And the Shelf He Rode In On (Part II)

You Gotta Get Up - Five Iron Frenzy (mp3)
Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) - John Denver (mp3)

Part One -- "The Origin of Laura Jane," wherein I mention our transgendered hero/heroine, Nicole Kidman, late night elf pornography, and Gmail)

November 29, 2010. My elder daughter -- let's name her Billie Jr. -- writes a letter to Santa and places it under our Christmas tree. In it, she requests a new Elf on the Shelf of her own so that she doesn’t have to share Laura Jane (our gender-transformed female elf who looks like all the other male elves) with her sister.

You see, my second daughter was always far more obsessed with Laura Jane writing her emails almost every month... and we didn’t know it because we didn’t check Laura Jane’s email account until Thanksgiving Perhaps because Billie Jr. was resigned to never be capable of loving Laura Jane quite as ardently as her sister, she was hoping to start over with a new elf.

And this is where I morph into the bad guy. Here comes my Tragic Flaw.

I crafted an email from Laura Jane that started something like this:

My Dearest Billie Jr.,

I read your note to Santa because I thought it was for me.

Have I done something wrong? I am feeling quite awful about this and wonder how I have failed you. Just this morning you want to know about my life at the North Pole, and then this evening you are asking for a different elf. I am trying not to cry, because I must have done something awful or mean for you to want another elf.

The email went another two paragraphs. Laura Jane was heartbroken. Santa can’t send multiple elves to households. It’s one or none. She might lose her job. The sky is falling, and the Pole with her.

We have struggled with Billie Jr.’s increasing inability to attune to the aches and needs of others, to empathize and to grasp the depth of The Golden Rule. What better way to address that level of selfishness, I thought, than to let the voice of absolute North Pole innocence address it?

Her mother and I had sat her down on numerous occasions to discuss this matter with her, but we had gotten nowhere. Perhaps Laura Jane could accomplish what we could not.

If results can be measured by the level of psychological and emotional distress inflicted, then I earned a gold medal. My daughter looked like death warmed over for two days. She lost the ability to speak in complete sentences, and it was obvious that every time she emerged from a moment of privacy that she’d spent her alone time crying.

Her first email to Laura Jane first thing in the morning was a panicked apology. Her second reply, later that evening, was this:

you have made me cry even more.now i am very sad.I am so so so so sorry!i wrote that note because (my sister) & i argue about who has you and so on,but i am truely sorry.My thoughts have changed so much and thank you for reading the note. it has made me relize christmas even more.

You'll need to trust me on this: Billie Jr.'s apology was more about the fear of losing everything than about an appreciation for what she had. Her concluding sentence was more platitude than truth... although I think she really wanted to believe it.

The 72 hours after Laura Jane’s heartbroken email involved a gradual evolution of personal assessment for me. At first I was proud. Laura Jane’s email had worked. The message had penetrated. The seed would grow into something good.

Then I was defensive. My daughter needed to be taught a lesson, dammit, and some lessons are hard. But sometimes you can’t learn about a stove eye being hot unless you touch it and burn your hand, and human emotions are the same way, and she needed to learn about selfishness.

Then I was panicked. Had I just embodied the persona of one of Santa’s elves and crafted a note intended to stab a psychological knife into my own daughter’s heart? Nooo, of course not... no. Not quite. No no, nothing that awful.....

Then I was horrified. What kind of father does something like this? Isn’t what I did, in some way, even more dangerous and harmful than if I’d pulled out my belt and lashed her a few dozen times, something I would never in a million years do? Isn’t inflicting emotional scars far more cruel and dangerous?

Not to mention the hypocrisy of me -- ME -- having the gall to try and teach someone else about being self-centered or selfish. Who the frick was I to go judging my daughter so much more harshly than I’ve ever been willing to judge myself??

Suddenly I was eyeball-deep into a state of despondency not unlike that which had overtaken my daughter the first day of Laura Jane's “lesson” to her. Except as the puppet-master and supposed adult, my sadness went deeper, and my self-evaluation was unflinchingly brutal. Everytime I heard or thought “Merry Christmas,” I cringed. The season was suddenly a symbol of deception, heartbreak, manipulation... nothing good.

A week later, Laura Jane was dead to me. My wife didn’t handle my resignation very well. I have little doubt that I failed to share in any adequate way my internal nuclear chain reaction with her. I probably mentioned to her once or twice that I was bothered by what had transpired, and the next thing she knew, I was quitting, and it was non-negotiable. That jump from "bothered" to "done" seemed extreme and unfair, I'm sure. (Like many men, I'm not fond of breaking down in the presence of others.)

She begrudgingly and angrily took over Laura Jane duty and carried that seething frustration with her like a sack of coal, thus adding one more body to the list of Christmas casualties, all borne from my single heartbroken manipulative scheming late-night email.

Now it's the 2011 Holiday Season. Daughter Number Two has continued her pen pal devotion to Laura Jane...

Part Three - "The Night Before," Wherein at last shines a faint glimmer of hope.

And the Shelf He Rode In On (Part I)

We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Shonen Knife (mp3)


A f*#king elf might be the death of me.

Have you seen the Nicole Kidman movie “The Others”? In it, she’s the mother of two special-needs children whose skin is hyper-sensitive to light, and they have become recluses and shut-ins in a mansion/castle in the UK.

(SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT... although if giving away the surprise ending to a decade-old movie is a spoiler, it means you didn’t plan on seeing it...)

The big catch of the movie, and one I failed to properly appreciate the first time around, is that the terrible mean ol’ servants aren’t the enemies in the film. They’re the heroes. The enemy in the film is their mom.

Back to the f*#king elf. Laura Jane arrived by box, purchased from a store by a relative seeking revenge on us for some previous crime, three years ago.

My children had many times over witnessed a box precisely like it in one store after another, constantly begging us for one, a special elf for our house. We’d heard of these damn things, and we were certain it was a terrible idea. But now one was in our house, wrapped up without our knowledge or approval. We had been infiltrated.

My daughters unwrapped the package. They shrieked and screamed. They opened the box. Inside the box was, encased in mixed paper and plastic, an Elf on the Shelf. Much like Stormtroopers, all these elves look exactly alike. Which is to say nothing like any other elves on any other Christmas shows. They look like Justin fucking Bieber.

My daughters opened the box. They removed the Elf from his bondage. They hugged him and tested to see if he had any special features, sounds, or moving parts. They then, right there at that moment, mutually agreed that this Elf was female, and that her name was Laura Jane.

How, you ask? How can children of relative intelligence and sanity open a box “Made in China,” pull out a cloth mass-produced creature, and convince themselves that this thing came from the North Pole? I do not know. I only know it happened, and I didn’t have the courage or the cruelness to crush their enthusiasm like a grape.

From that day to Christmas, we became a predictable stupid American family. Laura Jane hid at night. She messed shit up. She ate cookies and spilled milk and snuck into the computer room and watched porn late at night. She was a cute adorable deviant menace.

She disappeared to the North Pole after Christmas, and we thought that was the end of Laura Jane, the transgendered fabric elf from China. But no, the next Thanksgiving, the girls were literally frothing at the mouth for Laura Jane’s return.

Although I’m not competitive about most things in life, I can’t say that about creativity. In my mind, I am hands-down the single most creative living mind not currently working in Hollywood, the book publishing industry, the comedy circuit, the newspaper-column industry or the big-time blogosphere.

So if regular normal boring parents could make their elves hide and mess shit up and be all playful, then I would by God kick it up a notch.

Therefore I created a Gmail account for Laura Jane, and she started sending nightly emails to the girls. Probably after she was done watching all that elf porn, but how would I know, right? Laura Jane even stole our camera and took a few pictures (clean, safe) and attached them to her emails. Ours was a technologically savvy elf.

The season was fun. Everyone enjoyed playing with the elf. I was super-cool creative, and we were awesome parents. Yada yada.

But something happened on the way to heaven.

(You can read my post foreshadowing all of this, from November 2008, here.) 

Part Two - "Bad Dad," wherein I experience the stages of grief, emotionally abuse my daughter, and am reminded why the Christmas season is so despicable

Part Three - "The Night Before," Wherein at last shines a faint glimmer of hope.

The Sport of Serfs

Black Betty - Ram Jam (mp3)
For Tomorrow - Blur (mp3)

UGA’s A.J. Green was suspended for four games for selling his own jersey for somewhere in the range of $400-500. A 1-game suspension per $100 of profit. According to Michael Wilbon’s column in the Washington Post, UGA rakes in a healthy six figures in pure profit off the sales of various licensed versions of A.J. Green’s #8 UGA jersey. Meanwhile, A.J. Green could only buy three Kindles with the money he made.

That makes my head hurt. But not as much as the next factoid.

Somewhere between 1.6 million and 3.8 million brain injuries - mostly concussions - are suffered each year during sports activities. There’s no reliable way to track athletes and concussions in high school because so many players are afraid of missing games or falling in dutch with coaches (PDF, GAO.gov). The number of emergency room visits for concussions for children ages 8-19 doubled from 1997-2007 (PDF, Pediatrics).

I play fantasy football. I am a moderately fervent UNC sports fanatic. My daughter plays select soccer, and it would take the jaws of life to remove her from doing so for the foreseeable future, because she loves it. So I’m not the Anti-Jock or Gozer the Destructor, apocalyptic death-bringer of all things sporty. But I would happily bet that we’re approaching the point, in the coming decade, where the cultural pendulum will reach its pinnacle of sports obsession and begin returning to something more in line with reason.

Take a look at Newsweek’s latest feature on college athletics, “The Case Against College Athletic Recruiting,” which is a troubling (if admittedly oversimplified) investigation into how important playing a sport can be in the college admission process... at all levels for schools of all sizes.

After my rant about our local paper, perhaps I’m beating a dead horse here. But sports are often hurting the very people it claims to help -- the students. It’s hurting them physically with concussions, torn ACLs, broken bones, and it’s taking advantage of their pipe dreams by giving them “scholarships” and then making millions of dollars off them. And those great college scholarships earn them majors in amazing things like “sports management,” “African-American Studies,” and “General studies.” (The top 10 list is here.)

What I’m saying is, the claim that these money-making athletes (read: D-I basketball and football players) get a free ride in college and should be grateful is a lie we all know to be a lie. We want to be deceived. We also prefer to believe that football is “safe enough” because they wear armor and are super-sized humans with super-speed. We say this even as we watch approximately 45 players get carted off the field during the Clemson v. Auburn football game last weekend. (OK, slight exaggeration, but myself ant at least three friends declared that game “one of the most violent football games in recent memory.”)

At some point, the willful self-deception will have to stop. Because it always does.

We are currently riding a sports bubble not unlike the housing bubble and dot-com bubble of the recent past. BThe economic unfairness of the college system, and the evidence piling up on the kind of permanent physical damage we’re doing to teens and young adults will eventually force us to wake up. And we will wake up. We will eventually decide that the risks are more costly than the rewards.

Sports won’t die. Nothing at all like that. But I do believe my grandchildren will grow up in a society that doesn’t use phrases like “select sports” with quite the same zeal and focus. It’s possible this will be because everyone speaks Chinese and plays table tennis. Or it’s possible we’ll all be dead because an astronaut hit us or we did something to our planet that we can’t fix that wipes us out.

Or maybe the zombie virus will actually come. (And oh hell yeah I’m gonna watch “The Walking Dead” on AMC. You betcha! I say, to quote our most famous American zombie. I have a huuuuge soft spot in my heart for zombies.)

The Fun Theory

You Make a Fool Out of Me - Brendan Benson (mp3)
Thoughts/Facts - Ice Palace (mp3)

This video is awesome. Like, really really cool. Four different people have forwarded the link to me, and a number of folks have promoted it on Facebook. If you haven't seen it, I've included it for your edification:



There's this cool French phrase that stands for the brilliant responses that come to you only after the opportunity to use them is long gone. You know what I'm talking about? Like, when you were in fifth grade and got in that playground insult contest and that big kid says something about how he bets you eat your own poop and like it, and all you say back at the moment is, like, "Ohh yeahhh?" And everyone's standing around waiting for you to offer something, anything, with more teeth, but you just can't think of anything. And then, you're in the bathroom that night after dinner at home with your parents, still reeling from the shame of your pathetic response, and you come up with a big comeback that would have been totally awesome in the middle of the fight, but is now completely useless.

A friend of mine had something like that happen to him allllll the time.

So this is one of my mutant powers. The ability to manufacture great comeback lines after the milk has already spoiled, so to speak. In the heat of the moment, I am a gullible human being, often rendered speechless or befuddled by things which don't deserve such gawkery. On the bright side, being easily duped also makes me easily awed, and it's that sense of naive wonderment that probably makes me a generally happier person than others who are more wizened, who see through magic tricks and sniff out conspiracies.

Initially, The Fun Theory sounded really awesome, and it proved a really powerful point: If you make something generally less palatable more fun, more people will do it. That this theory should give us a big "NO DUH" moment doesn't make the theory less true. Anyone who's played Big Brain Academy or one of those cool typing games can attest that learning games make learning more fun. The ever-present example of Schoolhouse Rock! reminds us that crafting a cheesy but catchy song packed with an educational pearl is a powerful tool.

But watch it again. And again.

This video is just like a magic trick. It's well-done propoganda. The aim is to distract you from asking vital questions by offering you simple answers and making you happy with the outcome. People who like an outcome naturally ask fewer questions about the method of achieving the outcome.

Here's some questions worth asking:

• How much did those musical stairs cost to build?
• How much energy/electricity is required to operate those stairs?
• How does that compare to the amount of energy required to run the escalator?
• How much benefit does walking one extra flight of 24 stairs provide someone?
• How long does the Fun Factor last? Days? Weeks? Months? Forever?
  

Here's what I suspect: dollar for dollar, the piano stairs is an overly expensive exercise. It only proves that, if you spend a shitload of money making something, people will be fascinated with it. Yes, the stairs got people walking instead of being lazy and taking the escalator. But for how long, and at what cost?

The group has a second video that attempts to make recycling more entertaining. A third video explores what happens when you make tossing trash an adventure, with similar great results.

But the questions still persist, because inevitably, they're important and valuable questions.

And here's what's even worse. The biggest question of them all:

Why is Volkswagen sponsoring something called The Fun Theory and paying people to conduct all these pseudo-experiments when it has absolutely nothing to do with automobiles?

The wrong answer is that they're interested in improving humanity. I'll let you figure out the correct answer all by yourself.

Sorry if I ruined the magic trick. But at least it was fun for a little while.

If You Say Something Enough, Does It Really Become True?

Harry Nilsson--"Everybody's Talkin'" (mp3)
All Hail--"Truth Be Told" (mp3)

About three years ago, I brought a nutritionist onto our campus to speak to the boys. She was a hardcore, but positive, vegan, and accepting of other choices. In touring the campus before her talk, she got a look at everything from the dining hall and its setup to the snack machines outside the bookstore. She advocated restructuring the soda-first approach of our dining hall, so that the students' first option in the natural flow of getting food and sitting down was not a gauntlet of sugar drinks. She also noted that every single snack or drink in the machines outside the bookstore was absolutely unhealthy--full of fat or salt or sugar or all three.

Of course, due to federal or state law concerning public schools, or simply to a greater awareness of the obesity and other health problems plaguing our nation, this year, our school is adopting every one of her recommendations.

But at the time, she was a threat.

Our bookstore depends on selling junk food to students for a substantial portion of its revenue. The dining hall, already an expensive proposition with cost overrages each year, had no intention of rearranging drinks or expanding their menu to include more expensive, healthier options.

And a threat must be dealt with.

So one obsequious faculty member was walking somewhere that morning and happened to see a woman sitting in her car in the chapel parking lot smoking a cigarette. He made the immediate connection that this must be the nutritionist. While she was speaking to the students in chapel, he told the story to a school administrator, and the story very quickly made the rounds, even while the nutritionist was on campus. When I spoke to that school administrator the next day, he told me the story of the "smoking nutritionist" with more than a hint of mockery. I explained to him why that could not have been her in the car because she was with me the whole time. He nodded.

But it did not matter. The next day, he was still telling the story of the smoking nutritionist, and all of her suggestions were ignored. It was as if she were never on campus.

Could this be a post about the Iraq War? Bush and company said so often and in so many places that Saddam Hussein had been connected to the 9/11 terrorists that a significant number of Americans believed, and probably still believe, that it is true.

Or a post about Barack Obama? Conservatives have trafficked in claims that Obama a) is Muslim, or b) was not born in the United States, or c) is a Socialist, or d) is a Communist, or e) wants to be the One World leader, or f) you name it, so often that people have begun to believe them. In the South, nearly 50% of the people believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; it's about 10% in other parts of the country.

Or about Health Care? Well, you get it. You get the point.

We all tell lies. No point in denying that. We all have told the same lie more than once. No point in denying that either. But there is something so insidious, so virulent, so wrong in telling the same lie over and over in the public discourse of a school or, even worse, a country as a way of undermining one's opponent. Whether it skews more towards pathological behavior or towards Machiavelli, it is a repulsive act.

The problem is that it tends to work. Like all ad hominem attacks ("against the person"), such statements are hard to refute, because every time you say that something isn't true, it feels to the casual observer that it might be a little more true. And the other problem , for the human soul, if that matters, is that a person who tells the same lie over and over starts to believe it's true, starts to act on it as if it is fact, will defend it against all opposition with greater ferocity than an equivalent truth.

And so what happens to a society that gets bombarded with false statements repeated over and over? I'll tell you. The people in that society become confused, they become paranoid and distrustful, they become passive, and any attempt to move that society forward becomes mired in that mud. You want a quick way to get a sense of where we are right now, then take a hard look at the statements that are out there every day, being mouthed on radios and televisions and then being repeated in cars and churches and locker rooms.

In America 2009, if you think that whatever side you're on is winning, you're wrong. It is only the voices of the shrill that are winning, drowning out any middle ground as we push farther and farther apart.

Devil's Advocate for the Adulterous Advocate

Your Next Lover - Lori McKenna (mp3)
A Girl in California - Nine Days (mp3)

I caught wind of John Edwards' daliances slightly ahead of the curve thanks to my regular visits to Plastic.com, a geeky little discussion + news site that posted this as it was starting to really percolate in late July. So I felt like friggin' Drudge when Edwards came out and shocked the world with his confession last week.

The reaction of acquaintances has been fairly surprising, to be honest. Shock, mostly. Edwards' infidelity has been a much larger surprise to (left-leaning?) people, it seems, than that of Wild Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, I'm like, The dude pays FOUR HUNDRED FRIGGIN' DOLLARS to get his friggin' hair cut! He spends as much on his hair per year as Spitzer spent on that prostitute. Any guy who loves his own hair that much is waaaay too full of himself to sleep exclusively with one woman.

But here are some other thoughts that have sprouted from the Edwards scandal:

FORGIVENESS
Edwards said he has sought his wife's forgiveness and his God's forgiveness, and so he basically doesn't care what the rest of us think. Since it's hardly our business to begin with, I couldn't agree more. If you enjoy this story for its juicy context, or if you enjoy watching the overly ambitious and well-coiffed get their come-uppance, that's fine and good. But I'm kind of violently anti-TMZ and anti-paparazzi at the moment, and for me this is just a slightly higher-class version of celebrity rubbernecking I can do without. This really should be between him, his wife, and his deity of choice. Well, and the "other woman "who seems to have gotten a sweet-ass deal out of it.

BUT HE LIED! HE DENIED IT!
If reporters gave a flip about my private life -- and if you thought The Truman Show was a boring concept, my daily existence is even more snooze-a-riffic -- and had the unmitigated gall to ask me if I was having affairs, or smoking crack, or surviving solely on a diet of Pop Tarts, Mountain Dew and Twizzlers, I'd like to think I could answer them in such a way that gave them nothing good yet amused me to no end.

If they ask and you say "No" because it's the truth, then you're only helping their cause, because they can then use you as an example of those who "have nothing to hide," allowing them to bring down that judgmental hammer harder on another's head. So I'd like to think I would say I'm sleeping with everyone. Kate Beckinsale. Ashley Judd. The whole cast of The Golden Girls (except for Estelle Getty, of course, God rest her sweet soul). Tom Cruise. Barbara Bush (the older AND the younger). Say their names, I'm sleeping with them. And they're all just using me for the sex.

My point is, once Edwards screwed around, is he really obligated to, according to our society's odd little rules, confess it in detail to the first reporter to ask the oh-so original question of "Have you ever had an affair?" Is George W. Bush required to explain in great detail his past drug use or even admit he did cocaine just because some bonehead asks him? Are we really better off as a country if they tell the truth to us when it's none of our business?

In my book, if goobers with no right to do so ask anyone such questions, it's not lying to tell them whatever you want. "I sleep with Martians. We spoon, mostly, but sometimes we use toys on each other. I prefer Martian Menages after my Martian Massages. And if you've never been rubbed down by a Martian, you haven't truly lived!"

BAD APPLES MAKE BAD ORANGES?
Our Puritanical society has somehow bought into the bullshit that you can't be a great politician without being a lily-white clean slate of perfect family values. Being outstanding or gifted in one area of life does not require being outstanding or gifted in another. That's like saying you can't be a great rock guitarist without sleeping with 40 women a year. Or that Donald Trump can't be successful in real estate unless he's also a devoted and loving father. It's so oddly unrealistic and foolish that I don't even know why we continue to allow this myth to propagate.

"THE WORST TIME TO DO IT"
Almost every person I've heard pontificate on his infidelity says something akin to this: "And he couldn't have done it at a worse time. His wife is fighting for her life against cancer, and he's off fucking around! What a jerk!" First off, I wasn't aware there was a proper or acceptable time for adultery. Is there some space shuttle re-entry in adultery, where there's a few "perfect windows" in the atmosphere wherein it's acceptable and understandable for married folks to screw around?

Jimmy's always been a devoted husband and father, and although he slept with that drunk librarian two years ago, it was at a time when his wife was healthy and everything in his life was going well, so it was no big deal. If he'd fucked that librarian back when Shelly had been diagnosed with diabetes, well, that would have been another story... Then Jimmy would have been one disgusting sumbitch.

Let's go one step further. (Since my writing on this entire topic automatically qualifies me for the "Perhaps He Protesteth Too Much" Award, no point in leaving any stones unturned.)

Isn't it maybe a little more acceptable for the dude to seek his needs elsewhere at a time when his wife is utterly and completely incapable of being there for him? So long as Edwards didn't abandon his wife emotionally, so long as he was there in the ways she needed him, why isn't his shoplifting some pootie on the side more acceptable when Elizabeth is sick rather than when she's shiny and healthy as a pearl?

If one of you readers is willing, I would really appreciate you breaking down the Affair Scale for me. From 1-10, when's having an affair a 1 and when is it a 10? This might help all those readers out there who want to know when it's most acceptable to have an affair. If they're gonna be immoral, at least they can be considerate.

"Your Next Lover" is from Lori McKenna's super-mega-awesome album Unglamorous. "A Girl in California" is from Nine Days' latest EP, Slow Motion Life Part I. Both can be purchased through iTunes or on Amazon.com's mp3 site.

The Fruits of Freedom

Your Stripes - Buffalo Tom (mp3)
Liar - Tonic (mp3)

Freedom is a Lie.

Freedom with a capital F, the notion that a human being is free, means having the ability and choice to lie, to deceive, to subvert. In other words:

Freedom = Deception

While I'm sure this is an entirely unoriginal idea, it came to me most recently while listening to an NPR Morning Edition story on women in Basra struggling for freedom under the oppressive shackles of their culture, especially prior to the American insurgence.

One woman confesses to going home at night and putting on makeup, then washing it off before leaving her home the next morning. "It allowed her, she says, to feel more feminine in the confines of her home," the reporter says.

Presently, in a more liberated Iraq with her increased freedom, she is described as follows: "She's dressed in a white jacket and a form-fitting purple satin skirt. Her toenails are painted with silver glitter. Her makeup looks like it was applied with the giddiness of a teenager. Still, she's afraid."

Now, read carefully this Iraqi woman's comments to the reporter, as she's made up like a teenager and trying to mimic Carrie Bradshaw. Everytime I hear it or read it, it knocks my head sideways: "The civility is temporary. The problems in Basra won't end because all we do is cover these problems up. They do not attack the cause."

My wife manages our church's very successful summer camp. Two days ago, she was hemming and hawing about one of her 17-year-old counselors who wears these mammoth diamond earrings. She didn't think it was appropriate for him to wear them while shepherding around kids at a summer church camp, but she didn't want to "infringe on his freedom."

Iraqi women equate Freedom with makeup and fashion?
Teens equate Freedom with earrings and tattoos?

Have I gone mad?! Are Amigos falling from the sky??

Perhaps it will betray my own desperate need to come across as high-minded and intellectual (although quoting The Three Amigos prolly shoots that goal in the proverbial foot), but when the hell did satin skirts and tats become symbols of the Freedom for which we are willing to send our soldiers in harm's way to protect? Why do we insist on equating individuality and freedom of expression with what goes in and out of our nostrils?

And can I express how troubling it is that Iraqi women seem to have managed to catch up to our superficial obsessions in the blink of an eye? If Freedom was Mel Gibson, they apparently skipped the Braveheart stage and went right into What Women Want.

These thoughts were giving me mental indigestion, so I continued processing.

One of my biggest personal pet peeves is the equating of freedom and individuality with permanent splotches of ink in our flesh, piercings of one sort or another, or even clothing items. I look at these people, modestly intelligent younger folks who have permanently altered their flesh so they could "express themselves," and wonder, Couldn't you just write something?

Others need to free themselves with surgery. Bigger chest. Bigger dick. Different reproductive organs (that don't reproduce). Bigger lips. Fake muscles. Smaller stomach. These people feel imprisoned in their own bodies and are convinced that doing one thing or another to alter their appearance means personal Freedom.

Hell, who am I to say they're wrong? Maybe doing this stuff really does free them.

There's a new movie coming out about people who fantasize and fetishize the notion of being crippled. They get off by riding in wheelchairs and wearing leg braces and scheme about permanently disabling themselves. I chuckle thinking about women with fake tits and Botox and fake lips watching the trailer and having this conversaition:

"Wow, those people are messed up."
"What kind of messed up person gets turned on thinking about being crippled?" "Seriously."
"So, when's the next time you inject botchulism toxin into your face?"
"Next Tuesday. Can't wait. My eyes are looking so crinkly and old, I can't even look in the mirror. When's your lap-band appointment?"
"Two weeks. Can't wait. Once that's done, and now that my tits are huge and firm, I'm gonna be the hot slut my husband has been fantasizing about."

Our screwed-up notion of Freedom actually goes back to the mythological (or not) Garden of Eden, where our two protagonists bit that damn fruit just so they could feel Free. We claim the serpent deceived them, but did it? It might not have told them the whole truth, but it didn't lie.

Until A&E bit in, they didn't really understand right from wrong. They didn't really understand sin. They were like infants, morally. They had two simple rules. That's it. (1) Don't Eat That, and (2) Don't Eat This. They did what they were told and never thought much else about it, kind of like vacuum cleaners or weather vanes. But after they ate, they were suddenly aware of the notions of deception, of lies. ("The serpent deceived us!")

Yes, they were Free.

And what's the very first thing they do? Cover themselves. Adam & Eve were the planet's first fashionistas. The fruit made them aware of their own imperfections. I'd bet a thousand bucks that Eve immediately started smearing various berries on her face, thus inventing rouge and lipstick as well. Then come Cain & Abel and their immortal tale of murderous envy. Cain wants to Keep Up with the Joneses so badly he kills for it.

Deception. Fashion. Envy. These are the first first-fruits of Freedom.

And here's what rankles me. Whether I like it, whether my higher mind accepts it, whether it annoys me, we cannot have Big Freedom without Insignificant Freedom. Iraqi women can hardly start to grasp equal rights if they can't even wear pants. Most teenagers don't even know what a "fireside chat" is, so maybe they need to equate Freedom with that treasure trail tattoo before they can grasp Guantanamo Bay and rendition.

We must crawl before we can walk. Sometimes we must crawl because we're in a small space or someone Jeff Gillooly'd our leg. I am wrong to agonize about people fixating on the superficial Freedoms if I truly hope that they might one day appreciate or concern themselves with the larger ones.

Therefore, I raise my drinking glass -- albeit with shaky and uncertain hand -- to this wonderful bastion of Freedom:


I'll try to only throw up in my mouth as opposed to all over someone.

"Your Stripes" is off Buffalo Tom's third album, Sleepy-Eyed. "Liar" is off Tonic's third album, Head On Straight. Both are available on iTunes, although I personally recommend purchasing each band for selective songs rather than entire albums at a time.

The Fine Art of Beautiful Lies

Untitled Song - Buddy Miller (mp3)

According to my wife, who swears she saw this on Oprah or some such, all of us have the same amount of gas. Pound for pound, all humans have equal fart-ability. Such a study seems pretty dubious, but for the purposes of this entry, I'm gonna say it's food for thought. Just keep this seedling planted in your noggin, and I'll get back to it.

I lie to my children. I teach them to lie to other adults. But don't worry. Newsweek says it's OK, and if anyone should know, it's journalists.

The Newsweek article suggests that certain kinds of lies are totally OK to tell your children. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Other times it's totally OK to encourage your children to lie. Yes Auntie Gertrude, I just love that disco jumpsuit. I'll wear it all the time!

If those are the good lies, what are the bad ones? According to the article, lies that abdicate one's own responsibilites -- as a parent, as a friend, as a coworker -- are much less acceptable. These are lazy lies that come back to haunt you, karmically speaking.

All I did was help you tell a lie.
You never even knew it when I said goodbye.

A superb article from the New Yorker last summer explored our cultural fascination with lying and our over-inflated belief that we can catch others in lies.

In reality, we totally suck at detecting lies. We're only slightly better than 50-50 at doing so. Think about the significance of that for a second. If someone is lying to you, or telling you the truth, flipping a coin is almost as accurate as your "gut feeling." Much like most of us think we're "above average" in intelligence and looks and talents, most of us think we're above average at smelling bullshit.

In reality, our BS detectors are BS. We think so highly of them because we pat ourselves so heartily on the back when we catch someone in a lie, not realizing that for every lie we've caught, another one or two have snuck by us unaware, like small insects we unknowingly eat while sawing logs in slumber at 3 a.m.

Back to the discovery that we're all equally full of hot air. Hot, stinky, noxious air. Most of us don't like admitting that our shit stinks, or that we're full of shit. But lying is more about the fumes we expel than actual substance. Lying is more flatulent, less fecal. And more often than not, our lies are the Silent-But-Deadly type. Besides, it's somehow less of an insult to tell someone they're full of fart.

All humans have in them this need, this natural-born drive to tell lies. As much as I'm a religious fella, I believe this need, in and of itself, is neither sinful nor evil. Lying is a dangerous weapon, but it has its good and proper uses, much like money, which is only the root of all evil when it is held too close to the heart.

All our words are written down in chalk
Out in the rain on the sidewalk.

At the risk of coming across as a frightening sociopath, lying is what makes us human. It's one of the most complicated and nuanced facets of our lives and one of the easiest ways to separate us from less-sophisticated animals. It is to humans what flight and X-ray vision is to Superman, a power we uniquely possess that can cause tremendous destruction but also help us navigate life's treacherous SpyHunter-esque highway (and no, Tom Cochrane, that's not always a road you want to drive all night long).

Let's use an embarrassing example.

I'm 17. My parents are out of the house at a dinner party. One of my precious and rare female pals calls. "Whatcha doing?" she asks innocently. But what I'm doing is touching myself and watching one of my dad's not-so-well-hidden dirty movies. So when I said "Um, nothin'" rather than saying "Watching one of my dad's porn movies and imagining you and me doing what these people are doing to each other"... was I really doing the world some kind of disservice? Is this the kind of honesty our world needs or wants?

(NOTE: I have never ever in my whole life touched myself in such a way. Nor do I know anyone else who would do such a repulsive thing. I was just using something that happened to a friend of mine. As an example.)

Here's a more kid-friendly example: I believe in Santa Claus. That's a very complicated lie for me, and one I'm not ashamed to state. In fact, I bet even a lie detection machine would say I'm telling the truth on that one. (By the way, even the most biased studies in favor of lie detectors put them at around 90%... how would you like a 1 in 10 shot of being put on trial for a capital crime because that damn machine read you wrong?)

Lies can be complicated, nuanced, delicate things. Lies can be beautiful. They can save marriages. They can bring people to Jesus. They can reunite long-exiled family members. Lies can save innocent lives.

Picasso said, "We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." The word "Lie" is Legion, three letters possessed by a thousand different demons and arguably a few dozen angels. If we don't see lies for all the good -- or non-bad -- they can do, how can we properly fear and respect their power to do harm?

This Buddy Miller song, written by his wife Julie, is neither on any of his albums nor available in any form that I know of. But I highly recommend sifting through Amazon.com's MP3 collection of Buddy Miller (or Buddy and Julie Miller) songs and showing this renegade Nashville couple some luv.