OK, so Obama's not perfect.

I was really looking forward to American Idol tonight. Now, I have to wait until tomorrow. And then, the kick-off show will be on Thursday, the same night as 30 Rock and The Office. Couldn't he have picked a Monday?

This Spring Break, Kalyn and I are both home in Menard. We’ve spent part of the week going through my Grandma Pierce’s old things that have been stored in the garage for a decade.

Now, many of you probably know some things about our relationship with my grandma. She was a little crazy—in a good way, and she was our babysitter growing up. We played very elaborate games at Grandma’s house involving these large GI Joe civilizations built in her dining room. We had presidents, cabinets, wars, treaties, trials, schools, funerals, transportation, newspapers, etc. Everything.

Anyway, as we were looking through her stuff this week, we found things she’d saved from our playtime. We found pictures we’d drawn. We found toys. We found our newspapers dating from second grade where I’d written my “Dear Blabby” column. We also found our rules.

Pretty well everything we found told us something about how we’d become who we’ve become, especially what liberal wackos we’d become. But especially those rules told us stuff. I’ll stick my comments about the rules in parenthesis as I go along.

1. No shooting in Washington. (Washington was where Kalyn’s people were. Strangely, Washington gun control is something in the news where we’re still quite liberal.)
2. No starting a battle for no reason. (If only Bush had played with my Grandma.)
3. No hostage keeping. (Ditto on that last comment.)
4. No rioting.
5. No killing, except in times of self-defense. (We were clearly not quite pacifists yet.)
6. No stealing.
7. No animal sacrifice. (I think Grandma insisted on that one.)
8. No hunting without a license.
9. No owning more than six guns. (We’ve always been very pro-gun control.)
10. No disturbing the peace.
11. No faking for welfare. (We did have welfare in our civilization.)
12. Must obey in court or else be helt in contempt. (We did have court often, presided over by a GI JOE that Grandma had renamed the Pope. That’s also how I spelt helt.)
13. No lying in court.
14. No driving a train without a driver. (Seems very sensible to me.)
15. Must drive a train with a license.
16. No more than ten horses. (We were communists, clearly.)
17. Must have a license to drive a wagon. (Washington, i.e. Kalyn, evidently made a lot of money off of issuing licenses.)
18. Must be organized. (Ha. Grandma was even less organized than me and Kalyn.)
19. Has to get 6 hours of sleep before traveling.
20. Must have a license to travel on a horse.
21. No traveling at over 50 mph. (I wonder how often we broke this one on that dining room table.)
22. No discriminating against different races. (This is the one I couldn’t believe.)
23. No taking any kind of drug (alcohol and tobacco, too).
24. No attempting murder.
25. No breaking out of jail.

Signed by the following personages: Captain Senator (the leader of my group of GI Joes/Cowboys), White Nofeet (the plastic Indian leader of Grandma’s tribe—his feet had been chewed off by the dog), Al Gorey (One of the GI JOES had a passing resemblance to Al Gore, Grandma thought. He was her vice leader.) Shepard (another GI Joe guy on my side) Dr. Marsh (Any doctor visited by a family member eventually had a toy named after him or her. Kalyn’s representative. Also the president.) Fireman (the vice president)

I was fascinated by the article yesterday posted at the Christian Science Monitor about a predicted collapse of the evangelical community. I think the author, Michael Spencer, is generally right, especially in citing as a top reason for the collapse, "We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith."

That was the first thing I thought about today when I happened across Glenn Beck's Nine Principles. Now, I've never for a moment liked Glenn Beck. I use some video clips from his show every year to demonstrate to my class the use of logical fallacies and to demonstrate how cruel and dehumanizing some of our very mainstream rhetoric is. I knew I wouldn't like his nine principles. But this was really bad.

What stuck out was the order. Number 1: America is good. Number 2: I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

He's honest at least. He knows his priorities.

"If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it." and "The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me." Yeah, those don't contradict.

It doesn't get much better: "Government cannot force me to be charitable." Yeah, why would anyone want to practice charity?

I'll admit that figuring out what the heck the first two lines of this poem meant took a few minutes. But once that's clear, wow. It's a wonderful poem.

Petition – W.H. Auden

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all
But will its negative inversion, be prodigal:
Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch
Curing the intolerable neural itch,
The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,
And the distortions of ingrown virginity.
Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response
And gradually correct the coward's stance;
Cover in time with beams those in retreat
That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great;
Publish each healer that in city lives
Or country houses at the end of drives;
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.