If you can't beat 'em...let 'em beat you

I read in the Drudge Report, that a British school has engineered a brilliant new policy to discourage its students from swearing at teachers.

Are you ready for this? Here it is. They will allow the students to use the f-word in class, but only five times per day.

A running tally will be kept on the board of how many times the word (or derivative) has been used. When the class exceeds their allotted five profanities, the teacher will “speak to” them at the end of the class.

The logic is flawless. Obviously, when you tell someone they can’t do something, and they do it anyway, the only effective way to discourage them from doing it is to – allow it! Good plan.

This was clearly thought up by the same geniuses who thought the best way to make abortion “safe and rare” was to make it legal.

In other news, authorities have decided to discourage insurgents from attacking soldiers and innocent civilians, by allowing car/police station bombings, but only five times per day and the insurgents must submit schedules and locations beforehand for approval. If they exceed the five-bomb limit or bomb the wrong orphanage, we’ll give them a stern talking to at the end of the day (see if we don’t!)

Thank God we went to war for oil - otherwise gas would be expensive!

So, gas prices are going up.

Did anyone notice that? I noticed. They’re definitely going up. In case you think it’s bold of me to make such a definitive statement without attributing it to someone, don’t worry - I conducted a study.

The study consisted of me buying gas every few days and discovering, each time I did so, that it was more expensive than the previous time (that’s science). Also, I looked at the signs with the gas prices on them. And the numbers on the signs are higher now than they used to be. Thus I have empirical evidence of the increase in gas prices and should henceforth not be questioned.

Now that we have established that gas prices are, in fact, going up, we should discuss what to do about it.

You have to admit that it poses a problem – although admittedly only to those of us who buy gas. The rest of you have your own problems to deal with.

I thought about walking to work, but since it’s a half-hour drive, that didn’t seem like the voice of wisdom. I thought about just not going to work at all (and it seemed like a really good idea for a moment) but realized just in time that there’s a good chance they’ll stop paying me if I do that – which explains why I’ve been going for so long to begin with.

So, at this point in the commentary, it would be appropriate to introduce some stunningly brilliant solution to our problem. But what for? You’ve all got the forwarded emails. So this is my suggestion.

Buy a smaller car.

No need to thank me for my advice (but if you do want to thank me I accept PayPal). Just be glad you know me. And be glad I have nothing better to do at work than spout nonsense to keep you semi-entertained.

Writing stuff

So I’m almost done with my book, and as it builds toward the climax, it’s getting harder and harder to write. Where the words used to spill out so quickly and easily I didn’t know where they came from, I now have to sit and agonize for hours at a time before writing anything. In fact sometimes I don’t write anything. I just agonize.

But I’m past the point of no return. This book is and always has been, totally God, not me, so I suppose a little perspiration won’t kill me, especially since I got more than probably my fair share of inspiration, if you subscribe to the one percent rule.

I did recently have a breakthrough after weeks of writer’s block. It was small but significant. And it was the first thing to be written in the new journal (thank you Sarah and David). It also happened directly after a much more significant breakthrough in my relationship with God and my willingness to obey him. I don't doubt that the two are related.

That said, I already have an idea for my next book. “Getting a little ahead of yourself aren’t you?” you might ask. And you’d probably be right.

The new idea, far from being the Lewis-esque fairy tale that the current one hopes (desperately prays) to be, is based on an actual, live, real-time romance happening very close to me. And it’s so totally awesome because it’s the kind of beautiful, pure, innocent romance that you never see in today’s everything-goes atmosphere. Even in church, where we often blur the lines between our standards and the world’s (read about it in chapter nineteen of my book!) you rarely see something this … lovely.

The reason I want to write it is because it would be really challenging. You can’t just write that like regular fiction. It has to be really poignant and unique to be a success. A “Lovely Bones”/”Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”/”Catcher in the Rye” type thing, if that makes any sense. But uplifting.

I hate that the choice so often has to be made between really good literature that makes you feel like killing yourself and a really uplifting story that’s badly written.

Am I capable of rising to such a task? I guess we’ll find out. The really interesting thing about it is that I don’t know how this story ends yet. I think (and I hope this is God) it ends as beautifully as it starts.

Actually I know it ends perfectly, praise God, but I don't know if perfect means what I expect it to mean.

Anyway, look for it in stores in a couple years. It’ll be called “Evolution of a perfect love story” or something equally cheesy. Well, okay, maybe not.

But pray about it for me. If it’s God it will happen.

Hey, have you read this? I wasn’t funny at all today, was I? My sincerest apologies. I’ll see if I can find something to get indignant about for my next post!

I believed in Intelligent Design ... and then I met you

Okay here it is. This is for Steve, my silent, but apparently loyal reader (whom I had never heard of until today).

Let’s talk about “Intelligent Design!”

A brief synopsis: some people think children should be exposed to all the facts and allowed to take more than one unproven viewpoint into consideration about the earth’s foundation. Not surprisingly, the idea of their party not having a total monopoly on our children’s education greatly upsets those self-proclaimed champions of tolerance, diversity and open-mindedness on the left.

Experts at painting pictures of the right as morons waving their Bibles in the air and demanding the stoning death of girls in short skirts, they have set to work with a vengeance to discredit intelligent design. The current picture: President Bush forces children to recite chapters of Genesis in class while a frustrated parents, bound and gagged, look on.

It would be pointless for me to pretend to be unbiased about this debate, since everyone who reads this blog knows that I believe God created the earth (idiotic I know, when you hold it up next to the alternative – that it burst into existence by magic).

Let’s overlook, for a moment, all the arguments against evolution and assume against all reason that there was nothing, and then, quite suddenly, there was something huge that contained all the exact conditions required to support millions of different life forms all living in relative harmony – what the new-agers would call “the circle of life.”

Let’s pretend “science,” the current vanguard of the liberal agenda to control your child’s mind, has not found numerous large holes in Darwin’s theory (no, I promise you, it IS a theory, no matter HOW loudly you scream over me).

If it’s so OBVIOUSLY right, why don’t you think your children are smart enough to figure that out? Why try to stifle every peep of opposition? Creationist families have been forced to allow their children to sit through classes where theory is taught as fact and opposing ideas are ridiculed for years. And the outcome is that our kids know both sides of the story. Yours don’t even know what they’re ridiculing.

This has been evidenced in my own experience more than once.

My friend Ben and I, on our way to a camping trip, got into a discussion about it once. I told him that there are plenty of scientists who were also creationists – the two are not actually mutually exclusive.

He smiled condescendingly, and, (looking a little embarrassed on my behalf) said, “but … not real scientists.” Silly, stupid Kate he added silently.

On another camping trip (one I wasn’t on) Ben, stepped in his own campfire after eating a few too many mushrooms.

The funny thing is, Intelligent Design is not religion. It’s merely the idea that some evidence suggests there was a plan behind the earth. No one is suggesting we beat our kids about the heads with Bibles until they can chant our religious mantra.

Just that you give them an alternative to the utter nonsense with which you’ve been filling their impressionable young minds.