Broni: “Daddy, JELLO is sticky like magnets!”

Broni: “Broni for president!”

Wesley: “Bum bum bum. I’m singing the bummy song!”

Wesley: “We’re the stinky bottom brothers!”

Broni: “Dad, I just like mayonaise and sticks.”

Update: Nov. 3, 2008

Broni: “What if you were a samosa and I put mustard on you?”

Broni: “Chapter 9. This is a good one, I liked this one when I was a little boy.”

Amanda and I have been doing the summer reading program at our local library. After reading a certain number of hours our kids get to pick out a small prize which has historically been something like a picture book, a squooshy rubber fly with neon-green guts, or a coupon for a free sundae at a local ice cream joint. The latest LibraryBooty^TM was a fairly elaborate package of goodies passed out at a local community fair. They got coloring sheets, stickers, crayons, and tickets to rides at the fair. Needless to say, they had a great time running around the fair with Amanda! As part of their prize package the boys also got a coupon for a free kids meal at the Hudsonville Grille - a watering hole just down the road from the fair grounds. After a long day of riding spinning dragons, eating fair food and petting all the 4-H animals, the boys were tired and hungry. Amanda picked me up from work, and the plan was to grab a quick dinner and then head back to the fair for one last round of tractor climbing, elephant ear eating, pig-petting fair fun. Neither Amanda nor I had ever been to The Grille, but we are both ones to try new places and give the benefit of the doubt, so instead of eating what was deemed to be greasy fair-food we decided to cash in the boys free kids meals, and eat dinner at the Village Seafood & Grille (or whatever its name is, I guess it was changed after it opened back up…).

The restaurant was in a small strip mall next to a BP, just off of the highway. It looked OK from the outside and the hostess seemed friendly, but there was a lingering smell of deep-fried fish oils and griddle-seared 80/20 which should have tripped my GreasySpoonDetector. It must have been thwarted that day by the ever-powerful IHaveAFreeCoupon-ReasonJammingSystem, which had to have been invented by the midwest dutch, because the four of us were seated in a Denny’s-like booth and began looking through the menu.

Nothing really jumped out at me, so I decided to go with the Caribbean Jerk Chicken salad (sounds pretty good, right?), Amanda ordered the daily special - a steak sizler with sautéd onions and mushrooms, Broni got a hamburger, and Wesley wanted macaroni and cheese. After a delay which seemed a bit excessive given the amount of people in the restaurant (approximately 5), our food was brought out. Here’s where things took a real turn for the worse. My “jerk chicken” salad would more accurately be described as “small bits of flavorless meat set atop limp iceberg lettuce, over-sized chunks of mozerella and enough salad dressing to fill a kiddie pool… oh and some watermelon and cantaloupe chunks on the side because this is a fancy salad.” Amanda’s “steak” was even worse: it appeared as though someone had taken some ground-chuck, compacted and smooshed it, griddle fried it, tossed a few MSG-laden canned mushrooms and over-sized warmed onion chunks (no, they couldn’t have been fried) on top, plated the whole disaster and then charged me $8.99 for it. I could feel my puppy-kicking urges begin to rumble.

The kids didn’t fair much better. Broni’s hamburger was overcooked, but actually edible (though he didn’t finish it). Wesley’s macaroni tasted like canned Velveeta had been spread over stale noodles (the kind that taste like cardboard box) and then microwaved too long. A bit of background: Wesley loves his macaroni and cheese. Wesley will eat devour huge amounts of macaroni and cheese. Wesley left about half of his meal on the plate.

As if the food wasn’t enough of a strike against this sad little place, they decided to engage their FreeCouponRejecting system (which seems to have Dick Cheney-like ties to the IHaveAFreeCoupon-ReasonJammingSystem) by not allowing me to use two free kids meal coupons on the same bill. Amanda: “But the kids just got these today, and nowhere on the coupon does it say that we can’t use both.” Waitress: “I’m sorry, we can’t take both of them. I can only give you one free kids meal.” Realizing that we were arguing over $3.99, I decided to pay the bill, leave the extra coupon anyways, and get out of there as fast as my grease-filled stomach would let me.

I was so out of sorts, that on the car ride to the fair I somehow got us completely turned around, and started bickering with Amanda as to the exact location of the fair. Had I not come to my senses, my marriage would have crumbled, my kids would have resented me for the rest of their life, and I would still be lost in the back streets of Hudsonville. Fortunately, I was able to reach deep within myself and begin directing my confusion and angst towards the proper target: the HGrille… Seafood… Village… whatever.

The elephant ear and burnt coffee I procured from Carny a short time later never tasted so good.

A quick, and obvious criticism of the speech and her plan is to ask where the money is going to come from (there was lots of talk about $200M here and $400M there), but I think that would be missing the point. The new budget proposal will detail a lot of that, but what she is doing is looking at the bigger picture. Sometimes a problem can only really be solved by taking a step back and searching for root-cause. Michigan’s economy needs to transition into something viable 10, 20 and 50 years from now, and someone needs to start that transition now. There will probably be squawking over details (as there probably should be), but if the legislature can’t swallow their pride and the squawking becomes cock-fighting, I might be tempted to send my representative a punch-in-the-throat-a-gram.

My hope is that our law-makers will take up the vision and fight for the people of Michigan, but the realist in me says that they should probably keep some neck braces handy.

Vague references to the state of the economy - it’s not so good, but it’s not so bad either:

Wages are up, but so are prices for food and gas. Exports are rising, but the housing market has declined. At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.

Throw around really huge budget numbers that make us all think that every member of congress wipes their ass with dollar bills (we’ll cut $18B, but still won’t have a surplus for another 4 years):

Next week, I’ll send you a budget that terminates or substantially reduces 151 wasteful or bloated programs, totaling more than $18 billion. The budget that I will submit will keep America on track for a surplus in 2012.

Extol congress to solve the problems of the world while offering little advice or direction as to how:

Congress [...] [t]onight I ask you to pass legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, modernize the Federal Housing Administration
[...]
The Congress must also expand health savings accounts, create Association Health Plans for small businesses, promote health information technology, and confront the epidemic of junk medical lawsuits.
[...]
So I ask Congress to double federal support for critical basic research in the physical sciences and ensure America remains the most dynamic nation on Earth.
[...]
And so I call on Congress to pass legislation that bans unethical practices such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life.
[...]
I ask members of Congress to offer your proposals and come up with a bipartisan solution to save these vital programs [Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid] for our children and our grandchildren.

Support public education… uh sort of:

[...] No Child Left Behind Act [...] Now we must work together to increase accountability, add flexibility for states and districts, reduce the number of high school dropouts, provide extra help for struggling schools.
[...]
We must also do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. [...] help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.

Keep up the funding for Team America, World Police:

Since 9/11, we have taken the fight to these terrorists and extremists. We will stay on the offense, we will keep up the pressure, and we will deliver justice to our enemies.

Solve centuries of culturally ingrained hatred, violence and intolerance in just a few short months:

[...] I assured leaders from both sides that America will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year.

Insert at least one statement to take the edge off the Team America, World Police statements:

America opposes genocide in Sudan.

Be sure to contextualize the previous statement, keeping veiled references to Team America:

We support freedom in countries from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Belarus and Burma.

And end with a bang:

So tonight, with confidence in freedom’s power, and trust in the people, let us set forth to do their business. God bless America.

If anyone has any ideas of how we can keep this guy occupied for the next year (buying baseball teams, kissing babies, playing fetch) please speak up before we find ourselves at war with no less than two Middle-Eastern countries, paying for health care in Loonies, and printing money as a homework assignment.

Christmas trees went up at Gentex last week. Big Christmas trees. Fifteen-foot, meticulously decorated Christmas trees with toys-for-tots boxes next to them. There were no corporate Thanksgiving decorations. I did receive a notice on my last pay stub that checks will be distributed a day early due to the up-coming Thanksgiving holiday. That’s nice of them. It’s hard to call that Thanksgiving spirit though. But what is Thanksgiving spirit? When was the last time you overheard someone talking about getting into the Thanksgiving spirit? Probably never because holiday spirit seems to be reserved for the Christmas season, and Thanksgiving day is just that - a day, no more, no less. Eat your turkey (or at least watch the over-weight, obnoxious football announcers eat their turkey), enjoy your day (or two) off, and be sure to overspend on Christmas gifts on Friday.

I guess we don’t really have time to be thankful for our things if we’re too busy wanting more of them. Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason we call it Turkey Day… and the reason we trample people the very next day just to save a few dollars. Maybe if we all took a step back and asked, “Do I really need that $50 laptop, and is it worth the black eye I just gave that little girl?” we could start to appreciate how much we have already, or even how much we ate the day before. Maybe we could even appreciate the heritage we’ve been given by men and women who worked so hard that they decided to set aside a whole day in appreciation of the fruits of their labor, the camaraderie and cooperation it took to produce those fruits and the God that gave them the strength and capacity to enjoy it all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I have been ruminating quite a bit lately about the Nature Of Things™, and a good part of this process has been a reflection on the existence and nature of God. I have visited several websites decrying the existence of God many of which have some interesting things to say, but this post is directed at one particularly irksome site: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ (WWGHA) which posits the question, “Why won’t God heal amputees?”

While I highly encourage direct dialog concerning religion and the supernatural, I have a hard time swallowing nonsense / irrelevant arguments from angst-filled individuals. After reading much of this website I get the impression that the author was either deeply hurt by a conservative religious up-bringing or extremely bitter from past experience(s) with “fundy religious nut-bags” (as a friend of mine once called them). While this site points out some interesting facets of a Christian world-view (the “optical illusion” argument for instance) which should be engaged and discussed thoroughly, the main line of argument used throughout the site is basically a subtle re-wording of the omnipotence paradox.

Let’s make this a little more clear. First, the basic paradox can be summed up in the following question, “Can an omnipotent being create a stone which is too large for the being to lift?” In creating the stone which cannot be lifted, the omnipotent being would then lose its omnipotence which then calls into question the initial omnipotence of said being. Hmmmm. That’s a Tuffy^®. Fortunately a lot of really smart people throughout history have weighed in on the matter (more on this later).

The WWGHA website poses their problem in the following way: God is all-powerful (omnipotent), therefore regenerating a leg is trivial. God is perfect, all-knowing, all-loving and ready-and-willing to answer prayers. God has no reason to discriminate against amputees. If he answers prayers for people like Jeanna Giese, we have no reason to believe he won’t answer prayers for a deserving amputee. But he doesn’t, and won’t for the foresee-able future.

At first glance the argument is clever, but ultimately it says a big heaping pile of nothing. First of all, simply because science never definitively illuminated the ultimate reasons for Jeanna’s recovery doesn’t preclude an explanation rooted in natural processes. Furthermore, a natural explanation for Jeanna’s recovery wouldn’t read, even slightly, on the nature of God and his ability to answer prayer - the topics are unrelated. Second, the question, “why won’t God heal amputees” can be re-phrased to read, “why can’t God create a world with rules and natural laws, and then break those rules?” Huh, sounds like we’ve made it back to the omnipotence paradox and in that case it’s about time to call in the heavy-weights.

I’m not going to delineate the opposing sides of this paradox here. Instead, I’m going to encourage you to read the Wikipedia article, and do some homework on your own. What I do want to point out here is that what the WWGHA website seems to dismissively pass off as a straight-forward question with a simple answer (leading quickly to the seemingly logical conclusion that God is imaginary) is actually a discussion about nothing with underpinnings in a well-explored philosophical paradox. Just because we can formulate a question doesn’t mean it’s worth answering: “Why won’t Whole Foods buy me a new house?” To quote C.S. Lewis:

God’s omnipotence means [His] power to do all that is not intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, “God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it”, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words “God can.” It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives — not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

(The Problem of Pain)

Now there is some kool aid worth drinking.

American politics is broken. Michigan’s government is about to shutdown because law makers in Lansing are block-headed puppets of their respective parties. The US House and Senate have been impotent because Bush is a stubborn ass, and the Democrats are gutless and just as stubborn. Can someone explain to me how the two party system is doing anyone any sort of good?

Several people have commented to me (both on and off facebook) on my support of Barack Obama while claiming Libertarian ideals in the “Political Views” line item on my profile. While I still think that he would probably do a fine job as president (he seems to be about as down-to-earth as a politician gets), I am now an official card-carrying Libertarian and as such I can’t in good conscience support a democrat or republican candidate. Neither party has convinced me that it can produce a candidate that is anything but a party-line towing, special interest catering drone.

Ron Paul definitely has my attention, but there are a few sticking points over which I am, as yet, withholding my “vote”. (Not the least of which is the higher than normal “I-might-just-be-a-crazy-old-man-and-ask-you-to-drink-my-Kool-aid” vibe). I’m not sure if he will be able to grab the Republican nomination because the RNC base seem to be the I’m-scared-of-(911) terrorists-so-go-ahead-and-rip (911)-up-the-(911) bill-of-rights-if-it-lets-you-catch-Osama (911) type people (Rudy911), but at least he is pushing Libertarian ideals into main-stream (read: 2-party) American politics.

To those of you campaigning for Ron Paul: keep it up, maybe in the next election we can get the Libertarian Party on the ballot and into the debates! To those of you planning on voting along party lines: the founding fathers were Libertarian Deists, and what you really want, what America should really stand for (true freedom), is not what your republican or democratic candidate can (or will) ever give you.