Rock the Casbah!

Who else can rock a mohawk and a polo shirt buttoned up to the very top button?

No one else but The Intuitive!

He's been pestering me for a mohawk since he was 5. I kept pushing the idea away, telling him he had to wait until he was older. Finally, I compromised and told him he could have one during summer break, when it wouldn't be a distraction in school. A couple of weeks ago, I moved up the date and told him that I would give him one the night before the last day of school.

So, here it is.

Despite his less than excited expression...he was very happy!

The Intuitive is even more excited because next year the "mandatory uniform" policy at his school has been changed to a "voluntary uniform" policy.....which might as well be a "no uniform" policy because who is going to continue to wear uniforms when they see all their classmates being allowed to wear anything they want?

Oh, that's right....The Rationalist will!

He's already informed me as much. A love of uniforms, patrol authority, and a reverence for following the rules....that kid is cut out for the military.

Meanwhile, The Intuitive is thinking of all the different ways he can wear his hair and clothing.

Experimentation, thy name is The Intuitive.

The line between what I would intuitively think was an ad on The Onion and an ad made for real-life is getting more difficult to discern:


If you really need this blanket to fend off "flatulence molecules"....then I give you my condolences!

FYI...if I ever got this as a wedding or anniversary gift...I'd be sure to reciprocate the gift with something as equally disgusting in concept.

God and Sales

Leila walked in the door, long black hair framing her brown face, smile wide and white and I gave her a quick hug. I hadn't seen her in almost a year, just before our kids started school. They had been neighbors and schoolmates of our children until they had moved south of us to a newer house, in a close-by town.

Birthdays and summer breaks kept us in touch, occasionally. I always showed up on the dot for her son's birthdays, in my way too literal, prompt, Anglo fashion, while the rest of her Latino guests would arrive about an hour or two later. She would joke that she should send me a different invitation with the "real" time listed so that I wouldn't always be so early.

She had called me the day before to say "hi" and to see if I'd like to get together to talk about the summer and what we could do with the kids that would be fun. After chatting for a few minutes, she asked if I had half an hour to spare the next day. Having just finished my last day of work for the school year, I gladly made time for her.

As she sat down on the couch next to me, I noticed she wasn't wearing her normal make-up and her eyes seemed a little puffy and tired. She works two part-time jobs, so I dismissed it as fatigue.

As we talked, I realized that the thirty minutes she had asked about was going to be spent on a sales pitch. She moved quickly from general conversation, with a purposeful side discussion about the church she was now attending and the Bible Institute she was taking classes from which was strict, but according to the Bible, to a DVD presentation about the company she was working for and their products.

I covered over my swirling anxiety with a fake smile and nodded while she talked, simultaneously thinking of ways that I could disentangle myself gracefully from the situation and not hurt her feelings.

Sadness began to well up inside of me as I listened, half of my mind attempting to stay engaged while the other half began to contemplate what had happened to my friend Leila. I realized that the black, curly hair, which tumbled down her shoulders, was different than the orange-y, blond streaks that she used to like. I noticed that she was dressed more conservatively, in a high necked shirt and wearing a skirt, instead of her normal shorts and showy blouses, bare ears instead of her usual dangling, sparkly earrings

I slowly began to piece things together and was left inwardly conflicted.

Leila and her husband, Angel, had just started attending a very conservative church the last time I had seen her. She had been excited and interested in sharing things with me. I was happy for her, but also uncertain in what to say, if anything, to her. My own spiritual mess kept me from being crazily enthusiastic, but I also didn't want to discourage her or challenge any of her new-found excitement.

I kept silent as I so often choose to do when someone I care about believes something in a way that I personally don't care for. I restrain my emotions. I tighten my tongue into lock-down mode. I carefully guard what I'm thinking, trying make sure nothing slips through to pour water on someone else's lit fire.

Doing this makes me feel lonely.....as if I have some terrible secret that I can't share without it destroying everything in its whirlwind path. It sections me off from people I care about but can't be fully honest with, not just for my sake, but for their own sake. I wind up living with these segmented relationships that can go only go so far, and then no farther.

All of these emotions bubbled up in me as I listened to Leila's accented English, which she always apologizes for but which is actually quite excellent.

What would I say to her? How would I turn her down without crushing her hope of growing her business through signing me up? Could I turn her down when I knew that the money would be very helpful to her family?

When she finished her presentation, I asked her how she had gotten into this particular business and was unsurprised when she said it was through a "brother" at her new church. I had been expecting that answer and would have been shocked if she said she had gotten into it any other way.

Conservative, evangelical/fundamentalist(?) church culture and direct marketing, or multi-level marketing, seem to be common bedfellows at times. I still remember the time DH and I started attending a large Baptist church in Ohio and had someone try to set up an appointment for his direct marketing business during the greeting/hand-shaking portion of the service. His handshake ended with a business card being placed adeptly in DH's hand.

Completely dissonant with what we thought we were at church for.

I told Leila that I would think about her offer...which was a lie because I already knew what I thought of her offer...though technically I am writing and thinking about it now...so maybe I can skate by with the rationalization that it wasn't a lie.

We ended the conversation discussing the summer and our kids again, and whether we were busy on Sunday. I wished her a good day and she left.

A few years earlier I would have been thrilled at Leila's involvement in church, any church. I had the sense that there was turbulence in her relationship with her partner and sometimes with her mother. I would have wanted her to know God as a grounding presence in her life.

In a way, I think she has found that. She certainly seems more focused on working on her family and doing things the "right" way. Those are all good things.....and those are some of the things that keep me from feeling as if I have completely fallen over the edge of Christian faith.

I wouldn't be who I am now without my conversion at the age of almost seventeen. I wouldn't have the family I have now. I wouldn't have the marriage I have now. I wouldn't have had the strength to move through so many of the problems that have come my way in life.

Without that faith.....I'm not certain what path my life would have followed.

On the other hand, I have had a lot to work through in that same faith. It hasn't come without its share of hurt, disappointment and disillusionment.

When I see Leila, I see myself and the bone-headed enthusiasm that led me to say and do a lot of things that I wish I hadn't said and done in the name of my faith.

It's hard not to make my story be her story. It's hard to separate myself and my fears for her if things go south at this particular church she's attending. I want to protect her.

It's ludicrous and condescending to think that way....I know it is. We must each find our own way.

Watching other people do it is simply hard for me.

Only the Beginning

These photos show only the beginning of what we're going to see in the next few weeks and months.

Gut-wrenching.

Sickening.

Mournful.

BP-Bumbling People

Yet another failed attempt by BP to stop this leak. One more failure in a monumental list of failures that boggles my mind daily.

I'm not upset that a mistake happened. I'm not upset that something went wrong. Human error will always be a part of any equation involving just about any business, machinery, or venture.

What upsets me is the complete inability of BP to plan for the worst-case scenario, or to even ponder that a worst-case scenario might even exist. There is some indication that BP knew there might be a problem with the casing and/or the blow-out preventer in the weeks leading up to this disaster.

It's unclear what exactly BP might have done to address the problems, but I can guarantee that there was one solution they probably never even considered....simply shutting the thing down until they knew what the hell was going on.

No. That would probably tick off all of their investors.

BP has repeatedly defended its failures by consistently reminding everyone that trying to work at these depths of water has never been done before and they are in uncharted territory.

Seriously?

Here's an idea:

If you haven't planned beforehand how to solve a catastrophic failure that you know would lead to disastrous results...then maybe you shouldn't move forward into "uncharted territories". And...even if you have planned beforehand what you're going to do in a worst-case scenario, it might be helpful if you actually try working in those depths with some training runs to make sure that your equipment and personnel can actually do what you propose.

I know, I know...totally crazy idea, right?

The military and NASA understand this concept. They spend years and years training and honing skills that they might hopefully never need, but are tested and proven just the same. No one goes into space without having had extensive simulation training. By the time astronauts are shooting through space they have been subjected to just about every possible strain that can be reproduced while still on earth.

Makes a lot of sense to do things that way.

Sickening me even more is BP's notion that if they aren't successful in this latest attempt that we will all have to wait until August for them to drill relief wells.

August?

They're kidding right?

They really believe that they can just decide to give up and wait until August and allow two more months of uncontrolled oil spilling into the Gulf? Two more months of this and there won't be any Gulf of Mexico left to save.

It will have to be renamed the Gulf of Tarry Death and Putrescence.

You know that section in Revelation about one third of the seas being dead is starting to seem all too real to me.

Free Weekends

So....After a year and a half of rehabbing my deceased father's house, I think I am finally rid of driving 3 hours, one way, every other weekend, for the foreseeable future.

I've handed off the keys to a property manager, signed on the dotted line, paid my up-front signing fee and have been assured that there should be no reason for me to "have to" go out there to solve problems or fix things. That's what they are there for.

It's not as great as being completely disentangled from the house....but it's a close second.

WooHoo!

For Your Listening Pleasure

I'm a sucker for folk music and I love, love, love The Wailin' Jennys.

Early Transcendence

The Rationalist,"I'm in a good mood today!"

Me: "Yeah? Well that's good."

The Rationalist: "Yep. I feel really cheerful!"

Me, laughing,"Well...it's always nice to be around cheerful children instead of grumpy children. Why are you so cheerful?"

The Rationlist shrugs,"I just am."

Me: "Ok."

The Rationalist:"Actually, you know why I am in such a great mood?"

Me: "No. Why?"

The Rationalist: "Reading Buddies."

Me: "Huh?"

The Rationalist: "Today was Reading Buddies Day and I got to go to the kindergarten and read stories for them."

Me: "Oh....so you liked that?"

The Rationalist: "Yes....it made my heart jump and made me feel really good inside. Have you ever had that happen to you?"

Me, smiling and giving him a hug: "I sure have. You're a good kid...you know that, right?!"

Oil $pill

I had to turn off my TV in disgust after watching Obama's press conference about the oil spill.

Nobody seems to get what a catastrophic event this is for the Gulf states. This leak started on April 20th. That was 37 days ago. 37 days of continuous oil filling the Gulf. 37 days of chemical dispersant being added to the mix. 37 days of inept handling of the situation.

During the press conference, when asked about the Federal Government dragging its heels about giving Jindal permission to create barrier islands to protect the Louisiana marshlands, Obama sad that the government and its experts were evaluating what was the most cost-effective way to handle the situation.

Cost effective.

Hello People!! This is not a time for cost-effectiveness. This is a time for urgent action. It doesn't matter how "cost effective" the solution is if it comes so freaking late that it isn't any help. What is the cost effectiveness of a dead Gulf of Mexico? What is the cost effectiveness of oil moving beyond the outer marshlands and further into the state of Louisiana? What is the cost effectiveness of the oil being picked up by the loop current and sliming the Keys and the eastern coast of the Untied States with crude?

BP has waited over a month to try a solution that will simply clog up this pipe or cover it over. Its first two attempts at dealing with this problem coincidentally happened to include a way to siphon some of this oil into a waiting tanker. How nice of them to be sure to get at least some oil for themselves from this disaster.

What is happening is completely insane. In an effort to keep the possibility open of eventually profiting from this rich deposit of oil, BP did not take the most direct approach to stopping this leak. The goal from the very beginning should have been to completely bury this pipe rather than trying to temporarily stop the flow, or redirect it to oil tankers on the surface of the water.

There doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency or panic running through BP or the government. It's almost as if they don't realize how bad things really are and what's going to happen very soon. The summer is coming and the Gulf of Mexico in the summer is plagued not only with the occasional hurricane, but with almost daily severe thunderstorms. A Gulf thunderstorm is not like a regular rainstorm. They generally are loaded with lightning, are very turbulent and have high winds. Once those start, cleanup will come to a standstill on the surface and that oil is going to be carried far and wide.

We haven't even begun to see what is going to happen to the wildlife in the Gulf.

This problem has got to be solved....and soon.

LOST Along THE ROAD

Blogs have been buzzing endlessly about Lost's season finale. Having watched every episode of Lost and making sure to always schedule the time to watch it, I have flitted here and there reading what other people have had to say and what they thought about the ending.

It wasn't until last night, after watching The Road with DH, that I could pinpoint exactly what it was that was bothering me about how Lost ended and the questions it left unanswered. Many bloggers and commenters have been downright snide about people who didn't "get" the ending, or people who may have thought that the writers were trying to tell us that everyone died in the plane crash. Lost experts can be found constantly saying things like,"Geez...everyone must have stepped out of the room because Christian Shepherd explained everything.".....as if that should have resolved everything.

What came to me after last night's movie(which BTW....never watch a disturbing movie with post-apocalyptic cannibalism in it right before bedtime!)was the recognition that the writers of Lost undermined their trustworthiness as storytellers and the ending they worked so hard to bring to their fans. You see, at the end of The Road, one of the main characters, a young boy whose father has died, meets up with a man on the beach who asks the boy to join him and his family. Up until this point in the movie, almost every person the boy and his father had encountered had been a cannibal wanting to hunt them down and eat them, or a thief trying to steal their food, or just a person shooting arrows at them for who-knows-what reason. We hadn't been introduced to any groups of normal, good people.

The boy talks with the man on the beach about whether or not he's a "good guy". The man assures him that he is and that he doesn't eat people and that the boy should come with him. That's the end of the movie. We're supposed to think that the boy has found a safe group of people to be with.

However, even though the movie clearly implicates this, it's almost impossible to overcome the dramatic anxiety that has been ratcheted up over and over throughout the whole movie. Even as the boy is being welcomed into this new family, it's almost inconceivable to completely discount the idea that he's going to wind up on the dinner table in a few short hours.

When a writer spends so much time constantly reinforcing an idea, in this case that other people are dangerous and evil and want to eat the boy, then it becomes too difficult to suspend our disbelief a second time and discount all the information that the writer has given us up until that point in the story.

I had the same experience after reading The Giver. That book ends with the young preteen protagonist and the child he has rescued from his community finding a sled at the top of a hill that leads down to a lighted home in the distance. This happens after an arduous journey away from their repressive community with little food or resources for the two of them. Right towards the end the author portrays the protagonist as becoming fatigued and weak. He is barely able to keep going on when he finds the sled, one that is just like a sled in a memory that he has been given, and as he makes his way down the hill towards a house which is just like a house he has seen in a different memory he has been given.

That's how the end of the book is written.

In the discussion with the author in the back of the book, Lois Lowry says that it makes her sad when people think that the boy and his charge die at the end. This made me scratch my head when I read it, because it didn't make any sense to me that she couldn't understand why people would think that. She presented the protagonist as fatigued, starving and desperate and then has him going down a sled towards a house that seems to be a depiction of a communal memory that he had been given.

Thinking he died is the most straightforward way to interpret that passage. Why would readers think a sled, just like the one in his memory, would be sitting at the top of a hill leading to a house just like the one in his memory. It's too neat to be a rescue from the real world and seems more like he is losing consciousness and slipping into the memory, or a dream.

This is what has happened with Lost. The writers spent so much time whipping characters from good to bad and back again, or changing key plot points, that we never knew whether the next episode was going to have our characters reverse themselves, or whether the plot was going to take a severe turn in a completely opposite direction. The writers did this so many times over the course of the series that they made viewers skeptical of their answers. By the time "The End" came, we didn't know what to believe. First it was about the smoke monster, then the Dharma Initiative, then time travel, then Candidates, then Light...etc., etc.

The final scene of the plane crash, which came after Jack's death, could easily be construed as an indication that everybody died.....because throughout the entire series we were taught to second-guess what the writers were doing and not to trust the "straightforward" answers that they had previously provided.

The more I think about the series, the more I believe the writers failed at bringing a cohesive ending. A series which can create a mythology out of whole cloth in just a few episodes could have easily provided more answers and continuity in its narration.

When everyone complains about Walt disappearing from the show without explanation, they are told that it was simply because the young actor playing Walt just grew too fast to be incorporated back into the show. Um.....how does a show that can posit time travel, and dead people speaking from beyond the grave, and smoke monsters, not be able to find a way to have an older Walt come back in order tie up a few loose ends? He could be from the future, or he could have been referred to even if he didn't appear in the show. A line could have been drawn from Walt's existence to some other facet of the show's mythology.

I mean, any show that solves a longstanding mystery--the whispers--by having a character suddenly just know what they are with no storytelling involved in this knowing, could have done something similar, but hopefully not as lame, with Walt.

My point after all of this:

The writers of Lost created this dilemma. They trained us not to trust them or believe them. They showed us that they didn't feel it was necessary to clean up some of the mess they created.

They shouldn't be surprised if people are still not quite satisfied with what they did.

Ten Years Old

I'm not sure how I managed to get old enough to have a child in the double digits...but it's happened. We spent the past weekend camping out in Ocala National Forest, splashing in the natural springs and canoeing through its waters. We managed to see two alligators, one which swam out about 6 feet in front of our canoe. Numerous turtles made our acquaintance and at least one river otter decided to amuse us by diving down to get tiny fish and coming back up to audibly crunch them. We had a lot of fun and the boys enjoyed being given the chance to actually steer and paddle the canoe.

"Woohoo! I'm ten!"

Our sturdy ship.

Peaceful waters.

Association

I received the following e-mail today from someone we used to attend church with for many years.

"Hi guys!

I recently sent out an email, but I think I may have done it in such a way that your spam filter may have blocked it... I thought that I should resend it, just in case.

As some of you now know, I am now a NRA certified instructor. On Saturday, May 29th, I will be hold a pistol class for anyone interested in handgun safety or in getting their Florida Concealed Weapon Permit.

If you are interested in taking the class, send me an email or give me a call. If you know anyone who may be interested in taking the class, please pass my contact information along and encourage them to contact me.

P---"

Ok...I get that some people like guns, want guns, feel strongly about having them, and are pro-gun.

What gets me is that at the end of this e-mail was the following quote, with links to all the pertinent parts of the constitution, which is not a bad thing....

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms. Ratified 12/15/1791.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The icing on this cake of strangeness is not the guns, the constitution, or the self-promotion of this person's new interest, for which he will earn a fee for giving lessons....it's this quote which comes right after all the gun-talk:

"Glory be to HIM whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to HIM from generation to generation."(bold and emphasis are original to the e-mail)

It was unclear to me if this was part of his e-mail signature or a purposeful correlation between owning guns and invoking God to help him use them effectively!

Odds and Ends

1. Took the kids to Chik-fil-A after their dentist appointments. While waiting in line I pondered the fact that almost all of the restaurant's crew was ethnically white. Then I realized that the Taco Bell next door to the Chik-fil-A has an almost completely black crew. This is strange because the area we live in is very diverse; almost equally white, hispanic, and black.

I doubt either restaurant owner intentionally set out to have such a one-sided group of employees, or I at least hope they didn't set out with that motivation. Still, it made me wonder how exactly it happened that way and if the employees ever noticed it.

2. The Rationalist was talking about having to pick an inventor or scientist for a research project. He's picked Thomas Edison. After talking about some of the things he invented, I tried to explain to them that before Edison if a person wanted to hear music, they had to either go and listen to a concert or band somewhere, or learn how to play music themselves. There was no such thing as being able to listen to music by oneself, at any moment of one's own choosing. Even I was given pause as I thought about that. The Intuitve said in a creepy voice,"So now we can hear dead people's voices!" When I asked him what he meant, he explained that we can hear musicians who lived and recorded music a long time ago, even though they are no longer alive. It's true....we have a level of communication with the "dead". These are the kinds of comments that have earned my youngest child the label of The Intuitive.

3. While the kids played inside tubular gymnasium, The Rationalist semi-flirted--at least as much as an almost-ten-year-old can flirt--with a girl of about thirteen. At one point in their "game" he simply shook his head and said knowingly, "Gosh....teenage girls these days."

He cracks me up.

Birds of a Feather

Geez....thank goodness Roman Polanski has the likes of Woody Allen to stick up for him!

ahhh.....the stupid...it burns!!

Best Ever Motto for the Blogosphere

"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."

--Pierre Beaumarchais