Thank God for W!

Thank God for W!

Because how else is Obama possible? Eight years ago was when McCain should've been elected president; he wasn't, and GW Bush claimed it was God's will that he be President. I have to say I was skeptical at the time, but as a Christian independent who leans right, I was willing to let him have the benefit of the doubt. And boy, was I patient. I won't give you a history lesson, because odds are if you're reading this, you're well aware of how the country has been doing the past eight years. Even my conservative brethren would be hard pressed to give a passing grade the Republican White House.

But wouldn't you know, Bush was dead on, one hundred percent correct! God put him in office for a very specific purpose: to make Barack Obama a viable candidate for president. If McCain had won the nomination in 2000, and subsequently the presidency, I think we'd have done alright. We certainly wouldn't have gone into Iraq so cavalierly, the war in Afghanistan would be better run, and we wouldn't have increased spending by the trillions and leaving it to future generations to foot the bill. We'd be alright.

But that's all. A little growth, spending down, some safe picks for Supreme Court Justice, Roe v. Wade would still be around, because it isn't going anywhere, no matter who's in office no matter what you say, and we'd be just as disinterested and complacent and dead inside as any nation that does extremely well and then coasts on its past successes and gets fat and decadent until they are too weak to fight off the Vandals and Visigoths sweeping in from the east with torches and facepaint.

Instead, we were forced to examine our path with clear eyes. We re-elected Bush because there was really no other option. John Kerry was by no stretch of the imagination up to the task of cleaning up this mess. We still had illusions, brush to be burned so that a raging fire of devastation didn't get out of control and consume our country. Bush, whether by accident or design, was that fireman that clears the path to create the fire-break. Kerry would've just been a bucket of water.

Bush exposed us to ourselves, showed us the painting of America we'd been hiding in the attic that aged and decayed while we stayed bright and shiny Dorians. And we didn't like it one bit.
Would we have been ready for Barack Obama without that facade being ripped away? Would we have heard his call to hope above the dull hum of contentment brought on by a mildly successful decade of average prosperity? Would we muster up the energy to even care?
I don't think we would. I honestly don't. We'd be right back where we started. But now, by the grace of God, we have the chance to reverse history. The idealism of the Kennedy administration gave way to Johnson and Nixon and led to an unjust and unpopular war. Now our unjust war and unpopular president have given way to a new, robust idealism, kin to Camelot with an eye on the future.

I disagree with Obama on most of his platforms. But I voted for him because he is what a president should be- a leader. Disagree with him. Passionately. I predict just as many conservatives will be inspired to public service as liberals. I predict that more people than ever before will be inspired to take action needed to back up their ideals, whether it's volunteering for underpriviledged youths or counseling pregnant teenagers and compassionately sharing alternatives to abortion. These issues are non-partisan. The debate has to change now.

I believe with my whole heart that God takes what is broken and makes it new. And sometimes a sickness must be made worse before it can be treated. Our fever has broken, the healing can now begin.

Happiness is College in your Rearview Mirror

Went down to Baylor this weekend and got the best and worst of the post-grad return. Undergrads who were freshmen when I left are seniors now, kids wanted to hang and hear what adventures I'm up to in the real world, a girl who was crushing on me three years ago walked into the room and her jaw dropped when she saw me. Those were the ego boosts. The freshmen being seniors shouldn't be in that list, but the backspace button is a form of censorship and censorship is wrong. So the freshmen being seniors made me feel super old. Sitting in on an improv class made me feel depressed. I'd say that was bittersweet. And in the interest of full disclosure, I used the backspace button several times before I nailed down the exact feeling. It was sweet because it was the class where I was first introduced to the magic of the Harold. It was bitter because I don't think my old professor has seen live improv in years and teaches Truth in Comedy like it's a textbook. To her credit, she knows her limitations, and she teaches the subject because she loves it, but there's been zero advancement in the level of teaching. It's almost an academic curiousity or something. This is what improvisation is, or was when Del Close developed his form, and we will reenact it as best we can for an hour and a half twice a week. Yikes. It made me angry and frightened that here were fifteen perfectly functional human beings who were making every effort not to connect with each other on stage. And these are people who hope to make their living on stage. Now, improv isn't for everybody, but any actor who gets onstage only thinking of himself or herself is going to fail, no matter how many laughs they get from the peanut gallery. People who matter will know the truth and see them for what they are and leave them in the dust to wonder why they can't seem to make it. So I'm going to go back there and share what little bit I've learned; I know I don't have it all down myself, but I can at least share the benefit of two years of UCB training to show them that the form can be living and vibrant and selfless and beautiful and an artistic expression of truth and the laughter it brings and not an oportunity to say something clever and be a badass for 30 seconds before giving up on the scene because you were only thinking of yourself. In all, I'm freaking glad to be out of college. That said, I need an improv class like a junkie needs his next fix. I'm jonesing. People still say that right? Jonesing? Probably for the best.

Never Shave Again

I just saw an ad on facebook for a home laser hair removal system. The tag line, "Never Shave Again". This product terrifies me, and I'll tell you why. Pranks. Think of the poor drunken college students out there who have too many SoCo and Cokes at the weekend house party and pass out on the couch. In the past, the worst thing that could happen is they'd wake up with a penis Sharpied on their forehead and their eyebrows might get shaved off. Hilarious. Now we live in a world where any frat boy can get his hands on a LASER designed to PERMANENTLY remove body hair. Imagine the horrors. Going through life drawing on your eyebrows is a price too steep for a night of indulgence. While it may serve as a deterrent to excessive drinking, I think stringent DUI laws already in place are keeping kids off the roads- why are we punishing them for responsibly passing out on the coach? It just makes me sick.

On the other hand, if the guy's a total douche, it would be pretty funny.

Now that's got me thinking. The eyebrows are a logical target, but let's face it, we want to attack the psyche. If this guy's a douche, you want to draw out the abuse, espescially if you live with him. It's like when my roommate peed in my closet and didn't tell me for six months and I just thought I smelled bad. Everyone in on it got SIX MONTHS of pure joy! I'm sure I'd have found it funny, too, if it hadn't totally destroyed my self-esteem and made it impossible for me to bring girls home. Come to think of it, the loft bed and my persistent virginity didn't help either. But back to the idea. You have to draw it out. So here's how to get the most bang for your buck. Attack the hairline. You, or your most steady handed friend, take the laser device and take a couple millimeters off the forehead from ear to ear. If you want to be chancy, take a little more off the sides directly above the temple. Repeat weekly until a bottle of Rogaine appears in your shower and baseball caps become a staple. Then up it to twice a week or just attack the crown.

This might just be the meanest idea I've ever had, and I wouldn't do it to my worst enemy, but that's my point, the technology is out there, and it took a straight-laced guy like me ten minutes to hatch a completely evil plot; a guy could wake up tomorrow with an irreversibly receding hairline in his virile late teens to early twenties. That sort of pressure shouldn't be on his shoulders for another ten years. So please, if you have unwanted body hair, there are perfectly good waxing establishments and five-headed razor blades at your disposal. Do it for your friends. Because no one should have that kind of power. Nobody.

There is a blog

My inaugural blog, in which I renounce myspace almost completely, begins here. Fittingly, I'm doing two screen-based activities at the same time, watching my beloved Cowboys in their season opener against the Browns, and surfing the interweb.

That's a fairly ubiquitous word these days, "interweb". It's used by moderately tech-savvy people to ironically comment on how moderately tech-savvy they are. It also sounds funny.

This blog is about funny things, and serious things, too, but only if there's some grain of fun to them. Figuring life out can be fun, whining about it isn't. If I ever cross that line, feel free to upload some sort of virus to my hard-drive that will make my laptop shock my testicles. Or send a nice note telling me to ease up. Your call.

See y'all on the 'net. (No one calls it that anymore, right? Good.)