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How empty are you?

2012-01-24T14:02:00.000-08:00

From Journey Inward, Outward, and Forward - the radical vision of the Church of the Savior by Jeff Bailey:

The breaking free of our "addiction to the culture" is something the Church of the Savior gives great attention to. Says Gordon: "Most of us are living, to some degree, as addicted persons, striving anxiously after power and money and prestige and relevance, trapped in the turbulence of wanting more. These addictions are so subtle for most of us that we have the illusion of being free people when in actuality we are immersed in society's expectations. We have given ourselves to God, but who decides what we do with our lives? Usually, we do. We are subtle control freaks, truly believing we are turning over to God but demanding a minimum of comforts, whether it be good health or a secure home or caring friends. We are addicted to having more and more comfort, which society says we deserve."

"We are addicted to things that money and power can buy. We spend more on entertainment and pet care and toiletries that on the needs of children barely existing in poverty; we strive after positions that seem important in our jobs and churches, whether or not God is calling us to them; we long to be noticed and honored, superficially if necessary. We forget that Jesus, 'though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.' Our culture promotes a constant filling up, but our disciplines will draw us toward greater emptiness, so that we can be better prepared for obedience and, ultimately, for finding our place in God's plan - finding true relevance."

Convicted.

I constantly have to remind myself that the name of this blog is ICON... as in, I con nobody but myself. It is easy to take a trip to Kenya and ride that wave of self-righteous feeling for a few years. I've DONE my part. I'm so far ahead of all those Wall Street capitalists! But the reason I feel the way I do about Kenya was precisely because I did empty myself (and my bank account ;) to make that journey. It was an act of faith. But, so what? Did I remain empty?

No, I filled myself up with lots of other non-Christian junk. This is my own doing really. My re-immersion into American culture was part and parcel with my Kenyan transformation. As one made me more aware of the plight of third world countries in a way that has to be experienced, the other was a reminder to myself that I live in the greatest country on Earth and, gosh darn it, it's good to be king. (Hmm... I just had a thought. I have a character in the novel I'm writing describe someone just like me (in a poor light, to be sure). Maybe I was channeling some of my internalization?)

I realize now that I've been coasting. I've been going back to the world when I had gone so far to remove myself from it. Its time to rededicate my life to God's purpose... again... for the zillionth time. I hope I haven't used up my 70 times 7 Forgiveness Plan yet.

The Nicholas Sparks Formula... in reverse...

2012-01-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows the Nicholas Sparks formula. For an author that has written such modern love stories as The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and Nights in Rodanthe, the formula is pervasive and yet never seems to limit the enjoyment of the story. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl fall in love. Tragedy befalls Boy (or Girl). Love endures.

Now normally I'm not one who thinks of formulas as being anything other than author-made shapings of the universe to serve a creative need. Nicholas Sparks writes to his formula because, quite frankly, it makes him gazillions of dollars. I wish I had thought of this formula years ago. However, in my case, I have quite a different formula in mind - one that actually happens... in real life... to me... every single time.

I call it my curse. It goes something like this. Boy meets girl (or is set up on a blind date... either way). Boy and girl agree to go out. Boy shows up and... tragedy befalls... always... on first date. It's actually comical in some ways.

So, after many years of avoiding this curse, I finally met someone that I thought it would be fun to hang out with. Now came the tricky part. I had to figure out a way to hang out together without bringing the curse. I very carefully phrased the invitation as a friendly affair - two chums kicking back for a nice lunch and a movie. Totally casual. Everything cool. Best buds. Nothing more, oh fates... nothing more.

Well, to make a long story short, Fate wasn't fooled. On Saturday, I drove over to pick up my "Not-A-Date!" for our little friendly adventure. She was waiting for me out in front of her apartment looking rather beautiful in a white sweater and pants. I pulled up in front and unlocked the door... and in her eagerness to get started on our not-date, she reached down and yanked open the door so fast that it smacked her right in the face.

I was horrified. Was she okay? She climbed into the car and sat down and checked herself out - a small gash on her face, a tiny amount of blood, and a lot of embarrasment, but other than that, she was fine. It was only then that I realized that the curse had struck again. No matter how much I was trying to pretend that this wasn't a full on date, no matter how much I was trying to keep hidden the fact that I liked her potentially as more than just a friend, Fate had seen right through my obfuscating shenanigans and walloped my date with the curse anyway.

Needless to say, I laughed. It was a mixture of relief that she was okay and a realization that fate was confirming that this was, in fact, a date. Besides which, if I was going to have the curse hit, the first ten seconds of a date are infinitely preferable to the last ten seconds.

We had a great lunch at a Japanese restaurant. Then we went to see "Hugo" at a local movie theater. Afterward, I drove her to the mall where she needed to get her sunglasses repaired and then I took her home. No other calamity befell our adventures for the day - in my book that almost counts as a perfect first date.

Now, next time, I will lock the car door, get out of my car, and come around and open the door for her. Of course, fate is tricky. Who knows what else might happen? Stay tuned...

Overcoming and Forgiving (Lord, its not easy being cool...)

2012-01-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

I used to drink the kool-aid. My Dad's first computer was a TRS-80 - the first home computer on the market. It wasn't a toy, but I played with it all the same. He taught me how to program. When I went to Jr. High, they had just been given a grant of brand new Apple II's. None of the teachers knew what the hell to do with a computer. Apple was aggressively trying to capture the education market. They placed the computer in the library where, you know, the nerds hung out. I taught many of the school's teachers how to program the Apple Computers. They were sleek, star treky cool. It was a love affair - a doomed love affair, as it turned out.

All through high school I was an Apple lover. I had my own personal Apple IIe that I loved to death. I would be up until all hours of the morning typing away all my great stories and an occasional homework assignment. When I graduated from high school, my Apple IIe went with me to college and then to the Navy. I plunked away on it and thought that our love would never end. When my printer finally crapped out while I was stationed in Hawaii, I bought a brand new one. It was like taking my cherry red Lambourghini and making it into a convertible. That was the best printer I've ever owned.

I got out of the Navy and went back to school. Five days after the warranty expired on my great and wondrous Apple printer, it died. BAM! Just like that. I tried to fix it. No luck. I tried to call Apple to see what I could do. They couldn't give me the time of day. I was in despair. I left for Idaho State with my computer and my busted printer and hoped that I could somehow get it working again. That didn't work. So I signed up for an Apple loan to get a new Apple computer and printer... and I was denied. Denied. My love affair was dashed and my sincere love for all things Apple turned into anger, frustration, and then hatred. I refused to use their products ever again.

Today, I read with obvious disgust the news that Apple wants to once again corner the educational market by putting text books on to Ipads. Duh! Naturally! The multi-billion dollar text book industry would be beholden to Apple. It was a real no-brainer for Apple.

But, suddenly, in the midst of all my distrust and long standing hatred for Apple, I had another realization - a glimpse back to that nerdy library loving student in Jr. High playing with his Apple computer during his lunch hour. In a rush of strange feeling and long lost nostalgia combined with a clear vision of students flipping through cool educational software and interactive books on their sleek star-treky type Ipads, I melted. I knew that despite the horrible customer service that I'd received from my favorite computer company years ago, this idea was a perfect one - a synthesis of modern technology and educational reform that is long overdue.

There are problems with Apple's proposal, but the gist of it is dead on. I, for one, think all students in America should be replacing their old text books with Ipad's.

And that's the way forgiveness begins.

Sacrificial Lamb

2012-01-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

Something occurred to me yesterday while I was thinking about my play and I wanted to run this past my very smart readers for comment.

Its perhaps not a coincidence that the Last Supper was at the time of a passover meal. Passover, after all, was to be comemmorated annually by the Jews as a remembrance of the fact that God directly intervened to free them from bondage and to begin their journey to the Promised Land. Jews were required to kill a young lamb without defect and spread his blood on the lintel of the door or be killed. God did this to honor the covenant he had made with Abraham.

Jesus, of course, takes the opportunity of the passover feast to create a new covenant with his disciples - a covenant of wine and bread, symbolizing blood and body. Jesus then offers himself up as the young lamb without defect to be sacrificed so that whosoever believes in him shall have everlasting life. This being the final culmination of the law and the prophets.

Anyway, I hope you can get the gist of what I'm saying here. I'm curious to read what you all think about this.

The Emotional Journey to The Last Supper

2012-01-16T10:26:00.000-08:00

I've been tasked with updating my The Last Supper play that we performed at my church last year. Considering that it was my first play and that I was sorting out a complex story in a short space, it wasn't performed so much as workshopped. I took a great many notes from my co-Directors and vowed that I would return a much pared down version of the play this year.

But in starting the re-writing of the play, I realized that it wasn't enough to just take the stuff I'd written before and shorten it. While I do need to shorten the play, I also need to still have a valid journey for the audience to follow whether they be Christians early on their walk or those who have walked around the block more than a few times. This means that I, once again, will need to reexamine this oft told tale and find a new "shorter" relevant story that I can tell while still constrained by the format issues and other restrictions placed upon me from the earlier version.

To wit: I need to introduce all 12 disciples and show the events leading up to and including the Last Supper (and this year I also wish to add the Garden of Gethsemane) and I need to do it in half the time.

But this post isn't about the literary journey I will now embark upon, but upon the (very abbreviated) spiritual journey I must take in order to tell this story once again.

While I love the Christmas story and the Christmas season, from a writers standpoint Holy Week is way more compelling for story telling purposes. Here you have a group of men that have been together for nearly three years coming into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover together little knowing that their week will end tragically before turning miraculous. But here's the thing - I don't get to explore that last part of the story. I only get to tell the story up until the point of the betrayal. And that's what makes the story so compelling. If Jesus had gone to Jerusalem and just been arrested for inciting a riot, I'm not sure this story would have been as interesting. But no... he was betrayed... and by one of his own men.

We've seen this theme before - many times - in movies and television. The hero is taken out by one of his own men. I always find it hard to fathom. I've been on the losing end of many a fight, but I've never been betrayed by a friend before. And I've never had a reason to betray a friend either. I can understand the motivation from an intellectual point of view, but let's be honest - betrayal is almost always emotionally motivated.

What could have been Judas's emotional motivation? Greed? Jealousy? Some sort of twisted misplaced love?

I know that the rest of the disciples were completely perplexed at the idea that anyone would betray Jesus. Their emotional journeys are a little harder to map because everyone has their own insecurities and internal questions that they need to answer. In a good story, thought, words, actions, and emotions all follow the same pattern - so that what a character does is part thought, part word, part action and part emotion. Or, in other words, what a person does is who that person is. Braveheart refuses to ask for mercy at the end because that is who he is. On a deep level we understand his thinking, his lack of words, his actions, and his emotions. To try and capture that sort of journey for the disciples in half the time... well, it's fun to try.

I think writing this play the first time through taught me the story in a way that I had never actually understood it. But this time, to perfect the play, I need to own it. I need to be not just the fly on the wall, but the thirteenth disciple (the one painting the group portrait ;) who explains the story in a way that makes it relevant to today without changing the story one bit.

Oh... and I have to deliver a final copy in like three weeks. It's time to put on some track shoes... this is going to be an intense, but short, journey...

Spontaneous Faith

2012-01-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

A man walks up to you on the street. He's clearly seen better days. He asks you if you've got money cause he's hungry. Do you... A) Give him the money, no questions asked. B) Take him somewhere to get a meal. C) Pat your pockets, mumble something about not having any money, and walk past him. D) Ignore him.

Now, let's be honest here... Sure, we'd all like to answer A or B to every single guy that walks up to you on the street, but I'm guessing that the vast majority of the time we actually answer C or D. Does this make us bad people?

Actually, that's not the question I want to answer, and its not the blog I want to write. You see, the short answer should be that we answer A every single time - without thought or question. Lord, when did we see you hungry and on the streets and refuse to buy you food? But that's a guilt trip that none of us want to consider. And yet, consider it we do. In that split second of time before we roll off one of four answers, our minds run through an entire gamut of questions. Who is this guy? Why is he hungry? Is he a drug dealer? Will he harm me? How much money do I have? Should I even take out my wallet? What's the right thing to do? Am I being a bad person? Will I be a good person if I give him money? Do I have time for this?

If you read my last blog post you may recognize this pattern of behavior. In my writer's mind this is what I call looking for the perfect answer to the situation. And yet, whether its a homeless guy on the street asking me for a sandwich or a potential girlfriend standing in front of me and I'm contemplating asking her out, the endless amount of questioning all point to the same set of insecurities.

The only thing human beings really want in life is to be loved unconditionally. Since we are all gravely disappointed in this desire, we form neurosies about love, connection, and trust. We know that humans being human means that there is nobody on this planet that will ever love us unconditionally. As a result, our minds put up barriers and tests and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam that prevent us from ever loving anyone else unconditionally as well.

BUT, that doesn't mean that unconditional love doesn't exist. God has unconditional love for us. So much love, in fact, that He sent His only begotten son, Jesus Christ to us and then allowed us to kill him.

Apparently, human beings can be counted on to kill those things that threaten us with the one thing we most desire. I've seen it play out again and again and again. The more someone loves and trusts someone else, the more they try to sabotage that relationship in some sort of misguided attempt at proving that their love is unconditional.

Anyway, God loves us unconditionally. When we desire unconditional love, we desire God. That's it. That's the only place you're ever going to get it. God IS Love. LOVE is God. Quite frankly, its hard enough to believe in God, let alone believe in the idea that God has unconditional love for us - but that's because we're human and, because we're human, we have this misguided desire to prove that God's love is unconditional.

What the correct answer to the first question asked is - and this is going to be hard to wrap your noodle around - that this is not a question. At heart you know that God desires you to love your neighbors as yourself. If you were hungry, you'd get something to eat. If you saw a guy that was hungry, therefore, you should get him something to eat. No questions need to be asked. You'd just do it as easily as you breath, or think, or speak. Because you'd be so in sync with God's love that you wouldn't have any questions to ask. Your faith, then, would be spontaneous... ingrained... part of you in such a way that thought becomes deed at the same moment.

Abraham, perhaps the greatest of humans when it comes to faith, was asked to drop everything and move to another country. He didn't bat an eye. Okay, he said, and he started to pack.

Me? It'd take me six months just to plan the trip. And then another year or two to raise money to go. And then finally, I'd pack up, send out change of address cards, attend several farewell parties, give a few speeches on the importance of my journey, blog about it a zillion times, make sure my camera was charged... before I finally took one step out in faith.

Sorry for the rambling... but this post was anything but spontaneous. I've been thinking about it for a while... perhaps a while too long.

Spontaneous Courage

2012-01-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

There have only been a few instances in my life when I've delved into spontaneous courage - usually events thrust upon me that required me to make a choice right then and there. Some worked out well for most parties - when my Mom fell down the stairs I called 911 and then took care of her until the ambulance arrived, remaining calm all the way - and some worked out not so well - when I saw a young skiier stranded in a snow bank, I went in to help only to become trapped in the snow bank as well. The fact of the matter is that I didn't lack courage or overthink the situation, I just dove right on in.

For most people, jumping right into a situation is not an unusual trait. I was born differently though and given the gift of a writer's mind. The writer's mind never shuts down. Honestly, it is a 24/7 mind that keeps on churning out ideas even while I sleep. The problem that this creates is that I am used to thinking first and then acting. Now that might sound like a very good principle to follow, and generally it is, except that my writer's mind doesn't just think about things - it perfects them first.

The classic example of the way my mind works:

As a child, I would play make-believe, as kids are wont to do. But unlike other kids, I would replay my make-believe scenario over and over and over again until I got just the right amount of drama applied. It wasn't enough that my hero had to jump on the rocks to escape the lava. No. There had to be dinosaurs. And demons. And a sword that had to be snatched. And a big fight scene with the Devil where limbs were hacked off. And the world was about to end unless the hero saved the day. And there was a princess... I think you get the idea. Over and over again, I'd replay this make-believe scene until I had just the right amount of complexity and pathos for it to be the BEST scene ever.

Now apply that kind of thinking to something mundane like asking a girl out. Most guys would simply walk up to a girl, take a deep breath, and spit out the words. Five seconds later, win or lose, they guy would have his answer. Not me. I would run through every single scenario. Every possible win. Every possible failure. I would determine what was the best way to ask. When the best time to ask might be. What I should be wearing. Where I might do the asking. And how I might sound incredibly romantic and cool. I would do this in my head, over, and over, and over again. Each time looking for just the right amount of complexity and pathos for it to be the BEST attempt at asking a girl out ever.

I didn't ask a lot of girls out. Way too many possibilities of failure. It wasn't that I lacked courage, per se, but that I lacked the sort of courage that allowed me to brave the outcome regardless of the odds against me.

I lack the courage to let the chips fall where they may. I have been trying to control every single variable of every single situation my whole entire life. Its what writers do. We control the information we give you. We control what side of the characters you see. We purposefully keep things back, as if secrecy adds to entertainment value. And the real sad thing about it is, I can't imagine doing anything else. My brain is not wired to react differently.

Even now, as I write this, my mind is trying to churn out a way to ask a girl out. I'm creating some compelling reason as to why I should, or shouldn't do it. I'm putting it in writing, because that's what I do - it's the way I think. I simply can't walk up to her and say, "Hey, want to go out for lunch some time?" Or should I say something else? Maybe coffee? Dessert?

The problem with analyzing yourself is that you start to ask why you're analyzing yourself and then you question your need to analyze yourself and to analyze your analysis... etc, so on and so forth. It's an endless rabbit-hole that you've started down.

I'm working up some spontaneous courage. This, of course, will never work. Because for it to work, it would have to be spontaneous.

Maybe I should just settle for courage and leave the head shrinking to someone else?

Climbing out of the pit

2012-01-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

At lunch today:

Me: You know a friend of mine was showing me a want-ad on Craig's List for a Publishing Assistant. It pays $40K a year. I wonder if I could do the job part time like at night or something...

My Human Resources Person: $40K a year is not enough to live on.

Me: :{

My Human Resources Person: (Oblivious)

Me: (To myself) I only make $30K a year now...

This is the crux of my problem. I live in one of the most expensive places on the entire planet and make a salary that, quite frankly, is laughable. Heck, I know kids fresh out of college with no damn experience in anything that make more money than I do. If I were to walk around town with my salary printed on my forehead, people would look at me in shock and assume there was a typo.

BUUUUTTTTT, that being said, I don't consider myself poor. I have a great network of friends and family that keep me sane. I know lots of people that have helped me for free and others that I have helped as well. Since giving is greater than receiving and I spend every free dollar I have giving back, I guess I've achieved something that richer and smarter people will never have.

I'm tired of maxing out my bank account though. I'm tired of limiting my potential because of my salary. I need other sources of income - which is what started this conversation today. If I'm going to climb out of the pit of working poverty, I don't have to work harder, I just have to work smarter.

So if you've read this far then you should know that I've installed a virus on your computer and have completely raided your entire bank account by now. Thanks. My new plan is to become an evil super-villain.

Okay, that was a lie. I wish I was that smart. I guess it's back to the old tried and true work harder. Somehow I've got to find someone that's willing to pay me twice as much for doing what I already do now for half. Wish me luck!

Who am I really?

2012-01-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

I've been slogging through the beginning of 1st Chronicles for a fortnight or so and it begins with a LOOOOONG geneology of seemingly every single person in the country formerly known as Israel (which at the time of writing may or may be Judah, Israel, or Judaelastan - 17th Province of Babylon... okay, I made that last name up). Anyway, I'm a sucker for lists and even though I can't pronounce half the names on the list, it kind of makes me wonder about the geneology of these people and why it was so important to them.

Here are the geneologies I can remember...

I am Will Robison III, my Dad is Will Robison Jr, and my Grandpa is Will Robison Sr..
Or
Anakin begat Luke and Leia who begat a passel of annoying literary Jedi kids that hopefully will never see the inside of a movie theater.

But back in the day, geneologies were important for a variety of reasons. First, being a nomadic people, Israel was essentially one giant family that had been given one kick ass inheritance - an entire land of milk and honey... and a personal relationship with God. Of course, land being important the Israelites had to be able to show that they were, in fact, part of the family by being able to trace their family line back to one of the twelve inheritors of Israel himself (one of the 12 tribes). Everything was divided that way.

So, then, skip ahead a few thousand years and the subsequent conquest by the Babylonians and then God bringing the survivors back to the land of milk and honey and the question comes up - Who gets what? Now knowing who you are, by knowing what tribe you belong to, lets you know what land you inherit.

It kind of makes me wonder. Beyond the land inheritance and all that stuff, how much of who we are is inherited from that that have gone before. Each generation makes its own way through the world. We are directly connected to the generation before ours and, in many way, the generation after ours, but what about other generations? Where do we fit in the grand scheme of things? Are we just one of those names listed on some list somewhere that no one can pronounce and about which nothing is known? Are we at least a historical footnote - Yes, that Will Robison that slew the giant lion with his bare feet? Or do we rate an entire book written about our exploits and downfall before God? Don't we try and look back on our own ancestors and pick out the ones that make us sound more glorious than we actually are? Hi, I'm related to Paul Bunyan. Or does that make us look sad by comparison?

Just some thoughts noodling around in my head. What else are you going to think about when reading a list of all the sons of Issachar?

Overwhelming to the point of panic

2012-01-03T14:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I have anxiety. This is usually brought on by my own actions mixed with the actions of a world that just likes to pile on. "Hey, look at Will, he looks kind of busy... come on boys, let's jump on him and drag him down!" As a Baptist Pastor in Mississippi said to me, "The Devil doesn't want you to succeed and he'll do anything to prevent that."

Which, of course, leads me to a logical question, "Am I really doing anything that ticks off the Devil?"

Okay, yeah, there are some things - but those aren't usually the things that cause me to be overwhelmed. No, no... usually the overwhelming stuff is of my own doing. I've got a lot of pokers in the fire. A lot of those pokers were placed there by myself. In fact, there are days when I can't see the fire through all the pokers. Seriously, if poker collecting were an Olympic sport, I'd be a Gold Medalist every single year!

So last night, lying in bed trying not to think about the overwhelming amount of pokers burning in my mind, I closed my eyes and just prayed, "God, help me out of this mess."

The power went out.

Okay, it may not have been in that order. I don't think God has a PG&E hotline or anything (although that Monday Night Football power outage is still unexplained) but the end result might as well have been the same thing. I needed the power to go out. It forced me to sit in the dark, close my eyes, rest, relax, and simply bathe in the light coming from those red hot pokers.

I decided that the best course of action would be to get some of those pokers out of the fire as soon as possible. I looked at the long list of stuff I have to do, re-prioritized it on the basis of which items I could most quickly finish, and then, remarkably, the panic started to slip away.

What a great way to begin the new year. The panic is still there in the background waiting to jump out, but at least I have a plan now. Progress will be made and pokers will disappear. The Devil might still rise up to defeat me, but at least this time he'll really have to try hard since I won't be defeating myself.

Post #801 - In Which I Discuss The Future!

2011-12-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet lately mostly because I've been busy. I've discovered that those who are doing usually aren't blogging about doing it. And I've been doing lots of stuff. Though, really, I have very little to show you just yet.

I had a few milestones in 2011. The high point, surely, was seeing my friend Russ get married to the girl of his dreams. That was a great moment and I was honored to be there. A close second was watching my first play being produced and shown. Had it been really good, it probably would have been the high point. ;) But we live and learn and will produce a much better and more streamlined version in 2012.

The biggest thing I will take away from 2011 though will be a paradigm shift in my thinking vis a vis my creative work. Sometime early in the year it occurred to me that I had better put up or shut up, because I had been talking a good game for a long time with little results. I was like Mike Singletary of 49er's fame. I talked a good game, but at the end of the day, I was still in last place with Alex Smith as my Quarterback.

So, 2011 has really been the year where I've been working towards project completion. It's been an ambitious year, but I think the results will speak for themselves in 2012.

In the last six months of 2011, I've shot two films, begun editing a DVD, written about half a novel, and restarted my website. All of these things have been trickling out there not for the sake of secrecy but, because, quite frankly I didn't want to raise any expectations until I knew I could deliver.

Sometime in 2012, these projects will be completed.

First will be my Kenya DVD. This is the DVD that I've been trying to put together for two years taking footage that I shot and that a colleague shot in Kenya last year to tell the story of our project in Kenya and the partners that we work with there. I've edited about a third of it so far and it's really good.

Second will be my Super Secret Sucky Project, or, as it's safe to call it now, The Amazing Mole 2. This is the most ambitious project I've ever worked on - so it's bound to suck (nobody, except maybe Amadeus, gets it right on the first try). It basically involves a reality contest that I shot in Disney World earlier this month with animated characters both competing in the contest and calling the shots behind the scenes. Test animation looks good. Audience reaction to the tests has been encouraging. But I need a lot of effort before I can pull this one off. Expect a preview pretty soon.

Third will be my untitled Folk Music documentary. My Dad has been singing off and on with the same group of folk singers since the earliest days of the Folk Music revival in the early 1960's. They meet every year in a reunion and have a hootenany. Since the San Francisco crowd was hosting the event this year, I decided that someone really ought to tell their fantastic tale - punctuated with taped performances. So in October I recorded their entire Hootenany and conducted interviews. I shot more footage in that weekend than I did during my three weeks in Africa. But I'm still only about half way there. I need to form a storyline in my mind before I finish the documentary with a second round of interviews and other footage. This one has a special deadline - next year's hoot. So I expect to be busy completing this during the summer of 2012.

And finally, I shall be a writing up a storm. In addition to the revised streamlined Last Supper play that I'll be working on here in the next couple of weeks, I shall also get back to my novel, continue writing for my website, and shall begin editing my sister's novel (I finally have an idea of how to unpack her dense, but fun, story). And, if there's time, I want to produce my next play - Next Year's Christmas pageant - as I think I have a unique take on it.

I'm going to be a busy guy in 2012 - so don't be surprised if I'm not around here a lot. I'll try to keep you up to speed, but I'm only going to mention things if I think they're up to snuff from here on out.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I'll see you all on the flipside of 2012!

A Holiday Message From The 99%...

2011-12-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

With profound apologies to Dr. Suess...
And Thurl Ravenscroft...

A Holiday Message To The One Percent

You're a mean one, One Percent.
You're really a heel.
You're cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
One Percent.

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

You're a monster, One Percent.
Your heart's an empty hole.
Your brain is full of spiders,
You've got garlic in your soul.
One Percent.

I wouldn't touch you, with a
thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

You're a vile one, One Percent.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
One Percent.

Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crocodile.

You're a foul one, One Percent.
You're a nasty, wasty skunk.
Your heart is full of unwashed socks
Your soul is full of gunk.
One Percent.

The three words that best describe you, are as follows, and I quote:
Stink, Stank, Stunk

You're a rotter, One Percent.
You're the king of sinful sots.
Your heart's a dead tomato splotched
With moldy purple spots,
One Percent.

Your soul is an apalling dump heap overflowing
with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable
rubbish imaginable,
Mangled up in tangled up knots.

You nauseate me, One Percent.
With a nauseaus super-naus.
You're a crooked jerky jockey
And you drive a crooked horse.
One Percent.

You're a three decker saurkraut and toadstool sandwich
With arsenic sauce!

(Sorry, I heard this song today and I thought, "This is exactly the message the Occupy Protesters have been preaching for the last three months." ;)

The Honorable Sacrifice

2011-11-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

My dear friends, as a Veteran of the Armed Forces of the United States of America - a fact that I proudly display - I think Veteran's Day is a sham. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not trying to disparage the sacrifices paid nor the honor we owe to all our veterans out there for the hardships they endured. We owe them our respect and thanks. But what exactly are we honoring?

A soldiers life is tough. They work hard to defend the country from all harm - foreign and domestic. But the method in which many are forced to defend the country, while necessary, is hardly honorable. Killing to protect your fellow citizens isn't nearly as honorable as laying down your life to do so. Nobody walks up to a Veteran and says, "Thank you for all the people you killed overseas so that I can speak my mind here freely." And yet, that's usually part of the job requirement - or at least it is for anyone involved in a war.

Now, I don't wish to dwell on this particularly gruesome fact. Military people do many wonderful things... and they also drop bombs, shoot people, and project force. Its a job. Its a horrible, terrible, but unfortunately, necessary job. We owe our thanks to our veterans for doing these horrible terrible things that need to be done for us.

This is all a round about way of saying what we should be honoring are the peace makers - the ones who go equally into harm's way, sacrificing everything they have, to bring food, knowledge, and health care to people that are sometimes resistant to their very existence. They go into war zones, famine areas, health crises, without any thought or regard to their own safety, and do the beautiful, wonderful necessary things that need to be done. All pay some, and some pay all to do these things. But rarely do these people cause harm while they are doing these things. They don't need to blow up a village in order to save it first. They don't need to shoot brothers, sisters, parents, and friends in order to save everyone else. They do their work with kind words, loving hearts, and generous spirits.

War is evil and we shouldn't continue to honor it in any way, shape, or form. We should acknowledge the sacrifice of those who fought in the wars, but we shouldn't continue to heap honor on these horrible acts.

I appreciate the thanks. I appreciate the remembrances for those that have fallen. But I don't wish to be reminded or applauded for the necessary evils I was called upon to perpetrate on other people. There seems to be something wrong in that very notion.

As for me, I spent my minute of silence at 11:11:11 thanking God for the sacrifices that have been made by both soldiers and peacekeepers, and longing for a world where soldiers were no longer necessary. A Day Without Veterans would be a holiday I would truly enjoy celebrating.

5 Steps To Knowing Christ

2011-10-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

1) Be introduced to him via word of mouth or book - someone mentions Christ and you are curious as to who he is.

2) You go to Christ's house to meet him and discover that He's not home and nobody seems to know where to find him. Further, although everyone there claims to know Christ, nobody has ever met him, and every description of him is conflicting. Still, you are curious, so...

3) You read his book. This is rather confusing. Like claiming you know Steinbeck because you read The Grapes of Wrath. This leads you to read other books from the experts, which contradict each other as well. You start to get a better picture of who everyone thinks Christ is. You know what he's done. But you still can't get to know him just yet. What you really need is to walk in his footsteps for a while...

4) You do things that Christ did. This brings you REALLY close to knowing him. You begin to suspect that the best way to know Christ is to be really really good to everyone - to love them as much as possible. BUUUUUTTTTTT... after many years of this, you still don't really know him. Which brings you to the final step...

5) You accept that Christ is unknowable. And surprisingly, when you stop trying to capture Christ into some definable picture, you finally get to know Him.

No Stupid Idea Left Behind

2011-10-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

I was hard on the Bush Admin. for No Child Left Behind because it was a stupid law. I need to be equally hard with the current executives running our schools for their equally stupid left wing insanity.

Considering that schools are low on money, SFUSD recently hired Health Coordinators to make sure that schools remain healthy. In addition to cutting off all sweets on campus (including those that the teachers might bring in their own lunches or might buy for celebrations or parties - like a retirement cake, for instance) they have recently begun to institute a mandatory exercise period for teachers. After school, of course. For the good health of the teacher, of course.

Never mind the fact that most teachers work 80+ hours a week - many of these hours unpaid and overstressed - but now they have to add 1 hour a week of monitored exercise to their workload.

Only, it gets worse. Because in addition to the one hour of mandatory exercise each week that these teachers are required to do, they are also required to fill out paperwork on their exercise and submit the paperwork to the school district. Because we need to be able to verify these things, don't we?

But, you know, these teacher's salaries are bankrupting the country, so I guess they deserve everything they get. ;)

It Doesn't Get Any Better... A Square Peg Into A Round Hole Conclusion

2011-09-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

I don't remember a single word ever said to me by a bully, but I can clearly recall their faces and every single one of their names and the feeling of dread that I got every time one approached me and the anger I still feel at the thought of each and every single one of them. I have no doubt they don't remember me at all. It's been 30 years. They thought only barely enough of me back then to ridicule me and ride me for three years of Jr. High, after which I'm sure they went home, did their homework, played with their friends, and never once thought about the consequences of their actions. Guilt is reserved for those who know they're doing something wrong. If you're taught that you are superior to others, you can't have guilt when you put those others in their place.

This, ultimately, is my point. The words and the taunts and the bullying behavior ends, but the effects of that bullying live on forever. Once a person has been told that they are worthless and those words are followed up with actions and the world does nothing to counter those claims, the victim will take those words to heart and will own them. There is no amount of self-esteem that can be taught that will overcome that kind of painful belief system. It becomes part of a person's psyche.

I don't think I ever saw it before - or at least not this clearly - and I don't mean to look at it as an excuse for my life. As I pointed out in the first part of this story, the seeds of my bullying were set in grade school. I was already well on my own path to confrontation with the "normal" world before I ever became bullied. But after being bullied, I can see how my psyche changed and how my decisions became flavored by that.

I loved to write in grade school. In Jr. High, I began to tell stories in other ways. In High School, I wrote again with a renewed passion - some prompted by teachers and friends reading my work, and some prompted by embracing a skill that I thought would take me places. But here is where that flavoring kicked in... I was certain that in some cosmic way, I was destined to be great. It was like I just expected a realignment of the world that would put me on top of all those that had ever put me down. I was waiting for cosmic retribution.

It wasn't that I expected I would win the proverbial lottery. I wrote. I worked hard at my craft. But I just assumed that sooner or later my talent would be discovered and that I would naturally assume my place as a great writer and a person beloved in all the world. That would show them.

That was the gist of it. That would show them! At my core, I was driven by a desire to prove that I wasn't that worthless person, that utter failure that everyone claimed to see when they looked at me in Jr. High. I was consumed by this desire. I threw everything good I ever had onto its altar and set the flames rocking.

Success wasn't going to be enough for me. I needed MEGA-SUCCESS! I needed Spielberg, Lucas, Disney success! Anything short of that was failure.

At some level, I still feel that way. Its something I struggle with even now. I can't enjoy even a minor victory because it only proves that I got lucky or that I managed to achieve something, but so what... there are others that do it so much better.

I don't want their wealth. I don't want their power. I want them to know that I have made something of myself and that I am not a loser. But I know that nothing I ever do or say will ever be enough to rid myself of these inferior feelings. I will be driven like this for the rest of my life.

So there is no BETTER for people that have been bullied. They have been taught that they are inferior and they have taken that feeling to heart. The only way forward in peace is to accept that feeling and somehow set it aside.

If there is any hope in this, it is this. I would never have put this together in my mind had I not a) made a horrible movie, and b) gone to Kenya. The movie made me question whether I really was talented and Kenya made me question whether anything I did or said really mattered in the grand scheme of things. My suffering is infinitesimal compared to the suffering in Kenya. That sort of perspective made me reevaluate my entire world view, starting with, as Michael Jackson once said, The Man in The Mirror. Maybe now that I know at least some of the wounds that I harbor deep inside, I can finally start to heal them.

It Doesn't Get Any Better... A Square Peg Into A Round Hole Part Three

2011-09-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say that my high school years were vastly different, that I was well liked, and that I excelled, but that wasn't entirely the case. While I did excel in some things and I did have a lot of friends and acquaintances, in hindsight I can clearly see how the bullying of Jr. High kept me from developing even more. In fact, had it not been for one event, its safe to say that I might not ever have pulled out of the tailspin of Jr. High.

When I think back on those high school years, I like to remember my Senior Year where I knew everyone in school and everyone liked me - but that would be glossing over somethings to the point of rewriting history. While it was true that I went to Lincoln High School primarily because all of the kids I hated in Jr. High were going to a different high school that doesn't mean the bullying stopped immediately.

In my Freshman year, I was still a freshman. And Freshman get hazed. I was no different. But seen from the lens of Jr. High it really felt as if it was more of the same. I was really depressed because I thought that I was going to face another four years of misery and I was prepared to go it alone again. I can clearly remember starting to disappear into that fantasy world yet again, but three things radically altered my life in somewhat quick succession.

First, and most importantly, I discovered that my Grandmother had terminal cancer. Unfortunately, because I wasn't supposed to know and my Grandmother wanted to go out on her own terms, I wasn't allowed to share this information with anyone. I had to bear the knowledge of her impending death on my own. I'm not saying that I would have suddenly become chatty about it, but at least I could have shared my grief with my siblings had they known as well. This furthered my depression and not being a particularly motivated student before, I became an even worse student as a result.

Second, having come from an honor's program in Jr. High, I was slotted into advanced algebra in high school. My depression combined with never being a really huge fan of math (its a left brain / right brain kind of thing) meant that I fell extremely far behind the rest of the students. My brain was just not getting into gear. Then, I went to a doctor and discovered that I needed glasses. The day after I got my glasses, I went into class and suddenly everything clicked into place. I hadn't realized that I was squinting and not making out the math problems on the board before. I ACED the mid-term, but ultimately it wasn't enough to save my grade and I flunked out at the end of the semester.

Third, in the midst of my depression, I came to English class unprepared for anything and my teacher asked us to turn in our writing assignments. In desperation, I flipped through my notebook and found a story I had written over the summer. I handed it in to my teacher feeling that I had just saved my grade for the time being, but not really thinking any more about it. A few weeks later, my grades having slipped even further, my teacher approached me and said, "Why don't you try writing my stories like the one you turned in a few weeks ago?" I was stunned. My teacher had not only read but remembered something I wrote. Truth be told, this was the true start of my writing career.

A month or so later my Grandmother died. I was devastated. I flunked out of my first semester of high school. I had to drop out of the swim team. And I was dumped into remedial math. (How you can go from Advanced Algebra to Remedial Math, I have never understood) But rather than becoming even more depressed, I became angry with myself. I knew that I had let myself down. I decided then and there to turn my life around.

By the following semester I was on the honor roll. I excelled in every class. I retook and aced advanced algebra. I became an editor on the school paper. I ran cross country and won the most improved award. And so on, and so forth. I had switched from being a Them to being an Us.

But lest you think that I became a member of the bullying Us, I still remembered the lessons I had learned in Jr. High and from that point forward, I made it a point to try and include everyone equally in everything I did. This, more than anything else I did to improve my image, was the reason I had so many friends in High School. I saw no point in elevating myself at the expense of others.

While that trait served me well in High School, it would have serious ramifications for the rest of my life. But that's a story for the conclusion tomorrow...

It Doesn't Get Any Better... A Square Peg Into A Round Hole Part Two

2011-09-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

I really hated Jr. High. I attended a school far outside my "price range" starting in 1980. This was the time when fashion began to make an appearance in a child's dialog and I was never going to afford being one of the cool kids. But besides appearance as a dividing factor, social skills became increasingly important, and I didn't have the kind of cutthroat social skill set that makes all those cliche teenage TV shows so popular. I was the loner kid and after getting a taste of the "in-crowd" I discovered that I wanted nothing to do with them.

Its funny because Jr. High was such a productive time for me almost precisely because I wasn't part of any social group. I was able to develop my own unique story telling ability and voice because I wasn't being influenced by pop culture nor by peer pressure. But despite these productive gains in creativity, those three years were the years that I was tormented and bullied.

For the most part I was left alone, but that was because I preferred it that way. However, every time I was forced to interact with the rest of the class or with the teaching staff, I was mocked and ridiculed. I maintained my aloofness mostly because being part of the crowd was the fastest way to social destruction.

Three instances really stand out for me.

I was at lunch once bouncing my baseball into my Dad's baseball glove on the wall - a perfectly normal activity that can be done by oneself. Some kids came over and started messing with me and once they'd drawn me away from my baseball glove, they filled it with mustard. The next day, I found the same kids playing handball. I waited until the ball got loose, ran after it, picked it up and chucked it as far as I possibly could out of the school grounds. Instead of gaining respect, I got sent to detention.

Another time, we had a substitute teacher in English class and this guy saw that the other students didn't like me, so he started mocking me at the board. I didn't take this lying down either - I mocked him right back. Of course, the students wouldn't back me up, but I think I got in some pretty good licks on the "substitute teacher". Needless to say, I ended up in trouble.

On the final day of Jr. High, my teacher took the entire class to a local pizza parlor. Everyone was supposed to have a partner to split the cost of the pizza. None of my classmates wanted to be my partner. The teacher allowed them to form groups of three or four or five just to avoid being partners with me. SO, I went to the pizza parlor, ordered the extra large with everything on it, and ate the entire thing in front of my class. My Dad wasn't pleased when I didn't bring home any change, but it was so worth it to get my just desserts. I should add that I was skinny as a rail back then, so no, I wasn't being irresponsible with my diet.

I, of course, focus on the bullying moments where I fought back - but there were many moments where I either couldn't fight back nor where I had the energy to fight back. I couldn't stay out of the crosshairs of an entire student body for too long. I felt their bullying constantly and there was nothing I could do to change it.

The main effect of all this is that if ever there had been a moment where I could have come out of my awkward inner phase and become one of the Us's of the World, I would have had to join those very people that were making my life a living hell. Those kids were all the driven world beaters whose parents could afford to give them whatever the hell they wanted to have. Though I was every bit their intellectual and creative equals, I could never match their lifestyle and, as a result, I was never going to be accepted into their world.

I ended up coming out of Jr. High not only hating every single student that had tormented me, but also the entire system of education that had allowed such bullying to occur. The only thing I had learned for the three years of Jr. High that I had been forced to attend was how to endure and survive on my own. While useful as a skill, as a social building exercise, this tended to make my default setting - retreat to the bunker of my mind. I had been forced to live in my own mind for so long, I preferred it to real life.

But then, I got to High School and something dramatically changed all that... in Part Three.

It Doesn't Get Any Better... A Square Peg Into A Round Hole Part One

2011-09-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I finally realized what it was that drove me nuts about all these YouTube videos proclaiming that life gets better for the victims of bullies - they're not true. It doesn't get any better. Or, at least, it might not get better for you.

Most of the reason that this is true is because people tend to fall into one of two categories throughout most of their lives - Us and Them. Depending on whether you're an Us or a Them at any particular point in your personal journey is the determining factor of whether you'll be bullied. Us's like people that belong to their category and are generally intolerant of Them's. Them's can't figure out why the Us's hate them and wouldn't know how to change to become an Us even if it were possible. Us's bully Them's. As pretty much everyone in their life goes through a Them cycle, you probably know what bullying is all about. But as you discover that you don't like being one of Them, you join Us, and the bullying stops. But not everyone joins Us. Some people remain Them no matter what. For Them, there is no end to the bullying they endure.

I have almost always been one of Them - you know, the weird kid that marches to his own set of drums. I remember in Kindergarten quickly surmising that I was pretty darn smart. I was easily ahead of the rest of the class on the learning curve - so much so that I pulled back, lest I get too far ahead. I enjoyed having friends and being the smart kid meant that I didn't have friends. But there wasn't a whole lot that I couldn't figure out on my own.

Throughout grade school I was able to associate with the smart kids in school. But unlike them, I didn't excel in my education. In turning away from education and learning as a goal in and of itself, my mind found the world of fantasy and make-believe to play around in. I often tell of the creation of my first story. We were supposed to write a paragraph about Halloween. I spent four hours and wrote ten pages. I had to be forced outside to join the rest of the kids in the Halloween parade, and I asked to take the story home so that I could finish it.

I loved to spend time in that fantasy world battling aliens and monsters, ghosts, spies, etc... But, as you can imagine, this made me the weird kid. I was aware of other kids at the school, but after third grade when all of my friends moved on to private schools, I was stuck in a classroom with nothing to interest me and no friends to keep me grounded in what was cool. I went off on tangents and became less and less connected to education and the things that all other grade school kids were interested in.

I wasn't quite bullied yet, unless you count loneliness as a form of bullying. I had "friends" but I didn't really have anyone to talk to. They were all going off into things like cars or girls or comics and I was lost in my fantasy world. I began to run not only as a form of exercise but also because it was the one sport I could do where I got to spend all of this time just thinking up things.

Of course, that all changed when I got to Jr. High... but that's up for discussion next time.

Thoughts in search of a well-thought out essay...

2011-09-13T16:49:00.000-07:00

I am not a crackpot, but this is definitely a crackpot idea... unless, I'm on to something here.

These thoughts were prompted by two things. 1) During an excellent 9/11 sermon given at my church by First Responder Chaplain, Toby Nelson, who worked at Ground Zero, Katrina, and other places, he mentioned one thing that I'd never put my finger on but that definitely had the ring of truth about it. He said, "While I watched the planes crashing into the buildings again and again and again, I found that I was getting more agitated every time I watched." And 2) I just saw a headline for a "News" video that said, "WATCH: A man gets naked before breaking into a store." And I really had to wonder, "Who would want to watch something like that?"

So, here, in a nutshell, is my crackpot idea...

Is the Internet, Satan?

I offer these points of comparison. 1) Both lie. Incessantly. Or tell the truth in such a shade of lie as to mislead and misrepresent. 2) Both show us things we want to have and want to believe and makes it easy for us to obtain these things - none of which bring us happiness. 3) Both, by their very existence, stir up trouble. 4) Both tempt us to do and say things we'd never have done before. 5) The world is definitely more agitated because of their existence.

Now, normally I'd argue that the same could be said about any form of mass-communication. But can it? Certainly books, when they were introduced, caused a stir - but not nearly to the level that the internet has and in such a quick and dangerous way.

Would you agree that since the internet first appeared on the scene back in the early 90's, that the world has gotten steadily worse?

Anyway, I will leave this thought at this stage of its development. If any wish to take up my lance and attack this particular windmill, I shall be happy to join your quest.

The Eighth Samurai

2011-09-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

We join our story halfway through the first act...

We have just seen the seven samurai graduating from samurai college. They are a happy bunch - before the inevitable downfalls that will lead them to the beginning of the story that we know as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. But in this blockbuster prequel with the explosions and heavy special effects all shot in 3-D and tons of extra bonus features on the Blu Ray DVD (plus don't forget the teaser for the sequel to be found at the end of the 30 minute long credits) our master director has decided to add an edgy twist - Chris Tucker is The Eighth Samurai.

And it doesn't matter that he's black... and that he's spouting off stupid American ghetto hip-hop slang... this is 18th century Thailand (it was cheaper to film the prequel there, so they changed the story too) and anything goes in 18th Century Thailand. So as our 8 samurai warriors prepare the school for battle with environmentally unfriendly and immigration hating corporate Thai bad guys with thick Russian accents who all look like rejects from the WWE for some reason, we get to hear the montage accompanied by the latest Rap Star combo pack - P-Nut Enima and Slo-Slice.

But here is where it gets bad... the director couldn't leave well-enough alone. No, he had to dub in a few words that completely changed the meaning of the scene. And he had the samurai fire first. Stupid bad director.

I'm going to complain about this, but to be a completist, I will have to pre-order my DVD/BluRay combo pack with the extra toy inside.

I just wish that Hollywood knew how to run their business. They're going to go bankrupt at this rate.

Mammon

2011-08-31T16:17:00.000-07:00

Why does money and power always corrupt? I find that even if you try to have a perfectly sane and normal conversation about money or power, eventually the worst nature of all human beings comes out - on either side of the debate.

I have said things here in the past two posts that I truly believe. But in saying these things, I may have hurt a fellow brother in Christ. I don't know why its hard to have a debate without it devolving into pain and recrimination, but I do know that that was never my intent.

Still, I find it hard to drop the subject. I don't know what part of my ego insists that I am right and that others are wrong, but if that part of my ego is causing pain in others, I need to shut it down. It should have no place in my life.

I recently took over as the Head of the Stewardship Committee at my Church with the one personal caveat that I would be certain this committee did not engage in Church politics. I have seen the corrupting influence it can have on Church committee's even when everyone on the committee is well-intentioned. I suppose I should add that such a mixture of politics and finances in my own life can also have a corrupting influence.

Therefore, I am hereby declaring an end to the discussion of politics and money from now on here at this blog. Neither right wing nor left wing - I shall remain flightless from here on out.

Rebuttal

2011-08-24T13:37:00.001-07:00

Why Taxing the Rich Is Good for America

By Loren Berlin Posted 10:30AM 08/24/11 Columns, Economy, People, Taxes

Comments Print Text Size A A A

Last week, Warren Buffett wrote an incredible opinion piece in The New York Times asking the federal government to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, himself included. "My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress," he argued. "It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Buffett's editorial sent economists and politicians into a frenzy as they debated the merits and implications of his request. Underlying the chatter is an important question: Does our country benefit, financially, from taxing our wealthiest citizens?

According to Bruce Bartlett, who's held senior policy roles in both Ronald Reagan's and George H. W. Bush's administrations, as well as on the staffs of Reps. Ron Paul and Jack Kemp, "in 2008, those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, with incomes over $380,000, had an effective tax rate of 23.3 percent. In 1986, a year when the real gross domestic product grew a healthy 3.5 percent, their effective tax rate was 33.1 percent. It has been much lower every year since."

Bartlett, who culled Internal Revenue Service data for his analysis, which appears this week in his New York Times column, goes on to say: "If this group were still paying 33.1 percent, federal revenue would have been more than $166 billion higher in 2008 alone. That would be enough to reduce the budget deficit by about 10 percent this year. If the top 1 percent of taxpayers had continued to pay the same effective tax rate they paid in 1986 every year from 1987 to 2008, the federal debt today would be $1.7 trillion lower."

While Bartlett acknowledges the assumptions implicit in his calculations, the bottom line is clear. America has lost boatloads of money thanks to our willingness to cut taxes on those who can most easily afford to pay them. This despite our country's history of successfully taxing the rich. Under Reagan, for example, the richest 1% of Americans paid one-third of their income to the federal government.

Between High European Taxes and Low U.S. Rates, a Happy Medium

Those who argue against higher taxes often fear that an increase will slow economic growth. But history dispels that myth. As William G. Gale, an expert on tax policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, wrote on CNN.com, "Even the massive tax increases during and after World War II -- amounting to a permanent rise of 10% to 15% of gross domestic product -- and the much smaller tax increases in 1990 and 1993 did no discernible damage to U.S. economic growth."

The debate over whether and how much to tax the rich isn't new. But it's extremely important in the current economy. The debt ceiling deal reached earlier this month includes spending cuts, but does nothing to increase revenues. Additionally, the spending cuts come primarily from programs that support low- and middle-income households. The richest Americans? They're virtually exempt from chipping in to resolve the nation's budget problems.

Which is why Buffett is publicly asking to pay more in taxes -- and why he's right. After all, "households in the top 1% of the distribution can afford to contribute," argues Gale. "They have done enormously well during the past 30-plus years. In 1979, their income accounted for 10% of total income. According to the most recent data (from 2008), their share of total household income more than doubled to 21%. In contrast, real income for middle-class workers has remained roughly constant over the same time frame."

In his opinion piece, Gale outlines a variety of options for raising taxes. In all cases, he's advocating for moderation. "None of this means that the U.S. needs to move to European taxation levels," he writes. "But between the depleted tax revenues we raise now -- the lowest share of the economy in six decades -- and the high taxes experienced in European countries, there is plenty of room to raise revenues in an economically sound manner to support a reasonable level of government."

Or, to put it more bluntly, our country is in the throes of a debt crisis. We're delusional to think that we can continue with the current tax rates. So let's stop asking whether or not we should raise taxes on the rich and instead turn our attention to how we can most effectively do so.

Loren Berlin is a reporter with the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. She can be reached at loren.berlin@teamaol.com, on Twitter at @LorenBerlin, and on Facebook.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/nWl920

If I Was President... (completely disregarding the way politics actually works)

2011-08-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

I had some good ideas over the weekend, and I thought I'd pass them along to whoever is listening out there. Hopefully, someone will listen and together we can solve all of our countries problems PDQ! So, here goes...

1) Solving the Immigration/Afghanistan/Economic Problems In One Fell Swoop - First, you grant amnesty to all of the illegal immigrants in this country. Deadline: April 1st, 2012. All illegals in this nation have to apply with weight granted to those who have been here the longest (wait for it...) In addition to place of birth, etc, we collect information on how they've been surviving here in this country (I.E. Who's been paying them and keeping them employed). On April 2nd, we close the borders. Anyone caught sneaking into the United States after that will be dealt with thusly - they will be sent to a detention camp, they will be treated nicely, then they will be loaded on to a plane and flown to Afghanistan. Not to fight, mind you, but just to be deported. Since Afghanistan doesn't share a border with the US, they will not return to this country. AND, as a bonus, an influx of illegal immigrants into Afghanistan will likely overwhelm the country and drive the Taliban out as that country implodes from all the extra mouths to feed. End of war. Two problems solved.

On May 1st, the IRS will be handed all of the information collected from the formerly illegal immigrants and asked to collect back taxes from not only the new citizens, but also from all the people that employed them. Fines for late fees, unfiled tax forms, and lying on official paperwork will be assessed, but jail time will not be required. That should fill our coffers and also replenish all the money we spent on 50 million non-tax paying freeloaders. Two more problems solved.

2) Dealing with my Republican Counterparts and Compromising On Fiscal Philosophy - I don't agree with the Republicans that rich people shouldn't pay their fair share of taxes because they need that money to create jobs, but I'm willing to compromise a solution.

First, we set the new tax standards on all corporations to a REALLY high percentage (like say close to 50%). Then, and this is the important part, we allow for the taxes to be lowered permanently based upon the current US jobless rate. We tie the lower amount to an attainable goal (say 5% jobless rate) and so long as the jobless rate remains that amount, the corporate taxes shall be at their lowest rate. Incentive: Create Jobs to Get Good Tax Rates. And if they try to just pocket the money, or ship jobs overseas, the tax rate soars and the government then has the funds to make sure the safety nets remain funded. Two More Problems Solved.

3) It's time we abolish WHOM from the English language. Nobody can darn well remember whether its whom or who that they're supposed to say. And really, in what other context is whom even a word? Its like someone added that letter M just to confuse people, or, dare I say it, its a conspiracy amongst English Teachers to keep their jobs!

(As an addendum... Obama shouldn't receive any credit for Libya if Democrats aren't also going to hand Bush credit for Iraq. In both cases, the President got us involved in a conflict that we really didn't need to be involved in and in both cases neither President really did anything substantial to bring about the end of the conflict. Kudos to Obama for at least keeping our ground troops out of the fight.)

There are some things you don't jinx...

2011-08-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

So, in a nutshell, here's what happened.

My Dad went in for a routine check-up, which prompted some tests, which lead to an angioplasty, which revealed the need for a bypass operation. This all literally happened over the course of a couple of weeks. Now, my Dad is generally very healthy. He wasn't really having too many symptoms and he wasn't really in much danger - except of course that he could have a coronary at any moment. So, it was decided to do the operation.

Now my Dad tends to be extremely private when it comes to things like this. He didn't really want the news getting out far and wide. So, I didn't spread the news. I kept it to myself. But there was a second reason I didn't pass it on. I was extremely confident that he was going to be okay.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't leave you all out of the loop because I didn't feel like you needed to know. On the contrary, I really wanted to tell someone. But combined with this "knowledge" that he was going to be okay, was this real fear that I didn't want to jinx it. Something told me to keep my mouth shut. So I did. And he's all right. So... there's that.

Its easy to say that its childish to be superstitious about things, but I never said I knew exactly how the universe works. If a butterfly can cause a hurricane, who knows what an errant comment can change? Loose lips sink ships, why can't they also reverse the outcome of surgery?

Anyway, my Dad is recovering. I am extremely grateful for all the prayers that found their way here. Please don't feel that I left you out of anything on purpose. I really just didn't want to jinx the outcome. And I'm glad my Dad is fine.

Marvin Mudpie Will Return

2011-08-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

I used to love sitting through the end of a James Bond movie credits just to see those words at the end, "James Bond Will Return". To me it meant continuity but also made me excited for further adventures.

Now, my own ne'er-do-well spy, Marvin Mudpie, hasn't had quite as much luck. Started as a collaboration with Ian Thriters, Marvin Mudpie's first book, "Dunebreaker" was completed in 1984. His second adventure, "Stilleto," was completed the following year. Since then there have been about four short stories written and one mini-series that explored his origins. He also was a co-star in the Bimbotech saga, but we'll ignore that for now. Mudpie has been largely absent around these parts for 11 years.

This points out the answer to the question about how do I get my ideas. For some stories, I can force an answer. If the story needs a mundane solution to a mundane problem, I just think one up. But for other characters or stories, there is never anything mundane about them, and you have to wait for a story idea to pop into your head.

Well, POP! I had a DOOZY of an idea on Sunday on my way to church. It still makes me chuckle even now. It came out of the clear blue and let's just say that it will finally answer all of your questions about our debt crisis and who is behind the last few years of economic unrest - while presenting our hero, Marvin Mudpie, with his greatest villain yet!

But the thing is, I don't ever plan for a Mudpie story. I had probably written him off as a hero a while back. 11 years is a long time to go between stories. And yet, there are some story ideas that can only be handled by this master spy. As soon as the idea occurred to me, I KNEW it was a Mudpie story.

So, now I have to cram yet another story idea onto my very full plate. Don't expect it anytime soon. You won't see the first chapter of this story until the middle of September on the newly revised TAC website. Until then, remember that old spies never die, they just become plumbers.

Health

2011-07-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

I fleetly flee, I fly
on fantastical feet
no more defeat, repleat
with life, my legs cry

no more with pain
I embrace my joy
like a spinning toy
the world to gain

I walk, gambol
dance with passion
toes - try not to mash on
liberty for my soul

When its gone
and all that
leg is fat
like a cat
chair I sat
the world flat
full of chat
SCAT!
I weigh a ton.

It's come back
my knee healed
my heart revealed
a lack, I lack

Soaring
no longer snoring
forget boring
on the dance flooring!

I'M FREE!

So now this curse
is set in verse
And it is time
To end this rhyme.

There's A New Blog A'Comin...

2011-07-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it took me THIS long to figure out what to do with all this vast and completely useless Disney Knowledge in my head. Seriously, I've been trying to figure out the best use for all this stuff for years now. It's probably the one thing that I study more seriously than film or writing or anything else and I've never had an outlet for all this knowledge. Most of the cool Disney info is out there already and I didn't want to be just another ME TOO! But the somewhat obvious answer hit me over the weekend.

You see, I've been pestering my family for years. Before every WDW trip I've done a countdown leading up to the day of travel. I would write a little blurb about some aspect of our trip - a paragraph or two about a hotel, attraction, restaurant, etc... - and then I would e-mail it to my family. I've kept these past countdowns with the idea that for my next trip, I wouldn't have to write them all from scratch. So, as I was thinking about starting up the new Countdown for my next trip in December, it occurred to me that what I had was the start of a really good idea for a blog - A Daily Disney reminder.

So that's what I'm going to do - a Disney Blog that, quite frankly, is designed to make me happy. I get to expound my Disney knowledge and if people read it, even better. I need a little time to get this up and running, so don't expect anything for a week or two. But I'll let you all know when it's ready.

Playing with the big boys

2011-06-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Congress Person:

My new E-Bay business has fallen on hard times and I need your help to secure TARP money to continue forward. So far, I have managed one sale. But of my four other bids, all are failing. Prior to 2008, I didn't have a single E-Bay sale failure. This is a new thing for me.

Recently, I voted to give myself a one million dollar bonus. As you can see, with the economy stuck in the toilet like it is, I probably won't be able to afford that bonus and continue to operate my business. But I need myself to keep this business running and since I'd probably end up leaving this company if I don't receive the bonus, it is imperative that this bonus be honored and that there still be enough capital funds to keep my business afloat.

Therefore, I am asking for a loan of $2,000,000 of TARP money to keep my E-Bay business afloat and to still be able to give my employee the bonus that he deserves. Since this amount is just a drop in the bucket for the TARP money, I suspect that approval should be forthcoming in a timely manner. I await your funding and your response.

Sincerely,

Will Robison
A Tax Paying American Citizen That Is Too Big To Fail

Tea Party For One

2011-06-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Do not feel sorry for me. I am broke.

As of Friday, I discovered that I had maxed out one of my two remaining credit cards. (One, unfortunately, was shut down on me as a result of economic downturn. I had plenty of credit on that card and was easily making my payments, but the company just decided to shut down my account - mostly because I think they were close to bankruptcy at the time). Now, I've never maxed out a credit card before. Suddenly realizing that one half of your credit is gone shines a light on the fact that the party is over. And now that the booze are gone, it's time to tell the freeloading guests to go home. When I get into this situation where belt-tightening is called for, my radical brainless side comes out and I start my own little slash and burn tea party for one.

What does that mean? I'm going cold turkey. No more spending. Period. End of story. No donations. No dutch treats. No treats. No movies. No books. No nothing. If it ain't free, it ain't me.

Oh sure, some bills I don't have any option over. I still need gas and car payments and insurance and stuff. And those pesky credit cards still need to get paid. But don't ask me out for dinner any time soon (unless you want to pay) and don't expect me to be knowledgeable on current movies after this weekend. Cold Turkey! It's not just for the day after Thanksgiving anymore...

I could give you 100 different reasons for being in this situation, but the truth of the matter is, I saw this iceberg coming a long ways off and I didn't turn from it. I kept hoping that it would shrink or the current would push it aside, but that iceberg kept coming. Well, it finally hit me. And I'm finally taking on water faster than I can bail it out. I'm not ready to man the lifeboats just yet, but I am starting to sink.

Nope. I have no money. Reality has not just settled in, it's foreclosed on me. I have no choice but to stop spending money.

Of course, if there's a silver lining to all this (one that's not easily removed and sold on E-Bay that is) its that now I have a lot of time to spend getting projects done. My novel will no longer languish from a lack of attention and other projects will get the time they deserve as well. So... good timing, I guess.

Reasons for my absence

2011-06-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd end my month long silence here by detailing all the profound thoughts I've had over the last month. So here goes...

(Chirp... chirp... cricket... cricket...)

It's hard to write a blog when you don't really have anything to say. That's been an ongoing trend in my life of late - a move to silence. It's as if I've already thought all the profound things I'm ever going to think. I'm the new target demographic for the Boob Tube... emphasis on Boob. I've simply run out of things to say.

Now, I might be tempted to just call it quits, to hang up the old pen and go quietly into that good night. But I don't have any good ideas about how I might do that, so instead I think I'll just fade away - like an after-image on a black holes event horizon. I'm already gone, crushed, and turned into so many exotic particles, but you still see me here - a comfortable presence - and wonder as I slowly shift red in my old age how I can linger without taking the final plunge.

Or maybe I'm just waiting until I get older and can start writing blog entries about how kids these days don't know the first darn thing about music, or respecting their elders, or life in general. They're disrespectful and rude and they ought to be seen and not heard - like it was when I was their age and I had to walk uphill both ways through the snow to get to school, barefoot, and then work 20 hours straight at the mill afterwords... God, I hope I never get that old.

Or perhaps, I'm just not cool enough to have blog entries. I don't get to go on these great hiking adventures every other day and take tons of pictures.

Or maybe I'm just lazy. I may not be taxing myself enough. Perhaps I feel as if I've been taxed enough and that, for once, maybe the rich people should have the burden of being taxed.

Yeah, that's it... I'm just waiting for a rich person to take over and start writing my blog for me. It's time they pulled their weight around here.

WHAT... EVAH!

I'm out...

until I think of something else to write.

A Strong-Arming Saint of The Lord

2011-05-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

There is a little old lady at my church who is neither little, nor old, despite her diminutive size and 80 plus years of age. She still tap dances. She still runs an annual show to raise funds for veterans and she sells poppies on both Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. She is also a great supporter of my step-mom's school, helping out with a program there called The Graham Cracker Fairy. But beyond all that, this church saint is also a master at strong-arming people into doing the Lord's work.

Case in point.

This weekend, my step-mom received a call from this saint. She had been in a darling boutique where they sold children's clothing and was so enamored of the wonderful outfits that she asked the owner if she had any clothes they were giving away - for the children at my step-mom's school. She had arranged for one or two bags of clothes to be picked up on Sunday and all my step-mom had to do was show up and pick them up.

Now school gets out this week, so my step-mom was a bit hesitant, but our dear church saint wouldn't take no for an answer. So my step-mom made arrangements to pick up the clothes.

On Sunday, she shows up at the little boutique and finds a half dozen people standing outside waiting for her to arrive. They are each carrying two or three bags full of children's clothes. My step-mom is shocked. She was expecting a couple of bags at most. She gets out of the car and asks the first person where she can find the church lady. The guy gives her a blank look, "Who?" "The woman who gave you the clothes?" "Oh... she's over in the parking lot."

So my step-mom goes over to the parking lot and discovers that this little old lady has figured out a way to block all of the cars in the parking lot from leaving. She has then asked each driver to help her carry the clothes over to my step-mom's car before being allowed to drive away. Six perfect strangers help my step-mom load more than a dozen bags of children's clothes into her car - just so they'll be allowed to drive away.

I'd like to say that this is one-time only behavior, but I'm afraid not. If this wonderful saint of our church asked a mountain if it could please help her by moving ten feet to the right, the mountain would get up and move ten feet to the right and would feel good about doing it. Some saints are just like that.

And deliver us from evil...

2011-05-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

I am of two opinions about the death of Osama Bin Laden. My first opinion is very much along the same lines as the one expressed by Andy Lie over at A Mile From The Beach. This is no time to gloat. We killed Osama and we should be humbled at his death and not boastful. My second opinion, however, is a little more in keeping with what we're seeing on the news. I think both of my opinions are justified - one by faith and the other by unfortunate reality.

My second opinion was earned through that toughest of schools - life experience - and it speaks to what is probably the most human and base interests inside me. I am a pacifist at heart. I believe that some of the most profound words ever spoken were those of the poet and prophet Rodney King, "Can't we all get along?!" But during my time in the Navy and particularly during my years in Naval Intelligence I learned that the unfortunate answer to that question is, "No. Not yet."

You see, there are bad people out there. Evil really does exist. And these people will not accept any other fate than their own destruction. I don't hate them. I pity them. But at the same time, I accept their demise and rejoice when it happens. Why? Because we will never have peace on this world while evil of that sort is allowed to continue. It must be stamped out, hard, and quickly in every case for peace to reign.

After 9/11 I waited for the other shoe to drop. I knew that a man like Osama Bin Laden would not stop until he had achieved his goal of as many American deaths as possible. And so I waited for bad things to happen - more 9/11 attacks, more USS Cole's, more embassy bombings, and maybe worse things - dirty bombs, back pack Nukes, biological or chemical attacks. Bin Laden's only restraints, it seemed, were money and access to weapons of mass destruction.

Truth be told, I was terrified of what a mad man like Osama was capable of doing and that was why I was so terribly upset with "W" and his stupid attack on Iraq. Saddam was a putz. It was like Batman decided to go after a jaywalker while the Joker was running loose in Gotham. The guy we really needed to run to ground was Osama. We needed to stomp on him and end his threat sooner, not later - which was a lesson I think we learned in the aftermath of the Mission: Accomplished speech. We might have toppled Saddam, but the real threat was still Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

And so, in the end, we have finally killed Bin Laden and while I know that the threat isn't completely gone, it has lost a lot of its heart. Killing Bin Laden will not end the War on Terror, but the War on Terror could not end while he was still alive. I will rejoice in the man's death because I can breath a little easier now. There is a little less evil in the world - there is one less threat to my survival and to the survival of the human race.

So while I sat at home last night visibly upset at all the posturing and shouts of USA USA, deep down inside of me I could distinctly hear myself saying in a low voice, "WE GOT THAT C***S***ER! Thank God!" And those are my two opinions on this matter.

Blow'd Up!

2011-04-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

Once again, I was trying to repair myself through long lists of things to do. And it was working. I was eating right (sort of). Exercising correctly (sort of). I was watching my dollars and getting my tasks done (sort of). I was flying high... or so I thought.

In the back of my mind, there were doubts. While I had started the list of foods that I was eating so that I could start eating better foods, I discovered that 1000 calories of salad was the same as 1000 calories of Big Mac - and who wouldn't rather eat a Big Mac? And the same with hiking. 5 hours of hiking over tough mountains and rocks was the same as 5 hours walking through a mall. And it was easy to justify a few bucks for a book when I hadn't spent hardly any money in a week and if I broke down my jobs into the smallest increments, I could check a job off my list after a mere five minutes work and then reschedule the rest of the job for the next day. Yeah... I was using my lists to slack off.

Not too ironically, if you've paid any attention whatsoever to the way God works, I was doing EXACTLY what the Israelites were doing for hundreds of years in Judea and Israel. God laid out a list of laws and tasks and said, "Follow these and you'll be just fine." And the Israelites followed the laws, sort of, and did all the tasks, kind of, that God laid out for them. What God wanted them to do was to embrace the laws and embrace the tasks and to do things whole heartedly for God and for themselves - what they did was the minimum whenever possible, and even less more often than not. They changed the laws and tasks to the point where they no longer came anywhere close to the ones that God had given them - and then they ignored the new laws and tasks anyway.

So what did God do? He blewed up the laws and tasks! Blewed dem Sky High!

In my case, God sent an infection to my leg. What happened? All of my lists and tasks and everything were completely thrown out the window. My schedule, my diet, everything... just completely thrown out. I found myself lying in bed and back at square one - wondering whether to start over with lists and schedules and things, or whether I should just embrace the spirit behind the lists and schedules and things and get my life changed without all the written checklists.

But for the Israelites, God did something even more devious and completely awesome. He sent Jesus. And Jesus threw out all the schedules and laws and tasks. He fulfilled them. He told the Israelites that if they really wanted to be closer to God like they'd been trying to do with all the laws and prophets, then they needed to become close to Him. Simple. Follow me and I will be the way for you. There is no law to follow, no prophet to listen to, no test, no record keeping, no lawyer that will keep you safe - just do as I've done, and you will find yourself close to God.

You know it's funny... the more things change, the more they stay the same. Time to move on and start over again. Only this time, I'm going to do it right.

The Long Roller Coaster

2011-03-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

It feels like I've been down this road before. I am weary and tired and ready to just kick my feet up and relax until I realize that I've only just started.

I finished my synopsis for my novel... again... last night. This is a process that I began on my first novel that never saw the light of day. The story was entirely too complicated to keep it all in my head, so I began by writing down a synopsis of each and every chapter - working through the novel in such a way that I knew I wouldn't encounter any roadblocks while writing it. It took me two drafts of that before I was able to start writing my novel - a process that lasted nearly five years before I gave up the whole enterprise as being flawed from the outset.

Live and learn.

Or did I? No, for my second novel I finally decided to start working on my magnum opus time travel saga. Lanz Franco, to me, was going to be a story where I crammed in every time travel idea I'd ever had and yet somehow managed to make it fun and thrilling - like Indiana Jones with time travel. The somehow managed part was the bit that made me realize I needed to write a synopsis first. Doing all those mental gymnastics of cause and effect and effect and cause that only time travel stories can really play with and still trying to keep the story about a character who is in love with his wife... well, that kept me up at nights - plugging away on a synopsis.

After nearly a year of working on the time travel story I finally figured out how to make it work - but the story was so complex that I realized I would have to spread out the complexity over three books. So, as soon as I finished one synopsis I went to work writing the next two synopsees. And finally, after a year and a half, I had all three books in synopsis form and was ready to start.

For nearly a year I toiled on the novel and it was coming along just fine... until I reached the half way point. And then, casually, I realized that I needed to figure out this character's origin story so that I knew his background a little more. So I started thinking about this character's origin and... well... I realized that his origin was WAY better than the story I was writing and that it really illuminated the entire time travel saga. SOOO, painfully, I decided to scrap the story I was working on and go back and write this character's origin story as my first book.

Of course, this meant coming up with another synopsis. And then to add complexity to my madness, I realized during the writing of this synopsis that I needed two more books to bridge the gap between the origin story and the trilogy of stories that I already had synopsized. Six books in all.

Ugh! BUT the good news is that I am finally done with the first synopsis of the first book and it doesn't need to be rewritten and it only took me about two and half months to complete.

So tomorrow, I begin writing my first novel... again... and hopefully, this time, it sticks!

P.S. I should have learned guitar and written a number one Country Song, "Mama, Don't Let Your Baby Grow Up To Be A Science Fiction Writer."

Did I get my money's worth?

2011-03-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was just watching the amazing footage from Kenya that I received from the Kenya Mission Group's latest journey. They returned to Kenya in February and resumed their relationships with our partners in Meru. Going along for the ride vicariously, I sent along my video camera to capture more footage so that we might continue telling our story through film. But after watching the footage, I couldn't help but start to think about the amazing investment this camera has been. Below is just a partial list of all the places and events where this camera has taken video...

Chicago (twice), Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, Cooperstown, Rochester, Cleveland, the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics (2002 Games), Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Washington D.C., New York, Boston, Goffstown, Salem, Orlando (twice), Boise and Challis, ID (three times), Las Vegas, Anaheim, Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, Vancouver, Victoria, Marysville, Brookville, Nairobi and Meru (twice)... and countless hikes (Yosemite, Big Basin, Castle Rock, Dipsea, Boot Jack, Mt. Diablo, Pinnacles) and other events (Sister's graduation from law school, etc...)

I guess it's safe to say that I did get my money's worth... and for a Scot, that's all I can ask.

No one is watching...

2011-03-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

I am by myself at work. There is a big tray of chocolate right across from my desk and absolutely nobody is watching. I could dash over there and have one... or two... of four. Nobody can stop me and nobody would be the wiser.

That ultimately is the problem with will-power. It is a struggle against invisible forces. The only restriction that occurs is the one in my head. I can justify that short walk a million different ways. I know. I have. And I've forgotten the number of times I've broken down and given in to those few steps of invisible restraint. It doesn't make me a better person for going over there, it doesn't make me a worse. It just means that it takes me longer to get to where I want to go. A stumble. A detour around a large rock - a large invisible rock that I just made for myself. My path becomes rockier and rockier the more failures I have. I am being bled to death by paper cuts.

So, no chocolate for me. Not now anyway. My path remains straight, my walk steady. But I see a lot of stumbling blocks in the road ahead. If only I had a lamp to light my way.

Why I do what I do

2011-02-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

The Oscars are my Super Bowl. For years, growing up, while other kids would stare in rapt awe at the World Series or Super Bowl and imagine themselves hitting that game winning home run or catching that all important touchdown, I practiced and practiced and practiced my acceptance speech for my Oscar. I was so convinced that I was going to be up there on that stage one day accepting my award that I never bothered to ask the question of what it was that I hoped I would actually receive. Accolades? Acceptance? Large monetary rewards? Self-esteem? I so accepted the knowledge that I would be there, that it was somehow a fait d'accompli, that I never actually paused and asked myself why it was so important to me.

There have been a few setbacks along the way. For one thing, I'm not nearly as talented as I once thought. Somehow I've fallen off the peak that rested above Shakespeare, Walt Disney, and George Lucas and below God as the ultimate human author and I've tumbled past most of the great writers, film makers, and story tellers to a much more attainable plateau. Reality has played a large part in my new found humbleness. But the larger part has come about because of the inevitable delay in reaching these heights - somewhere along the way, when I thought I was lost, I discovered that I was really looking for something other than the summit of human achievement. The time spent NOT winning Oscars made me realize that I never really wanted an Oscar in the first place.

I think we all want our lives to have some significance. We want to do something that changes the world for the better. And, of course, we want to be acknowledged for the things we do. This was at the core of my wanting to win an Oscar - because in telling stories I found my true calling and there was no better way of being signified as a master storyteller in this American society than in winning an Oscar, being a best-selling writer, and then opening your own theme park. Yes, I wanted all three. I wanted to be such a good writer that people would run out of words to describe how good I was. A million Oscars weren't going to be enough. No. I pretty much wanted them to retire the award when I was done.

But wishes aren't enough. Dreams aren't enough. Talent isn't even enough. There is also desire. And desire is fueled by accomplishment. I could never quite get my stories up to the level where I knew they needed to be in order to be the Greatest EVER! My desire started to flag. My talent stopped developing. My dreams remained dreams. My wishes changed into more attainable common place things.

But I never gave up. Honestly, I couldn't. I never chose to be a writer. Writing chose me. It just happened to match the way that I see the world. Like a musician can never stop hearing the world as music and the artist can never stop seeing the world as art, the writer can never stop describing the world in words and stories. And so, here I was, writing and writing and writing without any hope of ever achieving impossible goals that I'd set for myself. And that was when I started asking the big question - why, exactly, am I doing this?

Though writing is one of the most solitary art forms, it requires participation to make it complete. A writer is nothing without a reader. This symbiotic relationship forms the basis for all writing decisions - will the story I tell be met with approval? Can I entertain another human being? Can I make them laugh? Cry? Shout for joy? Think? Change the world? While I had initially hoped for accolades, what I realized was that the true thing that I was hoping to do was simply tell good stories and have people enjoy them. Period. End of sentence. Nothing so mundane as making a good product that people enjoy and embrace and that hopefully moves them or helps them or teaches them or simply makes them forget their problems for a moment. Once I realized this, my focus changed and I started working on projects where the outcome was simply to produce something that someone else could enjoy. In this change of direction, I found success.

And yes, I even had my Oscar moment. It was sitting in a church social hall with about forty other people while my movie played on a screen for them to enjoy. My words made them laugh. My words kept them enthralled. My acting drove them to reach for the barf bags - or laugh as hard as I did when I first saw something so horribly awful. That was my Oscar moment. That was my highest accolade.

I will achieve another milestone this year. I wrote a play. Somewhat. It is a dramatic retelling of the Last Supper. My church will be performing it on Palm Sunday. We start rehearsals in a week. I am like a kid in a candy store waiting to hear others perform my words. I don't care how they do it (that's why I'd be a terrible director). I just want to hear my words move others. If it's good, so much the better. But just hearing the words spoken out load will be all the accolade I ask for. That is why I do what I do.

Notes from the Road - Day Two - Karibu Nairobi

2011-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Back in the day we flew Lufthansa to Europe and back and I got used to a type of air travel that I’ve not experienced since. I’m crammed into my window seat next to a nice German couple no doubt heading off to Safari. Good for them. Africa needs tourism. Sitting in the row in front of me is a young man heading off on a six month stint with Doctors Without Borders. Outstanding. Half of the 400+ people on this plane are missionaries of one sort or the other. Are the do-gooders descending en mass? The plane is full. The service is excellent. I don’t think it’s providence. KLM restores my faith in flying.

Shortly after take off we were handed pretzels and I was not impressed until I realized that they were earphones for our personal seat units. These wonderful devices allow 400+ passengers to watch 400+ individual programs. I saw The Hangover and about 3/4^ths of Star Trek. What I really wanted to see was Europe, The Med, and Africa from my window seat, but the glare from the window kept the German couple from seeing their TV screens – so a once in a lifetime view was replaced with mindless Hollywood entertainment.

We were served dinner. It was a salad and cheese and crackers and a dinner roll with butter and a crème puff pastry dessert with some sort of penne pasta dish as the main course. Wine was served with the meal at no extra charge.

And then the long hours of the flight. I was able to look down over Libya as they served the meal. At last, Africa from the air. Vast empty stretches of desert with long straight caravan lines running from one oasis to the next. Little puffy clouds hovered over it all giving the countryside the look of a Cheetah’s skin. But the window closed, and I tried to close my eyes as I passed the 24 hour point of the journey. I wasn’t able to find a comfortable position, even to shut my eyes. My legs were cramping up and I just wanted off that plane.

Thankfully the ice cream arrived just after that. It was just enough. I put on Star Trek then to distract me for the last three hours of the flight. Right before it ended, they served some sort of breakfast thingy and I decided that I wasn’t hungry. I’d had enough for now.

We landed and taxied to the terminal and there at the end of the jetway was Silas Muriuki and his “bodyguard”, Martin. Martin lead us through customs and into baggage claim. As soon as I was through customs he gave me a hug and said, “Jambo! Karibu Nairobi,” which means, Hello, Welcome to Nairobi. Martin is one of those nice guys, flash of a smile, that would look good equally on the dance floor or in the middle of a riot. About three months before our arrival, Silas and Martin drove into the middle of just such a riot – between enraged taxi drivers and embattled police. I can see Silas’s fearlessness. He is a true believer. And with Martin at his side, he might be invincible.

After getting most of our luggage and managing to cram it into two or three vehicles, we finally left the airport and took a bewildering tour through the nighttime streets of Nairobi. Picture the traffic of New York in a quaint New England town. It was bedlam at 10pm.

Two things of note here. The police carry fully automatic machine guns. I saw at least one AK-47. Second, their word is law. They pulled us over at one of the many neighborhood checkpoints and I was sure that bribes were going to be asked. But once again, Martin to the rescue, and we took off without so much as a hiccup. This is an unfortunate truth about this country and it helps to keep everything else in perspective.

At last, the Methodist Guest House and a rather nice, if spartan, room. It’s stifling hot. We go to a late dinner. A really delicious soup and potatoes and various Nyomi Choma meats – lots of chicken and beef. Rice. My appetite has returned and I nosh. But then its off to bed – finally – after 30+ hours awake.

Notes From The Road - One Year Ago Today

2011-02-03T10:04:00.001-08:00

Who flies first class to Minneapolis? No, really. I started this journey with a somewhat facetious question. Our flight from SFO to Minn. Departs at 6:25am. It is half full. And yet, as we board, we walk right past an entirely full first class section. In this day and age of so many economic challenges, first class travel seems like such a wasteful luxury. These people have not only thrown away the extra money on first class, they’ve done so on first class tickets to Minneapolis. Nothing against this great Minnesota city, but that’s a little like taking the Rolls Royce to go buy groceries. It is a fitting indictment of everything I find wrong with America right now.

That’s America – with a Capital A – as in the country, the culture, and not its people or its spirit or its way. America is lost. We have been seduced by greed and wealth and ignorance. We have come to accept propaganda as truth. We have bought into the notion that we are deserving of our place in history as the World’s masters. Such hubris has always lead to destruction. The blood of patriots will have to be spilled again, I think, to refresh this tree of liberty.

But I think there is nothing wrong with America that Americans can’t fix. We’ve been in some pretty tough scrapes before but our love for truth, equity, and decency has always won out in the end. We will recover. We always do.

Staring out over a field of vast clouds, 36,000 feet in the air, and I can’t help but thinking that could be Africa down there. It hits me then. I’m going to Africa.

Africa – the legendary place of so much adventure. It’s very thought conjures up images of crocodile infested waters, strange and wondrous creatures, vast untamed wilderness, cultures ancient and exotic. It looks different and smells different and sounds different. It is half way around the world from me in every way imaginable. And I’m going there. I’m walking there. I’m sleeping there. I’m eating there. This isn’t a snippet of Africa like something out of Animal Kingdom. This is the full fledged experience.

In Minnesota, it is snowing and 30 degrees out. I manage to find an Arby’s for lunch and have a Bleu Cheese and Roast Beef sandwich. I don’t know when I’ll get another American meal. Before I know it, we’re boarding our flight to Amsterdam. There is a large group of college kids from Saskatchewan here heading to Nairobi. They take up the three rows in front of me. But sparingly, I’m once again next to no one. Breathing room is so necessary. For dinner, they serve some sort of veggie pasta dish. It is filling if not exactly thrilling.

Our individual TV sets go out, but that’s fine. My brain is starting to fog over with fatigue. I try to read one of the books I brought with me. But I don’t get very far. As the flight nears its end they serve us some sort of breakfast croissant thingy. It’s barely edible, but it does keep the hunger pangs away.

Tomorrow

2011-02-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Just to let you all know, tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the day I left for Kenya. So in honor of this auspicious event and as a tribute to the group that flies out of here tomorrow to return to Kenya this year, I will be posting my journal entries from my Trip Journal during the course of the next three weeks. Of course, I never finished writing everything. I think I managed about seven or eight days of journal. But so many things happened in those first eight days, you'll have to forgive me if I ran out of time to write them all. I was too busy living them.

Anyway, come back tomorrow and relive the experience... starting with a 25+ hour plane trip.

Broken

2011-01-11T14:08:00.000-08:00

So what sort of radical revelation is it this time, you wonder. How about something that startled me way more than it will startle you. I'm broken.

No, not in a dysfunctional way - though aren't we all dysfunctional in some way - but in the way that is to be expected. I've come to realize that the hardest part I've had in embracing the gospel and the good news is the part that tells me to be perfect and yet expects me to fail. How can sin be allowed? Its wrong. It's evil. And yet, it's so human. We do it every single day. And then we try to pretend that we don't even knowing that God already knows us and can see us. We are that classic cartoon character who breaks the china lamp and then puts the pieces back on the mantle in the hopes that nobody will notice. It's funny because it's true. We are all broken in a society that tells us that we shouldn't be. I am broken.

That was the big revelation. The true sin, the true stumbling block in my relationship with God and with everyone else, was trying to be something I wasn't. I was trying to say that I was fixed, that I was whole, that I had... maybe not all the answers, but certainly some of them. I'm together. I'm hip. I'm with it. I may not be perfect, but I'm certainly better off than most. If you could see my swiss cheese soul you'd realize how laughable that is. I really do Con No One! They can all see my holes. But I've got some bad news for you sunshine, I can see your holes too. We are ALL broken. And I'm one of us - broken like the rest.

So, shaking your head right now, you're thinking, "Duh!" You knew that. You knew you weren't perfect. You knew you weren't flawless. But maybe, perhaps, you thought you were still better off than others. Ah... there's the rub. There is No Better Off. We are all broken and there is No Way to fix ourselves. Think about it... Jesus didn't come here to fix the one's who weren't broken. He came here to heal the sick, the impure, the desperate, the lonely, the fallen, the broken. He didn't even talk to those people who thought they were doing just fine, thanks. Those people, the one's who thought they were fixed, were just blind to their own nature. You can't be put back together again if you're not willing to see that you're broken in the first place. Paul called himself the Worst Of All Sinners. He embraced his brokenness. He understood what power it gave him, what true vision of the world.

I've realized that from my lofty heights as one of the unbroken I was seeing the world as a place that I could fix or try to help. This was the LOG in my eye. It made me blind to my own shortcomings. Even as I went to Kenya, I think I went there with the idea that I was going to help them. I didn't know how or what I'd do, but I was certain that God was sending me there to help those people in their brokenness. They were poor, destitute, miserable, etc... Except that I was completely 100% wrong. Their living conditions were poor, destitute, miserable to be certain. But the people were anything but. They were joyful and full of God's love. They weren't any more or less broken than anyone else, but they understood that and embraced it and embraced God because of it. I went there to help them, but instead I found myself being helped. It was I who was transformed. Them... not so much.

My vision of the world and of my place in it has changed dramatically. I am broken. I am unable to do anything without God's help. I can kid myself into thinking otherwise, but there is no point in arguing it. I have accomplished nothing that God did not want me to accomplish. And I have failed to accomplish much that He wished I had. Now that I finally see the log in my eye, perhaps I will accomplish more in the future - God-willing.

I'm sure that in the future I will speak to this more. My communication skills aren't up to the task of trying to convey the depth of thought and feeling that I've been experiencing lately. Its far better to just keep my mouth shut and my fingers silent and just enjoy the truth for what it is than to try to convey that truth and failing miserably. Someday I hope you'll all reach the point of your journey where you encounter this same truth. It's not far ahead, just a little higher up the mountain. Keep climbing.

Out of the Loop

2010-12-30T13:38:00.000-08:00

Sorry. Been basically MIA for about three weeks now. I'm back and will post more regularly in 2011.

Embarkation

2010-12-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

I left this morning for a new kingdom. It is the same journey I take every day. And though I never come back to the same place I began, I find that I get no closer to my final destination either. I am starting to suspect that the journey is, in fact, the destination.

Kenya believe there's more?

2010-11-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

Kenya say this play on words is getting old? I knew you could... ;)

I'd like to continue repeating some of the stories that I heard from Merci Chidi in Kenya about the foundation of Ripples International - her organization which was started with a desire to help those suffering from AIDS. Some of what I'm about to repeat is speculation and some is from remembered conversations from almost a year ago. So if there are any mistakes in facts, they are all mine.

After getting Ripples underway by concentrating on building an organization that helped people get free testing for AIDS and then help and support for those with AIDS (with generous help from USAID and other organizations) Merci became aware of a growing need for a infant rescue center for abandoned babies. Not having funding for this project, she decided to do what so many others have done - she decided to sell stuff on the internet. Her idea was to make crafts in Kenya and send them to America where someone would sell them on the internet. All proceeds would go to the Infant New Start Center. She did some research and found a connection in Minnesota (I believe). Since she was flying to the US to report to USAID anyway, she decided to take a detour to Minnesota to make sure that this internet company was on the up and up.

As she flew, she met a lady who was from Wisconsin and who was intrigued by the work she was doing. She told Merci that if she was ever in the Racine area, to come look her and her church up. Merci arrived in Minnesota and went to visit the internet store and discovered that it was just a fly by night operation. The owner, who was completely gracious, told her that he doubted her plan would work. She was now stuck in Minnesota with a few days to kill before heading to Washington, so she decided to call this lady she'd met on the plane. Well, one thing led to another, and before she knew it this woman's husband was her biggest donor (and owner of several TV stations in the Wisconsin market). She'd gone to Minnesota to land a small internet company and she ended up with her biggest donor in Wisconsin (where the Board of Directors are now located, by the way).

The following year, as Merci was preparing to head to the US for more discussions with her various partners, she was confronted by her staff. They had been noticing that a lot of young women were coming in for AIDS screenings after having been victims of rape and incest. Not only was this heartbreaking to her staff and Merci, but it was felt that they ought to do something about it. Merci, however, knew that there was no money in the budget for such a project, so she informed her staff to collect the documentation and to pray for some divine help.

When she got to the US, she discovered that her Wisconsin donor's wife had prepared for Merci to give a talk about her organization to some influential politicians and their wives. Right before the meeting, Merci's staff sent her all the documentation they had accumulated about the young girls. Merci was rather upset by the documents and prayed to God for some help. She doesn't remember the talk going all that well because she was distracted by thoughts of the other thing.

The next day, as she was sitting in the hotel's restaurant having breakfast, this middle aged woman walked up to her and introduced herself saying that she had been at the talk the day before and that she wanted to help. Then she handed Merci an envelope and walked away. Merci, thinking the envelope to contain some sort of small donation, finished her breakfast and then got ready to leave for the day. At a stopping point, she decided to open the envelope.

It was a check for $20,000 US Dollars - more than enough to start a program for young raped and abused women. Merci thanked God for His intervention and then called the woman to thank her and tell her what the money was going to be used for.

When she was done speaking, there was silence on the other end. For a second, Merci thought she had somehow offended the woman, thinking that perhaps this woman wanted the money to go to AIDS care or something. But then she heard the woman on the other end sobbing.

This woman had been a victim of rape and incest when she was a child. She had never told anyone and had lived with the stigma all these years, just having confronted it within the last year. She had been looking for someway to reach out to other people who had been injured and, after having prayed to God, she heard Merci talk and decided to give money to help in Kenya. She was so overcome with emotion, the woman told Merci to start up the project and send her all the bills - she would pay for everything.

I can honestly tell you that after hearing stories like this from Merci and many others in Kenya, I knew that God was not only actively at work there, but that people's reliance on Him in their lives was making profound impacts. If there had been any lingering doubt in the reality of God before going to Kenya, they were gone by the time I left. And what I especially found to be profound in its impact was the matter-of-fact nature of God's working in people's lives. These people acted and spoke as if God was just around the corner - not some far off and nebulous cosmic figure that you had to struggle to think existed. His existence and intervention in people's lives was taken for granted - not something that had to be proven to anyone. I struggle for such a connection to God - though my connection to Him has been greatly bolstered.

Tomorrow, come back for a big announcement!

Kenya say Inspirational?

2010-11-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

I knew you could...

This weekend, we were visited by one of our Kenya partners, Mercy Chidi, who is in North America for a conference and also to visit her charities various sponsors - including Lakeside. On Sunday, at church, she shared the following story. Any mistakes in the retelling are due to my faulty memory...

After growing up in Isiolo (a town about an hour north of Meru), Mercy went to University in Nairobi. After graduating from University with a degree in Social Work, she took a job in Nairobi, got married, settled down and had kids. She was living a very normal life. But then, one day, everything changed.

Her best friend was dying from HIV/AIDS. For months on end, she would spend every weekend driving from Nairobi to Isiolo (about 8 hours) to tend to her friends health. At the time (about ten years ago) there was a huge stigma against AIDS. If you had it or were dying from it, you told no one. So Mercy was her only friend that even knew she was dying. She tended to her care as best she could, but, of course, AIDS is still a death sentence. When she died, the stigma was so strong, her friend's parents simply told their daughter's friends and community that she had emigrated to the United States rather than admit that she had died of AIDS. Mercy was heartbroken at the loss of her friend.

She turned to God in prayer and asked for some guidance because she saw how many children were affected by AIDS in Isiolo and Meru and she wanted to do something about it - maybe something to do with prevention or education. God told her to move back to Isiolo. To do so, she would have to uproot her family, quit her job, and force her husband to leave his well-paying UN job. But God told her what to do, so she did it. She moved her family to Isiolo and began to work with AIDS education and treatment.

The organization she created from scratch at the behest of God now serves over 12,000 children and just recently opened the first Pediatric hospital in all of central Kenya.

I can tell more inspirational stories... and I will... but the real inspirational part of this story was how normal and human and Christian this woman is. She laments the fact that because her organization has grown so big, she can no longer go to the local hospital and visit the children in the Children's Ward. She was telling us about confronting the heirarchy in her church by being seen with a known drinker at a bar who had been so excited by Christ until the church had discovered her secret and rejected her. Every time I get a chance to spend time with her, I come away even more inspired than I was before.

More to come tomorrow...

The More Things Change...

2010-11-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Nope. Not gonna comment on the Election. Or the World Series. Just not going to happen.

Instead, I want to talk about my new blog, The More Things Change, and invite you all to jump aboard now. This is going to be a daily serial (or as near a daily serial as I can manage with my busy schedule) that I've been hemming and hawing over for a while now. Mostly, I just miss writing a cliff-hangerish kind of story that's fun and silly and non-thought provoking.

At it's heart is a story of one nuclear family, and particularly it's protagonist and narrator, Taylor, who has a twin sister named Jess. As is typical of any TAC story, there is nothing typical about Taylor or his family - as he's about to find out. Beyond that, I don't know where the story will go. I have ideas. I'll take them as I come to them. Short, sweet, cliff-hangerish episodes. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Here's the link... I hope...

From ECBN - East Coast Bias News

2010-11-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

11/02/10

Boy, the Texas Rangers really have their work cut out for them now. Down 4-1 in the best of seven series, they not only have to win the last two, but convince the commissioner that the first game shouldn't count. However, as these Texas Rangers beat the Yankees, anything is possible for them.

Last night, once again, the Texas Rangers defeated themselves with a lack of hitting and above the fence defense. They didn't exercise plate control, swinging at pitches that they clearly couldn't hit, and not swinging at ones that they probably could have hit had they just swung. Also, on one particular play where the wind aided a pop-up by Edgar Renteria to clear the fences, they were not in a position to leap above the fence and catch the ball. However, these slight mental errors by the Texas Rangers are mere aberrations on what will otherwise be a glorious comeback for their first ever World Series win over that other team.

Any other outcome is inconceivable.

The Milquetoast Job - A Tale of Two Legs

2010-10-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

I love the story of Job because its a story that continues to play out day after day, year after year for all eternity. But I was really thinking about how much my life resembles this story of a guy who had it all but then had tragedy strike him and all the time that he is suffering, his friends continue to offer him advice. Only my version is decidedly less than earth shaking in its impact.

When I returned from Kenya, full of vim and vigor, I was ready to go out and conquer the world. This time I was really going to make a difference - hike, walk, whatever it took to lose weight. I even made plans to run the Bay to Breakers. I had a plan. I started to walk. I was ready to shed those pounds.

Three weeks later, my knee hurting a little from all the walking I'd been doing, I started on a particularly long and hard hike, figuring that I would "walk off" that nagging pain and feel better after the fact. I did walk off the pain, only to have it return as a crippling pain later in the hike. By the time I got home that night, I was in real pain and could barely walk.

Two days later, I went to the Emergency Room because I was in severe agony. No amount of icing or ibuprofen was helping. The Emergency Room doctor jabbed my knee with a needle to lessen the swelling (it didn't, but that's neither here nor there) and then took me aside. "You know," he said cooly, "You really ought to lose some weight. That's why you're having knee problems." Sitting on my ash heap at the time, I calmly explained that I'd just finished hiking eight miles on a bum knee to try doing exactly that. "I'm just saying," the doctor added.

Eventually, I got my knee swelling down though I continued to hobble. All the time I was metaphorically kicking myself for damaging my knee. As soon as I felt myself return to 98% of recovered, I hobbled out and started walking again. Bang! Out went the other knee.

As I now hobbled on the other knee, friends and family members continued to offer constructive advice, "You should take it easy. You keep damaging yourself. Let your legs heal, first." So I did. I let my legs heal. Long after they were healed, I had a relapse - and I hadn't been exercising at all. Then I healed my relapse, let my long period of sitting go on even longer, then started walking again - slowly. Hobbling. Eventually, after several weeks, I was actually able to hobble about a mile.

I drove to Vegas. No problems. I wandered up and down the Vegas Strip. No problems. I drove back home. No problems. YET, I still did not consider myself healed.

Finally, after a couple more weeks of walking normally, including one week where I walked more than I had since returning from Kenya, I finally made plans to go for another hike.

Then I twisted my ankle. Everyone saw me hobbling again and assumed it my knee - assumed that I had reinjured it. I explained that it was my ankle - a temporary setback. I hobbled for most of the last two weeks - taking it easy.

Yesterday, I threw caution to the wind for a good cause. I walked a little over five miles in a rain storm to raise money for Crop Walk. My legs, though stiff, did not fail. My ankle felt fine. I did develop a shin splint, but those go away relatively quickly (in fact, I can't even feel it now). I walked further than I'd walked since that day I blew out of my knee.

And when I reported the news to my Dad, he said, "See... all you needed was a little exercise."

I love the absurdity of this whole situation and try not to assign any cosmic significance to it other than the things that I thought before I started the whole process - I'm getting older and I need to lose some weight. The commentary has been, without a doubt, the most enjoyable part of it - like a Greek Chorus that is lagging behind the narrative by about three acts. I think when it comes to our health, human beings are at our most hypocritical. We ignore our own aches and pains while at the same time diagnosing dire ailments for anyone who dares to mention, or who is unable to hide, their own infirmities. I'm frankly surprised we don't have more hypochondriacs out there. It is, of course, the physical manifestation of the parable of the man trying to remove the splinter in his friend's eye while he has a log in his own eye. It is rather remarkable how the more the world changes, the more human beings remain the same.

As a final addendum to this lengthy discourse, I'm planning to hike again this Saturday - assuming I can make it through the week without something else falling off. My goal of losing weight, though many times thwarted, has never changed.

Choke on the bile of Free Speech

2010-10-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

A little background: My sister was quoted in an article on the down-turned economy. She is a lawyer who has been laid off due to the lack of law work out there. As she was just getting her feet underneath her as a lawyer, the timing was rather unfortunate. Anyway, this article was posted at a reputable newspaper site and has since become a magnet for the kinds of vicious and scathing comments that are reprinted below.

The most recent iteration of these comments came when a Blog for Temp Law Clerks reprinted the article. I read the comments and was really incensed. I wanted to complain and followed the link on the blog that said, "Report this blog."

Apparently, these comments are not regulated at all on the internet. In trying to make a complaint to Blogger, I received a message that basically said - We aren't liable, so we don't care.

I'd probably be mistaken to say that any air of civility this country once had has been completely eroded - I'm not entirely sure we ever had civility to begin with. Maybe we were just better hiding our lack of it in the pre-internet age. One thing I am certain of, these sorts of comments, left festering for all time on the internet for anyone to read, are destroying any chance of civil discourse. If someone can say some of these things without any worry of repurcussions, then why should any sort of commentary be banned? Why can't I say the N word? Or the F word? Or tell people what I think in the foulest, basest dialog imaginable?

Of course, I won't use that language - not because I can't, but because I was taught better. And that's my point. What are we teaching future generations if we won't clean up our commentary now? If any sort of commentary is allowed now, then what sort of restrictions on commentary will be followed in the future? The one undeniable fact of history is that the pendulum swings both ways. If we are allowed to say whatever we feel like now and we push the envelope far to the left, then eventually that pendulum will swing back the other way and our freedoms will be willfully repressed in the other direction - (Think 1950's to 1960's as a comparison). We need to address this now before it gets out of control.

Here is an example of the stuff people are saying: Keep in mind that this comes from a blog for Lawyers (those eloquent speakers and maintainers of civility and law).

Anonymous said...: She looks like a slob. She looks like the perfect candidate for S&C.; 10:33 PM
Anonymous said...: True dat 10:33. At least lay off the potatoe chips and go running or something.; 10:44 PM
Anonymous said...: Not as uncommon as you may think. I know several succesful female attorneys (some fairly attractive) who support lazy, stay at home freeloading man bitches. If only I could find a succesful woman to support me. To hell with pride.; 10:52 PM

Anonymous said...: She's got the right look for a gestapo type staff attorney.; 11:13 PM
Anonymous said...: She would fit right in with the middle-aged staff attorney cows like Lucy Cow and sloppy Big Mamma.; 11:17 PM
Anonymous said...: Agree. Just what biglaw looks for in a staff attorney. Ugly, fat, and trapped in the position for monetary reasons. All she needs is the nasty, sadistic attitude.

Anonymous said...: I too have a hard time believing the the fat, dopey looking white broad actually made $100K in law. Not attractive enough. And men, with cunty women & their homo allies taking your jobs, their is no shame in being a daddy day care on their dime. Its about time they do the lifting. Its what they get when the get what they hoped for.....the total emasculation & N-wordization of the straight male.

Anonymous said...: I do not mock..I simply state truths in the real world. It is very unlikely that the subject woman was making $100K in any real law substantive job. But I will grant you that she may have done so in doc review in San Fran where labor laws are more strictly enforced. They make them pay good OT over there unlike in NYC. Perhaps she was a staff attorney. Whatver the case may be, she, and most other legal lemmings are now toast. I will say that I do think that such folk who are in such blatantly tenous and bullshit 'professions' such as law, are being foolishly irresponsible when they pork up kids on purpose or by mistake. Many lawyers have no healthcare or benefits & can't hold a job regardless of whether its their fault or the game's fault. How they could be so stupid as to put innocent children into the equasion is beyond me. The moral of the story is is that such a woman should have been able to take a gander at the mirror and known that she was not cut out for law.; 1:29 PM
Anonymous said...: Everyone keep your hands off Big Mamma's cookies!; 1:44 PM

Anonymous said...: To the dingbat who posted at 1;45....The poster above who states "that's what you get for going to a tier III school" knows the deal.She went to Golden Gate. Most likely not much 'intellect' or great chance of a late life blossoming there. I would take you up on your bet. She is toast. I would be shocked if she went to anything cornell. She appears to have gone to Hormell & eaten too much spam.Why were you so shocked by the fat folk you saw at Cravath? Why so 'horrified'? Because you, like most of law made a scathing judgment. Your profile of me is weak at best. I have been on the fringes of biglaw but am mostly a TT toileteer. Big gap between LS & UG. No hep from me folks ever. Not in HS, UG or LS. I am a guy and clearly you are just another PC, lala land living in, head in the sand dingbat broad. If she had the kids before law school then she is just another victim of the TTT law school scam. She got taken. If the kids came while in or after law scam the she is an irresponsible, deluded & possibly arrongant fool.
Anonymous said...: Wow.That last post was deep. Very much confirmation of the la la land dreamworld mentality that many a dumb biotch displays. 'Broad' was my attempt at politeness. Dumb biotch is definitely way more appropriate. Ratings are established by our vile, evil, classist & racist overlords to discriminate and marginalize those who are not they. Ratings...from the LSAT on greatly affect most non elite folks' lives & career. They most often preclude la di da surprises from happpening for the regular joe or decent folk in general. I would love to be as priviledged as you to have smoked whatever Alice in wonderland bullshit that you smoked. Let me know when your'e coming back to visit the real world.
Anonymous said...: $100K? MAybe! Fat and unattractive people have a tendency to be the worst supervisors. Hell mgnt loves them. They can be the evil twin of the boss. They do all his shit. But, KARMA works. They are the first shit canned and the cute ones are kept in the end.

The Lies We Swallow

2010-10-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

We're told lies by our government and by Wall Street all the time and all we can do is shrug our shoulders and hope that someone will come along and change things. But it doesn't help when people will actually defend these lies as truth. I want to put two of these lies to rest right now.

During the gas price surge from the late 1990's all the way until the collapse of markets in 2008, the big lie from the oil companies was that there was always a reason for the gas prices to rise. Prior to the late 1990's there was a natural ebb and flow to gas prices, but, in general, they remained pretty stable - fluctuating, on average, about 25 to 50 cents a year. Starting in the late 1990's however, whenever the price inched upwards, it never came back down. Once gas crested $3.00 a gallon, the public started to take notice, and that was when the lying began. We were given every excuse under the sun - oil refinery fires, hurricanes, solar activity, war, famine, you name it. If something bad happened somewhere, it was a cause for gas prices to rise. Though I'm no economist, it was obvious that the people raising gas prices were looking for any excuse to justify their greed.

When the whole economy came crashing down shortly after gas prices reached $4.50 a a gallon, gas prices fell dramatically - and then rebounded slightly until they reached the $3.00 a gallon (CA price) average that they've been at since 2008. Two years... no huge increases despite dozens of natural disasters, oil refinery fires, etc... All of those things that previously caused the price of gas to jump 25 cents in one day suddenly have no effect on the price of gasoline - thus refuting, once and for all, that these things had any effect on gas prices in the past.

In much the same way, I think we can look at the incredible bonuses paid on Wall Street (a record amount this year) and really quell anymore talk of Trickle Down Economics. Again, I'm no economist, but it seems that the more money paid to Wall Street execs, the less money there has been on Main Street. There is no such thing as trickle down economics. It's a complete BS economic theory. So anyone still spouting off about giving more money to the rich so that that money can then stimulate the economy for the poor should just have their heads examined.

Now, I'm not talking about tax breaks for companies to hire employees or help for small businesses to pay health care costs or things of that nature. I'm talking about some whacked notion that we should give tax breaks to the wealthiest few because, somehow, the money saved by these few people will then trickle down to the rest of us in the form of jobs and other subsidies. It's just not going to happen. It never has. And it never will.

Historically, empires have sprung out of countries that recognized the wealth that came from the Middle Class (Don't believe me? Then ask yourself how the Dutch became a world power). It's not all that hard to understand why. If you put wealth into the hands of the wealthy few, they will defend it and not let it out of their sight. But the middle class aren't as controlling. They will spend most of that money to maintain their lifestyle and what they don't spend they can be enticed into giving back to the government in the form of taxes and fees to pay for the things that everyone needs (like roads and clean water). All fiscal policy should be set to increase the middle class and control the excesses of the rich. That's just good economic policy. Trickle Down Economics is not only a lie, but its bad economic policy.

Okay, enough real world stuff now... back to fantasy... have a good day!

Missed opportunities...

2010-10-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

Our society seems so intent on punishing wrong doers that we sometimes mistake the forest for the trees and miss opportunities to correct problems before they occur.

I read with sadness the story of the young man who chose suicide after being cyber bullied at Rutgers recently. This young man was so clearly distraught about the bullying behavior of others that he chose to jump from the George Washington Bridge to his death.

Since then, others have come forward with other stories of cyberbullying and other forms of bullying that have caused young people to do horrible things - suicide, etc... While it is sad to hear of such behavior, it is nothing new. Technology might have made it more widespread (to those who care to look for those things), but the anti-social attitudes represented by bullying teens are well-documented and rarely punished.

Had we Americans reacted to stop bullying after its most shocking incident, we might not have been in this situation right now. But we didn't. Instead, we looked upon the two young men who were bullied and villified them for their reactions to their incessant hazing (and rightfully so) without also addressing the people who bullied them.

I'm talking, of course, about Columbine. Lost in all the discussion about the evil actions of two disgruntled teenagers was the fact that these kids had been hazed and bullied by many of the people on their "hit" list. Instead of going to the nearest bridge and leaping to their deaths and a tragic suicide, they reacted to their bullying by buying guns, making bombs, and going after the people who had bullied them and a community of students that had done nothing to prevent the bullying from occurring.

I'm not justifying their reactions - far from it. I think they were completely wrong and totally evil in what they did. But I can also see how in their own eyes, they were justified in their response.

Some people who are bullied simply take it. They are miserable and depressed, but they don't fight back. Some people complain and are usually ignored or given the old, "boys will be boys" speech. But a few others fight back and stand up for themselves and for others who have been bullied. The longer and harder they were bullied, the more vicious the response can be.

In Jr. High, I was bullied (who wasn't really?) My response, most of the time, was to try and ignore it. But one time, the bullies crossed the line. The squirted mustard in my Dad's baseball glove. I walked over to where they were playing handball, waited patiently for the ball to come to me, and then I tossed the ball as far away as I could throw it. The bullies were ticked. They couldn't believe that I had fought back. They complained to the school dean. I told the dean what had happened and showed him the glove with the mustard in it and all he did was basically call it even. (Hardly...)

As a corollary to this, a friend of mine was also a frequent target of bullies. One day after school he came up to me and told me that he had gotten even. What I didn't know was that he had beaten a boy so severely that he had ended up in the hospital. Since it had been a mutual fight (though one sided) the only action taken was that my friend was suspended from school. But this was a much more severe response to bullying.

I am happy that people are finally talking about bullying. With the internet, such behavior can now have very serious and real world long term effects and so perhaps it has become time to end this type of behavior for all time. But it seems to me that with bullying as the main cause behind the most horrific school shooting ever, we probably should have looked at the real world consequences of such behavior back then. Either way, bullying should end now and its up to the parents and teachers to see that this kind of behavior becomes a thing of the past.

Banned Books Week

2010-09-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading with some interest the list of books that have been most likely to be banned. Harry Potter topped the list and the rest of the list included some pretty similar pop-cultural icons - hardly the sort of insidious cultural damage that I was expecting. Apparently, the types of books most people try to ban these days shows a clear lack of imagination on the part of the banning public. There are some truly horrid books out there that nobody is reading, much less banning. Our banning public needs to get out and read more.

I've read Harry Potter. It contains elements of witchcraft and dark magic. These things are warned about in the Bible as being bad. Apparently, the worry is that children reading these books, and being exposed to their teachings and glorifications of this lifestyle, would then become witches and warlocks as well - thus completely subverting Christianity and bringing about the end times (which are coming, no matter what, when we least expect it).

I'm currently reading a book from Oprah's book club called, "Say You're One Of Them" It is a collection of short stories by an African writer that, while fictional, are based on real-life horrors in Africa. The story I'm currently reading is about an uncle who agrees to sell his niece and nephew into the international sex trade in exchange for a new motorcycle. Hah, Magic and Witchcraft! Take that! I'll see your occult and raise you pedophilia and slavery! Can you imagine the outcry parents would have if their kids were asked to read this book in school? And yet, nobody is trying to ban this book.

I think it's clear that the people who wish to ban books are clearly not the best read people out there. If instead of fighting their ire by seriously considering their ill-formed requests, we simply agreed and replaced the Harry Potter books of the world with the Say You're One Of Them books of the world, I'm guessing that the banning public would demand Harry Potter back on the shelves and this nonsense would be over.

So next time you hear a parent ranting and raving about a particular book with bad words, inappropriate scenes, or some other mularkey, agree with them and suggest that the bookstore/library replace the offending book with a copy of Mein Kampf or some other such work. Quite frankly, it's about time we raised the literary level of our banned books.

The Heart of Admonishment

2010-09-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump...

I was lying on my bed. It was hot. Was that the beating of the fan blades? Or a Huey come to take me back to 'Nam? Did it matter? I was still beached. And bored.

They came with an indecent proposal. Seems one of their own - a Colonel Lie - was missing somewhere in the jungle at a place approximately one mile from the beach. He hadn't been seen in months and nobody had heard from him either. They asked me to take a boat up there, to fight my way to him, and to bring him back.

Or, if I couldn't bring him back, I was to do something drastic... replace his lawn, perhaps. Co-coach T-Ball with him. I could only imagine the horror.

I guess some people really miss his homilies. Me? I'd rather sit here on this bed listening to the drone of my fan. Cause it's hot. And that's how I roll...

My First New Temptation

2010-09-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

My behavior this weekend was boorish. There's a certain appeal every once in a while to cast off that respectable you that you've spent years developing in order to wallow in that old neanderthal self of your college years. The only thing is, I never really had any college years. By the time I was in college, I was already too old and too mature for the kind of college years that most people refer to as THE COLLEGE YEARS. So my approximation of my college years filled with boozing, partying, gambling, lascivious behavior, and other outrageous stunts, was mostly reduced to a kind of crude humor not normally allowed outside a locker room - and it got old in my mind really fast. I only maintained the pretense because nobody goes to Vegas to discuss theology, politics, or the complexities of life. For every moment when Shakespeare was in my mind, I masked it well with some half-baked discussion of some girl's anatomy and had another beer.

Las Vegas style temptation no longer has any appeal to me. Gambling (or should I call it throwing money away) is no longer fun. Drinking lost its appeal years ago. I'm too old to wander around picking up chicks. And all that drunken frat boy stuff stopped being fun after about one semester in college.

As I sat inside the Paris casino waiting for a friend, I watched all the women go by, dressed up for a night on the town, no two alike, no one really having "fun", and it occurred to me that I'd much rather spend time doing something real. Vegas suddenly seemed so artificial to me - a fantasy where the curtains were rolled back and the tiny wizard had been revealed.

Though I may have overdone it before - Kenya, Mississippi, Church, etc... - prompting a need to escape to Vegas for some counter-programming, the rightness of my path became crystal clear to me this weekend. There is a true power and a true desire for real relationships and real fun and real celebration that is other-centered. There is more fulfillment in a quiet moment of real laughter or real tears than in 10,000 nights of the artificial revelry of Las Vegas. I began to see the temptation such a REAL life could hold.

So God has dangled the temptation in front of me - to follow Him without reservation and to leave the glittery world behind. The question is, will I yield? Or will I remain boorish in some vain attempt to stay part of a world I no longer feel any connection to?

Aw heck... I give up. I'm trading in Vegas for a real life.

The Worst Idea For A Romantic Comedy...

2010-09-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

Upon leaving the Navy, I was all set to get my life started. I returned to my San Francisco home (now in Pacifica) and my fiancee and got ready to start college and get a job. Shortly after arriving home, I moved into an apartment with my good friend and fellow Navy buddy, Jay.

During the next six months, I had the sorts of adventures and life-changing moments that you see in hundreds of coming-of-age college type movies. Parties, women, crappy jobs, college, sports, and all sorts of crazy exploits surrounded me and my eyes were definitely open and my brain was definitely recording.

At the end of these six months, however, my fiancee dumped me and I was so heartbroken that I decided I'd rather live at home and spend money on a car rather than rent. As it turned out, my friends parents wanted to move back from New Hampshire - so they simply reoccupied the apartment that they had left for my friend and I.

It wasn't until a few years later, however, that I started looking back on this period with a sort of nostalgia. The heartache was still there, but the other events that happened during those six months were almost the stuff of legend. Certainly, I thought, they would be good fodder for a movie script. I began developing this idea for an autobiographical story that would be this romantic comedy.

Except that in real life, I was dumped. And miserable. Mixed feelings about this period aside, I began to play with ideas for a story.

And play.

And play.

And play.

A few years passed (Okay, more than ten, less than twenty... so far) and I started back to film school. After a rather successful attempt at making a horrible movie, I started thinking about the subject of my next film. The idea came back to me. I still hadn't figured out how to tell a romantic comedy where the main character gets horribly dumped and spends most of the movie moping around, but I started really developing the idea further.

Development always stopped however when it came time for my character to get dumped. It wasn't that the pain of being dumped had somehow inhibited my ability to write after all these years, it was more the fact that it was just so depressing of a story development that there was no amount of cool stuff that could overcome this momentum killer.

I pretty much gave up on the idea as a lost cause. But three weeks ago, in a moment of pure, brilliant insight, I suddenly realized that by moving some of the events around, by changing the actual event's orders, I could alter the momentum just enough to launch the story properly. Being certain that it had to be a mirage and that once I started writing I would realize that it couldn't possibly be that simple, I sat down on August 25th and started writing.

Last night, I finished the movie script. It took me three weeks to accomplish what it took me fifteen years to think about. The script isn't perfect, yet, but its a lot better than it has any right to be. I have finally succeeded in writing a romantic comedy about the end of my long standing relationship.

And I even managed to keep some of it still based in reality.

Oh... and best of all... No Star Wars references, whatsoever.

Free Speech? Really?!

2010-09-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

I know this might seem reactionary, but I've been letting this storm brew in my head ever since I heard about this a couple of weeks ago. It was stupid then. It's even more moronic now that plenty of peers have weighed in on the idea and they all think its a bad idea, and the guy is going ahead with it anyway.

I'm talking, of course, about burning the Quran. Look, here's my point, plain and simple. If you're a Christian Pastor and you have to defend your action by saying that Constitution supports your right to do something, then you're probably NOT doing what God wants.

There is free speech and there is Christian speech and the two aren't always the same thing. If you want to come out and say that Abortion is bad - I may disagree with you, but I respect your right to say it. And I imagine, God respects you for saying it as well. But if you want to ATTACK someone with your "free speech" then you are NOT being Christian whether the Constitution supports your right to do so or not.

What part of Love your Neighbor is not clear? What part of Do Unto Others As You'd Want Them To Do Unto You is murky?

You are a Christian Pastor. You are called to a higher standard than the U.S. Constitution. You have the right to burn a Quran as an American, but you don't have the right to do it as a Christian. In fact, you have no right to do this and call yourself a Christian. This is Hate Speech and a Hateful Act. And to say that God wants you to do this, well, you need to go back and take a few theology courses, buddy. You are like a little kid hitting your sister and then saying, "Dad told me I could."

Sorry, but there are not many things that I see as absolutely wrong. This is one of them. There is nothing you can say or do that justifies your actions.

Sorry, Stephen Hawking, but you're wrong...

2010-09-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's funny about the timing of some things. I just had this revelation two days ago and I've been mulling it in my head, trying to figure out how to phrase it. Then the news breaks today that noted physicist Stephen Hawking has decided that physics alone can explain the universe and that God is not needed. Well, quite frankly, he's wrong, and I can actually prove it using scientific theory.

This is a bit convoluted - which is why I was trying to figure out a correct way of phrasing it - but I'll give it a shot.

The Big Bang theory suggests that at some point roughly 40 billion years ago (give or take) the Universe existed as a single point without space or time. For whatever reason, this point then exploded with enough force to create the entire universe out of hot gasses and matter. My knowledge of physics here is a bit shaky, but I will concede the fact that the Big Bang did occur. The issue is whether the Big Bang occurred randomly as Stephen Hawking contends or whether God was its instigator.

Here is the gist of the problem with Stephen Hawking's idea. His theory is that the universe was created randomly - that the laws of physics clearly show that such a thing is possible and that, therefore, it must have happened that way. However, if the Universe was created randomly, it could have also NOT been created randomly. Random events are, well, random. They happen, or they don't. But in the only example that we have (our universe), the event DID happen. The Universe was created. And as a result we are here to speculate about whether the universe could be created. If the universe wasn't created, we wouldn't be here to speculate about whether it could happen. Therefore, we have a determinate outcome - the Universe WAS created. It does have a reason for existing. If it has a reason for existing (even if that reason is only so that we can say that the Universe does exist) its creation could not be random.

Think of this theory as a giant cosmic version of I Think, Therefore I Am.

By Stephen Hawking's rationale, there were two possible outcomes to the Big Bang - that it occurred randomly, or it didn't occur randomly. But obviously it did occur - the mechanics of which are not important to the discussion. Science clearly dictates that any fact must be repeatable scientifically. The Big Bang has not been repeated. Anywhere. So, the big idea that a universe could just form randomly has yet to be shown and can't be repeated. Also, the idea that the universe could NOT just form randomly has also yet to be shown and can't be repeated.

The problem with science is that it must, by its very nature, explain everything. Some things don't have explanations - no matter how much science wants to come up with one. If the universe could just randomly appear, it could also just randomly not appear - in which case this blog would have a seriously small audience. Since the universe is here, especially in light of the fact that the science shows that the universe is not a foregone conclusion, doesn't that argue for the fact that there is a reason the universe exists? If there is a reason for its existence, someone must have determined what that reason is. The idea that all of this is just here, with no grand scheme or design, is much the same argument you might have with yourself when you say, "What if I don't really exist?" What if you don't? Then your argument doesn't matter. If the universe was created for no purpose, completely randomly, then anything we discover about it, or about ourselves, also has no purpose. We exist randomly. We have no meaning, no purpose. We might as well not exist - because in the end, its just a different toss of the dice.

Another Darn Historical Day

2010-08-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

That's right, its Another Darn Historical Day in America. It seems that the news media has just discovered that the government (read here: Democratically controlled government that can't fix the economy even though they've had 18 whole months because its run by a Muslim Facist who can't even produce a quality fake birth certificate) can spy on Americans by tracking their movements on their GPS devices. The media can't say whether the government would actually do such a thing, but I mean come on... these guys want to control EVERYTHING!

Every time I think America is beginning to learn to think for itself, I see something like this in the media. Its not that this information is untrue. It is true. Every last word of it. The only thing left out of the story is that GPS has been around for more than 25 years now and the capability to track objects with GPS has been around just as long. But knowing that information would require two things - an attention span longer than about ten minutes and some knowledge of the world greater than that offered by the news media. Either America is no longer interested in the rest of the world or just doesn't care. Either way, look around and see the results.

I am not terribly enamored with the Obama administration right now - but I'd like to be able to judge the guy on his own merits. Instead I feel like an adult caught in the middle of a fight between two five year old kids. "You started the Depression." "NO, YOU DID!" "NO WAY! YOU STARTED IT WITH YOUR POOH POOH BREATH!" "NO, YOU STARTED IT WITH YOUR COOTIES!" And this is the professional media that seems to be slinging this hash around like it was news - hell of a lot more entertaining than actually digging up real news stories I guess.

Neither political party is perfect, neither is entirely to blame - yet everyone involved with running this country should be ashamed of themselves. This is the Greatest Country on Earth - and we look like idiots right now. If Obama gets bounced in two years, it'll mostly be for that reason. Instead of reacting to the stupid baiting actions of his immature political rivals, he should be showing their actions for what they are and ignoring their insipidness. Its okay to want to have inclusion in your government, just make sure that the guys you're including aren't complete morons. Anyone responsible for the mess we're in now need not apply.

But ultimately, the fate of this country isn't up to Obama, Pelosi, Boehner, Palin or the Mad Hatter - the fate of the United States is ours. We're the ones who have to demand more of our leaders. We're the ones who have to tell them to stop all the fear-mongering, name calling, and stupidity, and go get us jobs. I'm not against the rise of a new political party, but I don't want a Tea Party that is even more broken politically than the two Parties that it hopes to replace. What we need is a new leadership that will get the job done even if it has to make some hard choices and compromises for the good of the American people.

So, people, you can sit in your homes because you're afraid the government is tracking you with GPS, or you can start telling your leaders that enough is enough. We want real reform. The kind you can see. The kind you can taste. The kind that puts people back to work. (If it don't affect your bottom line, does it really matter?) Not more speeches about how great they are and how evil the other party is. Reform. Change you can sink your teeth into.

Jobs

2010-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

The biggest thing about poverty is that people tend to focus on the fact that someone who is poor doesn't have enough money, as opposed to the fact of why that person doesn't have enough money - education, lack of a good job, health, etc... As a result, many of our efforts to stem the tide of poverty are focused on getting poor people more money and not on helping poor people overcome the things that caused them to be poor in the first place.

If you look at the current policies in place here and abroad, you will see that we are generally focusing on the wrong things. Our health care bill, while addressing the issue of health as a means for creating poor people, left out the fact that health care costs are much higher than they should be. You can't solve a problem of making poor people healthy if you make people rich off the health of the poor. Its not a sustainable policy. Health has to not only be available to all people, it has to be affordable to all people as well. Same thing with all these bailout initiatives being thrown around. They end up saving large companies from going bankrupt, but do nothing to create jobs, help educate people, save health care benefits, etc... We'd rather throw money at unemployment benefits than use money to create lasting employment of people.

I think where this issue can really be seen is in the new proposal by the 50 top billionaires to give away half of their money to charity. I think that's an admirable goal and I won't even mention how they got that money to begin with. However, the idea, while great, is wrong and won't actually do anything to help poverty in this world. It would be far better, for instance, to use that money to create jobs doing things that were previously considered impossibly too expensive.

As an example, Africa needs roads. African people need jobs. Put that money into road building projects throughout Africa. Build their infrastructure at no expense to Africa. Hire Africans to do the labor. At the end of all that money, Africa's economy will be far more robust than it would have been had you just thrown money at charities and they'll have new infrastructure in place for many years to come.

The same could be done here. I know that there are many initiatives on the books by the Obama administration. Its time to start fast-tracking them. Americans need jobs. Take the first 52 projects that are off the shelf and fund them. One a week. Each project should hire at least 1000 Americans and pay them a decent wage. If that doesn't work, double it, or quadruple it. Let's rebuild our own infrastructure. Let's upgrade our energy distribution network. Let's rebuild some of those nature trails.

Let's put money in education that doesn't come with strings attached. School teachers working is a hell of a lot more important than school reform. How about school nurses? And new gymnasiums? If you're really serious about getting obese kids healthy, how about spending some money on gym teachers and gyms?

America needs to let go of the last twenty years of bi-partisan bickering and start taking its problems seriously. I say this as a Democrat with a Democratic Majority - we Americans are tired of all the infighting and backstabbing and name-calling. Its not important whether Obama was right or wrong about some Mosque in New York - he was wrong to have even mentioned the subject. Our problems are much greater than that. Put people to work and they'll have no time left for tea parties or Quran burnings or isolationist politics.

Oh, and we need to put people on Mars... but that's the subject of another post...

Somewhere along the road...

2010-08-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

One of those things that can't be taught to writers but that has to be experienced is the moment when your story first comes to life.

A writer will think up a story and imagine it in its finished glory. He was do the research and create the characters. He might write a synopsis or take notes. And then he will start writing - long, laborious nights in front of a keyboard imagining everything in a story from setting to dialog to action to motivation. This is the hardest stretch for a writer because the story is all work at this point.

But at some point, there is a subtle shift. You see a moment that you hadn't seen before - a change in a line of dialog or a character doing something that you hadn't imagined them doing. You write the words and voila, suddenly the story is vastly improved and much clearer - like you've reached a summit and can see the entire world before your eyes. It doesn't mean you don't have to keep working, but the path is all downhill from that point.

The story comes alive. It's characters start to breathe, to suggest words and actions to you. As a writer, you had trouble before remembering what came next in the story - you constantly referred to your notes - then, like a light switch being thrown, you now know the whole story, all the characters, and how they will face each challenge you throw at them.

The next step in the process is my absolute favorite - its the point where you have to tell your characters to shut up so that you can finish the story. Your characters will continue pounding your brain for bigger scenes, greater dialog, and grander and more glorious finishes. It makes for fun speculation, like fans at a Comic Book convention arguing over who would win a fight between the Millennium Falcon and the USS Enterprise, but it doesn't necessarily make for a good story. At some point you have to remember that you are the writer and they are the characters and that you are in charge. Such is the problem when your independent creations take on lives of their own.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about my story right now. The heroes have moved on from Saipan. If you'd like to know their next destination, you can keep track of it on my facebook page by checking to see where I currently reside.

(For the rest of you, here's a little homework... its July, 1937. You're in Saipan. Where would you go next, nearby to Japan, where some sort of historical turmoil is about to break out. HINT: The answer is worth an awful lot of tea.)

How do you solve a problem like Judas?

2010-08-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

I just finished all the monologues for a play I'm writing for Holy Week. In my take on The Last Supper I have each of the disciples arriving for the meal and, at some point, delivering a monologue to the audience showing their innermost thoughts about Jesus, their journey, and what they believe is about to happen. The first eleven disciples showed varying degrees of difficulty related to what research I could do on them and the various inner monologues that I was giving them. (My favorite is Nathanael/Bartholomew.) But today, after nearly two months working on this project, it was my turn to tackle the 12th disciple - Judas.

There's not much known about Judas prior to the Last Supper. He was one of the twelve disciples. John accused him of stealing from the group's purse (He was supposedly their treasurer). And Judas had that famous exchange with Jesus about the price of perfume that was used to anoint his feet - the one where Jesus said, "The poor will always be amongst us." That's really about it.

We do know, of course, that Judas took the 30 pieces of silver from the priests, betrayed Jesus with a kiss, and afterwards knew that he was cursed and hung himself from a tree. Ironically, it was here that I started in my quest to unlock what Judas might say in the moments leading up to his betrayal.

Had Judas merely been evil, Jesus' arrest and death would not have made Judas commit suicide. This was no Thelma and Louise style self-sacrifice - Judas wasn't surrounded by cops and decided to kill himself rather than face the music. On the contrary, Judas might have been regarded by some people in the establishment as a hero - the man who finally rid them of Jesus. No, Judas felt guilt - the kind of guilt so terrible that it makes you wish that you were dead. He realized, too late, that he had betrayed his friend and killed him.

So, back up. Judas knowingly took 30 pieces of silver. He knowingly kissed Jesus. And only after the fact did he have guilt about it? What was Judas thinking?

When I wrote my first novel I had to go to some pretty dark places. How does one write a rape scene, for instance, from the point of the view of the rapist? Its not an easy thing to do. I discovered that the only way into such a scene was to approach it from my own point of view and then skew it so far out of whack that I could imagine myself doing that horrible thing. In the case of the novel, I had to take an idea of lust and give it steroids to the point that the rage and the anger and the passion all combined to make this character rape another character. It was a very dark thing to write and it was a very hard thing to imagine. After writing that scene, I knew that I wanted nothing more to do with stories that dark again.

The reason I mention this is that I had to somewhat the same thing with Judas - but I think it was a little easier this time. I started with what I knew about Judas - that he was a thief, but that he was also a disciple - and I added what I knew about Judas after the Last Supper - that he was so remorseful that he killed himself - and I came up with a scenario that worked in my head.

Basically, I have Judas leaving a somewhat blameless life - human, not perfect - who succumbs to temptation. I simply extrapolated a situation where I succumbed to temptation into the story. Judas takes some coins from the purse for his own gain - not out of any perceived notion of greed, but simply to pay for a better meal and a nicer place to stay while on the road. Its still theft and its still greed, but its easily justifiable to Judas' way of thinking. Since he's in charge of the purse, he knows that he'll be able to pay it all back without anyone knowing about it. Except that maybe it worked too well. He was able to pay it back and nobody noticed or said anything. So he did it again. And again. And... then John started to suspect Judas. Judas became paranoid that they were on to him. He needed to pay back all that he had borrowed. He hears that the priests are offering 30 pieces of silver to anyone who helps them arrest Jesus. So far, Jesus has been able to make the High Priests look like fools every time he's dealt with them. A little arrest will be no big deal for Jesus. He'll make the priests look like idiots again and then they'll all continue on their way. In the meantime, Judas can put the 30 pieces of silver into the purse and nobody will be any the wiser. Of course, if his plan works, he swears that he will never borrow money again. Maybe he'll even suggest that someone else take the purse for a while.

Of course, we all know that the plan backfired. Jesus was arrested, flogged, put on trial and executed. Judas, seeing it all spin out of control, and knowing that he was the one responsible, would have known that he was cursed. So, he kills himself.

There is no evil mustache twirling villain here. Jesus was not so blind as to have the greatest villain in history as one of his disciples. The real tragedy of this evil is that its the sort of evil human beings perpetuate every day of existence - the lie told to ourselves, the delusions, the greed, the belief that they can get away with it without anyone knowing. As Jesus was the greatest of all human beings, unfortunately Judas was the worst case example of where sinning can lead us - the epitome of what happens when we sin and become separated from God forever.

In the Zone

2010-07-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

So, not much to report here lately. I get that way when I'm writing. Its like the rest of my life goes on hold and I have to be reminded to go out and smell the roses once in a while. I have purposefully not been in the Zone for quite some time - at least a few years now - because the last time I was in the Zone, I was there for almost two straight years.

This time, my new novel is shorter, more focused, and a lot less involving - but a lot more fun. It involves a certain favorite hero of mine traveling through the last days of the life of Amelia Earhart (as amended by wikipedia ;) So far, I've written about her espionage against Japan, the crash of her plane, and her rescue by a Japanese submarine. In the near future, Amelia Earhart will face a Japanese firing squad. So much fun!

It has helped my writing process immensely that two fine actresses played Amelia last year giving me a great range with which to work for her character. Amy Adams played a young, feisty Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum 2 - Battle of the Smithsonian. I love Amy Adams and she was great in this role. Unfortunately, her character was a little too cartoony for a serious attempt at portraying Amelia Earhart. But then, Hilary Swank played the title character in the movie, Amelia, opposite Richard Gere. She brought a more diplomatic approach to the character - deciding to make her a real person versus a fictional portrayal. Unfortunately for Amelia, the script gave Hilary Swank little to work with and one was left wondering just who Amelia Earhart really was and what drove her to be the kind of person who would want to fly around the world.

I opted for a middle ground on Amelia Earhart knowing that I need only keep to the accurate historical portrayal of her during the hours leading up to her ill-fated last flight (which was the first chapter of the book). After that, I was off in fictional speculative territory anyway. I've tried to keep Amelia real, but also offer some of the backbone present in Amy Adams portrayal. The more I write, the closer I think I'm getting to my ideal portrayal of this American icon.

Anyway, I'm enjoying writing again. I don't think I'll ever become the hermit I was during the writing of the ill-fated First Novel, but I might be a little more flaky as time moves forward. So, don't be surprised if I blow people off in the near future to spend more time with the lovely Amelia and her charming and enigmatic time traveling companion.

A new Non-Religious thought puzzle... Deep Waters Ahead!

2010-07-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

So I had another errant thought the other day and I haven't really had any free time to play with it. So I thought I'd open the idea to the entire blogosphere to see if anyone has anything deep to add to the discussion.

The question is basically this: Is Time Fixed?

Now what got me to start thinking down this road are two things: first was the idea of relativity. In that, our perception of space is relative to our movement through it. Or to use the thought exercise from Einstein, if you are on a train, everything is whizzing by your window, but if you're outside, the train window is whizzing by you. Applied to time in a practical manner, does time itself alter the further away you are from events? Or does time remain static and only our view of it alters as we get further away from the event?

This led me to my second road: entropy. Or to put it more bluntly, nothing ever remains the same. Physical properties of all substances are constantly breaking down, transforming, etc... But since Entropy seems to be a function of time, does it also have an effect on the physical properties of a fixed event in time?

How does this all break out? Well, let's say that time was not fixed. Using an example of Bob the Caveman inventing the wheel, that fact might remain true for say, 1 million years. But eventually, as you got further and further from the event, the facts behind it would begin to erode. Time, itself, would begin to unravel, to fade, to be obliterated by all that follows that event. It would mean, in a practical sense, that after a certain point the past would be a meaningless blur.

We, of course, would take this for granted. We can't possibly know who invented the wheel, right? Its before there was any recorded history. But what about the events of yesterday. Are they fixed? Did what you did yesterday have any permanence whatsoever? Or will it fade from history and memory when there are no forces left to leave it in physical place (i.e. Its not recorded and there is no memory of it by any still alive)? Is this a natural function of space/time? Or is this only a function of limited human knowledge?

Anyway, I was just exploring cool ideas about time. I don't think we can suss out a real answer to the question, but its certainly fun playing around with it.

Paradigm Shift

2010-06-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how convoluted this story is.

It started a few weeks ago. I was trying to think up a new story idea and I had a sudden brilliant thought. My story would involve a writer (me, basically) who wakes up and finds himself stuck in a world of his own making. But there's something wrong with the world that he's in - its heart/soul is dying. So the writer has to find the source of the problem and fix it. Only... what would be the source of the problem?

I realized that romance always sells so I began to devise a plot that involved finding a girl who was the source inspiration for all of his female characters (and all the female characters in the world that he was stuck in). The catch was that the female characters don't look like any girl he ever remembered meeting. So the writer has to retrace his life history to find this source girl who so inspired him. (I really thought this would give my female actress something to do - playing a whole bunch of different variations of one main source character).

Now this is where the story starts to get convoluted. You see, in thinking back on my own life to try and find a source character that could serve as an inspiration for this main female character, I actually remembered a girl that I had known many many years before who, now that I thought about it, really was an inspirational source for all of my female characters. But the thing is, this girl was someone I had known when I was in third grade.

You see, there was a brief period in third grade of about two weeks where I was in love. As I recall, a new boy came into the class and had no friends. The teacher decided that I'd be a good friend, so she asked me if I would play with him at recess. Well, I did and we had fun. But this boy had a twin sister who was in another class. As she didn't have anyone to play with either, besides her brother, she joined us. Well, she was beautiful, spirited, funny, and full of joy. I was like a moth to the flame. We played at every recess and after school every day for that entire period. And I even walked home with her after we finished playing. Of course I was in third grade and to me she was just a friend.

At the end of two weeks, she didn't come to school. I went to her house after school, but nobody was there. I found out the next day that there had been a divorce and the kids went to live in Sacramento. I never saw her again and I was really crushed.

In looking back on it, I suddenly realized that the things that I find attractive in women were the qualities this young girl had. So, in this case, art was indicating life. I was following the path of my own plot.

Now, the nebulousness of my thinking really took over. With this sudden revelation I began to see the world in a new light. I realized that my one truly decent relationship had been doomed all along because as much as I loved my ex-girlfriend, she was nothing like the young lady in third grade. My Ex was very similar at first, which is what attracted me to her, but as time went on, she grew further and further from those attributes that had attracted me in the first place. I overcompensated for this lack of attributes by trying to change, which led me to join the Navy, to try and become a serious writer, and generally everything else that has followed. I left behind the things that had made me happy in order to become someone that could maintain a relationship that was never going to work. When the relationship fell apart, I no longer had that ME to fall back on - I had changed so much that I didn't recognize myself. I realized that I had stopped being myself so many years before and that I'd been kind of stuck in this person that wasn't really myself ever since. See... nebulous.

What does it all mean? Now, this is where it gets interesting.

So here I am, being bombarded with one revelation after the next about who I am and what I want and how come I haven't felt the same as I did 25 years ago for a long time, and suddenly I realize that the one thing that I've been missing the most is Joy.

Joy. With a capitol J. As in the sort of light-hearted, pure spirited unconditional love that bubbles over from your center and makes you glow with giddiness. I used to be full of it. I used to drink it like soda. The last place I experienced it? You guessed it.

Kenya.

It all made sense now. 25 years before, lost and confused about my relationship with the girl I loved enough to propose to, I set out to join the Navy to make something of myself, but also to find out who I was. I have spent years looking for that answer, but there was no answer forthcoming. I learned patience. I went back to God. I learned to give back, to love my neighbors. I learned film making for some reason. And then, I went to Kenya and rediscovered Joy. The one thing I'd been missing all along. The one piece of the puzzle that I hadn't yet placed. Why show me Joy? God showed me Joy so that I might be healed and become whole again - so that I might come full circle.

I'm right back where I was when I was 16, except that I'm 24 years older and wiser. I've been given permission to go back to being who I was back then - to let go and be the insane Will that I remember. I spent the first 16 years of my life confidently drawing outside the lines, and the last 24 learning to draw inside the lines in order to impress some girl who did not have any Joy inside of her. I'm ready to draw outside the lines again. I'm going to restore the heart and soul to a world of my creation.

Action

2010-06-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

I didn't originally mean for this post to have such a religious bent, but my renewed inspiration for it came from reading the Bible last night. In particular, this:

³⁷When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. ³⁸But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.
³⁹Then the Lord said to him, "Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹But give what is inside the dish ^[j] to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.
⁴²"Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.
⁴³"Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.
⁴⁴"Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without knowing it."
⁴⁵One of the experts in the law answered him, "Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also."
⁴⁶Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
⁴⁷"Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. ⁴⁸So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹Because of this, God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.' ⁵⁰Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, ⁵¹from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.
⁵²"Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."

I have been struggling for the past year or so with this notion that perhaps reading the Bible was getting me nowhere. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. It seemed to me that I was trying to seek God through knowledge - like God could be found by studying for some kind of test. I realized that my search for God had kind of stalled out at the research stage. I had read all the books. I had read the Bible many times. I had taken classes and participated in discussions and sought out experts. But in the end, I didn't feel like I had come much closer to God than when I had started. I understood a heck of a lot more about Christianity, to be sure, but I hadn't yet really experienced it.

My thirst was still there.

At first, I decided that maybe I was over thinking all of this research. I'm one of those people that can get down into the nitty gritty when I really try. I remember when I was named education Petty Officer in boot camp that I was trying to explain naval history to my fellow recruits and a good friend of mine looked at me and just said, "We don't need to know that on the test. Just tell us what we need to know." I've taken that to heart over the years. Nitty Gritty is fine and fascinating and all, but it takes time to learn and ultimately doesn't change what you already know.

There are over 400 something laws in Jewish life and yet, Jesus boiled them down to two. Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. In these two commandments are the LAW and the PROPHETS. Talk about your summaries.

But what I think Jesus was trying to explain to the Pharisees in the above passage was the same thing that my friend was trying to explain to me in boot camp, "You're missing the point. I'm not in the book. I'm not in the law. Those things are only ways for you to find out about me." Jesus says that the true leader would be able to not only follow the laws but also practice justice and show the love of God.

Jesus's whole ministry was about taking the word down a peg and augmenting it with the deed. It wasn't enough to just be knowledgeable. If there was no practical application of that knowledge, all that was heard was a clanging cymbal (a noise without meaning). You could follow every commandment to the letter, know every law, do everything that you read about, but if you weren't also willing to sell all your possessions and follow Christ's example, everything you'd done would amount to nothing.

Action follows thirst. After doing all that research, after studying about compassion and love and righteousness, the only logical next step is to practice those things. To be in the world means that you need to study it, but also to experience it. It is not enough to donate off hand so that somebody else can do the work for you. You need to be out there doing the things that God wants you to do. The words are only there to point you the way to the well. You still have to physically go there to be filled.

Of course what action you take is dependent on what you need to satiate that thirst. For me, it was going to Kenya. For you it might be raising a family or educating kids or just being a shoulder to cry on in a time of need.

I don't think our actions have beginnings and endings. I think our actions become a way of living, a way of moving through the world and experiencing it. Visiting a homeless shelter once and dropping off an old coat is a good thing, but it is not a lifestyle. Actions should permeate our lives like yeast. They should move through us and raise us up and transform us until we are complete.

Knowledge is a fine thing, but learning about things and not being inspired to do things because of that knowledge ultimately does nobody any good. Knowledge comes first. Actions next. But neither works without the other.

Thirst Continued

2010-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

There is an aspect to thirst that only occurred to me about thirty minutes after writing yesterday's blog. It was not a new thought, just one that I had not considered at the time I wrote the first part of the blog.

For me, it is not enough to be thirsty and to seek some sort of refreshment that will slake that thirst. I have to seek the best, the ultimate form of refreshment. In the past, I would tell people that I was a perfectionist. I knew that that adjective applied to my makeup, but one look at me would cause people to doubt my words. If they could have seen inside my mind, they would realize that while I often did not achieve perfection, perfection has always been my goal.

It is not enough for me to simply have a coca-cola. I want that coca-cola in the best possible way. I want it in just the right glass, at just the right temperature, during the perfect moment of the perfect activity in the perfect location. For me, it is not just the need to fulfill my desire, but to do it in such a way that that desire is permanently fulfilled. I can't just find a job working in the film industry, I need to be the next Walt Disney. I can't just write a book, I need it to be the Great American Novel. I can't just go to Kenya, look around, enjoy what I see, and come back, it needs to be an EPIC JOURNEY!

As you may imagine, I am constantly disappointed. My thirst can never be slaked because I make the conditions of being satisfied impossible to fulfill. I use my need for perfection as a wall against enjoyment.

I wonder though if this is a bad thing. Jesus said that he was the water of life and that whoever drank from him would never be thirsty again. Now there are two ways of interpreting that. The first way is that once you've had the Jesus drink, you never need to drink again. And the other way is that drinking of Jesus is the only way you will ever be satisfied - his drink is cool, refreshing, perfect and never runs out. Drink early and drink often and come back as often as you want. These are two different interpretations that both spell out as Jesus being the only true satisfaction to our thirst - but one way means that you can drink from Jesus and never be Thirsty again, and the other way means that you will continue to Thirst, but Jesus will always be there to slake your thirst.

I can never have perfection except through Jesus. But having Jesus, does my desire for perfection go away? Does my thirst for justice and peace and that ultimate sunset and ultimate love ever diminish? Of course not. Nor should I want it to.

So I have this problem with thirst. I get thirsty. I want to find the perfect way to slake my thirst. I try to find the ultimate expression of any earthly thing that can help to satisfy me, but fail every time. And yet, I know where to find that satisfaction. I know where to find that perfection. Thirst motivates me to do things. But the thirst I have creates impossible goals that can never be achieved. So I set myself up for failure at every turn. What I need to do is learn to become thirsty for the one thing that is perfect and that I can drink to my heart's content - Jesus.

I had a taste of this water in Kenya. My trip there was far from perfect and yet it was the most rewarding trip of my life. I want more of that. I want to drink deeply. God willing, I will.

Thirst

2010-06-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

I remember going with my Dad and Uncle to a track meet in Berkeley when I was a kid. Ronaldo Nehemiah (before he was a 49er) was running the hurdles at the time and he just flew down the track, clearing those hurdles like they were nothing. Hurdles was never my thing. I always thought I'd have been great in Steeplechase, however. But I digress... The day was boiling hot, one of those rare plus 100 degree days in the Bay Area. We were in an exposed area of the bleachers and there was nothing to break the sun. Finally, after three hours, we left and walked back to our car. But just as we arrived at our car, we spotted a corner grocery store about 100 feet from the car. My Dad went in and bought three cokes. I kid you not, they were all gone before we reached the car. The coca cola evaporated in our mouths in less than ten seconds. I had never been so thirty in my life.

Thirst is a good synonym for desire, because we all thirst, and many times we quench that thirst with things that only make us more thirsty. Coca Cola, for instance, does not quench our thirst. It's slightly salty formula actually causes us to need more liquid. But on a hot day, a coca-cola will seem like an oasis in the midst of the Sahara Desert. When we are at our most thirsty, we will drink just about anything wet to slake that thirst.

On the other side of that equation is the knowledge that many of the reasons we are thirsty is not actually because we need hydrating. Sometimes our mouths need washing out. Sometimes we have become attuned to drinking things that aren't good for us - our desire for particular beverages having more to do with fulfilling other needs than for drinking itself. The need for liquid refreshments is more often than not a desire to quench something other than actual thirst.

When it comes to thirsts, however, I can often become a virtual camel. I can go for days or weeks without any sort of thirst at all. I merely wander through the desert of my life, ambling from place to place, with no particular thirst or desire guiding me. This, to me, is the quintessential definition of existing, not living.

To me life requires thirst. It is the one human trait, both good and negative, that defines us. When we wake up in the morning, if we are not thirsty for something, we will have no desire to move. We aren't satisfied. We aren't happy. We are merely existing - taking up space, breathing air, with no real impact on ourselves or anyone else. We are not getting in anyone's way because we are not going anywhere. Until we have a thirst, or desire, to properly motivate us, we have no direction.

Unfortunately, most times my desires are such that I will consume the first wet thing that comes along - regardless of whether or not it actually quenches my thirst. When I finally attain my desire, I discover all too quickly that I am still thirsty - that this thing didn't do a darn thing to satisfy me. If I feel the need to travel, I will find something that I've never done close by and I will go there on the weekend. I will no doubt enjoy myself. But come Monday, I will quickly discover that I still feel the need to travel. So I will then plan a longer vacation - maybe a week in DisneyWorld. And I will go there and spend enormous sums of money and have a "REALLY" good time - well worth the money I spent. But when I return from vacation and unpack my bags, I will realize that I still need to travel. Another destination, perhaps? A different destination? Maybe. A once in a lifetime expedition - couldn't hurt to try? But in the end, when I've tried everything and have traveled to all parts of the globe, and I still feel that desire, that thirst - perhaps I need to examine that thirst a little more closely and ask myself, what do I truly desire?

My Play Station Experiment

2010-06-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I decided to upgrade my 1970's tech and buy a relatively new game system - the Play Station 2 (Hey, I said relatively new... compared to an Atari). I was looking to score some cheap game playing action and add a new wrinkle to my entertainment experiences. But truth be told, I was after something a little deeper - escape. In all areas, my experiment failed miserably.

Since Kenya, I've been floundering. There hasn't been a natural replacement for my interests or enterprises. My second movie Dane failed. And my novel is coming slowly. I've been floating around without a direction looking for the next big thing to latch on to. And short of that, I've been looking to distract myself from this lack of direction. Hence, the Play Station experiment.

(Ironically, I went through the same thing at almost exactly this same time last year. It was resolved when I suddenly had a vision of walking in Kenya and I realized that I would be going there. My desire for a Play Station dissolved quickly after that.)

The problem with the Play Station 2 isn't that it isn't distracting - it excels at that - but that it brings into focus for me that which is most causing my floundering spirit. It isn't real. It's a facsimile of real. It's a fun facsimile of real. But ultimately, it is someone else's idea of a real world. Despite the game designers desire to give the players freedom to roam and do things, the players in the game lack any real free will. As a result, there are no consequences - only frustrations at failing a mission and having to do it over again. It is the simulation of life without the stimulation of life. It is the equivalent of a never emptying glass of water - no matter how much you drink you can't get to the bottom and you never are satisfied.

Kenya was real. In focus and sharp. In depth. In black and white and color. It was everything that a photo or a movie or a book or a game is not.

I was thinking about that and wondering if it was the games I had selected that was causing this feeling to occur. But I realized that no matter what entertainment source I chose, it was always going to be a simulation of real life.

I have outgrown simulated adventures. I have outgrown my need for a Play Station. I want to go on real adventures now, with real consequences, and real rewards. I want to affect change. I want to interact with real people in real time. I want to see the real world and be a real part of it.

Anyway... those are my words. There will be more to come.

Local Woman Saves Us All!

2010-06-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

A local woman using an XRF gun discovered that McDonald's Shrek Glasses contained too much cadmium and sent an anonymous sample to Representative Jackie Speier. Congresswoman Speier then sent the glass to the CPSC for further testing. After testing, the CPSA contacted McDonald's about their concerns and a recall was issued for all 12 Million glasses. This anonymous woman should be commended. Who knows how much damage could have been done to the children of the world had this recall not been undertaken?

Of course, the fact that the glass's cadmium levels fell underneath the current Federal Guideline levels should not let us pause in thanking this woman from saving us all from certain death. Also, the fact that these glasses are not exclusively sold to children, should also not deter us from thanking this woman from saving an entire generation of children from gruesome death. We shouldn't even consider the fact that McDonald's recalled what was legally an entirely safe product made in the United States and that this recall will cost someone $24 million. Money is no object when certain death looms just around the corner.

No, no, let us Thank God that we live in a country where a woman with nothing better to do can go around buying perfectly safe products and testing them willy-nilly for potentially dangerous amounts of chemicals so that these products can then be recalled even though they are perfectly safe at the cost of several million dollars to American manufacturers. Where would this country be without such safety provisions in place? I mean, besides still having manufacturing jobs and low insurance rates, that is.

No, no, we live in a great society that understands that the cost of our potential safety is way more important than a few hundred jobs. I know I sleep better at night knowing that such people are out there to keep us safe - even if it might mean losing my job because some random person decides my product isn't safe, regardless of what the courts might say. The court of public opinion, after all, is the only real court we need.

So let us commend this anonymous woman and perhaps give her a parade and a meddle. She has truly saved us all from certain destruction!

Good call, Bud Selig... and other things I thought I'd never say.

2010-06-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

We all feel for this Gallaraga kid that lost the Perfect Game. But for once, Bud Selig made the right non-call. While it would certainly be justified to correct a mistake by the umpire, handing over a perfect game after the fact would be a bigger mistake.

Its hard to imagine that there is any integrity left in Major League Baseball, but in general, one of its inviolates has been its scoring decisions. Right or wrong, blown call or not, once the next play happens, the call stands. It can not be undone by anyone. The game can be played in protest. The umpires can admit mistakes. But once play resumes, the call stands.

As egregious as this mistake was, coming as it did with the 27th batter in what would have been a perfect game, once the call was made and the next batter entered into the books, the perfect game was over. To reverse that decision and rule that the 27th batter was indeed out and the game was over, would be to say that the 28th batter was never in the game and that the pitcher never pitched to him.

This might have been fine for this one time, but what's to prevent an equally disagreeable call from occurring with the third batter of the game. Same exact situation otherwise. Do you then go back and reverse that call as well? How about home runs that are called foul or doubles or fan-interference? The game could have changed on that call. Do you undo those calls? Let's face it, reversing this call would have opened up a whole can of worms that nobody wants to deal with. At the very least, the 21st Perfect Game would forever carry an asterix and some notoriety as having been called perfect 24 hours or more after the fact.

As it is, this kid will now go down in the history of the sport as having pitched the Perfect Game That Never Was. His feat will be unique in the sport, not just another in a long line of great pitchers who threw perfect games.

On the other hand, I miss steroids. I'm tired of all these damned perfect games. I dig the long ball!

The Last Christian by David Gregory

2010-06-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for free.

The Last Christian, by David Gregory, is a thought provoking and well paced action story set in the middle distant future (around the end of this century) in the United States. It is set in a future where Christianity has all but died out in the United States and most of the rest of the world. Thrown into this setting is a murder mystery / action adventure sci-fi story that somehow manages to also be a little apocalyptic and apologetic at the same time. I recommend this story for anyone that is looking for a good read.

David Gregory is the author of two incredibly wonderful books about meeting Jesus (My Dinner with Jesus is one of them and I can't remember the title of the other at this moment). Both of these books were the kind that you can't put down. You pick them up and read them to the end - no stopping, no eating, no sleeping - just that compelling. I was really hoping for something similar from The Last Christian, but, alas, this is a horse of a different color.

While taking nothing away from the story that was written here, I found that this book had a little too much going for it. There was a murder mystery that the main characters were trying to solve. There was a science fiction element involving the replacing of our brains with mechanical brains. There was a conspiracy / action angle with dirty politics and corrupt businesses being involved with genocide and potential mad scientist escapades. And then there was all the apologetics and apocalyptic stuff that dealt with our heroine being the Last Christian in the United States. Each element of this story got its moment to shine, but they didn't gel very well together. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was kind of hoping for a conclusion where all the story lines came to a head at the same time... and that never happened.

Criticisms aside, however, I found the book an enjoyable read. It was well paced and never dull. The characters were interesting and many times the descriptions of the future felt spot on (and sometimes not - Jetpacks? Really?). I especially loved the background history of how Christianity died out in the United States which sounded frighteningly real.

I recommend The Last Christian and hope you'll go out and buy it. It was a good read.

F O U N D

2010-05-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

LOST ended on Sunday to a mixed bag of reactions. Some thought the ending left too many questions unanswered. Some thought the loose ends weren't enough to overcome six wonderful seasons, even if the last ten minutes seemed like a cheap cop out and an acknowledgment that the writers had no idea what they were doing. I, on the other hand, loved the ending and thought it was the closest thing to perfect writing that I've seen in years (loose ends and all).

Part of my love of this ending is based on a very intimate knowledge of the writing process. I don't rank myself amongst the great writers or even the mediocre ones, but you can't work on a novel for five years without at least gaining an understanding of how this craft is done - even if I can't do it successfully. I quickly surmised that the writers couldn't possibly explain every little mystery by the end of Season Six. It wasn't that they didn't have answers, or that they didn't want to ruin the ending by revealing the answers; it was the fact that entertainment sometimes requires that readers be left in the dark. The same people complaining that LOST didn't give them the answers they needed are the ones who complained when George Lucas did give the answers in Episode One. The answers weren't nearly as fun as the story that was being told. How does King Kong get from Skull Island to New York? In the original film, its done with a Fade Out and Fade In and no further explanation. We don't really need to know that to enjoy the story. Many of the questions that had been generated over the years on LOST were of that variety. A few, deeper, questions were answered by seasons end because they were necessary to tell the bigger story but the vast majority of these questions were more of the variety best left to Behind The Scenes Featurettes on a DVD. That's just the name of the writing game sometimes.

I also loved the finale because it spoke to a greater truth than most stories have in years - we all need a certain amount of faith and mystery in our lives. Why did someone have to protect the Island? Because they did... you just have to have faith in that. And faith requires belief even when the answers aren't forthcoming. I suspect that many of the people who had problems with the ending of LOST also have problems with issues of faith.

I think the final reason I found myself loving LOST's finale was that I realized that I have changed a lot in the last six years. Even as I sit and write a meticulously plotted and planned novel that has every i dotted and t crossed, I find that personally I no longer need such an elaborately spelled out plan in my own life. In the last year or so, I find myself opening up to the possibilities of things I previously couldn't have imagined - like traveling to Kenya, for instance.

For years I read the Bible voraciously looking for some clue as to what it all meant. I figured that intellectually there had to be something in there that leapt out at me, that made sense to me, something that I could hang my hat on - some bit of knowledge that had eluded me in the past. I was looking for God in thought and equation, in details and answers. I wanted, more than anything else, for the universe to make sense. But God isn't in the details. God isn't in the answer. He is in the question. He can't be made sense of with a book, or a poem, or a film, or anything in human understanding. How can you explain a mystery without revealing the reason for the mystery? How can you explain God with human understanding?

I have come to embrace the idea of mystery, of NOT knowing, and, as a result, I have discovered more of God in one year than in the ten years previous. Those who were waiting for the last episode of LOST to explain all the mysteries like it was checking them off a list might have had their answers, but the final episode would have felt even more artificial than any other artistic effort in recent memory. Those who were disappointed missed the point. There were no answers coming. There never was going to be. The whole story of LOST was about characters who had been searching for answers all their lives finally realizing that none of it made sense and that it also didn't matter. What mattered, what was important, was loving one another.

I'll take that conclusion over some "answers" any day of the week and twice on Sunday's.

Practice vs. Preaching

2010-05-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

What does Freedom of Speech mean to you? Is it something worth defending, or only worth defending when it isn't offensive to you personally? This is one of the biggest questions I've had to deal with in my life. As a writer, I've been preaching the gospel of Freedom of Speech since I could understand the concept. But at times, although its been very difficult for me, I've actually had to practice it as well. That's usually a lot harder to do.

I just received a call from my brother. He had just heard the news that they are planning to build a mosque at Ground Zero in New York. He was quite upset. And to be perfectly honest, I don't blame him. The thought nearly curdles my stomach. I am all for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, but a mosque? There? I don't see that as a powerful statement of forgiveness or a way to build bridges, I see it as a direct provocation to all Americans - even Muslim Americans. However, despite the way it makes me feel personally, I have to defend their right to build a mosque right there. It is important to the concept of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion that they be allowed to do so.

When I was in the Navy back during Gulf War One there were a few virulent protesters in Hawaii who decided as a sign of protest to smash the personal vehicles of US servicemen. They called us warmongers, baby killers, that sort of thing. You can bet that we were not too happy with that. I dare say that there were many of us who wanted to go down and do some forceful realignment of their beliefs. But one of our Gunny Sergeants reminded us that we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America and that as part of that oath we had to defend the rights of those individuals who said the very things that we hated the most. These knuckleheads were trashing the very people who were protecting their rights to say the things they were saying. Though it seriously sucked, we swallowed our anger and went about our jobs. It didn't change the fact that we hated everything they were saying, but we had to defend their right to say it.

That's a pretty powerful thing to absorb at 18. But it has taught me to be even more protective of one of our most sacred rights as Americans. There are times when I think we allow this freedom to go too far... but those are exactly the times that those freedoms were created for in the first place.

So, do we practice what we preach even if it breaks our hearts to do so? That, ultimately, is the question.

And as citizen practicing my rights, I really hope those people reconsider the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. I can see nothing good coming of that.

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in

2010-05-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've been away on some amazing trips the last couple of weeks. My mind has wandered over hill and over dale, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, and over the river and through the woods. It has taken me down rabbit holes and through wormholes. It has sent me on flights of fancy and ne'er-do-well such as I have not seen in years. But it hasn't taken me anywhere that I wanted to go. For me, it has been all about the journey.

Like most journeys, I have found much that wasn't worth writing about. I've been watching my life pass by like so much scenery while I remained in cool, quiet comfort inside contemplating other things. The concerns and frustrations of daily living have fallen across my face like the shadows of girders on a trestle bridge I happened to cross. The echoes of conversations have flown around me like the sound of a highway passing underneath me at high speed - thadump, thadump, thadump - as I crossed the speedbumps of life.

I did have one observation over the weekend - one of those types that can only occur to you after you have climbed quite a distance on your journey to the mountaintop. I was traveling up notoriously slow 19th Avenue on Saturday and I was watching a MUNI bus crawl through the traffic as well. It occurred to me that had I been on board the bus, I would have been tempted to get off at the next stop and run the rest of the way - like I used to. This was followed by a realization that I was certainly in no shape to run, much less run faster than a MUNI bus (whether stuck in traffic, parked at a curb, in the bus yard, or undergoing repairs ;). At which point I had one of those mind-altering conversations with myself.

Me: I'm in no shape to run ahead of a bus like I used to. I wonder why that is?

Self: Your no longer as impatient as you once were.

Me: Really? That wasn't the answer I was expecting. Why am I no longer impatient?

Self: Remember all those times God taught you patience. Do you remember what you used to be like before - how your life was such a mess because you were always so impatient to get somewhere that you tried every shortcut in the book and then some?

Me: You mean God made me patient and as a result I can no longer outrun buses?

Self: I mean that God made you patient and you no longer feel the need to outrun buses.

Me: I wonder what other things I no longer feel the need to do...

Self: Well, that is the question now, isn't it?

Me: Hmmm...

Hmm, indeed. I'm looking for an off ramp now - someplace to find rest from this wandering, some place to set up camp again intellectually. But for now, I'm just going to enjoy the journey for as long as my patience holds out. After all, I've got some new things to think about now.

Slinky Body Parts Update!

2010-04-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a creakity sound?

It's me! It's me! You know it's me! Everyone knows it's my knee!

It's my knee, it's my knee, it's no fun and bound to annoy.

It's my knee, it's my knee, it's no fun for a girl or a boy.

Everyone knows its my knee!

What can I say? I turned 40. I passed my warranties expiration date and right on schedule things start to break down!

The most annoying thing? Literally, the day after my left knee starts to feel good enough to walk on normally, my right knee goes down in pain (probably from overwork). At least my knees are finally starting to work together again - though I wouldn't exactly say its been pain free.

I think its safe to say that I won't be running the Bay to Breakers this year.

Time's up?

2010-04-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

I had a thought on the way to work today. What if this is it? I'm picturing a world 20 years down the line where you are trying to explain to people that there used to be things called phones that allowed you to talk to people anywhere on Earth - and they could also take pictures - and imagining the incredulous looks on people's faces who have never known such technology. It has been our fortunate experience over the last sixty years or so to experience a technology boom like no other in history. But if history has taught us anything in the past, its that we shouldn't get too comfortable.

I don't mean this to be a doom and gloom piece. This wasn't a fearful response to some news story or worry that Global Warming is real. I'm not really worried about a nuclear holocaust or asteroid wiping us all out. Such fears are hardly helpful and really, there's nothing that can be done about them anyway. I was simply idly speculating on whether this is to be humanities golden age (until the next golden age, that is).

Of course, it begs the question about what our technology has really done for us. I imagine that the post-golden age crowd are going to be fairly unimpressed with descriptions of cable TV or computers or the internet or i-phones. They are going to be more impressed with the fact that we had refrigeration and water (even in the desert!) and vehicles that could go 400 miles in one day.

There is no guarantee that technology will continue to get more advanced. We are one eruption away from grounding most air travel, for instance. And a good solar flare could wipe out telecommunications.

In all this speculation I realized that the one reason we have enjoyed such a prosperous time period has been entirely because the United States has been the super power of the world for the last 60 years. We have promoted intellectual freedom and commerce to the rest of the world and defended it vigorously during that same time. Such values have allowed technologies and communications to flourish. For all of this anti-American talk out there, the rest of the world should recognize our role in shaping the future. They may not always like the intellectual freedom that we support, but I guarantee they like its results. It is those results which make us the envy of the world - not our might, but our rights. Hopefully, as long as we remember that, and the rest of the world understands it, this Golden Age will continue for years and decades and centuries to come.

In Over My Head

2010-04-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

I love the comments I've been receiving lately. Occasionally, I like to dive into philosophical waters way over my head. I've never been the type to simply accept what others have said. I like to think things for myself and try things out on occasion. If I reach a fork in the road, I say walk down both paths a certain way to see where they go, then decide. I don't do this out of indecisiveness or caution, I do it because I'm curious. Always have been, always will be.

So this last discussion has drawn some great philosophical debates for me. My brain has expanded and from that I should eventually gain some wisdom and deeper understanding of the world... or not. I'm not always quick on the uptake. I like to consider myself smart, but I'm definitely on the slow boat when it comes to learning. I think it has something to do with the way I learn - which is to immerse myself in a subject and learn as much as I can absorb before I start to drown in it. I'm filled with knowledge, my cup overflows, but understanding doesn't always come so easily. This had led some people to assume that I am smarter than I actually am. I'm okay with that.

But my motto lately has been stolen straight from Edie Brickell, "Throw me in the shallow waters, before I get too deep." I can't play with the intellectual giants, though I like listening in on occasion. Randall, for instance, is not only a lawyer, but he speaks German as well. His musings and philosophy are matched only by his grasp of theology. And his daughter is a pole-vaulter, so how cool is that? See. That's about my intellectual level. I can always find a shallower end of the pool to play in. I can't debate Kantian metaphysics, but you can't match me in Star Wars trivia.

For a brief time, in college, I was playing with the big boys. But I learned two important lessons in my last semester in college. First, playing with the big boys is dull and boring and only really impressive to other big boys. Second, no matter how big you become, there's always someone bigger. Someone will always be looking down on you. It'd be like finally reaching the big leagues only to discover that you were on a team filled with Barry Bonds'. I decided that my search for the origins of religion had probably reached its zenith and I went off to do something else. I knew when I was in over my head.

I think the hardest thing I've had to learn is that I have limitations. In Jr. High, I took wood shop because I wanted to make movie props. I asked for and received a wood working kit for Christmas that year. I ignored the teacher's projects and worked on my own design in class. I hacked away, chopped, chiseled, sanded, drew diagrams - everything a professional carpenter does. Then one day, I came to wood shop and discovered that my project was missing. I looked all over for it and couldn't find it. It had been nearly complete! I went to the teacher and asked him if he'd seen it. As I described it, he gave me a queer look and then he said, "Oh that thing? I thought it was scrap wood and I threw it in the wood pile." Okay, so I wasn't going to be a carpenter. Lesson learned. I still loved my final wood project even if I received an "F" on it. That was one more fork of the road I had to venture down before choosing another path.

I'd like to say that I've changed, that I've applied that lesson to the rest of my life. But I still think that you don't know your limitations until you try something. I also suck at fishing, but I go every year. Not really sure if I was a very good youth leader, but I did that for 8 years. Fairly certain that I offered little to the T-Ball coaching experience, but it was still fun to try. I'm starting to suspect I may never compete in an Eco-Challenge race, but still have hope for The Amazing Race.

Anyway, I'll keep trying. I'll keep failing. I'll keep asking questions. And I'll keep getting answers. Really, what else is there to do in life? How can anyone actually settle? I feel like a shark - resting is dying. I want to do more, see more, and know more - all the time. I just know that when I finally reach the mountain top, I'll be one of the last. But I will get there, eventually.

Upon Further Review... Is God infallible, Part Two...

2010-04-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

I throw the red flag on myself.

As satisfied that I am right in my final comment on God's potential infallibility (please read previous post, Is God fallible?, and all the wonderful comments) I realized that I was missing the boat. And perhaps this was something that Randall and Dave and many others were trying to point out, God being infallible suggests that somehow we can judge his actions.

I'm going to go back to my commentary assertion about the coin toss as I think it helps illustrate my NEW point best.

Original argument - If God tosses the coin 100 times and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, He is perfect, but it doesn't negate the idea that the coin could have come up tails. Whether or not God would ever have failed to have it end up heads, the possibility always exists for it to come up tails. I do not think that this argument is incorrect. The potential for infallibility does exist according to this argument.

New argument - My original argument doesn't take into account that the coin, the ability to toss it, heads, tails, edges, and the laws of physics that govern the coin toss were all created by God. The original assumption is rigged. It assumes that 100 coin tosses that end in heads are Perfect. That's a statistical argument. Statistically, that is a perfect number. But what is the ACTUAL perfect number. What if the actual perfect number is 50 heads and 50 tails? What if its 99 heads and 1 tail? What if its 100 edges in a row? Indeed, whatever is the actual perfect number is exactly what God would toss. Every time. Therefore, there is no chicken and egg argument here - God would always be perfect no matter what He did because He would not only be the judge of perfection, but also its creator. God CAN NOT be infallible precisely because HE defines what fallibility is.

Hence, God became Fully Human and therefore defined what it is to be Fully Human. He was perfect as a human - hence, if you wish to be a perfect human you need to do EXACTLY as Jesus did. If that means growing in wisdom, then growing in wisdom makes you perfect. If that means striking out on a wicked Tim Lincecum fastball, then striking out makes you perfect. Because He was perfect, everything He did was perfect. He set the definitive model.

So, once again, I have proven that my limitless intellect has limits. It not only can't come to correct solution every time, but sometimes it has to blather on like a fool in order to come to the solution that everyone else had already arrived at. But I tell you what... growing in wisdom is perfect. Jesus said so.

Is God infallible?

2010-04-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

This is just a brief idea that's been floating in my head since yesterday. I am not trying to suggest that God has made a mistake, or that He ever will, but I was wondering whether the possibility of God making a mistake was part and parcel of His greatness. This is a question about the deepest of philosophies. Hear me out...

Imagine that you could not make a mistake - that nothing you ever did would ever go wrong. Would there be any reason to do anything? Surely one of the reasons we humans do things is to see if we can. We stand up and stumble and walk and get satisfaction from our accomplishments. We learn to ride a bike. We struggle to find just the right words to woo the love of our life. We seek deeper meaning in the stars and the sun and the way the earth moves, and sometimes we get it wrong. Our limited vision of the Universe is one of the reasons we strive to move forward, to understand, to achieve great things - because we don't know what the outcome of those struggles will be even if the deck is totally stacked in our favor.

God gave us free will so that we could have control over our lives and also to allow us to make a choice about our own existence. Part and parcel of that free will is the opportunity to make the WRONG choice, to be wrong, to be fallible. God made us in His image. Therefore, despite God's omniscience and omnipotence, isn't there also the possibility, however slim, that He could make the wrong choice. Can perfection truly exist without the possibility of imperfection?

I can't say that I know the answer. But part of me says that God has to be infallible in order for His perfection to really matter. If there is no possibility of failure, then success has no meaning. And I want my God to be successful over Evil, not just some creampuff victory guaranteed since the beginning of everything, but a real struggle with real consequences for failure (that nonetheless can never happen).

Anyway, just some deep thoughts to mull over this weekend.

Talk to you on Monday.

Changing Default Settings

2010-04-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, I really suck at this... as do, I imagine, almost everyone in the human race.

On your computer there is such a thing as default settings. These settings are the place your computer starts at, the place where your computer is set when it leaves the factory - its birth settings. As time goes by, the computer changes, grows, learns, becomes more efficient to handling things the way we want them to. If something ever goes wrong, however, the computer will always fall back to its default setting - and all progress that had been made will be tossed aside.

I seem to be set to fall back to my default setting. And that default setting is Me, Myself, and I. If push comes to shove, I always return to what I want, what I need, what is best for me. I feel as if I was created that way. But I'm not the only one.

I was reading a novel at lunch about World War II, in particular the D-Day landings in France. General Eisenhower was thinking about all the bickering, all the behind the back slandering and whispering, and all the arguments and dirty looks between the various commanders of the vast allied armed forces and he wondered, "Are we all twelve years old?" These men were clearly using their default settings to plan the invasion of France. Eventually, however, they came around to a way of thinking that was beneficial to all people.

I was also thinking about the Goldman Sachs case which is very complicated. On one hand, the government argues that top executives created a hedge fund that bet that the mortgage market would fail allowing investors to bet that the mortgage market would succeed. When 99% of the fund failed, it was discovered that the fund was selected by someone that had taken out insurance on all the mortgages that were about to fail. While investors lost billions, the guy who owned all that insurance made billions. It occurred to me that regardless of which side was legally right, morally both sides were only looking out for themselves. The squabble over this money concerns nobody but those people who stood to make billions of dollars on other people's mortgage money. It used to be that business was business - people made money by providing a service or product that was useful for everyone else. Now the Stock Market has become a den of gamblers and thieves willing to do anything necessary to create money out of thin air - even if it means sending the entire economy into a vast tail spin, or pushing jobs overseas to make a better profit, or requiring managers to fire long time employees and replace them with people who make less money. There is nothing moral about big business today. Its all about that me, myself, and I default position and that mantra that says it is righteous to be wealthy.

But what is there to do about it? God made a covenant with his people. He told them that he would take care of all their needs - but they still wanted more. Then he punished them. He tried again by creating laws. But the people used those laws as weapons, as a means to gain power for themselves, as a way to get ahead and lead. God punished them again. Finally, he came personally to show the people the way. He showed them that to be truly righteous you had to love and obey God and to serve others, not yourself. God showed us the REAL default setting we should have - that when push came to shove, it should be Other People As Much As Yourself - Even Your Enemies. Well, we killed God this time. We killed Him dead. Stuck Him on a cross. But that still didn't work.

That was the last warning. The next time God comes back, He's not going to try and explain to us what we've been doing wrong. He's done that already. We NEED to change our default settings - as a species, as a society, as individuals. We NEED to help others and take care of others - not as a matter of a tax right off, but as a matter of necessity. How can we be comfortable when others suffer without at least trying to do something about it? No stock portfolio or business acumen or list of accomplishments are more important than how we treat one another.

I wish I was successful at changing my own default settings. Lord knows I've been shown the way many times. But I still put myself first. I shall continue to try and change, and I urge you to do the same. That, ultimately, is all that we can do.

Learning to Walk Again

2010-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Not five minutes ago, I walked normally for the first time in weeks. I walked about thirty feet before my knee buckled out of fatigue. At least I think I'm past the point of lasting repercussions every time my knee buckles. Right now, I just need to re-strengthen the muscles that keep me walking, going up and down stairs, etc... Its a constant battle between doing what I want to do and doing what I can. If I overdo it, I might relapse and be right back to hobbling around again.

When I left Kenya, I had every intention of taking a short recuperation period then jumping in with both feet and doubling my efforts to help our partners there. But after returning, I discovered that I was hobbled by previous injuries. Every time I got started, some new source of pain seemed to hop up and drag me back down to where I had been before I left. In my fight to help the people of Kenya, I face a constant battle between doing what is right and doing what I can. Whether it be financially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or otherwise, I am not a spring chicken anymore. I am afraid of relapsing - of returning to that pre-Kenya state of being.

But I am buoyed by the chance to put all my thoughts and feelings into my Kenya film. I have been pulling footage off of my camera and onto my computer for the last week with the idea of editing it together into a film about my experiences in Kenya. The more footage I watch, the more I am reminded of what it was that shaped me and defined me for three weeks of my life - the more strength I get in my soul to help me avoid relapse.

Kenya was a special moment in my life. If I can even do slight justice to the events that I experienced and the people that I met that transformed me, then my film will be a success. I already think that this might well be my best film ever made (and believe me, the footage sucks ;). I can't wait to show everyone and have them experience Kenya through my lens.

So, I'm going to remind everyone - May 1st, 2010 - the Kenya Dinner and Kenya Film screening. I hope to see everyone there. And I hope to be fully walking, if not running, by then.

The Importance of Being Me

2010-04-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that dating sites don't work. Its not that I've given up on dating, just on the kinds of people that use dating sites. My working theory is that they are the same types that play the lottery - doing the least amount possible to win the life of their dreams. Hey, since I was on the site, I guess you can say that included me as well.

But it finally occurred to me that I've got more chance of finding the woman of my dreams by actually looking than by randomly floating my name and picture out there on the off chance that my perfect match is also looking and manages to spot me in the sea of a billion faces. In fact, I've got a better chance of finding my dream match by taking a picture of myself, writing my phone number on it, putting it into a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. At least that way I stand out from the billion faces as someone daring to take a chance on pure dumb luck.

I think the big thing I need to work on this year is to stop being a doormat to everyone. I do have an opinion and it does matter. I do have feelings and they matter as well. I guess this really came to a head for me on my Kenya trip. On the one hand, I was fine with being that piece of flotsam that fate pushed around. On the other hand, it annoyed me that I was the only piece of flotsam and everyone else was determining their fate. Cosmic cookies didn't crumble for anyone - so clearly upsetting the apple cart does not automatically tempt fate.

Its funny to me because I wasn't so wishy-washy when I supposedly knew better. When I was young, dumb, and selfish, I had no problem doing things my way. And I now look back on it and wonder if I wasn't better off then. Maybe dumb and selfish is the only way forward sometimes? It certainly worked for our last President. ;)

Mugendi

2010-04-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

So ultimately what was it all about? Why did God have me travel to Kenya? Well, the answer might surprise you. I know it surprised me.

You see, I got to walk along that dusty road with the kids. I got to play soccer. It was hot. Everything in my vision of Kenya came true. But this was no Hollywood revelation. I didn't get the reality that went with the vision and suddenly have the music swell and realize that my life was meaningless and that I was supposed to save the world. Nope. Didn't happen that way at all. After a week, I had done everything I had come to Kenya to do according to my vision and... well, I didn't know what. I waited patiently for God to show me the way.

At almost the halfway point of the trip, I was told cryptically that one of the partners wanted to talk to me about some idea he had. At first I didn't know what he wanted. Eventually I saw him again for a few minutes and I asked what he wanted. "Have you thought about shooting some video of our organization? I'd like a copy of that. We'd use it in a promotional video." That was the entire length of the conversation.

I started thinking about how I'd make sure all of our four partners could receive copies of the footage that I took. And then I started thinking about tailoring my footage specifically to each partner so that the promotional video might actually work. And then... well, my mind was churning.

Over my final weekend there, a visiting pastor who didn't know me from any other Muzungu (white person), decided to give me a Kenyan name as part of his sermon. He looked me over and said, "Your Kenyan name should be Mugendi." I nodded, to be polite, since I had no idea what that name meant. After a minute, he said, "Mugendi means traveler... voyager..." I later learned that the term is closer to vagabond. Vagabond was the name of the production company that made my first film. It would seem that I had my confirmation.

On my last work day there, I started talking with all of our partners asking them if they would like to have someone come and make a promotional video for them. They loved the idea. And thus was Mugendi Films born.

My idea is still in its infancy - not very much more advanced than it was in Kenya. Mugendi will be a non-profit film company that will make promotional videos of other non-profits around the world. An organization that needs a promotional video to show their potential donors and partners would contact Mugendi and we would send out a film maker and an assistant to this partner to make a film. The film makers would then come back and edit a promotional video together for this partner for a website and a promotional DVD. Cost of the production would be free. Transportation would be covered by the film maker. Cost of living while making the film would be covered by the partner. Or in other words, I will pay to go back to Kenya to make four promotional films for our four partners. They will make sure I'm fed, housed, and transported while I am there. And there will be no other costs associated with the production. (Though we might have to figure out how to pay for things like film and DVD's.)

Anyway, God put this idea on my heart and let His zeal burn inside me. I tossed and turned at night in Kenya while I thought of how this would all work and how wonderful it would be for our partners and for other organizations to be able to get their message out.

I've got a long way to go before this is a reality. But I don't have any doubt that this is what God wants me to do.

More than meets the eye...

2010-04-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

One of the members of the Kenya Mission Group wrote a wonderful essay for his website about how great and wonderful all of us Kenya travelers were for answering the call of God and going to Kenya. I can't really disagree with him.

This is supposed to be what we do. God calls us. We answer. And we are counted as Righteous for doing so. Every God fearing person knows that. Its something that we should count as a tenet of our faith. God calls. You go. You are Righteous. Simple. I knew this before I went. In fact, truth be told, it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Okay, spending all this money, traveling half way around the world, not going fishing this year... but I get to be Righteous when I'm done. Cool. I can dig it. Only, somewhere along the way, the warm and fuzzy feeling... well, darn it, it never quite appeared.

I read the article and I know I should agree with it. I know I should feel Righteous like one of God's heroes, but in actuality, I feel closer to Paul who said that he was God's worst sinner and that he should not be venerated at all. How can I do something so warm and tingly and feel so blah as a result?

I don't feel like a hero. I don't feel particularly Righteous. In pondering this mysterious gap between what I'm supposed to be feeling and what I actually am feeling, it occurred to me that I am no longer the person I was before the trip - the person that expected warm and fuzzy Righteousness. I have been transformed. February 3rd, I was a good Christian heading off to Africa cause God told me to go. February 27th, I became a good Christian who can't wait to go back to Africa because I need to go.

There's part of me that permanently in Kenya now. I can't describe it. I'm not one of these uber-travelers who counts two weeks in a foreign country as having lived there. I don't want to switch my citizenship or allegiance. I love the United States - even more so since I've returned - but part of my heart remains behind with the people of Kenya. All those arguments I had before, all those visions of rights and wrongs and the way the world ought to be versus the way the world is, have all been augmented by my experiences there. I can't read the Bible or hear of injustice without running it first through my Kenya filter. Its not that I see poverty here in the United States and say, "Well, its much worse in Kenya." Its more like I see poverty here in the United States and say, "I've seen real poverty and poverty sucks no matter where it is... I never really saw poverty before." My eyes have been opened. My heart has been opened. My soul has clarity.

Clarity of soul makes one feel unworthy of Righteousness, by the way. There is a realization that no matter how many times I go to Kenya or jump into the water to save drowning babies or feed the homeless or build houses or whatever, I will always be the selfish human being that I've been since birth. I am ultimately wicked and sinful like all human beings. The difference being, if there is a difference, is that I am now aware of that - really aware, not just someone told me something they once heard from someone else who read it in a book. I see the evil around me. I see the hurt and the pain. I see the need for God's grace in the world. And I know that I am part of the problem. And I wonder how I can become part of the solution.

So I need to return to Kenya at some point. I need to go back and help out where I can. I need to do that here as well on a much more frequent basis. But more importantly, I need to be constantly reminded that I am no longer WILL 1.0. I am a new Will - a better Will. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see.

Or to make a long story short... I once was a Honda Civic and now I'm a new Trans-Am complete with cool logo and red paint that can turn into a giant robot that fights evil robots from space.

Good Friday

2010-04-02T11:03:00.001-07:00

How should I commemorate this day? That was the question running through my mind last night as I sat in the Maundy Thursday service. I knew that I would be working today and unable to attend worship services and so I wondered if there was anything that I could do other than be quiet and somber for three hours. What is appropriate? What is recommended?

I was thinking about that day and about what it meant to the disciples. We tend to look at the disciples reactions backwards, as if they had foreknowledge of the events about to transpire - and, of course, they ought to have. But I was rethinking that supposition and it occurred to me that Jesus's death would have come as a serious blow to them. Aside from the fear of being arrested and the loss of a friend, Jesus's death must have really rocked their faith in everything that they'd done for the previous three years.

Imagine going about your life as if everything was perfectly fine. Not only fine, but great actually. You just celebrated a huge victory, a huge accomplishment in your life and you're really optimistic that things are finally going to take a turn for the better. A week later, your life is a shambles. You've lost the thing most dear to you. You are a fugitive from all that you know. And everything you've ever thought you knew is called into question.

A dark cloud would descend over your life. It would be hard to see the good in anything. It would be hard to distinguish between friend and foe, between truth and lies. Everything, everywhere would be gloomy. It would feel like your life was at an end and all joy had been snuffed out.

How many of us are in the midst of our dark clouds? How many of us are reeling from life altering events? How many of us are staring into our own Good Friday's?

I think of the people of Kenya. Not all of them, mind you, but those especially for whom the world has turned its back and they are lost in the black cloud. Jesus seems dead to them. Hope is gone. Judith Taussig told me of one family that she visited while in Kenya

Kenya Events Get Dates!

2010-03-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update:

Sunday, April 11th, 2010 - The Kenya Mission Group will present its report to the congregation during the 10:00am service at Lakeside Presbyterian Church. This report will focus primarily on our Kenyan partners - who they are, what they do, and why God is with them.

And then, on Saturday, May 1st, 2010 - The Kenya Mission Team is proud to present our first annual Kenya Dinner at 6pm at Lakeside Presbyterian Church. In addition to an authentic Kenyan buffet, this fund-raising event will also include hundreds of slides and photos, a few short testimonials from the trip participants, and the "official" video of the Kenya trip (made by me!)

I would ask that if you plan to attend the dinner that you please let me know and I'll be happy to place a reservation for you. We'd like to know how much food to prepare since we've never done anything like this and we can't expect hungry teenage African kids to eat all the leftovers ;)

Hope to see you there!

Will

Bouncy Bouyant Bubbling Optimism Returns

2010-03-26T14:52:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me why. I've had the week from Hell. In fact, it makes other weeks from Hell look like cakewalks by comparison. That week of college finals, PT Test in the Reserves, 7 days of work at Century Theaters, a flat tire on the freeway, and food poisoning - NOTHING! That week I was dumped by my girlfriend and had to fly off for my two weeks in the reserves - Pathetically easy! That first week of Boot Camp... um... well... No, nothing comes close to this week in terms of bad weeks.

And yet... its Friday. And although I still have to cram my scream inducing leg into my car and then hobble on to BART, then walk eight blocks on my bum leg in order to try and sit through a two hour movie without dinner, not to mention the standing up and sitting down I still have to do over and over and over again tomorrow as part of my Last Disciples Dress Rehearsal (repeated again just the once on Sunday), and, of course, the fact that I still don't have a bathroom or hot water in my house... I feel great.

Its like someone threw a switch and said, Okay, Will, now you're going to have a great weekend.

I feel like Job at the end of his book right before God restored all his fortunes. Just knowing that the ordeal was over must have been the best moment of his life. That sweet ecstasy of release, of the promise of a better world ahead.

I feel good. I knew that I would.

Have a great weekend!

Weighing in on 3-D films

2010-03-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

My exposure to 3-D goes back years. My Dad was always affiliated with clients that owned movie theaters so as a kid I got to see a lot of revivals of old 3-D movies (It Came From Outer Space being one that I remember). These movies always seemed to be perfectly ordinary films until someone threw an axe or pie or something to try and make the audience jump. It did nothing for me then. It does nothing for me now.

In the 1980's Disney came out with a real good 3-D system for use in their parks. First with Magic Journeys then with Captain EO, and later with attractions like MuppetVision 3-D, Honey, I Shrunk The Audience and It's Tough To Be A Bug, Disney made 3D real. For the first time, a character would fly out in front of you and you'd think they were right over the head of the guy in the next row. Really spectacular stuff... except that after 30 minutes or so of this I would have such eye-strain that tears would be flowing out of my eyes. As much as I loved the effect, I had to wonder what damage it was doing to my vision.

So when James Cameron, et al, decided to start experimenting with 3D films again, I assumed they had developed a way to take the eye-strain out the new 3D process that Disney had developed to create REAL 3D films. What a great idea. But then, they also started charging ridiculous amounts of extra money to see these 3D films.

Finally, last week, I managed to snag a free ticket to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. The film, while being well made, was actually kind of boring. But I didn't really care because I was mostly there to review the 3D effects.

First, the good news... there was no eye-strain. I sat through the entire film with dry eyes and no headaches.

Second, the bad news... the 3D effects were lousy. They weren't as bad as the old House of Wax gimmicky 3D of the past, but they weren't Disney Attractions quality either. They were somewhere in between in what I could only describe as the kind of 3D effect you get looking at a View Master. For this, I would have had to pay an extra $3 per ticket.

Now, to be fair, I didn't see Avatar in 3D and the descriptions I heard were that the effects were amazing. So perhaps Cameron has developed true Disneyland 3D for films (which would probably cause the eye-strain). But shouldn't all 3D quality be the same before Hollywood jumps all over the 3D bandwagon?

I remember seeing my first surround sound movie - Super Mario Brothers - and being impressed by the sound for about ten seconds. Then I realized that this gimmick was going to cause ticket prices to go up so that movie makers could afford to put surround sound on Woody Allen movies. Now, I think the same thing is going to happen again with 3D... and quite frankly, I don't need to see or hear Woody Allen in 3D or surround sound.

Jerry Bruckheimer was recently asked if the Prince of Persia movie or the next Pirates of the Carribean would be in 3D and he responded that 3D wouldn't make a damn bit of difference if the story wasn't compelling to the audience. That guy is one smart cookie. So, I for one am hoping that this trend for 3D movies dies a quick death. I don't want to pay extra for a gimmick that doesn't improve the theater going experience in the slightest way.

RANT MODE ON!

2010-03-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Something about bad behavior and ignorance just gets my goat.

My sister, who has been having a rough time of it lately, was interviewed for the San Francisco Chronicle in an article about middle class families that have fallen on hard times. The gist of the article was that not enough is being done to help families and that our traditional safety nets have really large holes in them - holes large enough that even formerly well off lawyers are falling through them.

I read the article on my sister's facebook page and the comments were entirely from her friends and family showing support and offering prayers for her. What I didn't read was the article's comments on the SFGATE.com official website for the San Francisco Chronicle. My sister called to tell me about some of these comments.

1) If you weren't so fat, you'd have a job.
2) If you can't support your children, maybe you shouldn't have had them.
3) If you can't afford to live here, you should move to some place cheaper.
4) I saw a story about people like you on Dr. Phil and I hope the IRS investigates you to make sure you're not cheating the hard working tax payers.
5) I looked up your former employer on Google and their website is atrocious - no wonder you're out of work.

Aside from the arrogance and ignorance shown in these comments, the pure mean-spiritedness of them took my breath away. Has our society really gone so far into negative territory that we've forgotten our basic humanity? Is it really every person for themselves and to heck with the next guy?

Now, other than those people who comment on my blog, we all know that most commentators on other websites are complete idiots. They are ignorant. They can't spell. And they truly represent the lowest common denominator in this country.

Except that their behavior is spreading. It's in Congress now. It's on talk shows. It's all over the main stream news and media. The idea of civil discourse appears to be taking its final bows.

This kind of behavior is categorically un-Christian. Which isn't to say that all Christians refrain from this kind of speech. In fact, in many cases, so called Christians are the worst offenders. The difference being that Christians ought to be called on it when they say offensive things like this. When Pat Robertson says that Haiti deserved to be flattened by an earthquake or Glenn Beck says that Jesus wasn't about social justice, I expect Christians to stand up and say, "You guys need to pray about what you're saying first." That being said, I find that people who make these comments again and again are the first ones who are convinced of their own righteousness (whether Christian or not).

It is telling that these comments come from people reading a newspaper in a city that has only 4% regular church attendance. I know that of the remaining 96% there is probably a large portion that believe that church has nothing to offer them - that they'd much rather spend their time with groups of people that agree with everything they say and think 100% of the time and are never challenged to assume that maybe the world doesn't revolve around them. That's probably true of many communities.

My counter comments to these people would be - get out into the community and find people that are struggling and help them. After just one day of doing that, you will never make such ignorant and hurtful comments again. And if not, then I hope you never find out what life on the other side of those comments is like.

For once the military has it right...

2010-03-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

The most communist organization in the United States is its military. It is an organization that basically practices what it preaches - equality. Recruits come in with an equal chance to succeed based entirely on their merits. If they work hard and follow orders, study and advance, they can reach the highest ranks. But even if they don't, their daily work and sacrifice is recognized by the rest of the world as something they can be proud of. Does this sound like real life to you?

Consider this, while in the military they are fed, housed, and given unlimited access to free health care. For the most part, this is not something they have to pay for, but even if it does, it comes out of their paycheck and is never a burden to the soldiers, sailors, or marines. They are also given access to educational opportunities, usually at a much discounted rate.

Their job is considered so important that every day issues like health care and food and housing should not be a burden to them. As long as they continue to do the work, they have job security and life security.

Why can't the rest of the country get it right? Why must we create rules and regulations that are designed to give everyone access to all the basic things they need to succeed and then overburden them with unrealistic budgets and overwhelming red tape? Either we think these things are important for all citizens to have, or we don't. And if we do, then we should create a system that works for everyone with as little fuss as possible.

I'm not talking about free rides. I'm not talking about hand outs. I'm talking about people being able to go to work in whatever field they want while not having to worry about food, housing, and health care. Remove those three worries from life and imagine what you could accomplish.

Or we could continue to have a system that supports those with money while burdening those without regardless of how hard someone works or tries to make a living for themselves.

I for one know where I stand on this issue. And I'm not impressed with Congress or the President right now. I know where they want to stand on the issue, but they haven't got it done yet.

March Sadness

2010-03-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

In the midst of all the Hoopla and pomp and circumstance surrounding this year's NCAA basketball tournament, there is a little ray of sadness. Last night I was informed that my uncle's cancer had spread and that he probably won't survive the weekend.

Uncle Keith has been a basketball fan since before I was born. For more than forty years, he and my Dad kept stats for the University of San Francisco. My lasting memory of my Uncle is visiting his home and seeing stats and scorecards littering every available nook and cranny of his home. He kept stats for USF and for fun, he kept stats of everyone else as well. In the day before the internet, my Uncle was a font of statistical information about any team and any player.

I'd like to say that my love of basketball comes from him, but it doesn't. It wasn't until I was in college and met my roommate, Russ, who had played for the University of Idaho and who even now coaches high school basketball, that I became a fan of the game. I could never dribble the ball, not even now, and so, I never saw any reason to enjoy a sport where I could not do even the most mundane task. But Russ opened my eyes to the game, showed me the rules and the strategy and the excitement, and I've been hooked ever since.

In the last seven years, or so, ever since my Uncle was first diagnosed with cancer, I've been helping keep the stats at USF. About halfway through last season, my Uncle finally benched himself as the chemo made it impossible for him to concentrate on the game enough to make the correct calls. I took over for him and continued through the first half of this season. He continued to come to the games even when he wasn't feeling well and he always wanted a copy of the stats when the game was done for his file.

So as the rest of the basketball world sits down today to watch Cinderellas and upsets and underdogs and hoops madness of all types, I will be watching as well and remembering my Uncle and all the ways that he has affected my life.

And as for next year, if my Uncle has his say in Heaven, expect USF to go all the way.

The Adventure Chronicles (1983 - 2010)

2010-03-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

When I returned from Kenya my first thoughts turned to this old relic of a website. I thought of how I would really remodel it and spruce it up. I thought of new content and new web dohickeys and all sorts of bells and whistles. And I thought of the fact that I'd be the only one working on it and the only one who visited it. It was a pipe dream. It was a nice pipe dream, but it was still a pipe dream.

Quite frankly, there are more important things to do than to resucitate an old pipe dream.

And so, when I came home yesterday and found a letter from my internet provider telling me that The Adventure Chronicles website's credit card had expired and that they needed a new form of payment, it occurred to me that this money could be better spent elsewhere. Keeping an aging dream on life support requires money and money is something I'm desperately short of right now.

So quietly, at 7:30 this morning, I pulled the plug. The Adventure Chronicles slipped away peacefully. It did not die in rancor or hurt feelings. It simply went to that place where all dreams go to die, to be remembered fondly from time to time, but to have no existence beyond that.

May it rest in peace.

We Can Rebuild Him...

2010-03-05T10:35:00.000-08:00

Kenyan food was generally quite good and tasty... but... it was also monochromatic. I'm not putting down their cuisine, but it was rather one shaded. It consisted of rice, mashed potatoes with either corn, beans, or banana mixed in, fresh vegetables (maize, cabbage, or carrots were in season), sometimes a beef stew that was heavy on potatoes, carrots, peas and a little beef, and sometimes chicken - usually boiled. They also served a heavy flat bread called Chipoti that for all intents and purposes was Naan. It was good food and filling. And it was the same. Everywhere we went. It was the same menu. Over and over and over again...

I never really understood how blessed we are as Americans until about the fifth day of rice, mashed potatoes, chicken, etc... The abundant variety of food makes my stomach sing like a canary. As a result, the sameness of the food caused me to have a little stomach quirk. I can't really explain it, but it was like my stomach went on strike. Little particles of stomach acid circled my gut with picket signs reading, "Heck No, Please No Mo'!" I ate, grudgingly, rice and chicken and I loved the fresh vegetables. Really, on a good day, I was maybe consuming half the calories that I would at home. But, at the same time, I wasn't really hungry.

This had an obvious side benefit. I felt fitter and fitter as the days stretched on. In addition to not eating as much as I normally do, I was getting beaucoupe exercise. I didn't sit behind a desk once on the entire trip. I may not have been running or going to the gym, but I also wasn't watching TV and noodling around on Facebook. And all that Vitamin D exposure from the ever present sun meant I was getting plenty of vitamins. Beyond that, I was at altitude. So my lungs, while having to work harder to keep me breathing (especially on long, hot, hills), were basically getting super charged for normal sea level air.

The end result is that I feel absolutely wonderful. Lighter, cooler, faster... I feel like I'm 29 again. I know that eventually sea level will catch up with me. Gravity sucks, after all. But I figure that if I walk, then run, fast enough I can maybe keep that feeling a little longer than usual. I intend to take all that Kenyan suffering and put it to good use.

Now if I can only figure out how to make the vegetables taste as good here as they did there.

Why Walt Disney World

2010-03-03T08:51:00.000-08:00

As I've told people, Kenya was the most challenging and most rewarding adventure of my life - but it wasn't a vacation. At some point in the first week of the trip as the fatigue and hardship hit me particularly hard this fact became extremely evident to me. I knew that wherever I went next it was going to have to be a vacation spot, a place of rest and relaxation, and a restorative to my body, mind, and spirit.

Every four years for the past twelve, my family has traveled to Disney World - the ultimate playground of rich (and not so rich) Americans and people from around the world. A resort like no other, I have found Walt Disney World to be a place to relax and to enjoy the company of my extended family. Ironically, while not feeling homesick, it was Kenya that made me want to return to Walt Disney World. In a place where family means so much, I felt the poverty of not having my family with me. I decided that what I really wanted was a new opportunity to spend time with my family on vacation.

So in January of next year, I will travel to WDW one more time with my family and enjoy the companionship and the strengthening of familial bonds. I will embrace the quiet, the peace, the relaxation, the laughter, and the luxury. I might feel a little guilty about not spending that money and that time helping the less fortunate, but I will return from WDW feeling restored and ready to carry on.

And besides, my next trip after that will be a return to Kenya. But that's a subject for later...

Skin Friends

2010-03-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while it is my constitutional obligation to write one very strange and out there blog post. Consider my obligation fulfilled for this year...

I was sitting on the staircase enjoying the bright sunshine when the brunette came and sat on me. She was very lithe and supple and quite enjoyable, but just as I was starting to get friendly, she left.

I was rather disappointed, so I joined my friend and fellow youth leader Sherman in the marketplace to look for swiss cheese. All of the packages were open and I just wanted to find about 20 slices that were roughly the same size - but, of course, the most I could find were about five decent sized scraps. It was very frustrating. But as I went to the checkout stand to pay, I was met by one of two sisters who handed me a brand new smartphone/laptop thingamajig.

I opened it up and watched a helicopter shot of a car chase through what appeared to be a cliffside auto wrecking yard. When the angle changed, the car skidded to a halt outside a two story home and two women jumped out in full combat gear. They started firing their machine guns into the house which was countering with return fire. But one of the women ducked behind the car and then produced a rocket launcher which she fired into the upstairs of the house. After the requisite explosion, the two sisters told me to close the laptop and join them on the beach.

As I joined the two sisters on the beach they explained that the movie I had just watched was a plan of their attack on a rival equestrian school up the coast. It was more of a fantasy, of course, than a reality. But this coastal area wasn't big enough for two rival equestrian schools. They wanted to know if I would support their school by becoming skin friends with them - skin friends being something akin to being so close that you were practically the other person's skin, like blood brothers or some such.

That was, of course, when I woke up.

One interesting side effect of anti-malaria medication is that it gives you REALLY bizarre dreams. However, about three weeks before I started taking anti-malaria medication I had a not so bizarre dream. I can't remember all the details, but I woke up with one very clear understanding. God wants me to start making money. Now, I know that such a revelation sounds completely self-serving (not that I'm against that ;) but the implication of the dream seemed rather profound to me.

First, the implication was that I was somehow preventing myself from making money - that I was somehow holding myself back from earning my maximum potential cash flow. I had to think about that for a while and I discovered that it was probably true. As much I grew up wanting to be a millionaire by the time I was 21 (I'm a little off the mark), I've never seen the acquisition of money as a goal unto itself. The million bucks was supposed to be a side effect of my fame and writing talent. So, I admit to worrying about the means of acquiring wealth without worrying about the actual wealth creation aspect. Or in other words, I worked on writing stories, not on selling stories.

Second, the implication was that I somehow equated having money with being, well, unchristian. I'm not entirely sure that was my thinking. It was probably more along the lines that those who were wealthy were that way because of un-christian acts - that the acquisition of wealth in and of itself was greed, pure and simple. Hence the idea that working hard was its own reward and if I made money doing it then that was great as well, but working strictly to make money was somehow impure.

You would think that with a revelation like that from God in a dream, I'd have jumped up and down and cried out, "Party! Party! Party!" But that wasn't the case. The revelation shocked me. Why does God want me to make money? Maybe it was just a dream after all.

Well, my skin friends, the answer is fairly clear to me after Kenya. There are things I want to do and things I need to do and they all require money - more money than I have and more money than I can possibly ever make. The time for being spiritually nourished by my poverty is at an end. God now trusts me with His resources and He expects me to go out and get a fair share and then distribute it to the less fortunate.

Some dreams are just crazy. Some dreams are calls to action. The hardest part is knowing which is which.

P.S. If you know where I can find 20 slices of swiss cheese roughly the same size, please let me know. ;)

Where The Streets Have No Names

2010-03-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

How could I not be changed by Kenya? If the point of a story is to take a character stuck in a rut of his life and through adversity and challenge bring that character to a new point in his life, then Kenya is the story of my character. I have been transformed in ways that I have not yet had a time to fathom. I was challenged. I struggled. I faced adversity and overcame it. And I was brought to a new point in my life.

About ten days ago, I was in the passenger seat of an old beat up Toyota truck. The truck had been driving down a dirt and mud creased road for nearly half an hour by that point. We were passing people walking to work, donkeys, goats, sheep, and others on the side of the road, fourteen passenger Matatu's whizzing by on the hard packed road looking for passengers, and a couple of small marketplaces with no names. It occured to me that I had gone so far off the beaten path that I was no longer visible on any map. I was literally in a place where the streets, and towns, had no names - except those known to the locals.

I should have been panicked. I should have been concerned. In my life I have sought to be constantly surrounded by things that I can control. I have a car that can take me where I want to go. I have a home filled with things to give me comfort. I have a job so that I can afford to buy the food that I want and the goods that I need. My life has been shaped and defined by my desires. I like to know where I am. I like to know where I am going. And I like to know how I'm going to get there. But, here I was, in the middle of nowhere, going who knew where, and not having any idea how I was going to get there or what was going to happen when I arrived. That uneasiness of the uncertainty of life defined Kenya to me because it made one thing abundantly clear and necessary - I had no control over anything except my faith in God.

Faith in God in a place like Kenya is as necessary as water or air or good sunscreen. Its not something taken for granted. Its not something you can turn on or off as needed. It is palpable. It is ever present. It is required. In Kenya, my faith wasn't restored - it was defined. It was bolstered. It was strengthened. It became something tangible to me, something real. It was like owning a rain coat your entire life and then suddenly encountering rain after 40 years.

I will talk more of Kenya as I process more of it, but for now I just wanted you to know that from now on part of me will always be on that dusty road watching the scenery going by and reveling in the knowledge that I have no control, but faith will see me to my next destination.

Mr. Robison, I presume

2010-01-29T09:23:00.000-08:00

Dr. Livingston disappeared in Africa. Or was it Dr. Stanley? I can never remember. The point is that he wasn't really missing just completely out of touch with the rest of the world. Africa tends to swallow up communications that way. Its a big continent and the tin cans and string don't reach very far. This is all preamble to say that by this time next week, I will be in Kenya and you won't be hearing from me for a while. Don't panic. Exploratory missions to Africa to find me are not necessary. I shall return.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has in some way contributed to this adventure. Some have donated money. Some have donated time. Many have donated prayers. I cherish and value all of your contributions and hope that they somehow translate into better lives for the street children of Kenya.

God be with you all.

Will Robison

A Great Story In Need Of Editing...

2010-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

My second book review in as many days brings me a little closer to home. Last night, I finished reading what my sister had given me for Christmas - the first 41 chapters of her first novel (they're short chapters and the book is near the end). I have to admit that I hated where she left the book because it was right after the most emotional part of the story, but given that bias, I'm still going to tell you what a wonderful book it is.

The book is titled, "The Exhausted Women's Club," and its about four women from different places in life coming together to find friendship in the midst of their exhausting lives. Because this book is not yet finished and not yet published, I'm going to leave the synopsis vague. We need to preserve its money making potential, after all.

I've been writing since Halloween of my Second Grade year - which is a really long time. Almost since the moment I first fell into writing, I've known that it was what I was meant to do. But that doesn't mean it comes easy or that I'm particularly good at it. When I read my sister's writing, it is a constant reminder that I'm really not that good. She, on the other hand, is phenomenal. She's wasted in lawyering. She needs to be published.

She's made some rookie mistakes so far - but nothing that can't be fixed with rigorous editing. After muddling through some of the main story elements, she has moments of pure genius. Just as I was starting to fear that her story was going down the road of mediocrity, for instance, her last three chapters whopped an incredible true life emotional punch that had me in tears. It made me very confident that the rest of the story could be saved and that it would be quite the number one best seller.

It's not every day I get to review a book that isn't even finished yet - especially one that I haven't written. So its quite a treat for me to not only review this book, but to recommend it to all. My sister's book will be one that you hear about for years to come and one hell of a great movie as well.

Now if she'd only hurry and send me more of the book. I need to find out how this whole thing ends!

(P.S. I'd like to recommend Meryl Streep as Amber's mother - I know its a small part, but it needs someone of her gravitas, and besides, Meryl Streep sells movies!)

A match made in Heaven...

2010-01-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

This is not a typical book review because I honestly don't know how anyone else would react to this book. The point of this blog is to point out that sometimes we are pre-composed towards something and that, therefore, any review of the material should be taken with the extreme bias already destined.

As a combined Christmas/Traveling present, Andy from A Mile From The Beach showed up at my house a couple of weeks ago with a book. He wanted me to read it on the plane. He said, "This book is really you, Will. I know it will speak to you." Now, having been told that a million times before from a thousand different people, I took the recommendation with its implied meaning - I think you'll really like this book.

The book is Donald Miller's latest book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." At its primal level, the book is a "sequel" to Donald Miller's best-selling "Blue Like Jazz". It begins with Donald Miller being contacted by a couple of film makers who want to turn Blue Like Jazz into a film, but as part of the process, they begin discussing ways to re-write the largely autobiographical story in such a way as to make it into a good film. Donald Miller sees the process as akin to editing and rewriting his life's story.

As I didn't want to travel with too many books, I decided that I'd read this book before I flew to Kenya. Its not a very long book - 200+ pages. Even for me, I knew I should finish it before I left. So for the first week or so I waded into it - reading about five chapters in a week. It was good, but it wasn't really connecting.

As anyone who regularly reads this blog could tell you, I've been struggling lately with finding answers to questions about my own life. Where I was going to go from here and what all the various things in my life were leading to. Added to this were questions I posed about my faith journey and about my trip to Kenya. Then there were dozens of other questions in my head about things that I've never had the time to blog about. Lots and lots of questions with very few answers. If there's one thing my faith journey has taught me though, its patience. God answers in his own time and in his own way.

This Saturday the weather created a situation where all my plans were canceled. I had about two hours to kill waiting to head off to a Basketball game and there was absolutely nothing on television. So, I curled up on my bed, got nice and comfortable under my blankets, and grabbed Donald Miller's book. I figured I could get a few chapters out of the way, maybe take a nap, or whatever...

I finished reading it. Couldn't put it down to be precise. One by one, in answer to my many prayers, Donald Miller answered every single one of the questions in my head. When Andy said that this book would speak to me, he had been right on the money. It was like Donald Miller had crawled inside my head, found my deepest level of questions, and then been given the answers to those questions. This wasn't just a book, it was an answer to prayer. Whether Donald Miller knew it, he was writing this book to me.

Of course, God knew what He was doing. He seemed to offer these words of wisdom to Donald Miller and had him write them down and get them published. It would be arrogant to assume that the book was meant intentionally for me, but boy did it speak to me in ways that nothing else ever has.

Now, I want to clarify something here. I've found other things inspirational before. I've read things that made me want to visit foreign countries, or be a better person, or what have you, but I've never read anything like this. I didn't immediately jump up from my bed with a plan of action. I didn't immediately vow to travel or to save the world or anything. I can't really say that reading this book worked like that for me. Its well written and certainly inspirational, but to me it was more like an oracle. Ask your question and get an answer meant only for your ears - an answer that makes you think, not one that makes you leap into danger.

As a result, I've begun to more clearly see my path. All has not yet been revealed to me about what my future has in store for me, but the context of that future has been illuminated. I may not know what will happen in Kenya, but at least I understand why I'm going and to what purpose God has sent me.

So Andy... sorry, I'd like to give you credit for knowing me so well, but the fact of the matter is even you could not have suspected how deeply profoundly this book would have affected me. You were inspired to give me this book just as Donald Miller was inspired to write it. God used you as a messenger. And to that extent, you should be very humble and thank God, as I shall for your part in this tale.

(As an addendum, I totally 100% recommend this book to all people, but especially to writers and film makers - even I learned some new tricks about story from it. But I also recommend it to anyone who is currently searching through life for some way to become better connected or to be better utilized by the world. This book won't make the hard work go away, but it will make you want to tackle that hard work with gusto.)

(As an additional addendum - Donald Miller - You Rock!)