World Enough, and Time?

2006-07-13T05:12:00.000-04:00

Oh my! We've suddenly issued progeny!

BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY

Emma Claire Denton, 7 lbs. 12 oz.
21 inches.
June 23, 2006. Write it down, my homies. Bring gifts for daddy too.

P.S. -- July 6, 1975? I forsee a father/daughter birthday party in our future. Though I'm thirty-ohmygoodnessIcreakwhenIwalk-one years older than she is. Thirty-one. 31. THIRTY STINKING ONE. I thought I'd be dead by now. Or Buddhist.

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Crazy maudlin dead-daddy thoughts sends fingers flying to Google -- warm (selectively edited) memories of childhood fun and frolic . . .

Bwahhhhahahhahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lookee!

In *Wiki-freakin'-pedia*!

Whowouldathunkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridgely,_Tennessee

Cue the Springsteen . . . "In my hometown,
In my hometown,
In my hometown."

Now if only I can get RoEllen added. I actually lived there longer, don't you know? And it's MapQuestable. Only a matter of time . . .

.

2005-11-16T10:28:00.000-05:00

Wow. I just had to share some of these pictures. I've been fascinated with the idea of space exploration and astronomy ever since I was a bespectacled preteen; stellar anomalies, quasars, and black holes always seemed to make more sense than girls, after all . . . plus, growing up in the dark unindustrial flatness of agri-rural West Tennessee allowed me phenonmenal opportunities to look up at the stars unimpeded by little things like pollution, or trees.

These are photos from the Cassini-Huygens NASA mission to Saturn and Titan.

This first photo shows Saturn as we never see it, at the edge of its rings:

Photo two shows the three moons Dione, Tethys and Pandora:

Photo three shows the icy moon Dione near Saturn itself:

Photo four shows the small Hyperion satellite that is actually located in the rings of Saturn:

And, finally, photo five shows an approach angle to the planet.

I hope you take a minute to browse the excellent multimedia images found on the NASA website.

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2005-10-19T21:32:00.000-04:00

Here's the kind of world we live in.

The lovely [name withheld], to whom I have been married for seven wonderful years, has DELETED FOREVER her blog, because of 1.) odd spam, and 2.) creepy comments by even creepier commenters.

(P.S. -- You know who you are, and I swear if I find you, I'm beating the [deleted] out of your [deleted][deleted], you [deleted][deleted] of a [deleted].)

Ahem. I'm just trying to be forceful, yet remain employed.

In other news, should anyone else feel the urge to express themselves to the lovely [name withheld], or should they feel the need to somehow fish for personal information, or feel some need to commit identity theft, feel free to contact ME instead via e-mail:

phil.bredesen@state.tn.us

Have a blessed day.

2005-10-13T10:14:00.000-04:00

Do you have the same kinds of friends that I do?

I seem to have surrounded myself with the Ambrose Bierce bunch; those cynical, biting wits who like nothing better than to skewer the stupidity that's so easy to find on the internet. I received an e-mail just the other day from a friend of mine who linked me to a highly entertaining "bible thumping" website that had the most hilarious denouncements of the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and modern culture that I had just about ever read. To wit:

The Mormon movement began with "the prophet" Joseph Smith, Jr. in the year 1820. Joe (as he was known) was born to some rather strange parents in 1805. His mother, Lucy, was involved in occult practices and visions, while his father, Joseph, Sr., consumed much time with imaginary treasure digging (including the booty of Captain Kidd).

According to Mormon writings (Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith - History 1:1-25), on a day in 1820, Joe was praying in the woods when he received a "vision" from God the Father and Jesus. It was "revealed" to Joe that the church was in "apostasy" and he was "the chosen one" to launch a new "dispensation."

Being unwilling to drop his current occupation of money-digging with his father (while using "peep stones" and "divining rods"), Joe put his "calling" on hold for three years. Then, according to his own account (Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith - History 1:29-54), he was paid a bedside "visit" by the "angel" Moroni in 1823.

Do you get the "feeling" that this "person" doesn't "like" the "Mormons"?

My laugh reflex wasn't ready for this, though: Santa, is Satan. Why? It's obvious, really.

SANTA LIVES IN THE NORTH
Tradition holds that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, a place ABOVE the rest of us.

JESUS CHRIST LIVES IN THE NORTH
"Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King." (Psa. 48:2)

SANTA WEARS RED CLOTHING
Santa wears a red furry suit.

JESUS CHRIST WEARS RED CLOTHING
"And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God." (Rev. 19:13)

SANTA HAS WHITE HAIR
Santa is always pictured as an old man with white hair like wool.

JESUS CHRIST HAS WHITE HAIR
"His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;" (Rev. 1:14)

SANTA IS OMNIPOTENT
He has the ability to carry presents for over a billion children.

JESUS CHRIST IS OMNIPOTENT
"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." (Mat. 28:18)

SANTA HAS SPIRIT HELPERS CALLED ELVES
Webster, 1828: "ELF...a spirit, the night-mar; a ghost, hag, witch"

JESUS CHRIST HAS SPIRIT HELPERS CALLED ANGELS
"Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him." (Mat. 4:11)

SANTA - SANAT - SATAN?

Sanat Kumara is worshipped by some new age groups as God. H.P. Blavatsky, the mother of the new age movement, said on page 350 of her book, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2: "The name isn't important. It is the letters". "Santa" has the same letters as "Satan"! According to G.A. Riplinger, "Ole Nick" is listed as the name of a fallen angel in the Dictionary of Fallen Angels. (New Age Bible Versions, Gail Riplinger, pg. 53)

Friend, don't glorify Satan by giving the glory and attributes of Jesus Christ to Santa Claus! Santa is a COUNTERFEIT GOD, and you are honoring Satan when you teach your children to believe in Santa! Christians should teach their children the TRUTH. We should glorify God by teaching our children about Jesus Christ and His saving grace!

Jesus lives in the north?

Furry?

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO -- Then it got personal.

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For those of you who don't know, I am a extremely liberal member of the church of Christ. (This is a misnomer, of course, as it means that I'm really to the right of most fascists . . . anyway, I'm a Campbellite.) We pride ourselves on our autonomy and our equality; basically, we don't believe in any form of church hierarchy -- everybody's an evangelist, really -- AND we believe in the complete, absolute authority of scripture. We speak where the Bible speaks, and we are silent where the Bible is silent. Our doctrine changes from church to church, but we ALL agree on those two precepts.

Oh -- and we agree in full immersion water baptism for the remission of sins, as Peter describes in Acts 2:38, "Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Yeah -- we're that literal about the Bible.

Let me repeat. We are freakishly literal about the Bible, and highly conservative.

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After the Santa thing, I began reading some of the other tracts on the site and found myself laughing aloud at how insanely conservative the writer is . . . but it's the self-conscious sort of laughter, the laughter elicited by the realization that the insanity I find humorous isn't so far removed from the values I say I represent . . . when I saw it.

Yep. "Acts 2:38 -- Satan's Favorite Bible Verse."

"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." (Acts 2:38)

The above verse of scripture is a favorite among many religious groups. One can hear it several times on Sunday morning radio programs, as well as from the pulpits of numerous groups, and it can be found in much religious literature. The verse is a favorite because, on the surface, it seemingly states that one must be baptized in order to be saved, and without baptism one is not saved. So, those who believe that water baptism is essential for salvation make it a regular habit of using Acts 2:38 as scriptural support.

The problem is that Acts 2:38 isn't the only verse in the Bible which deals with salvation. While many claim to "speak where the scriptures speak and remain silent where the scriptures are silent," they practically ignore most of the New Testament teaching on salvation. The only verses that such false teachers quote and reference are the ones they feel they can use to promote their "water gospel." The fact is that most of what the New Testament says about salvation doesn't include baptism at all! (John 5:24, John 11:25-26, John 14:6, Romans 4:5, Romans 10:9-13, Eph. 2:8-9, etc.), and the few places that do mention water baptism do not include it as part of one's salvation. Water baptism follows salvation as one of the first steps of obedience for the new believer.

In spite of this obvious truth, the cultists remain steadfast in their heresy, insisting that Acts 2:38 sets forth water baptism as a requirement for salvation. Thus, this verse of scripture has become Satan's favorite Bible verse. In fact, many are trusting water baptism alone for the salvation of their souls! Indeed, Satan has deceived multitudes by his perversion of Acts 2:38.

Well, poop, buddy, you almost had me.

I find the greatest humor from this site NOT the cloying diadactic recitation of why Santa is Satan, or why "the Mormons" are "wrong." No, I got the biggest belly laugh from the fact that the most honestly conservative church I know, a church that can be so stilited and insane about trying to literally interpret the Bible that it occasionally binds its own best intentions in a Gordian knot of revealed truth, this church that is MY well-intentioned-yet-occasionally-crazy church . . . yeah, we're so liberal and misguided that WE'RE on the track to hell as well.

(Which is a real place, by the way.)

When A Sinner Goes To Hell. . .

"....the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame." Luke 16:22-24.

"Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. . ." Matthew 25:41.

"Enter ye in at the straight gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." Matthew 7:13-14.

"But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 8:12.

"And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for the to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Mark 9:43-44.

The subject of Hell isn't a very POPULAR subject, but it is, indeed, a very IMPORTANT subject. Jesus preached often about this horrible place for one basic reason: HE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO GO THERE! There are many who consider "hell fire" preaching to be cruel and unnecessary, but the Lord Jesus Christ thought it was very necessary to preach on Hell and WARN lost people of this horrible place.

Friend, since you began reading this tract, many people have died and went to Hell forever, and many more will have gone before you've finished. I can assure you that they would all love to have a second chance. They would all love to be able to read this tract and receive Christ as their Savior, but it's too late for them. They'll be in Hell for eternity. What about YOU?

Great. I guess I'll be down there too, with the Mormons, department store Santas, and everyone else in my cult of the "water gospel." Excuse me: I GUESS I'll be DOWN THERE too, with the MORMONS, DEPARTMENT store SANTAS, and . . . well, you know the rest. I wonder where hell is, though?

THE SPHERE OF HELL

The sphere of Hell is a round, hollowed-out place in the Earth's core. Scientists say that the Earth's outer crust is less than twenty miles thick, and that beyond that point, there are rivers and lakes of FLAMING HOT LAVA, or, as the Bible calls it, a "lake of fire" (Rev. 20:15). So, this very moment your eternal soul may be less than twenty miles from the burning fires of Hell!

Hell isn't in some distant dimension; Hell is UNDER YOUR FEET! The rebels in Numbers chapter 16 went DOWN into the pit. Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 32:22 about a fire in the LOWEST HELL. Amos 9:2 speaks of people trying to DIG down into Hell. So Hell is a REAL PLACE, and it's UNDER YOUR FEET RIGHT NOW, torturing millions of lost souls forever! Think about THAT!

Oh, I am. I am.

(giggles)

Sorry. I just realized that if my soul is, indeed "less than twenty miles from the burning fires of Hell!" then hell could also be Monroe, Georgia, another "hollowed out place" that I would like to nominate as a more likely candidate than the earth's core.

I also couldn't help but giggle at this passage from later in the same tract:

THE SUFFERING OF HELL

If you go to Hell, you'll suffer. That's what Hell is for.

". . . Keep smiling
Keep shining
Knowing you can always count on me
For sure --
For good times
And bad times
I'll be on your side for ever more . . ."

Suffering of hell, Dionne Warwick songs, hmmm. Maybe this guy's stumbled onto something.

2005-10-04T14:30:00.000-04:00

My head hurts. I've just spent the last hour or so reading Xanga sites that my junior high kids have made . . . I am amazed at the sense of community they have. Other things about the Xanga experience that amaze me: the awesome "order from chaos" feel that I get from reading them, the true hypertextuality, the referentiality, the playfulness with language and design.

It's really interesting to read how these kids choose to define themselves, the way they experiment with language. HOWEVER, with that said . . . the crazy, mind-altering backgrounds kill me. WHEW.

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Graduate school -- I love it. I've spent waaaaaaaaaay too much time online looking for poetry ideas, though . . .

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One of the interesting things I've run across is an early 18th century Italian philosopher named Giambattista Vico. This from the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism:

Vico turns the jurisprudential principle of the true and the certain into a metaphysics of history such that, as he holds in the New Science, it shows what providence has wrought in history (par. 342). The new critical art of the philosophical examination of philology shows, in Vico's view, that all nations follow a common pattern of development. This pattern shows the providential structure of human events. A further dimension to the new critical art is Vico's axiom that "doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat" (par. 314). He says that the first science to be learned must be mythology (par. 51) and that the "master key" to his new science is the discovery that the first humans thought in "poetic characters" or "imaginative universals" (universali fantastici) (par. 34). All nations begin in the same way by the power of the imagination (fantasia) to make the world intelligible in terms of gods. This age of gods gives way to a second age, in which fantasia is used to form social institutions and types of character or virtues in terms of heroes. Finally, these two ages, in which the world is ordered through the power of fantasia, decline into an age of rationality, in which the world is ordered in purely conceptual and logical terms and in which mental acting is finally dominated by what Vico calls a barbarism of reflection (barbarie della riflessione) (par. 1106).

This cycle of ages of gods, heroes, and humans repeats itself within the world of nations, forming what Vico calls ideal eternal history (storia ideale eterna) (par. 349). The world of nations is typified by the corsi and ricorsi of these three ages. From the standpoint of Vico's conception of the metaphysics of history, the divine attempts to reveal itself over and over again in human affairs, but history never takes on this sense of progress typical of eighteenth-century thought.

I love that idea of cyclical development -- gods to heroes to humans.

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Fascinating Satan stuff, from Wikipedia:

Where Satan does appear as an angel, he is clearly a member of God's court and plays the role of the Accuser, much like a prosecuting attorney for God. Such a view is found in the prologue to the Book of Job, where Satan appears, together with other celestial beings, before God, replying to the inquiry of God as to whence he had come, with the words: "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking in it" (Job 1:7). Both question and answer, as well as the dialogue which follows, characterize Satan as that member of the divine council who watches over human activity with the purpose of searching out men's sins and appearing as their accuser. He is, therefore, the celestial prosecutor (a type of lawyer), who sees only iniquity. For example, in Job 2:3-5, after Job passes Satan's first test, Satan requests that Job be tested even further.
It is evident from the prologue in Job that Satan has no power of independent action, but requires the permission of God, which he may not transgress. Satan works in opposition to God, though not entirely able to take action without consent. This view is also retained in Zech. 3:1-2, where Satan is described as the adversary of the high priest Joshua, and of the people of God whose representative the hierarch is; and he there opposes the "angel of the Lord," who bids him be silent in the name of God. In both of these passages Satan is a mere accuser who acts only according to the permission of the Lord.

In 1 Chron. 21:1 Satan appears as one who is able to provoke David to number (or take a census of) Israel. The Chronicler (third century B.C.) regards Satan here as a more independent agent, a view which is at first glance striking since it would seem the source where he drew his account (2 Sam. 24:1) speaks of God Himself as the one who moved David to take the census. But after a more careful survey is taken of the situation, it is apparent that the circumstances were similar to that of Job: Satan is free to issue temptation with God's consent. Although the older conception refers all events, whether good or bad, to God alone (1 Sam. 16:14; 1 Kings 22:22; Isa. 45:7; etc.), it is unlikely that the Chronicler, and perhaps even Zechariah, were influenced by Zoroastrianism, since Jewish monism strongly opposed Iranian dualism, especially in the case of the prophet.

I don't know what your feelings are about the idea of Satan, but it's an interesting thought.

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2005-09-07T10:13:00.000-04:00

A letter from Eddie White, a minister friend from the South Baton Rouge Church of Christ:

Dear family in Christ,
Our congregation has received hundreds of phone calls and emails over the past few days. We have six secretaries answering six phone lines and responding to emails.
Our work with evacuees is more than you can imagine. The population of our city has more than doubled overnight. It looks like a war zone here- army helicopters, people on the streets stranded, police everywhere, etc.
I am only telling you this so that you will know that my email responses to you are brief, because I am swamped. Thank you for understanding. Your expressions of generosity and love to these precious people in need is a wonderful blessing.
I met today with leaders of churches in southern Lousiana, and with leaders of disaster relief organizations. Together we are coming up with a better plan to meet the multitude of needs.
Our church is involved in housing evacuees, and also being used as a distribution center for truckloads of water, medical supplies, food, etc.

This is a huge undertaking. It can't be done without God.

Hannah(my daughter) and I just picked up a lady and her 10 month old child from a Baton Rouge hospital, where she was recently released. We took her to our shelter. She was rescued from the roof of her home, and through a sad turn of events, was separated from her four of her children. She has not seen them for five days, not knowing where they are. Two hours ago she found out that they are in Dallas at a shelter. Thanks to someone we found in Lafayette, this mother and her infant will be taken to Dallas and reunited with them. That's good news.
The sad story is that I was not able to take 8 other people from the hospital with me, to find them shelter. I can't find room. There is one man from New Orleans stranded in the hospital with a 14 month old son with cancer. He has been treated, and because of the lack of space in the hospital, he must be released.

I have many many more stories, and we are just one congregation that is involved.

Strengthened by your prayers, Eddie White

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Eddie, Jami, the Dowdys, and I were all involved in taking a group of 25 students from GACS to the Czech Republic this last year. Eddie and his family spent ten years ministering to families in the city of Brno, many of them refugees from the Baltics, Turkey, Eastern Europe, you name it. I wonder how the American refugee experience differs? (Actually, I can think of some ways off of the top of my head, mostly dealing with support and hope, I think.)

Please keep Eddie and his church in your prayers.

2005-08-17T14:21:00.000-04:00

Guess what? Monday begins the big Ph.D. adventure for me . . .

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A friend of mine asked me to do him a favor that fell on a weekday afternoon in October, and I discoved that I couldn't give him a clear answer on whether or not I would be available.

"Why not?" he asked, rather innocently.

I then began to list all of the things I was involved in this year, and he was so amused he told me to write them down so he could keep them straight . . .

A Partial List, submitted Humbly by your Author, in Reasonable Expectation of Sympathy, of his upcoming Yearly Schedule:

1. Teaching 8th grade English (six classes instead of the usual five; I am a mercenary willing to give up planning time for cold, hard cash);

2. Graduate school (at present, four nights a week for an hour and a half a pop);

3. Varsity and JV Academic Team head coach (practicing three afternoons a week, two hours a pop, with tournaments on ten Saturdays from 8AM to 3PM);

4. Co-chair of the SACS Steering Committee for GACS (responsible for school re-accreditation; writing a big old accreditation paper AND meeting at least twice a month somehow . . .);

5. Teaching an adult Sunday school class at church (and all the activites that go with it);

6. GACS football team statistics (an old promise to a friend . . . I will be attending every football game, even the away games . . . this is every Friday night in the fall.)

7. Assistant with GACS textbooks (this means I have delivered a ton of textbooks from the textbook "dungeon" to the classrooms -- I also am the first person consulted in the JH to fix problems with textbooks);

8. Czech Republic Mission Trip (taking 20 kids out of the country over Spring Break);

9. World Vision Club Sponsor (facilitating our JH kids to serve the poor and disadvantaged in other countries);

10. All of the duties, responsibilites, and stresses that come with being a JH teacher.

I tell you this not only to elicit your sympathy, but also to beg you to teach me to say "No." I've got to start saying "no" to people and not expect that they will hate me . . .

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More later . . . kids are coming back from lunch!

2005-06-12T14:18:00.000-04:00

OUTSTANDING BOOKS ALERT:

A quickie (not a quiche, I assure you) as I am stealing time from Jami's classroom computer in between moving books around --

I recommend that you beg, buy, or steal the following books, immediately:

1. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (originally published in 1978): In one word: Lordamercy!!!! This book, after a first reading, immediately catapulted into my all-time, all-genre top five novels. It's a dialogue between Kubla Khan and Marco Polo; it's a description of all the cities that Polo has visited in his travels; it's a brilliantly informed commentary on the nature of existence; it's a pocket handbook of how to write. Read this book. READ THIS BOOK!

(After reading Calvino and deciding that he would join my all-time, all-genre top five novels, I went and re-read the other four I would stick in there. Someday, if I get a wild hair, I'll give you my top five collections of poetry, top five collections of short stories, top five non-fiction works, top five dance moves, top five dead dog movies, top five toothpaste brands, etc. BACK TO THE NOVELS! In no particular order:)

2. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1969): This sad and marvelous tale of the temporal sojourner Billy Pilgrim makes me weep openly every time I read it. For my money, the greatest depiction of the chaos of wartime in the life of an individual. Is Billy crazy? Is he sane? Poot-tee-weet. (Also one of the greatest openings in novel history: "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .) I also adore the Tramalfadorian structure underpinning the novel. What else to describe random chaotic insanity but absolute determinism?

3. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946): A fictionalized account of the life of the despotic Huey Long, this novel is also so much more. Perhaps it is best described as a fugue about the interplay between guilt and memory, as the aptly named Jack Burden struggles to forget, then ignore, then face the inexorable past that he thinks must create his future.

4. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929): I happen to believe that Faulkner is the greatest novelist ever, anywhere (yes, I'm a white guy; yes, I'm from the American South, but, c'mon, have you read this dude?) Wow. Double wow. From Benjy to Quentin, is there a better account of the sheer weight of the false idealism of the antebellum South? In the face of every small Southern town, its dust and heat and idolatry and chivalry and rage and hatred and racism and values, from the fetid antediluvian swampland of southern Mississippi to the great white expanses in the cotton counties of western Tennessee, from the arid wind-hammered plains of Texas to the wet mantrapping marshes of South Carolina -- in the face of everything that the Southron holds to be righteous -- here Faulkner forces the dark underbelly of the south into the light, demanding an answer, an understanding , a RECKONING; can you stand near the hellish fires of truth, or will you wither away, slinking underbrush, collapsing into yourself and hiding behind the ancient lies once hidden by the self-same darkness, lies once so easy to support but now uneasy as if their unveiling by the firelight has somehow given a palpable, unsupportable severity to those columns that once themselves held firm the unshakable, unapologetic foundation of the "chivalrous" and "honorable" South . . .

Uh, sorry.

Got carried away, there.

5. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (1956 as Tyger! Tyger! in Great Britain): Okay. I refuse to apologize for any of these books. They're my top five novels, not yours, and if you want to slap me for my lack of diversity in authorial gender, race, or time period, fine. Make your own list and send it to me, and I promise to give your favorite books a try.

I also refuse to apologize for my lack of snobbishness by picking an Alfred Bester novel. This book is science-fiction, written in the 1950's by a former comic book writer and pulp hack, and happens to be one of the most entertaining and enjoyable novels I have ever read. Soooooo much sci-fi becomes instantly dated by poor anticipation or hackneyed writing, and yet this 50 year old novel reads as fresh from the page as if it were finished this morning. Gulliver Foyle, "one-hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead," ranks as one of the greatest anti-heroes in all of literature. Mega-corporations, atomic fears, telepaths, "jaunting" from place to place, and above all else, revenge -- much like the Count of Monte Cristo, Foyle finds himself driven beyond his own capabilities by an overweening anger and a thirst for vengeance -- this book has it all. I assure you that you will not be disappointed if you try it.

Arrgh! Must go! Jami needs help! Later, peeps, and if you want to leave me your top five novels, I'd love to read something great this summer. I ask only that you restrict these responses to novels . . . poetry, short stories, and all non-fiction to come at a later date.

Go out and read something good!

2005-05-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

Ahh . . . I see that Matt Elliott has created a caste system in order to (presumably) guilt us into updating more.

Eh, caste system seems inexact -- no, it's definitely incorrect.

What we've got here is Matt's Divine Comedy, of sorts, with "Update Regularly" in Paradise, "Wild Hairs" in Purgatory, and we lazy "MIAs" in the raging Inferno: the fifth circle of Hell, to be precise, reserved for the slothful who are forever trapped beneath the Styx.

But who will be my Beatrice, drawing my vision forever upward despite my torment? Matt? Mike Cope? David Hutchens? Greg Taylor?

I suppose I'm stuck here forever with Mandy, Baron, and Quiara. Hopefully I'll be able to redeem myself in the summer months, when I am not helping 137 teenagers try to move on to high school English; updating and maintaining a website was so much easier when I was unemployed . . .

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Mark this date in your calendars: August 22, 2005. That date marks the first meeting of Contemporary American Poetry, which is my first class at Georgia State University.

Oh, did I mention I was accepted into the English Ph.D. program there?

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I'm still trying to formulate a theory of everything. Remember TOEs? Back in the halcyon days of physical chemistry and modern classical (an oxymoron, apologies) physics, some knucklehead stated that all that could be known about the physical world would soon be known, and a number of "theories of everything" abounded to explain every known phenomenon.

Unfortunately for the theory, quantum mechanics developed. With QM came all of the vagaries of chaos theory and its problematic relationship with probability; pretty soon physicists everywhere discovered that they didn't quite know what they knew, or some such.

That's about where I am, in my ongoing struggle/discourse with faith and truth.

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TOE Fragments:

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Whatever happened to value?

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Plato versus Aristotle: The nature of truth, it seems to me, comes down to a dogfight between Plato and Aristotle . . . is there a Platonic objective truth, outside the particulars, or does truth hang upon the particulars with Aristotelian subjectivity?

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The best description I have ever heard of the solipsistic hell of pure existentialism is delivered in an exchange between Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp in the new Western classic Tombstone:

Doc Holliday -- A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never steal enough, or kill enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
Wyatt Earp -- What does he want?
Doc Holliday -- Revenge.
Wyatt Earp -- For what?
Doc Holliday -- Bein' born.

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Reading Mere Christianity for the first time shocked me when C. S. Lewis, apologist supreme, gave this reason for believing: the human conscience.

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Don't you think the human mind looks for patterns more than anything else? Pattern recognition: it's the basis for so many of the writing techniques I teach. We teach students to write and think in parallel structures because these structures reassure us that the author knows what she or he is doing, even aside from the content delivered by them. Until I first taught eighth grade English, I didn't really appreciate Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the medium is the message." Wasn't it T. S. Eliot who said (and I paraphrase, badly) that "meaning" in modern poetry served only to divert a reader's attention, just like a burglar gives meat to a watchdog? The structure's often the thing.

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Apophenia.

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the ease of chaos yet
an old yearning for guidance

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Conversation with Gary Crane, GACS world history teacher, about modern critical theory:

Me: Yeah, Gary, but I'm probably more formalist than anything else.
Gary: I don't follow you. What's that mean?
Me: Formalist, the New Critics. Tennessee, Vanderbilt, 1920s. Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, Donald Davidson. You know, symbolism? The Formalists held that works of literature were complete texts no matter how they came into existence, and they should be studied as such. One text can be directly compared to another, and texts exist to be "decoded" in order to find placement in the canon. Really, the text is a sort of -- uh -- almost -holy- artifact, and you study it instead of its author. Each work is complete unto itself, regardless of who wrote it and his or her literary reputation.
Gary: But you said this differs from modern theories . . . how?
Me: In a simple nutshell, modern theory depends upon the reader and what they bring to the work. It doesn't matter authorial intent, or even codes hidden in the text . . . well, you can see codes, but there's no definitive meaning behind the code. What matters is how the individual reader sees those codes. Heraclitus, ya see? You can't step into the same river twice, and no two readers actually read the same book because the book depends on the reader's analysis. It's subjectivity versus objectivity, right?
Gary: But you've still got the same text.
Me: A-ha! But some modern critics would argue "no, no you don't."
Gary: In history we don't really have these arguments, because no one can argue that something actually happened. Something happened, all right, your interpretation can differ, but you can't argue that *something* happened.
Me: Sure you can.
Gary: No, you can't. Take Pearl Harbor, for example. No one can argue that it happened, that the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941.
Me: Gimmie fifteen or twenty years, let everyone die who eyewitnessed the event, and I'll make you a great argument. Especially if the evidence is fragmentary.
Gary: But that's not history. Something happened! You can't argue that it didn't happen just because . . . shoot. The Holocaust. Jesus and his death. The Mormons. Hmm. I guess you can.
Me: (hoping to deliver an intelligent epigram to end the conversation) Gary, I think it can be argued that history is completely subjective.
Gary: (completely upstaging me) I wonder if objectivity is merely the subjectivity of the fortunate?

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Is it value I want, or authority? Who will have dominion?

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Simple faith.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: As Christian advances through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, he encounters a whispering ghoul who flies up behind him and whispers to him, "Why don't you die?" Christian is tired, and weak, and he eventually confuses the ghoul's voice with his own. Bunyan says that he would have fallen on his sword and ended the struggle, except he remembers his faith at the last minute and begins to repeat a simple sentence: "I will take my strength from the Lord God."

Sometimes, you only need a sentence.

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Post structualist, deconstructionist, etc. -- were they created to point out the chaos and simply destroy everything? Didn't they have the goal of replacing the deconstructed values with something else? Have they painted themselves into a corner?

If everything is untrue, how is truth chosen?

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We're like adolescents, reveling in the fact that adults compromise, and ignoring them if they are fallible . . . why?

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I want choice -- I don't want marginalization -- but I also want TRUTH. What is it? Does it exist? Can it exist? Why or why not?

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2005-03-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

Laws a mercy, it's been a while.

In the interim, your intrepid blogger has been busy. A sampling? Yes.

1. SACS/SAIS stuff -- for those of you who do not work for a school, and do not have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous accreditation every five years, let me tell you -- it's BLISSFUL. ("Can I get an exact count of the learning disabled Aleutian Indians that your school has graduated since 1977? What differentiated learning skills did you utilize to reach this group?") Actually, it's not been that bad -- I'm just easily stressed by official documentation and the "R" word . . . responsibility.

2. GATA -- Over the weekend (Saturday, 19 March to be exact) the GACS Academic Team that I coach won the Georgia state championship. They are the best team I've ever seen, much less coached, and I can't express to you how proud I am of them. One of the greatest moments of my life happened on Monday when we were presenting the championship trophy to the school. The entire high school began to applaud the team, then rose and gave them a spontaneous standing ovation. You know what? They deserve it. (And yes, I cried. Like a baby.)

3. Graduate school -- I've been trying to get into English Ph.D. programs here in the Atlanta area to hopefully work my way through part-time. I've applied to Emory University (this, dear friends, is but a pipe dream), the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University. On the plus side, I'm a pretty good student with good GRE scores; on the minus side, it took me seven years to finish my M.A. at Georgia Southern . . . does this translate to taking 45 years on the Ph.D.? This doesn't really bode well, either -- I was forced to fill out a form at each of the schools describing my "Book/Magazine Publishing History" and I put this blog and my high school newspaper articles. I'm pretty sure the Princeton M.A.'s have a slightly different record. Then again, I'm pretty sure that the Princeton M.A.'s never wrote about Tennessee's draconian car window tinting policy for the Trojan Torch in 1992. This could be my ticket to a free education.

4. Mission trip -- Jami and I (and Bev and Ken Dowdy) are taking a group of GACS kids to Brno, Czech Republic over our Spring Break; I fully expect to be deported by day two. You can read about our misadventures here.

5. Grading -- I'm an English teacher; enough said.

I've got another epic in the works, but the bell has rung and you'll just have to wait anxiously until, uh, April? (Was it really a month -- yowza!)

2005-02-22T22:34:00.000-05:00

This is, easily, 1.) the funniest thing I have ever read,

and 2.) proof that I am the luckiest human alive.

Read this, immediately: The THINGS I LOVE blog entry.

After you read it, tell me -- am I not lucky to share my life with this jewel of a human being, who makes me laugh out loud every day?

And, no, you don't even need to answer that.

2005-02-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

Matt Elliott! I thought of you!

Went to a "barn raising" this weekend (church in the sticks built a new building, y'see) and much doctrine and fellowship was had there, all hail.

Anywho, we're having a good old church of Christ time, when the songleader (using mimeographed copies of the songs -- mark of the true professional) tells us to take our "Songs of Faith and Praise" and turn to "Victory in Jesus." The song in the book, though, read differently from his version . . .

Our book said: "And somehow Jesus came and bro't to me the victory"

Our songleader sang: "When I obeyed the blest command, I GAINED the victory."

We were all actually frightened for a moment by the book -- the nerve! That Jesus might come and speak to us before our full immersion baptism! What were they thinking?

2005-01-28T20:26:00.000-05:00

Amen, sister.

Teacher, student, professional -- I think that we are all closet (or overt) doldrum sufferers. Thanks to Mandy Richey for her insight into this part of the year that threatens to make prodigals of us all.

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With that in mind, I'd like use as little brainpower as possible. I have decided to steal from others in order to make this thought provoking. With mad kudos to Matt Byars and his quotes of the day, here are some quotes that I have stumbled upon recently and really liked:

(P.S. -- Quotes in bold, and I have reserved and exercised the right to comment after each.)

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act.... Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Does anyone else believe that we've gotten dumber as a society, rather than smarter? You would naturally assume that it worked the other way, of course, but then you go back and read Lincoln, or Mark Twain, and their prosody leaps off of the page -- and not as an antiquated rhetorical artifact, but a living, breathing, impassioned engagement of society. I am often humbled by 19th century essayists, especially when I'm feeling all fat and sassy about something that I have written.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. -- Justice William O. Douglas

Wow. Wow. Had you ever heard this one before? I can't believe I've lived my entire life without hearing this wisdom. . . I love this one. If I ever finish my Great American Novel (we're at 893 pages of drivel, and counting) this sucker's gonna be on my dedication page.

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation. -- President James Madison. 1751-1836

"Be careful little hands, what you do," for governments, maybe?

Every normal man must be tempted at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -- H.L. Mencken. 1880-1956

Ahh, Mencken. I went through a Mencken/Bierce phase, and though I tell myself I've out grown it, or at least out-civilized it, there are times when his exact turn of phrase fits perfectly. Please don't take this to mean that I am currently contemplating this action. ("I love my students," whispered Mr. Denton quietly, sharpening the knife.)

Middle class people are fearful of losing. So everything is about fear of loss. When's everything is based on money, everything's for sale, including their integrity and their morals. -- Roseanne

Is this not the most salient thing you've ever heard Roseanne say? Do you feel as weird as I do about the inclusion of Roseanne on a wise quotes page? Still, I call 'em like I see 'em, and I think this quotation stands on its own merits.

Never doubt that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead

Well, that, and fast food.

Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it; but there it is. -- Sir Winston Churchill

I use this one in my classroom all the time, especially in my eighth grade Bible class. I've got this strange belief that the truth is just the truth; it stands on its own merits and does not require cajoling. Maybe my favorite Sunday school class of all time was one taught by David Anguish at the Snellville church of Christ . . . one of those happy accidents, as I was not at all a regular; it was the day before Christmas and we were visiting family. Anguish structured his entire class around the story of Jesus and how we ought to believe in it: "Friends, we believe in the Bible not because it is morally courageous, or doctrinally sound, or cleansingly compelling -- we believe because it is the truth. Take a good long look at your own beliefs: you should have no "oughts" or "shoulds" in there. God's story does not appeal based on adjucation: he isn't the best of something, he -IS- the something. Did God say 'I am better than?' Did God say 'I am righter than?' No. God said, 'I AM,' and he is." I was so pumped, I didn't even notice that we didn't sing one single Christmas song. Go C of C! Er, c of C!

Liberty lies in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious. -- John Stuart Mill

Actual conversation, Georgia Southern University, Fall Quarter 1997, Methods of Teaching College Composition --
Dr. Frederick Sanders: Of course, when it comes to composition, we use a standard template of works. You'll note the careful selection of novels, poetry, short stories, essa-
Ambers: (interrupting) Aw, Doc, Doc, Doc! These kids won't read these.
Dr. Sanders: Eh?
Stark: What do you mean?
Ambers: Why can't we vary the curriculum? You know the kids these days. Boom. MTV. Boom. Scooby Doo. Boom. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Boom. Jai Alai. Boom. Jetskis. Right? Right? (Looks at Dr. Sanders, Stark, Williams, Strayhorn, Gbisi, and Denton, all of whom are thoroughly confused.) I mean, it's a new generation, right? Pepsi and all that rat crap?

(Silence for two beats, then everyone talking at once.)

Strayhorn: William? What the h**l are you talking about?
Gbisi: Is it just my English, or is he-
Williams: Naw, I'm from Macon and I don't understand him.
Stark: (honestly confused) Highlighted chassis?
Denton: (giggling uncontrollably) JAI ALAI. He said "JAI ALAI" then "JETSKI."
Ambers: I just mean, well, look here, this one. John Stuart Mill. He sucks eggs. Tell me one reason we should teach John Stuart Mill and not, say, Grisham or somebody popular. Clive Cussler. They'd love Clive Cussler. They're gonna snooze through Mill, yes? Does anyone read this crap?

(Short pause, then Dr. Sanders, Stark, Williams, Strayhorn, Gbisi, and Denton all raise their hands.)

Strayhorn: (beginning to become angry) We're all -- all of us -- all -- you are too --
Stark: We're all freaking graduate students in British Literature, moron.
Denton: Were you hoping for some kind of revolt, or something? Down with the books! Up with Buffy! Jai Alai will be our guide, and Michael Jackson our prophet! JETSKIS . . . . HO!

Of course, the ultimate irony lies in the fact that William Ambers probably held the most odious views of anyone I have ever met. But Mill only gives him liberty, not freedom from taunting. . .

The only thing in the world worth a d*mn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit. -- John D. MacDonald, A Deadly Shade of Gold

Lest you read the previous comments and find me an elitist psuedo-intellectual snob about books, let me beg you to go immediately to your local library or bookstore and find the Travis McGee mystery/suspense series written by John D. MacDonald from 1964-1986. Read every one of them that you can get your hands on. What a marvelous commentary on the human condition, society, friendships, military service, aging, action, everything -- and all distilled from the perspective of a world weary beach bum who keeps on going by doing favors for his friends. The above quote I once had framed above my bedroom door, just as a reminder.

I'm quoted out for this week. Feel free to comment on these, leave favorites of your own, etc. I hope these fire your synapses and activate your mind.

2005-01-21T08:19:00.000-05:00

How do you follow a magnum opus?

You don't. You're emotionally drained, plus there's the fear that you just won't be as relevant the next time you go to write. Then, of course, there's the fear that your magnum opus wasn't as good as you thought in the first place, 'cause it pales in comparision to Shakespeare.

(Poop on you, Harold Bloom!)

Update time, then!

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1. Books I have recently purchased and will read soon:

-Hopscotch- by Julio Cortazar

I'm into this whole "friends of Borges and we all collectively extend the cult of modernism in our own way by exploding it" thingy. Ultraist fiction, indeed! Bring on my Spanish dictionary!

-Child of God- by Cormac McCarthy

Has anyone else read any of McCarthy's earlier work? I'm not talking about the Border Trilogy (-All the Pretty Horses-, -The Crossing-, -Cities of the Plain-); I mean his pre--Blood Meridian- stuff . . . pretty creepy and excellent, from what I understand.

-Selected Poems- by Gwendolyn Brooks

She's black, she's urban, she's an careful wordsmith with a fabulous ear for meter. She is everything I am not. I adore this woman. Why? Because she is everything I am not?

-If Not Now, When?- by Primo Lev i

Levi's one of those writers that comes highly recommended by my favorite writers. I look forward to revisiting WWII Italy. Or would that be just visiting WWII Italy?

-Time's Arrow: Or, the Nature of the Offense- by Martin Amis

So he's supposedly a genius, an auteur, a creator of the highest rank . . . we'll see. I loved his memoir, but I'm a little iffy about his fiction.

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2. Mad props to my college homie: Brad Kibler. Words cannot express my joy. He is truly the Prince of Tides, a southern gentleman, a lover of history, the man who asked me, quietly, to stop listening to so many Queen and AC/DC albums.

Miles and years have seperated us. He's away the heck and gone in Coastal Carolina; I'm in metro Atlanta, and we haven't really kept in touch.

I often recall a legendary trip through the heart of Alabama: Nashville to Mobile, driving straight through (after the KOA outside of Columbia, Tennessee was found to be hosting a biker convention) -- we couldn't take a chance on our own personal Sturgis, so we decided in the middle of the night to see the ocean. I, for one, had never been.

Ahhhhhhh . . . maybe the funniest thing I have ever experienced is awakening drowsily to discover that the car was stopped at a gas station in Clanton, idling, one Kibler foot on the brake, one Kibler foot on the clutch, completely prone with the seat all the way back, eyes closed. Thinking he had fallen asleep, or died, I softly wept and whispered, "Brad, Brad." He immediately responded, "Don't be sorrowful, other Brad. I have not died, or fallen asleep. I have merely been struck blind by extreme fatigue. You must drive. When we get to Nashville, take me to Vanderbilt. Tell them I am blind. Tell them I have insurance."

He came, he saw, he commented.

2004-12-17T11:38:00.000-05:00

This is Part 3 of a continuing story about my house meeting a rather large tornado.

for Part 1 -- The Tornado, click here.

for Part 2 -- The Trip to RoEllen, click here.

Part 3 -- Dustin

At this point in the story, I always feel inadequate to the task of retelling it. (Notice how long it's taken me to put up this installment.) How can I express my apprehension? How can I fully explain my incredible fear? I cannot. When my father died in 1994, our family had died. Period. The psychic and emotional trauma that surrounded his passing had fractured what was left of my mother's sanity, my sister's patience, and my own decision-making skills. We weren't a family, we were an ICU ward. And now this? I was actually frightened that someone would have to be committed to an institution before the week ended. Now imagine incalculable terror compounded by the ill omen of insane weather. Not only were we being personally attacked by tornadoes, but the freakishly high barometric pressure had us all feeling that our sinuses were going to explode. The entire situation reminded me of the old children's album Witches Brew; however, instead of "oral language development" this crockpot was bubbling over with rancorous malevolence.

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Like an experienced Formula 1 driver, Tommy wove his way through the stalled traffic until we arrived at the I-40 interchange, where traffic was backed up (literally) for three miles.

"It's an emergency, right?" said Tom Jr.

Tommy grinned, activated the hazard lights, and pulled us onto the side of the road. We sped down the emergency lane until 40 cleared enough for us to make good time.

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Exactly two hours and thirty minutes after leaving Nashville, we rolled into Dyer County. My discomfort was obvious, my worry palpable: what would have happened to my mother and sister? Did anything survive? Would there still be pictures of my father, somewhere? On a lesser note, what had happened to our wedding gifts? Jami and I had been storing our wedding gifts at my mother's house in lieu of keeping them at our transitioning homes in Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia. (Note: this is the part of the story that really affects some people . . . a co-worker at Barnes and Noble made cooing noises when I told this story during a lunch break -- you know the noises I mean: "Aww, too bad." "Wow, your neighbors died and all." "Yep, that's tough. Indeed. Tough indeed." Then I casually mentioned that we had lost our wedding gifts, and she imploded. Literally. There was an event horizon, and everything. Gravity lost its pull, the chairs and tables and oxygen in the room all fell into her yawing mouth, and we all had to clutch desperately to the book racks to keep from being sucked in ourselves. She then began to radiate outrage, and the raw power of her indignation caused the Hot Pocket in my hand to catch flame. "WHAAAAAT???? YOU LOST WEDDING GIFTS?????!!!!!! THIS -IS- A TRAGEDY!!!!!!!!!" I always wanted to meet her husband and ask if they had somehow lost gifts. Never did.)

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Insult heaped upon injury: upon our arrival in Dyer County, Highway 104 towards RoEllen was packed, bumper to bumper. Odd, indeed, for Dyer County in 1997 only had about 37,000 people.

Fun fact: look here at the census statistics for Dyer County, Tennessee versus my current home in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Notice that Dyer County has 37, 308 people living on a total land area of 510 square miles, while Gwinnett County has 673,345 people living on a total land area of just 433 square miles. Hmm. I think of locusts, here. A locust is merely a grasshopper with a high population density . . . once the population density for the area becomes twice normal, a locust develops rudimentary teeth, sharpened forelegs, and begins to attack other creatures en masse. Makes you wonder about our urban areas, doesn't it?

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We soon discovered the reason for the traffic -- all roads leading to my house were packed. Rubberneckers. Everyone in a hundred mile radius had seen the reports of the devastation on CNN, and they packed a cooler full of food, chucked the kids in the car, and were off to sightsee at the expense of my mother's dignity. Hey! Here's fun! Maybe they have yet to move the bodies! Bring a disposable camera!

Billy Pilgrim, in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, finds himself weeping suddenly at various times for no apparent reason. We readers know that it is connected to the great trauma he underwent at the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, but Billy cannot recognize the cause. Nor does he really worry about it, as he sometimes doesn't even notice himself doing it. He doesn't wail, or moan, or gnash his teeth, but he discovers himself crying a great deal, "as if his eyes were leaking." That was me. That was I. That was the author of this post. As we ever so slowly neared my house, I found that I couldn't keep from crying. However, I wasn't really feeling sad, or distraught anymore; instead, I felt empty, hollow, unreal. I felt like I was adrift in a powerful current -- check that, I felt like I was being tugged by the aftertow of a powerful current that had passed. The wave (of reality? time? probability?) had moved on, somehow, and rather than being pulled along I had fallen through the crest. Here's the really funny thing -- I could actually see the wave that I'm talking about, see it physically in front of my face as we neared Cribbs Road. It was blurry through the tears, but it was an actual, material object for a few seconds. Then we made the turn onto Cribbs, and I thought that I might collapse.

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I must apologize to you, here, for I have no "before" photograph of my home to show you. As far as my mother and I can tell, no complete photos of the exterior of our home survived the tornado. I do have two photographs that can be combined together to approximate our house's exterior.

In physical size and layout, our home was very close to this one:

However, ignore the front door. Our house was a one-story all-brick ranch built into a hill with a basement exposed on one side, but it also had a huge front porch (unlike the above picture) with four columns, plantation-style. In reality, the front of the house looked more like this one:

We had a gorgeous home on a lakefront property with 3.5 acres. Retail price, rural Dyer County, Tennessee, 1997? $84,000. That gave us one of the most expensive non-farm properties in the county. I chuckle as I write this from my much smaller, much more expensive subdivided house on a slab in the middle of our one-sixteenth acre homestead . . .

According to my oft-errant memory, these photographs most closely resemble our house. I cannot produce a "before" photo; I still cannot believe the "after" photo.

*************************************************

When we crested the hill on Cribbs Road that overlooked my house, here is the first thing that I saw:

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Remember the wave I described earlier? I could still see its edges, framed around the desolation.

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Now -- one of the many erroneous things my father taught me was that psychology was a "load of horses**t!" By this I think he meant that he did not believe that psychological trauma was a justification for poor judgment. In this I agree with him, to a point: poor judgment or not, there are still consequences for every action, whether or not those consequences are fair, just, or take into account the heart of the actor. If you shoot someone in the head that looks like your abusive father, you will face severe consequences even if you were confused at the time. (Please don't test this -- trust me. Especially if you live in Texas.)

However, I did not yet possess the ability to discern shades of grey when it came to memories of my father's wisdom. I was still in the stage where he was either completely right or completely wrong and to question him was to accept his early death and my anger, my limitless high-strung anger, my overweening anger, my anger was inescapable and either directed towards him or against him AND I COULD NOT DEFEAT HIS WISDOM BECAUSE YOU CANNOT QUESTION A DEAD MAN AND -- you get the point. The irony of ironies was that I had refused therapy after my father's death because I believed that I would betray his memory if I accepted it, yet I really needed therapy because I couldn't deal with his death. Dad would appreciate this.

How do the preceding paragraphs on psychology intercede with the story?

I truly believe that I was about to go insane after I saw the house.

Don't confuse this part with storytelling, or dramatics, or exaggeration -- I could physically see a wave of energy shimmering before my eyes. I realized as I viewed the scene that there was a single shrieking note emanating from somewhere; I thought it was a nearby car horn, or something, and in VERY bad taste, considering the destruction. It was so loud that I had difficulty hearing my uncle and cousin ask me questions about what they could do. Later, as I chatted with people who had been there at the scene, I realized that there was no sound. I was the only one hearing it. It was being generated solely inside my head.

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The wave, the note: I've often wondered what could have happened out there, in RoEllen, on April 16, 1998. I felt, at the time, that my face was about to slide off of my head, that a literal crack had appeared at the top of my skull to split my cranium into discrete pieces. And, of course, Dad had everything to do with that. His death was the wedge, and the tornado provided the force. I was having trouble breathing -- there was something on my chest, it felt like -- and I was fighting a disconnection between my senses, my memory, and my conscious awareness. The world, it seemed, was winding down.

(I had felt this way once before, on June 13 of 1994, walking out of the HCA Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee. Behind me was a dead man covered with a bedsheet; ahead of me were glass doors. I couldn't catch my breath that night, either, and as I plunged out into the darkness and looked up at the moon, I was struck with the impossible sensation that I was about to fall into the sky. My sister was with me, and I clutched her hand tightly until we found the car because I was actually scared that I might fall upward into the night. I was eighteen, and she was twelve, but without Meredith there, I still don't know if I would have actually made it to the car.)

In the Explorer, I really had no one. Tommy and Tom, Jr. shared an awkward enough relationship without adding me to the mix. Tommy was the mover and shaker, the bold financial visionary, the glad-hander, the incomprehensibly successful money man; Tom Jr. was a financial failure, a musician, an introspective thinker, a worrier. And so, they didn't really communicate. And I wasn't particularly close to either of them. Thanks to my mother's ineffable yet incessant worry that somehow we were "trashy" when compared to other families, they had both been browbeaten with my academic prowess and intelligence. "Maybe my husband can't keep a job or make an intelligent financial decision, but by-God our son will do well with his native intelligence that by the way proves that we have been good parents and justifies every single decision we've made." (Not an exact quote, but a true one.) They didn't know what to do with me. Nor was the situation conducive to pithy wisdom or ingratiated comfort: they were as stunned as I was.

Would I have fallen into a agonizing disassociative state? Would I have fallen apart completely? What would have become of me? A few months ago I did a search on my symptoms out of morbid curiosity, and I ran into this website that terrifies me -- I honestly don't know what might have happened.

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Might have. Here's what did happen: we pulled into what was left of the driveway, and I was completely speechless. I fumbled for the door handle, and couldn't get it to work -- my eyes were fixed on the scene -- until, unexpectedly the door opened from the outside, and I was face to face with Dustin Adkins.

Dustin, my best friend.

Dustin, who is still closer to me than any other family member.

Dustin, who came to live with us after his mother left town.

Dustin, with whom I had shared every joy and heartbreak I had known for the fourteen years I had lived in Dyer County.

Dustin, who lived just south of Nashville, two and a half hours away.

Dustin, who once he had heard that the tornado had struck, had stumbled from bed and immediately -- IMMEDIATELY, without packing a bag, a change of clothes, or a coat -- driven to RoEllen to "make sure your Mom was okay."

Dustin, who had arrived in town, made sure that my Mom and Meredith had a place to stay, purchased them clothes on his dangerously overextended credit card, and then returned to the house to try and find my mother's wedding ring, which she had been cleaning in a Pyrex dish on her nightstand that evening.

Dustin, whose first words to me were "We'll make it through this."

****************************************************************

About two years ago, Dustin met me in Nashville where we spent the afternoon bumming around in Green Hills. Classic Dustin: he showed up unexpectedly at my sister's dormitory because I had casually mentioned on the phone about a month before that Meredith was moving. A quick knock on the door then it swung open; there was Dustin with a sheepish grin. "I thought you might need the help moving the heavy stuff." Did I mention that he had moved to Denver, Colorado six months previously? Yes. He -drove- down.

After we moved Meredith in, he asked if we could drive around and talk a bit. So, we did. I asked him about his church home in Denver and the ministry position he had accepted. He hesitated, and finally admitted that he was concerned about the church.

"What's the problem, big guy? Too liberal for you?" (Dustin was a notorious conservative, especially about theology.)
"No, I'm really . . . really . . . concerned about . . . the church dividing."
"Dividing, why?"
"There's . . . I . . . I don't know . . . the eldership . . . I don't know how to tell you this . . . I'm . . . please don't . . . I don't . . ."
Now I was very concerned. I looked over, and there was Dustin, a twenty-six year old man bawling like a baby. He looked at me, shamefaced, and whispered, "Brad, I'm . . . gay."

***********************************************

This is a story about a tornado, about my family. Dustin is part of that family. As I write this, I have on the desk in front of me a "Christian" publication that advocates excommunicating homosexuals from churches for their perversion. "They want to be 'out?' Drive them out!" says the most often quoted minister in the piece. Nothing new, really, as my kids at school brand the most heinous crimes against their attention span as "gay" activities; the unsocial or awkward kids are obviously "faggots," right? Right?

As I said before, this is a narrative, not a position paper. Dustin's admission remains the most shocking experience of my life; indeed, he could have said that he enjoyed drinking caribou urine in tattoo parlors while reciting Luther's Ninety-Six Theses, and I would not have been any more surprised. To this day, I don't know what to do with it, or him.

But I know I love him. Unconditionally. When I needed -- most desperately needed -- hope in my darkest hour, he was it.

Those same kids who unknowingly label all that is hated and despised by them with epithets about sexuality, many of them wear little bracelets that say "WWJD."

What would Jesus do?

I have no idea. I believe that he would have been there for me, too; muddy, dirty, sleepy, but more concerned with my welfare than his own. I like to think that Jesus would do those jobs that no one else would, that his very presence would bring comfort, and hope, and peace.

I've never seen Jesus. I've seen Dustin.

************************************************

Maybe I have seen Jesus.

************************************************

(He was bawling, and he managed to whisper, "Please don't hate me" before I could get the car to the side of the road with the hazards on. My shock -- my indignation -- my fear evaporated in the face of his sheer terror, his greatest fear: he was afraid that I would never speak to him again. He cradled his head in his hands, and continued to cry.

I put my hand on his arm and whispered the only thing I could think of, the first thing that popped into my mind:)

************************************************

We'll make it through this.

We've been through a tornado.

We'll make it through this.

2004-11-15T13:48:00.000-05:00

This is Part 2 of a continuing story about my house meeting a rather large tornado.

for Part 1 -- The Tornado, click here.

Part 2 -- The Trip to RoEllen

Let me backtrack a bit -- let's leave the Explorer idling in Tommy's driveway for a minute with "Midnight Rider" cued up and ready to play -- in order to explain a couple of humorous aspects in the back story that I completely ignored earlier. Immediately after digging herself and my sister out from under the chimney, my mother made her way to the unmolested farm across the road from our house. Amazingly, the farm's rotary telephone was working fine, no problems. (God bless South Central Bell!) After some rudimentary first aid from Old Man Viar and his wife (I honestly believe that his first name was "Old Man" -- even his wife referred to him thusly) my mother asked for the phone to let her family know what had happened. Bloodied from the bricks and totally disoriented from the experience, she could only pull one phone number out of her head. She steadied herself, dialed extremely slowly (rotary, after all) and waited for the phone to be picked up. Yep. She called her nephew, Todd.

Here's what's amazing about this: at this time, my mother and my uncle Tommy talked on the phone twice a week, AND he's had the same phone number since 1977. Also, because of the long distance charges from my dorm (coupled with my incredible lack of money) my mom actually called me -- dialed my number -- at least once a week. Did she call Tommy? No. Did she call me? No. She called Todd. She had never spoken to Todd using the phone before . . . what's more, Todd and his wife Tracy had only lived in their house about a month, so their phone number had recently changed. But Todd's house phone was the only number her leaky mental Rolodex could produce after a live burial at four in the morning. Mom called him and asked him to contact Tommy and me.

Todd expressed his concern for their welfare, hung up, and called Tommy. No answer. He called his brother, Tom Jr., who tried calling Tommy's cell phone. No answer. Tommy was dead asleep, and my aunt Carole (who would normally shout him awake like a good Marine roommate) was up in Tennessee visiting her ailing sister. Tom and Todd conferred and decided they had to go to Tommy's house to wake him up. Yeah, to Tommy's house, where he slept with weaponry.

***********************************

Todd and Tom arrived at Tommy's (alliterative, isn't it?) at about 5:45 Eastern, scarcely forty minutes after the tornado. They rang the doorbell; they knocked on the door; they shook the garage door. No answer. At this point, Todd mentioned that the downstairs window over the living room couch had a rusty catch, and if they felt lucky they could probably break in. Tom expressed reservations -- my uncle is a gun nut, after all -- but Todd assured him that he had entered the house late at night many times during his teenage years by using that very window. Go underage drinking! Woo-hoo!

Todd slipped the catch, lifted the window, and fell into the house with Tom following close behind. Both of them have spoken of the profound terror they both felt as they made their way up the staircase, each of them yelling like an idiot: "Dad, it's us, your sons!" "Ha-ha-ha! Don't kill us, father!" "We love you, don't bust a cap in us!" and so on. When they were about halfway up the stairs, my uncle Tommy emerged in his pajamas with a Glock tucked in the waistband . . . he looked at Todd and said, "I knew it had to be you, you're the only one who has ever entered the house through that window."

"WHAT?"

"Don't pretend you didn't used to sneak in that way all the time, youngster."

***********************************

Tommy asked if I had been called -- I had not, but he didn't know that yet -- and neither Todd nor Tom knew, so he decided that I must be informed quickly. But how? He didn't have my phone number.

Oh, but he had Jami's.

(For more information about the crazed year of 1997-1998, click here.)

***********************************

Jami was getting ready to go into school that day. She had finished her student teaching the previous semester and was employed as a substitute teacher by the Lake County (FL) School District.

So, here's the scene: the phone rings at Jami's house at 5:56 AM. She's in a bathrobe, applying mascara, when her mother runs into the bathroom.

"It's Brad's uncle Tommy. There's been a horrible occurrence."

So Jami goes to the phone, only to hear Tommy say: "Jami, it's Tommy. A tornado has struck and destroyed Marsha's house in Dyersburg . . . there are four total dead. I've got to get in touch with Brad immediately, and I need his number. Now."

Jami reads off the number, and asks, "Is there anything I can do?"

"You can pray." CLICK.

Now, did you notice anything missing in their conversation? Like, perhaps, reassurance that my mother was alive? Jami was led to believe that I had unexpectedly lost my mother and sister just three years after the shocking death of my father. She did not find out until lunchtime that my mother and sister had survived. My family? Overly dramatic? Naaaaaah.

*****************************************

Back to the Explorer . . . (finally!)

I hopped in, buckled up, and we were on our way. There were two vehicles in our mini-caravan: one aging Ford Explorer (with Tommy, Tom Jr, and me) and one brand-new Ford F250 Super Duty (Jamie Rice, Todd.) We fueled up at QuickTrip, made our way to I-75, and headed north.

There was an undue sense of tension in the Explorer as we headed for Tennessee. We shared few smiles, exchanged few wisecracks, and generally indulged in great deal of negative speculation about the extent of the damage, both physical and emotional. Who knew what to expect? I cannot fully express the dread that completely filled me -- I supposed (not unwisely, as it turned out) that this experience would be the most traumatic of my mother's life, even more traumatic than my father's death, or that time that she saw Barry Manilow at Mud Island.

**********************************

Because of the vagaries of scheduling, the loading of the cars, a short lunch break, and atrocious traffic, we did not make it to Nashville until 3:45 PM. Traffic -- it was horrible, absolutely the worst I have ever personally experienced on I-24 between Chattanooga and Nashville. There was a point where I personally believed that we would just have to pitch our tents on Monteagle and wait everybody out . . .

Funny thing, coincidence. You'll note that I marked our arrival time in Nashville as 3:45 PM . . . how can I be sure of the exact time, you ask? I had finally -- haltingly -- voiced my fears to Tom and Tommy about Mom's mental health around Murfreesboro, some thirty minutes before we arrived in metro Davidson county. To their credit, Tom and Tommy tried to allay my fears. Honestly, though, who could have? My dread had grown into a tangible thing, with weight and dimension. Just as we entered metro Nashville, I had finally gotten around to expressing my greatest fear to them, a fear I had suffered from since my father's death four years previously: does God mean, somehow, to punish our family?

Now the coincidence: Tommy immediately poo-pooed the suggestion, and he offered up advice that under other circumstances would be very sound. He said, "You're just feeding off of the negativity surrounding this tornado. You need to take your mind off of it -- it's not healthy to brood about a situation where you aren't even sure yet of the details." To aid me in doing so, he clicked the radio on, and we enjoyed about two verses of a country song before the Emergency Broadcasting System tone sounded. All we could do was look up and stare at each other as the announcer breathlessly described a tornado supercell that had formed a funnel cloud in downtown Nashville at ". . . 3:45 PM on the DOT!" According to the announcer, all of the windows in her studio had just exploded into shards of flying glass, and she was uncertain how much longer she would be able to broadcast, if at all. She was able to exclaim, "This is the same supercell that devastated Manila, Arkansas and RoEllen, Tennessee, earlier today, taking the lives of at least two Tennesseans . . ." Then there was a burst of loud static, and the radio station no longer transmitted. Shocked, all three of us turned toward the downtown area where we could barely see the top of a funnel in the distance. Cars all around us pulled off the highway into the median, the guardrail area, anywhere, looking for a place to hide. As Tommy began to accelerate, weaving in and out of the sporadic stalled traffic on I-440, hoping to get us out of the path of this tornado, Tom Jr. turned to me, and in complete seriousness, said, "Holy [expletive], maybe God does hate you."

*******************************************

Part 3 later . . . here's the bell. I hope I'm not being too annoying with the updates . . . now that GACS has internet again, I promise to work on the next posting tomorrow. . .

2004-11-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts as I wait for my brain to recover -- Lord-a-mighty -- from a weekend of listening to Willie Nelson and reading Rick Bragg. I'm a true son of the rural South, you see. As I slopped up my last bite of grits this morning with a little biscuit and a little red-eye gravy, I thought to myself, "Wow. Did you ever think that you would live in an area with horrible traffic and acceptable dental care?"

********************************************

Here's a neat thing: neat in the sense that it's vaguely creepy. I was actually going to post about my upbringing in rural northwest Tennessee, the old 'sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth' sort of a thing, you know? I actually typed "RoEllen, Tennessee" into Google to see what might be available, and the first link that came up was this link from the National Weather Service. Here . . . I'll post part of it for those of you too lazy to click:

RoEllen, a rural Dyer County hamlet located about five miles east of Dyersburg in Tennessee's northwest corner was struck by a tornado around 4:05 a.m. on Thursday, April 16, 1998. The National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning at 3:35 a.m. as the tornadic thunderstorm was approaching the Mississippi River from Arkansas. Thus, the warning was posted a full half-hour before the tornado struck.
The RoEllen tornado first touched down to the west of the community. Moving rapidly toward the northeast, the tornado crossed state Highway 104 about 1.5 miles west of RoEllen (Fig. 1). At that point, the tornado produced only F-0 damage. While most of the initial damage swath was to trees, one home along Highway 104 suffered minor roof damage. The tornado then passed over open agricultural land until it crossed Welch Road. A farm's machine shed was heavily damaged just north of Welch Road's intersection with Clanton Road. The tornado then increased to F-3 intensity and completely demolished a substantial brick home located along Cribbs Road and a house trailer next door (Fig. 1, #1 & #2). Both homes were occupied.
The bodies of the house trailer's occupants, a man and wife in their mid 40s, were found near a copse of trees about 250 yards toward the southeast of where the house trailer was sited. The remnants of the house trailer were widely strewn. Heavy objects such as the water heater, stove, and clothes washer were found about 200 yards to the north. The twisted remains of the trailer's frame were found about 300 yards toward the northeast. Two lightly constructed homes between where the trailer had been and where its frame landed were not seriously damaged, suggesting the frame may have flown over them.
Residents of the brick house, a mother and teenage daughter, saw notice of the tornado warning on television. They went to shelter in a corner of the home's basement. While the tornado completely demolished their home and deposited a pickup truck on the remains, they were unhurt.

Here's the creepy part: the mother and teenage daughter in this tale of woe happen to be my mother and my sister. Our "substantial brick home located along Cribbs Road" (thank you, National Weather Service, for calling our house overweight) was demolished. I mean, DEMOLISHED. Our eccentric next-door neighbors, the Kolwycks, were killed apparently instantly.

There are few things that my leaky sieve of a memory can actually recall with perfect clarity. Strangely, most of them are insignificant moments, without real weight. Isn't it strange how you can recall the exact tint of Laurie Morgan's hair in sunlight (I sat behind her and the window in first grade) but you can't really remember what color your car is when you exit the Publix? Or what your grandmother's hands looked like?

However, pure adrenal stress has burned the memory of April 16, 1998 into my brain like a brand. I was in graduate school in Statesboro, Georgia, a mere 635 miles southeast of RoEllen when my uncle Tommy Wolaver called me from Atlanta at 6:11 AM Eastern Time. I had gone to bed around 4:00 AM, and I can't recall ever being so groggy when the phone rang. My graduate housing roommate actually answered the phone, luckily, for he was a 27 year old ex-Marine who was one of the few people actually loud enough to yell me awake. I got to the phone only to hear Tommy say something about our house being destroyed by a tornado, and that my mother and sister had to dig themselves out from under our chimney which had fallen on them in the tumult. Describing the scene, he painted a picture reminiscent of a Dore illustration of Dante's Inferno. All I knew, in my sleepy certainty, was that my house was spread across most of Dyer County, and my mother and sister desperately needed my help. Tommy, the rock of our family, even sounded worried.

"We're goin', boy. How long do you think it'll take you to get to Atlanta?"

"Don't know -- four hours, four and a half, maybe? I'm gonna hit rush hour on 285, aren't I?"

"Just know this: as soon as you get here, Tom, Todd, and I will be ready to go."

I hung up the phone, packed a small bag, and arrived in Snellville two hours and fifteen minutes later. For those of you calculating at home, that's 226 miles in 135 minutes; to put it another way, I touched 138 once between Dublin and Macon on I-16. I have ridden faster, but never again have I driven that fast.

Did I mention it was raining? The whole way?

*************************************

After the death of my father in 1994 and his mother in 1995 (Dad quite unexpectedly passed away at age 45, MeeMaw at 68; at the time my father died, MeeMaw knew she had cancer and refused treatment because, she said, with her husband and son dead she just "didn't see the use") I had few relatives left, really -- our family history is a litany of death and stupidity that causes most people to gasp with pity. I, of course, find it humorous (or even humourous, when I'm feeling frisky and British.) People have asked me where I got my sense of humor, as neither of my parents share my personal concept that everything can be laughed at . . . there are three reasons, really:

Reason 1: I am now, have always been, and will forever be the smallest kid in my class/school/family/world. I am a midget in the land of giants. I have always been short, strange, and unathletic. In our world today, but especially in rural agri-Tennessee, boys and men who are my size either develop a world-class sense of humor or an Alaskan-sized shoulder chip very quickly, 'cause we're the ones forced to prove ourselves. I couldn't carry a knife to school, but I always had my mouth.

Reason 2: Until I attended David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, I had darkened the door of a church building maybe . . . maybe five times? Six? Three Easters, that I can recall. Christians in my neck of the woods were really more objects of fun than they were reverence (around the Denton household, anyway) so I lack an essential respect for sacred objects and ideas that I see in others around me. Strange, really, especially dealing with some of the kids in my eighth grade Bible class here at GACS . . . I have a few students (but more than you'd guess) who have enormous reverence for holy things, but absolutely no respect for authority. [NOT GENERALIZING ALERT! I SWEAR I'M NOT GENERALIZING ALERT!!!!] I have seen good kids -- great kids -- refuse correction from adults in our hallways, filtering out reprimands like so much white noise. Yet reference Jesus, God, or the Golden Rule, and they feel remorse. I was raised as an exact opposite, in some kind of weird land of doppelganger virtues, where you could laugh at God all you want, but may He help you if you ever disrespect any adult, 'cause you'll need Him when Dad hears about it.

Reason 3: You've just got to laugh if you're a member of my family, because -- not to be morbid, or anything -- everybody just died. By the time I was nineteen, I had attended over twenty funerals. Nine of them were for close family members, including all four of my grandparents (three of which had moved into our home shortly before their deaths; perhaps it was the house?) and my father who had seemed indestructible at the time. (Still does.)

********************************************

That last reason, the utter lack of family above ground, gave Tommy's words about helping family a special resonance in my mind as I made my way to Atlanta. They also gave me a kind of grim determination to not let up on the accelerator until I had established enough velocity to coast in for the last twelve miles or so.

When I arrived in Snellville, Tommy was ready. What does this mean, exactly? Well, Tommy has a $17,000 gun collection, if that gives any indication of his readiness. Tommy also happens to be one of the most successful real estate brokers in the metro Atlanta area -- he's happy to give away his trade secrets, which consist of hard work after effective planning. How do you effectively plan for a tornado? Easy. Overpack.

We had a full set of camping gear, including 14 tents and 14 sleeping bags for ourselves and anyone else who might be stuck working outside ("God bless those Boy Scouts!" said Tommy, when I asked where he had gotten them.) We had 11 Coleman lanterns, 9 shovels, 9 pick axes, 4 chainsaws, 2 buckets of fire sand, ("Better safe than sorry!") a post-hole digger, 3 12-pound sledgehammers, and, I believe, 30 pounds of peanut butter. We also had Tommy's sons Tom Jr. and Todd, otherwise known as my enormous cousins. I am not kidding you. Tom Jr. (6'4", 255) and Todd (6'2", 230) look like half of the most terrifying D-line you've ever seen. Add to the mix their good friend Jamie Rice (6'3", 270) who agreed to come along for the ride, and my uncle Tommy (well, 5'9," but he's an easy 225) and we lacked only a good defensive end for a run to the playoffs. Me? Sorry to disappoint, but at a slow 5'7", 180, I'm not really the final piece to anyone's athletic puzzle.

I parked my sporty two-seater in the driveway and leapt into the Ford Explorer.

**********************************************************

Looks like I'll have to serialize this one, as my planning period just ended. I'll finish this story later, for my sake, if not yours . . .

2004-10-28T22:24:00.000-04:00

Is it time?

Could it be?

Yes -- Blog Roll Call!

You'll notice, the more astute of you, that I link to other blogs I enjoy and read. I've added a blog or two without fanfare, and I thought that it would be a nice time to introduce the other bloggers you'll find here . . .

Matt Elliott: What can I say about Matt Elliott that he has not said himself, written down, and posted to other blogs anonymously in order to increase his own popularity? In a word, nothing. He is one of the two finest worship leaders I have ever heard, a truly caring individual, with excellent taste in music, political allegiances, coffee, and books. He is, in short, much cooler than I am.

Jon Owen: The second of the greatest worship leaders I have ever heard is, of course, Kip Walker of the Crieve Hall church during his late 80's heyday . . . ok, that's overly cruel. No, indeed: Jon Owen is the other greatest worship leader I've been pleased to experience. Jon is the chaplain (and a Bible teacher) for Greater Atlanta Christian School, where I teach (not much longer, if the administration finds this blog, I'm sure) so I get to see him interact with kids almost daily. [SO AS NOT TO BE PERCIEVED AS JOKING, IRONY OFF] Jon wants everyone to have a personal relationship with Jesus; even more striking than that, he means it -- he really does -- and that's a wonderful thing to behold. [IRONY ON] He claps too much. But we love him anyway. Go Spartans!

Bev Dowdy: As blogs go, mine skulks about like the angry kid in the back of the class, trying desperately to hide yet yearning for attention so greatly I am willing to embarass myself totally just to be seen . . . yep, Bev's blog is the complete antithesis of mine. If you think that reasoned dialogue has gone the way of the Victrola only to be replaced by a loud tinny yelping, then I beg you to visit her blog. It's incredibly well done; it will make you think; it will make you (gulp) CHANGE your thinking. Bev teaches political science and government at GACS.

Mandy Richey: Mandy teaches civics, geography, and humanities at GACS. After graduation, she plans to attend the University of Tennessee at Martin and major in nursing . . . whoops! Got carried away, there; thought I was back announcing the homecoming court at a DHS football game . . . Mandy's great. Warning: she's very pious, sterile, and demure in her thinking, so it may be difficult to get an opinion on anything from her.

(Quick humor interlude: in order to include the DHS Golden Trojan football roster in the homecoming joke above, I actually had to track down my high school's website. Click here to see the best of what the web has to offer in West Tennessee! WARNING -- your head may actually explode with laughter when you see that "West TN Agriculture: The World View" is listed ABOVE the curriculum link . . . priorities, priorities!)

Matt Byars: Matt writes poetry, builds wooden furniture in the shop in his garage, teaches college English, plays a mean hand of Texas Hold'em, and isn't employed by GACS . . . what's that noise? Oh, it's everyone leaving my blog to read the cool guy's. Poop. I'm not even going to mention that he owns a plasma screen television. Hello? Is anyone left? Anyway, he's a great guy, with a great blog, and a perspective on life just skewed enough to be highly amusing. Read his blog!

I hope you have enjoyed this update . . . click and read on, my peeps! Word!

2004-10-18T11:46:00.000-04:00

Found on www.handwritingwizard.com :

Analysis, Bs Denton:

Bs exaggerates about everything that has a physical nature. Although he may not intend to deceive or mislead, he blows things way out of proportion because that is the way he views them. He will be a good story teller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of his material world. Bs allows many people into his life because he is accepting and trusting. He is sometimes called gullible by his friends. That only really means that he trusts too many people. Bs has a vivid imagination.

Bs has a tendency to put things off, Bs procrastinates. He sometimes pretends to be busy, so he will not have to do whatever he is putting off. He is often late to appointments or deadlines. This usually leads to a great amount of effort at the last minute to meet the deadline. Procrastination is an important factor as it relates to his output on the job or at school. Remember, Bs will put it off until later. Procrastination is easily overcome through a simple stroke adjustment in the handwriting.

One way Bs punishes hisself is self directed sarcasm. He is a very sarcastic person. Often this sarcasm and "sharp tongued" behavior is directed at hisself.

Bs's true self-image is unreasonably low. Someone once told Bs that he wasn't a great and beautiful person, and he believed them. Bs also has a fear that he might fail if he takes large risks. Therefore he resists setting his goals too high, risking failure. He doesn't have the internal confidence that frees him to take risks and chance failure. Bs is capable of accomplishing much more than he is presently achieving. All this relates to his self-esteem. Bs's self-concept is artificially low. Bs will stay in a bad situation much too long... why? Because he is afraid that if he makes a change, it might get worse. It is hard for Bs to plan too far into the future. He kind of takes things on a day to day basis. He may tell you his dreams but he is living in today, with a fear of making a change. No matter how loud he speaks, look at his actions. This is perhaps the biggest single barrier to happiness people not believing in and loving themselves. Bs is an example of someone living with a low self-image, because their innate self-confidence was broken.

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

I hate it when junk like this works.

A couple of things: one, would you trust analysis that included the word "hisself?"

Two, why, with all the positive comments, has this site not exploded with popularity? I can only wonder.

2004-10-11T21:55:00.000-04:00

Overheard on xanga.com:

the_math_geek: i feel that a large portion of poetry (as well as modern art) is for the birds.

This is for you, Wes.

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

[Transcript of an actual conversation from Winter Quarter 1998; Statesboro, GA, Seminar in Poetry Writing, Graduate, ENG 8809]

Professor: Good God, son! This is 1998! AND YOU'RE MOUTHING FORMALISM AT ME??!!! Are you Cleanth [expletive deleted] Brooks or something? Wake up and realize that you're not in [expletive deleted] Podunk, Tennessee, anymore!

BSD: Why are you yelling? All I said was that maybe . . .

Professor: You are a naive fool, that's all! Show some sense. SHOW SOME SENSE!

BSD (angrier): WHAT? What did I do?

Professor: New Criticism is dead!

BSD: I'm not a new critic! I 'm not Cleanth Brooks, or Robert Penn Warren, or Donald Davidson, or anybody else. I'm just not very, uh, very postmodern, I guess. I'm not a fan of deconstruction . . .

Professor (snorting): I'm sure Jacques Derrida's heartbroken. He's probably thinking of ways to convince your inimitable genius right now.

BSD (tearing up in frustration): LET ME FINISH! I just think that good poetry should mean something, that's all.

Professor (genuinely angry): WHAT ARE YOU? THREE YEARS OLD???!!! My God, my God. Poetry is dead! Nothing means anything, anymore! Poetry mean something? Modern poetry has no power to affect anyone or anything -- IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO!!!!

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

A. Zolynas
The Man Who Had Singing Fits

He would begin unexpectedly anywhere,
bubbling into song at the Woolworth's cash register,
in the elevator, in the restaurant
as the waitress approached with coffee,
in board meetings.

The pale canary of his heart chirped
from its cage while all around him
we woke momentarily, startled
out of our cultural trance,
too amazed to be embarrassed.

His family and friends were used to these fits,
and we too became charmed
by his soft voice, the lilting, gentle song
that never quite made sense
but had something to do
with a quiet, confused love.

He would sing for a half minute,
and then he'd be back among us, no memory
of his departure or return, no memory
of the stream he'd dipped us all into,
that one running along just under
the surface of anything you and I
think we understand.

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

Robert Lowell
For the Union Dead

"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die--
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year--
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

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

William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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

Philip Larkin
Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare.
Not in remorse-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always.
Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels.
Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says
No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink.
Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others.
Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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

Elizabeth Bishop
Casabianca

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

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

Elizabeth Bishop
Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.
Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

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

Gwendolyn Brooks
The Mother

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

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

No power to affect anyone or anything, my fat white butt.

2004-10-05T14:35:00.000-04:00

Random thoughts as I persue my dream of more caramel, caramel, CARAMEL!!!!

Sorry.

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

It's election time, again -- or time to ask yourself, "No, really, these are the best you could come up with?"

Every year, it seems, I ask myself this question.

There are, according to the latest U.S. Census estimates, 290,809,777 people living in the United States. Wouldn't you hope, as I do, that our most rigorous methods for presidential candidate selection would give us the pinnacle of American thought and ability? That we would, somehow, sift and glean and carefully select from those 290 million people only the kindest, the strongest, the smartest, the most honest, the most moral, the . . . well, the best?

George Bush and John Kerry?

Really? These men are the best we can do?

Blaaaaaah. It's the same feeling I get from watching Army football. I know that specialization has killed the game, and the Army recruits students first, then athletes, but I always feel bad wondering if we should send the University of Connecticut to Iraq, 'cause our countries best athletes could not "do much against UConn's bigger, quicker defenders."

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

Been reading Borges again. This is what the Matrix franchise was trying to do all along, yet he's still done it better than anyone ever has. Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy bemoans the current fetish with epistemology (the science of knowing); I respect Durant as much as anyone, and agree up to a point -- epistemology is explained much better through story and fiction than it is thorough rigorous logical analysis. You do waste your time if you try simply to explain the process. Read "The Lottery in Babylon," "Funes, His Memory," "Labyrinths," or "The Library of Babel" if you want to stretch your mind around the problem of meta-knowledge, semiotics, or temporal analysis.

Warning: Borges + Closed or Tired Mind = Headache. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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

Photobucket????!!!!! PHOTOBUCKET???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What happened? ? ?

It accidentally ERASED 149 online albums?

AND MINE WAS ONE OF THEM????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL MY PICTURES GONE??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Therefore, you may have noticed that my windblown, eighth-grade-Savannah-trip-photo has been replaced. Who is that, you may ask?

Someone you need to know, of course! Here for the answer.

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

Bell rang; planning has ended; more later!

2004-09-27T20:26:00.000-04:00

I swear to you, this is the last time.

The last time I make you read The Onion horoscopes.

Your Horoscope

By Lloyd Schumner Sr.
Retired Machinist andA.A.P.B.-Certified Astrologer

Aries: (March 21—April 19): You're getting tired of living out of boxes, but if you stop now, you'll damage your reputation as the patron saint of the cardboard cubist lifestyle.

Taurus: (April. 20—May 20): There are those who say you're just a glorified janitor, but you fail to see how the titanium mop and bucket add glory to what you do.

Gemini: (May 21—June 21): You'll soon learn the important legal and semantic differences between the phrases "folksingers should just die" and "it'd sure be nice if someone slaughtered all the folksingers."

Cancer: (June 22—July 22): Hey, it's not your fault if the others around the office don't find your horrifyingly racist sense of humor funny.

Leo: (July 23—Aug. 22): You'll be surprised and pleased to find yourself listed between Leah and Levi in Who's Who In The Bible, but you won't really like what the editors had to say.

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22): You'll be overrun with shallow, boring romance-seekers merely because you genuinely enjoy long walks and sunsets.

Libra: (Sept. 23—Oct. 23): There's no law about over-enjoying the work of Uriah Heep, but the judicial flexibility built into our society will see that you get what's coming to you anyway.

Scorpio: (Oct. 24—Nov. 21): Leprosy is certainly not the problem it once was, but that might not be any consolation to you.

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21): The National Hockey League lockout will have little or no effect on you, which is fairly surprising, considering you're Lord Stanley's Cup.

Capricorn: (Dec. 22—Jan. 19): You'll experience a soufflé that sends you into a white-hot inferno of culinary passion, instantly incinerating you and everyone in the downtown restaurant district.

Aquarius: (Jan. 20—Feb. 18): This week will be prime for advancement at work, as long as you manage to avoid the ball lightning and the other guys don't.

Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20): Good news: The airline will only charge you four Frequent Flier Miles for your violently abbreviated flight this Friday.

2004-09-18T01:44:00.000-04:00

Music test time!

(Oh, I might as well say it . . .)

Age test time!

That's right, humble readers. In another installment of the recurring series *****Signposts that Brad Denton has Officially Gotten Old***** I submit to you this musical pop quiz on song lyrics. My sister e-mailed me to let me know that her roommate's music appreciation class at Middle Tennessee State University took a "just for fun" pop quiz yesterday -- a pop quiz on pop music. Cool, eh? Not so -- the professor, who is four years younger than I am, created this test from some of his more favorite obscure songs from popular performers. Obscure? Maybe, but I knew 'em. Then he went even farther; he crossed the line. He labeled this music as "oldies."

That's "oldies."

Oldies.

You'll see what I mean in a minute. Let's see if you did as well as I did -- I answered all ten immediately, with very little hesitation. (No cheating! I did not use the internet, or Google my way to a better score, so you can't either!) Meredith freaked her roommate out by taking the quiz and making a four, which would have been the highest grade in the class (I made her listen to my albums when we were younger.) I have supplied the answers below, but in order to give you the same chance I had, I have interposed a nostalgia-filled aside to separate them from the questions. Here we go . . . good luck!

Name the song and performer for each of the following lyrics.

1. "Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month
Ralph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find none
He came home too drunk from mixin' Tanqueray and wine . . ."

2. "The streets are lined with camera crews
Everywhere he goes is news
Today is different
Today is not the same
Today I make the action. . ."

3. "No good deed goes unpunished
And I don't mind bein' their whippin' boy
I've had that pleasure for years and years . . ."

4. "Baby nothin's guaranteed
Take back your acid rain
Baby let your T.V. bleed . . ."

5. "When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote
I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions . . ."

6. "You say you'll give me
Eyes in a moon of blindness
A river in a time of dryness
A harbour in the tempest . . ."

7. "Reach out for me and hold me tight
Hold that memory
Let my machine talk to me,
Let my machine talk to me . . ."

8. "She was just another notch on my guitar
She's gonna lose the man that really loves her
In the silence I could hear their broken hearts . . ."

9. "Now they sit and rattle their bones and think of their bloodstoned days.
You chose your words from mouths of babes
Got lost in the wood.
The hip flask slinging madman,
Steaming cafe flirts,
In Chinatown howling at night. . ."

10. "It's nothin dangerous
I feel no pain
I've got to ch-ch-change
You know you got it when you're going insane . . ."

Answers follow!

[Begin nostalgia-filled aside]

Now, I'm not quite thirty, but I always had the musical tastes of a mulleted fifty-year-old. My first love (in many ways still my strongest) was stadium rock. I adore 60's and 70's "power" rock: Zepplin, early Stones, The Who, The Doors, Skynyrd, Boston, Rush, The Allmon Brothers (for my softer side), really anything mindlessly (or thoughtfully) guitar driven. To this day I still treasure actual albums -- LP's, 45's, records . . . whatever you want to call them, as long as they include a screaming Fender and a creepy falsetto. Save my life, I'm going down for the last time!

The first album I ever owned (purchased with my own money) was ZZ Top's Afterburner. It was well worth that $5.77.

After ZZ Top had done all the damage they could do, I entered a phase we all suffered through, namely the "Chicks Will Dig Me If I Adore Beach Music" phase. And, yes, I called them "chicks." And, yes, I used "dig" as a verb when I was in high school. And, yes, I had no idea why I couldn't get a girlfriend. For a short time, I owned every Jimmy Buffett album. I defended his talent right and left ("No. NO. Seriously. Ignore everything he's done since '79. He really had talent -- he really did. How do I accept him? Oh, I just pretend he died just before the release of Somewhere Over China, and they've used a Buffett cyborg ever since.")

Around 1992, I entered my current phase, my mature music phase. Picasso had his famous "Blue Period," and I have my "Purchase-Every-John-Cougar-Mellencamp-Album Period." He's sort of like Buffett, but he's not a cyborg. At least, I don't think he is. Even if he is, I really like his music. Go cyborgs!

[End aside. ]

Before we get to the answers, I would like to revisit my initial anger.

OLDIES????!!!!! YOU CALL THESE OLDIES???!!!!!

Ahem.

Answers:
1. "Johnny 99" by The Boss. I am considering sponsoring a federal bill that will make the purchase of Nebraska mandatory for every aspiring solo artist. Me and her, we had some fun sir, and ten innocent people died . . . sounds like my dating life.

2. Peter Gabriel, "Family Snapshot" -- great song, more murder. It was here that I first began to worry about the sanity of Meredith's professor. Ole Pete never does write too many happy, well-balanced songs, does he?

3. Of course! "Crumblin' Down" by J. C. Mellencamp, back when he still had the middle name. Deduct five points -- no, no, that's not enough! -- don't even give yourself *credit* for this one if you wrote "Crumbling."

4. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Jammin' Me": A song I will always remember fondly, if only for the line "Take back JOE PISCOPO!!!!" I think we're all in agreement on that one.

5. ***Guilty admission alert!!!***: I would never have known this one if it hadn't been the tagline on Matt Elliott's website AND if he hadn't taken me to three Elvis Costello concerts in the past couple of years . . . this one's "Everyday I Write the Book." I was not an E. C. fan until recently. For some reason, he never played the Dyersburg-Tatumville-RoEllen circuit in rural northwest Tennessee. We did see a lot of .38 Special, though. I suppose you must know your audience . . . and be able to hold on loosely.

6. U2, "All I Want is You": If you've seen the seminal Stiller/Garafalo/Ryder/Hawke film Reality Bites, then you already know this one as the love theme from the greatest movie ever made by humankind. Citizen Kane, Schmitizen Kane! Rosebud, my butt! Yes, I'm medicated!

7. One of my favorite songs of all time -- "World Leader Pretend" by R.E.M. Has there been a better college radio band in the history of college radio? Did you, like me, just realize that the history of college radio only encompasses about sixteen years total? Do you, like me, suddenly feel a need to dance? PRETZELS, BABY!

8. Oooooh. I adored this album, song, and artist. This is "Strong Persuader" from the Robert Cray Band; this album also included the song "Smokin' Gun," one of the best hard blues tracks of all time:

I'm standing here bewildered
I can't remember just what I've done
I can hear the sirens winding
My eyes blinded by the sun
I know that I should be running
My heart's beating just like the drum
Now they've knocked me down and taken it
That still-hot smoking gun

9. I know this courtesy of Brad Kibler, the obligatory "Friend from the Early Nineties who wanted to Stalk Natalie Merchant." Didn't everyone have one of these? Really? C'mon, admit it. You were that person, weren't you? Weren't you? There's no shame here. Anywho, the song is "Hey Jack Kerouac" by 10,000 Maniacs.

10. Have you ever been both elated and shamed at the same time? Did you ever possess a piece of information so oddly, crudely unhelpful that you were ashamed you knew it? Yet were you somehow at the same time PROUD of this knowledge? Yep -- here's where I am. This one's "Cat Scratch Fever" by the Motor City Madman, Ted Nugent.

Shall I add a rubric, or scoring scheme?

0-1: Don't feel bad, youngster. Once you start driving in seven or eight years, you'll forget all about failing this.

2-5: Partially old. You're either on the cusp of falling apart, or you're a repository of strange knowledge that should be suppressed. Get out of your house sometime!

6-8: Aged. Enjoy gumming the prunes, Gramps, 'cause these songs are supposedly "oldies."

9-10: Glacial. Your movement is measured not in distance, but in time. I'm sorry to inform you, but you have surpassed the elderly. Buck up, though, because today is tapioca pudding day at the home!

2004-09-11T03:45:00.000-04:00

Bleary-eyed, groaning, dare-I-say --gassy--, our hero turns his attention away from the endless headlines scrolling at the bottom of the ESPNNews ticker ("MIAMI BEATS FLORIDA STATE 16-10 IN OVERTIME!!!!!!!!"; "ROBBY GORDON WINS THE EMERSON RADIO 250!!!!!") and toward his blog.

"Hoo-boy," he says, "hoo-boy -- I'm a tired toto."

Opening Microsoft Outlook, he sees an e-mail message. 'Hello there -- what's this?' he thinks, tiredly. 'Is anything worth keeping me awake any longer?'

Of course there is.

He sees the one thing that will keep him awake, and make him post.

That's right.

It's The Onion horoscopes.

Your Horoscope
By Lloyd Schumner Sr.
Retired Machinist and A.A.P.B.-Certified Astrologer

Aries: (March 21—April 19) Your beloved Sparky will shock you by traveling 1,000 miles back to you. But then again, loyalty is the reason you married him in the first place.

Taurus: (April. 20—May 20) It's going to be a busy, nerve-wracking week, but by the end, you'll be elevated to Imperator For Life Of The Greater Taurus Economic Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Gemini: (May 21—June 21) No one's ever called you a rich, sexy genius, but that was before National Say Hurtfully Untrue Things Day.

Cancer: (June 22—July 22) You'll help realize Western civilization's oldest dream, but it's only the one about getting to school late on exam day.

Leo: (July 23—Aug. 22) An unlikely coincidence involving the spontaneous combustion of your trousers and their subsequent suspension from communications cables will not be enough to teach you to tell the truth.

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22) You're working hard on your list of songs you want played at your funeral, but the flawed premise of the project is that it assumes the presence of attendees.

Libra: (Sept. 23—Oct. 23) Your reading group insists that the Iowa School is more concerned with list-making than with producing good fiction, but frankly, you just wanted to talk about hobbits.

Scorpio: (Oct. 24—Nov. 21) Don't waste time developing a healthy body image, as your body will look a h**l of a lot different starting Thursday.

Sagittarius: (Nov. 22—Dec. 21) Romance and a felicitous atmosphere for new projects are foretold by the moon passing through your sign this week, as well as—wait a second! That's no moon!

Capricorn: (Dec. 22—Jan. 19) It's difficult to be compassionate and loving in today's increasingly cruel world. The term "diminishing returns" comes to mind.

Aquarius: (Jan. 20—Feb. 18) You'll be repeatedly cited as a living refutation of the Great Man theory of history.

Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20) All the stars in your sign have an important message of hope, but you may not get it before the sudden explosion in your galactic spiral arm Wednesday.

(from The Onion, VOLUME 40 ISSUE 36, 8 SEPTEMBER 2004; accessed 10 September 2004.)

2004-09-04T23:07:00.000-04:00

Why only post once, when you can post twice? I just had to write in on this while it was on my mind.

Matt Elliott (you can view his blog here) keeps me abreast of all things political, and he e-mailed me a wonderful link to Travis Stanley's blog. The page I have hyperlinked discusses Bush's recent acceptance of the Republican nomination. It's a magnificent refutation of Bush's asinine implication that democracy is the only God-ordained form of government; Travis says this much better than I can:

Before you criticize me, let me say, "I'm not saying Sadaam was a good leader. I am not saying Iraq is worse off without him there. I'm not saying democracy is not an improvement from dictatorship." So, don't criticize me with any of these statements. There are plenty of other things to criticize me for, so be creative. What I am saying, however, is that regardless of the benefits we experience with democracy that does not mean democracy is a divine right or the only acceptable form of government under God. If you would, think back with me to the book of 1 Samuel. When God decided to directly intervene in the politics of a particular nation called Israel, what kind of government did He establish? Hmm...Democracy? WRONG! I believe God established a monarchy, complete with a king who was either put on the throne because God directed a prophet to anoint him as king or he simply inherited the throne by blood. There were no elections. There was neither a House of Representatives nor a Senate. There was a king and a nation that followed his leadership. I'm not saying this was good. I'm not saying that monarchy is the answer to the world. But I find it problematic to say that democracy is the only "God-ordained" form of government when the only biblical account of a "God-ordained government" was a monarchy.

(from http://travisstanley.blogspot.com/2004/09/problematic-bush.html; Travis Stanley, owner/operator, accessed by me 8/04/2004 at 10:15 PM)

My only question here would be, hey, did God really ordain the monarchy? Didn't God establish the monarchy only at the behest of the people of Israel, who wanted a king just like all of the other countries that surrounded them? I thought that God really ordained the concept of the ruling judges, hence the O.T. book named, appropriately enough, Judges. (This is about as deep as I get -- I hope you weren't looking for an in-depth exegesis or something.)

In thinking about this, I became really excited by the idea.

If God wanted us to have judges, doesn't that mean that He tacitly agrees that laws cannot be static?

Think about it: if the law were simply the law, then why would judges be needed? Doesn't this imply that each case must be handled on an individual basis? If you steal because you starve, and not out of a wish to harm someone else at your expense, do you get the same punishment as the one who stole to harm? If there were no judges, then the punishment would just be the punishment . . . no questions asked.

Plus, the idea of a wise, trained council, chosen by God -- it's really the concept of eldership or shepherds that churches still use today, isn't it?

Wisdom-based leadership. That's what the concept of judges boils down to, doesn't it?

Of course, I'm going right now to the old KJV and make sure that I got this right. If I didn't, well, it's something to think about anyway. Make sure you completely read Travis' post -- it's excellent, and it's much more thought-provoking than this one.

2004-09-04T19:25:00.000-04:00

I love the internet.

Recently, Merriam-Webster online held a poll to identify the top ten favorite words chosen by the visitors to their website; the results are here. I don't want to ruin this for you, but the top word chosen was also my favorite word, the word "defenestration." Here's the definition, from Merriam-Webster online:

Main Entry: de·fen·es·tra·tion
Pronunciation: (")dE-"fe-n&-'strA-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: de- + Latin fenestra window
: a throwing of a person or thing out of a window

- de·fen·es·trate /(")dE-'fe-n&-"strAt/ transitive verb

Just try and use that puppy in a sentence, will you? What a fabulous, unmarketable, incredibly specific term. ("Walter defenestrated the elephant to create an escape route." or "We were quiet throughout the sermon, but we all gasped at the defenestration." or "The defenestration of Betty opened the door to my own.")

For those of you who think that's random, here's one of the photographs that comes up when you put my name, Brad Denton, into the Google Image Search directory:

What are they doing?

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

I've been reading again.

I don't have time (we're already late for a dinner date, Jami and I) to write down everything I should about the wonderful things I read over the summer, but know that a huge book geekfest is coming. Soon. I'm currently reading Faulkner's Sanctuary, with an eye towards re-reading Light in August -- great stuff, this, and inspired by reading my aide's great paper on As I Lay Dying. Faulkner, now, that boy could string words together. I'm excited by the prospect of revisiting his work for the first time in four or five years. Man alive!

You know what? The only thing better than reading . . .

. . . is re-reading. (What did you think I'd say? Heroin, or something? It's a family friendly blog!)

2004-08-19T00:40:00.000-04:00

Apparently Necessary Disclaimer: The Author of this Blog is Himself an Idiot, and Not Unaware that his Ranting can be Interpreted as a Judgment against those he views as Overly Judgmental. Please be Advised that the Delicious Irony of the Situation is not lost on said Author.

(But it's how I really feel, dang it!)

2004-08-17T09:32:00.000-04:00

I'm about to violate a rule I set for myself.

We're all closet legalists, aren't we? By that I mean we all pretend to interface with the world, react to stimuli, make decisions based on rational thought focused by our experiences . . . but we're also list makers, yes? We have our little clipboards filled with checklists to assess our growth, development, correctness.

I have lists I keep in the back of my head. These lists are my lists; you may have similar ones, dissimilar ones, I don't know. One is entitled "Things My Parents Told Me I Will Never Tell My Children" -- this is a list you may have, as well. You know this list, right? Things your parents told you all the time that you swore to never inflict upon your kids? Things like "You think this is something? Everything was so much better when we were younger *sigh*." Or, "In my day, people had respect for others!" Or even the inevitable, "Appreciate what you have, young man! When I was your age I had to . . ." Insert horribly melodramatic tale of woe here, usually punctuated by immense piles of snow and hurricane force winds. Who knew that West Tennessee became Montana for months at a time in the 1950's?

The rule I am about violate has to do with another list I keep. This list is entitled, "Things To Never Write About on Your Blog Because It's a Public Forum, Idiot."

I'll quit stalling now -- I swore I would never mention religion. To begin, I really don't know enough about the Bible. When I was growing up (by the way, those were much better days!) my family did not attend church much . . . my father was a cynical and lapsed Methodist (a Methodist without Method, perhaps?) and my mother was a pseudo-member of a small church that most of the people in our hometown thought of as some kind of strange legalistic cult. When we did attend church (twice a year or so) as a family, we went to mom's cult. Of course, it wasn't really a cult, but I can't blame anyone for thinking so. After all, we were trained (with long sermons and even longer prayers) to snap viciously if anyone -- ANYONE -- assumed that the church we attended had anything at all to do with any other church, even those nearby of the same name. The Baptists called us "Campbellites"; the other churches around us of the same name called us "anti's," or "non-institutionals"; eighteen elderly people and four younger than sixty (including me) called us "home."

Books could be written about my little "home" church and its wonderful ability to sow the seeds of alienation, division, hypocrisy, and discord. Now, I'm going to try very hard not to be judgmental, as they were; I'm going to try very hard not to loose my anger, either, because I know it's ultimately counterproductive.

That church hurt me. It hurt my mother deeply.

I am reminded of a great poem I read years ago (forget the author, sorry) who wrote about his daughter's response to a day camp at a local church: "How could I tell her the truth/That church was a place for people who wanted only/But to hurt other people with their holiness/And keep a Bible filled with rules she could never fathom." I think everyone who has spent time in our fellowship (though the men of my home church would have said "brotherhood" -- sorry ladies, you get only to cook for us) understands the perilous chasm between legalism and liberality. On the one hand, you have rules that can never be kept that seemingly exist only to prove your own worthiness; on the other hand, you've got a universalism that includes everyone, even those who don't ascribe to your values. Spirit AND truth? You've got to be kidding me.

Those more astute among you may be asking, "Great! What does this have to do with anything?" My history with the church reared its head just recently. While browsing other blogs and websites this weekend, I came across a public message forum that disguised itself as an open forum dedicated to discussion in the body of believers. After one post -- ONE post, and remember, I still quote exclusively from the KJV -- I had received a number of "corrective" e-mails that threatened to collapse my computer monitor under the weight of the scriptures included in them for the sake of eliminating my error. Wow. It seems God does not want us to sing a song during the passing of the Lord's Supper. That's apparently VERY bad.

Even reading those last two sentences I am forced to laugh at the outrageousness of their intimacy. Many of you may not know what I'm talking about -- heck, many ***Christians*** have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. In order to understand the concept of the debate, you and I have to be so close in doctrinal belief that the world would see no difference in us. Unfortunately, my new acquaintances on the message board certainly did. I am tempted to write back with some shocking sin -- "What does the Bible say about bestiality, friends? Should I be worried about my salvation if I keep eyeing my dog?" The saddest thing about this story is that they would be far more accepting of that struggle than the idea that our worship styles could be different. All of the old anger I felt at my home church came rushing back in a flood of memory. I literally shook with anger at my keyboard. "Don't they know?" I thought. "Don't they understand how much their inflexibility hurts other people?"

And yet, here I am. I'm still in the church, still looking for truth, still trying to understand.

That right there may be the greatest of the miracles of Jesus Christ. In a fallen world filled with flawed people who use the word of God as a defensive weapon to wall off their own faith, we still search for Him.

Crazy, isn't it?

2004-08-06T12:59:00.000-04:00

I'm back . . .

This time, with an M.A. in English.

Thank you. Seven years . . . how can I fully express the futility and frustration I felt for seven years? It's more than a weight, more than a burden, more than an albatross. Maybe now I have the strength to unleash the burgeoning passion in my soul for interpretive dance.

Both of the regular readers of this blog have asked that I give you an example of the poetry I wrote to complete my creative thesis. As much as I would like to publish examples of my poetry, I am concerned that doing so would put this blog just a "This Page Under Construction" sign away from internet hokeyness. Still, my unimaginable need for attention drives me to post some poetry. Love it, hate it -- I don't care. Just send me money! (Ahem.)

Poem #1: Here's my ode to irony, specifically the air of detachment it assumes in a literary context. I love the juxtaposition of the "postmodern" world view, too -- hey, if nothing is real (or at least provable) through the problematic lenses of sensory perception, and if our engagement of the world must only take place from a distance, then why the heck does my hand ache so much?

IRONY

I cut my hand today; I can never seem
To operate the can opener without tragedy.
Blood pooled at my feet. I should have
Realized the beauty in the agony and
Used the greatest weapon in my arsenal
Of artifice: irony. Certainly Thomas Mann
Would elevate my mere misfortune to high
Farce: sure, Tom and Henry James would
Quickly telescope my hand to rest on some
Distant pedestal. Then we could observe together
In our witty detachment, removed from
The messiness that comes in the moment.
But I could not think to detach myself,
To observe and tease from afar. It hurt too much for poetic devices.

Poem #2: Is this over-the-top, or melodramatic? Sure it is. I wanted to write a poem using the second person and see if the intensity (and general furtiveness) it commands would translate well to poetry. Ah, well. It's an experiment.

CATALYST

Go quickly to the stair. You can almost hear
The voices below urging you to breakfast; your mother
Laughs without conviction, your father equivocates.
Go now, hurry! They are simply biding time, awaiting
Your appearance. Yours is the final entrance.
Have you not heard your cues? You know they are
Making small talk to pass the time until you arrive.
You can almost hear them now. How does the script
Read today? Will this lovely, cloud-filled morning
Bring your mother of compromise, who will allow peace
By temporarily ignoring every wound she's carefully salted
For years? Or will the unforgiving eternal sunbeams reveal
Your mother of retribution: a withered, tattered figure held
Together by secret cunning and an awesome mechanical hatred?
It is the same with your father. "Peace, peace at all costs" is his
Credo, though he confuses peace with avoidance. Will he
Play the part of the blustering, expansive patriarch, eager to
Appease and assert? Or will he assume the role of the sniveling
Conniver, excusing himself on the basis of the world's
Conspiracy against him? How will it be between these two,
Who know no other roles than these? What awaits?
Go. Their world hangs upon your entrance.

Poem #3: I won an award for the following poem. Okay, it's an award I made myself with Microsoft Works, but it's an award nonetheless. Oh, it contains a bad word, that I will star out. (My African-American thesis advisor adored this poem and told me it lost its power if I blunted the word in the first line, but I informed him that not starring it here might annoy some AND cause me to lose my job -- please accept my apologies for equivocating, Doc.)

Achilles in Reformatory

I remember: "n**ger" was the word
He craved, like the chaplain craved for Christ;
instant justification
For all the horror of twelve years
Of warfare to flood over his body
Like the Styx --

We watched as he donned
The breastplate of depravity,
The shield of torment,
And the mighty sword of smoldering rage
Forged all those years ago
By Hephaestus's foundry in East St. Louis --

One time, in the cafeteria, it took six guards to put him down.
Sunlight glinted off of forks and food trays.
Chaos reigned.

When his blood lust was sated,
He shared a laugh with Ares
As they walked him down to solitary.

White Hector they carried to Baptist Memorial.

I was secretly relieved when they
Made good on their threat to keep
Him confined, alone: that way
He could make no friends to avenge.

Poem #4: This poem is a villanelle; a villanelle is a chiefly French verse form running on two rhymes and consisting (typically) of five tercets and a quatrain in which the first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and together as the last two lines of the quatrain. Metrically, you're looking at good old iambic pentameter. Remember Dylan Thomas in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas.)

Well, I had to write a number of verse forms: x number of sestinas, x number of Petrarchan sonnets, x number of Elizabethan sonnets, x number of Spenserian sonnets, etc. I had to submit one villanelle. Interestingly enough, I have only ever written one villanelle, and I wrote it as a response to James Joyce's autobiographical novel The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Though I adored the book, I did occasionally tire of his portrayal of Stephen Daedalus as the uber-intellectual youth. Thinking back, I decided to write of my heroic childhood in a villanelle.

Villanelle: A Portrait of This Artist as a Young Man

Try not to pick your nose in church today.
Old ladies weep when burdened by your snot --
Show manners once in your young life, okay?

Yes, every week the ladies swoon, for they
Believed at first you had some kind of clot.
Try not to pick your nose in church today.

The worst is when you bow your head to pray:
Must we buy you some kind of chamber-pot?
Show manners once in your young life, okay?

We talk about this every week, I say!
This you will learn if I must force the thought --
Try not to pick your nose in church today.

And even if MY anger is allayed
You know what happened to the wife of Lot!
Show manners once in your young life, okay?

I tell you son, this is the only way.
(Your father teaches lessons best forgot.)
Try not to pick your nose in church today.
Show manners once in your young life, okay?

Thus endeth the boredom. If you wish to taunt me, go ahead. Only know that I am, with a graduate degree from THE Georgia Southern University, sufficiently academically accomplished to ignore your cruelty.

2004-06-20T16:26:00.000-04:00

Apologies . . . it's the summer, we just moved into our new house, I'm still driving four hours both ways to graduate school, and my home computer is on the fritz . . . updates will likely be sporadic until late July . . . I know the web needs me, and I'm sorry to seperate you from my genius . . . hello? Is anybody out there? Just as I suspected . . . the world is not ready for me. Go ahead and hate me -- you merely empower my own bitter cynicism. I'm getting a black beret, a tweed jacket, and a mocha latte: soon I will be seen at coffeehouses throughout the south, laconically commenting on the state of world affairs and how it is not my place as an outsider to "engage" it.

Don't you hate those people? Now, I'm pretty much a liberal Democrat (RANT ALERT! RANT ALERT!) but I absolutely despise those people who thrive on their smug ironic commentary. Sure we as a nation (I mean America, not the Democrats) have done despicable, horrible things -- same atrocities, I might add, that every nation has committed -- but I can't stand people who wallow in the pig muck of mistake and guilt. If we are mistaken, help us see it, understand it, and fix it. In my graduate school class (an overview of American literature, this term) there are a number of people who espouse a philosophy centered around the evil that is America . . . every class period I hear how the American Dream is a lie propagated by the powerful, fed by our wanton consumerism, conspired into being by every American citizen; indeed, Marx would be proud, as it is the new opiate of the masses. There is no freedom! they cry. America's insipid class system is destroying us all! they scream. What a terrible place! they moan. We've had an entire class period where various members of my class have decried the Satan masquerading as the American public school system for making them read Mark Twain. I am not kidding. I drive home every night with a headache.

Run for office. Petition your congressman. Get involved in your community efforts. Move. If America is such a horrible place, either do something about it or get out. Before you jump ship for North Korea, however, ask yourself where else in the world you will find the sheer amount of opportunity that exists here in the United States of America. Do some people enjoy greater advantages here? Certainly, and we don't need to kid ourselves that the fight for equality in this country is even halfway over. Think for a moment about that sentence, though: how many other countries around the world struggle with -equality-? How many other governments espouse a commitment to diversity? I can think of at least 17 countries offhand that make assembling en masse to protest the government a crime punishible by jail time or even death (in extreme circumstances.) Here? It's a -right- given us by the first amendment to our Constitution! And we have the gall to say that we are being -OPPRESSED- by the American government, and lied to by the American Dream?

I have a secret dream of my own: you might call it my American Dream. I see seven or eight of my classmates weathering storm, famine, and thirst on a rickety boat for days until finally reaching their freedom by washing ashore on the Cuban coast. Of course I'll not be with them. I've chosen oppression and Mark Twain.

2004-05-24T09:16:00.000-04:00

Did you ever desperately need to be putting grades in your school computer, or grading final exams, or boxing the 7,230 books you own for transport to the house you just purchased, or reading Mansfield Park, or trying to catch up on sleep you've missed because you drive seven hours to graduate school twice a week?

Yep.

So here's the stuff I've found on the internet recently that's fascinated me . . . a hearty Dyersburg thanks to everyone who e-mailed in to contribute to this list -- oh yes, that's only me, Brad Denton, mad props. I am my own peeps. Holla!

(Can you tell I'm not sleeping well?)

1. Random Shirts, Home of the $10.00 tee!: Wow. I've already purchased the double sided "Calvinism -- This shirt chose me/Armenianism -- I chose this shirt" tee, so don't think you've cornered the market on individuality, hombre. I am more expressive than you are, by cracky! (If you know what "by cracky" means, please write in and explain it to me. Or should I do like that weird guy in my grad school class and refer to myself using the editorial and royal "we." Yep, I like that better. If you know what "by cracky" means, please write in and explain it to us.)

2. Lee's Useless Super-Hero Generator: Cresting the wave of popularity created by my mention of the Internet Anagram Server (see earlier post), I only fear that mention of this site will encumber web traffic to the point that all credit card transactions in the U.S. may cease. Hundreds of you -- nay, thousands -- wrote in to say that you enjoyed the Anagram Server, so I offer this to you, you one of many who adore me! Ha ha ha -- I've gone mad!

Ahem.

Anyway, here are my five randomly generated super identities:

Mad Enigma
Power(s): Glows in the dark, Hypnosis
Source of powers: Cybernetics
Weapon: Atomic Pitchfork
Transportation: Vibro 4x4

Wind Midget
Power(s): Super-human stamina, Super strength, Light generation/control
Source of powers: Unknown
Weapon: Foam Pellets
Transportation: Alpha SUV

Archfighter
Power(s): Energy blasts, Animate/control the dead
Source of powers: Unexplained
Weapon: Ether Hammer
Transportation: Insect Glider

Detective Tornado
Power(s): Seventh sense, Flight, Heat generation
Source of powers: Chemical
Weapon: Magnocarbine
Transportation: Crimson Chair

Stone Lad
Power(s): Friction manipulation, Psychic, Super jumping
Source of powers: Abnormal brain function
Weapon: Celestial Rifle
Transportation: Squirrel Catamaran

To be perfectly honest, I've always dreamed of sailing around the world on a catamaran made of squirrels. Uh, shooting foam pellets at people. Um, from my magnocarbine. Righhhhhhhhht. With my warcry of "Fear the Mad Enigma!" I will fight crime using only my manipulation of friction! Evil beware!

3. Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie: For protection against mind control, of course. Isn't it strange how you find these things? I had an eighth grader who was procrastinating on our career day; he was to have completed at home an online career survey called "Future Focus." Needless to say, he had not finished it and asked to use the computer in my homeroom. He started Internet Explorer, but he could not remember the name of the website where the survey was located. He decided that www.futurefocus.com was a likely site, and so he was directed here. This site, however, was for Future Focus, Inc., a corporate security and investigation site. Intrigued by the "case studies" they presented on the front page, I decided to poke around on the site. That's where I found the aluminum foil link above, and this: the greatest disclaimer in the history of mankind. After reading this, I knew that this site was being produced by one lone pasty guy in a cubicle and not the work of a shadowy organization whose resources rival those of the Central Intelligence Agency.

4. Trinkaus -- An Informal Look: From the Annals of Improbable Research, in itself a fascinating site. Trinkaus is a professor of statistics who has found the perfect way to circumvent the large university "publish or perish" mentality by publishing constantly -- about nothing. I love this guy, and the story is absolutely true.

5. The Political Graveyard: Politicians On Money: Who hasn't forgotten the name of the guy on the dollar coin? Well, I have not -- it's Eisenhower. Okay, what about the guy on the first $500 note issued by the treasury. Easy -- it's Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin, of course. Who was the "Poo Bah of the Confederacy," the man on the $2 Confederate note? Simple -- it's Judah Philip Benjamin. If you think for one second I knew any of those before I went to the site, well, you're correct, and I'm a huge loser.

Hopefully, like me, you can avoid most of the things that you need to be doing with these simple diversions. Rock on, people. Rock on.

2004-05-24T09:11:00.000-04:00

Well, the check didn't bounce. Hallelujah!

We're homeowners.

2004-05-17T18:09:00.000-04:00

More internet stuff. I LOVE the internet stuff. I decided today to "Google" my best friend Dustin -- you've "Googled" a friend, right? Or at least "Googled" yourself, you solipsist! (Even the fact that I've written this in the second person is putting a hop in your step, admit it!) I thought that a name like "Dustin Adkins" would be rare enough as to give me the current information about MY friend Dustin. So I went to "Google" Dustin Adkins, and here are the results:

1. Dustin Adkins, President of Mountain State University Students for Bush! (Not my Dustin, I assure you.)

2. Dustin Adkins, the losing pitcher for the Wichita Rattlers! (Hmm. My Dustin is an extremely unathletic Democrat. Not him.)

3. Dustin Adkins, 5th Place (Senior Division) International Conference 2001 Scenario Writing Winner, Future Problem Solving Program! (Well, Dustin and I graduated together in 1993 from Dyersburg High School in Dyersburg, Tennessee, so I'm hoping he didn't have to remediate for 8 years. In Kentucky. Wouldn't that be a slap in the face of Tennessee education? Your high school was so bad, you had to do 8 more years of it in Kentucky? Have mercy.)

4. Dustin Adkins, Champion Supreme Dairy Female, 10th Annual Livestock Expo-West! (Wow. How the mighty have fallen. Good luck having a future after you've been saddled [no pun intended] with that award by the Department of Agriculture. "What'd you win, Dustin?" "Uh, Supreme Dairy Female." "Dear Lord, what have they done?")

5. Dustin Adkins, Powder Metallurgy Technologist, Level 1! (What can I say here? I'm not even sure what this is!)

And there are so many more fun Dustins that time will not allow me to tell their varied and disparate stories. Suffice to say, you would be horrifically bored.

2004-05-16T19:51:00.000-04:00

If you read the earlier post, you know that I'm back in grad school to finish my M.A.

What classes am I taking, you ask?

You'll all be glad to know that my two seminar topics have amazing relevance to my current career as a junior high English teacher. The first seminar boldly proclaims its message without omitting any extraneous details -- Seminar in the 19th Century English Novel: Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte. That's right! I'm not just reading Emma, no ma'am! Nor am I just reading Emma and Mansfield Park, no no! I'm reading Emma, Mansfield Park, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre! If my eyeballs can survive this month without being forcibly self-extricated using a spoon, I count this month a raging success. Needless to say, I'm not exactly pumped about this half of the class.

However, I've found that I need to be forced to read novels out of my interest field, and I usually end up loving them. So far, I really enjoy the professor, and I love the eccentrics that work on a M.A. at GaSou.

The second half of the seminar promises to be much more exciting (for me, anyway!) -- Seminar: Flannery O'Connor. Now I adore O'Connor's work; she's long been a personal favorite. Plus, she's distinctly a Southern author, perhaps the prototypical Southern author, and I am more interested in Southern American than I am Southern British, 19th century style.

Next update? I'll let you know if the eyeballs make it.

2004-05-12T08:29:00.000-04:00

Big things happening here. As most of you know . . . wait, wait, no . . . as NONE of you know, I am an alumnus of Georgia Southern University. Yes, that Georgia Southern University, the home of the finest English Department on the eastern seaboard! Uh, the eastern seaboard of Georgia. Hmm . . . finest English Department for a *public institution* located on the eastern seaboard of Georgia. No, the finest . . . well, you get the idea.

How did I choose GaSou, you ask? Hearken back with me to the dog days of Spring 1997: how well did you know your future then? I was getting married in June 1998 -- that much about my future I knew in 1997 -- and I had no earthly idea what I was going to do with my life. I had recently graduated from David Lipscomb University (the home of the finest English Department in an American-Restoration-Movement-derived college or university located within the city limits of Metropolitan Nashville/Davidson County) and the employment field confided to me by my college-entrance-mandated career survey (package deal with the Myers-Briggs; "Psychologist/Counselor" and ENFP on the same day, can you believe all the self-awareness I gained that day?) didn't really appeal to me. So: I had won medals at graduation (for something?) from the English Deparment; I was an English major; I was president of Sigma Tau Delta (STD!!!!!!!!) the English honorary society; my advisor and confidante was an English professor. Strangely, I somehow felt that graduate school in English was in my future.

But where to go? Somewhere close to Jami (who would be in Florida student teaching in the second semester of 97-98; also, the June wedding would be there. . .) Plus, somewhere cheap (Public!) and somewhere I could still be admitted, despite the fact it was late March of 1997. Florida State and the University of Florida? All materials due December 15, 1996, thank you very much. University of Central Florida, South Florida, North Florida? No admission after February 1, 1997; no exceptions. Even Valdosta State turned me down (March 1, 1997).

But GaSou had (and has) a rolling admission policy, and they were downright eager to take my money. So I spent 1997-1998 there, doing my coursework for an M.A. in English. It was actually a very good graduate education, all my joking to the contrary.

Of course, I didn't finish my thesis. A million times you've heard this, right? Breeze through the coursework, don't finish the thesis. I began a perfectly serviceable thesis on the humanist framework found in the later novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; my advisor hated it. So, I started another on a different aspect of his work; never did finish it.

End of grad school. Kaput, right?

Well, no. I never finished my academic thesis, no, but I did channel my inner writer enough to finish a creative thesis in poetry (enjoyed that much more than the non-creative one) and [INSERT DRUMROLL HERE] I discovered that under the conversion to the semester system from the quarter system I needed six more hours of coursework to finish the degree. So I signed up for the course, and here I am . . . with one six hour seminar between me without the M.A. and me with academic bliss.

Here's where the fun begins: I did not know that I lacked coursework until March of this year (March to March, eh -- a fearful symmetry there; Blake would be proud!) and as I am up against the seven year rule, I must finish before August. So I need six hours worth of credit this summer from Georgia Southern. Easy, huh?

I didn't know until yesterday that GaSou had changed its academic semesters in the summer so that the first course started in May . . . May 11 to be precise. So that's why I found myself hightailing it to Statesboro, GA, a three-and-a-half hour trek from my current Atlanta home, in order to make it to my graduate class at 6:30. Oh, yes, I drove back last night, too, when the class ended. At 10:30. So I got home around 1:45 AM or so, just in time to collapse and awaken at 6:15 in order to teach my eighth graders. Yep. I've gotta do this twice a week until the end of school.

However, I'm excited by the prospect of the high adventure that goes along with finishing this seven-year-long chapter in my life; I need epic drama and torment in order to give meaning to those things that would otherwise be devoid of significance.

I need sound and fury. For me they signify . . . everything.

2004-04-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

"So I'm surfing the web, right?"

How many conversations about cool things you've found online started with that sentence? I **need** a blog, just to showcase all the eclectic crap I find that absolutely fascinates me.

Here's one for you: the Internet Anagram Server. Fascinating stuff, this. I must have played around with this site for an hour or so, until I decided to put in my own, full name. Whew! I had hoped for some kind of pithy, wise maxim or epigram that I could relate to the students in my English classes, or something (modesty is not a strong suit of mine) that I could put on a bumper sticker and change the world. I needed a phrase that would sell! So, using the "Advanced Anagramming" link I was able to separate the wheat from the chaff and find these world-changing anagrams for "bradley scott denton" :

ABSCOND TENDERLY TOT
Really, excellent advice for absconding tots across the world. Somehow, though, I doubt it will catch on as this year's catchphrase.
A BOLT CONTENTED DRYS
Doesn't this sound like the title of a Movie of the Week?
DEBACLE DON NOT TRYST
This doesn't make a lot of sense, but I love the idea of a literary character named "Debacle Don." Plus, you know he's a pretty good guy, with all his tryst rejecting.
CABLED RODENT SNOTTY
I'd be snotty too, if I were cabled. Or a rodent, for that matter.
ECTOBLAST DENTON DRY
This one frightened me. Not only did it sound like a rejected Ghostbusters script device, but it sounds like it would hurt. Towels are fine, thanks.
CARBON DOTTED YENTLS
Either a strange Barbara Streisand movie sequel or an obscure vegetable.
BLADDER CONTEST TONY
See "Debacle Don," above. "Hey -- who's that . . . OHMYGOODNESS, it's BLADDER CONTEST TONY!!!!!!"
DAYBED CONTROLS TENT
From a Sharper Image catalog, perhaps?
BLOATED CONTENTS DRY
In my case, definitely not true.
BRADLEY SCOTT TENDON
Yeah, this one felt like cheating to me, too.
BLASTED CODY TRENTON
I'm envisioning a Western scene with our hero, Blasted Cody Trenton. Is his first name descriptive, or an expletive?
BALD COTTONY TENDERS
Coming to an O'Charlie's near you.
BRANDON ELECTS DOTTY
In the parliament of his mind . . .
STANDBY CLONED OTTER
Great imperative sentence. I suppose he is to wait for orders from Central Otter Command, or the Mammal Attack Post.
STANDBY COLORED TENT
Otter's buddy.
TABLE CONDONED TRYST
I see this as a strange news headline, somewhere. All we know is that Debacle Don and Bladder Contest Tony were NOT involved.
TENTACLED BODY SNORT
Great prospective name for a band. "Hello, Grayson! We are the men of Tentacled Body Snort!!! Two nights only, no cover!!"
CONSTERNATED BY DOLT
Aren't we all? This may be the closest I've gotten to true wisdom with these.
LANCED DEBTOR SNOTTY
I would be, too -- you owe me money? You stuck a lance in me? What next?
TRANSCEND BLOTTY ODE
I'm trying. I'm really trying.
CANDY BOTTLE SNORTED
Put that down! Stop it!
DYLAN CORBETT STONED
Here is the first saga of the Corbett family . . . more to follow. I envision Dylan as the Prodigal, maybe played by Brad Pitt, returning to the Corbett family after his wild drug days. Or it could be literal, I suppose.
DANNY CORBETT OLDEST
He's the firstborn, and livid at Dylan for tarnishing the good Corbett name, of course.
DONNA CORBETT STYLED
And she looks marvelous.
DAYTON CORBETT LENDS
Here's the bank-owning Shylock of the family, always asking for his pound of flesh . . . seems like every week someone else comes along and sticks a lance in him. . .

As you can see, my name does not lend itself to wise statements guaranteed to rise the consciousness of humanity. However, it does serve to describe me pretty well:
NASTY BLOND DETECTOR

And with that, I adjure you to try the demon machine for yourself. Good luck!

2004-04-24T01:42:00.000-04:00

I had planned yet another over-the-top, literary name-dropping extravaganza
("OH RALLLY? Yew haven't yet read Borges? In the original -Spanish-? Dear me, yew ahre not as smart as I am, now are yew?" It works better if you imagine it in a foppish Bostonian drawl mixed with upper-crust British tones; kind of like that odd accent Madonna has been affecting in her recent interviews. NOT THAT I WATCH MTV -- I'M TOO BUSY TRANSLATING DANTE FOR FUN! I'M REALLY, REALLY SMART!!! SWEAR TO GOD, I AM!!!! EVERYONE REVEL IN MY INTELLIGENCE . . . BWA-HA-HAHA!!!!!!! Ahem. Sorry.) but I ran out of time . . . tomorrow (today! I must sleep!) my JV Academic Team journeys to Gray, GA, south of Macon, to compete in the JV GATA State Tournament. So I don't have time for an original posting.

I know . . . I'll give you some Seanbaby. Seanbaby is one of my favorite finds of the last year or so; he's a Gen X freelance writer who writes some of the funniest (and, occasionally, some of the most obscene -- be careful) magazine articles I have ever read about various aspects of popular culture. The setup for this article: his current hometown of San Francisco was experiencing a mugging epidemic, and the mayor advocated that each citizen should insure that they had some form of protection. Seanbaby's answer? Use those leftover defense guides published during the "kung-fu boom" of the 1970's to arm the citizenry. This from his bi-weekly article in The Wave:

The Complete Guide to Self-Defense Guides
Bringing you the hottest, most high-flying non-stop, commercial-free face rocking since the invention of the groin attack.
By Seanbaby

To survive the streets, you’ve got to turn your hands and feet into deadly weapons. No other form of self-defense can be trusted. Pepper spray has a better chance at making your taco delicious than taking down a mugger; a simple mirror can turn any of your laser weapons against you, and the ladies know what I’m talking about when I say that shotgun holsters don’t go with ANYTHING.

The following books teach the street smarts and deadly attacks that will transform you from a clueless victim wandering into dark alleys counting your money to a barely-contained whirlwind of death. Please be careful with the knowledge gained from this article, and use it only for justice. You see, every day, karate kills 87,000 people around the world.* Some experts say that this number may balloon to as high as a million billion before the year 2000, and that men, women, and children alike will soon only be categorized in two ways: “Karate Star” and “Hold on, what’s that in the bucket?” Do your part.

*This figure is based entirely on speculation by the author and the awesomeness of karate, which sounds a lot like this: “WaoooOOWATA!”

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE! The Secrets of Street Fighting, 1982, By Dr. Ted Gambordella
In his foreword, Dr. Ted says that he does not advocate killing people, and his techniques are not to be used for murder. With that out of the way, he really lets you know how to turn someone’s crotch into oatmeal. And while I admit my street fighting experience is limited, a lot of Dr. Ted’s advice seems difficult to apply. For example, his defense against someone punching you in a parking lot is kicking them in the face, giving them a complicated judo throw and tearing their eyeballs out. If I could do all of that, I think I’d be a little too busy infiltrating Baron Von Terror’s satellite bunker to be reading a self-defense book. Maybe I’m thinking too much with my brain here, but it seems a little irresponsible to encourage a casual karate enthusiast into thinking he or she has the option to spinning-heel-kick the guns out of a team of ninjas’ hands and exploding their throats with a backflip fireball.

When Can You Apply It?
All of Dr. Ted’s situations take place in a strip mall parking lot where one or more people totally hate you. He shows you how to break someone’s knees or pubic bones during many types of attacks, and is thoughtful enough to end most of his advice with something like, “Stomp on their groin while waiting for help to arrive.” Dr. Ted hates groins – HATES them. If his book taught me one thing, it’s that you should never run away from a deadly situation when you have the option of maiming someone’s crotch.

Defense Example:
If a thug grabs for your briefcase, pull him in and elbow him in the jaw. Then (and you probably knew this was coming) “smash a knee into his groin, knocking him into the ground, where you finish him off with a smashing heel stomp to his groin.” It ends there, but my own experimentation has found that opening and closing your briefcase on his groin while he’s unconscious keeps the attack light-hearted.

Looking Forward to Being Attacked, 1977, By Lt. Jim Bullard
Policeman Jim Bullard teaches that the key to self-defense is to love getting attacked. In fact, the title of his first chapter is, “You’ll Never Enjoy Being Attacked If You Don’t Change Your Attitude!” So get out there and really get excited about violent assault! He often refers to crippling combat maneuvers as “fun” or “cute.” His chapter, “Life Affords Few Pleasures That Can Equal The Striking of Vulnerable Areas!” will change the way you giggle when you put your fingers in people’s eyes. Not that you need me to point it out, but Mr. Bullard sounds a bit like a lunatic.

When Can You Apply It?
According to Jim, almost any time is a good time to jam your keys into someone’s throat. Of the dozens of situations he teaches you how to demolish your way out of, I’d say about three would be considered “attacks.” He shows you how to deal with a stranger choking you during a tennis game, grabbing hands that shoot out of men’s rooms, and people who sit too close to you at church. I can see how quick, decisive karate is the only option when faced with those horrors. But when Jim showed me how to break someone’s kneecap for standing in my sun while I’m on vacation, I thought that might be excessive. Plus, the four pages on how to kill your dentist should he ever turn evil could be a case of simple insanity – but after he mentions fighting off your dentist twice more in the book, that’s a little... let’s just say I’ll have a lead suspect should there ever be a series of missing dentists.

Defense Example:
If you’re at your favorite department store and a man starts hitting on you, Jim’s advice is, “Bend your knee against the back of his knee to break his balance while throwing your arm into his chest. He will go down with a bang and probably remain there in a crumpled heap. Off you go into the store screaming at the top of your voice.” I’m so glad I read this. I thought I was going to go crazy trying to figure out why every woman I flirt with flings me into the ground and tells nearby shoppers, “AAAAGHHHHHHH!”

Instant Self-Defense, 1965, By Bruce Tegner
Bruce Tegner is a holder of “The Black Belt” in Judo and Karate. He’s probably written at least three books about every martial art on the planet, but if you ask any serious martial artist, they’ll tell you these are terribly inaccurate. This is moot, though, since if you’re really talking to a serious martial artist, then by now he’s punched your heart out and, with a primal scream, sacrificed it to his savage karate gods.

When Can You Apply It?
Bruce’s techniques seem useful no matter where or how you’re attacked, but I especially liked Chapter 3: DEFENSES AGAINST ANNOYING ATTACK. It’s a series of painful holds and attacks you can use against your friends if they annoy you. Like if someone slaps you on the back to say hello, Bruce shows you how to break his arm. He’s even smart enough to suggest that you pretend you didn’t mean to, in case you want to remain friends with the person who used to be attached to the arm you’re holding.

Defense Example:
If one of your pals is leaning on you, Bruce suggests, “Next time he leans, dig into the side of his body just below the last rib, using the extended knuckle in a grinding motion. Grin as you grind – you are not trying to start a fight.” I assume that if my friend was to try for a full hug, I should jam a switchblade between his third and fourth ribs. This would puncture his lung and prevent him from screaming. Then I’d gently caress his hair as he bleeds out – I don’t want him to think I’m angry with him. Thanks, Bruce!

2004-04-15T10:55:00.000-04:00

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed -- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

This is William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech -- I have no words to describe it, elucidate it, or even desecrate it. I think it would survive even an attack from my carefully disaffected irony.

Faulkner's a favorite. How could he not be, after reading the speech? To paraphrase a story told by Raymond Carver: "I was taking a class in the short story that year, from the (eventual) novelist John Gardner. We were assigned the story "Blackberry Winter" written by Robert Penn Warren. I read it, but did not enjoy it, so I went to the next class and told him so. His exact, shocked response was 'Read it again.' He was not kidding."

2004-04-14T09:10:00.000-04:00

There are sports guys out there, of every flavor and disposition. Football guys, basketball guys, baseball guys (and I must admit, I'm kind of a baseball guy myself.)

You've also got your car guys (and I dabble in that one, too, though I really lack the resources to indulge in collecting classic cars, or even indulge in gasoline purchases for my '97 Sentra.) Computer guys -- technology guys -- scare me a little. Was I the only person to see the original Terminator?

My dad was a hunting/outdoorsman guy. My paternal grandfather was a gun guy . . . and a suit guy, strangely enough. He didn't get much of a chance to wear them at the Ridgely City Gin, but he sure bought them in record numbers. (He founded three chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous in West Tennessee . . . his set piece was a hilarious retelling of the time my grandmother found his cache in the attic where he kept the suits, guns, and whiskey he spent his paychecks on, instead of food. She found 31 long guns, 12 handguns, 42 three-piece suits, and 35 bottles of George Dickel.)

My maternal grandfather? DeeDee was a reader. And here's where I am, really. I'm a reader, myself. I'm a book guy. I like to think of myself as an iconoclast, but I'm really just kind of dorky.

I'm a book guy. Favorites to follow, in a later post.

2004-04-12T07:34:00.000-04:00

FEAR. Random, heart-racing fear: adrenalin kicking my heartrate to tachycardia.

Momentary pause. Mild consternation by the realization that I don't really know how to spell "tachycardia."

Return to fear. FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR

I am twenty-eight years old.

I have been married for six years.

I have world-record credit card debt, and a student loan balance that only nine years of dabbling in graduate school can explain. Okay, maybe not -explain-. Had I been attending graduate school in Micronesia and paying weekly airfare using my loans, that might -explain- my balance.

FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR

Jami and I put a contract offer on a house last Saturday. A house. A HOUSE. A backyard-havin', roof-and-everything-included, mortgage-payment-please, oh-dear-golly-how-much-do-I-need-to-borrow? HOUSE.

I get the shakes from clipping coupons. It freaks me out; there's too much pressure. You're tellin' me I've only got NINE days to cash in on Palmolive? I can't handle -- LITERALLY CANNOT HANDLE -- the fiscal responsibility that comes with saving forty-one cents. $ 0.41.

But $140,000? Oh, heck yeah . . . sign me up for two hunnert grand. I'm ready, buddy-o. Bring it on!

(I may have just wet myself. Why lie? I've been wet ever since noon on Saturday . . . selective service, take notice! I AM NOT TO BE TRUSTED IN THE SERVICE OF MY COUNTRY! I CANNOT HANDLE BECOMING A HOMEOWNER! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

In other news, Jami is excited by the possibility of painting, refinishing, remodeling. She has these, these, whattayacallems, these -- is it -- swatches? She's been calculating the combinations and permutations on those suckers nonstop. It's like watching an insurance actuary take my height, weight, and family history and extrapolate my lifespan. Only, here's the deal: Jami frightens me more. And improvements? I honestly never saw the dozens of subtle improvements that could be made in the home requiring only 1.) every second of my time up until September 2009 and 2.) a small investment of $650,000.00.

I'm married to Bob Vila.

2004-03-31T09:40:00.000-05:00

This from James Lileks, one of my favorite columnists of all time, on getting fired from a job:

I was fired today. It was, as the Native Americans say, a good day to die. (Also said by Klingons, and Keifer Sutherland in "Flatliners.") Mid-40s, sunshine, melting water tapping on the porch roof. Warm enough to stand outside and shout into the cordless phone, instead of pacing inside. Because I can smoke outside, and when you're fired, there's nothing better than smoking, pacing and shouting.

Afterwards, though, I went out for errands. I needed to get a pound of overpriced coffee - Fireside Blend, with each bean personally kissed by the Master Roaster - and some groceries. I had a genuinely odd
experience at Byerly's, home of the Exalted Shopping Experience; every item seemed to irritate me. The happy product names irritated me. The 58 varieties of potatoes irritated me. The magazines in the check-out stand irritated me. There was one mag - "Country Wood 'n' Gingham" or some such name - whose cover had the most inane headlines:

The Man who Planted Trees: An inspirational story!

How inspirational can that be? If the man had no arms, dug the holes by chewing through the grass and rolled the tree seeds into the pit with his nose, it would be inspirational.

French Toast - like you've never had it before! You could fill up a magazine with the ways in which I've never had french toast. I've never had French Toast while sitting naked on the Pope's lap. I've never gone to a skeet-shooting range, had them fire the french toast into the sky and then caught it in my mouth as it fell to earth. I could argue that each instance of French Toasting eating is unique, since the date, time, clothing, dining implement, etc., is different from the last time. I was close to pointing this out to the clerk, but caught myself. . .

Yesterday's column was my last. (My parting words to the audience, it now appears, were "enjoy your disasters while you can." Not bad, really.) That does not surprise me, and I can't say I blame them; no point tossing money at me when I'm just going to leave.

But the rest of the conversation was just flat-out jaw-dropping flabbergasting. The reason they made such an underwhelming offer to counter the O.O. was because they were mad at me. If I'd come to them without a competing offer, and said I wanted more $ and some publicity, then we would have had a nice warm confab about my future, and goodness and mercy would have followed me all the days of my life. The act of bringing a competing offer to jump-start the negotiations was seen as blackmail, not leverage.

I can't say I agree. I thought this is how negotiations are done, but what do I know? We parted amicably, even though I thought I would urinate Drano during a few points in the talk. Then I called everyone I knew and vented. (Outside on the porch pacing and smoking. The whole block knows everything now. )There's something fun about being fired; it's like you won the Anti-Lottery. You're full of adrenalin, and when you talk to friends, they're outraged. Everyone is on your side! You're the Martyr of the Hour! And then it wears off, and you feel like slinging a rope over the rafters. Well, I still feel fine. It was just a job, one of many. If the O.O. falls through, I'll make it up elsewhere.

I'll start making money on the Internet! I hear there's a world of opportunity out there, and all I need is a 386 computer, a box of Amway products and ten friends.

Doesn't that perfectly encapsulate the firing experience? I don't know if you can truly appreciate this post if you have never been fired . . . so work on that today, kids. Everybody -- LOSE YOUR JOB!

2004-03-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

Update time -- I'm feeling pretty antsy about my lack of updates, because the ever-popular Matt Elliott has graciously linked to my blog here.

I must admit, I'm uncertain which road to take, Dear Reader. Do I make it a goofy, random-humor-driven site? Do I bore you with never-ending updates about my feelings about teaching, the nature of irony, my personal beliefs ad nauseam? Or do we really just want to know how well I'm doing in Fantasy Baseball?

Hmm. It's a conundrum.

Oh, I'll figure this out. I promise more updates this weekend.

2004-03-05T13:46:00.000-05:00

What is the nature of the world? What is the nature of existence? Why are we here? Above all, how are we to live? What is our purpose?

Many people propose to know the truth, to have the truth, to OWN the truth. Who do we trust, in this transitory state between birth and death, to give us the answers?

Well, that's simple.

You trust everybody.

2004-02-16T10:45:00.000-05:00

So this is the culmination of history? The zenith of technology? So one goofy guy in the southeastern United States can instantaneously publish his thoughts on any conceivable subject, and prove to the world that he deserved a "B" in ninth-grade Typing I?

Yes.

It is.

2004-02-16T09:15:00.000-05:00

You've got to love those Green Mountain Boys. Ethan Allen -- meet RICHARD STINKING WATTS!!!!!!!

Main Entry: pre·ten·tious
Pronunciation: pri-'ten(t)-sh&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: French prétentieux, from prétention pretension, from Medieval Latin praetention-, praetentio, from Latin praetendere
1 : characterized by pretension : as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) [the pretentious fraud who assumes a love of culture that is alien to him -- Richard Watts] b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature [pretentious language] [pretentious houses]
2 : making demands on one's skill, ability, or means : AMBITIOUS [the pretentious daring of the Green Mountain Boys in crossing the lake -- Amer. Guide Series: Vt.]
synonym see SHOWY
- pre·ten·tious·ly adverb
- pre·ten·tious·ness noun

2004-02-16T09:05:00.000-05:00

Dear friends:

Are you ready?