My New Favorite Basketball Player (And My New Least Favorite Football Player)

As I'm sure you heard, a guy named Jason Collins became the first active player in a major American sport to come out as gay. He is now my favorite basketball player. I don't follow basketball at all, so it's not like he knocked anyone out of the top spot, but regardless, I'll be rooting for him from now on.

I knew that eventually this would happen, but I didn't think the response would be so overwhelmingly positive. President Obama, NBA commissioner David Stern, and almost everyone else immediately lined up to support Collins. There seems to have been a sea change in gay issues since the 2012 election, and it really is heartwarming to see. And in a more general sense, it's quite encouraging to see that basic human compassion (and reason) can eventually overcome firmly entrenched fears and biases. (And, incidentally, it's also a counterpoint to anyone who says that elections don't matter.)

I also discovered that I had a least favorite football player, some guy named Alphonso Smith. (I don't follow football either.) He apparently had some hateful tweets about Collins that he later deleted. Then he tweeted "it's a shame I have to apologize for my TRUE feelings."

I have a different view on a guy named Mike Wallace, also a football player who I've never heard of. (At first I thought they were talking about the legendary anchor of "60 Minutes." Then I remembered that he's dead. Seriously, living Mike Wallace, why didn't you go by "Michael"? Now I have to call you "Living Mike Wallace.") Living Mike Wallace also apparently had a bunch of hateful tweets, but then said "never said anything was right or wrong I just said I don't understand!! Deeply sorry for anyone that I offended."

I'm not particularly happy with Living Mike Wallace right now, but I much prefer his attitude. If he's truly sorry, and truly open to trying to understand, then he should be given every opportunity to do so. Hate the sin but love the sinner, as Christians might say. Anyone can change, and anyone can be forgiven if they do change.

Alphonso Smith's response, though, triggers one of my biggest pet peeves. It drives me up the wall when people say horrible things and then, when verbally attacked for it, act like they're the victims. Getting angry responses for something you say does not make you a victim. It only makes you someone who disagrees with other people. Much like everyone in the history of the human race.

Playing the victim card just because someone contradicted you is just such an obvious defense mechanism, one that allows you to delude yourself into thinking that the sting you felt from the public disdain must be the world's fault, not yours. It's the coward's way out. It gets you off the hook for self-examination, which should be at least one part of anyone's reaction to overwhelming disagreement.

And moreover, it is a horrible injustice to everyone who was ever truly victimized. There are still people in the world who are jailed and tortured for speaking their minds. Getting a few hate tweets isn't even in the same ballpark.

The worst is when people in this situation say something like "Whatever happened to free speech?" I think you misunderstand the concept. You see, free speech goes both ways. You're free to say whatever you like. And I am free to tell you that you're a complete asshole for saying it.

Free speech is not consequence-free speech. Free speech only means you can't be put in jail or be tortured for what you say. But you can be hated, shouted at, ostracized, fined, and even fired for what you say. Your words tell people who you are, and that means words have consequences. Not of the legal variety, granted, but of every other variety imaginable.

And then there's Smith's implication that your TRUE feelings somehow should never be something you have to apologize for. What? When did this happen? So you should only have to apologize for PRETEND feelings?

Your TRUE feelings can still be WRONG and HURTFUL TO OTHERS. People once had TRUE feelings that slavery should be legal. People once had TRUE feelings that witches should be burned. TRUE feelings are not necessarily RIGHT feelings.

It's true -- sometimes your true feelings are wrong. We've all felt things that we had to keep in check because they were wrong and needed to be ignored. I've felt murderous impulses over some jerk tailgating me on the highway. I've felt anxiety at being among a large group of people of a different race. Those were my true feelings, and they were wrong.

Being an adult means learning which feelings you should express openly and which ones you shouldn't. Granted, sometimes it's hard to know which is which. Fair enough. We all make mistakes -- but you have to be at least open to the idea that you may have made a mistake. That's the only way to ever learn anything.

To be clear, I think it's important to express yourself. But it's more complicated that that. Yes, you can express your feelings, but then you have to take responsibility for those expressions. If those expressions offend people, then you have to deal with that like a grown-up. Maybe those people are wrong to be offended. Maybe those people are right. You can engage them further about it to find out. What you can't do is cry foul and pretend you're being victimized just because someone got offended.

While criticism is necessary, I also don't want to see Alphonso Smith and others like him condemned to lives of eternal public hatred because of what they say. I don't think that solves anything -- instead, it just stiffens their opposition and makes progress more difficult. I want to see people like this gently convinced that gay people are no threat. That takes true dialogue, beyond just the venting of spleens that tends to pass for argument.

But for this to happen, Smith and his ilk are going to have to meet us halfway. You have to at least be open to the idea that your feelings may not be right. I promise to do the same. Without that, nothing can ever get better.

Why I Hate Computers, in a Nutshell

I need to know what version of Internet Explorer I'm using. So I search for "what version of IE am I using?" Bing leads me to this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/which-version-am-i-using#ie=ie-9

It gives instructions on how to find out what version you're using: Go to Tools and then About Internet Explorer. I went to Tools and then I looked everywhere for something that says "About Internet Explorer." I couldn't find anything.

Then I noticed at the top of that page, it says these are the instructions for Internet Explorer 9. Other versions require different instructions -- for IE 10, I'm supposed to go to Settings and then About. OK, so apparently I was supposed to know what version I was using so that I could get the right instructions to find out what version I'm using. This is moronic.

Why make this different for each version? If there's one thing that should always be the same for each version, it's the method of finding the name of the version in the first place. I'm betting it worked perfectly fine to go to Tools and then About Internet Explorer. Has anyone's lives been enriched by changing that to Settings and then About? Or has it just wasted a whole lot of people's time learning the new location?

I understand that software has to keep improving. But most often, updates add nothing new for me except the irritation of having to relearn everything. It often seems like software companies just change stuff for the sake of changing it, so they can justify selling new updates.

Maybe there are some behind-the-scenes things in each update that make it run faster or whatever. Fine, sounds great. But be very sure that the changes to the interface are worth the trouble.

Grumpy old man rant complete.

I Am Royalty

I have a child. And the child's name of course reflects her status as a member of the English royal family. She was christened "Eleanor I, by the Grace of God, Queen of England and France, Defender of the Faith, Lady of Ireland and the Church of England in Earth Supreme Head, Dykhuizen." Amongst playmates she may affectionately be referred to as "E.I.G.G.Q.E.F.D.F.L.I.C.E.E.S.H." She may not be referred to with the vulgar appellation "Ellie." Such calumny shall be considered an affront against God's representative upon Earth, and justice shall swiftly be brought upon the guilty party.

The nature of said punishment will depend upon the progress of my newly engaged effort to restore Eleanor to the throne as the rightful heir to Henry III (1207-1272). You see, I confirmed through Ancestry.com long ago that I am the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King Henry III. It's true. I am one of only ten million or so people to be able to make such a claim.

My task is then simple: Gather an army, hie myself to England, and kill everyone with a better claim to the throne. While such a task may have appeared Herculean in the days of my vaunted forefather, advances in modern weaponry make this a relatively easy task. For too long, the House of Minnesota has been ignored in affairs of state! Once more unto the breach, my good men (and women, because my marauding horde is an Equal Opportunity Employer)!

However, in my extensive studies of my illustrious ancestors (I read two books), I must say I've gained new appreciation for democracy. We may occasionally elect an idiot, but hell, at least we don't have wars to decide it. And even George W. Bush looks like a Rhodes scholar compared to some of England's past rulers. To wit:

Henry VI, who ruled England for about half of the 1400s, was pretty clearly what we would call nowadays "developmentally disabled." He was the immediate successor to Henry V, who was the one played by Kenneth Branagh and says "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ... come upon this field of glory to kick ass and drink beer, and we're all out of beer ... we must protect this hoooouuuse!" Then he went on to win the Battle of Agincourt, defeating Mothra in ten rounds. I think that was how it went, anyway. I was reading all this as I was watching late-night TV, so I'm not sure I got it all right.

Point is, his son Henry VI had quite a legacy to live up to. And boy, did he ever not. He was not only born into the Hundred Years' War against France; he was also heir to the Wars of the Roses, in which different branches of the royal family, those of York and Lancaster, killed each other regularly and traded the throne back and forth. Meanwhile, Henry VI was terrified by war, which is a problem when you're the commander-in-chief of two of them. 

He was reportedly very meek and gentle, in a way that would be cute if he were a greeter at Wal-Mart, but extremely dangerous for someone trying to lead England. He would blush whenever anyone mentioned sex and sincerely believed his son was created by the Holy Spirit. His solution to the Wars of the Roses was to stage what he called a "loveday," in which members of the York and Lancaster clans would all have a public ceremony together. Mind you, these were people who killed each other's children, a lot. Their beefs are not likely to be smoothed over by a public smooch-fest. Henry thought they would.

The end result of Henry VI's incompetence was that England lost all the gains in France made by Henry V, with Joan of Arc being the symbol of the reconquest. Meanwhile, for the most part, the Wars of the Roses only killed of the members of the nobility, leaving peasants and middle-class folks out of it -- that is, until King Henry's forces looted and pillaged a bunch of towns of Southern England. 

Imagine that for a second -- imagine if the Republicans and Democrats were killing each other over who would be in power. I think our first reaction would be "Yeah! Cool! Is it on TV?" But then imagine if the Republicans, under their leader George W. Bush, decided to just raze and burn Iowa for no good reason. I think even Fox News would have to turn against them then.

King Henry VI came along for all this countryside brutality, but was likely oblivious, allegedly laughing and singing in his private camp during the carnage. The people of London reacted to the spree by literally shutting the door on Henry and the Lancastrians (they had real doors to cities then, with real keys -- hence the term "the key to the city") and declaring a new king, Edward IV.

Normally things weren't as bad as all this -- normally it would just take one civil war to figure out who the next leader would be. Just a few hundred lives lost over a year or two, something like that. In general, though, we see the danger of letting someone be king just because his father was. Well, we see it, but the English didn't. They kept on with the tradition, because they didn't know anything else.

So imagine what a huge step forward it was to try democracy instead. These days, it's old hat, but then democracy was revolutionary in a way that is hard for us to fathom. It was radical. It was a intellectual, long-shot idea based on cutting-edge theory that turned out to be extremely right.

So that's what I hope we all celebrate when we celebrate America: radical solutions to longstanding problems, solutions based on the latest in intellectual thought. That's our true legacy, that willingness to try something that's very new and is based on the creativity of the most probing minds. Innovation, in business-speak. Let's try to keep that in mind before we hate on Obama and the Democrats for trying an innovative solution on health care, or before we reflexively crap on other new ideas in immigration, energy policy, etc. The country is seeming a little afraid of change lately, and fear of change is not what we were founded on.

My Question for White People

White friends, I have a question for you. What is it with you guys and the electric guitar? I don't get it.

Well, that's not fair -- sometimes I do get it. I've always loved Jimi Hendrix. The White Stripes can often be amazing. I love a lot of Beatles. But even with the Beatles, I prefer their later albums, when they brought in more than than just electric guitars and drums.

I get bored with most rock, which seems overly fixated on guitars. Oh, I'm sure you can come up with a few dyed-in-the-wool rock bands that also feature a keyboard or a flute or a sousaphone or whatever. But for the most part, those are novelties -- most music classified as rock is heavy on the guitars and light on everything else.

Granted, if you're going to pick one instrument, the electric guitar is a good choice, no doubt. It can do an amazing amount of things. I'll go as far as to say it's the best instrument in the history of popular music.

My point is that it's crazy to pick just one instrument. The possibilities for exciting new sounds expand exponentially if you have a bunch of different instruments working together. Every other musical genre has been pretty liberal about which instruments get to join the party. Jazz was open to any kind of wind instrument, and then electric guitars and whatever else. Hip-hop has been open to every instrument plus every conceivable sound that can be recorded and looped into a beat. It's only rock that is so conservative: guitars and drums. Eventually even great recipes get repetitive.

Nervous Nellie rock fans have been proclaiming "rock is dead" probably every year since its creation, usually because they are too old to comprehend the new sound. But nowadays they might be right. And I think it's rock's own fault, for boxing itself in as far as instrumentation.

I saw an article on the A.V. Club a while back saying that in 2012, only one album of the Top 50 best-selling albums of the year was a rock album, one by Everclear. You can be sniffy about the list of most popular albums as representing lowest common denominator and just music for 12-year-olds and etc., but you know what, those 12-year-olds eventually grow up. They might develop more sophisticated tastes and move from Drake to the Roots or Blackalicious or what have you. They're not likely to move from Drake to Black Sabbath, methinks.

I like to think that Radiohead was the band that brought the world around on this. They were an extremely good guitars-and-drums rock band, and then all of a sudden they released "OK Computer." The title says it all -- they acknowledged that computers can make some pretty terrific music, and then they went on to prove it. In my admittedly very amateur observation, it seems like music slowly followed their lead, and by now, only a few bands since even try to do much of interest with just guitars and drums.

I perhaps should have mentioned at the outset that I am a white man. It's true -- I'm not proud of that fact, but it's a burden I have to live with. But I am one whose CD collection is probably 90% made up of African-American artists, with the lion's share going to hip-hop. Public Enemy was the first music that I became truly fanatical for, and after them De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. (Other lifelong favorites include the Smiths, Radiohead and Beck. I didn't say that white people can't make good music. Just that they do so less often.)

I certainly didn't gain these predilections from my peers. Like most people who grew up in suburbia in the 1980s and 1990s, I've spent a lifetime among almost exclusively rock fans. I seemed to have similar tastes to theirs in most everything except when it came to music. When they would gush about whatever guitar-based band they loved, I usually felt like an outsider. Sometimes I got it, but more often I just didn't.

That's music, I suppose. It's so subjective that trying to describe why you like something, or moreover, trying to convince someone else to like something, is usually pointless. Occasionally you can learn enough about the context of some song or genre that you can develop a taste for it. More often, though, it just moves you or it doesn't.

So I guess the question I posed at the outset is a futile one. Maybe it's something you just can't figure out -- white people just love their electric guitars, and that's all there is to it. More likely, though, I think it's because you are all racists.

The Nerdiest Thing I've Done in a Long Time

As I asserted in a previous post, I'm a nerd, but not really of the card-carrying variety. I'm not into sci-fi or comic books at all. I've never been to any kind of "con." I tried playing Dungeons and Dragons once, but didn't like it. I have a lot of interests, but none that really dominates my life. And most are things like politics and history which are actually important to know -- maybe a bit nerdy, but in a constructive way.

My wife would tell you that my fascination with fantasy baseball makes me a true-blue nerd. And yes, I do spend a lot of time playing a type of fantasy baseball that is well beyond what you amateurs are into. This involves taking players throughout history and pitting them against each other in simulated games. You choose 1969 Harmon Killebrew and 1921 Babe Ruth and 1987 Keith Comstock and so on, a bunch of other people pick who they want, and then you assemble leagues and let the computer simulate entire seasons, game by game. Regular fantasy baseball was just the gateway -- this is the hard stuff.

But I can quit any time. I have it under control. What I'm really a nerd for is my wife and kid. I would definitely go to a Erin and Eleanor Dykhuizen convention if someone would just start one already. (Neither of my senators have responded to me about this idea.)

When I was a kid, though, I was definitely a nerd, for "Star Wars." The insane fervor that I would later bring to my pursuit of a girlfriend was then applied to ensconcing myself in the "Star Wars" universe.

I was especially fascinated by the "Star Wars" action figures. I lusted for every single figure, for every vehicle, for every playset or beast or napkin that George Lucas spit on or whatever else -- I had to have them all. I would spend blissful hours gazing trancelike at the backs of the toy packages, where they showed pictures of all the available figures. As I marveled at the folds in the Gamorrean Guard's tunic or the odd spots on Boba Fett's uniform, these cheap pieces of plastic became like holy relics, ones that allowed me to touch for a moment the world I desperately wanted to be in. When, several years after "Return if the Jedi" had been released, other kids moved on to G.I. Joe or He-Man or Transformers, I remained steadfastly loyal to "Star Wars," and would not dare betray it for a second to even glance at any of those other toys. (Although, in weaker moments, Transformers did tempt me ...)

By the time puberty hit, (and hit pretty goddamn hard), the "Star Wars" figures were mostly set aside in favor of baseball and hopeless dreams about girls. But most of my adolescence was spent alone in my room, so occasionally, for lack of anything better to do, I'd bring out the figures again. Usually in odd contexts, though.

For example, I fell in love with rap group Public Enemy in ninth grade. Nothing took my away from my sad and frustrating life better than sitting alone in my room and listening to "Fear of Black Planet" on my Walkman (never out loud -- I definitely didn't want my mom to hear it).

But sitting and listening to this music didn't leave much for my hands to do. And I wanted a sort of visual aspect to the experience. So I would make my Ewok figurines act out the raps. I believe Chuck D was played by Logray (Ewok Medicine Man) and Flavor Flav was played by Chief Chirpa. Later I realized that my Ewok stuffed animals were better able to make the many emphatic hand gestures I imagined that Chuck D and Flavor Flav were making, so they took over. I tell you, righteous indignation over racial injustice had never looked so adorable.

At one point in college I did bring a bunch of my "Star Wars" stuff into my dorm room, clearly because I felt I was doing too well with the ladies and needed to scare off a few. I even put my old Star Wars sheets on my bed. I thought I was being kitschy, but I'm sure I was regressing on some level. If a woman had ever been coaxed into that bed, I'm not sure she would have stayed.

The next time I revisited the "Star Wars" toys was after I got laid off from my first real job, about three years after college. I suddenly had a lot of time to kill, was in kind of a depressive state, and worst of all, I had some money to burn. eBay smelled an opportunity and pounced.

On eBay, I could get the figures and playsets I had never managed to get my hands on as a kid. I looked at that stuff online and longed to get that feeling back, that feeling of bliss and contentment and escape that I experienced when I gazed at those toys as a kid. Even if it didn't feel like that now that I was an adult, maybe I could at least achieve a pale imitation. That sounded better than what I was doing at the time, which was very little.

One night after a having a few too many beers, I was on eBay (stories that start this way never end well). I found a auction in which a guy was selling his whole collection, a massive set full of figures and playsets and even many things still in their packaging. Oh my God, I thought. This is how I can make a little extra money. I can buy collections, break them down into individual toys, sell those toys individually, and then ... millionaire.

I paid $3000 for this guy's entire collection. After it came to my apartment in two massive boxes, I had a grand old time sifting through it all, taking inventory, estimating the values, etc. I started by putting on eBay a few of the AT-STs (Imperial vehicles often colloquially known as "chicken walkers" that had a major role in the battle on Endor, though they were originally released as toys after "Empire Strikes Back," because the battle on Hoth had a very brief, almost gratuitous scene where ... I'm losing you, aren't I. Sorry. Back to the story.)

I watched my auctions with bated breath and ... did not get one bid. I tried a couple of other auctions and got the same result. What I neglected to investigate before launching this future Fortune 500 business of mine is that eBay is packed to the gills with this stuff. And often they're sold by licensed dealers that people can trust. I didn't stand a chance.

I did find a major dealer that I was interested in some of it. This guy lived in a McMansion on the coast of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin, and had a huge warehouse of old "Star Wars" stuff. I drove down there with a bunch of stuff still in its original packaging and got maybe $1500.

So I was still $1500 in the hole, with a bunch of toys I'd have a terrible time trying to unload. So much for my brilliant get-rich-slow scheme. I stuck it all in a closet.

Only recently did I get intrigued again. Now that we have a house, I would like to put this stuff on display. At this point, I'm happily married and I don't give a fiddler's fart what people think, so why not? These ugly little things with bizarrely shaped guns still carry a lot of nostalgia for me. For better or for worse, they're woven into my psyche -- I still have anxiety dreams about losing them.

So this is what I've done so far:

Yeah, baby. Jealous? That's almost all the figures from the original lines, released from 1977-1985. The gaps at the bottom are for the figures I don't own -- only 5 of the 95. Not all are complete with their guns and capes and what have you, but most are. I painstakingly wired them all into place, at my wife's recommendation, and even wired most of their guns into their hands. (Those goddamn little guns drive me to distraction -- they seem to be designed to disappear into carpets and get vacuumed up.)

The idea of this is to mimic that back of the toy package that I would gaze at so lovingly:

My creation arranges them in exactly the same order, with a few exceptions. You see, the "Return of the Jedi" and "Power of the Force" card backs would exclude the original versions of C3PO and R2D2 -- what you see in the above is "C3PO with removable limbs" and "R2D2 with lightsaber," whereas the original versions released in 1978 had ... and I'm losing you again. Sorry.

Anyway. I don't know what my point is with all this. I suppose it's just that when you get old and contented, you get to indulge in silly nostalgia, turning the things you loved as a kid into sacred relics. Then your kids can look at them politely, nod at your boring stories about them, and as soon as you die, they can throw them in the trash. Such is life. The end.

Translation Guide for My Two-Year-Old

My two-and-a-half year old daughter, Ellie, is the greatest person in the history of the world (in a tie with my wife, actually). Seriously, she makes your kids look like a bunch of chumps.

My main goal for life has always been to have a loving family. I've also wanted friends, and that worked out too. Occasionally I would half-heartedly pursue a specific career, but that never went well. So now I've settled for a job that I don't completely despise, doesn't make me work during weekends or evenings, and pays enough to support my family. My job sometimes gets me down, but not as often as you might think. I always knew that true fulfillment, for me at least, would be to have a wife and kids. And I turned out to be right. Ellie and my wife are a lifelong dream come true.

That said, my kid really needs to work on her language skills. Too often, she splits infinitives and ends sentences with prepositions. And let's not even get into her Latin -- how do you constantly mix up the accusative case with the ablative? It's very simple: The accusative is used for the direct object of a transitive verb! We say this phrase over and over and she just laughs. Just use the very simple mnemonic device: Terry Adams Initiates Unusual Fur Transportation, Despite Officious Orangutans Allowing Thirteen Valises! How hard is that?

We're constantly giving her poor grades on her chalk drawings and finger paintings, but she keeps just looking at the grades and going "D! Ha ha ha." I'm afraid a strict boarding school may be the only solution. 

Her pronunciations also leave something to be desired. If you find yourself engaged in conversation with her, you may have trouble understanding what she's saying. Here's a guide that may help:

"Cock": If Ellie says "Ellie has cock," don't be alarmed. She means "clock." She does not actually own a rooster.

"Fock": Again, don't be alarmed. She means "frog."

"Matits": For the third time, don't be alarmed. (Seriously, stop with the alarm already.) She means "Muppets." She might also say "Piggy Matits," meaning she needs a movie or TV show that includes Miss Piggy. This is so that we don't put in "Kermit's Swamp Years," which features no Miss Piggy, and is therefore useless to her.

"Strojo": You might think she is referring to famed Olympic runner Strorence Griffith Joyner (or perhaps former Mets third baseman Stroward Johnson), but she actually means "stroller."

"Sha Shank": The first time she said this, I thought she meant she wanted to see "Shawshank Redemption," the beloved story of men in prison. I then got confused and showed her "Oz" instead. She didn't seem to enjoy it.

It turns out she meant "Java Train," a coffeeshop/restaurant we live a block from that is the perfect place for us to live a block from, since it has an indoor play area, an outdoor play area, coffee, baked goods, ice cream, a full menu, gumball machines, beer, wine, gumball machines full of wine, an outdoor play area for baked goods, and everything else a family could possibly need. There should be places like this in every residential neighborhood.

"Ooo ooo aaa aaa": This is her monkey impression. It's pretty convincing -- you do feel like you're looking at a big silly monkey.

"Fuff fuff" (said very quietly): Her dog impression. She apparently thinks dogs are very soft-spoken and adorable. I don't feel the need to break the truth to her just yet.

"Pbbbbbbbttttt" (with upturned hand hear her mouth): Her elephant impression. The hand represents the trunk.

"Pbbbbbbbttttt" (shaking head back and forth): Her zebra impression. This may not be well-accepted as the sound zebras make, but she and I were at the Como Zoo and saw a zebra do exactly this. We were enthralled to have a sound for zebras. (True fact: Giraffes don't make any noise at all. No vocal chords. You'd think there would be room in that long neck somewhere. But no. Jerks.)

"Rarrrrr!": Her lion impression.

"Rarrrrr!": Her tiger impression.

"Rarrrrr!": Her dinosaur impression.

"Rarrrrr!": Her monster impression.

"My daddy!": She yells this repeatedly when I pick her up from day care, as she runs toward me for a big hug. I respond with "My Ellie! My Ellie!" I suppose that one was pretty easily interpretable. But I wanted to mention it anyway for some reason.

"La boo": This means "I love you." She says it specifically to make me tear up with joy. Really manipulative of her, frankly. Boarding school will fix that.

The Nerdiness Scale

Nerd culture is thriving like never before. There was a time when, if you were a nerd, you only had physics experiments or "Lord of the Rings" (the books) to keep you entertained. Now there are dozens of TV channels containing nothing but nerd-friendly content. It is truly a golden age for Nerdish-Americans.

With so much content, you need some organization, so that people can easily find what's most likely to suit them. I think each movie, TV show, book, etc. should come with a label that gives you its degree of nerdiness. There is a spectrum, you see, from 1 (not at all nerdy) to 10 (holy cow, your comic book collection is about to topple over and bury you alive).

Let's take an example. I think we can all agree that "Star Trek" is pretty nerdy. Indeed, it's a sort of standard-bearer for Nerd culture, a touchstone by which people of other social strata are first exposed to the rich diversity of nerdania. But is it nerdier than "Babylon 5"? Ha ha (snort) ha ha -- yeah right, and Captain Pike had no ill effects from delta ray radiation on that J-class training ship! Ha ha (snort) ha ha ... gasp ... oh dear ... I need my inhaler ...

Basically, "Star Trek" is less nerdy than "Babylon 5" because non-nerds can watch and enjoy "Star Trek." It has considerably more crossover appeal than other fields of nerdology. At the same time, nerds can indeed get extremely over-nerdulated about "Star Trek," as we all know. The immense strength of its Nerdic following has to keep its score pretty high.

That's basically how the scale works -- you have to look at the balance between crossover appeal and nerditorial fervor. With those two criteria in mind, "Star Trek" gets a 6 out of 10 on the Nerdiness Scale."Babylon 5" is easily a 9.

So here are some other judgements:

"Star Wars": 4. As with "Star Trek," you can get extremely nerdified over "Star Wars." But I submit that "Star Wars" has more crossover appeal than "Star Trek," and has a smaller Nerdic subculture. Of course, comparing the "Star Trek" nerdiverse to "Star Wars"'s is a bit like saying Jessica Simpson is dumber than Paris Hilton -- you're talking about the two titans of their field. But "Star Trek" was the groundbreaker, and still the champion.

Now if you start talking about the "Star Wars" sub-subculture, the books and graphic novels and Web sites and etc. that explore Greedo's relationship with his mother or Darth Maul's favorite breakfast cereal, well, then you're getting into primo nerditacularity, possibly a 9 or 10.

"Doctor Who": 8. That's the score in the States, that is. In Britain, it gets probably a 5. In the States, you have to be a pretty hard-core nerdist to watch "Doctor Who." I'm happy to say to say my particular nerdicacity stops at around a 6 or so, so I have never seen "Doctor Who."

"Doctor Who" has many factors pushing it in to top-flight, high-yield, weapons-grade, light sweet crude nerdilocity:

1. It's British. (Nerdites are often Anglophiles.)
2. It's on PBS. (related to no. 1)
3. It's sci-fi.
4. It's laughably cheap-looking sci-fi (as I am led to believe, anyway. I haven't seen it, remember? OK, once. But I only watched it because the Doctor's female hanger-on was real hot, and I was 13, and I would've watched an cat-strangling competition if a hot chick was involved.)

"Monty Python": 5. As with "Star Trek" and "Star Wars," there's plenty of crossover appeal here. And it's not sci-fi, which lowers its score considerably.

But it has never really reached the mainstream masses in the States the way the two Star empires have. "Monty Python" crosses over not to Joe Sixpack and Jane Peoplemagazinereader but to Professor Van Nostrand and Chuckles McSlappy (a.k.a. smarties and comedians). That pushes it a bit higher on the scale.

My wife put this one best. She says that post-pubescent unathletic boys tend to go apeshit for "Monty Python" (particularly "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," of course). That's usually a prime sign of Grade-A nerdiciousness. But then many of those boys grow up to be relative non-nerds, maybe 3s or 4s on the scale. And there isn't a huge "Monty Python" nerdastic subculture -- there's not much in the way of fan fiction or action figure trading or sexual fantasies about Carol Cleveland. So that knocks it back a few points. The middle is a good place for it.

"Dungeons and Dragons": 10. I'm sorry, but D&D is really the ne plus ultra of nerdturbation. There's really no aspect that crosses over to legitimate society. There was a TV show once, I think, and some terrible movies that no one but the Nerdeviks saw. Really, the only way you can participate in Dungeons and Dragons is to take out some 20-sided dice, call yourself Mokdur the Impaler, buy some pewter figures of half-orcs, and let the nerdescence burst out of you like a primal scream.

And the nerdalaxy for D&D is massive and fervent. There are entire stores devoted to it, stores that may even be in your neighborhood and you don't even know it. They usually pose as normal storefronts, but if you innocently waltz in seeking out a nice lathe or some liquid aspartame, you will get suspicious and unfriendly looks from the shady, shifty-eyed characters shuffling within. You quickly get the hint, depart quietly, and immediately after you close the door behind you, you get the distinct feeling that a rumbling, growling mob has suddenly re-emerged from the shadows to light upon each other with adamantine battleaxes and Spells of Necrotic Termination.

I admit that I have met a few D&D adherents. I would never, of course, reveal their identities. It is their choice whether or not to come out of the closet and undergo the inevitable repercussions from a world that refuses to accept their lifestyles. I can only support them and hope that some day, somewhere, a society will be born that will permit grown men to freely and openly attack each other's Breastplates of Kaltar with the Orbs of Negative Energy that they have spent their lives accumulating.

So that's the basic idea of the Nerdiness Scale. What other Nerdiflabiflubilations would you bring up, and where would you put them on the scale?

Not to My Taste

My sister tells her kids that when they don't like a particular food, don't say "it's bad." Instead, say "it's not to my taste." I think this is an approach that should be applied to lots of things in life. So many things really are a matter of personal taste.

Not everything, mind you. I wouldn't say that Hitler is "not to my taste." He isn't, to be clear, but I think a most people in the world would agree with that. So it's not really an apt way to express it. To say something's "not to my taste" means that it doesn't do anything for me personally, but I acknowledge that other people can like it, and there's nothing wrong with them doing so.

A better example for me would be Joss Whedon. He's not to my taste. I don't need to go into why. Other people who I know and love and respect (in fact, almost all of the people I know and love and respect) would disagree, as Joss Whedon is definitely to their taste. That's fine. It doesn't mean that Joss Whedon is definitively good, or definitively bad. It's just a matter of personal taste.

In fact, most things that don't really matter should be judged in this way. Entertainment is a good example. I used to get furious when everyone was gushing about some movie or TV show that I absolutely despised. I'd even write long, fervent diatribes in whatever blog I happened to be maintaining at the time, detailing all of the reasons why everyone else was wrong and I was right. I have moved past that now. Calm blue ocean. Calm blue ocean. Serenity now. Serenity now.

By the way, here are a few of things that used to drive me up several walls with manic fury: "Lost in Translation." "Braveheart." "Chasing Amy." Kevin Smith in general. "The Turd Locker" -- I'm sorry, I mean "The Hurt Locker." "House." Diablo Cody and everything Diablo Cody has ever touched. Joss Whedon, again, for good measure. Oh, and your stupid face.

Did my blind, white-hot, single-minded hatred of any of things get you riled up? Well, that's your problem. I am in serenity. I am at peace with what I hate. You are free to hate and love what you will. That has no effect on me. We are just different beings on this small planet, with no choice but to keep hurtling around the same sun until we both pass our atoms into the loam.

Maybe a better example is music. People tend to get especially haughty about music. I don't personally care for Creed or Nickleback or Justin Bieber or whatever act is the latest designated whipping-boy for hipsters. But I don't really care if other people like them. Who can it hurt? Does that really warrant me expending energy berating those who do find something meaningful in their music? I'm not sure I see the point.

Because really, there are so many more important things to be angry about. Republicans, for one. Conservatives, for two. Tea partiers, for three.

I recognize that there's lots of overlap between those groups. My point is, what's the worst that could happen if Nickleback became the most popular group in history? Maybe you'd have to overhear their songs more often when you're in the mall. I probably wouldn't even notice -- I never hear any of their songs now, because I'm a grown-up and therefore don't listen to Top 40 radio. (Assuming they're still on Top 40 radio, or that Top 40 radio still exists -- I don't know and I care so little that I can't be bothered to check.)

Meanwhile, what's the worst that could happen if Republicans and conservatives and tea partiers and everyone else get their way? Well, the gap between the rich and poor would grow even wider. We'd have a new Gilded Age, in which the ultra-rich could wipe their asses with our tear-stained dreams, and the rest of us would become a permanent underclass living paycheck to paycheck if we're lucky -- if we're unlucky, we'd die of starvation or insufficient health care or inadequately labeled food or whatever else because we weren't sufficiently "makers."

You see why I'm a little more concerned with politics than with whatever dumb schmuck is the latest to send 12-year-old girls' hearts a-flutter. I don't care if Justin Bieber sells 10 gazillion records. As long is it means I can still listen to my old De La Soul CDs, I don't see how that can possibly affect me.

Anyway. The point is that so many things in the arts in particular can be boiled down to personal taste. I think professional criticism should acknowledge this more. Critics tend to say that this or that didn't work, when, in reality, it just didn't work for the particular person writing this review.

You assume that this person knows best, because he/she's the one who gets to write the reviews. And this person knows a lot, because he/she sees literally dozens of movies or hears hundreds of songs per week. But that kind of overstimulation could also warp a person. Maybe after that kind of barrage, the straightforward appeals to the heartstrings get turned into cliches. Then anything novel in any way becomes a breath of fresh air, and gets fulsome praise.

Meanwhile, us Joe Sixpacks get off from our jobs punching things with a hammer, desperate for some kind of cultural experience that could make us feel like part of the human race. We read those reviews, go to those French films that are heralded as having ground-breaking mise-en-scene, and then come out thinking "I didn't get it. I am apparently dumb."

A better system, I think, would take what you already like and go from there. That would get more at personal taste. Netflix does this well. You rate what you like. Then Netflix tells you what other people with similar ratings to yours have also liked. I think this approach will have a much better batting average than your local critic.

I'm not saying there's no place for criticism. But I think it's much more useful after you've seen the film or heard the song. Like many people, I loved the late, great critic Roger Ebert. But I almost never read his reviews before seeing a movie. I would read them afterwards, and would then would be left with a brilliant new perspective, one that would only deepen my experience.

This is how literary criticism works, by the way. No one goes to Jacques Derrida's column in Us Weekly to find out what book to read (though, if he had one in Us Weekly, I would definitely subscribe. Get on it, Us Weekly.) You read Derrida to gain a deeper understanding of whatever work you may have only understood on a surface level.

So that's my new plan. Netflix will tell you what to see based on your personal taste. Critics will then be the erudite friends who will give you a new appreciation of artistic endeavors.

And in general, let's stop wasting energy on fighting over things that don't matter. Some things are to my taste. Some things are not. Tomato, tomahto. Bieber, boober. Let's call the whole thing off. And then let's unite to destroy Republicans.

Animals You Have Never Heard Of But Need to See

My lovely little two-year-old daughter loves animals, as do all kids at that age. She does some kick-ass impressions of monkeys, dogs, cats, elephants, lions, tigers, dinosaurs (granted, the lion, tiger and dinosaur impressions all sound quite similar). And she has all sort of little puzzles and books showing all the animals that kids normally learn about, in this country at least.

It strikes me as interesting though, that the animals she gets exposed to are pretty much only from three continents: North America, Europe, and Africa. I suppose penguins often get in the mix too, and sometimes pandas. Australian animals get a page in your more comprehensive books. But it's still not enough for me, because there are so many awesome animals from the other fifteen or so continents (I don't have the exact number on me at the moment).

And I'm not talking about the bizarre little bugs who have 35 eyes on each leg and eat their own genitals or whatever. Bugs are fascinating to hear about, but are no fun to see in person, at least when it's not genital-eating season. I'm talking about the animals that are big enough to be fun to see in zoos.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Chevrotain

That's an adult chevrotain, also known as a "mouse-deer." They are from Southeast Asia. There's one at the the Minnesota Zoo, and it is the cutest thing you've ever seen -- way cuter than that picture. It makes the zoo's much more popular red panda look like a slime mold.

Chevrotains weigh at most 18 pounds and are in the suborder ruminantia, which also includes deer, giraffes, cows, antelopes and goats. They have barely evolved in the past 30 million years, and love the water, so some believe that whales evolved from chevrotains. No joke. Whales, as I hope you know, are mammals, not fish. Mammals evolved on land, so for whales to exist, some mammals had to move back into the water. Of course, the development from chevrotain to whale took millions of years and involved lots of embiggening (an evolutionary term meaning "getting more bigger.")

Capybara

Now we go from a tiny deer to a gigantic rodent:

The capybara's the one on the left. On the right is a species known as a "scientist," identifiable by the white beard, the cheap clothes, the baseball cap with a logo unrelated to any sports team, and the popsicles. (Scientists subsist entirely on popsicles and condescension towards anyone who isn't a scientist.)

I picked a picture that included a more familiar species so that you could get an idea of what really makes capybaras fascinating to see in person: how large they are. They are basically R.O.U.S.es (Rodents of Unusual Size). It is a bit jarring to come across something that looks like a beaver but weighs as much as an Olsen twin, what with capybara adults clocking in at an average of 100 pounds. Most live in South America, but I know they have some at the zoo in Amsterdam. So get on a plane right now, go to Amsterdam, look at the capybara for about 15 minutes, and then fly immediately back. (There's not much else to do in Amsterdam. Assuming that you love Jesus.)

If you're lucky, you'll be able to catch a capybara eating its own poop. Scientists call this "coprophagia," because scientists like to make up very long, difficult words for simple concepts, in an effort to keep science a secret. A lot of animals eat their poop, by the way, and not because they're stupid (though they are, at least compared to me. I am a scientist, by the way). They do it to restore a lot of the gut bacteria that they need to digest all the grass they eat. Ideally, that gut bacteria wouldn't leave with the rest of it in the first place, but, failing that, poop-eating is the Plan B.

It does beg the question, though, of whether poop-eating defeats the purpose of pooping. So you're trying to get rid of bad stuff, but when you do, you accidentally shed some good stuff. Then it's like, oh crap, I need that good stuff. So you eat it all back up. Then you have to get rid of the bad stuff again, and, oh man, who could have predicted, the good stuff left too. So then you have to eat it all again. I wonder if each capybara has only had one poop in their lives that keeps circulating in and out.

Maybe the good gut bacteria sits in a layer on top of the poop, like the icing on a cupcake, and the capybaras just eat that. More likely, they only need to eat a little poop to get enough gut bacteria back. Then on the aggregate they're able to come out ahead.

It is my moral obligation right now to point out that we humans apparently don't eat enough of our own poop. Scientists have recently discovered that injecting poop into people's buttholes (they of course call it "fecal bacteriotherapy" so no one will be interested in it) can cure C. diff infections, which can be very brutal. The good bacteria from the injected poop can then crowd out the virulent C. diff.

Modern life is of course to blame for the C. diff infections in the first place, because modern life is to blame for all our problems. Surprisingly, it's not video games that are at fault this time -- it's the fact that we've gotten away from the simple, small-town values of the old days, values like eating your own poop. When I was a young lad growing up in Mayberry, U.S.A., skippin' stones down by Old Mill Pond, dancin' the watusi at church hootenannies, and systematically oppressing Negroes, we didn't get our britches in a bunch just cuz a few turds showed up in our peach cobbler. Kids today, what with their MTV and lambada dancing and improved but still problematic race relations, just can't appreciate the simple pleasures of a good old-fashioned diarrhea soup, served with nothing but a little salt, a little pepper, a splash of urine, and a whole lot of love. (See "grumpy old man argument" in the previous post about arguments. I'm a bit obsessed with it, as I got a lot of it as a kid and I'm already seeing it crop up among my peers.)

Oh, and also, the antibiotics we take all too often have made the bad stuff even stronger in an effort to survive -- C. diff only started becoming a problem in 2000. These antibiotics may also flush out good bacteria we need for digestion, which perhaps causes some food allergies. But yeah, it's mainly about our society's shocking lack of poop-eating.

How did I get on this topic? Oh yeah, capybaras. Point is, they're real big and sometimes eat their own poop. Moving on ...

Mata-mata

Speaking of poop, the mata-mata looks like a 30-pound pile of it. It's often hard to tell what exactly you're looking at. You see a bumpy turtle shell, and in the picture you can make out an arm. That giant thing in the middle is its head and neck, and he's looking at you. He's actually giving you a come-hither look, and having just bought you a drink, he's expecting to get some action. I recommend you run.

But mata-matas don't look that way to charm the ladies. They look that way to blend in to the leaves and bark and other crap on the bottom of the Amazon. When they see a fish, they suddenly extend their long necks, open their huge mouths, and suck the down fish whole. It's quite a sight -- I saw it once at the Bell Museum in Minneapolis, where they have a huge mata-mata that sits right next to the glass, all the better to scare the crap out of you.

Man, this post is getting longer than I expected. It wouldn't have gotten so long if you all hadn't demanded so much jibber-jabber about poop-eating. We better move on to the next animal, which is ...

Pygmy slow loris

OK, that's a baby pygmy slow loris, so that's hardly fair. But look at that thing. It looks like a Precious Moments figurine, not an actual animal. It's as if it evolved extreme, almost sickening cuteness so that predators would stop and go "Awwwww. So cute! So cute I just don't want to just eat you up!"

And you don't have to go to Southeast Asia to see one -- they have a bunch of pygmy slow lorises at the Como Zoo in St. Paul (you know, it's starting to seem like the Twin Cities are a wonderful place to explore!) Here's what an adult pygmy slow loris looks like:

Adults typically weigh about a pound, so these are tiny little buggers. Lorises are primates, just like us, except that they're among the "prosimians," primates that are considered more "primitive," more like our distant ancestors.

It is not accurate, however, to say that lorises are monkeys. Primates are broken into prosimians and simians. Simians are broken into New World monkeys, Old World monkeys and apes. We are apes, not monkeys. Gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees are also NOT MONKEYS. I feel the need to BOLD that PART because my CAPS lock is MALFUNCTIONING, but it is APPROPRIATE because every damn time I go to the zoo, some stupid parents point at the gorillas and tell their kids to "look at the big monkeys." I then, of course, slap them in the face and scream "They're apes, dammit! Damn you! Damn you all to hell! You blew it up!" I then get forcibly escorted from the premises, and I scream "Get your filthy hands off me, you damn dirty ape!!! Because you are an ape, see, not a  monkey!!! See, you start with primates!!! And those are broken down into prosimians and simians!!!" By that point I usually am forcibly gagged, because the world isn't ready for the truth.

That's enough animals for now. The rest are all boring and delicious. The end.

Lessons from "Adventures in Babysitting"

(Editor's note: Tonight I tried to produce the third edition of "My Troubles With Women," a series that has been surprisingly popular. And the fact that it has been popular is frankly very heartwarming -- when you go through as much emotional pain I've been through, you always pin your hopes on someday turning it into some essay or movie or something that other people could understand and empathize with. But after staying up until 1 last night writing Volume 2, and editing it through the day, I'm exhausted. Check in next week for Part 3. In the meantime, here's a rerun of a post I wrote ages ago on a different blog.)

Last night I watched "Adventures in Babysitting" at a party. (Editor's note: No, I didn't -- I watched it about three years ago. Sorry, maybe this wasn't necessary. I'll shut up now.) I didn't see it when it originally came out, but I might as well have, because it contained just about everything I learned from TV and movies in the '80s. To wit:

1. Punching someone in the face is a perfect solution to any problem. When someone says something really terrible about a woman, you're supposed to punch him in the face. Or if he's threatening someone, and there seems to no way out -- one punch and problem solved! The great thing about punches to the face is that the guy immediately falls into deep unconsciousness. And you know that, given a reasonable amount of time, he'll get up again, no permanent damage done, and will never bother you or say such terrible things again. He knows he has been defeated.

I actually tried this once. In eighth grade I had a friend named Nathan whom I couldn't stand. I was a passive and overly polite kid, so I tended to attract the kind of people who got on everyone else's nerves. They got on mine too, of course, but I was too nice/timid to tell them to go away.

So Nathan was always annoying me, and I secretly resolved to punch him in the face next time he did. Sure enough, the next day, he was being a jerk, and I punched. But it was a light, ineffectual little punch that just glanced off his chin and didn't hurt him at all. He was more like "Uh, what was that?" I tried to pass it off as a little joke. He seemed to accept that.

2. Cities are horrific, lawless wastelands filled with gangs, hookers, homeless schizophrenics, and gangs of homeless hooker schizophrenics. Suburbs are the the place for normal, safe life, in which your biggest worry is acne. As soon as you cross the border into a city, you will immediately be attacked by screaming lunatics and street gangs that, by the way, happen to be very multicultural. That was another interesting part about the '80s: Each street gang had a good mix of white people, Latinos and black folk. I understand that it was due to the hiring quotas mandated by the affirmative action laws of the time.

3. Black people are always scary at first, but usually turn out to be super cool. If you're going to have a character who is just some guy, you'd make him white, of course! If you're going to make him black, he needs to start out with some level of menace to him. That menace is usually contradicted by him doing something awesome to help you out.

Granted, in "Adventures in Babysitting," there is one black guy chasing our heroes around the hellscape of Chicago who's pretty mean. But even he's really more of a middle-management guy, taking orders from the truly evil person, a white dude.

Every other black person scares our heroes at first, but later becomes awesome. One is a car thief that inadvertedly gets our heroes in trouble. But he always wants to help, and in the end he gets the chance by (spoiler alert) punching the evil white dude in the face.

The other prominent black guy is a blues musician -- our heroes wander onto his stage and are frightened of him and the crowd (all black people). But the bluesman says "you don't leave here until you play the blues," and of course they do so. And the crowd quickly turns from hard-eyed disdain to launching an overwhelming ovation. That's a great thing about performing in the '80s -- all you have to do is be on a stage and try really hard and the crowd will explode with joy. It doesn't matter if you're white as all hell and can't sing (this was the founding principle of The House of Blues, by the way).

4. When you raise your voice in a fancy place, every other patron immediately stops talking and all music stops on a dime. At one point, our heroes barge into a fancy French restaurant to confront Elizabeth Shue's two-timing boyfriend. As soon as things get heated, everyone else in the restaurant suddenly stops talking and stares at them like toddlers watching Elmo. And the violinist in the corner had to cut himself short at the exact same time, so as to not drown out the show. It's really out of consideration -- fancy people LOVE gawping at confrontations. Of course, no restaurant employee intervenes -- hey buddy, down in front! We're trying to watch two kids fighting here! Anyway, the scene ends with (spoiler alert) actually not a punch in the face, but a kick in the butt that pushes the mean guy onto a table. Problem solved. Next scene.

5. Quicksand is everywhere. OK, this wasn't in "Adventures in Babysitting." But it is a very prominent lesson I learned by watching TV in the '80s. I don't know if it was mainly old reruns or what, but somewhere I got the impression that falling into quicksand is a very common occurrence, and it's a good idea to lay out a contingency plan now. I know that after you fall in you have to stay still -- the more that you move, the faster you will sink. You have to hope you can grab onto someone's arm ... but uh-oh, you might pull them in too! Great! Now what?!?! Wait, there's a long vine over here that we can use to pull ourselves out! And it's a vine strong enough to withstand the downward pressure of an entire human being's weight plus the suction of quicksand! Phew!

Liveblogging an Evening of Nothing

My wife is away on a business trip, the kid is in bed, and I'm watching baseball. Such a momentous event in the history of our democracy deserves a "liveblog," which, if I'm using the term correctly, means that I just puke out whatever I'm thinking at a particular time and presume it's something people would want to read. Here goes!

7:59 p.m.

Ummm ....

8:02 p.m.

(clears throat)

8:05 p.m.

So, what's up with you?

8:09 p.m.

(awkward silence)

8:15 p.m.

OK, clearly, I'm not getting into the spirit of this. Let me try again. Maybe I should try talking about the ballgame.

8:16 p.m.

Oh, Twins. Why are you not winning this game? Clearly, you need to be doing the sorts of things that cause you to win. Scoring runs, for example. And not preventing them. Why can't the Twins manage to score more runs than they prevent through the duration of this game? Morons.

8:20 p.m.

Mike Moustakas' nickname should be "Moose Tacos." I've always felt that way, and I'll be damned if I'm about to change now.

8:22 p.m.

What the hell's that?

8:22:05 p.m.

Oh, it's my foot. Never mind.

8:22:10 p.m.

What the hell's that?

8:22:15 p.m.

Oh, it's my other foot. Hello there, foot! You had me going there!

8:22:20 p.m.

What's that, foot?

8:22:25 p.m.

Wow. That is really inappropriate, foot. No way I'm repeating that in my liveblog.

8:35 p.m.

I just thought of a bumper sticker: "Mormons do it in the missionary position." I'll explain it, which makes it funnier. First level of joke: Mormons are often missionaries, and the missionary position is a way to have sex. Second level: Mormons are not typically the type of people to have bumper stickers with sexual innuendos on them. Third level: It's an ironic commentary on the state of contemporary sexual dialectics vis-a-vis the Platonic ideal of religious expression. Fourth level: You didn't even understand the third level, so there's no way I'm telling you the fourth level. But man, is it funny! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (asphyxiates and dies).

8:37 p.m.

(Descends into Purgatory.)

8:38 p.m.

Hello? Am I dead?

8:39 p.m.

Oh dear. You're a Mormon?

8:40 p.m.

It was completely inappropriate, you're absolutely right, sir. I'm so sorry. It was my foot's fault. Totally his idea.

8:41 p.m.

I understand and completely agree. Joseph Smith was definitely directed by an angel named Moroni to discover some magic tablets that had been buried in western New York by indigenous Americans, who were of course Israelites who spoke "reformed Egyptian" and believed in Jesus several centuries before He was born. And of course Smith used "magic glasses" to interpret these tablets, tablets that no one else could even be allowed to see. The fact that the group of treasure-hunters he had run with (oh yeah -- he had regularly gone treasure hunting to supplement his meager farming income and always come up empty) then turned against him for cheating them out of this alleged treasure, and they ransacked all the hiding places they could think of, finding nothing -- all this only supports Smith's story. I have never heard anything more plausible in my entire life. Consider me converted.

8:42 p.m.

So I can return to the world of the living if I devote the rest of my existence to spreading the word of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints?

8:43 p.m.

You say "yes"?

8:44 p.m.

Because I enjoy repeating everything you say in a stage-y manner like I'm a poor man's Bob Newhart, that's why.

8:45 p.m.

Say, why do you always take exactly one minute to say everything you say?

8:46 p.m.

Oh, that makes perfect sense. Wow.

8:47 p.m.

OK then, I'm ready. Zap me back. Joseph Smith 4-eva!

8:48 p.m.

(Comes back to life)

8:49 p.m.

Whoa. I just had the weirdest dream! I dreamt that Martin Luther King handed me a block of cheese and told me to fart more, and then I had to get to class to take a final but I hadn't been to class all semester, and then Joseph Smith discovered a tablet planted in Western New York by ancient Israelites that only he could read with magic glasses! So weird! Anyway, back to the ballgame.

8:51 p.m.

Well, the Twins are still adamantly refusing to win. Apparently they failed to take my advice. I recommended they win, and they are not doing so. Morons!

Noah's Ark: Worst Story Ever?

Recently, we brought out a Noah's Ark toy for my 2-year-old daughter. She enjoyed putting the animals in the ark. My wife started telling her the story behind the toy. She tried her best, but she couldn't make it sound like a story based in sanity. It's just a terrible story from beginning to end.

Many stand-up comedians have already gone through the problems with this particular story. Eddie Izzard (and get ready for a butchering of his stellar material) pointed out that God thought the animals were evil too -- but the idea of an evil animal is just nonsensical. What is an evil giraffe, exactly?

And moreover, any evil ducks got off scot-free, no? They could just float on top of the water -- the only difference would be that the water is a little higher than usual. The world should now be full of evil ducks.

Eddie Izzard also pointed out that this was basically the Etch-Sketch version of creation. God didn't like  what he had made, so he decided to just shake the Etch-a-Sketch and come up with a new reality.

Joe Rogan asserted that no one, not even the developmentally disabled (not his choice of words), could possibly think that this story was plausible. Eugene Mirman brought up that this is an incredibly bizarre solution, on God's part, for the problem of sin: Let's just flood everything! That's the only solution I could see!

David Cross said that, after Noah survives, what happens? Noah's family is the only one that survives. So that means lots of incest.

Here's the larger point: What possible good, useful lesson could my lovely little daughter learn from the Noah's Ark story? None, from what I can tell. Meanwhile, here are the horrible lessons she could learn:

• God, who controls everything, will slaughter everyone at the drop of a hat if they don't comply with whatever his demands are (which are never made entirely clear in this particular story).
• If you are told by a mysterious voice to do something bizarre, like building an ark, do it, or your family, and everyone you love, will drown and die.
• You can bring animals with you in the crazy death ark, but only two of each, because then those two can have children, who will then presumably have sex with each other despite all the mutations that will follow, and then, even with that incredibly shallow gene pool, presumably species will thrive somehow?

Seriously, is there a message at all in this story, besides trying to indoctrinate blind obeisance to whatever bizarre, fickle, and unnecessarily cruel demands this "God" person comes up with? Maybe this story was helpful in the days when people needed reinforcement to trust God no matter what impossible odds they seemed to face. Now that fate is less fickle (and we know a little more about genetics), I don't see the Noah's Ark story doing anything but scarring little children.

Many secular humanist, agnostic, "spiritual but not religious," "I don't know, leave me alone" types like myself patronize the Bible by saying "it's an amazing piece of literature." Really, though? Is the Noah's Ark story even that? You don't get to know Noah, or what could possibly drive him to do these things. He's just some guy, who is deemed good for some reason, and does what God tells him to. You definitely don't get to understand his family, who are at best mentioned in passing, as if they are mere trivia. And you definitely definitely definitely times infinity don't get to understand a God who commits such bizarrely, devastatingly cruel acts upon the creation he allegedly loves. None of it makes any emotional sense, let alone narrative sense.

I grew up going to Sunday School every week, so I understand the pull this story had on our young psyches, what with the cute animals marching two by two and such. But putting aside that rather primitive nostalgia, I don't see a good reason for continuing to tell this story. It should really be edited out of the Bible entirely.

I think this story, and others like it, do nothing but prevent the Bible's good messages from getting across. I'm not religious any more (in part because of horrible stories like that of Noah), but I think Jesus's message of love, forgiveness and understanding is absolutely terrific. It deserves a better lead-in than the one in which millions get slaughtered for no good reason, all to set the stage for rampant incest.

Granted, there is more in the Old Testament, some of it good (some of the Ten Commandments make sense), but most of it terrible. It's pretty much always emotional blackmail. Here's how most Old Testament stories go: Terrible things happen. People decide it's because they didn't pay enough attention to God -- basically, that they didn't sufficiently kiss his ass. Like a petulant little baby, He lashed out by killing a bunch of them. So they go back to making sacrifices. After that, things get better. Moral of the story: Love God, or else. This is a similar moral to every story that every abusive lover has ever told his object of abuse.

But, to be fair, this is how all gods worked at the time. The Greek and Roman gods were no different. They didn't have any moral lessons to impart. They were just super-powerful versions of humans who could do whatever the hell they wanted, and if you didn't kiss their asses, you're dead. It was a harsh life then, one of fear at the mercy of forces you didn't understand, and your only way to alleviate some anxiety and retain some sense of control was to get on the right side of whatever god you believed might be in charge.

The Abrahamic God was just one of many options at the time, and didn't really distinguish himself among the rest in any substantial way. He always had a few diehards (and who doesn't?), but all He could do to ever gain some real traction is to say "Hey, remember that famine or when the Babylonians killed everyone or whatever? That was because you didn't love me enough. So now it's payback time. Let's see some dead goats already."

And in those days, people always lived on the precipice of death, with almost no knowledge of why, so they were more than willing to grab onto whatever seemed to work at any particular time. If sacrifices to God were followed by a good harvest, or a military victory, or what have you, then they would believe in God for a while (correlation, in their minds, being the same as causation).

But then the Babylonians would invade or the plague would return, despite the fact that the Jews had killed animals and prayed and jumped up and down and etc. So then they would say "OK, this ain't working." They then turned to Baal or Zoroaster or Odin or David Cassidy or whoever else some convincing orator would could come up with. And the cycle continues.

In the Bible, Jesus breaks through this repetitive, tedious narrative with something revolutionary. It's no wonder that Jesus was the one who really made this a world religion. Compassion, patience, love and hope will always win more followers than threats and bribes. Instead of just a temporary correlation that might or might not be connected to positive outcomes, Jesus had a new philosophy that could result in happiness no matter which direction the wind blew. It was revolutionary enough to create a whole new world -- one that almost never lives up to his standards, but one that at least tries to.

Anyway, yeah. I'm a true-blue atheist at this point, but I of course want my daughter to grow up with a strong moral core. And I'd love it if she could be raised in a tradition that teaches the lessons of Jesus Christ. But not God. That guy's a jerk.

A New "Silent Majority"?

Remember the 1960s? I don't. I was too young. I was negative eight when they ended. But even growing up a decade later, it was still hard to not feel like you remember them.

The 1960s, we're told, were a golden age of courageous idealism. The hippies broke away from the staid, stifling 1950s and bravely stood up for a new world order that passionately stood for taking lots of drugs and having lots of sex. Which was revolutionary, because young people had never wanted to do those things before.

I'm being unfairly snotty here, because, growing up as part of Generation X, we constantly got an earful about how great the 1960s were. Baby boomers, it turns out, tend to be a little full of themselves.

But even if you push aside the hype and look at them objectively, the movements of the late 1960s were pretty inspiring. You had civil rights, women's rights, the peace movement -- all things that made our world a much better place. And at the time, it all was really shockingly, vibrantly new. Even as I chafe at baby boomers' self-congratulation, I do often wish I could have seen it all firsthand.

One interesting wrinkle in it all, though, was that the majority of Americans weren't going along with it. Sure, they participated in the 1960s as far as wearing the terrible clothes and redecorating their houses in pea-green and poo-brown, but in the end, they voted for Nixon. In 1968, probably the apex of all the exciting, revolutionary change, Richard Nixon won 301 electoral votes, to Hubert Humphrey's 191.

Oh, and there was a third candidate, George Wallace, who won 46 electoral votes stumping for the Racist Asshole party (aka the American Independent party). George Wallace's entire platform was "black people are scary," so I think we can safely count his electoral votes in with those who were not terribly on board in the great social changes of the time.

At the time, it was known as the "silent majority." The hippies and revolutionaries were getting all the press, but the majority of Americans were still boring types who just wanted to go to work and push aside all the ruckus.

I wonder if this latest presidential election exposed a new silent majority, except a good one this time. I follow politics pretty closely, and as a dyed-in-the-wool, pants-wetting liberal, following politics felt a little masochistic before the 2012 election. You had George W. Bush, and then a brief moment of hope when Obama was elected -- which then came crashing down with the ascendance of the Tea Party. Watching old morons in tri-corner hats waving signs like "Get the Government Out of My Medicare," it was hard not to wonder if America was just too dumb to survive.

But then the 2012 election went much better than I could have possibly hoped. Obama won convincingly. Democrats gained in both the House and the Senate.

And perhaps most tellingly, ballot measures about gay marriage and marijuana came down on our side. After years of state constitutional amendments against gay marriage passing easily, now we seem to have gone over a tipping point, as the nation has suddenly realized that there's no good reason it shouldn't be legal. And I just saw a poll showing that majority of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana. Both of these are things I never thought would turn so quickly.

All this has apparently shocked the Republicans too. They're now in disarray and scrambling for a new approach. Most of what they've come up with so far has been basically "OK, we'll shovel the same crap, but this time, let's have a younger, darker-skinned person do the shoveling." In other words, they got nothing.

Is it possible that all the while there was a silent majority of liberals out there? In the 1960s, the liberals were the most vocal, but before 2012, you could argue, the conservatives were. The conservatives were making waves through Fox News and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and all the rest. Meanwhile, young people watched "The Daily Show," had gay friends, smoked marijuana without hurting anyone, and perhaps didn't get too involved in politics -- but when it came time to vote, they did, in larger numbers than anyone predicted.

I hate to get triumphant, though, because I have this gnawing fear that the other shoe will drop soon. Maybe in 2014, all the gun control and gay marriage and marijuana will all prove a step too far, and we'll lose the majority in the Senate. These things always seem to work like a pendulum, where one election's winners get a little too big for their britches and then the other side gets the passion and takes the power back.

But I also take some solace in the economy. Realistically, the government has a lot less effect on the economy than we tend to believe. The government may set the rules of the game, but the players, us private citizens, are the people who really cause the economy to win or lose.

Regardless, though, when it comes to the economy, Americans have this weird relationship with government where we want it out of our lives but also want it to solve all our problems. It's always "Get the government out of the way" when things are fine and then "Why isn't the government doing something?" as soon as things turn bad. We treat the government like a 14-year-old girl treats her mother -- as a terrible pest who needs to leave her alone and then, when she needs help, as a savior who should swoop in and know exactly how to rescue her.

As a result, the economy ends up having the greatest influence on people's perceptions of the government. And right now, the economy is stable enough so that it's out of the headlines. That means good things for the party in power.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. 2008 might have been a false start for a new liberal majority, but 2012 is starting to feel like the real thing. Am I jinxing it by saying this? Oh, God I hope not. Oh please please please let me get what I want ... Lord knows it would be the first time.