if all my posts are lame, then none of my posts are lame

In one of my classes at Fuller, we watched a video of Rob Bell talking about how everything is spiritual.

I'll be straight with you - I don't remember the point of the video. I linked it above but I didn't even re-watch it so I could talk about it intelligently. I do, however, remember what one of my classmates said (and repeated several times for emphasis) after the video finished:

"If everything is spiritual, then nothing is spiritual!"

I thought the statement was sort of ridiculous. I mentioned it in conversation with a few friends and they shared my opinion, and it ended up turning into an inside joke. We'd have conversations and throw in that line of reasoning.

"Man, everything is so expensive there." "If everything is expensive, then nothing is!"

"Lately, I just feel tired all the time..." "If you're always tired, then you're never tired!"

"All the dogs in the neighborhood were barking." "If all the dogs are barking, then none of the dogs are barking!"

"All of our inside jokes are kind of dumb." "If all our inside jokes are dumb, then none of them are dumb!"

...ad infinitum.

It was all good, nerdy fun, but I think the various statements we made underscored the heart of the issue. Basically, the formula "If everything is 'X' then nothing is 'X'" works when "X" is something made true only by its absence.

I've been struggling to come up with a better way to phrase that last sentence and I can't, so here's some examples to explain:

- "If everyone is hungry, then no one is hungry" doesn't work because the level of my hunger does not correspond to someone else's hunger in any way. When someone else is starving, it doesn't negate the fact that I'm full; conversely, when I've had three filling meals, it doesn't make a hungry person feel any better. If everyone in a room feels hungry, you just have a room full of hungry people. Order a few pizzas or something.

- An example that does work comes from the film The Incredibles:

Syndrome, the villain, reveals that he plans to sell technology that will give everyone in the world superpowers. He then cackles and muses, "And when everyone's super, no one will be." This makes sense, because someone can only be "super" if his or her abilities are greater than a normal person's. If everyone can lift a hundred tons with one arm, "super strength" becomes simply "average strength."

Thus, here is the question: "Is spirituality only made meaningful by the fact that there are moments or things that are not (or are less) spiritual?"

This is an old conversation that many theologians and would-be theologians enjoy debating. I pose it here because of the nature of my first week of posts.

So far in my lenten posts I've discussed social networking, celebrity sightings, comic books, fast food, and other such seemingly superficial topics. Aside from my first post I've made scant mention of God, the Bible, Christianity, church, or even religion and spirituality in general. Yet one of my two rules for these posts was: "[Each post] must be spiritually meaningful to me on some level, i.e. no fluff." Have I already sidetracked into fluffy territory?

As you probably guessed from the inside joke shared between my friends and I, I do think I am still being true to the spirit of this blogging endeavor. Me finding spiritual significance in Facebook or In-N-Out does not negate or cheapen the moments when I've experienced the nearness of the Holy Spirit during a worship service or in the midst of a good conversation or as I viewed a scene of natural beauty. All of these things, significant and mundane, mean something to my growth as a human and the development of how I interact with my God, my family, and my friends.

So I think I'm not going to alter the trajectory my blog is currently taking - at least not yet. If you find my posts fluffy, remember this: If all my posts are fluff, then none of my posts are fluff.

why is it called in-n-out when the lines are so long

I still remember the first time I ate at In-N-Out Burger.

I am a Texas transplant, having lived in the Los Angeles area for almost five years now. Before moving out to the West Coast, I had numerous native Californians and people who had visited the Golden State tell me that the first place I should eat, the absolute first stop I should make, upon arriving should be to visit an In-N-Out and try their burgers.

To say that In-N-Out was hyped would be an understatement. I was told that this would be the greatest fast food I had ever tasted, the most delicious burger known to humanity. I had a few Californian friends in Texas and many of them listed In-N-Out as their number one thing they missed about home, just above family members and significant friends. (At least, that’s how it came across.)

In the first weeks after moving into my apartment, I got to know my three new flatmates: Seth, Eric, Josh, fellow new students at Fuller who were all native Californians. Finally, one night In-N-Out came into our conversation, and two of my flatmates were mortified that I had never tasted the Manna From Heaven. I remembered having seen one of the restaurants while driving around, as had Josh. Both of us remembered the place being not far from our apartment, so we convinced Eric to walk with us.

Now, I was never much of a pedestrian in my life before living in Pasadena, California. I was enjoying my newfound mobility on sidewalks, something foreign to me for the most part in the places I lived in Texas. It was a comfortable evening, and my two new friends and I were enjoying getting to know one another as we traveled toward to the burger joint. Walking down Walnut street, we passed Lake Avenue, then Hill Street, then Sierra Bonita, then…

Eric asked, “Are you sure you guys know where this place is?” We had been walking for over half and hour. Josh and I looked at each other, starting to lose our conviction that In-N-Out was so close after all.

We finally did reach the In-N-Out Burger after about fifty minutes of walking. We saw the line of cars long before we saw the restaurant, and then joined a queue at the order window about twenty people long. Finally I had my chance to order, asking for an ordinary cheeseburger and some fries. Josh and Eric tried to sway me toward the Animal Fries, but I have my limits, particularly in regard to Thousand Island Dressing.

We waited and waited for our food, and probably an hour and a half after we left our apartment I finally bit into my first In-N-Out burger.

It was kind of boring.

Don’t get me wrong – it was a perfectly decent burger, better than many I’ve eaten. But it was no more amazing than something from Whataburger or Wendy’s. Josh and Eric watched me with wide-eyed anticipation as I chewed my first bite, and after I swallowed they both asked for my verdict. “It’s OK,” I shrugged.

They gasped. For a moment I thought I’d already made two enemies.

We headed back to our apartment, bellies full of greasy fast food and soda, unenthusiastic about walking a few miles. Halfway back Eric grumbled, “Man, I hate you guys.” He said it with a smile, though. It was a good evening.

And thus, In-N-Out symbolizes my Los Angeles experience. There’s a lot of hype about what’s going on and what we get to experience, but in the ends it turns out pretty ordinary. When I get to share the experiences with good friends, though, it suddenly becomes meaningful.

normal here vs normal there; or, a lesson from batman

I work part-time at a hardware store located near the heart of the entertainment industry. Located within a few blocks are a number of television and film studios, and many people who work in various capacities in the creative world live nearby. I work in the paint department, and often we'll have people come in and place orders such as, "I need ten gallons of flat black paint for a stage" or "I need the cheapest off-white I can get because it only needs to last on the set for today's shoot." Overall it's still mostly your young professionals re-painting their apartment before they move or professional painters who come in every week, but we get enough entertainment industry figures that it's by no means unusual.

Those aren't the only entertainment industry figures who come in - we do have the occasional celebrity sighting. Most recently I was at the paint desk and saw a man looking at the batteries directly across from where I was standing. I was busy cleaning my work area, but I recognized his face, though I couldn't place from where. I ran through the possibilities: "Is he a regular customer? Did we go to school together? Is he a member of my church?"

Then it clicked: He's Batman.

My reaction was this: "Oh hey, look, it's Christian Bale. Cool." I then returned to wiping up the paint stains on my work space.

In retrospect, I was surprised at my response. I remember my first celebrity sighting, which I wrote about on my former blog. I was at a jazz club with a large group of friends when word started to spread through whispers that "Roy from The Office" was at the bar. A friend and I discreetly walked back toward the restaurant entrance and back by the bar, just to see him engaged in conversation with somebody, his back to us. We were beside ourselves.

If you took the time to read my old Xanga post, you may have realized that this post is basically that old post Version 2.0. However, I think the old post more accurately captures my feelings when still relatively new to living in Southern California.

Case in point: A few months after moving to Pasadena, California, the pilot of some television show (no, I don't know what one) was filmed literally down the street from my apartment. My flatmates and I were overwhelmed - here was a REAL TV SHOW filming right next to us! We (or at least I) bragged about it to everyone.

As the week went on, however, the crew continued to camp out by the apartment complex, the street was still down one lane, and police were swarming everywhere, making it difficult to walk to the Target right by us if we wanted to shop there. A few days in, we went from "That's so cool that they're right here!" to "Ugh, when will they freakin' leave?!"

Now when I see film crews blocking streets and sidewalks (which is not an uncommon occurrence), I feel exasperated instead of elated. I'm more concerned with being able to get to my house or my work than to stargaze. And when I see celebrities in my store, I still brag about it to select friends and family, but overall it's not the exciting in the moment. They're just people working on their houses.

It's interesting how quickly the definition of "normal" shifts depending on where one lives. Where I grew up in Houston, "normal" meant people who worked in the chemical plants and refineries. "Normal" also included NASA engineers, mission control personnel, and astronauts. One of my best friends from high school works at NASA; this is a pretty unexciting tidbit in Houston, but in Los Angeles I can drop it in conversation and people perk up and start asking questions. Similarly, when I tell my friends back in Texas that I saw Christian Bale at my store they get excited, while my friends in California reply with stories of their own celebrity sightings.

My first longterm overseas experience (and longest I've had so far) was studying abroad in Malaysia for a semester. One of my Malaysian friends gave me this advice soon after we arrived: "Take a bunch of pictures of ordinary stuff in these first couple of weeks - the stores, the restaurants, the cars, the trees, etc. In a few weeks it'll all become normal to you and when you get home and try to tell people about it, you won't be able to."

That was superb advice, and I've tried to follow it every time I've had a cross-cultural experience since then. It'd be nice to live in that honeymoon stage of being in a new area, when all the people are interesting, all the customs are fascinating, and everything merits a photograph or a story. I know it's unrealistic to maintain that attitude constantly in every situation, but it's nice to let down your guard and look at your current situation with new eyes every once in a while.

So here's your homework: Wherever you are, wherever you live, think as you go through your routine today: "How would I see all this if I lived somewhere where none of this was normal?" I hope it makes you smile.

getting it together

For Christmas 2010, I received two gifts from my sister and brother-in-law. One was the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and the other was the complete set of the Scott Pilgrim comic book series by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Honestly, this was a fairly random gift. Although I wanted to see the Scott Pilgrim movie, I had never watched it and never given much thought to reading the graphic novels, nor had I ever mentioned any desire to own either the DVD or the books, much less both. I guess my sister and her husband know me well, however, because I love the story in both forms of media.

It's hard to pick whether I like the books or the movie better, because they're pretty different. The movie takes a strange trajectory in reference to the comics - Volume 1 is followed almost frame for frame, then Volumes 2 and 3 are followed in their key moments with significant changes, then the movie takes a total deviation for Volumes 4 through 6. Listening to the commentaries I learned that one reason behind this is that O'Malley was finishing the final volume of the series as the movie was being written - it's hard to coordinate your movie ending with the books when the books haven't ended yet.

Anyway, Edgar Wright (the director of the film) is probably my favorite director and Bryan Lee O'Malley writes a great story, and the two prove to be wizards at capturing the truth of life in your early-to-mid-twenties in the most insane, over-the-top fashion imaginable. I was shocked that a story where bad guys turn into coins when they die and 1-Ups occur in real life could at points cut through to the bone of figuring out your life as a young adult.

Which brings me to the subject of today's post, Volume 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together.

But first, some background for those who haven't seen the film and/or read the comics: Scott Pilgrim isn't a very good person. In fact, he spends most of the first parts of the series as a selfish, two-timing jerk. He's a twenty-three year old slacker in Toronto who's dating a seventeen year old high schooler named Knives Chau, mostly as a rebound after breaking up with a girl he loved. He then meets Ramona Flowers, a mysterious American girl new to the area, and begins relentlessly pursuing her, without breaking up with his high school girlfriend, and then begins dating Ramona, without breaking up with his high school girlfriend. This is your protagonist, ladies and gentlemen.

(Relevant point that was made in some movie commentary: Michael Cera was cast as Scott Pilgrim in large part because audiences view him as a likable person. The makers of the movie figured they needed a likable lead because the character Scott is an idiot and they'd lose their audience if they weren't careful.)

By the time Volume 4 roles around, Scott has defeated three of Ramona's evil exes and- oh wait, that's important, too. So once Scott and Ramona start dating, Scott learns that he must defeat her seven evil exes in order to keep dating her. Each volume of the comic revolves around him fighting one of her exes (with the exception of Volume 5, in which he fights twin brothers who both dated her). OK, that makes sense, right? Good.

ANYWAY... so Scott has defeated Exes #1-3, he's finally gotten around to breaking up with Knives, leaving her heartbroken, and he's still basically a slacker with no job and no great aspirations in life other than dating Ramona. He's been mooching off his roommate Wallace for the whole series but now they're in trouble with their landlord, he's been sleeping in until noon most days but his friends hassle him about getting a job, he's still dating Ramona but she's pushing him about why he likes her and he can't come up with a terribly great reason. In other words, Scott's basically treading water in terms of living situation, career, relationships, et cetera.

Scott begins to feel the heat from his jobless existence, so he starts asking around. The only problem is, he's burned basically every bridge he has with his friends and the places where they work. Finally he gets a job working minimum wage as a cook at a vegan restaurant, earning 500 experience points in the process. (It makes sense in the book, I promise.) He and his roommate also learn that their lease is up, and Wallace encourages Scott to move in with Ramona, something that terrifies Scott.

In the process of trying to balance relationships, the new job, the apartment situation, and battling Ramona's female evil exe and Knives' ninja father (again, I promise it makes sense in the book), it all unravels. Ramona stops speaking to Scott, he gets fired from his job, and he can't defeat the villains coming after him.

All that changes when Scott almost has a tryst with an old friend of his. Crashing at her place one night, he realizes how much he loves Ramona and wants to make it work. He spends the rest of the book getting his job back, professing his love to Ramona, and finally defeating the fourth evil exe.

The book is called Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together, but he doesn't really completely get it together by the end of the book. There's two more volumes to go, and Volume 5 in particular deals with the consequences Scott faces when Ramona and Knives both realize he was dating them at the same time. But Scott takes a big step forward, and by the end of the series Scott is still pretty immature, but he's grown a lot and taken great strides toward a real career, a stable relationship and accomplishing some actual goals.

I've been thinking some lately about the Scott Pilgrim-ish parts of my own life. No, unfortunately I don't have video game superpowers and I can't travel on a secret subspace highway, but I'm still in some ways fighting the same immaturity as Scott. Do I listen to my wife when she talks to me, and do I actually back up my words of love with action? Do I do the best I can for my career, putting forth my best effort? Do I have a real plan for my future and goals for my family? If I'm honest, I'm sometimes more like Scott early in the series, content to tread water in my laziness and selfishness.

I think life in your twenties is in many ways about getting it together. Suddenly you're in charge of decisions about how to spend your money, where you want to work, where you want to live, who you want to date and marry, what you're willing to wait for and what you're willing to compromise. I remember very well a side comment a professor of mine made in college: "You need to decide what you're willing to sell your soul for." Everybody ends up making compromises and giving up dreams for something else - we need to make sure that the thing we're compromising for is something important and valuable.

I fear I may be like Scott Pilgrim in Volume 4, starting to get it together but still pretty immature. I'd rather be further down the road to maturity. But I guess I'm on a journey, and above all I need to commit to walking in right direction.

facebook-stalking people you knew in elementary school

It's an interesting experience to look up people you haven't had contact with since 1996. First of all, I always forget that these people have been aging at the same rate I have been for the last ten-to-fifteen years. When I look at little Olga Marin's Facebook profile, I expect to see her chubby freckled face looking exactly like it did in Mrs. Aden's class, not an adult social worker living in Chicago with a husband and two kids. YOU'RE TOO YOUNG FOR THAT, OLGA, WHAT THE HECK?!

But many of the discoveries are fascinating. You find that your former best friend is now an aspiring indie rocker or that the bully who picked on you is now heavily tattooed with an enormous beard. (Both true!)

So, I looked up my first crush.

Now, this is a sad story. When I was in the first grade, I fell madly in love with a beautiful girl named Katia. (At least, I shall call her "Katia," after the first female name I found by pressing the "Random Article" button in Wikipedia, in order to protect her identity, plus make it more likely that she doesn't find this blog post and think I'm a huge creep for writing about this.) Anyway, I confessed my love for her in front of a large group of my male friends. I quickly realized this was a mistake - for the rest of my first grade year and much of my time in elementary school, the guys never let me live it down. So, I abandoned my romantic pursuits in favor of running around the playground pretending to be a ninja turtle.

Anyway, Katia seems like she's doing pretty well, from what I can glean off the ol' Facebook. But we're here to enter the portal to an alternate universe, seeing for ourselves: "WHAT IF six-year-old Andy had asked out six(?)-year-old Katia, she had said yes, and their exceedingly young courtship had blossomed into marriage when they were eventually older than six?"

Here's the basic facts about the girl that I can glean from Facebook, which I remind you, consists of information she has made public to the entire world so it's totally not that creepy:

- Katia is a Christian. That's good - I am also a Christian, and shared faith is one of my prerequisites for marriage. However, when the only book in your "Favorite Books" list is "The Bible," I immediately start to wonder about your personal depth. (ED NOTE: I have like ninety Facebook friends whose only entry under "Favorite Books" is "The Bible," so that can't narrow it down too much. Also, sorry if the only book on your favorites list is the Bible. I still think you're a good person.)

- Katia is really girly. She likes chick flicks, acoustic guitar music, shopping, and Twilight. None of this is bad, and many girls I know like one or some combination of those things. But like listing "The Bible" as your only book, when ALL of your movies are chick flicks, ALL of your activities involve consumerism, and ALL of your music is sung by emotional guitar-playing white guys with wispy hair and boyish grins, I start wondering how deep our friendship could possibly be.

- I think Katia has a dog. I do like dogs, but dogs make me sneeze. This is generally a minor inconvenience, BUT REMEMBER OUR STARTING POINT: I'm a first-grader, I've asked Katia out, and she said yes. When in the first grade, my allergies were much more severe than they are now. If she had a dog back then, the fur neigh well have killed me dead.

So, let's ponder the logistics. So I'm a first grader, and I've asked Katia out. Where do first graders go on dates? More importantly, how do they get there? The mind boggles.

Since Katia, I've only officially dated two girls, one of whom is now my wife. I've had significant interest in probably fifteen or so different girls; most of these crushes fizzled out naturally over the course of a anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, while others crashed and burned when she started dating someone else or not-so-subtly knocked me back. But as I play the "what-if" game, I'm reminded of, somewhat randomly, The Chronicles of Narnia. At one point Lucy asks Aslan what would have happened if she'd made a different decision. Aslan's response? "Child, did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?" (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Ch. 10)

I'm happy with the life that I have. And the moral of the story is this: Facebook stalking is creepy. Don't do it.

fire ant bites

If you checked in on my first post, you may realize that I've now changed the name of my blog. Up until yesterday this slice of the internet was called Between Two Pasadenas, a reference to me having lived in both Pasadena, Texas and Pasadena, California. Currently, however, I live in Inglewood, California, rendering the Pasadena/Pasadena connection moot. I've realized this blog has needed a new title for some time, but when you're not actively updating it doesn't matter all that much.

So, that's it for the old title. What's up with the new one?

I chose The Fire Ant Mound in reference to a nickname given to me by the youth group at my church. After several months of working with the congregation, the youth leaders decided to christen me "Fire Ant." They had hyped the coming naming ceremony for a few weeks, and I'll be honest - when I first heard the name chosen for me, I was kind of let down. I thought, "Just a fire ant? That's it?"

I came around when I heard the reasoning. Here's what I was told:

1) I'm from Texas. There are many fire ants in Texas. ...nothing amazing about that, I suppose.

2) I am often a somewhat silent person, holding back comments in group conversation. Apparently, I occasionally slip in witty observations or suggestions. I’m kind of like a fire ant going in for the sting.

I was pretty flattered by my nickname when I heard that explanation. I want to be the kind of person who talks when he has something to say, whose words have value when they’re spoken. Too many people love the sound of their own voices, and too many people are afraid to speak up at all. I hope that when I'm at my best I can find the tension between the two. Hopefully I can live up to the fire ant reputation (without being an invasive pest, of course).

a blog a day for lent

It's apparently been a year and a half since my last post. Huh. Time flies?

I’ve never been good at consistently keeping up my blog . Well, scratch that – I haven’t been good at consistently keeping up my blog since maybe 2006, and the bulk of what I wrote in that era I now cringe when I read. (Granted, in 2018 I’ll probably cringe when I read these words. Such is life.)

Today is Ash Wednesday, the kickoff for the Christian season of Lent. Growing up in a Baptist church I never really heard anybody talk about Lent, and I think the first time I practiced it I was a freshman at college. I think in my home tradition Lent was regarded as a little bit “too Catholic” to be of much, if any, value.

I currently work as the youth director at a church down in Torrance, California, and as it happens, my church’s pastor is out of the country for the end of this month and asked me to fill in for him the two Sundays he is gone. These Sundays were last week – Transfiguration Sunday, the end of Epiphany (a season of the liturgical year still so unfamiliar to me that I had to look up its name) – and this coming week – the first Sunday of Lent. In the process of composing sermons, I’ve been forced to wrestle with the notion of Lent, what it means, and how to observe it.

I’ve heard of many different modes of fasting during this time. I’ve traditionally done a normal fast from something, something many people I know do, giving up something like drinking soda or listening to the radio in the car or reading for fun or eating chocolate. I’ve heard of more esoteric fasts, trying to give up malicious thoughts or the right to hold a grudge. I even have one group of friends that gave up Christianity for forty days last year.

I’ve also heard of people who "fast" by doing something during the Lenten season. They decide to read a particular author or books on a specific theme. They volunteer with an organization. They donate intentionally to a church or a nonprofit.

It’s in this second vein that I’ve decided to fast to blogging this Lent. Somehow I hope to write a blog post a day (excluding Sundays) until Easter arrives. I will not put parameters on how long or how deep these posts need to be, nor will I structure them around a specific theme (unless one naturally emerges over the course of the next few weeks). My only rules are: A) It must be original content, i.e. no linking videos or songs or so on unless it’s for the purpose of offering some reflective commentary of my own, and B) it must be spiritually meaningful to me on some level, i.e. no fluff.

So if I’m fasting to writing blog posts, what am I fasting from? Well, I think one reason I’m not consistent about updating this online journal (aside from general laziness) is that I’m an extremely self-conscious person. When I write a post, I typically proofread it about twenty times over the course of two or three days before publishing it, and then I continue proofreading it after I’ve posted it for about a week, apprehensive about any comments people will leave or impressions they will have.

By forcing myself to write a post a day, I’m denying myself that right to withhold myself. I’m forcing myself to lay out some pieces of who I am and what I think that I’d otherwise hold close to my chest out of fear. So, there you go.

I have no idea what I’m going to write tomorrow, or the next day, or so on until April 8. Feel free to find out along with me.