The Pros and the Cons

DNC Chairman Howard Dean: “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.” “The struggle between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is a struggle between good and evil–and we’re the good.” Republicans are “brain-dead,” “have never made an honest living their lives,” and “They all look the same. They all behave the same.”, and are exclusively “white Christians.”

I got the above quote from The Anchoress Online in the middle of a lively discourse about political rhetoric and apologies.

I just hope that Howard Dean can do for the democratic party what he did for his own campaign: bring it to a grinding halt by opening his big mouth and inserting his foot. I found it amusing that he had to reassure his audience that, in his good and evil scenario, that his party was the “good” one.

Here in Indiana, one can get specialized license plates for one’s vehicle. I’m not talking about clever wordings, such as "D8 B8" or "TRUSTNO1" or "I8 AGAIN". I’m talking about the plate itself.

Here in Indiana, one can opt to pay more for a license plate that expresses social concerns, like breast cancer awareness or public safety. The ones for Purdue and Indiana Universities feature their respective team mascots. Except for those, there doesn’t seem to be that much logic behind their choices for the pictures they put on the plates. The one to support the firefighters features the state bird, a cardinal. You might be disappointed to learn that the one for breast cancer awareness features a ribbon. If I had my say, it would at least feature a nice pair of ribbons. Who doesn’t like a nice pair?

The ones featuring state universities make more sense to me. I have, however, noticed something about them, and you can tell me if I’m mistaken. It seems all the ones I see featuring IU are bolted to Hondas; usually Accords. The ones for Purdue are a mixed bag, however, I do see them on a lot of German cars.

The one plate that amuses me the most is the one that says “Kids First”. I have no idea what that means. The plate features multi-colored lettering and two brightly colored hand-prints. That one I invariably see on the backs of vans driven by road-raged PTA moms. As I watch the “Kids First” vans tear diagonally through parking lots, I wonder if by “Kids First” they mean “Kids First” to fly through the windshield as Mom t-bones a Honda driven by an IU grad.

The joys of warehouse shopping

My wife and I are members at Costco.

If you’ve never been to Costco, let me paint a picture for you. It is 150,000 square feet of savings…economy sized.

Don’t let the size fool you. Costco only sells the best stuff. We once got leg of lamb there for $4.00 a pound. Right next to the Michelin tires and designer jeans. Or how about a 21 cubic foot Whirlpool refrigerator for $300 after rebate?

The other day I was there with my wife. They had our favorite brand of frozen pizza on sale, two for $8.00. I got so excited I did a little dance. The “Robot”. My “Robot” is uncanny, to say the most. Strangers might be amused by my “Robot”, but who cares? It’s not my fault if they don’t appreciate the joys of warehouse shopping like I do.

I don't go to church

I used to go to mass every week when I was still in middle school. Sometimes I had to practically drag my parents to take me. Every night, before I went to bed I would read my Bible and pray. I studied my bible and tried to live like God wanted me to.

When I was a teenager, I started going to a Methodist church with my friends. It was great. It was a United Methodist Church. I was in the choir and we went on retreats. I really liked the minister, too. I even shared some of my teenage secrets with him. I volunteered to cold-call people on the phone to invite them to attend.

Then, when I was a student at Purdue, I joined a different church. It was the Boston Church of Christ. At Purdue, they were known as “Campus Advance”. Real hands-on discipleship and such. I met the woman who would become my wife there.

They were one of those groups that believed that they had the one way to God and that everyone else was lost. I didn’t want to be lost, so I stayed with the group right up until the time the congregation I attended in Indianapolis split away from the international organization.

Since then, most of the folks I knew from back then aren’t interested in talking to me. They’re polite, but short. Except for my wife, of course. She’s polite, but of normal height. She’s the best thing going in my life and I thank God for her every day. We’ve been married for over 11 years and, if you ever met her or had a conversation with her, you’d be happy for me.

Now I’m at a point in my life where I want to be a part of a congregation where I can feel at home. I want to share my faith and attend Bible studies. I want to volunteer.

Maybe I could go back to the Methodists. I wonder if they’d have us…

My wife and I just moved into our first house in April. It is weird living in a house and having neighbors who are mostly neither transients nor deadbeats. Living mostly in apartments, those are the types one usually encounters.

Now, instead of neighbors who play their car stereos too loudly and hog the laundry machines, we have neighbors who walk their dogs in the evening and wave as they pass by. They have rummage sales (inviting strangers into their garages to look at their things) and offer to loan tools to their neighbors.

Here’s a story to tell you what kind of neighborhood my wife and I have moved into. We moved into our house in one day; taking three trips in the moving van. Between our second and third trips, one of our neighbors mowed our lawn. Is there a better way to say “welcome to the neighborhood” than by mowing one’s lawn?

And yet, in spite of all this, I still find myself avoiding eye contact with my new neighbors. I have caught myself turning my back as people walk past, pretending to be absorbed by a weed growing in my lawn. My Cheer is in my laundry room and my Joy is under the sink.

I just read this fantastic posting about forgiveness. You can find it here:
http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/sinsagainst.htm

When I was a kid, we would go down to Race Street to the railroad tracks, followed the tracks about a half mile to the south to a bridge, and cut through some trees, where we came to a place we used to call the "mouth." The mouth was a place of quiet, solitude, and entertainment for many of the "River Rats," as the children in our small town were known. It was not an uncommon sight to see a gang of energetic boys on dirt bikes, myself included, carrying fishing tackle, radios, and thermoses full of warm iced tea toward the railroad tracks on a warm summer morning. It was not a very long trail, unless we were in a hurry.

The trail following the train tracks was usually cool depending on the time of day. The trail was lined with trees and filled with the sound of birds complaining of our presence. It was bumpy and rocky and usually at least one of us would have to stop to retrieve something dropped. The trail passed an old cemetery hidden deep in the woods which had probably been forgotten since the time of the French and Indian War. Further down was an old garbage dump. There lay the remains of what once were a refrigerator and an old couch which looked as though it had been through a fire, a flood, and a Van Halen concert.

I do not know how the others felt, but I never liked riding next to the train tracks. I hated the loud noise and the immense machine that shook the ground and blew leaves and dirt into my eyes. Maybe I was scared that what had happened to the kid from Middletown might happen to me. I never quite forgot how I felt when I found out that one of my friends had been playing on the tracks and what had happened to him. The adults left out the really bad details.

As we left the train tracks, we were led through weeds which climbed up our legs and stuck to our clothes, leaving us to pick tiny itchy burrs out of our socks for the rest of the afternoon. Riding through them, we learned that the weeds were a hiding place for millions of different biting insects. Those large, flying, carnivores were always after us for a nibble. None of us could never remember to bring our insect repellent.

Once through the weeds the cool shade of the small wood comforted our tired and overheated bodies. To the left a small bubbling creek flowed lazily into the river from under the bridge into dangerous rapids. There was a clearing to the right where we would stash our bikes. The river swept through from the north, which was on our right, and flowed south to neighboring communities which all seemed identical to ours in size and personality...small and lazy.

If we continued toward the river, we would go over a steep, rocky hill and then the terrain leveled out. The mouth was to the left. There was a log near the water where we would sit for hours and talk, fish, and sometimes sing. It was not always fun to swim as it was to fish there because the river was muddy and the creek was very cold. Once we waded downstream with our poles toward the center of the river. We got completely soaked but failed to get as much as a nibble. Usually, we just sat on the log and told wild stories of the battles we had fought with the "dangerous" fish which inhabited the territory. My friend Tyler tried to convince me that he had once almost caught a catfish the size of his little brother, Logan. We knew he was pulling our legs, but that's just the kind of story telling we loved.

The mouth was always a place of refuge for us and will always be a fond memory. I cannot say I enjoyed every last minute I spent there, but it is a place I will never forget.

I decided to name my blog “The Pros and the Cons” because that’s mostly what my writing is…prose. I tried to write a novel once and it came out sounding like VCR instructions.

I have wild ideas all the time; I just lack the discipline to collate them logically. For example, who else thinks the “Joan of Arcadia” show should have been called “Oh God, It’s Joan”?

These are the types of things that I think about when my mind is really fatigued, like when I’m trying to comprehend modern pop culture. The problem is that most of my best ideas are completely impractical at best. That would explain why nobody has offered a service whereby one can get his cat euthanized and made into a robot. It’s an impractical idea, regardless of how original it may be.

These are the types of issues best left to the realm of fiction. However, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t pull it together. Does that make me a failed writer? So far, there’s no evidence that anyone has read anything I’ve ever written but me. Even my wife is afraid to look at my notebooks. On the other hand, at least I’m writing. And if my goal is simply to write, then, in the words of our beloved president, “mission accomplished”.

I have no idea if I have the brainpower to keep anyone’s attention long enough to actually read my rantings and my ravings. Yesterday my boss told me I’m smarter than a third of my coworkers combined. It sounds like a compliment, but he didn’t mean it that way.

This is my first posting, and it’s about distraction and attention.

I remember going on an errand with my dad once. I had no idea what we were doing when he asked me to go, but I like hanging out with my dad. We were going to see a man about a dog.

The dog was nothing special. It was a pointer or a setter or something like that. Who knows? It was hairy and it wet the carpet. That’s what I remember about that dog. My dad finally decided to get rid of it when it came into the house and wet on the Christmas tree.

The thing I remember most about this dog was when we went to go get it. When we went to the guy’s house, we got confused because he didn’t tell my dad that he lived in a garage. We went into the detached two-car garage and there he was, sitting on a couch with, presumably, his wife and child. They were watching “The Worst Witch” on cable. This guy had probably snaked a cable from the house of the guy who owned the garage and was watching it on a console TV. His family’s eyes were glued to it. They never looked up from Tim Curry singing some ridiculous song about Halloween the whole time my dad and I were there in their home.

This has happened to me on several occasions and it always makes me feel the same way, sick. I don’t mean indignant or offended, but ill. It makes me dread the future Ray Bradbury wrote about in his book “Fahrenheit 451” in which everyone watches television like they’re hypnotized and books are banned.

This is my cognitive dissonance: I like watching TV just as much as the next guy. Maybe not “just as much” since I won’t spring for cable. But does my watching TV interfere with my perceptions of my immediate surroundings and the world beyond?