Safe Haven

 Fair warning: Tom Segura is a crude comedian, and he uses words I don’t even use in a flare of some passion. Nevertheless, I find him really funny. I think most people know who Joe Rogan is, but if not, he hosts the most popular podcast in the world. He’s also a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC for short, which is the top level of mixed martial arts (MMA for short). It’s probably risen to prominence because of corruption in boxing. I digress. Tom Segura has a funny bit about the difference between watching his own sons, versus the two girls his cousin has. At the time, both sets of kids were the same age, 6 and 3. He says in part: “(OMG), what did I do wrong, to not get girls?…They’re like, ‘Hello, Uncle Tommy.’ And I say, ‘Hello to you.’…I could go in that room an hour later and they’re like [impersonation of little girls coloring and smiling]…My boys aren’t like that…real “he/hims”, if you know what I’m saying. Don’t worry, we asked them. [Segura kind of s...

 I feared this loss for some time now, because the stroke which limited his capacities was 14 years ago. I'm going to keep this brief. One thing we owe as a debt to every British subject and resident of the Commonwealth realms is the preservation of our English language, and how this heritage is the root of some of the greatest human stories ever told. Between the King James Bible and William Shakespeare, every entertainer who keeps our language and our greatest playwright's work alive is worth honoring. On the stage, Curry was a three-time Tony Award nominee, and a Laurence Olivier Award nominee for his turn as The Pirate King in the West End production of The Pirates of Penzance (1982). He was also a mainstay of American film and television. He stars in the film adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October (1990) and acted in numerous films for children, starring in Home Alone 2, and FernGully, to take two examples. From what I could see, he was prolific as a perfo...

 If you’re not fortunate enough to leave the Earth way too soon—as I said, Billy Joel’s famous song isn’t totally wrong—you’re probably going to be around awhile. Besides your family, friends, and helping anyone else who needs help along the way, there will be some times of boredom, or slowness, or something. We watch sports, and TV shows and plays, etc. because as the comedian Tom Papa noted about marriage and its lulls and frustrations, “You’re here because you think, ‘Let’s have someone else talk for an hour.’” Celebrities of all kinds, if you think about it, are people that are uniquely gifted in one or a few things, in such a way that a bunch of people want to experience them do the thing they are good at, and are willing to pay for it. I hereby redact any forthcoming rant about the fundamental disorder of modern market economics. In any case, I promise not to canonize every celebrity who dies, if you can just let people enjoy things, and let any good words about people, provi...

 Some time ago, 60 Minutes had a reel from a story they did that you could see on Facebook. A young couple got married when the woman was 21. He was young, too. I think they had children. The husband was in a motorcycle accident; traumatic brain injury, the whole thing. He’s not even mentally the same person, and I guess they couldn’t have sexual intercourse. She found another man, got “married,” and in their alleged compassion, have become caregivers to this husband, as he’s now also in a wheelchair. Assuming he wasn’t impotent, lady, you’re still married, and you’re committing adultery on the regular. He didn’t die; he’s sick, as per the traditional vows. And maybe I say this with more passion as a wheelchair user myself, but this is wrong. 

 I am not currently employed in education, and maybe I didn’t log enough time (2.5 years) to have a valid opinion.  That said, I understood that a principal who oversaw a great deal of staff turnover would no longer be a principal.  Now, I know that there are bad executives all over the world. There is injustice all over the world. But should there be? Then again, I doubt anyone with any sense would say that Chesterfield County School District in South Carolina is competently run.

 I didn’t like the argument published at The Gospel Coalition (think Presbyterians and Calvinistic Baptists) some years back that we should judge the morality of homosexuality by a gag reflex. If that person had same-sex attraction, he wouldn’t gag. Personally, other than possibly being covered in my own waste, I am not grossed out by the very idea. It’s not a principled argument. I gag at mushrooms and peaches; other than saying that I won’t and can’t eat them, I would be a fool trying to argue that they are immoral because I can’t eat them. I just have to say that I know something about disordered inclinations and I have plenty of failures with respect to my own principles. Therefore, homosexuality and other errors don’t induce in me a sort of patronizing pity, something unimaginable and tragic. I’m not a priest, thank God. But I do love the people, like a priest should, like Jesus the great High Priest does. A person doesn’t have to believe me, but my horse isn’t very high. I do...

 I love Richard Marx, man. He’s written some great songs. Love songs. Story songs. Tons of songs. But I was listening to “Endless Summer Nights” just now, and I realized that he’s three wives past the woman he wrote this song about. Lionel Richie is another favorite songwriter of mine. Maybe the greatest love songs I know about. I don’t even want to elaborate on his personal life. Eric Benet. Kenny Lattimore. Babyface. Train wrecks. Suffice to say, I don’t think these people know anything about true love. I’ll be the judgy one, I guess. Maybe the most enduring love is beyond words.

 The best thing I can say is that her music was in my ears when I was small. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have some idea who she was. I was a little bit worried about this outcome when I saw a reel from her a few weeks ago, letting her fans know that she’d been in the hospital. Not to worry, she said. But then again, she definitely seemed like the sort of person who would look Death straight in the face and say, “I ain’t scared of you!” A couple years ago, I think there was a fuss about possibly removing an Andrew Jackson statue in Tennessee. I definitely thought, “Give Dolly a statue.” I think maybe they did. 400 years from now, nobody would dare protest. Dare to think how beloved someone would have to be, to be immortalized with a statue today, and not a peep of protest would be heard. Others will mention all her charitable works, and that is right and good. But I think a lot of people can say that her efforts in this regard fit with who she seemed to be, and ...

“Gay” as a word was coined by early activists and advocates for homosexuality. As you might know, the word already meant “happy,” “pleasant,” associated with warm feelings. It was a good choice for the goal. Let’s stop for a moment, and talk about the word “homosexual.” You can use it as an adjective, as a description of an orientation perhaps, but even now, it sounds a little dehumanizing as a noun. I’ve seen old documentaries and propaganda films, and using it as a noun sort of “others” people; it defines them by what they do. I’m naturally obsessed with words and their definitions. “Gay person” is clunky, and drenched in false sentimentality, but the phrase is intentional in that way. Smart people know that the very basis for human rights is the definition of personhood. Someone is hoping that the resonance of the second word in the phrase overrides any possible objections to the first. That’s why it works. It’s almost impossible to separate the dignity of a person from the quality ...

 Activism run amok creates in-group jargon, especially when it loses contact with reality. We’ll just do a little verbal exercise: “gay person.” Most people think they know what it means, probably because they haven’t thought about it too much. It could mean: 1. A person who engages in homosexual sexual activity; 2. A person who experiences sexual attraction to persons of the same sex; Or even: 3. A person advocating for the full normalization of homosexuality (and other activities) and possibly the eradication of the traditional family. He or she could be a part of (1), (2), both, or none. Some of the extremists have helped us out in a sense, by asserting things like, “Declaring the labels is a political act.” Well, not a surprise. Revolutionary and destructive activism doesn’t want debate and discussion; those people want power. If sentiment works—liberal white women, for example—they’ll use that. And for this power game, your uncle or cousin who generally doesn’t want to demand ...

 I don’t even generalize to “disabled people” like that. Our experiences are too varied. If some group of people want to advocate for something, presumably they have all agreed on what that thing is. Actual politics is about solving a specific problem or problems. Even to say “the civil rights movement” isn’t specific enough; we’re talking about legal rights of Black Americans to exercise rights enshrined in the Constitution. The nonviolent protests led by Dr. King and others were about the social acceptance of those rights exercised. Thurgood Marshall and others had won lots of legal victories against legal segregation, but if someone is legitimately afraid to exercise those rights by the threat or exercise of violence, those rights don’t exist in reality. It was the violence by segregationist forces exposed to the nation that compelled the federal government to act to enforce civil rights law in the South. It was nonviolence that revealed who the true Christians were, if I may sa...

 I was in Colorado in the summer of 2017, because my friends Greg and Cally were getting married in the mountains. I know it was 2017, because it was not long after I’d returned home from the hospital after being hit by a car on Easter Friday. If memory serves, it was also two visible solar eclipses ago, here in North America. Because I sat on Cally’s parents’ driveway to observe it. Later, I was at Red Rocks Amphitheater, in the museum. We couldn’t go into the theater, because hip-hop country (still an odd subgenre, in my mind) star Sam Hunt was doing a sound check for his performance there later that evening. He got himself off my Bad List when I saw him much later in St. Louis. Anyway, if you go into the museum, you’ll see clips of performances from Red Rocks over the years. And I saw the clip of Lyle Lovett singing the song which is the title of this post. I probably watched it 6 or 7 times in a row. It felt like the greatest song I’d ever heard. As a rule, I don’t like “indie”...

 Federer worked insanely hard. I’ve seen tape of workouts and practices. But in addition to being incredibly talented by a preternatural gift, he worked on his anticipation. It’s verifiable that he ran a shorter distance on court during a match than his opponents. On the one hand, a tennis player playing into his or her 40s was bound to happen, with a general awareness of nutrition and training improving and being utilized by most players. A tragedy involving the death of a beloved coach was the catalyst for the development of Federer’s famous emotional control. If you don’t waste energy with emotional outbursts, you have a great chance to win at the highest level. In fact, despite the fact that Novak Djokovic seems to be fueled by antipathy—for his own play, or a hostile crowd’s antipathy for him—Djokovic is actually a master at controlling his emotions on the court. (His infamous ejection from the US Open for whacking a ball that struck a ball person was a momentary lapse. Though...