1. Go big or go home

This is my number one life motto and the most important of them all.  In every decision we make, we can decide how we behave.  I want to live a life on purpose and with intentionality.  “Going big” means not taking the safe route, but the exciting one, the route that’s got risk but also greater reward.  I don’t want to do something halfway, but rather have big goals and big accomplishments.  “Go big or go home” is the reason I moved down to Florida.  It was an adventure and a stepping out of what was safe and easy.  Something else I love about this motto is that there is no judgment in whether you “go big or go home.”  Sometimes it’s time to go home, and that’s ok too.

2. Be the change you want to see

Ghandi said this first and I’ve just kind of stolen it from him.  Basically what it means is that if you look around you and notice a problem, don’t just complain about the problem, fix it.  Don’t look around the room and say to yourself, “Wow, no one here is talking to anyone else” and then leave because of how unfriendly everyone is.  Go and talk to people.  Help create the positive change you want to see, because the only responsibility you can control is your own.

3. You gotta dance with the girl that brought ya

This is a very important one to me.  I often find myself not wanting to say no to people or opportunities.  If someone wants to hang out or needs help with something, I’m most likely to say yes.  Unfortunately, if different people all ask you to do something, saying yes to all of them will often end in disaster, and the people you didn’t want to disappoint end up very disappointed.  This motto for me means that once you commit to something, you must stand by your commitment, no matter what other opportunities come up.  If you ask a girl to the prom and she says yes, then you need to go with her to the dance.  If later a prettier,  more popular girl asks you to go with her instead, you simply have to tell her that you already have a commitment, and you stand by your commitments.  In the end, you and the people around you will be happier if you stick to your commitments and “dance with the girl that brought ya.”

4. It can’t all be wedding cake

This comes from a song by Spoon called “The Underdog.”  Here’s what I take from it: There are many different types of cake in the world, but if you’re just looking and hoping for wedding cake every time, you’re going to be very disappointed.  Sometimes life’s going to give you birthday cake instead.  Or coffee cake.  If you only care about wedding cake, then you’re going to be upset.  But coffee cake is delicious, and there’s a time and a place for it.  If you can understand that it’s not always going to be wedding cake but that’s ok, and sometimes other cake is better, you’ll be much happier.  In fact, wedding cake isn’t really all that good all the time.  Sometimes a nice angel food cake will be even better, and you’d miss out if all you’re looking for is wedding cake.  Don’t get me wrong, sometime it will be wedding cake, and it’ll be delicious and there will be celebrating and that’ll be great, but “it can’t all be wedding cake,” and that’s ok.

5. You can’t wing a button

Where I got this motto from is a little sillier, but the lesson is important.  There have been a couple times in my life where a button has fallen off of my shirt and I’ve had to sew it back on.  Easy right?  That’s what I thought.  I’d take thread and make the most convoluted knots, convinced that it would then stay on.  Inevitably, at the slightest gust of wind, my button would fall off again.  What I learned was that there are things, like buttons, that I personally could not wing.  I couldn’t just go into that situation and say to myself, “I don’t need to prepare for this, I don’t need to give this any thought, it’s just a button, and I can wing it, and it’ll be fine.”  It turned out that I couldn’t wing a button.  To properly sew a button back on, I was going to have to pay attention and take my time and do it intelligently, maybe even ask someone for help.  And that’s ok.  There’s going to be things in your life, like buttons for me, that you have to work for and will take patience and time and energy and will not come easily.  Now that’s not to say there isn’t anything you can wing.  Somethings will come naturally to you and you can wing it.  But other things you will not be able to, and like buttons, you will have to work at.

• The Pilgrim’s Regress – Lewis
• Phantom Tollbooth (Reread)
• Bambi vs. Godzilla  (Reread)
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Chabon
• Freakonomics – Levitt and Dubner
• A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bryson
• No Logo – Klein
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Armitage
• The Secret History – Tartt
• Consider the Lobster – Wallace
• The Year of Magical Thinking – Didion
• Gilead – Robinson
• The Tipping Point – Gladwell
• The Road – McCarthy
• Life of Pi – Martel
• War and Peace – Pevear and Volokhonsky
• Bad Science – Goldacre
• White Teeth – Smith
• The Plot Against America – Roth
• Everything is Illuminated – Foer
• Eats, Shoots, and Leaves – Truss
• If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – McGregor
• Blank Slate – Pinker
• The PowerBook – Winterson
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Tower
• The Ascent of Money – Ferguson
• The Carhullan Army – Hall
• Children of Men – James
• Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott

I also recently got some great suggestions from friends on Facebook which I need to look up.  Do you have any more suggestions of book I need to read?  Or have you read any of these?  Would you recommend them?

Basically, the study found that Evangelical Christians, of which I consider myself a member, are the most likely to consider torture acceptable, compared to other religious or non-religious groups.  They asked the question “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified.”  The study found that the more often you go to church, the more likely you were to answer that torture is justified or sometimes justified.

You can go to the article for the stats, but I am shocked to hear this and it makes me really sad.  Christians are supposed to be the light on a hill, an example of Christ in this world, set apart and holy, a royal priesthood sent to seek and to save the lost, and we are the most likely to see torture as justified?!  Most likely! Torture is what was done to Christ…it should not be what is done in the name of Christ.

I honestly do not understand this Tea Party business going on around the country lately.

There seem to be a lot of Republicans get very excited about joining in on these Tea Parties, but I can’t figure out what exactly they are protesting.

The original Tea Party, the Boston Tea Party, was all about Taxation Without Representation. England was imposing a tea tax on the colonists in order to increase their revenues from the East India Company. The colonists resented this taxation because they believed they had the right to only be taxed by their own elected officials, hence the Boston Tea Party, where in protest they dumped three ships-worth of tea into the Boston Harbor.

So fast-forward to today. These groups have latched onto this name Tea Party, I guess recalling this great protest in our American history, but I fail to see the connection.

Are they protesting the fact that they are being taxed without representation?

No, because they aren’t. We have a democracy, and we had an election, and our elected officials are in charge of our taxes.

So are they protesting because our taxes are too much?

No, they shouldn’t be at least, because our taxes just went down! Starting April 15, 2009, President Obama’s tax cut for 95% of Americans just started taking effect. Almost everyone that’s protesting just got their taxes decreased by President Obama. Check your pay check, I bet yours went up too! 95% of Americans just got a tax cut, it’s the biggest tax cut in American history! Why would they be protesting about taxes being so high now when their taxes are less than they were during Bush’s presidency? Why weren’t they holding Tea Parties when Bush was president?

So are they protesting because taxes are being raised for those who make more than $200,000 a year?

I don’t know why there would be this much outrage over this. The taxes of the really wealthy are being raised so that practically every other American can get some tax relief! And how much is it getting raised? 3%. Yeah, that’s right, just 3%! The rich, instead of being taxed 36%, are going to be taxed 39%. 3% more. And not even yet; this won’t even take effect for another couple years. And it wasn’t really even something Obama did, this was when the tax break for the wealthy Bush passed was set to expire. It was going to revert back to 39% either way, unless the new president renewed it. I’ve heard a lot of people claim that this is socialist! Taxing the rich more! Well, all it does is bring the tax rate back to what it was when Clinton was president. We weren’t a socialist country then, why are people all the sudden saying this is going to make us socialist? It’s just back to the way we were in the 90’s! Remember the booming economy back in the 90’s, by the way?  Also, during Reagan’s presidency, the champion of conservatives, the tax rate for the wealthy was even higher than this!  Is Reagan a socialist?  (No, by the way, neither of them are).

So are they protesting because President Obama’s budget proposal is a record 3.6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years?

Again, why now? Why weren’t the Republicans holding Tea Parties when Bush proposed his 3.1 trillion dollar budget? Is 3.1 trillion acceptable and 3.6 going to burn American down? And besides, Bush did not include Iraq spending on his budget. He’s allowed to keep that number separate and secret for national security reasons. So although we were spending that money, it wasn’t included in his budget. Obama’s budget decided to disclose and include Iraq spending. So Obama’s 3.6 trillion dollar budget includes Iraq spending, and Bush’s 3.1 trillion dollar budget does not include Iraq spending; so the difference between them isn’t much, if anything. Why protest now?

Are they protesting because Obama’s spending is pushing our National debt higher and higher?

They can’t be, because if so, where were the protests before? During Bush’s presidency we went from a budget surplus to double the national debt in 8 years. There weren’t any tea party protests then. We spent a trillion dollars in the war in Iraq, and these Tea Partiers didn’t protest.

So are they protesting Obama’s stimulus bill or the bailouts of the banks?

If so, almost every conservative and liberal economist alike disagrees with them. Almost every economist agrees that capital needs to be injected into the economy in order to avoid exponential collapse, and also that the major banks have become too big to fail. If we let the banks go down, our economy goes down with it for many years to come. And besides, our former President was bailing the banks out as well, where were the protests then from Republicans?

Are they protesting because they believe Obama is walking all over the constitution?

This one makes the least sense to me. These people were overwhelmingly in support of our last president who authorized warrantless wiretaps and the suspension of habeas corpus, both in direct contradiction to our Constitution. What has Obama done to violate the constitution?

I really believe at this point that the only reason for these Tea Party protests is a simple one: they do not like Barack Obama, and they will protest anything he does. Regardless of what policies he supports or actions he takes, they will continue to protest, because they have made up their minds that they do not like him. I don’t know what happened to all the people that told liberals during Bush’s presidency that it’s wrong to criticize your president during war times and that it was unpatriotic to be so against the president. That’s what these conservatives are doing now.

There’s a survey I would like to see done, and I think the results would be very telling. Everyone would be asked their political affiliation. One half would be asked what they thought of President Obama’s support for the NEC resolution, if they agree with his support for it, disagree, or are neutral. The other half would be asked what they thought of President Bush’s (or McCain’s) support for the NEC resolution. No one would be told that there is in fact no such thing as the NEC resolution.  I believe that you would find that many conservatives asked the first question would heartily disapprove of Obama’s support of this fake resolution, and conservatives asked the second question would heartily approve of Bush’s (or McCain’s) support of it.

They just don’t like Obama, that’s what it all comes down to.

Also, yesterday my friend Sam and I went and took some picture behind Publix.  He’s had this idea for a picture of a massive brawl for a while, and we decided to try to make it happen.  Here’s what we ended up with.

For instance, I went with Allen and Bethany to the Winter Park Sidewalk Arts Festival and had a really great time. There was a lot of interesting (and expensive!) art to look at, as well as some sweet live music playing. Here’s a couple of pictures from our time hanging out there:

I was also messing around in my front yard with my new camera remote. These pictures are what I got as a result (aren’t you glad there’s only one of me?)

And finally, I was taking a shower this morning and found this spider in my shower.  It was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen just out and about.  Needless to say, I called in the marines, who quickly took care of the problem.  Creepy little guy, isn’t he?

• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Israel
• Egypt
• South Africa
• Malawi
• Madagascar
• Komodo Island, Indonesia
• Alaska
• Nepal

What about you?  Where would you like to go?