I love language, and most especially, the ambiguity and elasticity of thought symbols constructed of the randomly assigned collection of lines and squiggles we call alphabets. Language is a metaphor for The Captain: I love myself; I’m ambiguous and elastic in my thinking, especially when it comes to reality; and I am constructed of randomly assigned genes, which, when depicted on paper by scientists, look a lot like a bunch of lines and squiggles. I was recently reminded of this when I arrived home from work one day and went to greet my teenage daughter with a kiss and a hug. “Not now, I’m doing my homework!” Licking my wounds, I retreated, scribbling notes about the encounter to use for my blog. There was a time, not that long ago, when I would have been greeted with an enthusiastic “Hi Daddy!” to go along with a great big hug and kiss. What changed? Right then and there the perfect metaphor for this moment fell out of the sky and smacked me in my brain: homework.
Home and Work. Use these words separately and you have two separate thoughts. As I toil at work for a lifeless Insurance company, I long for quittin’ time, when I get to go home and relax after a full day of work. But as I was reminded by my encounter with my daughter, the world is set upon its head for children if you combine them to create a new word: homework, the bane of all students. After a hard day of texting and learning, students must come home and do their homework. All the unpleasant memories came rushing back like flashbacks after a blackout. Homework sucks the life and happiness right out of you.
I remember the rush of adrenalin when my 7th grade teacher taught us about child labor laws. I went straight home and told my parents that child labor laws prohibit them from making me do my homework, and ran up the street to share my revelation with my friends, who all joined me in the streets for a celebratory game of kickball! But the air was kicked out of me the very next day when I was called into the Principal’s office for a meeting with my parents and history teacher, who deflated me by explaining that child labor laws do not, in fact, apply to public schools. But I learned a valuable lesson that day. Children have no rights and adults are lying bastards.
So all these years later, now (debatably) an adult, as I sat there feeling sorry for myself, I experienced something strange and new. I believe the word for it is empathy. It wasn’t me (though, admittedly, sometimes it is); the homework ate my daughter! I realize that one day, my daughter will be regurgitated to me and the pleasant greetings will return. Armed with this new feeling and a new word, I walked gently up to my daughter, braced myself, and gave her a great big hug…and I think I caught a glimpse of the tiniest of smiles.
Believe The Captain when he says: Beware when home and work hook up.
Yours drumming up a game of adult kickball – because I can!
The Captain
You can't blame it on this guy!
There has been a great deal of debate recently about God’s political preferences. I find these all very amusing. The Captain is here to set the record straight. God does not speak directly to you, or your priest or minister or imam, or your dog or hamster, and he certainly doesn’t speak to me; heck, even my mother doesn’t speak directly to me (and it took years for me to accomplish that one!). Since God doesn’t speak to me, how, you might ask, could I possibly make such a confident assertion? Fair question. The answer is elementary – deduction, that is. Here’s what I have deduced.
· Christine O’Donnell has become the poster child for politicians who claim that the almighty, like some down-on-his-luck street puppeteer who fell off the wagon, pulls the strings of her campaign for one of the most powerful political positions in the world – US Senator. You may assume that I am mocking this wiccan exile, and you’d be correct, but I love Christine O’Donnell. She is the perfect cure for writer’s block. So even though her conviction that God speaks to her seems genuine enough, how can I be so sure she’s deluded? Well, would a divine being deign to take time out of her busy day to try and explain the subtleties of healthcare, foreign policy, or the US tax code to such a ditzy, unemployed, pagan goddess who fibs on her resume? Based on her public statements, it’s obvious that these discussions have never taken place and that the divine voice she claims to hear is but a phantom of her un-medicated mind.
· The Scandal of Boredom. You’ll love this one because I just made it up. It is utterly scandalous to even imagine a divine being with first hand knowledge of the mysteries of the universe having the slightest interest in having a chat with such a lying, thieving,violent creation. Yeah, maybe God made us, but when a human produces a pile of crap that ends up in a swimming pool, what does he do? He runs away as fast as he can and denies he had anything to do with it; or at the very least, sticks around to watch from a safe distance the mayhem he created. There’s just no way an omnipotent, omniscient being wants to shoot the breeze with us. She’d be bored out of her mind – she already knows what we’re going to say to her and her surpassing knowledge means her musings have no relation to even the most brilliant human thoughts. There really is nothing analogous in the world. The closest thing I can think of is Albert Einstein trying to explain his Special Theory of Relativity to Sarah Palin…which gives me an idea. I think I’ll contact Palin’s press secretary to set up a national debate on science versus religion; I’ll hire an Einstein impersonator to come out on stage at the last second to take up the cause for science– it will be fun to see how long Mama Dizzy debates the imposter before figuring out that the real Einstein’s been dead since 1955. 2-1 she debates the full hour. But I digress…
· Finally, I think that when all is said and done, I must believe that God doesn’t speak directly to the world. Simply take a look at some of the notable examples from recent history of individuals with whom God has purportedly chosen to converse: Joseph Smith,Jr., who forbade his followers from consuming liquor (no benevolent deity would think of doing such a thing), the “reverend” Jim Jones, who single-handedly transformed Kool Aid from a popular kids drink into a national punch line (pun intended), or David Berkowitz aka Son of Sam, who randomly killed innocent people on orders from God via his neighbor's demon dog. The only conclusion one can reach is that God is one fucked up individual, and I’m not willing to accept that. Why God created a world that includes Christine O’Donnell is beyond my spiritual and intellectual scope. But I am quite sure that she gave me the capacity to laugh at silly people and the world is full of them, present company included. To that I say “Thank God!”
Believe The Captain when he asks: What if God was a mime?
Yours doing the moonwalk,
The Captain
You can't blame it on this guy!
