My Seamonkeys are Married

I can tell because the female seamonkeys publicly undermine the little male seamonkeys at social events.

Seamonkeys are brine shrimp and when they come of age, the males hold on to the females and they swim together for a couple of days. The females have two wads at the base of the tail that are egg sacks. The eggs are pink in color and eventually drop off.

Sadly, as soon as the eggs are laid other adult seamonkeys devour the eggs. It’s damned tough being a brine shrimp.

My kids saw the Seamonkeys swimming together and asked, “What are they doing, daddy?”
I said, “When they swim together like that it means they got married.”

Watching Miss Guided

There’s this new show on ABC called “MISS GUIDED” and you should watch it because it’s funny, cute and tells the true stories of what we all suspected were going on in the High School teacher’s lounge.

The other reason you should watch is to see my friend Kristoffer Polaha play a lead character named “Tim”…I can’t tell if he’s oblivious or a scoundrel or just an oblivious scoundrel but it’s funny. It’s on tonight at 8PM up against Survivor so your viewership will help a good show look even better.

MISS GUIDED!

I Ran 8 Miles Today

Don’t be too impressed, now my legs don’t work. I took a shower and laid down on my bed. Did I say that right? I never know if it’s lain, layed, lie, lay because I couldn’t think of a moment in my life where I ever said, “I lay down on my bed.”

Anyways, EIGHT MILES! What did you do today besides eat junk and sit at a computer reading my blog?

From Mom, With Love

Mom and Dad came in town and are staying on the fold-out couch for one week. I love when they visit because Mom just picks up her job where she left off 24 years ago. Things around the house are magically cleaned, food is cooked, new foods just appear on the shelf–and it’s GOOD food.

Mom sat next to me at dinner last night and I didn’t even think about putting my arm on her arm during the whole meal. My family is very affectionate so putting an arm around mom or dad is normal.

After dinner the dishes were magically cleared without my help. I went into the other room and came back to the dishes being finished. Not finished and drying on the counter–they were finished and put away.

Holding my eleven month old son, Johnny and mom walked up to us. Mom put her arm around us and didn’t kiss Johnny, she kissed me. “He looks just like you did at his age.” Then it hit me, when mom came up and put her arm around me, she was thinking of me as her little baby. My son triggered a 41 year old memory in Mom’s mind when she held me in her arms while cooking in the kitchen, no doubt filled with cigarette smoke.

My kids are raised in world where food has no soul. We aren’t allowed to put cake or sugary snacks in their lunch because it might be offensive to other kids or whatever to their classmates at the Catholic pre-school they attend. We can’t put peanut butter on their sandwiches because two kids in the whole school are allergic.

My poor kids have to eat shitty cereal from Whole Foods. The cereal they eat is called PANDA PUFFS which is low in sugar, made from crops without genetically tweaked corn and every box comes with a preachy message about man clearing rain-forests. Indoctrination complete. When I was a kid a cereal box called PANDA PUFFS was probably made with bits of real panda.

Imagine my shock when I opened the cupboard and found a box of Zingers. DOLLY MADISON ZINGERS! What the hell happened? Did Jesus return and take us to heaven? I checked the ingredients and there was no hemp involved so it couldn’t be some piece-of-shit Whole Foods knock-off. This was for real…ZINGERS! There were some Ho-Hos in the box too so this had to be my parent’s box of travel snacks. Mom brought some love in a box! She knows what makes my heart and soul tic. Mom loves me. And what about my Beloved wife? How can she love anyone she makes eat Panda Puffs? I’m calling Child Protective Services and have her thrown into goody-goody parent jail.

When I was in high school I used to eat a bowl of Captain Crunch as a snack. Not just Captain Crunch but I’d put a piece of cake on top. If there was no cake I would cover it in Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I regularly put a scoop of ice cream on my Apple Jacks and I mean I did that every day. We were raised on Honey Smacks when they were called SUGAR Smacks. Frosted Flakes used to be called SUGAR Frosted Flakes because moms used to know that if you love your kids you’ll smother them in sugar.

My kids love when I make oatmeal because I put a heaping spoonful of brown sugar on their bowl. Mom just sprinkles a pinch of brown sugar. That’s empirical proof that I love them more.

Raimi! Paramount! MONSTER ZOO!

…because Sam Raimi set up the movie deal at Paramount! :
Hollywood Reporter article

Paramount Pictures has preemptively picked up the rights to “Monster Zoo,” an upcoming graphic novel from Doug TenNapel, for a live-action adaptation that will be produced by Sam Raimi and Josh Donen via their Buckaroo Entertainment banner and Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein.

And this from Aint It Cool News

And what, you ask, is MONSTER ZOO? Well, it’s the latest graphic novel from Doug TenNapel, whose work I’ve been quite vocal about over the last few years. Doug’s sold projects to New Regency/Fox (CREATURE TECH) and Universal (TOMMYSAURUS REX), but the idea of Sam Raimi getting involved in this one is verrrrry exciting.

Raimi’s movie A Simple Plan is among my favorite all-time films. It’s nice to be in business with people who love telling stories…about creatures, comics and underdogs.

Pre-order my book Monster Zoo here from AMAZON!

I Have a Fear of You Seeing Me In MY Underwear

There’s something bad in me where if you tell me I can’t do something I’m driven to do it. Some call that being a prick, I’ve always called it being “a natural enemy”…to everyone. It’s the pressure I feel not to make racist jokes, to shop at Whole Foods, to text message. I resent this pressure but what I hate the most is that it has no author. There is no person I can smack in the face for trying to get me to shop at Whole Foods and re-use my shopping bags. It’s just a general everyone-ness to the pressure so it makes me generally resent my entire culture.

That character defect is a cousin to my other hang-up, a desire to not be seen in my underwear. Perhaps it’s a fear of vulnerability, perhaps it’s self awareness that a 6′8″, 186 pound, 42-year-old who hasn’t seen the sun in four years and is covered in moles, freckles and scars from about 30 skin cancer operations shouldn’t be seen by ANYONE. But this isn’t the character defect…the real hang-up is that I feel fake for covering up anything. I think I have some form of Tourette’s Syndrome where if I think a lady is acting like a bitch that I have to call her a bitch.

A combination of these character-defects can quickly escalate into illegal behavior when I have a fear of being seen in my underwear but feel like I’m telling a lie by wearing a suit outside and sense that the culture authorities are pressuring me to remain dressed. I could be streaking in no time, and in my corner of Glendale there appears to be a law against being a shirtless man in public who is not covered in thick, black, back-hair.

When I make new friends, one of the first things I have to tell the guy is that I have a jacked up sense of personal space. The little light in their eyes always dims in that moment as they realize this could very well be a friendship with one of those guys who runs through the neighborhood in his underwear. I’m a dangerous friend. One of my pals reminded me the other day about how scared he was to move his family to New York a few years ago…I guess he brought it up to me back then and I was his only friend who said, “New York? It’s a dump.”

He remembered that comment I made in passing and I could tell when he brought it up that my opinion of New York really stuck in his mind. I guess if I had one of those cultural filters I would have curtailed my opinion of New York and said something less offensive like, “They stack people up like diseased rats.” I’m trying to work on my tact, so maybe I’ll get there some day. But New York. What a dump.

Back to my fears. I have this dream where I’m sleeping in my briefs and these men in suits pull me out of bed, drag me downstairs, take me outside and hand-cuff me to a tree in my front yard. The tree is thin enough to where I can’t hide behind it and all of the cars and pedestrians passing my house can see me in my underwear. I don’t think it’s entirely abnormal to not want to be seen in public in one’s underwear. We’re average in that sense.

I know some women who wear thong underwear and want all of us to know they’re wearing thong underwear by the jeans they choose to wrap around that thong underwear. But they’re still wearing jeans over the thong. They too, fear being seen in their underwear, they just don’t fear exposure of the sequined turquoise strap. They’re brave cowards. Screw you, poser, try being 6′8″ and going to a public swimming pool. My family went to a water park in Iowa and with the stares I got you’d think I was the Alien Queen going down a water-slide.

I Jogged 6 Miles Today

I don’t know why but the sweat pouring over my eyeballs burned the bags under my eyes while jogging today. I ran the first four miles and felt really good, so I figured it was a convenient time to expand my recent goals to go farther, though I could never do another four miles. I went for two more miles.

So now that I can do 6 miles! Now instead of doing 2 miles a day I’ll up my minimum to 4 miles a day.

Jogging has become an external symbol for an internal change I’ve been going through. Some call it a mid-life crisis. Some blame it on me quitting smoking. It’s important that I keep up these interlocking disciplines; go to bed at 10pm, no smoking, cut back on alcohol, exercise, go easy on the sweets and carbohydrates and seek my wife and my God.

I don’t know how these things are tied together but it was never enough to just try to quit smoking by itself. I’ve pursued God for most of my life but nothing like this. Now I feel supercharged, jogging for miles when I couldn’t get out of bed last year. It’s not about getting healthy either, I care as much about my health as I did last year when I smoked, drank and ate a fourth fast food meal most days.

This year, the mental has met the physical. There’s a fist-fight going on inside me and once I decided to jog, that was it–I knew I had the strength to quit smoking. Once I quit smoking I knew I had the power to fall on my face before God. I knew I could make my marriage better than it’s been in seventeen years. I knew I could do the dishes.

External ritual has become more important than ever. I’ve always found Communion my favorite all-time ritual. I can’t imagine more meaning, importance and restoration coming from simple grape juice and crackers. I think long ago, Christ knew he was dealing with a generally forgetful, stupid church so He commanded us to take communion saying, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

My four year old son, Edward, was named after every Ed in my life. The first being my father, once my greatest enemy, now my best friend. My father’s father is named Ed and is still a black-sheep of the family. So my son also has the name of my father’s enemy. My best friend’s name is Edward Schofield. He is one of the greatest men I know and is closer than a brother. So calling my son “Edward” is dense with meaning, a promise of greatness and a warning against tragedy all in one.

Anyways, I took my son to his Catholic Preschool he attends (no, we aren’t Catholic) and he showed me how he usually prays with his mom in the chapel before attending class. I asked him, “I don’t know how you and mom pray. Can you show me what you do?”

Edward grabbed my hand and ran me around the side of a sanctuary where we walked into an empty gothic room. He pointed to a little cup mounted to the wall, “That’s where they keep the holy water.” I don’t know if I did the ritual correctly and I hope I’m not alerting the mechanizations of the Holy Catholic church as I write this, but I lifted Edward so he could dunk his fingers into the water. Then I put in my fingers.

Edward did something weird with his hands…I think he was trying to cross himself but kind of mangled the order of things. I did some reading about crossing oneself a few years ago so I did my best by standing behind him and holding Ed’s and putting it up on his forehead, “This is because Christ is in our mind and because he was up on the cross.” Then I moved his fingers down over his chest, “This is because Christ is in our heart and because he went down into the grave.” Then we moved his fingers to his left shoulder, “He rose from the grave.” Then we ended by tapping his right shoulder, “Then the Holy Spirit came to us.”

We proceed up the middle aisle of the dark sanctuary, tiny, stained-glass windows and a few lit candles light the way to the front row. Edward kneels, closes his eyes and folds his hands so I did the same. Then silence.

My son doesn’t like to pray. My family says grace before every meal and everyone takes a turn, but not Ed. At night, we pray with all of the kids before they go to bed and Ed doesn’t close his eyes and generally doesn’t care what I say during prayers. He’s so obsessed with trains that if I pray for trains he’ll listen, but he’s not praying, he’s making sure I say the parts of the train correctly: “God we pray for the boiler, the sand dome, the cattle-pusher on the trains of the world.”

So I was taken aback when Edward prayed in the sanctuary today, “God, thank you for this day.” I was quick to pray along, “Yes God, you made the day and you did a good job of it!”

We offered up a 30 second prayer and Edward didn’t once mention trains in his prayer. I think it’s because of the Catholic-ness of the sanctuary that helped my son connect with God. We eat dinner all the time at the table and sleep all the time in bed, so it’s not a place we go specifically to pray. But we only go to this sanctuary to pray. Dipping fingers into holy water and crossing ourselves are also physical, external rituals that help the human mind grasp an internal work.

I jogged 6 miles today.

Spammers Are All Out of Ideas

I just got a spam from a made up name with a subject that reads “Hot repl1ca w4tches from 2008″. I don’t want to break the heart of this poor spammer but if I wanted a Rolex knock-off wouldn’t I have ordered one by now? I’m trying to meditate on every email I get about fake watches and understand what’s going through the sender’s mind.

“He’s gotten 18 emails a day offering fake watches but after four years of deleting them every day, today he’s gonna buy one!“

If that’s what you’re thinking Mr. Korean counterfeiter you just tipped your hand about why your country only just got flushing toilets six months ago. There’s a reason why I had steak for dinner tonight and you ate roots– no wait, you stood in line at the commie market to get your government subsidized roots. When I visited Korea I would have adopted one of your children out but I didn’t have a loaf of bread on me to pay for it.

There’s a lot of spamming that I understand. Men are weak animals so you might be able to tempt a doughy, desperate man into buying discount Viagra. Because if there’s one thing we men want to scrimp on it’s third world pharmaceuticals that mess with our erections. Yes, some men want Viagra. I get that. Hell, some men might still be stuck in the 70s and need a penis-enlargement pill. But why, why, WHY?! would anyone buy a knock off watch from a Russian spammer?

If I did want to buy one of these watches I’d go downtown like normal people. The watch is sitting there on the guy’s hairy arm–they come pre-warmed! I don’t want to unscramble his words to understand what he means by “repl1ca of w4tches”. And yes, I’m too lazy to add “w4tches” to my junk-mail filter after four years of w4tch offers so shame on me.

Spammers, I have some news for you. As you read this in your malaria-ridden hut just trust me, there are more than four things to sell on the internet. You’ve played out every junk-mail filter combination of numbers and letters on those four products. You could actually send out offers to legit products. Why not print 1000 novels of “Bridges of Madison County” and send out a spam offer? You could expand your demographic to women. Ever think of selling venus fly-traps? When I was a kid I’d buy at least one of those a year and it would die within weeks. Built in obsolescence. Money in your hut. You could give your kids a day off at the salt mines and take them to Disneyland. Maybe buy them some meat to eat.

Calvin vs. Arminius

In the Calvinist vs. Arminianist debate I lean toward Arminianism. For those of you unfamiliar with this age old debate I would simplify the debate as those who believe God first elects a man then chooses Christ (Calvinist) vs. those who believe man chooses Christ then God elects him.

I’m not going to get into this debate, especially when most people on both sides haven’t read any John Calvin or Jacobus Arminius and inherit the straw men of our side’s long held positions. Smart guys line up on both sides of the argument from Calvinists like Greg Bahnsen, Francis Schaeffer and Greg Koukl to Arminianists like C.S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig and Wesley.

The main reason that I reject Calvinism is that I believe that God wants all to come to be saved:

2 Peter 3: “God is not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance.”

If God doesn’t want any perish yet he only elects some before the foundations of the earth then he clearly didn’t want all to come to repentance. Most Calvinists give me pretty bad answers like “It’s a mystery.”

I didn’t even want to write about that…only that I’ve also been studying a similar divide between atheists. There is a camp that believes free will is just an illusion. We’re particles in motion and they operate in a strict cause-and-effect world. There is no mind, only the illusion of a conscious soul that is actually just an array of synapses firing.

In the other atheistic camp are those who might think quantum particles behave in a non-deterministic fashion. Both camps have their brilliant thinkers erecting straw men and slamming the other side, much like those of use who believe in God.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s something really deep within the mind of man that is both free and not free. That is expresses itself in these two sides of philosophy be you an atheist or a Christian.

Anyways, if you didn’t like this and you believe in some form of determinism I hope you don’t blame me for the contents of this post. This brings me to the most offensive idea to us not having true free will and that’s responsibility.

A man’s responsibility by definition is measured by his ability to perform within a normal expectation. My 6 year old is held to a higher level of responsibility than my infant because she can grasp the moral implications of her actions. Yet within the Calvinist/Materialist Determinist camps we have people incapable of doing anything but bad things. To the Calvinist, a man cannot choose to be saved by Christ until he is first elected by God (an many are not elected). Can a moral agent be blamed for rejecting Christ when he can do nothing else?

The younger my children are, the less they are held into account for their behavior. I don’t scold the 10 month old for pooping his diaper but if my 6 year old messed her pants we’d have a little talk about appropriate potty behavior…as one gains abilities, one is held to a higher standard of responsibility. Or, “to whom much is given much can be expected.” Where a person’s ability is reduced, they have less duty, less responsibility for their actions.

A man so evil that he has no ability to act one way or another should not be held responsible for actions he could not make. No free will = no responsibility. For the atheist and the Christian. They are blameless, like kids in diapers.