NaBloPoMo, Day 7
I have almost nothing to say. It’s election day, one best spent in bed on a deserted island with a book and no internet. Unfortunately that is not how I spent it, and now I’m medicating with Haggen-Dazs and will resume Game of Thrones, the book, shortly.
Today a friend commented that she can’t handle people who question the inerrancy and canon of the Bible. I, of course, took the bait, then thought about it some more. Bite now, ask why my jaw hurts later. That’s me.
(Tangent: Religion! I forgot I knew anything about this topic. But gosh darn it, those sixteen years of Christian education need to go to work somehow.)
While I am generally agnostic, I would never be accused, on good days, of anything resembling fundamentalism. I don’t believe God literally wrote the Bible — in fact we have proof that pretty much every single book in it was written by a human (okay, a man), with many of them being letters, and we know it was accumulated, translated, edited, and published by humans.
In other words, the Bible is the world’s first wiki. And, on my good days, I see this as a really cool thing, that God would entrust this important message to humans to figure out. And where there is disagreement, close study reveals deeper, more complex ideas, and I would argue, a deeper understanding of who/what God is. It’s pretty neat, and looking at it that way helps me understand it and contextualize it a lot better. I just can’t believe it’s taken me this many years to figure it out.
Yeah, I know. But I’m in good company: none of the rest of y’all blog anymore, either. So…there?
But in an effort to account for the lack of blogging, I give you a list (with occasional hyperlinks) of excuses for why I no longer write anything longer than a tweet. Speaking of which,
1. Twitter. Here I like to vent about companies, then realize I’m in the wrong. Actually that happened yesterday, when I spent a good twenty minutes on the TOMS shoes website trying to figure out how to calculate tax/shipping on shoes and was unable to do so without creating an account (grr), so naturally I griped about it on Twitter. Today, like a moth to flame, I went back to the TOMS website because WE LOVES THE SHOES SO MUCH and lo and behold, you could calculate the shipping on the site. And you could check out as a guest, both without creating an account. I SWEAR BY MY PRETTY FLORAL BONNET that this was not possible yesterday, but I also do not trust my brain these days, so I’m sorry, TOMS, if I was wrong, but I really hope that I wasn’t. ‘Cause I’ve been wrong and it’s embarrassing.
2. Cooking. Today I made these cinnamon rolls, and then the bastard I live with ATE THE MIDDLE ONE. If you wonder why he’s got a crick in his neck for the rest of the week, it’s because the couch isn’t quite long enough.
3. The kid. I have one. It’s a lot of work. Totally worth it, but oh my. I had no idea tiny little hugs and the slapping sound of pudgy knees and hands crawling — nay, sprinting — across the living room floor could affect my heart so. And by “affect my heart,” I’m talking about all the caffeine necessary to keep his cute little butt alive to see another day. Oy.
4. Netflix. Oh, I remember when television was something you watched from a big box in your basement instead of your laptop wherever, whenever. BUT YOU GUYS, I can indulge my Damian Lewis crush (e.g. Captain Winters in Band of Brothers; who says gingers aren’t hot?) right here on my couch while the child gnaws on the dog’s chew toy and the dog gnaws on the child. I can also watch the complete seven or six or whatever seasons of Weeds in a month, which I am not proud of nor a better person because of but did anyway because I’m a sucker for well-written shows. (See also Veronica Mars, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and Castle. Okay that last one isn’t well written, but it has Nathan Fillion.)
5. Books. I don’t read nearly as much as I used to, but The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen were both fantastic. Am also going through Corrections by Franzen as well as the short stories of Mark Twain, which I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve read little of. [Tangent: I really want to get a Ph.D. in literature with my area of study being humor. Tell me this would not be a waste of time, please?]
6. Football. Of course. It’s October; what else is there to do on Sundays?
7. Ignoring politics. Okay, that’s a lie. But I haven’t been writing much about it, and I figure everyone’s blood pressure is healthier for it.
From That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo:
She pointed at the wall, specifically at an indentation in the plaster that looked to be about the same size as a college dean’s forehead.
I won’t even give you the context. It’s good, but sometimes one’s imagination is even better.
In related bits, a friend introduced me to My Parents Were Awesome. While I understand that my parents were once my age (in fact, my mom and I met right about the time she was my age now), I’ve never really seen pictures of them without us kids. And now I really want to know what they were like.
In unrelated news, Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck impersonation was downright inspiring. It’s not that he’s making fun of Glenn Beck — it’s that he’s taking every rhetorical strategy of Beck’s and illustrating how ludicrous they are: the word association schemes, the crazy diagrams, the appearance of being well-read without the information to back it up, the crying, the screaming, the hand-waving and -wringing — all these are ways Beck tries (and logically fails) not so much to win but to shut down arguments. That’s the beauty of this — not that it’s funny, but that it’s true.
“You like to tell true stories, don’t you?” [my father] asked, and I answered, “Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.”
Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?
“Only then will you understand what happened and why.
“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”