Featured Grownups offered the writing prompt: What makes you so special? The impetus behind it was a query about what is the greatest problem plaguing Americans’ psyches. The consensus among psychologists is that this most prominent malady is malignant self-love, or in a singular term, narcissism.

I would not say I’m a narcissist. To whatever extent I love myself, it’s not malignant. It’s not harming myself or others. At the same time, I don’t think I have a lack of self-love. (I mean the emotional and not physical variety, if you’re thinking like that). I do think I’m special, and I’m happy to tell you why.

For one thing, I’m intelligent. I mean, I’m really smart. Mensa material, even. I have a photographic memory and a mind like a steel trap. I retain facts both useful and useless. I wield a prodigious vocabulary. I seek to boldly split infinitives as they’ve never been split before, knowing exactly what that means. I can tell why “swimming” is a gerund, and why the correct spelling is y’all, not ya’ll.

But in the pursuit of true specialness, I decided to use this vast cerebral power for the good of humanity, and become a teacher. Even more special, I teach middle school. Anyone who has a 12-14-year-old child, or who knows a 12-14-year-old child, or has been a 12-14-year-old child, knows how especially special middle school teachers are.

But most special of all is the fact I’m a father. Now listen. There are millions of fathers– it doesn’t take anything special to become one, as anyone familiar with the process knows– but I did not become a father in the usual manner. I married into four children, one with special needs, and then adopted the oldest, instantly becoming legal father of a teenage daughter. That’s special.

I’m also a special writer, a special blogger, a special sports fan. You name it, I’m special at it. I wrote this post especially to tell you how special I am. I could go on, but then I would be narcissistic– a quality which, apparently, is not so special.

Here’s an update on the experiment. So I promised to post every Sunday. I’ve succeeded so far, but these past couple of weeks, I find myself typing this within an hour or two of midnight, my eyes drooping, my brain heavy only with the promise of slumber. I know some would say, don’t force yourself to post then, but you don’t understand. If I don’t, I’ll never keep this up. Once I while I do have something important to express. It may not be every Sunday, but my habits are such that I’ll never persist without a deadline and a schedule.

For those who read two weeks ago about how I worried if I’d ever be truly responsible– well, I still have those concerns, but I’m feeling a bit better about it. Maria came through her surgery in much less time than anticipated, which was good, although I felt apprehensive for a moment when I saw the surgeon approaching us in the waiting room much earlier that we expected to see her. For a fleeting moment I feared something must have gone wrong, but as it turns out, the fusion inside her abdomen was much less severe than had been feared, so it didn’t take as long to separate. She spent two nights in the hospital and then came home, and has been recovering slowly but surely every day since. She goes to the doctor for her follow-up appointment Thursday, and fully expects to get her to sign off on permission for her to go back to work the following Monday, the 17th.

Meanwhile, it’s been kind of quiet. Only the teenager has been home; the three youngest are staying with their dad or shuttling to his mother. They all caught chicken pox and have been fighting off colds or sinus infections as well, and obviously being ill, they can’t be home with their mother in a weakened state, not regarding the fact that it makes it a bit too hectic here when she needs to rest We’re looking at them coming home Friday.

Tomorrow I am going to school, as in my school, my classroom. Our official report date is Thursday, but I always start early, because I just don’t focus all that well, and I need extra time to really get “in the mode.” First day with students is the 20th. Our kids start the day before that. They are in a new school district this year since we moved, and it’s going to be a new adventure for everyone. I bought their supplies today, most of them anyway, bouncing between OfficeMax and Big Lots. One small perk of teaching is these office supply stores give teachers discounts on occasion, and I have a strange fetish for office supplies, so they enable my behavior.

As I start to reflect ahead on the new year, and consider what I’ve examined in the graduate course I’m taking, which is entitled “Diversity in Education,” I think about what’s wrong with American public education, and what’s right with it as well. Here I am in my very first course working toward my M.Ed., and I’m taking an Incomplete. I’ve never done that before in my long postsecondary career, but I’ve had to devote time to taking care of my wife, particularly her days in the hospital, but now at home as well– and I don’t regret any of it for a moment– and, although frankly, I have had some time here at home since it’s been quieter than usual, I’m just not able to focus like I need to right now. The good news is that the program doesn’t follow semesters but rather half-semesters, eight-week sessions, so while I won’t start a new course the week of the 24th, and instead will focus on finishing the work for the class I’m currently taking. I’ll still get to start a new class in mid-October.

As for what I mentioned in the first sentence of that last paragraph– all these deep thoughts about the state of education, well, they’re going to have to wait until next time. I usually want to write something more topical and complex than this post, but sometimes you have to just write the daily life stuff. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you “out there.”

I guarantee you I am not the first person to use this title. Put it in quotes and Google it. It’s true though, much as I would prefer not to confront it. We (as in the USA) are a culture of cheaters.

The most glaring example in our society is the sport affectionately known as our national pasttime, baseball. Major League Baseball has been plagued by evidence of players using what are collectively called “performance-enhancing drugs” or PEDs. Most people equate PEDs with anabolic steroids, but the category can include HGH (human growth hormone) and other substances. MLB only started testing for steroid use in 2003, which was well after records had been smashed repeatedly from the late 1990s to that point. Evidence of use became so abundant that the period of the 1990s and first half of this decade have come to be known as “The Steroid Era.”

So basically there are two groups: those who are believed to have been using PEDs before 2003, whom can only be judged by preponderance of evidence against them, and then from 2003 on, those who have actually tested positive. After 2003, there was a list compiled of those players which had tested positive in the initial round of testing. There are 104 names on that list.

This spring, before the beginning of the season, the most prominent name on the list was “leaked”: Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod didn’t deny it, but gave a half-hearted apology in which he admitted to wrongdoing but then qualified by saying it “was, you know, kind of the culture back then.” Then Manny Ramirez was suspended for a postive test result. He didn’t protest it, apologized weakly– mainly to his teammates– served his 50-game suspension, and then came back, to thunderous applause in his home park in LA, and boos elsewhere.

Last week a report came out that both Manny and first baseman David Ortiz, who still plays for Boston, were on “the list” from 2003. This knowledge casts the World Series championships in 2004 & 2007 won by the Red Sox in a different light. Some say these titles are now tainted. Are they?

I say no. It’s totally wrong that these two players, and likely others on the team we don’t yet know about, were cheating by using PEDs. However, the sad truth of the matter is that they were hardly the only ones. The pervasiveness of the problem may never be fully known. Jose Canseco, one of the most blantant “juicers,” wrote a book after retiring that exposed the names of several players he claimed to know used. He contends that the majority of baseball players– more than half– used PEDs at one point or another during this “era.” We have reached a point where there are no players who can safely be assumed to be “clean”– everyone who has played in the majors over the past 20 years is implicated, guilty by association. It was the classic excuse of “everyone is doing it.” It wasn’t hyperbole when A-Rod said “it was kind of the culture back then,” although that doesn’t make it one bit more right.

Bottom line, since every team had players who were cheating in this way, in a twisted sense, the playing field was leveled. The titles aren’t tainted. because the Red Sox didn’t win them purely because they were cheating. They simply were the best cheaters those two years.

So what does all this say about our culture on a societal scale? What does it say that fans have hardly stopped buying tickets to games, buying team merchandise, watching on TV? That Ramirez is still loudly cheered in Los Angeles, just as Barry Bonds was cheered in San Francisco to the end of his time there?

It says that despite all the hue and cry over how horrible cheating in the game is, it’s all talk, an act. Baseball fans, and Americans in general, don’t really care. They want to sound like they care because they know that’s the moral high ground, but in truth, we’re all cheaters.

Kids start cheating in school, everything from copying each other’s homework, to using cheat sheets on tests, and plagiarizing essays from the Web. They do it because they see adults do it. People cut corners. They do what they can get away with to get ahead. They don’t tell the whole truth if part of that truth would deter their advancement. They pad their resumes. They fudge their timesheets. They claim damages that didn’t happen for insurance payments. They claim exemptions and deductions they don’t have on their tax returns. They cheat to get ahead or make someone else fall behind. They cheat for the pseudo-noble cause that others have an inherent and unfair advantage over them and cheating is the only way to catch up. They cheat on their significant others. They cheat because everyone cheats and if they don’t, they’ll have no chance to compete.

Why? Why have we developed and perpetuate this culture of cheating? The primary rationale that comes to my mind is the American cult of individualism. We believe, perhaps more strongly than any other society on earth, in the value and importance of the individual. Individual rights trump all others, including those of any group, class, school, company, or government. The upshot is that each of us believes, consciously or not, that he or she is entitled to everything and if anyone or anything gets in our way, well, we have the right to do whatever it may take to eliminate the offensive disruptor.

to be continued…

Learning to be responsible is part of growing up, they say. Makes me wonder if I ever grew up.

This is a not a good thing. This is not some Peter Pan fantasy where I celebrate being footloose and fancy-free, avoiding any commitment or beholdenness to another human being. I would seriously question the veracity of anyone, man or woman, who stated that as a goal. We all want to have days like that, perhaps, but not lifestyles. Correct me if I’m wrong.

We all want to feel that we are important in some way, and we can’t be important if we are not important to– someone else. Human relationships demand balance, and when one does not hold up his end of the equation, the relationship ultimately fails.

Most of my relationships failed. Inevitably, I questioned whether I was the one not holding up my end. I’ve felt irresponsible in many ways. I start things I don’t finish. I lose friends by rift or drift. (I hope I don’t need to explain that, but if need be I will). At the age of 21, I walked out on my job of three years so I could spend time at my fiance’s college two hours away. At age 23, I walked away from my two best friends since high school because of one falling-out evening. In between those events, my loss of steady income eventually led to me losing my car. I also lost my financial aid from dropping too many classes. I did graduate, taking 5½ years, not four. Because of one essay I turned in one day late, which ultimately lowered my grade in that course from an A to a B, my overall GPA dropped from 3.50 to 3.49. One single paper– if I could have just got my ass in gear and finished one single paper on time (and I could have), I would have graduated cum laude.

At age 26, I dropped out of graduate school after three semesters, feeling disillusioned. Eight months later, I moved to Colorado. Fifteen months after that, I got married.

I married into four children, one with special needs. My responsibility meter spiked. Before my second wedding anniversary, I adopted my wife’s oldest daughter. I had already acted as Dad with the kids living with us at home, but now, I was officially a father. Uber-responsible.

Eight months after that, I was hired as a teacher. Now I became responsible not only for my children but for other people’s children as well.

Three years have passed since then. Yet I still feel, if not irresponsible, much less responsible than I should be. I don’t take care of things at home. I don’t take care of things at school. Not like I should.

All of this thought is prompted by many things, but most of all, worrisome times are ahead for our family. Frightening, perhaps. My wife will undergo her fourth major abdominal surgery of the last six years on Wednesday, and this will be the most serious of them all. The surgeon estimates 6-10 hours. That is a lot of time on the table, a lot of time under, and there will be a lot of careful maneuvering around vital organs and blood vessels. I’m sure you can imagine what comes next.

There is a chance, albeit quite a small chance, but more than a zero chance, that she will not leave the operating room alive.

It’s highly unlikely, no more than a one percent chance. But major surgery always carries this risk. My wife is a strong person, who has a very strong belief about the afterlife based on her own experiences (another story, another time). She is not afraid of death. She only fears the effect it would have on her children, who mean everything to her.

She is very responsible. She is everything in that regard that I wish I could be. She organizes, she sets priorities, she gets things done. She runs the household, she cleans it, she buys the groceries, she pays the bills (though I still make a bit more money). She observes things in the house that I am oblivious to. She keeps the kids in line, checking up on their rooms, while I trust them far too much to take care of their own spaces. And I feel that even when I try, I will always miss something, and never live up to her standard.

We have had the talk. Should the worst happen, she entrusts everything to me. She had to fill out this document called “Five Wishes” which essentially amounted to a living will. But she worries if I can handle it. So do I.

She says she has faith, that she believes in me. She says she wants me to see what she sees– in me. When will I learn to? When will I act on it?

I sit here in my office at home, surrounded by crates of material I brought home from school to organize. Mostly, it’s the same stuff I brought home to organize last summer, and did not. Now my time is running short again, especially considering the events of this week. On top of it all, I decided to start graduate school this summer. This course is “guided independent study”, meaning it’s basically me and the instructor. I complete the assignments, she reads and grades them. I have to set my own deadlines, and now I’m already behind and this weekend, the paper I was supposed to send by Friday only got sent tonight.

It seems to me that I have plenty of motivation, no shortage of reasons to change my ways, get my act in gear, whatever cliché you may apply. But yet I don’t feel it strongly enough to act on it. What is it going to take to make me take action? Hopefully not the worst. But maybe a scare is some kind of divinely-intervening-kick-in-the-butt.

One day soon, I will feel I can truly call myself responsible. First and foremost, I must be responsible for myself.

I’m looking forward to sharing good news here next Sunday.

It’s Sunday and that means time to write. I had thought of drafting this post earlier, but that did not happen. I had thought of setting not only a day but also a time of that day as my deadline– I was thinking of noon Eastern time, which would be 10 a.m. my time. But until I get in the swing of this deal, I’d best be content with having a 24-hour window once a week. Andy mentioned me in his post this week and so now the pressure is on. I mean that in a good way– pressure makes diamonds.

Our kids were gone for most of this week, from Sunday afternoon to Saturday afternoon. The three younger ones were attending day camp at their grandmother’s church. The teenager was babysitting our former neighbor’s daughters. So I had quite a bit of time at home alone, during which I should have accomplished a lot. A lot. Such was not reality, and I’m disappointed to say that I’m not surprised. Then Wednesday afternoon my wife’s best friend, Eric, arrived for a visit and was here until Saturday afternoon. We had a lot of fun. (Photos in photoblog, go look). It was great because I actually had a guy to hang out with for three evenings. Since I moved to Colorado (today, July 19, was the day I left, and Tuesday, the 21st, will mark exactly seven years since the day I arrived) I haven’t had a “bud” like that and it’s a part of my life I’ve been missing. I really don’t know how one goes about making new friends when you’re married with children. Sure, I have friends at work who I occasionally socialize with with a gathering at one’s house or at the bar on Friday afternoons (or playing basketball on Friday afternoons), but folks who come over, hang out, drink, play video games or watch funny movies– I don’t know any here and now.

Friendship is a funny thing to me. In this day and age of online social networks we toss around the word ever so lightly, as in “He’s my friend on Facebook,” etc.; some even make it a verb, as in in “I friended her on Myspace.” Certainly Xanga falls into the same category. There are always people who will belittle and/or stigmatize social interactions that exist on a mostly or totally online basis, as if they don’t really count or matter. They will say that the social Web is a complete fantasy world, that you don’t really know anyone you talk to within it, that you can’t know someone if you haven’t physically seen or heard them (I guess blind and deaf people are friendless by default under such a definition). Such remarks always rile me. I have spent probably too much time socializing online in the past 13 years, and at times it was, indeed, because I was lacking for such interaction in the “real world.” But I don’t discount the friendships I made. I have met a number of people “IRL” who I first knew online and I have to encounter any individuals who were totally different from the way they represented themselves. At worst, some of them were more boring than their online personas. Others, like Natasha, are even more interesting.

The result though is that even when people do feel an attachment to online friends, they seek to minimize it publicly for fear of being freakish because of this stubborn stigma. I don’t think people should have to deal with such feelings. On the one hand, I do think it’s true that for many, the Internet can actually make one less connected and more isolated from the outside world.  I don’t advocate spending all your free time playing World of Warcraft and not stepping out into the sunshine. Just like anything else in life, moderation is called for. I think a balance between socializing in “real life” and online can be struck– and obviously you may have friends you interact with in both spheres. But I’m not going to feel like a freak if I seek social interaction here when I am short on it outside.

I will fiercely defend the friendships I have formed online, some of which have translated over to the outside world, others of which have not. There are people who I have never met face-to-face who have listened to me when I needed someone to and offered their support and loyalty. That is what I call friendship. It may not be the hanging out and drinking yourself silly kind that I was speaking of earlier, but those are the most important things true friends do for you. I also feel that I know someone better when I read how they express themselves in writing than I do when I just met them in a bar five minutes ago. But the greatest testimony of all I can offer in this regard is the simple but vitally important fact that I met my wonderful wife right here on Xanga and that led me on that 1450 mile drive exactly seven years ago.

Lately it doesn’t seem to be so easy to make new friends in any fashion, online or off.  I don’t know if it’s more age or situation. But I would like to develop new friendships, of any sort, and I’ll take the risk of sounding pathetic in stating that. C’est la vie.

I suppose I will write more on the topic of organization next time. ‘Tis my greatest weakness and I sense I will be suffering for it in the near future. Until next Sunday, be well and keep writing.

I know it looks long, but don’t let that scare you.

Ahem… just read, please?

New plan: Weekly posts. On Sunday. I know I can’t write (or at least enough to post) every day– if I’m not accomplishing it in summer, it sure as hell isn’t going to happen once school starts. I noticed that Andy posts on a regularly weekly basis, every Friday. If a dedicated writer like him can do it, so can I. But I know better than to do it on a weekday, and I figure giving myself Saturday to work something up will be helpful. All the best columnists get front-page treatment in the Sunday newspaper, so I can pretend to follow in that tradition. Plus, during fantasy-football season, I can remember to post to my blog when I post my lineup.

Now we conclude our meta-xangation and move on to our regularly scheduled post…

This week will feature a visit from my wife’s best friend. On the 29th, my wife goes in for her third major abdominal surgery in the past six years (she explains much better than I can on her site). Meanwhile, I’m taking my first class of my M.Ed. program and trying to get all my teaching stuff organized– a project I procrastinated all last summer and have so far this one as well, but I know I will be miserable through the year if I don’t get it done.

Now let me relate the exploits of last week…

So, in my pulse I had mentioned the adventure of trying to give away a TV. Yes, give away. You figure that would be easy, but it was not quite so easy as I would hope.

When we moved here, into our own house (OK, we’re renting it but consider it ours) and moved out of my mother-in-law’s house, we brought two televisions with us. Both were 32″ models but one was a three-year-old LCD HDTV and the other was a seven-year-old CRT monster. The latter behemoth weighs at least as much as I do and was no fun whatsoever getting out of or into a house. Although we did not keep it on the main level here, we did at least have the sense to take it downstairs to the basement, where we figured it might remain even after we left because there was no way we were moving that thing again.

This TV generally worked fine but had one small problem. Sometimes you would turn it on, and after a few seconds it would turn off– actually, the picture would disappear and then you had to turn it off and on again. Sometimes you would have to repeat the cycle several times and flip through the channel guide, raise and lower the volume, etc. to make it be “active” so it would stay on. Even when it stayed on TV itself, if you changed to another input like the DVD player or Wii, it would go out again. But we could always get it to stay on eventually. However, our child with autism did not understand the problem and did not have the patience for it, which sometimes became an issue itself.

So, my wife and I decided that we could get a new TV once we saw a really good deal. That good deal finally came along at the end of June with a special at Costco.com. With a $100 “instant rebate” they were offering a 40″ HDTV for $499. I got the green light from the missus to order it, and as soon as I did, I said “We should get rid of that old one.”

There was brief discussion about asking some small amount of money for it, but we decided that considering its one issue and its sheer bulk, we would give it away for free provided that the takers would carry it out of our house with no assistance from us.

And where do you go to give something away for free? To Craigslist, of course.

I posted the ad, complete with two photos, shortly after 3 p.m. The first three offers came in less than 10 minutes. By 4 p.m. I had received a dozen offers. I started off by responding only to the first three. I hadn’t mentioned the TV’s “issue” in the ad, but felt I should do so to anyone who was seriously ready to take it. That mention led #1 to decide she didn’t want it. #2 was going to come get it, but it would be she and her husband and 1-year-old twins in the car so could we help her husband get it while she stayed in the car? NO, we couldn’t, that’s not part of the bargain. Read the ad. (But I was polite about it). #3 just didn’t respond right away, as I recall.

Several of the early offers promised they could “come get it right now” but those didn’t have priority in the first received, first offered order which I tried to maintain, for a while anyway. Various people said they wanted to get the TV for their son, daughter, grandmother, etc. But by the time we came back from picking up dinner, roughly 8:00, the more interesting e-mails were coming.

“hi my name is sheila i am a cancer pt. when i got home from chemo today my house had been cleaned out by my ex. is the tv still available pls let me know”

“Do you still have this TV? My TV went out and I am a single working [college student] mother…and right now getting a new TV isnt in my budget.  I can have 2 people come get it for me….Please? I can get it tonight also…please let me know”

“Hello my name’s Marie & i desperately need a new TV i am currently struggling just to make the rent and last week my only TV was stolen while i was at work. Please call me if your TV is still available i have friends that could pick it up and carry it for me tomorrow.”

“Hi my name is Tina and I just came across your ad on craigslist for your 32 inch tv. Well I understand that you have had alot of replys about the tv and I just would like to pretty much beg for you to give me the opportunity to have the tv. The reason is I just moved into my apartment with my daughter its our first apartment together we are recovery from a really bad loss in the family. Both of my grandparents just passed away 2 weeks ago and when I went to my daughters friends to break the news to her she took it very hard cuz we were living with my grandparents at the time they passed away. Well as we were getting funeral arrangements ready for my grandparents our house (grandparents house) had got robbed by some thugs and stole my daughters tv that my grandmother had previously bought her and other electronics as well, so I would really like to get my daughter another tv the only problem is I don’t have that kind of money to get it for her. I’m not trying to have you feel sorry for me but I’m just telling you the truth of why I desperately need one.  Please if possibly can you call me at …”

Color me cynical, but I guessed at least some of these stories/pleas to be fictional. Suddenly I felt elevated to a kind of benevolent philanthrophist who had to decide who was most deserving of my goodwill? The cancer patient cleaned out by her ex? Someone who just recently had their TV stolen? (The last story there tops them all for melodrama, especially with the addition of the line “I’m not trying to have you feel sorry for me”). No, I picked the one that sounded most legitimate to me– the single mom in college. She wasn’t anywhere near next in line in terms of when the e-mail was received, but she seemed the most worthy beneficiary to me.

She was going to get it. We made it as far as exchanging numbers and I called and gave her directions. I waited. Two, close to three hours passed. Finally I checked my e-mail again. She had written again, and as far as one can read tone in an e-mail, she seemed genuinely frustrated and apologetic at once. Her help had “flaked out at the last minute” on her. I felt bad but had to stick to the rules as stated before.

So I was left trying to sort through the now over 40 e-mails (although I had deleted the ad earlier in the day, after she said she was coming). I started sending out offers in the order received; I just wanted whoever could come get it first. Eventually this young woman and her husband who was, I could tell, corresponding with me via her cell phone showed up about 8 p.m. Monday night and carried it away.

The new TV was supposed to arrive the next day, Tuesday. UPS gave its infamous “9 a.m. to 7 p.m.” window for when it could be delivered. By 5 there’d been no sign of it and I wondered if I should say something. My wife advised me that until 7 p.m., all they would tell you is “it’s out for delivery.” So I waited. And sure enough, at 6:50– with all of ten minutes to spare– the truck shows up.

I had purchased a new DirecTV HD DVR the same day at– you guessed it– Costco and was looking forward to big-screen full-HD glory that night. But, of course, DirecTV’s systems were being updated and their agents had no access to user accounts. Ultimately I had to wait almost 48 hours, until Thursday evening, to get my new receiver authorized but, let me tell you, looking at this thing, the wait was well worth it. I’m such a guy.

Now it would seem good old Xanga has become a “network” of sites including Datingish, Mancouch, Autisable, and Revelife, the last of which is Christian-themed. Revelife recently featured the provocative question “Do you believe in evolution?” and this of course led to a banter of comments debating evolution versus creationism.

I started thinking, “Hmmm, I’m sure this topic has been debated before on Xanga, and more particularly, I’m sure that I had something to say about it before.” And so I did… as early as January 22, 2001 in this post. I’ve always been fascinated by this topic, and experienced difficulty reconciling all my beliefs, but at the same time, I’ve often been disgusted by how polarized people become with their opinions. There is middle ground, I believe. Anyhow, I’m kind of at a block on anything else to write about at the moment, so I thought I’d share my “answer” to the abovementioned question:

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I consider myself both Christian and a believer in evolution– in fact, I believe in all development of the natural universe as presently described by rational science, from the Big Bang on. Furthermore, I believe that science is the revelation of God’s truth to us. What we now consider science would have once been thought of as magic (or its darker counterparts); the progress continues.

I think GabrielPeter’s issue is that he’s ultimately a fundamentalist. If you want to ascribe the existence of sin and death to Adam & Eve and their Fall, well then, you do have to take Genesis literally and you can’t believe in the old Earth/scientific view. In the scientific view, there were no two human beings from whom all present living humans descended.

If you can take the Genesis account figuratively, then you can fit in sin and death. And if you’re believing that the Creation account is figurative, not literal (which must be done if you are to reconcile evolution and a 4.5 billion year old Earth with it), then you can follow that the Garden of Eden story is also figurative, not literal.

If you figure that the tale of Adam & Eve is a parable, just as Jesus told about the prodigal son, et. al., then it works. There doesn’t have to be a literal prodigal son; the point was in the moral of the story. So, the Hebrews told a story about Adam & Eve that was essentially the same story that the Greeks told about Pandora, and countless other cultures doubtlessly tell similar stories: Mankind was created essentially perfect, free of death, disease, and all suffering. But someone– Eve, Pandora, (we could have a separate discussion about why it’s so often a woman– likely because these were/are partriarchal cultures!) decides that this idyllic existence isn’t quite enough because they get curious about what god(s) know that they don’t. Once they indulge that curiosity– eat the apple, open the box– boom! all humanity is doomed to suffer forevermore for it.

Does it matter why suffering (which Christians will equate with sin) came into the world? Fundamentalist Christians will insist it will, that there is a direct connection between the Fall and Christ’s redemption that cannot be fudged on either end. More liberally, one could still endorse the exclusivity of Christ’s ability to redeem mankind because of his divine co-nature. Suffice to say that someone had to die to redeem sin, but the only one who could do that had to be at once both God and man.

The next step would be simply to believe that Jesus lived to set an example for how all of us should live and that believing in him means living our own lives by that example and thus each doing his or her small part to make the world a better place. However, this opens the door to not literally believing in the Resurrection and by most commonly accepted definitions, one cannot be a Christian without believing in the Resurrection and all it entails.

The bottom line is that reconciling science and Christianity is possible, so long as one does not insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentalism and rational science are indeed mutually exclusive. It’s easier if you are a Deist and favor the idea of the “Divine Watchmaker” or “Supreme Architect” God over the “Talking to You From a Burning Bush” God.

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What do you think?

What a week it has been.

I’ve played medical taxi twice– once taking my teenage daugher for oral surgery (wisdom teeth), later taking my wife’s co-worker/friend for vocal cord surgery. I’ve visited the campus of Regis University to consult with my advisor about my graduate program that begins, officially, tomorrow. I took care of said daughter post-surgery. I laughed in horror and consoled and supported as my wife was told she needed a $700 shot. Three celebrities died (Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, and Michael Jackson) as well as thousands of other human beings around the globe. And, not least importantly, I made a quasi-triumphant return to Xanga.

Everyone else has shared their thoughts on Michael Jackson, so I might as well do the same. The man was an icon. If you are 30something years old, like me, he’s a part of your formative years. I clearly recall music class in 3rd grade and whatever game we may have played– Musical Chairs,
Freeze Dance– most often the song of choice (by us third-graders) was “Beat It.” In fifth grade we convinced our teacher to buy the “We Are the World” record (yes, record) and play it in class.

Unfortunately, in his latter years, MJ was more a target of suspicion and ridicule than regarded as the great musical artist he was. No doubt he did bring much of it on himself. There were extremely complex psychological machinations leading to his desire to so radically alter his appearance. As for calling him a child molestor, well, I can’t think of many worse crimes, but the fact remains that he was proven guilty of nothing. I still believe that for the most part, although he probably didn’t have much sense of appropriate boundaries, he was just trying to recover and relive a lost youth, a childhood he was never allowed to have. It seems hard to deny, to me, that this man had his heart in the right place. Look at what he did with USA for Africa. Consider the messages in songs like “Black or White” or “They Don’t Care About Us.”

His death was shocking, but like Elvis Presley and John Lennon before him, it just somehow feels as if he wasn’t meant to become old.

In other news, I’m pleased to see that so many of my old friends are still around here on Xanga. I have to laugh at people commenting how they’ve been on here– a year!– or even more– two years! Maybe I came across as condescending when I spoke of my longevity here and how these futile and insipid attempts at Xanga “celebrity” are not only nothing new, but are most of all like Kansas described– dust in the wind. If so, I apologize. If you’re trying to carve out a legitimate presence here, and you want to get noticed, you go right ahead. It matters not what your join date is. Just remember that there are those of us who have been around this block many times and, when you do seek advice, we know of what we speak.

One of the new (and not so improved) features on Xanga since I’ve been “gone” is the “True” badge. While surfing sites today I came across the quite intelligent and articulate Xangan, Lynnjynh9315, who was asking the question, “What exactly is a Xanga Celebrity?”:

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Oh, this makes me chuckle.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Here, on only my second day back, I was reminded on one of the things I always hated about Xanga: the editor doesn’t auto-save your drafts.

Couple that with one of the very few things I hate about Firefox: For some reason, on my laptop, it will, once in a while and for no particular reason I have yet discerned, it will death-crash. By that I mean not just an ordinary crash that forces you to close and then re-open the browser. I don’t even mean the kind that locks up everything to the point that you can only CTRL-ALT-DEL your way out of it. (And please, if you’re a Mac user, don’t take this opportunity to preach Apple’s virtues). A death-crash will, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, present you with the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. An all-blue screen with white text stating “Hardware malfunction. Contact your hardware vendor.” And your only option is a hard reboot, i.e. pushing the power button until it turns off, then push again.

And this beautiful entry I wrote about my daughter, 16, who is getting her wisdom teeth extracted today, and how much I love her, pain though she may be– it’s gone. And if you’ve ever had to endure this, I’ll wager you also never feel like immediately re-writing what you just spent half an hour of your life on.

Well, let me post this before something else happens. It won’t change my plans to stick around; it’s just frustrating when this is a simple feature that has been implemented into other blogging platforms for quite some time. Come on, Xangods.

EDIT: I discovered this paragraph from my 2/15/06 entry here that recaps some of what I had written:
Speaking of my daughter, I wanted to share with the Xanga world my most exciting news of last
fall, surpassing even the student teaching. I officially became a
father on September 27, 2005, when we visited court and the judge
granted my petition for stepparent adoption. Dora was born back in
1992, when Maria was only 17 years old; her biological father
disappeared soon after. He became, well, not a good person some time
after her birth, and Maria didn’t want him in Dora’s life. He had one
last chance when she was three, and made a host of promises he didn’t
keep. He was never heard from again after that. The court mandates that
“diligent efforts” be made to locate the other biological parent in a
stepparent adoption case, and we did try all we could; but there’s no
record of him anywhere. So, upon the judge’s order, she became Dora
O’Quinn and I am now the proud father of a 13-year-old daughter. She is
proud to bear the same name as both her parents, whereas her three,
much younger half-siblings retain their father’s, Maria’s ex-husband,
last name. Though I love Corin (8) and Jonah and Caleb (twins, almost
7) as if they were my own, they will always be my stepchildren. But for
Dora, I am, and shall always be, Dad.

There’s a lot of real names in there. That’s one thing I’ve thought of that I need to change in this reboot. I discovered that I had a lot of entries on here that I had made private, and I’m not quite sure why, but I’m going to make most of them public again, if you’re extremely bored and interested in reading back.