but it does pause one to wonder...could that really be true?

Such is the effect of a relatively new study (2007) from Washington University in St. Louis. The apples and oranges in question today? Gas prices and obesity.

Charles Courtemanche, an economics professor at Washington U, found a 13% increase in obesity between 1979 and 2004, which he attributes to the overall falling price of gas during that time. His conclusions are based on a comparison of average fuel prices at the state level with their subsequent health behavior trends as documented in surveys spanning 1984 - 2004.

The most radical conclusion to his findings: Courtemanche projects that, for every additional $1 tacked onto the price of a gallon of a gas, the American obesity rate would fall by 9% subsequently. You know, raise a buck--get the nip and tuck.

But how?

Consider this: if a quarter of all car trips are now shorter than a mile, that would mean people are walking / biking more to curb the extra fuel expenditure, giving their bodies the extra metabolic boost. In addition, going out to eat as a means of entertainment or staple mealtime would theoretically decrease, meaning people would rather save money by cooking meals at home, which are generally speaking much more healthier than the preservative-ridden foods of the fast-food industry. All this would create a scenario where walking is as commonplace as driving, irregardless of access to big-city public transportation, thus collectively shaving (according to an estimate put out by the American Meteorological Society) a hefty 3 billions pounds of the national waistline.

A personal example to tag along this study. Madison Market Co-op is 1.2 miles from our apartment, which is that watershed distance between too far to walk but too close to drive. But, considering the extra weight in carrying home a few bags of groceries, it'd be much easier to drive to the market rather than 'waste all that time and energy' in hauling groceries by hand, not to mention the 2.5 mile roundtrip full of those West Coast hills. Thus, guilty as charged, I confess my guilt, echoing the same choice of millions of Americans who choose to burn fossil fuels in the name of their personal efficiency.

Yet, this mindset, this ethic in which we value time management and convenience over its environmental and post-generational fallout is not a novel idea. In fact, it started over a hundred years ago with the advent of specialization (also known as the division of labor). By specialization, I don't wish to conjure images of assembly line workers in the first Ford factory, each having their specific role to tighten a nut, install a wheel, etc. Take a step even a few years prior to the assembly line era, when refined oil started to become a mass-produced commodity for use in combustion engines. Suddenly, where communities previously had to rely on one another to provide food, services, and goods for day-to-day existence, now communities could travel beyond their quaint set of homesteads, knowing that we could now summon the specialties of other individuals to meet our growing wants and needs. I'm hungry and would like a bowl of cereal...so, I open up my refrigerator (powered by a coal-burning plant), grab a gallon of organic milk (shipped from rural Washington), and make a bowl of cereal (from a grain mill in Minnesota). If I'm lucky, at any given meal, I might have depended on goods from at least four other states, most of them located in the Midwest. But do I worry myself in trying to find a local farmer to buy pasteurized milk, or grind my own garden-raised grain to make cereal, or dine by candlelight to save on electricity? Of course not...because I have never had to.

This is the bane of what Wendell Berry calls the 'cheap-energy mind.' Cheap, available, deliverable energy infuses our collective consciousness as water is to a fish. Every conceivable commodity or past-time is inextricably linked to the convenience of cheap power, to imagine a life otherwise is nearly impossible. Thus, the cheap-energy mind is the one that asks, 'Why bother?' in response to topics such as climate change or a post-petroleum planet. The cheap-energy mind is the one that translates every discussion of value into a discussion of money. The cheap-energy mind is the one that puts faith in the 'specialized,' namely, our planet's economists and innovators, who hope a few shifts in market strategy and investment opportunities will properly align an economy based on self-interest to therein place its value on the right things, and therefore reality as we know it now will resume 'normalcy' once again. But this isn't revolutionized thinking...it is merely, as one author states, 'a greener version of the old invisible hand.' Same hand, same tricks, same death-hold grasp on cheap energy to sustain our lifestyles and existence.

But back to the Washington University study on gas prices and obesity...how does this, the excess pounds and the cheap energy mind, all tie together?

Quite frankly, if there is something proper to be done in response to the climate crisis, the oil crisis, or the fill-in-the-blank crisis, we as a people cannot rely on legislation alone. In fact, is not relying on our legislators a mere fall-back to specialization, where we confer all the hope (as well as blame) on individuals we assign the role of meeting a certain need? Or, as the more textbook argument, are not our politicians representatives of the beliefs and desires of the people that voted them into office? As Michael Pollan of the NY Times wrote,

'For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we're living our lives suggests we're not really serious about changing--something our politicians cannot fail to noice. They will not move until we do.'

Personal lifestyle change, while the most rudimentary and close-at-hand change scheme as it may be, is the key to reversing not only the national obesity rate but our cheap-energy mind. The predictability of success is much more difficult to measure, but such viral social movement is how some of the world's most sustainable revolutions have been achieved. Consistency has to start somewhere, and it starts with...well, me, before I can effectively spread such a compelling message.

Yikes, and isn't this the longest argument I've ever read for walking to the grocery store.

Review: Black Like Me

2008-05-18T14:25:00.001-07:00

Empathy is one of those tricky words. Upon first study, ‘empathy’ is simply an advanced level of ‘sympathy,’ fortifying an altruistic pity with a shared experience of being in a place of either victimization, isolation, or misfortune. But like all words in culture, meanings evolve with the spirit of the times, bending in tune to the shifting displacement of the wind. ‘Empathy’ is, likewise, not immune to these meta-forces of groupthink, and the contemporary result places its vacillating definition somewhere between the zenith of human compassion and a heralded best practice in the social service lingo. With each commercialization of humanitarian effort, a la LiveStrong, empathy is shaded gray as a buzz word for, at its basest terms, is ‘being a good person.’ No longer are the clear-cut lines of institutional racism and cultural bigotry apparent in our 21^st American culture of subtlety, efficiency, and passive aggressiveness. Still very much alive and (I believe) persistently thriving, racism is like a burning candle that, to the modern mind, was snuffed out in 1964 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but whose burning embers linger long enough to produce a cloudy haze and a second reigniting of its previous form.

But this post isn’t about the second flame of cultural and institutionalized racism in post-modern American culture. Rather, this post searches to examine what history has taught us thus far about how a white journalist in the racially charged early 1960s decided to step down from his world of white privilege and enter the black community the only way he thought most feasible: by coloring his skin. And as a journalist, John Howard Griffin didn’t seek this thing called empathy to change the world. Rather, he simply sought to record the facts—and the truth he found was a world turned on its head from his previous privileged existence at the top of the racial ladder.

One of the strengths of Griffin’s account is his reversed vantage point. History, as the Winston Churchill maxim goes, is written by the victors. With that formula, it makes sense then that those with the most power, access to resources, and control of the media are the ones that will record said ‘history.’ Griffin, in becoming for all apparent purposes a black man, places himself at the bottom of the American caste system, certainly not a victor in any sense of the word. He also is an alien. True, he indeed shares in and suffers the plight of the black man, but Griffin is also a mere ‘convert’ to the race, a masqueraded imposter who knows not the context or cues of assimilating into his new community. From this double-edged vantage point, Griffin records his personal account, describing an America ill-fit to its traditional definition, a ‘strange country that is suspended in ugliness.’

Griffin’s estrangement reminds me personally of how simple, on the surface, life appears to me. Of course, as a white male in our society, the opportunities presented me are endless, and I move rather uninhibited through the system, a move that is simply based on the amount of melanin in my skin. This comfort I feel and have felt my entire life is an insulated comfort, like the young Buddha inside the palace walls, estranged enough from reality to misjudge virtue for placated power. How could life not be thoroughly beautiful, all sewn up neatly without any rough edges? Yet, it is not so. Life as viewed from the top-down is harrowingly different when viewed from the bottom-up. Can you imagine the effect upon our collective subconscious if the stories we told and the traditions we passed on were those written by the marginalized peoples of our society? It’s disturbing, really.

But the questions remains: so what remains of empathy? Is it even possible to right the wrongs of a country divided since its founding, where ‘all men’ was a title to be decided legislatively rather than divinely? Or are we just left with hopelessness for unity and our country’s future? Perhaps we should just put our hopes in the legislative system, or, even better, a political candidate to make sweeping reforms that will finally and rightfully stand everything on the ground of truth and common decency! But we would be better pupils than to mistake our political optimism for history. The narrative we receive by John Howard Griffin bares the most devilish rues of human nature, whether that is small-town rural Mississippi or in the chambers of our national Senate. Considering the tide of our current culture, one that is a mere four decades removed from Griffin’s writing, I believe that Black Like Me is still every bit applicable to the road before us in unifying the racial divide. Yet, the grittiest gruntwork, in my opinion, lies not in our undoing our cultural tidings of black and white but in disembedding the colorblind ideologies that perpetuate ignorance and institutional bias. For that work ahead, we are going to have to make our own history, but only if you we really want to.

Headlines

2008-05-08T20:12:00.000-07:00

We don't own cable, and that's fine. I rarely have enough free time to shower regularly, much less watch late night comedy television. But that doesn't mean I do not appreciate Conan's slapstick brand of completely absurd humor or Letterman's witty take on our nation's current events.

One of my favorite parts of late night television is Jay Leno's Headlines. Witnessing such brass irony in published headlines gives me faith in the journalism industry. This faith isn't in their objective reporting but rather in the late-night, deadline-pressed journalist whose last task is to put together a catchy headline that'll peak their readers' interest. A good, solid headline will make their drive home just so much more satisfactory. See, I think the writers do this intentionally, their iconic way of living out their dream to write for the Onion in a socially acceptable, professional manner.

I don't avidly hunt for witty headlines or anything, but last week I came across two headlines on the same day on CNN.com that literally made me laugh out loud. Seriously, reading them made my day...

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

"Sinkhole swallows part of Texas."

"Boy hit by Prius claims he couldn't hear the car."

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

Finally, I'd like to conclude by adding my very own headline, one that I documented with my camera. To give some history behind this photo, I was driving down Brown Trail, one of the primary residential streets in Hurst, TX, my beloved hometown. As I was driving home from the local community college, to secure all those lovely extra elective credits, I witnessed this restaurant billboard that, in all logical sense, made zero logical sense. I present to you one of my proudest moments as a amateur photographer. Enjoy.

The Church

2008-05-07T22:43:00.000-07:00

"When we go to church and listen to the sermon, what we want to hear is his Word--and that not merely selfish reasons, but for the sake of the many for whom the Church and her message are foreign. We have a strange feeling that if Jesus himself--Jesus alone with his Word--could come into our midst at sermon time, we should find quite a different set of men hearing the Word, and quite a different set rejecting it. That is not to deny that the Word of God is to be heard in the preaching which goes on in our church.

The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid with so much human ballast--burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consolations--that it has become extremely difficult to make a genuine decision for Christ. Of course it is our aim to preach Christ and Christ alone, but, when all is said and done, it is not the fault of our critics that they find our preaching so hard to understand, so overburdened with ideas and expressions which are hopelessly out of touch with the mental climate in which they live. It is just not true that every word of criticism directed against contemporary preaching is a deliberate rejection of Christ and proceeds from the spirit of Antichrist. So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus. Are we determined to have nothing to do with all these people? They are convinced that it is not the Word of Jesus himself that puts them off, but the superstructure of human, institutional, and doctrinal elements in our preaching.

Of course we know all the answers to these objections, and those answers certainly make it easy for us to slide out of our responsibilities. But perhaps it would be just as well to ask ourselves whether we do not in fact often act as obstacles to Jesus and his Word. Is it not possible that we cling too closely to our own favorite presentation of the gospel, and to a type of preaching which was all very in its own time and place and for the social set-up for which it was originally intended? Is there not after all an element of truth in the contention that our preaching is too dogmatic, and hopelessly irrelevant to life? Are we not constantly harping on certain ideas at the expense of others which are just as important? Does not our preaching contain too much of our own opinions and convictions, and too little of Jesus Christ? Jesus invites all those that labour and are heavy laden, and nothing could be so contrary to our best intentions, and so fatal to our proclamation, as to drive men away from him by forcing upon them man-made dogmas. If we did so, we should make the love of Jesus Christ a laughing-stock to Christians and pagans alike.

It is not use taking refuse in abstract discussion, or trying to make excuses, so let us get back to the Scriptures, to the Word and call of Jesus Christ himself. Let us try to get away from the poverty and pettiness of our own little convictions and problems, and seek the wealth and splendour which are vouchsafed to us in Jesus Christ."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939, The Cost of Discipleship

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

Emerging from my sophomore year of college, I was highly critical of the Christian church. Certainly ironic, no doubt, seeing as I considered myself a member of the Christian body yet remained very bitter towards those who professed Jesus' name. Aware of this irony, I remained faithful, all the while compounding my faltering church attendance with a 'justified' criticism towards those beloved with whom I shared communion. All this made me isolated, withdrawn into myself, and searching for a real connection to Christ's body--his Church.

Enter Dietrich. I never had heard about Bonhoeffer until I took a Philosophy of World Religions class at the local community college to 'get ahead' in my college credits. Show up, take notes, and write a paper--no need to waste time by actually paying attention in class, right? I superciliously thought the education would be sub-par, a natural extension of the spirit of criticism that I was riding like a magic carpet. Then, one day, to enter into a discussion of the Christian faith, the professor showed us Bonhoeffer, a 2003 documentary of the man's life, works, and most importantly, how his gentleness and humility exuded a soulish strength that transformed him into one of the most resilient Christian leaders of the post-Christendom era. Whereas my familiarity with Christian writing previously came from the breezy lifestyles of mainstream American evangelicals (with comfortable book royalties and a gargantuan fanbase enough to finance their grandchildrens' retirement), I was blown away at the unsung story of a German Lutheran pastor and his struggle with the swelling political climate of the 1940s. His letters, his writings, his love for country that never superseded his love for Christ...they tell a story of a man who was uncommonly jolted by the Sermon of the Mount, whose love for his enemies was as unknown to his left hand as to his right hand.

There's a verse in Scripture that exhorts followers of Christ to not become lazy, but "to imitate those who through faith and patience inherited what has been promised" (Hebrews 6:12). For me, that person is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. While his life was tragically ended in execution as the hands of the Nazi SS guards mere hours before his detainment camp was liberated by Allied forces, he (and others like him) saw and understood the way to the Promised Land of a restored humanity through the selflessness of one's pride and submission to Christ's love.

Dietrich was equally critical of the faithful as well as his enemies. But, Dietrich taught me to not give up, to not lose hope, and to "lean in" to God's flock when the times are going tough. Covenant is not contractual...my relationship with the church is not conditional on its good behavior (good luck on that always holding up). I need to both learn and practice the discipline of forgiveness towards this followers of His name.

Since that fateful summer, for the first time, I learned to stop "despising" the Church, rather embracing it while never forgetting the pain the church as an institution has caused. Or, as the theologian Karl Barth would have put it, reading the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. And it is that lesson that wouldn't have come about without the simple lessons of a life lived quietly and resolutely a mere 70 years ago.

Just waiting...

2008-02-10T22:29:00.000-08:00

"Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and thos who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team, so bet, for winning is all that matters.

But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way--in their own lives, at least--to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. I imagine the white Southerner who growing up heard his dad talk about niggers this and niggers that at the office and is trying to teach his own son different, who thinks discrimination is wrong but doesn't see why the son of a black doctor should get admitted into law school ahead of his own son. Or the former Black Panther who decided to go into real estate, bought a few buildings in the neighborhood, and is just as tired of the drug dealers in front of those buildings as he is of the bankers who won't give him a loan to expand his business. There's the middle-aged feminist who still mourns hr abortion, and the Christian woman who paid for her teenager's abortion, and the millions of waitresses and temp secretaries and nurse's assistants and Wal-Mart associates who hold their breath every month in the hope that they'll have enough money to support the children that they did bring into the world.

I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting.

They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them."

* * *
An excerpt from Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, 2006.

Cereal Killers

2008-02-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

A trip to the grocery store is rarely a brief endeavor in our family.

Case in point: cereal.

We were getting pretty low on cold cereal. All we had left in our 12 cubic feet of pantry space was a 1/4 box of Life Cereal left. No worries, though. A simple run to the local Safeway up on 15th would mitigate the morning munchies, and we would be back on progress towards conquering the daily grind. Walk up the hill, browse the cereal isle for our favorite box or two, and badda-bing, you're out the door.

That's if cereal is merely a pragmatic, alimentary endeavor to you. You know, like cereal = food, food = good, good = not feeling hungry.

See, this is yet another point of social deviancy for the Pratt's. We don't just eat cereal...we partake in it. Nay, it partakes in us. When we walk down isle 3 at Safeway, it's like the recreation of matrimony all over again. Our hands held tight, our elliptical eyes weepy with tears, offering confidence and reassurance to one another like sacraments, we begin the mystical duet down the seemingly endless row of fortified grains. Be it the offerings of mail-order low-budget films from the 1990s or the promises of a more consistent bowel movement schedule, cereal is more than just the crunchy goodness on the inside. Before our very eyes, the cereal boxes become like a rally of square-faced, snaggle-toothed children, all colorful in demeanor, playful as a Saturday morning, reaching out their grasping arms as if to say, "Pick me! Pick me!"

Then, there's the whole buy-12-get-1-free deals that really pull at the heartstrings.

'Truly, we cannot just turn down all these unadopted little morsels away...they are just too good to be true!'

'Verily,' I respond, holding back the tears of my indecisive discernment. 'But where do we go from here?'

Then, in a moment of unquestioning certitude, Kyrsten exclaims, 'Why don't we get them all?!'

...

And there you have it. A jaunt to the grocery store becomes an economic stimulus plan for the state of Kansas. You think I'm exaggerating, but see for yourself below.

That's right. Count 'em. 16 boxes of cereal. In one trip to the grocery store.

For those of you who are structural engineers, you'll quickly notice that...

(16 x cereal box) + (other non-perishable items) + (ridiculous rental rates in Seattle) > (12 cubic feet of pantry space)

Where does all the extra cereal go? Well, we can't put them next to our extra towels because that's where the canola oil is sitting, and our two extra bottles of olive oil are located in the same crate as our hair products, so what's left? Under the bed, of course! Right next to our spare set of laundered sheets...it's perfect!

...

Great. Not only do my wife and I risk mistaking hair serum for vegetable oil, but we also found oursleves sleeping on an archipelago of Corn Flakes. Just beautiful, really...

On the Status of Rocks

2008-02-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

Rocks are some of the most versatile objects on the planet.

From house foundations to the foundation of the Earth's crust, rocks provide a firm surface for supporting humankind's synthetic structures. Were it not for the rocks under our feet, water would have no resting place. In fact, our atmosphere would be filled with ammonia, carbon monoxide, and other noxious chemicals, all brewing at extremely high temperatures and creating a very large, continuous pool of molten lava. Mmm...delicious.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Rocks are, like, cool. Totally. You think stretch pants and Ugs are the hit thing in hipster world? Visualize the 1980's creative brainchild known as the pet rock. This pop culture phenomenon skyrocketed the popularity of these cute inanimate aggregates, catapulting all rocks into a dizzying limelight from which they have never recovered. Wherever you go, rocks are collected, studied, taken home as cheap souvenirs...people just can't seem to stop themselves! And, of course, there is the whole post-blues / pre-emo movement known as we Generation Y people like to call rock 'n' roll. You darn kids and your grunge...just take a second to see what distortion pedals have done to perpetuate the daunting notoriety of our little mineral friends. Rocks are everywhere, literally, physically, conceptually, philosophically, popularly. Rocks never asked for this kind of attention...the fame, the cash money, the diamond rings, the MTV specials. All rocks want is the affectionate shout-out in an 8th grade textbook, which give props for providing support to your very gravity-centered existence.

Why this silly exposition on one of the most boring subjects on the planet (forgive me geology majors)? Besides sitting there and looking pretty, rocks are viewed by some people as the prime examples of the Christian lifestyle. But before we advocate sainthood for Mt. Rainier, allow me to explain the madness of such an analogy.

I read an article a while ago from the Appalachian News Express, the hometown paper of Pikeville, KY. The article, entitled 'Are you more Christian thank a rock', was given to me by one of my hallmates in college. I confess, before taking the time to sit down and read the article, I pre-judged the piece to be one of those trite Sunday school lessons that are, unfortunately, more platitude than propitious. As a somewhat new Christian who didn't grow up in a church (or particularly favoring it, either), I smugly thought that my faith would be soooo over this. How futile was my thinking...reading this 400-word article has been ruminating in my mind ever since, and now is leading me to share this good news on this blog.

For a good majority of people growing up in America, the Christian lifestyle is racked with regulations, primarily those that ring with aura of 'thou shalt not.' It's as if Christians are perceived as these all-around repressed creatures, hobbling along in our bent-over bodies, crooked with all kinds of hormones and desire coursing through our veins, yet we wear a long face as if it were a sort of moral disinfectant to our plight. Of course, this kind of narcissistic thinking wouldn't be prolonged if it weren't for those 'pesky' Ten Commandments, where 8 of the 10 are written in that 'thou shalt not' negative format. Truly, those ten rules have done nothing but to lead to human demise.

Hmmmm.

...

Maybe God doesn't have a good grasp on good writing? I mean, what's with all that negative emphasis? Maybe he should have gotten his Masters of Journalism from Columbia before penning the ten most argued about and transgressed rules in all of human history? Er, not so much. So what is my point here? And where are the rocks? I want to hear more rocks!

This is where I want to start to drive this article home a bit, namely because it hits very close to my heart (and perhaps others as well).

I confess that, for a majority of my faith in Christ, I have personally defined my spiritual life by the very things I choose not to do. My brain has a way of rationalizing itself into self-admiration by thinking that by not smoking, not excessively swearing, and not going to all those rambunctious high school parties back in the day...all that made me a pretty swell Christian. Using the above examples as fodder for my logic, I was practicing the biblical principles of treating the body as my temple, keeping unclean language from my lips, and avoiding the appearance of evil. Sweet! Steve gets a holy high five from Ned Flanders!

'Nuh uh!' says Ned as we quickly retracts his hand from the air. 'This here Holy Award goes to my pet rock.' Shoot! Seems that darn rock is always one step ahead of me. Not only does said pet rock avoid the party scene (the 1980s were a while ago) and not smoke pot (lack of a thoracic cavity), that goody-two-shoes doesn't commit adultery, lust, envy, malice, deceit, jealously, or fall privy to pride. The only downfall of the rocks is their lack of evangelical outreach to other non-rocks (i.e. humans). But I suppose I can't really count that against them...I mean, I haven't exactly shared the Gospel of Christ with our house plant.

The fact that a lifeless agglomeration of atoms in crystal formation shows 'perfect' Christian behavior by most popular ways of measuring goodness should stir those who claim to follow Christ to disembed our usual methods of measuring 'success'. Granted, spiritual disciplines are a serious and very necessary undertaking, one I that hope to develop continually. But the focus of this blog is this maligned conceptualization of Christian success, a line of thought that lies entrenched in what we choose not to do...rather than we actually do. For a better part of my Christian life, I subscribed to this line of thought because I am by nature spiritually lazy and I want to hold my head high...all resulting in an absorbing hubris which was ultimately empty piety. The longer I walk around on this planet, the more I realize that the new creation I have become in my faith is meant to just that: to create, to be proactive in a world full of the reactive, to do something redemptive, to fulfill a higher purpose than aggrandizing my own image or self-perception. It's the whole nagging question of duty, which Soren Kierkegaard eloquently discusses in his private journals:

I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of understanding and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

Jesus did not say that followers of the Way would be recognized by the number of times they said 'no' to certain activities. Rather, it would be by the most dangerous, most penetrating force humanity has ever seen let afire on this planet: love. And while recognizing that love is as confusing and ill-defined word in our limited vocabulary, George Orwell put it rather well when he said, 'there is a humility about genuine love that is rather horrible in some ways.'

Passion, authenticity, selfless action. This is what marks the Christian lifestyle. Not continual no's and declined party invitations. So, while rocks are cool, they are not the model for the mysteries of following Christ. But they do make killer centerpieces, especially when drilled out and then filled with a bamboo plant. Go, rock, go.

I don't see color...

2008-01-17T22:09:00.000-08:00

Every week in the Seattle Weekly, there's a spoof article written by the mythological embodiment of all things Seattle. His name is the Uptight Seattleite, and he is the avatar of the Pacific Northwest. Think of a child of the 60s with the computer programmer gray ponytail, pumping out a pertinacious, self-confident agenda when he's not pumping his body full of 100% fair trade espresso. The caricature is dead-on, as you might agree. Anyway, enjoy his tongue-in-cheek advice on how to make the most of the up-and-coming Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Because really, you need his advice.

------------------------------------------
Dear Uptight Seattleite,
How should I spend Martin Luther King Day?

Dear Conscientious Guy,
It's not that I hold myself up as an example in this regard, but I will briefly mention that I'm pretty much color-blind. This one time, when I met a co-worker? Someone asked me later what he looked like, and I just couldn't recall. Suddenly surrounded by a menacing, mumbling crowd demanding to know even the smallest morsel I could squeeze from my subconscious. I did allow that I dimly recalled he was a 6' 5" Filipino squinting into the sunset, with a blood-red kerchief tied neatly about his throat. Whatever, though, right? Because what the heck difference did it make? This other time I met a sales rep who happened to be African American. When someone mentioned him later, I said, 'Who?' I couldn't remember meeting anyone at all! My vision pierced through his ostensible racial identity to the white board he was standing in front of. Almost as if he were invisible.

I'm not saying that kind of transcendent vision can be achieved overnight. But a day of contemplation wouldn't hurt. That's why I would recommend staying home on January 21st and working on your post-racial nonchalance. Look in the mirror and casually repeat to your reflection, 'I just didn't notice. I just didn't notice.' After all, it is only the exquisite self-consciousness of Caucasians that can make Dr. King's dream come true.

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

Hmmm.

I'm sure my co-workers wouldn't be insulted if I didn't recognize something as central to their identity as their race. Really, this is the 21st century, and race is insignificant, nugatory at best. Racial prejudice--nay, the concept of race itself--vanished the moment the gavel rang in the Senate chamber on July 2, 1964. It's those of us (myself included) who still see color are the real obstructions in the way of progress. So, please, stay at home on Monday, or at least close out reality with your iPod if you have to venture out in public...and be sure to assuage your conscience knowing that you're doing the right thing. Looking people in the eye or seeking to talk with real people is incredibly barbaric. Create a homogeneous culture filled with strip malls and advertisements. Remember, insulating your life experience from any trace of racial, ethnic, or religious diversity isn't the way of ignorance...truly, it is our manifest destiny.

* Here's the official link to the article's source, so I don't get sued. But if I do, I'm asking Tom Claycomb to defend me. Do lawyers accept food stamps?
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2008-01-16/diversions/ask-an-uptight-seattleite.php

Texas: we kill people

2008-01-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

There's a certain, say, 'mindset' that comes with being Texan. It's bequeathed at birth, irregardless of your parents' hometown or country of origin. It enters your body from the moment the OBGYN smacks your bare hiney, and it then echoes down your lungs as you let out that first scream of pulmonary victory. Then, in a moment of pure pride, the doctor grabs you by your slippery, gooey ankles, lifts you high into the air, and yells, "Hey folks...we got ourselves another born-and-bred Texan." The exclamation in then answered by cheers, whoops, and the ringing of gunfire in the operating room. You are now Texan.

And so it was with my birth. Perhaps a few exaggerations, but you get the point: people are generally proud of the their Texas heritage. I mean, what other state in the union can claim that it was once its own country? Or that David Crockett stood against overwhelming odds in the Battle of the Alamo to take a stand for independence? Or that the San Jacinto monument is the only state monument that is actually taller than the Washington monument? See, we get away with all kinds of things down in Texas...why? 'Cause we're Texas, that's why. And if you don't like it, we'll run you over with our Ford F350 Deluxe Cab Diesel Truck, you darn bike-riding frisbee-playing long-haired hippie types.

Someone might say that, at some age, sensibility kicks in and you begin to outweigh with your haughty hubris with a bit of common sense and appreciation for your fellow man.

Depends what you mean by appreciation for your fellow man.

As you see below, I conducted some research to examine how this 'appreciation' translates down in planet Texas. Take a look.

This table was downloaded from the Bureau of Justice website.

The 2007 report was just released, and I wanted to see how we Texans fared in loving our fellow man. Not bad...first place, once again, with over eight times the number of executions than the second place contenders. And, if you notice the little note at the bottom, all executions stopped as of September 25th to allow the courts to decide whether or not Pavulon--the drug responsible for muscle paralysis--is inordinately painful to constitute as 'cruel or unusual' punishment. Something tells me they're not going to try it themselves...

Some say that Texas has built an express lane to Death Row. Looking at the numbers, I say they built an HOV lane, several handicap parking spaces, handed out bottles of water, and even built a merry-go round and a water-slide leading to the warm, mahogany carpentry of the execution chair. How is that for 'appreciating your fellow man'?

To bring this to a harrowing conclusion, Ill end by saying that this all reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. Calvin is wanting to enter a contest that is tapping the creative genius of elementary students to create a new motto for wearing safety belts. You know, 'always buckle up', etc. Calvin, in his perpetual thirst for the macabre, splatters spaghetti sauce on a picture of a dead possum and writes, 'Be careful...or be road kill." Perhaps Texas should take a similar route, seeing its thirst for the macabre, changing it to 'Be careful...or be CHAIR kill.' Whatever. Nothing like a shot of potassium chloride to get your heart going in the morning.

Texas: bigger than Germany, killing more people than dogs, since 1845.

Review: The Bluest Eye

2008-01-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

Rich in metaphor, dripping with poetry, yet poignantly and subtly raw: these are but a few of the accomplishment’s of Morrison’s work, The Bluest Eye. But this wasn’t something I expected. Truth be told, I never had read any of Morrison’s works much less heard anything about her works. My literary education played the tunes of the ‘literary classics,’ those stuffy works that frequent the reading lists of high school students. And, if we’re honest, these classics were predominantly written by middle- to upper-class white males, leaving little wiggle room for the contributions of any non-majority power group. Thus, as I began a little research about the author and heard her acclaimed as one of America’s gems—a member of the ranks of Faulkner, Hemmingway, and Twain—I knew I was jumping into something greater than mere dabbling at fiction.

The opening of the book—framing the story around a child’s sparely informed explanation of an agricultural mishap, cusped with a brief, nugatory mention of child rape—succeeded in confusing me of the narrative’s direction, which I believe Morrison intended. Rather than spinning a linear, detective-like retelling of the events leading to that spring’s barren harvest, Morrison coyly destroyed my brash expectations by sending my brain into a scramble. I kept asking, “Where is this going?” which would be immediately followed by, “Wait, am I missing the point by wondering where this is going?” I stepped into the novel to investigate racial tension or the haphazard dance of social class in early 20^th century Americana, and, above all, I wanted to emerge victorious, sure of myself and my well-informed, progressive opinions. Forget that! When I got over myself, I started to enjoy…no, love this novel.

Morrison’s writing is melodic. Not melodic like a ho-hum congregational hymn, or as uncomfortable as a immature jazz ensemble trying to keep up with Coltrane, but more of a playful bounce-back blues session between George and Ringo, where the riffs and rhythms fit snugly without being forced. Entire pages of the novel transformed into a music score, where the pages are slightly tattered from turning and the pencil marks speak of familiarity. I couldn’t help but notice how Morrison’s flow resurrected those antiquated but familiar feelings of experiencing Abbey Road for the first time. Start to finish, everything flows, complimenting the previous piece while leading to the next, an organic cycle that still retains order. Basically, her writing is beautiful.

What touched me most about the novel was how no one was made out to be ‘the enemy.’ No lines were drawn in the sand. Each character had their own tale, a coming-of-age that was uniquely theirs, and depending how fate and flux corresponded, the character would then come to process reality in accordance to the lenses through which they perceived the world. The aphorism rings true in life as it does in this tale: perception is reality. Yet, the downfall of such a cultural truth of our common humanity (e.g. human nature) is that even the most notorious and nefarious criminals of history don’t often perceive themselves as such. Sure, such men of power don’t beseech humility’s door, but deep down in their psyche, there is that instinct to put the blame on someone else. ‘It was the way I was raised;’ ‘the Jews started it first;’ ‘it was the white man who did this to me;’ etc. The verisimilitude of these claims is irrelevant. The point is… we humans have a tendency to see ourselves as either victim or survivor. Even if the responsibility of our choices—no matter how poor they are—is ours to bear, we rarely perceive it as such, and it’s much easier to displace our anger, anxiety, or rage towards ‘the other,’ whomever or whatever they might be.

2008...

2008-01-06T15:42:00.000-08:00

So this is the new year
and I have no resolutions
for self assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions.
-Death Cab for Cutie-

Blogging. For some, it comes as natural as breathing, but I guess those people have a perfect set of lungs and a very fit diaphragm. I, on the other hand, have that publisher's plight where I want everything that is produced to be the best and most accurate representation of the writer's skills. Or, it could be that I am 'type-A' about what and how I blog about something. Like an art masterpiece: perfunctory yet well-planned, rich in color and theme, intentional about the little details but spacious enough to accommodate the reader's own experiences and thoughts...and, indisputably the most important, always retaining that slightly brash dry humor that, just maybe, might make you laugh out loud.

So, you can see how I can constantly drive myself crazy in trying to create a 'masterful work' each time, ex nihilo, an effort that seems doomed from the beginning.

Oh, trust me, I've tried to start a whole series of blog drafts. In fact, I have at least 30 ideas that I have halfway written down but never published. All kinds of wonderful things: CD reviews, insightful quotes, hilarious stories from the middle school world, spiritual reflections on life, even memories that suddenly reemerged to the front of my mind again. But then there is the whole brainstorming and writing process, which takes hours upon hours to complete, not to mention the sheer jeopardy it puts on my health. Seriously, ingesting 40 oz. of coffee seems like a good idea to get your brain going, but when your heart starts to palpitate and recreate the askew time signatures off the new Radiohead album, your forthright literary efforts are quickly disembedded. Repeat this several times a week, with the ideas pouring in faster than there are waking hours of sunlight in the Pacific Northwest, and you're left with a dusty laptop and a desire to go out and break stuff. Hey, we all need a creative outlet. Otherwise, porta-potties start toppling over.

Now to my point. I've thought a lot about making this new year a time to focus on new disciplines and polishing up previous ones. Blogging is up there towards the top of the list. But, as my previous promises to blog once a week have shown, life has a funny way of disrupting the best laid plans of men, especially those uppity hipster-type men in Seattle who compost religiously and actually blog about blogging. Either I need more hobbies or a full-spectrum light bulb to counter my Seasonal Affected Disorder. So forget resolutions...I'm just going to do it. Whether it's a single paragraph, a quote, a picture, or a novel...I want to put a good faith effort in 2008 to making this blog a running tab on my thoughts, life, and ever-transforming worldview.

Ready, go.

The Purpose Driven Ice

2007-06-12T18:18:00.001-07:00

Throughout the ages, historians have defined cultures by their peak artistic creations. These creations did not come about through an uninitiated spark of genius. Rather, these creations enveloped as the coveted creme of a brewing process that combined a culture's customs, ethics, and intellectual thought into a unmitigated explosion of creativity. Like a volcano, the rumbling is long, even dormant for centuries, until the unexpected becomes reality, a reality that even the most hindsighted could not have forseen nor controlled. The idea simply "is." Cooed into being, resolute in remaining, as timeless as the sands of the Sahara.

Given all this existentially heavy verbage, you feel helpless, confused, and befuddled. All you want is to tune your iPod Shuffle to My Chemical Romance and retreat to your bathroom, locking the door so you can cry about your problems and scream at the top of your lungs, "Whoam I? What is my purpose?" O, unfair universe! Where hast thou goodness gone? Where should one go to seek the answers of such timeless questions? Should you climb the Himalyas to seek the Dali Lama? Maybe practice extreme ascesticism through a strict diet of almonds, brussel sprouts, and wasabi peas?

No! Stand fast! You are not alone! The apex of 20th century artistic achievement is here to enchant your mind with the centuries of wisdom that have gone before, to usher in a new century that will inspire your life towards purpose, towards meaning, towards a life of love.

Is it Gone with the Wind? Citizen Kane?

No, friends, I present to you the Sistine Chapel of the post-modern world... 1991's Cool as Ice.

In this groundbreaking film, we come face-to-face with the true-to-life popular culture icon of Vanilla Ice, a true grassroots rap musician that stuck out those tough years of free-flowing his way from the bottom of his Plano suburbs to the top of international stardom. Now, in his role as the iconoclastic John 'Johnny' Van Owen, Vanilla is tested to become a man of a different flavor than the one he was born to be. The film's plot, while epic in its scope, retains humble roots, representing the common man and his lonely plight through a wicked society that doesn't understand him. Combining the twists of Wilde with the enticing emotionality of Hawthorne, it is as if the story is a mirror, a reflection of lives lost in the moral moratorium of our restless, tired age.

You may think that this all a bunch of useless corybantic puffing up a sore film that was the earmark of a despairing musician's downfall.

Well, you're wrong.

Dead wrong.

To speak in such a way stings with bitter recrimination against a sea of hope-filled lives that have regained their footing, their bearings for the daily grind of existence. Take Rick Warren for example. Many of you know and admire Rick for his heartfelt work, The Purpose Driven Life, as you well should. Fewer books in the past ten years have sparked the kind of spiritual revival as this call for inner peace with God. But, what very few people know is that Rick himself wasn't always a purposed driven voyager through life. He didn't set his sails towards the setting sun. No, Rick was too busy casting his anchor in the harbor to check out the shoreline bars. It seems the only time Rick was awake to see the setting sun was when it periodically startled him from his deep slumber, a slumber induced by his trusty mate Captain Morgan. As a pirate of such nefarious character, Rick made Jack Sparrow look like the pre-prison Martha Stewart. You wouldn't want to cross him.

Then, one night as he sat listening to his iPod in the bathroom and screaming for hope, Rick hit rock bottom. All around, the exits were bricked, the walls were slippery, and there was no was escape.

Until it happened.

Rick watched Cool as Ice.

Five minutes later, Rick Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Life. In forty-six minutes, flat.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

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

Skeptic, are you? Do you think that such an artistic achievement could bring a man from guts to glory, and then to help others along the way with his inspiring message? Don't take my word for it, don't even take Rick Warren's word for it...look what other people have to say about Cool as Ice, as listed on the scholarly Amazon.com...

"Only once in a millenium comes a story with the ability to move the soul so powerfully. Do not deny yourself the privilege of being a part of this staggering achievement in cinema, this passionate tale of bravery, patriotism, and sacrifice. Some things in life are worth working for, no matter what the cost, as Vanilla Ice discovers in this movie--just as you will discover once you have purchased it."

"I would have given it 100 stars if i could."

"A classic distillation of untainted passion and angst."

"One does not simply view this film, they unfold alternative modes of being through its perplexing, yet fully rewarding, narrative."

"Simply put, Cool as Ice saved my life."

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

Friends, do not deny your impulses. Go see this movie...now. Otherwise, choose to live a life filled with regret, shame, and an endlessly emo playlist.

Apologies...

2007-06-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while since the last blog entry. A long while. Like, two months and twenty days a while.

These things just don't write themselves, you know.

Alas, have no fear. Within the past eighty one days, I have informally recorded a series of 34 separate events that fit the aphoristic title of 'bowling without irony.' In fact, perhaps the best way to cajole the creative juices out again for a game of literary hopskotch is to explain the origin of this confusing little phrase.

About two years ago, some of my favorite fraternity boys were out fraternizing one night at a local Lexington bowling alley. After a few round of drinks and flailing their flacid wrists in a bowling motion, their good time was interrupted by some neighboring fraternizers, but more of the blue-collar persuasion than these college boys. Criticism was vollied one way only to be returned with captious criticism towards their mother's species (and trust me, they weren't identifying her as a female Homo sapien). The locution continued as both parties moved to the parking lot towards their vehicles, as neither party was inclined or (chemically) influenced enough to resort to fist-a-cuffs.

Yet, the true winner of this battle of wits goes to the locals, who spouted of the following line:

Just remember, that the difference between your people and my people is that my people bowl without irony.

...

Inspiring.

Insidiuous.

Yet, so perfectly ingenious.

...

It will be another 200 years until the human race understands the totality of that statement. Until then, we can only hope those words will continue to pulsate ripples of change throughout our world, inspiring the invention of breakthrough widdling technologies and spreading the gospel of hand sanitizer as the everyman's deoderant.

Confused? Hey man, no worries. Take a deep breathe, read those words over and over again. In the words of the Beatles, 'turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.'

Yeah man. Welcome back to the Irony. Woot.

Haiku Snafu

2007-03-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

One of the requirements for my AmeriCorps position is that I write a reflection regarding my year of service. This reflection is then submitted to the state coordinator's office, who then compiles all of the hundred something reflections across Wisconsin and puts them in a 5 x 7 notebook. The function is two-fold: we keep the notebook as a memorable keepsake, the Man uses it for promotional material.

Thus, between the euphoric high of a caffine buzz and the congential predilection to sting promotionalism with recriminating words, I sat down during my lunch break and encapsulated the year with a four stanza haiku. Here goes...

Tutoring I do,
Fractions or teenaged focus:
Which one is easy?

Sure, it can be hard
Turning iron into gold
But try a middle school.

Freud would have his day,
Hormones fueled with ketchup
But only for lunch.

But after school comes
Walkie-talkies, chains, and tears;
I'm in the zone--kerplop?

Tying the Knot, Ninja-style

2007-03-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

Hey friends. In case you're not a savvy Facebook sleuth and thus have discovered the (secret?) news, Kyrsten and I are now engaged to get married! Even better, we will be getting married this summer (August 11th) in Minneapolis, MN.

Yes, we know, you are probably asking, "This summer?! That's so soon! What about all the planning?" Etc. Etc.

That's why we plan on getting our marital counseling through middle school students. Why make such a taxing, exposing commitment to take a compatibility test and discuss results with a pastor? It's so much easier to pick the brain of someone who thinks flirting is punching a girl in the arm. See, to a middle school student, they're dumbfounded that anyone would want to wait more than one week to get married. "You didn't get married this weekend? Why?"

Good question. I tend to take their side, but then there's the whole spending the first year of marriage in a house with 21 guys, not to mention becoming the object of wrath for a vengeful mother who would have not attended her only son's wedding. I would have better chances surviving playing Chicken with a freight train.

In all seriousness, though, we had our first day of counseling today, and it was definitely a learning experience that spurred good converstion and future points for discussion. Plus, the pastor said that all guys are like ninjas, which confirms Kyrsten's thoughts that, yes, I really am a master of the shadows. My first thought in response to this comment was that I likened myself more to a pirate than a ninja, esp. when juxtaposing bathing habits, degree of couthness, experience in academic swashbuckling, etc. But I digress, leaving you to forever reconcile this eternal debuckle.

http://www.ninjapirate.com/battle.html

If you wish to hear more about the how/when of the proposal, please visit our wedding website. We're taking weddings into the 21st century, man. Kind of like those automated checkouts at the grocery store that require zero human-to-human interaction, but with more love and good-will. Seriously, if you use those things and don't feel like you've just been fondled by the gods of consumer efficiency, you don't have a soul.

Okay, enough of my endless corybantic. Enjoy the website, and thanks soooo much for everyone's encouraging messages. We are grateful that we can celebrate this occassion with you.

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/KyrstenLillehei&StevePratt

White Stuff

2007-02-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

I've lived in parts of the country where school, church services, even banks were closed to inclement weather, be it snow or ice or stupidly cold temperatures.

Now, I live where they cancel church services over 24 hours in advance because they expect a blizzard. Like, really?!

I've never witnessed a blizzard, but, conceptually, it sounds quite violent. I picture a white deluge of exasperating proportions, just with lots of noise. Ear-splitting noise. Booms, crashes, whizzes, zooms...like Sylvester Stallone meets an old Batman & Robin episode sans Technicolor. I know it doesn't make sense because snow absorbs a majority of quiet, ambient noise, but nevermind that. Just you wait. I happen to know Old Man Winter himself...he is a 7th grade social studies teacher at Toki Middle School. He's Norwegian (and thus, I find himself overpoweringly attractive), wears flannel everyday, and has ridden his bike everyday to work for the past 34 years. Chuck Norris can divide by zero, but this guy controls the tilt of the Earth's axis.

We've been in good cahoots lately, and he has given me the down-low about how a blizzard can make a Bone Thugs concert in Compton look like a day care. I'm expecting a freakin' fireworks show...a really cold fireworks show.

In the meantime, I'll shovel the walk. Oooooohhh...new experience!

Angst in the Cafeteria

2007-02-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't know, I love middle school. And this story reinforces this love all the more.

During 6th grade lunch duty yesterday, I was returning trays to the kitchen for washing as it was the final minutes of the lunch hour. I was carrying around 30 lunch trays, but even though my mind was preoccupied with not slipping, falling, and pulling every muscle in my back, I was fortunate enough to witness one of the most comedic (and tragic) events of my life...enjoy...

As background information, the cafeteria is organized into two sections. The larger section is made up of round tables. The smaller section has five long, rectangular tables. Kids are allowed to sit wherever they choose, but, as in any middle school cafeteria, there are immutuable rules about who sits where. Whatever you do, don't violate these rules.

Lunch was coming to a close, so, following the normal routine, we ask the students seated at the round tables to move to the long tables because the cafeteria staff needs to wash the tables before the 7th graders arrive. Conveniently, the 6th grade class as a whole is quite the complient organism, benevolently inclinced to grant clemency towards staff direction. So, the kids got up and moved to the long tables...everything normal thus far. Yet, this is where the mixing of social circles begins, and occasionally the results are not as homogeneous as we'd like.

The protagonists:
Sade (pronounced SHAW-day) is a no-nonsense black girl whose first language is Bluntness, followed closely by Snideness. She's prettly big too...I mean, she could take me in a fight.

Griffin is a scrawny, 4' 9" beanpole of whiteness that is complimented by a bushy head of brown hair and a rattail down to his waist. He enjoys reading, drawing mythological creatures, and Dungeons and Dragons.

(Hmmm...my literay criticism teacher in high school taught me about the art of foreshadowing.
Considering the players in this unfolding melodrama, I predict a collision as seamless as oil and water, or, more accurately, a flamethrower and styrofoam.)

The story:
Griffin and his friend Adam both get up from the round tables to move to the rectangular tables. Because of the lack of space, these two boys sit down straight across from Sade and her chicken teriyaki. As they sit down, Sade captiously glares at Adam with her big brown eyes and mutters, "What are you doin' sittin' here?"

Adam, is also who quite the walking lexicon for his age, articulately responds, "Ms. Beth asked us to move to the rectangular tables because we were sitting at the circular tables. This was the only table open, so we sat down here."

Sade then quips, "Yeah, well you're a nerd and no one likes you."

(Keep in mind, this dialouge has occured entirely between Adam and Sade. Griffin is merely a passive observer to this exchange of middle school corybantic.)

The monkeywrench:
Griffin has Ausperger's Syndrome, which is a mild variant to autism. This help explains his proclivity for reading and why he is, in my opinion, a child genius ahead of his time. But, another symptom of Ausperger's is a hypersensitivity to everything sensory. If anything ever doesn't seem right in this boy's world, he succumbs to fits of terrifying rage. Like, screaming-veins-popping-out-of-his-neck rage. It is not a pretty sight.

The story (resumed):
Griffin is deeply affected by Sade's snide comment towards Adam. He doesn't like it when his friends' self-esteem are supplanted in such an unjust manner.

Suddenly, without saying a word, Griffin stands up from the table, grabbing his 16 oz. bottle of chocolate milk, most of which still remains inside the bottle (see picture below).

Then, holding onto the bottom of this upopened bottle, he jerks the bottle in an ax-like motion directly at Sade in such a way that the contents are projected in a frothy stream of chocolately malice square into Sade's right eye.

The cafeteria goes silent. Nobody moves. Carrying my trays, I am completely flabbergasted and can only respond with, "Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa." My only thought was that this middle school exegesis of David and Goliath would quickly be re-interpreted with Goliath (e.g. Sade) pounding David (e.g. Griffin) so mercilessly that his remains could only be identified by said rattail.

I sprung to action, lead this open-mouthed, 6th grade giant in near-shock to the nearest female staff. Thankfully, the shock of 16 oz. of dairy being used as a projectile temporarily stunned the beast within, so Sade was stupified enough to be escorted to the bathroom where she could clean up her face and her beautiful Baby Phat jacket.

I then look for Griffin. Apparently, he ran underneath the table, crawled around, and then sprinted out of the cafeteria screaming. Feeling like a RA at a Pike Chapter Room Party, I called for backup. Griffin was located soon enough. Who knows what happened to him next.

As the only staff left to overseeing the remaining 6th graders in the cafeteria, all eyes were on me. I then told the kids to resume eating their lunch, not to worry, everything was fine, no big deal, etc. The silence remained, and it was deafening.

I quietly spoke to a few kids at the same table where the crime was committed, and they only gave me the same deer-in-headlights look that we all wore thirty seconds prior.

Commentary:
I know it sounds terrible, but, between actually witnessing this boy's act of avarice and then meddling through its subsequent fallout, I find the whole situation absolutely hilarious. Like, you cannot put words to describe the absurd joy that bubbled up inside of me for the rest of the day. I hope that, Lord willing, as an aging old man, my photographic memory will serve me well and project these images into my mind on lazy days to reinvigorate me with humor, joy, and awkwardness.

Second of all, the method in which Griffiin dispensed his milk was, by far, the most efficient and accurate way possible. Cupping his hand on the bottom, choosing not to throw the bottle but rather have inertia have its way with the milk, employing the single-handed axing motion repeatedly: there's no mistake in what he did. The whole thing just screams pre-meditation.

Oh, I almost forgot. Sade's friend, who was sitting next to her as yet another passive observer, received a good percentage of the punishment as well. She was wearing a white sweatsuit. Now, it's a Dalmation sweatsuit. Oops.

The moral of this story? If I was the social worker and had to handle Griffin's intervention, I would extol the merits of paying to sit at the 'popular' lunch table. Therefore, he wouldn't have to worry about possibly mixing with a confrontational crowd. Just mimic the example of my lifelong friend Corey Fleeman during his freshman year of high school: ask the cool kids to save you a seat at the cool table in exchange for bribing them with a few slices of your pizza. Hey, it worked for him...he racked up popularity points while I bore the brunt of fostering tenuous friendships. Who knows, maybe the rattail would make a comeback...

Hmmm, maybe I'm not cut out to be a social worker, or at least a good one...

Home Brewing?

2007-02-08T22:44:00.000-08:00

One of the sweetest joys in life is having an espresso machine in the comfort of your own home, where you can make a double Americano on those slow, lazy mornings.

Of course, unarguably, the best joy in life comes a mere hour after ingesting said Americano. A result of the precariously balanced excretory system, the urine that exits your body an hour later carries the sama pungent aroma of the original dark-roasted brew. To even come close to mimicking this effect using other substances would require one to eat three 12 oz. servings of asparagus, no easy task for the most veteran vegetarian. Or, if you're a visual person, eating the same amount of beats (pickled or otherwise) over a period of three meals may produce a pinkish hue to the urine.

So, all meals aside, espresso is, verily, your best brew for a pee that smells askew.

That's so stupid...

2006-12-17T20:06:00.000-08:00

I had an enlightening conversation with Kyrsten about a week ago. We were discussing a phenomenon which I genuinely believe is the studipest concept known to humankind: icefishing.

For those born sub-Mason-Dixon Line, the activity goes like this: you got a lake made of water, it gets cold outside, it stays cold for a long time, there's some snow, it stays cold, I question why I ever decided to become an avid biker, and then *BAM* the lakes freeze over. Okay, no big deal. It happens in nature all the time.

But the crux of the whole matter is akin to the discoverer of cow's milk: who was the genius that initiated the first moonwalk over a deep, cold body of water that is covered with a sheet (a sheet, mind you, not an impenetrable ballast) of ice? Better yet, who was the guy that started hammering the mere sheet with a piece of metal? 'Yes, I'll start drilling a hole in the very siftless ground that I am standing on, and then I'll sit out on the ice for hours on in hoping that the snaps, hisses, and gurgles below me are not the impending sounds of a cold, icy death about to immerse me.'

While pondering on these points, I observed my first frozen lake when I was driving back from an AmeriCorps meeting last Friday. Simultaneously, this sunny drive became a harrowing tale of horror when I saw people meandering around on top of the lake, banging big hooks and drills into the ground, having a good ol' time. Did I mention that it was sunny, about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the ice was clear enough that one could see the water clearly underneath it?

This leads me to the following conclusion(s):

1. Ice fishers have an extreme amount of faith in the concept of buoyancy

OR

2. Ice fishers are part of an anathematic secret society of suiciders, the lost leg of the Heaven's Gate doomsday cult, the faithful remnant who believe dying the agonizing death of falling through ice is the rite of passage for a first-class seat ticket onto a magical spaceship in the sky.

Before you judge, let me ask you some questions. Have you ever spoken to an ice fisher? Do they have that menacing twinkle in their eye? Have you heard them shower praise on the peaceful, serene nature of ice-fishing, only then to quickly invite you up to their northern Minnesotan cabin for a weekend 'out on the lake,' all with an exceptional and rather uneasy coerciveness that makes puffy-haired televangelists cry with jealousy? No, they don't want your money...they want your soul. On ice. That way, it'll be preserved for generations to come, and they won't have to pay for refrigeration on their fancy spaceships. Gas prices are pretty high these days...

So guird up your loins, my fellow outdoorsmen! The ice-fishers are out to reap their harvest, one frozen lake at a time.

Neil Diamond caught me with my pants down...

2006-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to poop, I'm encouraged by my Jewish friend, Neil Diamond. Perhaps encouraged isn't the more accurate term...maybe, intimidated, emotionally supplanted, or as I stare longer into his eyes, seducted into purchasing his 1992 Christmas album that aurally haunts my childhood memories?

This is the unedited view of the bathroom wall directly across from the 1st floor toilet.

Even if I try to get up and poop in an alternate flush-hole in the bathroom, those eyes follow me. Creepy...

In other news, I lost a game of HORSE to one of Toki's 8th grade basketball stars. (Why do I continuously set myself up for these awkward situations?) The entire shootout was one-sided...basically, he shoots, I miss. The final score? H-O-R-S-E to nothing. Even when I flamed my patented baseline 3-pointer, he matched with ease. As a result, I owed him fifty push-ups, ten for each letter.

Today was the day I repaid him. Fifty push-ups surrounded by our entire after-school club, counting them all out. Nonetheless, I felt pretty freakin' swoll. Until I played a game of dodgeball and got knocked in the nuts by a 6th grader who doesn't know his times tables.

Huh.

Foo, get steppin!

2006-12-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

Part of my work with AmeriCorps is that I tutor seven boys twice a week, each session being an hour long. One of my most...energetic...tutorees is a seventh grade boy named Darren. A frequent flyer of the referral system, Darren navigates upwards through the Madison Metropolitan School District without knowing how to read or computate basic mathematical functions. See, the District views it 'socially unacceptable' to 'degrade a child's self-worth' when you hold them back a grade: their friends would be promoted to the next grade, they would have self-esteem issues, they would lose all sense of empowerment, and a bunch of other silly reasons. Thus, Madison does not hold back kids from being promoted to the next grade, even if a student fails every single class. The kids know this. Teachers know this. And similar to districts across the US, if you attend a 5-week summer school program, you've served your time and the slate is wiped clean.

Anyway, back to Darren. He's been handed off from one set of teachers to the next each year in a sort of insouciant wave of the hand, each teacher expecting the next to 'deal with him' for a whole year. But really, he's just like any other kid that just wants some attention and someone he can trust. So, why not choose this kid to work with twice a week?

Our tutoring sessions generally involve me coaxing him to get to work for the first fifteen minutes. Then, once he is sitting down with an assignment, which is to copy a set of notes or a connect-the-dots coloring activity, I can talk to him about what's going on in his life. His newfound fascination is calling me a 'faggot' any chance he can get. And calling my girlfriend ugly. About 80% of our conversation gears towards those two topics despite my efforts to move the conversation onto...anything else, really. So, you can see I was a little worried when his social studies teacher said he didn't have any work to do one day, but I should still take him out in the hall to tutor him.

That's when a miracle happened.

'I want to make a rap.'

Like, he wanted to do something that involved reading and writing. Or even yet, a pencil and a piece of paper, neither of which (I hope) would be used for a dangerous projectile.

Granted, I would have to do all the dictation and recitation and rapping, but I was totally pumped about ressurrecting my hip-hop roots from 9th grade. Without further adieu...let's get crunk...

It was a clear bright day
When I was goin' to the club
But something didn't seem right
So I hit your mama in the jaw.
I'm runnin' down the street--scratchin' my booty
While drinking some iced coffee.

The coffee didn't taste good
So I poured one out for my homies
And started runnin' faster.
I tripped and got an "ow-ee"
And so I went to the ER
But they boxed me on the head and said,
'Foo! Get steppin!'

I saw my homeboy beat-boxin' down by my crib
I said, 'Foo, get steppin!'
I kept walkin' down the street
And my girlfriend saw me in my boxers
She said, 'Whaddup homeboy. You stupid or something?'
So I went to her house to take a bathb
But I farted in the tub and it smelled bad.
So she slapped me in my head and told me,
'Foo! Get steppin!'

BRIDGE:
I started runnin' 'round town,
Still scratchin' my booty (b-booty b-b-booty)
I stopped at the post office and they offered me a job.
I got a free car to drive around.
Now I drive around town and I scratch my booty.

END HOOK:
When I got out to give an old person their mail,
A pit-bull dog bit me in my booty.
So I smacked the dog with some mail and told him,
'Foo! Get steppin!'

(small music interlude...meaning, I throw in a lot of ere-ere, scratching sounds, beep-bops, etc.)

I went inside and turned on the TV
I watched 'All About Darren.'
That's the end of the hop-hip-Darren

(end)

Darren and I got to perform this hit single in front of my boss. This means that I was forced to stand up, rap, and put some sort of iambic pentameter to this hot mess while he sat in a chair and attempted to make a 'raw' beat with his fists and the aforementioned pencil. Basically, he just sat there, dumbfounded that I was doing this, and tapping his pencil every now and then to no sort of beat pattern whatsoever.

When we were done, we received a rousing round of applause, Darren smiled (miracle #2), told me that I sucked, that my girlfriend was ugly. But he didn't call me a faggot, so I vouched it a small victory for the day.

Oh, and then he threw the pencil at a kid named Deandre in the hall. Sweet.

Hot Stuff

2006-11-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

I may not particularly enjoy the dehabilitating power of an affronting, Canadian cold front, but I'm lesser fond of the rising temperature of the Earth's surface.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061103/ap_on_sc/un_greenhouse_gases

But don't worry, it's all a fabricated myth that cannot be linked to human activity...just like cigarettes and cancer. Your parents told you not to smoke because smoking can cause cancer...but is your mommy or daddy a pulmonary specialist?

Hmph. I didn't think so.

I hate life...

2006-10-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

People actually buy and wear these shirts.

It makes me want to buy a fleet of SUVs, fill them with little pieces of styrofoam that are individually wrapped in plastic packaging, and then leave them all running with the A/C at full-blast in a Texan landfill until they are all out of gas. Then, I'd fill the rest of the landfill with thousands of unopened hairspray cans, positioned so that a large flamethrower could suddenly ignite this vat of flammable liquid into a violent chorus of CFCs, CO, and other free-radicalization agents. The number of metric tons of noxious chemicals released into the atmosphere would be enough to make a Republican legislature gasp for breath. Only after all this would I sit down and ponder why an overwhelming majority of the world's scientists are part of an evil, Satanic conspiracy (whose cult followers like to call the Kyoto Protocol) whose single aim is to save the cute, furry caribous at the expense of my precious American freedom to drive my Hummer no less than 100 miles each way to work.

Those intolerant, freedom-hatin' jerks...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2023835.stm

Worth a Thousand Words

2006-10-29T12:30:00.000-08:00

Below is the result from a sunny afternoon's quest to find the iconic representation of all things in Madisonian. Eccentric, uber-progressive, Midwestern: it's all there. Enjoy.

The Great Gig in the Sky

2006-10-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

For you rock fans out there, please forgive me for what I am about to say.

I have never listened to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Until tonight.

And let me tell you something...

There's nothing like listening to the album, start-t0-finish, while eating a Romaine lettuce salad and vegan meat patties. Holy schmokes, it was trippy.

So, if you've never heard it...go do it...NOW. But you have to listen from the beginning to the end, preferably while ingesting a dense load of foliage. This album is a groud-breaking, apex work akin to the Beatles' Abbey Road...maybe even Sgt. Pepper, not definitely, but maybe. Yes, I just went there, but trust me, it's that good.

So go tickle your rear cerebral cortex and get those neurons scintillating with delight. It's the British way.

Nuke the Whales!

2006-10-22T11:29:00.000-07:00

Madison is cold. Stupidly cold. It snowed for the first time on October 11th. But I didn't know it was snow. I thought it was burning white sulfur raining from the sky, an anathema of the Almighty for all the heinous crimes commited by humanity.

Most people insulate themselves from this curious beast known as 'winter' by turning on the heat in their houses. Not college students. We're all about saving some money, even if it means a diet of Ramen, tap water, and unbaked cake mix (eggs are expensive, you know). So, one of my twenty housemates sent out an email proposing that we acclimate our bodies to the weather as soon as possible so as to avoid turning on the expensive heat. His proposal? Open up all the windows, put fans in the windows, and wear t-shirts for the next month. Sure, he says, it may be miserable, but think of how great it will feel to wear a sweatshirt and have a windbreaker to the northwestern cold fronts! As a safety precaution, we would have to wrap our computers in blankets so as to prevent the machinery from freezing and breaking. But, he boldly proclaims, it would be a small sacrifice in the long run for saving energy costs and, in turn, saving the Earth.

Below is my reply-all email response. Enjoy?

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

Gents,

In the name of adjusting our bodies to Old Man Winter's executive decision to resign significant molecular motion from the tundra known as the Midwest, I also propose an idea. Let us continue this idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and press fast forward on the evolution clock--because really, who has time to be patient and wait around for our species to be naturally selected for the genes of Superman? My idea: let us contemporaneously strengthen our immune systems by increasing our exposure to germs.

It may sound absurd, but hear me out.

We spend 33% of our life sleeping, like 20% of our life eating, and the other 47% using products that kill these cute, furry microscopic creatures. All those antimicrobial products like detergents, surfactants, bleach...and why do we do it? Really, why? Because we're biological bigots, really. Confess it right now...you and your captious ideology view your species as superior in a rapid form of specism that foams at the mouth with every kind of sanitation product in your imagination. This dangerous, close-minded view is a slippery slope. You wash your hands today, even wipe off the counter tomorrow, and by next week you'll be selling crack to middle schoolers while wondering how the child slave market can be better endorsed on eBay.

Where is the answer, you ask? How can you rid yourself of these horrid crimes that stain your hands crimson with the blood-ridden cries of the microscopic world?

The answer is in the question: through NOT washing your hands. Yes, I am proposing a revolution of sorts...or, more aptly, more of a de-evolution. As a house, let us continue in this recent trend of not washing our dishes after we use them; of leaving counters covered with crumbs; of never wiping the microwave after we use it...let us continue in these things and then ADD to these righteous deeds. Stop showering for weeks at a time. Don't wash your hands after defecating. Eat food dropped on the kitchen floor. Even poop in a trash can and leave it outside Mark's door. All these things will increase your exposure to germs and strengthen the very things that our general lack of genetic plasticity has graciously awarded us: memory B cells. Sure, we may get infections, heath department eviction notices, even fewer dates with the ladies at the beginning, but rest assured our bodies will be stronger and...the best part...we will save money but not having to purchase (useless) commodities such as dish soap, jet dry, and toilet paper. And don't even try to argue with this infallible, spiritual rhetoric, O ye of little faith!

Open your windows, nuke the whales, and stop washing your hands!

Slatternly yours,
Steve-o the Unshowered

*note: this is satire. so please don't be offended or poop in front of my door.

A Whole Bag of Tools

2006-10-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Everybody has weird dreams. Some involve rollarblading grade-school teachers, others involve two-story cornstalk women that give birth to pixelated computer game characters. Whatever your subconscious stews up, it's bound to be tasty.

I had a dream the other day that I had the powers of Spiderman: webslinging, flexibility, wall-climbing agility, and the abdominal strength of a Russian Olympic gymnast. Don't be mistaken, though, I was not Spiderman...only possessive of his powers, sans the Tobey Maguire charm. Because I had these supercool powers, I was invited to a superhero reunion on top of the Sears Tower. Superman was the obvious star of the show...the ability to fly, his summer box office smash, and his over-the-top American charisma that bleeds red, white, and freedom. Don't forget that annoying combover, too. But, as you can already tell, I was not a fan of Superman. Call it jealously, call it what you will, but I thought Superman was such a tool (perhaps a whole bag of tools?) because he didn't have the agility of a bipedal anthropomorphic spider. Booya.

In a move of zealous showmanism, I then leaped off Sears Tower to dazzle the superhuman crowd with my superhuman webslinging antics. This part of the dream gets kind of fuzzy, because suddenly I found myself organo-bionically sweeping around the Empire State Building. It must have been the Grape Nuts I had right before bed...

After I returned to the Sears Tower rooftop, I somehow wound up on 33rd Street Beach. This is where I ran into this dude who was creepily, relentlessly working his mojo on my girlfriend. He kept following her around and giving her those 'strong, silent type' puppy-dog eyes that junior high boys who are too shy to talk to girls often employ because it's their only tactic for hopelessly succeeding in the estranged boy-girl dynamics of adolescence. Yes, that was a long sentence, and yes, I knew exactly what he was doing. Why? Because I have freakin' Spidey-sense, that's why!

So here's this biggish, fireman-type guy who's trying to mack on Kyrsten. Now, as much as I try to be a passive person, the Sermon on the Mount was not a priority at this moment in space and time, and thus, I beraggled his head with some swift hammer punches. As I was delivering the beating of a lifetime, I felt a twinge of guilt because I suddenly realized that these weren't ordinary hammer punches...these were Spiderman hammer punches, which must have been 100 x the power of your ordinary, store-brand, nonfat, low-carb hammer punches. Geez, this guy was really gettin' it reak good...but hey, next time try stalking someone else instead of Spiderman's girlfriend.

Booya.

Forgiveness

2006-10-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

Since Labor Day, there have been 7 school shootings nationwide. That's right, seven. And to be honest, the shock value is starting to wear off. I declare, 'How tragic!' ... and then I worry about what song is going to show up next on my iPod playlist, and whether or not the double espresso I just ordered has enough crema on top. I'm a true walking humanitarian, I tell you.

But admist all of the buzzing media coverage surrounding the funeral processions in the Amish community of Georgetown, PA, I caught a small, perhaps unintentional, blurb near the end of an AP article that covered the event. The link is below...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/04/national/main2059816.shtml

...but to summarize briefly, on the same night of the shooting, an Amish neighbor approached the residence of the killer's family and offered forgiveness to the family.

Like, the same night.

The same night that your husband (or father) fanatically acted on his disillusionment to shoot Amish girls execution style in a one-room schoolhouse.

Either these are people of severe emotional anaesthesia, or they're acting on something greater than their minds, hearts, and souls can bear. The quote to summarize it best is one that got me thinking, one of those existential moments that doesn't go away easily...

"The hurt is very great. But they don't balance the hurt with hate."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*As a side note, though, I'm not trying to be one of those Christians who is spending every facet of energy to capitalize (quite unjustly) on either a cultural phenomenon (a la DaVinci Code) or a moment of harrowing and ubiquitous sadness. We hear them all the time... 'See?! See?! I told you so! That's the power of Jeeez-sus!' or, for another example, the people at the end of the Narnia movie who ran up to the front of the movie theater and started loudly preaching about how Aslan was Jesus, you should love Jesus, etc. Let the narrative speak for itself. Lewis, Tolkien, Dostoevsky...they all believed in the power of narrative to convey something both intrinsically, holistically, and purely human and yet something beyond, some other indescribable kernel that leads only to one thing: wonder. That is what I'm hoping this story will convey. Maybe it will, I can only hope...

A Taste of the Pie

2006-10-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

Returning to middle school is as natural as swallowing your own tongue. Everything is your psyche wants to push out those three horrid years of awkwardness, a time when your brain simmered (or boiled) in a vat of hormones as you fantasized about your seventh-grade algebra teacher as you huddled with friends at lunchtime to discuss the inferior graphics of Warcraft II, all the while dodging the cute cheerleaders in the hallway because your dad's deoderant isn't powerful enough to anti-persperize the morning's football practice into your humble and yet still embrassingly hairless armpits. Need I say more?

But the awkwardness isn't gone, at least for me anyway. Like a regurgitated Tylenol, the bitter taste is still quite palpable. But rather than this awkwardness emerging as an avatar to prophesy my doom within middle school social hierarchy, it more or less gives me the shudders every now or then. In Freudian language, this cathexis of energy 'tranfers' unto something else, rearing its head every now and then as a cruel reminder that the beast still roams the hallways, prowling upon every haphazard child and, occasionally, wafting its noxious breath my direction.

So there's that. Now to two interesting stories from the previous Friday...

1) As always, I was on lunch duty in the cafeteria. There were two kids who were goofing around in the lunchline and trying to stomp on one another's feet. In a brave attempt, one of the students miscalculated his stomp and instead drove his heel into what I call the Custodian Zamboni. Basically, it's a zamboni-esque mode of vehicular motion that sweeps dirt and mops the floor. Well, our said stomp knocked a hose loose, and 20 gallons of mud water was released into the cafeteria to the jeers and screams of the entire seventh grade. You would have thought that the mud water was made of boiling acid, baby seal pellets, and the blood of Malaysian prostitutes. After calming down the students, I reassured them that there was nothing to fuss about, but I project that--from the student's perspective--I had the clarity of mollifying a legion of Barbarians using one of the dead languages. Oh well.

2) During the same lunch hour, there were four male students who were 'nominated' to eat lunch with the principal in his office as a consequence for their 'good behavior.' During this detention, the principal had to leave in order to see to this pesky mud water situation, locking the four students in his office. When he returned, he found the four male students looking innocently at him against a backdrop of gang graffiti covering his back wall. All gangs were fairly represented (i.e. CMB, KoG), interposed with misspelled slang terms for female dogs. Really, how many vowels can you put into that word without looking totally ridiculous?

Remember, friends, it's only awkward if you make it awkward.

A Reply to Facebook

2006-09-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Zuckerburg--the CEO and founder of Facebook--recently announced that he will be taking his collegiate networking site to the next level. In the spirit of MySpace, Facebook will soon be open to anyone and everyone on the Internet. .

Of course, people raised a stink about this. Questions about quality of service, privacy, even safety are all judicious, legitimate concerns.

Moving in for the suave PR move, Zuckerburg asked his online users for feedback. Seeing an opportunity to use my lunch break as a chance to make another lost point into cyberspace, I mounted my soupbox and delivered a response. You might disagree or think I ramble on insiduously, but take a gander...

***

This might sound absurd, perhaps borderline sketch or even intolerant, but in opening up facebook, you are no longer making an 'academic-only' web server. Now, there is no exclusivity, and any person on the Internet can join. You well know that all kinds of people pose like they are from different places, etc. and soon you can have child sex offenders as well as Dateline specials that broadcast stings that catch said sex offenders. In short, by opening up the floodgates to the masses, you are creating the very same wake produced by websites such as MySpace...resulting in wronchy people looking for wronchy activities, and now they can even specifically target high school students in their area! How convenient! Perhaps global capitalist policy isn't the panacea for our age, economically, socially, spiritually, or otherwise. So, rather than adhering to the maxim that 'bigger is better' or 'increasing the flow of (what you call) information' is the primary goal to your website, which all aims at 'connecting people,' maybe Facebook should genuinely admit that the reason this catalytic corporation wants to get bigger is, bottom line, popularity. I can't imagine the rush of being the genius behind this entire cultural movement...you can single-handedly say that you influence the majority of cafeteria table conversations, weekend parties, even how people view one another...no longer as people with 'information,' but in Marixt terms, as commodities. THAT's where I draw the line, and by opening this up to the world for 'exchanging' information, in my opinion, you're playing the tune of captialism, which fundamentally (and oh so eloquently) plays to the tune of the very desires which make us human. Essentially, your aim now is growth, to create and advertise and market a program that hits a chord with one's basic human desires and biopsychology (as atuned by culture, language, etc.) and--BAM--you have the capitalist wet dream.

Sounds crude, by I've thought this out a bit using a psychoanalytic lens (and, sadly, even presented a paper on it for a university philosophy conference). These are my thoughts, now transmitted into your message database, soon-to-be shifted into a recycling bin, and then blown apart to 1's and 0's as they are deleted from your mainframe, forver lost in cyberspace to be lost amongst the corporate malaise of human resources, bureaucracy, and the gears of 'just doing business.' Best wishes with your endeavor in thinking this all out...just, please please please, know that decisions made in your boardrooms are having immeasurable cultural effect on college campuses, high schools, and (soon to be, I predict) the rest of the world.

I'm out...

Natural Selection Results

2006-09-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

Homo sapien embracing mechanical technology: one.

Genus Rodentia with a soft-spot for peanut butter: zero.

I came up with the best name for a rock band the other day...

2006-09-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

...are you ready for this? Like, if you start a band and name it this, I'll sue you for every penny that you're worth, because it's just that awesome of a name.

Okay, here goes:

Spinach Lasagne

Can you taste the versatility of such a word? And as the band starts out playing small local shows, you could bring large homemade platters of spinach lasagne, and everybody would love you. Your band would appeal to the crazy, left-wing vegan crowd too. Well, maybe not...I think there are three kinds of cheeses in the lasagna. So you would have to fight off the vegan protestors, but the vegetarians would welcome you with arms wide open. Perhaps your bandmates could dress up like different vegetables, encouraging their aficinados to eat diets high in fiber.

Indie/glam rock + colon health + best smelling mosh-pit ever = instant success.

More coffee...but no Nazis this time.

2006-09-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

One of my fellow AmeriCorps members recently concluded her two-year, nearly full-time career at Starbucks on Saturday. In our conversations about coffee, I learned one very shocking thing.

(No, I already knew about Starbucks' wonderful employee ethos of medical insurance, 401(k) plan, and stock options.)

Rather, it's that she has NEVER pulled an espresso shot while working for Starbucks. She hasn't the slightest idea how one would do it, either.

How the heck does that happen? Next time you go to Starbucks--which is the next time you decide to get randomly parachuted in the middle of nowhere and then walk about 30 paces in any direction--check out how the make your espresso. 'Coming right up!' and then they walk over to a machine and press a button. Espresso!

But where is the tamping? Ground-size control? The swift wrist-and-click of the barrista? Well, that must be too inefficient. And you take the chance of having any number of factors being complicated or misperformed, leading to a faulty product. So in the name of product-control, Starbucks has eliminated all room for error...and also any ounce of skilled labor development. ''Would you like some McDonaldization with your latte?' Freedom ain't free...

I guess the next step is to take out the whole barrista, too. I mean, you never know if the barristas you hire will have enough of that 'coffeehouse' look to them. You know, the dark-rimmed glasses, the scraggly facial hair, numerous piercings, other-worldly tattoos, earthy body aroma, Chacos, etc. You never know...you could just have a disgruntled surburbian teenager who listens to pop radio all the time, and that kind of image just won't do! I recommend personable cyborgs that come equipped with hair-regenerating folicle cells and random knowledge of unheard-of indie music.

Shame of the Nation?

2006-09-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

AP did a recent story on the correlation between earning a high school diploma and financial success. No surprise, really: if you have a diploma, you're more likely to earn more money. But here is the other kicker...

"The high school and college graduation rates of recent U.S. students are now below the international average. For example, among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. ranks 11th among nations in the share of its population that has finished high school. It used to be first."

Contrast this find the fact that the US spends an average of $12,023 per student, from elementary school through college. That's higher than in all countries in the comparison except for Switzerland.

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

The coup de grace? How come school taxes are their highest nationwide, but kids are not graduating? Or how teachers everywhere complain about not getting paid enough, but yet their favorite part of the job is June and July off?

Perhaps we are learning in our capitalist society that, sad to say, Puff Daddy's philosophical insights were right: "Mo' money, mo' problems." Finances--or at least the way the funds are being currently allocated--are not our nation's salvation. More money just attracts money hungrier teachers, which are exactly the kind of people you don't want teaching a future generation. Keep salaries the same! Weed out those who see teaching as a 'fall-back' job! Rather, get those Dead Poet Society types in the classroom...essentially, those who genuinely care about the kids as human beings. Sure, good desire does not automatically begat good design, but if that humble foundation isn't there, students can expect more bland worksheets, apathy, and mono-vision teachers who want their summers off and a pat on the back everytime they turn around.

Maybe Jonathon Kozol is on to something...

The Post-College Meal

2006-09-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

You would think that literally graduating from an all-inclusive meal package that featured a bottomless salad buffet, whole-grains, and fresh bean soups would be the final blow to a vegetarian lifestyle. With the healthy diet equating the more expensive one, you would think that a paradigm shift in vegetarian eating would be the next natural progression.

In other words, rather than black-bean soup, a chick pea/black bean medley, and baby carrots for dinner, the 'new' self-sufficient vegetarian--being of the strong-willed sort to not give up inadvertently--would begin the supper meal with Ramen, leftover cheese sticks from the weekend, and then finished with peanut butter until your stomach stopped cramping with hunger. About 6000 calories later. Still vegetarian? Theoretically, yes. But then again, communism works...in theory.

Have no fear, my readers. This author has not been championed by culinary adversity. Behold, I present to you one (of many) delicious, nutricious, and (perhaps most importantly) fibrous meals yours truly has created in the post-college moratorium.

Spinach, carrots, zuccini, celery, cucumber, squash, crumbled cheese curds: all fresh, all purchased from local farmers, and all relatively cheap! What is more, the meals are helping me remain regular, an important goal for anyone's diet.

But of course, with regularity comes the 'signs and times' of regularity, most notably the fecund scents of bacterial digestion. I forewarned all my housemates about my 'lude behavior,' but most already had caught wind. Metaphorically, that is. Oops.

Shirtless Bible salesmen?

2006-08-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

What could be more flamboyant than a pair of blond-haired, blue-eyed, shirtless painters riding a tandem together on a sunny afternoon?

Elton John? From his mid-90s stardom? Maybe?

Oh stop.

Nazis and Coffee

2006-08-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Before I forget, last Saturday was completely nuts. The National Socialists had an outdoor rally as a demonstration against lax immigration laws. That's right folks: Swastika-loving Nazis called the Madison Capitol Square their pulpit for two whole hours.

Being that this is the second most liberal cit in the US, I can't fail to mention that the city defended their right to gather, calling it 'free speech.' Right, I can't scream 'FIRE' in a movie theater but I sure as hell can scream 'WHITE POWER' through a 400-watt PA system. And because the city allowed them to gather, they required that all the farmers pack up two hours early from the market, leaving them with two hours less of potential profit. Hey friends, it's all in the name of 'free speech.'

The best part in this monstrosity was witnessing the counter-protest. As a vendor at the farmer's market, we weren't required to leave because we were not directly on the square. So what do we do? Sell lattes to the protestors, of course...and, well, hope that our wood trailer isn't overrun in a potential riot. But back to the counter-protest--it was somewhat organized. The protestors arrived, deeming signs of anti-Nazism, chanting 'Bullshit!' and sporting the trendy middle-finger. Yes, because that will make the Nazis question their personal ethics: even more resistance and angry yelling. But here is the sweet kernel: a band of Anarchy Youth--you know, those who don the circumscribed A and wear lots of black and hate all forms of government?--starting parading around the square, banging drums and declaring their hatred for Nazis. Then the crowd began applauding the Anarchists! The irony was so cold that I poured a double Americano on myself.

Blood from a freakin' stone...

2006-08-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

So I donated blood today for the first time in four years...and for good reason. It's not that I particularly dislike needles. I mean, the whole syringe-in-a-Pepsi-can scare never affected me. It's just that I've had bad experience compounded with bad experience...and, sadly, today was no different.

On average, donating a pint of blood takes 6 - 8 minutes if you have 'good veins.' I'm young, healthy, of low blood pressure, and I eat vegetables like nobody's business: naturally, I figured I would fall into this category.

Well, my resident 'blood specialist' (who looked old enough to need a transfusion herself) deemed it appropriate to keep the needle in my arm for 22 agonizing minutes.

'Give me another few squeezes, okay?' Sure, right after I get over the fact that there is a metal straw rapidly drawing out life essence from my body. 'Oh, try turning your arm this way.' Those last two minutes were the worst. She held up the bag to my face...to my face, mind you!...sheepishly tapping the topmost mark on the bag, the cursed mark my blood needed to reach before she withdrew her panacea of pain.

'See, just give me a couple more squeezes.'

I squeezed. Twice.

Yep, the bag is still swinging in my face. If I wasn't so dizzy or temporarily disabled, I would have smacked her hard enough that her mama would have felt it.

The 'blood specialist' replies with chagrin and disappointment for my lack of performance. JUST TAKE IT OUT, I scream, but not with words. No, I scream with the eloquence of my body language: sighs, groans, loss of adequte blood flow to the face. At this point, the room begins to swirl a bit, and I see (possibly hallucinate) an old woman cutting a pizza with a scissors. is no longer funny. Then I deliver a stern kick against the chair.

Still, two minutes after all this, the needle is finally pulled out.

As an offering for my valiant undertaking of a voluntary torture experient, I got to eat some Wisconsin cheese curds.

To add irony to insult, the Red Cross called me to ask why I haven't been donating blood since August. I simply copy and pasted this blog and sent it to their CEO.

Huh, haven't heard back from them. I wonder why.