144 Or Less, Vol. VII / 1-26-11

Utah.

Seat of the LDS Church. Nearly 60 percent of Utahns are Mormons, while 16 percent of the population is religiously unaffiliated.

Utah, also the place where people politely purchase premium porn, in proportions which eclipse the rest of the population.

It's not even a photo finish, in which horny Oregonians might've "come" in second, by a fraction. (They didn't. Alaskans finished second, Mississippians third, and everyone else is faaaar behind. Bringing up the rear: Utah's neighbors and fellow ubercrimson states Idaho and Wyoming. Explain that.)

Researcher and Harvard prof Ben Edelman analyzes: Utah has lots of teens and young people, and a dearth of retail porn outlets. Baow-chicka-baow-baow, I guess.

Sadly, the study's author already coined the term "Red-Light States," which is especially tragic, since that pun was born to be made by me.

Word count: 142.

God Isn't / 1-19-11

The practice of negative definitions has been my little spiritual friend for a while now.

God is not bound by time and space; God is not corporeal; God is neither male nor female; God is not like us. I take great solace in these "beliefs."

As a result, I recoil from declarations that begin with "God likes ____," "God's very nature is to ____," or "God will most certainly ____," especially when these become downright laughable.

Like on Monday, when a friend of a friend said, and not jokingly, "God has a twisted sense of humor." This was, mind you, in response to yet another chapter in an unemployed friend's fruitless job search. A search that has now lasted months and is taking its expected toll on all parties.

In essence, this person's super-duper helpful point was "God is cruel." Or "God likes to mess with your psyche. For fun. Come on, get in on the funny, funny joke already."

Yeah, instances like that are why it's easy to see why for so many centuries, the Catholic Church discouraged regular folk from reading the actual text of the Bible.

Got time for a casual glance at Job? You'll conclude, like our buddy from earlier, that God is indeed a sadist. A little reading of Hosea at bedtime? Well, what do you know, God's a masochist. Skim through a few Pauline epistles and God's a sexist; swim a shallow lap around Leviticus and God's a bloodthirsty legalist. (Saunter on over to Revelation and God's a drug trip. Far out.)

I don't know about you, but this God is starting to sound, like, not all there, you know?

Who wants a God like that -- or even a friend like that? Not me. I start with the belief that God possesses none of those attributes listed two paragraphs earlier. The effect is that the Bible gains a freedom it otherwise wouldn't have -- the freedom to be a collection of mankind's evolving view of a deity. Rather than revelation, it becomes insight, wisdom, poetry, guidance, philosophy, allegory.

Liberated from the need to synthesize 66 books into a Great Unifying Theory Of God's Celestial Nature, I'm able to read Job and Ecclesiastes and Deuteronomy and Philippians and take them for what their author meant them to be -- musings on how God is and is not. (With special personal gravitation toward the "is not" portion.)

And as such, the Bible continues to retain power in my life. Because I'm not looking to it for all the right answers, but instead, for the right questions to ask, it shines a light for me. Not a light of "God is exactly like this." A light of "Look at this wisdom. Read these stories. Learn. Be illuminated."

Plus, then I don't have to explain away a friend's suffering as God's twisted joke.

Observacations, Vol. II / 1-18-11

Second in my back-to-work three-part series.

Part Un: Politix. Soo yesterday.

Part Deux: Sports. I would link to it, but you're reading it, and that would be 11 percent too silly for even me.

Part Trois: Musings on God and god.

Then we (I) will be all caught up after our (my) five (five) weeks off.

FIRST AND TEN, EIGHT AND TEN

After the NFL switches from a 16-game to an 18-game schedule (and the move is inevitablish, given that the owners would make more money and the players' union would negotiate for more roster spots), a team will finish its season 8-10. Obviously. And yet, that team -- the future Cleveland Browns -- will not be the first-ever pro football team to do so. The Seahawks already pulled it off. Poor Cleveland. Can't even lose with distinction.

Scenarios by which a team arrives at 8-10, given that it takes a winning record to make the playoffs every year except 2010: Zero. A team that qualifies at 8-8 can't lose twice in the playoffs -- it takes a team with nine regular-season losses to finish 8-10. And only once in a full NFL season has a losing team won a division. That was 16 days ago. Yay Hawks! History! Notoriety!

Not only that, but a 7-9 division winner would have to win its first playoff game (against an actual good team) for it to reach 8-9 before losing its next one to complete the uncharted course to 8-10.

Fun fact: Had the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl -- stifle your laugh! They could have won that stinkin' Bears game, which would have set up a Packers-Seahawks NFC Championship game in Seattle. Are you going to bet against them at Qwest? So. As I was saying, had they reached, and gotten properly annihilated in, the Super Bowl, they would have ended the season 10-10.

So to recap: When you're asked, as the final question of a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit (non-holographic version) in your retirement home in the year 2059, which pro football team was the first-ever to post an 8-10 record, you'll remember (ha!) to answer Seattle. You're welcome. Pass the Jello.

26 DAYS LATER

Pitchers and catchers report in 26 days. For the Mariners, the stench of last season can't dissipate too soon. Picked by many to win a weak-looking division, they finished dead last instead, and along the way, managed to score fewer runs than any other DH-carrying team, ever. For a brief look at how rotten the year was, click here.

So, to address the blood-gushing head wound that was 2010, they made this litany of significant moves:

...

That's it. No new starting pitchers, no big bats -- one stud part-time defender and one medium-sized bat and one serviceable catcher is the extent of the renovation.

No, the M's didn't technically go for the big upgrade; instead, they opted to pinch a giant loaf containing the worthless Casey Kotchman, Jose Lopez, Milton Bradley (will be cut within days), Josh Wilson (back to AAA) and Rob Johnson, who led the league in passed balls by a wide margin despite playing only half the time.

Instead, they'll count on the young guys and the nondescript new guys -- 1B Justin Smoak, LF Michael Saunders, IF Brendan Ryan, 2011 3B Chone Figgins and not 2010 2B Chone Figgins, C Miguel Olivo, DH Jack Cust, plus eventual 2B Dustin Ackley -- to make us forget last season's unwatchability.

And to a certain extent, it'll work. They'll win far more than 61 games, because the pitching will be as good as 2010, the defense will be better, probably by a wide margin, and finally, the offense will necessarily improve. You can't get worse than the worst ever. Probability won't allow it; the power of regression is too strong, almost all of the time.

The 2011 squad will win at least 78 games. And with money to spend in 2012 when a couple big contracts come off the books, the future is bright. Don't buy any shades just yet. But these guys are better than they look at first glance. I promise.

VIOLENCE, SILENCE, SALIENCE

So now, I find myself wondering if I have a moral compass at all when it comes to sports figures in trouble.

I've been in homes where parents abuse their kids verbally and physically. Traveling to 30 homes each week, with a clientele constantly in flux, lets me see a broad range of middle- and upper-class families in action, and sometimes their best behavior deserts them. So I've discovered I'm content to charge abusive parents a fee to teach their children, because their money is just as good as the next family's.

Yet I'm inclined to disapprove of my team hiring an assistant with a history of violent behavior. Yet I want a guy who pled no contest to some ugly charges to get a chance to work in his field, for now, at least for now. Even yetter, I agree with people who want their favorite club to release a prominent baseball player arrested for assault just earlier today. And yettest of all, when this guy did this in a playoff game, I and 67,000 of my closest friends celebrate so raucously we cause an earthquake.

Sometimes this fairness-justice-punishment-redemption-second-chance thing we call "life" is hard to sort out, especially when rooting interests and mercy and employment rights and even humility get in the way. Darn you, nuance! Darn you, forgiveness! Darn you, blind spots! Darn you all to gosh-darn heck already. Gosh.

Observacations / 1-17-11

Been out of the office for a while. But now, break time's over, ladies and laddies.

So, did anything happen since we last spoke?

Oh. Uh-huh. Mm. 'K.

Well then, I'll touch on three topics, but not at once, because my attention span isn't what it used...

Yeah. Three rounds of politics today. A sports trifecta tomorrow. Spirituality season starts Wednesday. Then we'll be all caught up, you and me.

HOLY BEDFELLOWS, BATMAN

Well, in smack-myself-across-the-forehead news, I found myself, this holiday season, agreeing with -- wait for it -- Pat -- wait for it some more, juuust a little tiny bit more -- Robertson. Not once, but twice.

The first time was no shocker: When P-Rob declared that 2011 would not mark the end of the world, I co-nodded graciously. (No matter how many times a public figure says God likes to kill people for other people's behavior [here's your link, you're welcome], there comes a time when something resembling reason is bound to exit his speaking organs.) And after all, the man has probably read his Mayan Calendar 2012 (365 apocalyptic thoughts for every situation, $399.95 on Amazon.con), so best check back in with him for all your Armageddon needs in a year.

But the second time he and I linked minds... that was stupefying. Said Robertson: "I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot and that kind of thing, I mean, it's just costing us a fortune and it's ruining young people." Even after his spokesman managed to float a near-lie to backtrack, claiming Pat "unequivocally stated that he is against the use of illegal drugs," I find myself aghast at my tattered and shredded view of the religio-conservative icon. He even went on to suggest that treatment, not incarceration, could be a better reaction to weed possession.

For twenty years, I've denounced the man. (Get it? 420 years?) And now he does this? Jerk.

That one took me a while to recover from.

RAINBOW WARRIORS

Speaking of things that failed to cause the end of civilization, discrimination against gay soldiers is officially on its way out. And none too soon. Turns out that the judicial, legislative and executive branches all have struck it down; thus, the DoD is phasing it out over the next few months. Let's be real: polling shows that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Discriminate" (not the policy's actual name) had fallen seriously out of favor with a vast majority of the population. As such, the policy's demise was inevitable, but nonetheless, I'd like to advance a theory that casts Democrats in a favorable light here.

I submit:

House Democrats, late in the lame-duck session, cleverly fooled congressional Republicans into believing they would block the extension of the Baby Bush tax cuts for another two years. This after the Senate had declined to consider lifting DADT. AND after President Obama had come out supporting a tax cut extension, however tepidly. But what did the outgoing House D's have to lose? They were already about to lose their majority -- at least they could go down swinging while satisfying the far left. (Me!) While pissing off incoming Weeper of the House John "Boo-Hoo" Boehner (R-Ocryo).

Well, when negotiators discussed how to break the impasse, Democrats said that another vote in the Senate on DADT would probably pacify. Republicans, knowing popular opinion would only continue to cut against them, and wishing to fry other fish in the upcoming session, acquiesced, and framed the issue to cast moderate Republicans (in blue states) as the driving force.

And DADT dies.

It's a pretty theory. One that allows my wing to look good, and astute, too, while much, much, much more importantly, concluding another contemptible chapter in Amalgamated American Institutional Discrimination Against Gays, Inc.

CIVILITEA PARTY

In the wake of yet another mass shooting (yes, I'm gingerly approaching the Tucson mess), the usual voices have made / will make themselves heard.

"We need more gun control!" (True, but get real.)

"We need more guns!" (Seriously?)

"Give him the death penalty!" (Iron. E.)

"It's her fault!" (Not the time or place, idjits.)

"It's not my fault!" (Shut up.)

"He's a right-wing terrorist!" (5... 4... 3... 2... 1...)

"He's a left-wing terrorist!" (Toldja.)

"What we need is more civility." (Pshaw--wait, what?)

We'll get more civility in our political discourse, actually. Just like we did after 9/11. Then with the distance of time, we'll revert to our hyper-partisan ways, present company included, and it'll be as if Tucson never happened. Then, fatalistically, the process will restart with another tragedy. You can hope that it doesn't take place in your neighborhood. Good luck with that.

Happy New Year.