Comma Dot Comma

My new favorite dorky comedian, Demetri Martin, did a Comedy Central show over the weekend. He had a whole segment of charts and graphs. His were super funny, since it is his job to sit around thinking of funny things. He had a line graph showing the effect of a girl’s cuteness on how interested he is in hearing about how intuitive her cat is. I’ve been inspired to make my own charts, which are amateur but I had fun making them.

Recently I combatted boredom by pulling my 8th grade yearbook off the shelf. It is primarily an excruiciating record of self-punishment; I have signatures in there from all the girls who had formally rejected me, via elaborately folded note, from their clique. I’d forgotten about that. They each wrote variations on, “Well, we aren’t THAT close anymore, but have a great summer!” Ouch! Thank goodness for Annie, who had voluntarily extracted herself from the clique the year before and subsequently accepted into her circle, with cheery good grace, all newcomers and newly rejected. I didn’t appreciate what a feat her unflagging kindness was at the time. I was just glad I had someone to eat lunch with who didn’t regale me with veiled insults and calculated inside jokes. We would walk to the candy truck parked across the street from the school to buy Now R Laters and Nerds. I think she’s doing well. Our little sisters keep in touch, though we no longer do.

I decided it would be a fun project to google everybody who signed my yearbook. I lived in a small logging town and wasn’t particularly popular, so it wasn’t that hard to go through all of them. Mostly I found boys because so many of the girls changed their names when they got married. Even though I myself tacked on an extra last name when I tied the knot, I was resentful of the way my childhood peers were thwarting my spying attempts. Why couldn’t they just stick with their original name, for goodness sakes? Oh well.

The guy who wrote “Have a new friend in you old house that you are moving to” is now in computer science grad school. The leader of the boy clique that paralleled my former girl clique is doing special ops for the marines. A girl who moved away the same year I did, hoping to get started in modelling, is now an optometrist and has a testimonial video online for her university. And so on! It’s a fun game.

First, if you haven’t checked out the most amazing parallel parking feat ever, please prepare to be impressed.

Second, remember when I was talking about crime and how people believe things are worse than they are? And remember how I blamed it on the facile go-to explanations of media/govt fear-mongering to a gullible populace? Well, Nate found this guy’s explanation, which is a lot more interesting.

Finally, this PersonalDNA quiz is the most trippindicular quiz of the year so far. I know myself pretty well (interviewing “baskets” anyone?), so when I take personality quizzes, it’s as much to test the quiz-makers’ skills as anything else. But this one is super-duper fun. You get to use sliders, and empty virtual buckets, and position yourself on two-D graphs. I heart pictures. This quiz single-handedly eased my angst about either/or, one-possibility-only answers. Then it gave me a page of fairly accurate encouragements about myself, as well as the title “Benevolent Creator.” Which in one way could apply, and in another way is sort of creepy since it’s a phrase that I’d prefer to apply to GOD.

Here are a few quotes and my “Personality DNA Map”, on which you can mouse over different colors for different information:

Your imagination, confidence, willingness to explore, and appreciation of beauty make you a CREATOR.

Your confidence allows you to take your general awareness and channel it into creativity.

Your caring nature goes beyond a basic concern: you take the time to understand the nuances of people’s situations before passing any sort of judgment.

Considering many different perspectives is something at which you excel, and you appreciate that quality in others.

I regularly visit scienceblogs.com, and there I sometimes have occasion to witness battles between intelligent design apologists and evolutionary scientists and science writers. I feel sort of sorry for the I.D. folks, because they always lose. On the other hand, I sort of don’t feel sorry for them because they make a lot of enemies unnecessarily and confirm people’s prejudices about religious folk.

I myself am a creationist, in the sense that I believe God makes all the stuff. On the other hand, I don’t see much in the Bible explaining exactly how it all gets made, so I’m content to go with the mainstream scientific explanations on the nitty gritty. It doesn’t seem anathema to God’s character to work through processes of transformation and change. (If it is, boy, is my soul in trouble.)

So I wish the I.D. people would just change tactics. I sometimes get the feeling that they think scientists are obstinately clinging to evolution in a perverse desire to thwart their creator. I think scientists like evolution because it is an useful paradigm for both predicting outcomes and designing research projects that will produce interesting results. To compete with evolution, I.D. apologists will have to show that they have an alternate theory that is equally robust. My recommendation, O passionate Intelligent Design defenders? Go get your biology PhD’s and your research grants, formulate your theory, and test it as many ways as you can, publishing your results in peer-reviewed journals. You’re going to have a lot of work to do since people have been testing and refining evolution for about 100 years. But if the evidence is there, it’s there, and the truth will out.
Let’s say this is the theory: A supreme being or beings made all life on earth, and he/she/it/they made it in a specific period of time, and he/she/it/they got it right the first time.

Example interesting research project: Given: species go extinct. Given: All species were created at the same time. Therefore: the further you go back in the past, the more species diversity you should find. (the opposite of what evolution predicts) Ergo: Go to some fertile area, dig around, and compare evidence of species diversity from different eras. Make sure you proceed in a rigorous, repeatable, way, and that your results are verifiable.

Won’t that be so much better than arguing a lot?

Merriam-Webster has posted its top ten words, which are only slightly less dour than the previous year’s words.  “Quagmire” makes a repeat appearance from a few years ago.  A la elementary school, I will now attempt to use them all in one sentence without cheating with a semi-colon or dash.  Consider yourself challenged to do the same.

1. truthiness
2. google
3. decider
4. war
5. insurgent
6. terrorism
7. vendetta
8. sectarian
9. quagmire
10. corruption

Insurgent scorpions, drawn by piled dishes and the corruption of food scraps, have launched a terrorism campaign in my quagmire of a kitchen, leaving the decider no choice but to declare war and google anti-scorpion tactics for my sectarian vendetta, because in all truthiness, scorpions in the house are against my religion.

Today, our favorite Netflix reviewer encounters his first “California D***head” in Grizzly Man, the documentary about a guy who befriends grizzlies only to eventually be attacked and eaten.

” I have much the shame, but I have to say for that I was much the happy to know this man was tremendously eaten ferociously by the grizzly bear. I have cousin who live in Los Angeles and he say to me that many of peoples living there are “California D***heads!” I am not so sure what exactly of meaning this, but I maybe think it is not so good thing. I think this grizzly man is a California D***head. I do have much the pity for his girlfriend who is also tremendously eaten by ferocious grizzly bear. I think she was innocent and not a California D***head.“

Here’s some anti-boredom serum.

• Stick Figures in Peril pool on Flickr. Discovered by Dr. G. This example is especially awesome.
• “A really fast dictionary… fast like a Ninja.” ninjawords.com
• Not sure I totally get the purpose of this one, but if you like lists of words, try wordie. Discovered by Nate.
• Elaborate quiz on BBC’s site about whether your thinking style is more masculine or feminine. You need a ruler that measures in millimeters for this one. I took it a few weeks ago and ended up leaning toward the feminine end. Link via Pharyngula.
• If only the writers of power ballads had editors! An imaginary editor lays it on the line for Axl Rose’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Link via Chris Uggen.
• so which Christians, exactly, are getting divorces? Blogger, sociologist, and Christian Brad Wright examines the data.
• Have you ever wondered when the most people blog about hiccups? Blog Trends can tell you. Or bananas, or solar eclipses, or whatever.
• And finally:

How rich are you? >> I’m loaded. It’s official. I’m the 55,146,441 richest person on earth!

Awhile back I found myself yelling at the prophet Ezekiel.  “Are you going to take that lying down?” I hollered.  At the beginning of his career, he responded to God’s pronouncements and acts with passion.  Then one day, God told him that his protests on behalf of his friends and country were no good.  Judgment was judgment, and in this particular case, even the best people who ever lived could only save themselves.  Afterwards, Ezekiel kept quiet about his own opinion and did exactly as he was told.  If you ask me, he was mistaken in this decision.

The pronouncements got worse and worse.   Finally, one day, God lamented, “I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not destroy it, but I found none.”

God could have meant that he wanted someone to start a religious revival.  But perhaps he was looking for something more simple:  someone, perhaps Ezekiel, to argue for mercy and relief, to call upon the part of him that moves in kindness and gentleness.  God likes those plucky types.  Think of a few of the many successful arguers of the Bible: Abraham bargaining for Sodom and Gomorrah;  Job and David, each arguing on his own behalf; Moses intervening for the people of Israel; and Jesus himself, calling down forgiveness on his persecutors. All the really good prophets belong to both God and their people.

Ezekiel was in a bind, of course, listening to all that doom and being constantly reminded of his moral obligations.  I can’t really blame him for wanting to avoid stirring up trouble.  But then God announced that Ezekiel’s wife, the “delight of [his] eyes” would die, and God would use the death as an object lesson.  As far as I can tell, Ezekiel didn’t do a thing about it.  “So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died.  The next morning I did as I had been commanded.”

What husband, given advance warning of his beloved wife’s sudden death, would not fight for her life?  If ever there is a moment to argue with God, that’s it.  I was really hot under the collar at Ezekiel about his passive acceptance.  Stand in the gap for your wife, fool!  He had already heard God invite people to challenge his judgments, just as I later read it.

It reminded me a little of people I knew in another country, who, anytime something bad happened, would shrug their shoulders and say, “It is the will of God.”   The mechanic didn’t tighten the lug nuts so the taxi lost a wheel and rolled over, killing several people?  The will of God.  A bad storm blowing a makeshift house over yet again?  Also the will of God.  Those who acquiesce easily to the vagaries of Fate have a certain peace; they never try to control things that are out of their control.  They accept, they continue on.

And yet, it is an act of faithlessness for Ezekiel of old, and believers of today, to submit unquestioningly to the hand of Fate or judgment.   There is no Fate– no implacable force of change and blessing and disaster shaping our destinies.  To behave so is to deny the power of God’s gift to us: relationship.   He has invited our opinions and pleas, and sometimes they can affect destiny.  If they did not, the whole idea of relationship would be useless.  It would be no better than sending an impassioned plea to the President and getting back a picture of his family, stamped with a signature.

There are a few things I wish I had argued about more, when I had the chance.  I wonder if Ezekiel ever felt the same.

We have the best landlady ever. I’ve been a renter for eleven years and this is the first time I have ever received a Christmas card from a landlord. I think this is her first experience in the role. She used to live in the condo we now rent, and kept everything very nice. I emailed her recently to politely complain about a problem with the washing machine. Two weeks later, we have a brand-new, high-efficiency front loader with a new matched dryer with a moisture sensor. She apologized about the long wait.

I guess she doesn’t realize that landlords in our rental bracket are supposed to delay, delay, delay; then blame it on us; then send a sloppy contractor for a faux repair; then finally replace the item with the cheapest, loudest, most energy-wasting model on the market.

I think back to the guy who, when I complained about catching nine mice in the kitchen, said I must be leaving the door open to let them in. I think back to the year-long struggle to get an A/C repaired. To the painted-over bug parts in the back of a cabinet and lacquered-over dirt in the corners of a hardwood floor. To the woman who stole my phone out of my locked room under the assumption that I was trying to steal from her. To a doorbell catching on fire under the ministrations of an inept electrician’s apprentice. I think on all these things and feel like hugging my current landlady. She’s friendly but I don’t know how she would take it.

Kirk Cameron is popping up everywhere! We saw him on TV as a member of the Tribulation Force last week, and now he’s the subject of the latest fake Christian news from Lark News.

News on the job front looks pretty good. That interview I had just before Christmas has turned into part-time contract work for six weeks, to make sure we like each other, to be followed by an offer of full-time employment, if we do. That place I blogged about, wondering why they didn’t call me when their ad described me perfectly, finally called. They want me to interview for a more senior position next month, if nothing else works out before then. Until the full-time stuff happens, I’ve got my two days a week at the non-profit, am teaching one or possibly two classes, and may help develop a new website. If all the maybes and possiblys come to fruition, the blogging will slow dow a bit.

This will be Year Three of my attempts to execute the following resolutions:

1. Do not try to save anyone

2. Do not try to prove anything to anyone

3. Do not try to accomplish anything

These resolutions provide me implicit permission to stop shoulding and striving.  Their crass absolutism has tasered, although not killed, the not-enoughing. Now that I don’t demand (as often) great triumphs and strides and rescues and performances from myself, I don’t feel the need to demand them from others.

To my own amazement I have not yet melted into a lazy, apathetic puddle of greasy cellulite and maudlin self-regard.  Maybe by 2008.