Guilty Pleasures

You know, when I first started this blog, I had hoped it would be relevant, theological, thoughtful and reflective. I had intended for it to be a meeting of like minds, where art and culture would be discussed. I had hoped for pithy insights, profundity, and for it to be graced with a soupcon (imagine the accent agrave on that last word. I can't find how to insert it on this blog) of satirical wit.

I, alas, have failed in this regard.

I say this as a preamble, just to show how far departed I am from the lofty goals I had set forth above.

As a general rule, I hate television. It is one of the greatest thieves in our lives, robbing us of our time, a rich inner thought life, and yada yada yada.

Okay. Essentially, it's crap. To prove it, tonight a new reality show is premiering, entitled 'I Survived a Japanese Game Show'. It's a reality show where brain dead Americans travel to Japan, try to survive living with each other AND making it through the manic, infantile machinations of... you guessed it... a Japanese game show.

However, one of the GREATEST all-time shows premiered just before it, called--------------

WIPEOUT!!!! Where buxom babes and middle-aged men spin on a wheel until dizzy and then make their way through an obstacle course. Where they leap over a phallic-shaped pink Nerf that circles them wildly, and if they get hit by it, THEY'RE KNOCKED IN THE WATER!!!!!!

Craziness! Madcap! Zany hilarity ensues!!!!!

But I have to admit, it was damned funny, and I intend to watch it again. It was like the other night when I was bored and watched Jackass 2, and liked it.

So I'm not as deep, intellectual nor certainly as interesting as I thought I was. But I think I have the strength to admit that now, and though TV certainly is a cultural wasteland, it is not without its rewards. So, here is a list of guilty pleasures (TV shows) that hereby disqualify me as an intellectual:

- The Daily Show and The Colbert Report
- Lost
- (I hate to admit this one, but I dig the challenges and the utter sniping) Survivor
- Football
- American Gladiators (Only the end, when they do the Eliminator. The rest is dull)
- Wipeout (Snide comments from commentators and people getting whacked. BEAT THAT,
INDIE FILM PRODUCTION COMPANIES!)
- The Amazing Race (Watching couples' relationships implode while in Kenya is just fun)

*Sigh* I'll turn in my 'Semi-sentient' membership at the door.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED: While Traveling

Yes, here at Platypusking Productions, where our motto is 'Strive for mediocrity- at least it's better than failure...', I'm unveiling something new on my blog. Never mind that's been used elsewhere to better acclaim than it will receive here: it all comes from the heart.

Every so often, I will compile a list of things I have learned in the intervening weeks. And to open this off, this inaugural post is entitled:

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED WHILE TRAVELING

1. The coveted aisle seat on an airplane will ALWAYS result in the following:

-Your ankles will be smacked no less than 3 times by the snack and beverage cart
-The back of your head is a target for flight attendants and overweight passengers waddling
to the restroom (note: multiply the amount of smacks you receive by 2 if you happen to be
sleeping)
-No matter where you travel, the passenger in the middle seat will always be talking on their
cell phone prior to take-off and upon landing.
-The conversation of the above is always boring, but must be done at FULL VOLUME

2. Receiving 'the finger' in LA is no longer the vituperous obscenity it once used to be. As a matter of fact, it is now something between a half-hearted threat and a way of saying 'Hi!'

3. If you are ever, for ANY reason, stuck in the Detroit International airport, keep in mind it is actually MORE sanitary to NOT wash your hands after using the bathroom

4. Speaking of Detroit, those roads are where the world's worst drivers are. Presumably, they are either just coming from the airport and are trying to sanitize themselves with handi-wipes, or are on their way there and are trying to put on their Haz-Mat suits en route

5. Wearing a lavender shirt with a charcoal gray suit looks absolutely smashing in San Francisco. In LA, it'll get your ass kicked.

6. When crossing the border from Canada to the US, remember that the guards are trained to ask questions that will throw you off. The easiest way to get through, then, is to ask them questions they aren't prepared for. For example:

- 'What was the nature of your visit, sir?'
- 'Could you scratch my back? Right there... middle down... it itches like hell. I think it's a rash.'
- 'Go on through, sir.'

7. If someone in the service industry- regardless of what it is- does anything that makes your travel experience one iota easier, tip them handily. They deserve it. Their job sucks.

8. If someone in the service industry doesn't do anything to make your life easier, you can bitch about it all you want. They don't care, and will move twice as slow.

9. To avoid fights and marital discord, never offer driving suggestions to your spouse while they are behind the wheel. If you are driving and they offer suggestions, obey them no matter how idiotic the suggestion may be.

10. It doesn't matter if you are the first to the baggage claim and you have plastered your knees against the carousel like they were glued there. Some jackass will always cut in front of you once the carousel starts. Only say something to them if they are smaller than you.

How Much Sleep?

Interesting article from Time Magazine via CNN online, with scientists talking about sleep, and how much we really need.

The article is here: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812420,00.html?cnn=yes

It is here where I take my heroic stand. I stand for THE OPPRESSORS!!!

I stand for those brave souls who threatened Galileo with excommunication and the Inquisition because of his heretical idea that the earth revolved around the sun.

I stand for all those people in Southern enclaves who believe the earth is 7000-10,000 years old

I DISAGREE with all of those eggheads who thought the atom could be split- EVEN THOUGH THEY ACTUALLY DID IT!!!

My friends, it is time to rise up. It is time to take up the bold (but clueless) cause of Willful Ignorance, under whose mighty banner we march but keep missing our turn-off because the map is wrong, the earth is flat and there are monsters waiting to devour us at the edge of the oceans where the water falls off.

Never mind 'FACT'. Disregard 'EMPIRICAL'. If anyone utters the phrase "The evidence clearly states..." shoot them on the spot immediately. Make haste to silence any fool who tries to make sense, and do so with the weighty phrase spoken by that dude whose name I forget: 'By any means necessary.'

6 to 7 hours of sleep each night, my ass.

It is here that I will make my stand.

Sorry for Getting Political, But...

Did anyone BUT George W. Bush NOT see this coming??!?

The leaders of two nations with a past history of violence, bloodshed and war against each other, shake hands in solidarity against elements of the proposed US-Iraqi Security Pact.

Where to End?

If there was ever a blog that I wish I could pour myself into, it would be this one. I'm struggling here, trying to channel thoughts and feelings through my fingertips and into this text in some superhuman, kenotic effort , knowing that no one possesses the words- or has the gift- to say exactly what they mean and have it truly understood or felt at the same intensity as the one who wrote it. Such is the limitation of language. Derrida knew his stuff.

I've written before of how life is often like a hurricane: a concantenation of endless anticipation followed by a fury that lasts far less long than the antipcation itself, but still seems to last an eternity.

Today I had two tasks to accomplish: one fairly quick and easy, the other long but not without reward.

The first was to meet with our realtor, to ask a few questions in regards to the 16 page document that lay before us, develop a plan of battle, and then sign, sign and sign. Oops, missed one, sign this one. On Thursday night, we received an offer on our house. On Friday, we parsed the offer, discussed options and concerns (the close date was shockingly short), and on Saturday we gathered in a small conference room and signed our counter-offer, which simply consisted of putting the close date out a few weeks later.

Within a few hours, our 'counter-offer' was accepted. Our house is now off the market, Subject To Inspection, and in the month of July it will pass out of our hands and into those of another.

Shortly after signing the offer, I climbed into my new car (another blog, another day) and made the once-quarterly journey to Canada to pick up my prescriptions.

As usual, the automative arteries of Seattle were clogged and sluggish: stop-and-go traffic through the city center, up past the Mercer exit and all the way up through the U district. I was wearing my jacket, as all of us have had to do during this past April, May, and now part of June, and the clouds circling above the city divested themselves of some mist which- not sure what button was what in the new car- meant that it took me 15 minutes to find out exactly how to set my windshield wipers on 'intermittent'.

The freeways finally coughed, hacked, and spat me onto the open highway, leaving the mess of traffic where it belonged- stuck in that miserable city.

My mind was filled as I drove: so much to think about. So many logistics to consider. The deal was done and the ink was drying. I had applied for a transer/promotion at work and received it. My wife had requested the same transfer and received it. We are California bound, now, and that quite shortly as well.

As I pondered this, the logistcal questions fell away from my mind, and as I neared the Canadian border I realized that this may in fact be the last time I see this city that I have loved so dearly, deeply and unequivocally.

It is hard to explain, certainly to myself, but also to those around me who know and love me. From that first exploratory moment when I stepped from the plane and onto the Vancouver tarmac to explore seminaries in Canada, I felt that I had found 'home'. There is no way to describe it in any way that make sense, other than in the words of Tenessee Williams from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, where you feel the 'click': that moment when everything goes right. I knew then, and even know now, that I could live in that city for the rest of my life and never want to be elsewhere. In our discussions of posthumous disposal, my wife wants to be cremated and her ashes be spread in the Pacific ocean near where sharks dwell. For me, I want my ashes taken to Stanley Park and scattered to the winds that blow along the ocean near the quay.

My time in Seattle has been like living in a 'shadow city'- a darker, meaner, dirtier cousin- sure, it's still the Pacific Northwest, but it's an angry city. It is soiled and squalid and full of people with small minds and large ambitions, where everyone angles and deals and claims they work for Microsoft and in every transaction ask 'Could I get a discoont?'.

It's as if you have lived at the foot of the Alps for years, able to see the scope and beauty of those peaks everyday, never tiring of the majesty before you. And then you have to move to Fresno, CA, but your new landlords paint a clumsy landscape of the Alps on your bedroom wall to make you feel more at home. That is the best and only way I can describe it. It's a fake; a poorly orchestrated representation. I am not sad to leave it behind, and I am certain it will shed no tears at my departure, either.

Almost as if to underscore this point, the closer I drew near to Canada, the more the clouds the broke through and the sun peeked out, casting a welcome warmth onto the ground below. I stopped at a rest stop near the border and removed my jacket, and revelled in the 70 degree heat. I climbed back into the car and passed through the border, trying to drink in every detail, because I realized that I now do not know if I'll see it again anytime soon. Or, indeed, ever.

Suddenly, this all-important errand that I wanted to complete as quickly as I could so that I could return to the project that is my current life faded in urgency, as I realized that this might be my last chance to carress those few touchstones that had meant so much to me over the years.

Driving across the Oak Street Bridge, I took the first turn-off and not the second, which would have taken me to where I needed to go to complete the business I had come up for. So, rather than circling around and heading west on Marine Drive, I turned east towards the city center, and turned right on 16th. Driving a few blocks, I came to 71st, my old street, and turned down the crowded street. I pushed past the parked cars and came to rest in front of the tiny stucco and cement house I had called home for 3 years.

This 800 square foot top floor of a house, with a walled ledge and the cement steps that led up to the house. It was here I lived with the unfortunately named fellow seminarian, Ron Knickerbocker. It was in this house that we discussed theology and women with equal fervor, played Madden Football endlessly on the Playstation 2 and tried to write our theses (he finished his: I didn't). I parked my car where I used to park my old 240SX; the sound of the motor familiar to my cat, Leo, who would always come running from a corner to greet me as I came home at night from leading a bible study or a day of preaching and fellowship. He would mew, following me towards the house, alternately running ahead of me towards the door, and then back behind me as if trying to hurry me to open the door for him.

The house had changed very little, and I hoped that our ancient landlords, Al and Marie, were still in possession of it and were doing well. They were a dear couple who, for unknown reasons, hated Ron but loved me. Al was from Nove Scotia, and spoke with the heavy accent of a native Norwegian, and Marie could talk (without accent) for hours. And often did: whenever they called on some business, if Ron answered, they always asked for me. I would talk for an hour with her, only to have her come to the eventual point that she was calling for- which usually required an answer from Ron in the first place. They also adamantly refused to allow us to do any yardwork, and there was more than one occasion when he or I would arrive home to find two septuagenarians working and sweating in the yard, clipping, raking and mowing. It was a bit discomfitting, being an able-bodied 20 something doing nothing while 'grandma and grandpa' worked in our front yard.

Despite much change in the neighborhood, this tiny house was still the same, and I wished Al and Marie health and happiness in these later years. I climbed back into the car and drove away, this time heading west again on Marine Drive, my destination this time being the scenic drive that led to the University of Bristish Columbia campus (or as some of my Chinese college students called it, the 'University of a Billion Chinese'), to see my old seminary one last time.

The road to UBC was populated with bikers, taking advantage of the warm weather and sun, cycling earnestly as frustrated drivers tried desperately to find space to pass them. Slowly the caravan I was in made it onto the main college drive and the road opened into a few lanes.

Once free of the bikers, I was able to circle onto "Theology Lane", or "Religious Row", thus dubbed because there were 4 different theological schools all within blocks of each other. In fact, often I would have a class at Regent College, and then have to literally run the 3/4 of a mile to Carey Theological School (where the sorely missed Stanley Grenz taught) to make my next class.

It had been a few years since I'd last seen Regent College, but there was no mistaking it as the sun reflected off the multi-windowed front which always seemed to have a slight tint of green to them when the sun shone directly on them.

The seminary itself was locked for the day, but the square in front was still open, and in my mind's eye I could see seminary students sitting with Ross, the homeless man, sharing a meal with him and talking some near-blasphemous theology. He was radically irreverant, but had adopted us just as much as we had adopted him, and I had been one among many students who shared a lunch with him on cold winter days. It was and is a socially progressive school, and Ross never went hungry, nor was he ever pressed to 'accept Christ'. 'I believe in God, and Jesus and the Virgin Mary and all that,' he told me once, 'I even talk to them now and then. They've done alright by me.'

I hope we did alright by him, too.

Despite the addition of a couple of walkways, and what looked like the broadening of the lower level where the library was kept, the school appeared largely unchanged: this architecturally unique building that caught my breath the first time I lay eyes on it. Even the laughably small student parking lot remained unchanged, holding enough parking spaces for maybe 20 students. If they carpooled. Progress and priorities.

While there was so much more that I wanted to see- downtown, Broadway, Burrard and Georgia St, Stanley Park and the Lion's Gate Bridge- but these were long diversions from the one place that I had to go to: The Lord's Love Church, where I had served as an assistant- and then associate- pastor for 3 years.

I remember driving up to the church for the first time in June of 2000, for my first interview with the church leaders. I almost didn't get out of my car. It looked run down and unkempt, the grass uncut and the stain-glassed windows either had mis-matched panes or was broken: even during the three years that I worked there, I was never able to figure out which.

The cement walkway that led up to the entrance and the nave within was cracked and pockmarked, and as you stood from the sidewalk looking up at the church, the upper portion of the apse had Chinese characters written on it, with the English title written in much smaller letters below it. The ONLY reason I exited the car that day of my interview was the rationale that this would be a good experience in interviewing for church positions. It was to be a lesson in honing my interviewing skills and articulately answering theological questions thrown at me quickly. I planned to go that far in the process, and then pursue it no further. I had no idea that I would eventually fall irretrievably in love.

Driving up in June of 2008, almost eactly 8 years to the day that I first saw it, was like driving up to it for the first time again. It was still in need of a paint job, and the grass in front desperately needing cutting. The sign board out front still proclaimed Rev. S.Y. King as the reverend, though he had retired even during my tenure, to finish his book on the Psalms. I had the privilege of being mentored by him for a year. A gentler, more humble man I have never met, but with a sharp wisdom that either belied or augmented his 85 years of life. Working with him had been a singular, unforgettable honor.

SPOILER ALERT: Here's where things get 'religious'. Mac, if you're reading this, you may or may not find this interesting, but I think it is germane to past discussions.

Standing there in front of the church, it seemed like it would have been the most natural thing in the world to reach into my pocket, retrieve my keys and enter the church, making my way back to my tiny office in the tiny main church office.

But this was mine no longer: someone else now occupied it, and it- all of it- was no longer my job. My job has changed now. I am soon to be a father, and I am preparing for that. My job is to provide for my family. To love and support my wife, to make money for the company that now employs me.

So I stood there, in front of the church, in the middle of a dying afternoon, while behind me on the sidewalk turbanned Sikhs and Chinese students walked back and forth. And at that moment, I closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and prayed.

I prayed for forgiveness, for it has been long since I have done so, and even with the best of intentions there is much need for forgiveness. I prayed for those people who called this church home- whether I knew them before or never knew them at all. I prayed for peace within those dilapidated four walls, and for the Spirit to bless and work within them.

And then I prayed for myself.

For a season, I had been called to them- for whatever mystical, humorous and ultimately cruel reason- and had been so lucky to have been there, with them, for that season. I don't know if I did them any good, but I know they did so for me- and maybe that was what it had all been about, anyway.

And so today I prayed for the NOW- the immediate. The 'here'. And it was for nothing, other than for the guts to finally surrender and accept another calling. Not to the ministry, not to the church. There is a fine line between 'practical joke' and 'outright cruelty', and I have no wish to tap-dance along that dangerous line.

Mac, and all others exploring this framework of thought, forgive the young Jedi bucking the wisdom of the master, but there is no Saturday for us. I appreciate Eugene Peterson's attempt to try and answer this obvious gap we live in, and of course the famed Willard tension between 'now' and 'not yet'. But Peterson is as much a poet as he is a theologian, and there are times when what at first analysis seem analgous simply does not have any correlation.

'Saturday' is despair. It is hopelessness. It is the crumbling of every thought and dream you've ever had, and it is the bitter divestment of identity, as everything you had seen and believed up till then has been nothing but dust.

When I think of the dicsiples, those clods who couldn't believe that Jesus had died (never mind the fact that he'd been predicting it from the start of his ministry), the only thing they knew is what they had bought into was a lie. They had seen bread multiplied and the dead rise. Some had seen him transfigured, while all of them had seen him take on the established orders of the day... and win.

And now this. Christ died yesterday. Tomorrow, he will still be dead. In a few days he will stink, despite the lineaments and oils rubbed into his brusied skin. In a few years, dust. And it is not just the waste of the last few years of their life, or the future and the stigma they will now have to live under: these followers of the slain 'messiah'. The worst, and what is most unimaginable to Christians nowadays is that, with his final cry (had they been around to hear it) and last breath, everything become meaningless.

We do not live in a pre-resuurection world. We do not live in that Saturday, and our while our lives are filled with struggles and confusion, we still have that ultimate hope that the disciples lost when Jesus breathed his last. I appreciate Peterson's attempt to articulate the confusion and tension we live in, but it is not without hope. No matter how hard we try and identify with that Saturday, we know about Sunday. We know what happens then.

Our tension and difficulty is not living in hopelessness, but rather it's living within befuddled hope. What he is doing at present, as we wait for the 'kingdom now' is as confusing to us as it was for the disciples when they heard Christ's proclamation at the heighth of his ministry that he came to die.

I am at the busiest, craziest hurricane of my life now. And today as I stood at the foot of the church, looking up at it, I wondered today just as I wondered then: 'what the hell am I doing?'

If you had pulled me aside on that first day of work when I had been hired by the church, and told me that I would suffer a breakdown, lose my ministry, not finish seminary, live in squalor doing penance, then pull forward out of it, get married, find a 9-5 job making decent money, have a child on the way and be moving back to California (a place I vowed never to return to)... I would have never entered that church, for I wouldn't have wanted that fate. I wouldn't want the failure, nor the pain.

But now, having made it through the shit, I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world.

There are times when my head whirls, and I have no idea where I got to where I am. But I am here, and during the roughest times of all, I still believed. I didn't want to, and I feel guilty at the times when I felt hope, for I felt I wasn't even deserving of that palliative gift. But it was there. I didn't know the future, I could only live in the moment. Maybe some people want to call it 'Saturday', that soul-crushing day after crucifixion but before resurrection, but it is not. Because I knew, even in my most despairing moment, of the risen Christ, and even in my bafflement and self-castigation I could not divest myself of this belief.

If Christ bore the sins of the world on his shoulders, it was the disciples who carried the despair of loss and meaningless on their shoulders for us.

For a day.

We do not need to live in 'Saturday', for they did so for us.

I closed my prayer, left the church, finished my errand and turned towards home. I felt called to be there.

We Owe You One

Hey, St. Joe,

This might be a little premature, but...

Thanks.

I Am So Conflicted

At night, when all the world's asleep,
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man.
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd,
But please tell me who I am...
- Supertramp


So.

To all intents and purposes, it looks like Barack O'Bama has secured the Democratic nomination.
This is good. This is what I've wanted.

Sorta.

See, here's the problem I've been running into lately. I want to be a liberal. I've always thought of myself in those terms after high school, and my motto has always been 'When in doubt, always lean to the side that is most dolphin-friendly'. But lately it seems that there has been darker, shadowy, conservative side to me that seems to whisper deep within my psyche: 'Screw the spotted wood owl, but not the rich white oil executive'. And it is then that I want to crawl into my clothes hamper and weep.

I guess the biggest conflict of all is that I want to be a liberal, but without having to buy into everything a liberal believes. I guess liberals have been pushed into so many corners that the only thing they can do is become even more zealously devoted to their cause than they ever were before. In many ways, it's much like the church in China in the 80's and 90's: the repeated persecution only galvanized the faith of the Christians, rather than eliminating it. But they weren't as obnoxious, self-righteous and all-knowing like many liberals tend to be.

So, I am terribly, terribly sorry. But like the song lyric above, I simply don't know who I am. A conservative in a hemp t-shirt? A liberal in suit and tie? Here. Just observe my inner conflicts:

1. I DON'T believe in global warming (There... see that? I just lost Al Gore) as an immediate threat. Is it not happening? Sure it is. Did we cause it? Um... ice cores, ancient weather patterns, the waxing and waning of glaciers throughout history make a pretty strong argument that my Ford Escort is not causing the ice caps to melt.

2. I believe in the near-immediate withdrawal of our troops in Iraq, because we were led into that quagmire by a stuttering imbecile and apart from deposing a dictator that we were shaking hands with in the 80's, have accomplished nothing more than fucking up the lives of good Iraqi people (Al Gore just moved a little closer).

3. I believe we either have the most inept, incompetent, technologically retarded military if we can manage to find microchipped lost pets, but cannot find a middle-aged Saudi who has not changed his appearance once since 9/11 and is walking around with an oxygen tank, for Pete's sake. And for the record, I don't think that way about our military at all. Quite the contrary- our people in uniform never fail to inspire me. However, I think our esteemed president-elect, George W. Bush, took our eyes off the ball and waved the red cape of Iraq like a toreador so that he wouldn't actually have to eliminate or prosecute a member of the royal Saudi family (Al Gore now wants to cuddle).

4. I think increasing taxes, particularly at this time, is NOT a good idea.

5. I believe that national healthcare is not only achievable (if we learn from other countries' mistakes), but required for a country with our (previous) largesse. To not have the least of basic healthcare for our citizens is appalling. To have our healthcare costs be double the cost of other wealthy nations is equally appalling.

6. I believe we're already paying for national healthcare already, at least for those who aren't citizens.

7. I believe that the 'No Child Left Behind' initiative actually meant 'we'll dumb down the education of every other kid so the dumbest kid in the class can do the same work at the same level that the smartest kid does'. I also believe George W. Bush WAS that dumb kid back in school, and this initiative was based on his own personal experience. Therefore, under the morass that that initiative propogated, I think we shouldn't have thrown that money at education.

8. I desperately believe that if there is a smart way to use the funds, TONS of money should be thrown at education. And teachers. And re-working curriculum so it actually teaches something.

9. I truly believe we need to lessen and eventually eradicate our dependence upon oil. ALL oil: not just foreign. We're not so dumb, folks, that we can't come up with better a means of powering up our homes and vehicles.

10. I don't believe we should eradicate our need for oil in order to 'clean up our air' (LA notwishtanding, because let's face it: liberal or conservative, that place sucks).

11. I believe our economy is in trouble, and that good people need help.

12. I do NOT believe we are in a recession, based on the conventional definition of 'recession'. Now, while Bush may sound like an idiot when he tells us not to worry, the fact that unemployment has gone down, the market has fluctuated wildly but has always remained at a mean of 12,500, and that we have NOT had two successive quarters of negative GNP growth, means that for the moment he is right. Oh, and in regards to the above good people who need help? I firmly believe that. It's the dumb ones who need to get their whuppin' (what the hell were you thinking, buying into a sub-prime mortgage which, even then, equalled your total monthly take home pay??? Did you think the mathematics of this would work? Clearly, you are a 'child that was left behind'. Why the hell should the government- meaning us and our tax dollars- bail you out?)

I believe that the government that governs least, governs best. I also believe in walking softly and carrying a big stick. I think Jimmy Carter is one of America's greatest heroes, and (present administration excepted) one of the worst presidents we've ever had.

I think it's time for the Bush/Clinton dynasty to move on, the stale air to be fanned away, and new ideas and definitive changes need to be piped through the dusty air ducts of Washington.

But I'm not sure how. I can't buy into any one candidate or party's platform. I can't be liberal because I support the building of new refineries, but I also can't be conservative because... well, hell, the very nature of the word means 'stubbornly resistant to any change whatsoever', and change is so desperately needed.

Someone. Please. Tell me who I am.

Virtual Relationships

It's so easy to hide nowadays.

And do it in plain sight.

Yesterday Salome and I were on our way to a barbecue yesterday and- as per our usual custom- we were running late (sidebar- I say 'we were running late' much in the same way one uses 'the royal we'. In other words, I'm late by proxy and not by actual negligence). At about 3:15, my wife receieves an email on her Blackberry: a quick sentence from her friend who is throwing the barbecue, asking where we were.

Now, as Salome was driving (we've discussed this state of affairs in recent blogs), she handed me the Blackberry and asked me to reply to the email. And so, as I sat there trying to type a coherent message on a bumpy freeway with a 'qwerty' keyboard that had keys roughly the size of a head of a pin, I realized what a collossal waste of time the whole affair was.

Granted, this epiphany was fueled by the fact that I was seriously annoyed at having to try and type on a sophisticated cell phone, for God's sake, but it was also dawning on me to what lengths we will go to in order to avaoid actual contact with a human being.

With text-messages, emails, voice mails, answering machines, Skype and ICQ, not to mention Slingboxes and Bluetooth, we can have a relationship with virtually anyone, without ever having to soil ourselves by actually talking to them.

Consider the script and the likely time requirement:

- Salome's friend dials her Blackberry: 10 seconds. Or 5, if she's in the 'contact' list
- The Blackberry rings twice before Salome picks up: 5 seconds
- Salome's friend inquires as to our whereabouts ('Hey, where are you guys?'): 5 seconds
- Salome replies 'We're running late, but will be there in 15 minutes': 5 seconds
- The friend replies 'Ok, we'll see you then.': 3 seconds.
- Each person then hangs up the phone: 2 seconds
Total time: 30 seconds

But no. Said friend must email this query, which requires typing on a keyboard designed for small rodents. The recipient must then receive the inquiry, and type a reply (in my case, as I hate the damned things and text as seldom as possible) that takes 3 minutes to send back the following:

'WeER runningh late (Big bump in road, and can't find the punctuation button) Bbe ther in 15.'

Now, granted, we were on our way to spend actual time with them: face-to-face discussions, laughter, and the enjoyment of food.

But somehow we've come to the point in our high-tech world that the actual talking to someone without seeing them face to face is a terrible breach of decorum, much like flatulating in mixed company.

Put another way, there are now so many ways to get a hold of me, that why should you even bother getting a hold of me? Leave a voice mail. Text me. Email me. Let's set a date to IM each other online. Ok! Cya then! TTYL...

And after all the texting and emailing is over and done with, why is it that we still feel dreadfully, awfully alone?

Buy, D--n You! BUY!!!!!

To all the people who have looked at our house, liked it, and then went on to buy nothing at all:


Look, I want you to know: I get it. I know exactly what you're doing, and I don't blame you because I would be doing the exact same thing if I were in your position. Moreover, if one of you ever gets the gumption to actually make an offer, I WILL be in your position in 30-60 days.

You're looking for the best house with a price that has plummeted the most so that you can get the absolute best deal. I'm with ya on that. And you probably have seen us lower the price on our house on occasion. But this is what you must know:

1. We did not get a sub-prime loan
2. We are not unemployed and struggling to make payments
3. We will NOT be selling this house for a loss
4. We are open to any offer that possesses a semblance of reality

So if you're looking for that SEO, that short sale, that foreclosure, I know of a couple of heaps about 4 or 5 miles away.

But if you want this house- and there are those of who you DO want this house- stop being a vascillating weiner or greedy opportunist and buy. Otherwise we rent this house to one of the two major corporations that are less than 8 miles away, get their corporate housing money, and keep paying the mortgage on this place. Trust me: there's about a year of bad market times, and then things will bounce back. I know you're thinking 'Let's not buy until the price drops below 300k.' Let me assure you: IT WILL NOT.

And in a year, you could have had a house for the price we were reasonably asking in 2008, but a year from now when the market stops sliding, we'll be asking 60k more than we're currently asking. And we'll get it.

So grow a pair and throw in an offer. You've got maybe a month left. We don't want the hassle of dealing with renters, which is why we're selling it. But I assure you: if we have to, we will.

And Seattle: try something new. Show the sun once or twice. It's frickin' June, for Pete's sake, and today our barbecue had to be moved indoors because it was too cold. That's just dumb.

Those are my gripes for the week. Thank you for listening.