Verbisaurus Blogicus

Wednesday, 24 October 2012

Did you know there’s a new Star Trek film coming out next spring? Read about it here: CLICK THIS. It’s called Star Trek Into Darkness, which is so cute I nearly choked.

I’m marginally excited. About 12 years ago, the powers that be at Star Trek decided they were tired of inventing the future and instead decided to cannibalize their own past. So they made a TV show called Enterprise. Later, they continued to ride the origins story bandwagon and came out with the frustratingly titled film Star Trek. Now there’s just gonna be more of the same from that alternate (= less good) timeline.

Here’s an idea: How about going farther ahead in time, you know, past the time of Picard and Janeway and that soap opera with Odo and Quark and giving us a new batch of heroes to follow? ‘Cause then I, for one, would be standing in line to see that flick.

Thursday, 25 October 2012

 Here’s the tentative cover for my upcoming book:

I think it will be tweaked a little bit, but this is pretty much what the cover’s gonna look like. Inside, there will be 24 chapters, plus an appendix, table of contents, acknowledgements section, five or six photos, and about 200 end notes. Right now I’m hard at work editing (mostly editing out) what the editors feel should be axed. The book is definitely too long, and I am not hurt in the least to be leaving plenty of stuff on the cutting room floor. I’ve actually removed entire people from the book – which is kind of funny, really. It’s like removing people from my life but I need to remember that it’s not my entire life story – just the story of being a Witness.

If you’re one of the four or five people who enjoy reading this blog, I hope you’ll buy a copy of the book one day. You, or someone you know, may be in the book (besides me and my wife, of course). Heck, I’ll even sign it at no extra charge (assuming it’s a copy you bought, and not one you rented from the library).

Friday, 26 October 2012
Here’s Owen at the corner drug store this afternoon:

Hey, look! Why does he have both an ice cream cone and a root beer float?

Well, the ice cream is what we buy every Friday after school. The float, meanwhile, is fortuitous because a new employee was being trained in on how to use the soda fountain, and after they made a float, the lady who’s been working there for a while said, “Do you guys want this? Otherwise we gotta throw it out.” So we gobbled it up. Quite literally, actually.

This evening I participated in a book reading at Valley Books in Stillwater.

Here’s the front table that greeted me upon entering:

How awesome is that?

About twenty people attended the reading, which accounted for standing room only in this tiny store. A couple of people just walked in off the street, and a few people came due to reading about the event online. Michelle Huber, meanwhile (seen reading her essay in the photo below), had seven guests in attendance.
I gotta say, I’m jealous. How does she get seven – seven! – people off their asses to come and support her at a literary event in Stillwater? I think seven represents the total number of people that have come to support me in all my author readings, ever. Combined. I’m thinking of stealing Michelle’s friends from her.

Monday, 22 October 2012
Like I do every election year, I visited THIS SITE, entered my zip code, and obtained a sample ballot for the upcoming election. Of course, I already know how I plan to vote for President/VP, Senator, the Voter ID proposal, and other big ticket items. But I don’t know much (or anything) about some of the other races. So I looked up the candidates and wrote down my preferences.

Let’s talk about one race in particular: Associate Judge of the Supreme Court.

Tim Tinglestad is running for a seat on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Again.

As you can see from this still shot of his kick-ass YouTube video, Tim believes that GOD (presumably Thor) superceeds THE CONSTITUTION and even THE PEOPLE.

This is quite scary. Tim is hoping for a position in the judicial branch of our state’s government. The government, of course, operates in accordance with the constitution, which, in turn, was approved by the people. So, I agree with 3/4 of Tim’s heirarchical schematic. But then he puts “GOD” (presumably Vishnu) on top. So…if 100% of the people in Minnesota believe that the voting age should be lowered to 16, but God feels it should be raised to 35…guess what? Tim’s gonna rule on behalf of this unnamed deity – a deity who, quite likely, is not even a citizen of the state.

Tim outlines this in further detail in his vision. His vision begins with the assertion that god (presumably Zeus) wants to shine the light of Truth upon this state and nation again. Not sure when it shined the first time, but Tim says some deity wants to shine it again. I’m not sure how Tim knows this. God must have told him. But this begs the questions of why God only told Tim, and why he didn’t make his pronouncement more widely known.

Anyway, God’s plan evidently begins with Tim getting on the Supreme Court.

Watch his video:

My plan, however, is that people who hear voices in their heads and believe that a powerful deity is guiding their life are in need of psychiatric care, not a seat on the bench. How do we know what this god will tell Tim next? What if Tim is on the court, and God tells Tim to shine the light of human sacrifice again? Will Tim listen? What about reinstituting prayer in the classroom? Will Tim listen to that? What about bringing about marriage equality? If Tim wants to serve on a court in a place where people think they have a direct conduit to extraterrestrials, he should go elsewhere. Utah comes to mind.

On Tuesday, November 6th, be sure to flip over the ballot and re-elect Associate Judge David Stras. Stras is also religious…but decidedly less intense about it.

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

I really hate abject stupidity in politicians.

I recall, a few years back, seeing a video of a Senator unable to name the three branches of government.

At tonight’s Presidential debate, Mitt Romney said Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.” My immediate reaction was, “no it’s not!” My second reaction was, “Oh well, who cares? He just made a simple mistake.”

But I guess he’s said this same thing at least six times this year.

Why does no one correct him?

If you’re running for a political office – especially at the national level, you should have a workable knowledge of geography. This is even more important regarding key hotspots in the world. I mean, if the moderator had said to Romney: “Quick, name all the nations that border Namibia,” he’d probably answer incorrectly, if he dared to answer at all. I don’t blame him. I’d get it wrong, too. But in my defense…I’m not running for CEO of the USA, and Namibia is not a foreign policy concern by any stretch. But if someone were to ask me which nations border North Korea, or to name off the countries in the Middle East, or to identify all the nations of Euopre on a blank map, I would surely be able to do it. Especially if I was running for office.

Here’s a map of the relevant portion of the Middle East:

Syria is the green nation in the top left. Iran is the big brown one in the upper right. Notice: Iran is not landlocked. And if it needs a quick route to the Mediterranean, it could go through Turkey, instead of Iraq and then Syria. Or its ships could go around the Arabian Penninsula, up the Red Sea, then through the Suez Canal. Lots of options.

I like to think the people that get my vote can name the branches of government, know who our past Presidents are, and identify key nations on a map.

That’s why this video pleases me greatly:

Saturday, 20 October 2012

I think it’s time to pronounce the Apple Orchards of my childhood dead.

Once upon a time, there were a dozen apple orchards within a halfhour of my house, and I went to those orchards and actually picked apples. There were signs saying “feel free to eat an apple while you stroll through our orchard.” After I got my bag of apples, I went in to the little store, and they weighed the bag and charge me accordingly.

There are still some like that…but they’re not nearby.

Today we visited McDougall’s Apple Junction. Unlike several other orchards, there’s no admission fee. That, plus their online promise that we could pick our own apples, got us to pay them a visit.

When we got there, I couldn’t find any indication of where to pick apples, so I went into the store and has this conversation with a woman sitting behind a sampling table…

ME: Hi, we’d like to pick some apples, so…

SHE: Oh, there’s plenty of bags of apples for sale right there.

ME: Yeah, well we wanted to PICK our own apples. That’s why we came.

SHE: Oh, I think there’s only one variety of apple left to pick.

ME: Okay, how do we do that?

SHE: Just go outside, and there’ll be bags for you.

So, we went outside, and let the kids play with the free stuff (there was a playground and haystack maze that cost extra). I couldn’t find any bags. So I walked up to this guy at a counter where they were selling brats, and I noticed a wood shelf that said “bags.” It was empty. So I waited about 5 minutes until it was my turn, and then I asked him if he had any bags available for apple picking. He had to rummage around a bit, but then he pulled out a plastic bag, wrote today’s date on it, then said, “Okay, that’s 20 bucks.”

ME: Twenty dollars? Don’t you have a smaller bag, or charge by the pound [like they do with pumpkins].

HE: No.

ME (looking at Jennifer): I don’t know, I think $20 is a lot.

JENNIFER: Yeah, that’s ridiculous. We’ll never eat that many apples.

ME: Yeah, that would be a waste of food and money.

HE: Oh, okay then.

So…thanks for nothing, McDougall.

Then we drove over to Ziertman’s, a place we partonized last year, upon which I decreed we’d return. They sell rock-bottom priced pumpkins (like, 25 cents) and homemade honey. The kids enjoyed feeding the goats, and we had a good time. Alas, there’s no apple-picking there, either. So we’ll keep looking…

Sunday, 21 October 2012

Today I made two trips to the compost heaps in Ramsey County.

The first trip was all the way up to White Bear, where they accept dirt. We got a lot of unneeded dirt. Earlier in the summer, Jennifer suggested we pile it all in the driveway and advertize “free dirt,” but I never did that. I guess my primary resistance to her idea was that, if no one took the dirt, I’d be forced to shovel it a second time (this time into bags) and then take it to the copost heap anyway.

Since our driveway has a slight incline, my idea was to evenly spread the dirt over the driveway right before a heavy downpour, and just let it all wash away. Jennifer thought that was stupid.

My second trip was to the local compost heap, where Owen and I transported 9 bags of leaves. Owen loves going to the compost heap, and he insists on dumping out all of the bags. I think next time we go, I’m gonna bring a lawn chair, an umbrella, and a lemonade, and just set up camp next to the car while my son goes to work. Then all the other men will look at me and be so jealous that my kid does all my work for me. And maybe some women, too – one time, I saw a woman at the compost heap. So that’s good that they’re making inroads into dumping leaves. Glad they’re breaking through that gender barrier.

In other news: Is this an IKEA product, or a Lord of the Rings character? Great idea for a quiz; I scored surprisingly well (85%), but that’s probably because I’ve read all the IKEA novels and I’ve been to Lord of the Rings, like, 50 times.

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

I’ve agreed to participate in an author reading coming up next Friday. In case you’ve lost track of what I’ve been reading where, this is another reading of excerpts from Atheist Voices of Minnesota, in which my essay “Losing My Head” appears.

This reading will be at Valley Bookseller, a rather trendy book store in Stillwater. My favorite aspect of the store is the large aviary with finches nesting and flitting about.

I think there will be four readers, and (I hope) a question-and-answer session. Then out to eat at a local swanky restaurant.

Let me know if you’d like to join my wife and me – or just show up and surprise us.

Click here for details.

Thursday, 18 October 2012

For class, I had to reread Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I now like marginally better than the first time I read it.

The edition we read features a couple dozen essays about the book, and the professor set it up such that each student has to read and deliver a presentation on one particular essay. My presentation, which I gave today, concerned a feminist approach to Huck Finn, but many of the essay discussed the racism.

Let me sum up the essays on racism for you real quickly: The problem with Huck Finn is that black kids will think less of themselves and maybe even be picked on by the white kids. The essayists differed on whether the novel should even be read and discussed at all in classes with young students.

After the third (or maybe fourth?) such essay, I had to raise  my hand and ask: Do any of the essays adress the harm the novel might have on white kids, or even all kids in general?

No one seemed to know what I meant, so I clarified: All the essays seemed to think that readers just automatically will identify with characters based on race. I explained that I, like the (black) character Jim, am a married father in my 30s. So I identify more with Jim than with 12-year olds Huck and Tom. And even if I was to identify with Huck, it doesn’t make me feel empowered to launch racial slurs or not mind if slavery should be re-legalized, it would make me embarrassed that white folk used to act like such rednecked bigots…and that they still do.

The professor said that it really depends on where we are – reading Huck Finn in 1960s Alabama might have posed a real problem for black students. I said that I assumed we were talking about reading this in classrooms in 2010s Minnesota.

In other news, if you’re in the market for a new binder, then I suggest checking out the reviews for this white Avery Durable View Binder with 2 inch EZ-Turn Ring. If you don’t laugh, there must be something wrong with you (like, you’re probably Mormon or something).

Friday, 19 October 2012
For over a month now, I’ve had the word “Community” written down on today’s date on the calendar.

“Why is that?” you ask.

Great question. I’m glad you asked. Here’s the reason: my favorite sitcom, Community, was slated to begin its fourth season this evening, and I wanted to catch it. Well, with kids, it was unlikely I would watch it right when it aired, but I figured I would watch it later, after they went to bed.

So what happened?

Well…NBC postponed it.

Not sure why. Could be becuase it’s a funny show that I actually enjoy and it seems that my enjoyment of a show is a surefire measurement of how bad a network screws with said show.

“Postponed until when?”

Again, I’m glad you asked. I don’t know. After conducting extensive research (I checked Wikipedia’s article on it), it would seem the network hasn’t released the season’s premier date. Sad.

In brighter news, here’s the cast of Community explaining this season-postponement conundrum to us fans:

Monday, 15 October 2012

 This morning, I brought my son to school, and here’s a picture of a Honda Odyssey parked a few cars in front of mine:

The writing might be tough to see, so I’ll spell it out for you:

On the left side of the torture device, it reads “Living within Loving Boundaries is NOT LIMITING it’s LIBERATING VOTE YES for Marriage” [sic].

On the torture device itself, it reads: “Not of this World JESUS”.

And to the right, it says: “If U leave it blank it counts as a No vote.”

And here’s what I have to say:

First of all, living within any sort of boundaries is limiting. That’s what boundaries do: they limit things. The boundary isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s limiting nonetheless. For example, I have to live within the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere. That’s not liberating, it’s limiting. But that’s okay.

Second, by denying same-sex couples the right to vote, this person is explicitly denying them a liberating boundary. So…I’m not sure their first sentence is even coherent.

Third, I totally agree: Jesus is not of this world. This world is reality, and Jesus is fantasy. So, like zombies and leprechauns, Jesus is, of course, not of this world.

Fourth, since we can all agree that Jesus is not real, then it forms no real argument for or against same-sex marriage. At least Witnesses have the good sense to keep out of government: they live in a magical world where things like Smurfs and Michael Jackson can kill you and where birhtday parties are evil and shunning family members is good. They wisely realize their pretend play should have no voice in the real world. And it doesn’t. Take a lesson, Odyssey.

Fifth: I agree. If “U” leave it blank, it does count as a no vote. So, if you’re like many disenchanted voters, and can’t stand the sight of either major-party Presidential candidate, please go vote anyway. Leave the president choice blank, if you must, and just vote no on the amendment proposals. Or vote on the 6th district judge and leave everything else blank. Or write in my name for county commissioner. Go on, do it.

In other news…

Here’s an article about a Boy Scout denied his badge because he’s gay.

And here’s a very Funny post about cats and how they are nothing but murders.

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

This evening, I returned to Homewood Studios in Minneapolis for an author reading event. I read my short story “Bad Air,” which is on display at their gallery until Saturday, the 20th. So, if you can peel your butt off your couch, go take a look at it. There’s a guest book there where you can leave comments, and all the comments get forwarded to the authors, so I’ll read what you wrote.

Anyway, there was a small crowd, and only four readers. I was the third reader. After each piece, the audience asked questions. I like this part the best. At all the other readings I’ve done recently (Fresh Grounds Coffee Shop and the UU Church, to name a couple), I simply read my piece, accepted the applause, and sat down. This was much better.

Sometimes they asked questions about me – like, “Have you written any other fiction?” and sometimes they commented on the story – like, “Wow, I could really feel like I was there.”

Speaking of that, I guess the two parts of my story people liked best were the descriptions of Africa – my story told of “telephone lines receding in the distance” as a man walked out of town, and of two brothers “sitting in the shadow of their stalled car” to stay cool. They asked me how I came up with this imagery of Ugandan Africa, and I said, “Google Images.”

The curator asked if I had any other pieces to read. He asked all the participants this, but they all read short poems, so I was a little surprised that, after reading a 3-page story, they still wanted to hear more. I told him I had brought a copy of Hamline’s 2012 Fulcrum to read a short story from that, but that I’d had second thoughts and left in the Little Free Library right outside the door. The audience told me to retrieve it, so I did.

So then I read my essay “Andy,” which I chose over my other story in The Fulcum (the story “The Third”) because I had never read this one aloud to a group before. After reading this piece, one man said that it reminded him of his friend, who had died. He said, “My friend had everything I didn’t have, except time,” which I thought was quite sad. Then he said, “I’m sure Andy still thinks of you.”

It turns out, about hald the people in attendance were related to Witnesses, and they’re all disgusted by the coldness they receive from those family members. One audience member asked if I thought of sending Andy a copy of the story I wrote. I said, “Yes, but I never have.” Then another guy said, “Put the book back in the Little Free Library, and who knows? – Maybe Andy will pull it out and read it one day.” I was going to mention the pervading illiteracy in the Witness religion, but I didn’t.

After the reading, a few of the visual artists took us around to their pieces and discussed them. Pretty fascinating, really, and it helped me appreciate each piece even more.

All in all, a great evening.

I finally left just after 9:00. I deposited The Fulcrum in the Little Free Library.