No, as a matter of fact, I don't think "Harry Potter & My Left Nut" is an appropriate title for a book.

Maybe its because we're a week away from the movie or maybe just because we've been reading The Sorcerer's Stone to Harper every night, but either way, I've fallen back into my Potter addiction. I've spent all day reading The Half Blood Prince and looking at fan sites. I don't know what the point is, really. I know, generally, everything interesting there is to know about Harry Potter. I think I'd give my left nut to be a wizard for a day. I'd probably start that day by using my powers to regrow my left nut, though.

Another thing I did today was take a Bible quiz. Its made by the Freedom From Religion Foundation so obviously, the questions are cherry-picked to make the scriptures look strange and sick. That being said, those things are actually in there and sometimes the scriptures are just strange and sick. So it goes. Chalk it up to cultural relativity if you want, but, unfortunately, there's only so much you can account for with that explanation.

I did really well on the quiz (48 out of 50 questions correct), but I'm really curious to see how well the people that read this blog would do, particularly the Christians. The trick is, when you don't know the answer, just pick the weirdest one. I had to do that a few times.

Lastly, this is a reminder that if you haven't called your state senator about Cynthia Dunbar yet, you really need to. With Don McLeroy, it was all about Evolution vs. Creationism, the right vs. the left. But I think that, in Cynthia Dunbar, we've all found a common enemy (assuming that we all care about the education of our young people). This is a woman who openly hates the very idea of public education. To borrow an analogy, its like hiring an arsonist to be fire chief. For Liberals, she represents a lot of what we hate about stereotypical conservatism, for Conservatives, she's an embarrassment, making ignorant statements on par with a drunk Sarah Palin. The fact that she's even on the board of education is gross, the idea that she could be put in charge of it is flat out depressing. Find your senator, tell them what you think. Let them know that globally competitive education is important to you and your tax dollars. THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12

So today, I am feeling patriotic again. I just got off the phone with my senator's office and now I want you to pick up your phone and call yours. If you don't know who your senator is then go here and find out. There's a "find my senator" widget at the bottom of the page.

Remember a while back when Rick Perry nominated Don McLeroy, an ultra Conservative dentist, for chairman of the board of education? Well, luckily, he was defeated. But, remember how I said that I was concerned that Perry would just nominate someone worse? Well, its not official yet but its looking like he's going to. Her name is Cynthia Dunbar and she's very open about her disdain for public education, which to me is a giant red flag when you're looking for someone to be chairperson of the Board of Education.

In a book published last year, Dunbar argued the country’s founding fathers created “an emphatically Christian government” and that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test.” She endorses a belief system that requires “any person desiring to govern have a sincere knowledge and appreciation for the Word of God in order to rightly govern.”

Also in the book, she calls public education a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.”

The Establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even “tyrannical,” she wrote, because it threatens the authority of families, granted by God through Scripture, to direct the instruction of their children.

Dunbar home-schooled her own children.

First off, there are few things more annoying than when right wingers imply that our founding fathers were saintly men who wore their devout faith in Christianity on their sleeves. It takes about 10 minutes of research to figure out that most of our founding fathers were Deists, and had quite a bit of disdain for religion. Take the George Washington approved Treaty of Tripoli, for instance. "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;..."
Here's a quote from Ben Franklin's autobiography, "But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns several points as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of the Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of the sermons which had been preached at Boyle’s Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them. For the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to be much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
And then there's Jefferson who called himself a Christian from time to time but only because he got down with the moral philosophy of Jesus. However, he took a pair of scissors to his bible and hacked out all the things he considered to be superstitious, miraculous or mystic. When speaking of god he was known to, more often than not, use the popular Deist term, "Nature's God."

I digress. If you want to get a clear view of our founding fathers religion and skepticism, its pretty easy to find.

The real problem at hand is this Dunbar lady. Can we not, honestly, find someone better for this job? Someone who doesn't already think the very idea of public education is morally wrong? Someone who isn't, very clearly, intending to use the position to push their ideals into the education system?

It doesn't matter if you have kids now or not, because this is a fight that will affect how our nation's future leaders are educated. The biggest, most important thing that parents and schools can teach children is how to think, not what to think.

ps. Here is some more crazy shit Cynthia Dunbar said. Apparently, Obama is plotting with terrorists to attack the U.S. and he's going to institute martial law. Yeah...that sounds reasonable.

I used to enjoy smoking tobacco but my wife really hates it, so I quit. Its not a big deal, I doubt I could afford it now anyways.

Tonight, after Harper goes to sleep, I'll be going over to Matt's apartment/recording studio to do some more work on the new Quiet Company EP. This will be the first thing we've released where I've actually allowed myself to play the drums on an entire song. I played a tiny bit on Everyone You Love... but just enough for us to sample. I'm still hoping that Jeff plays the bulk of the drums but its difficult because he's still living in Waco for a little while longer. Luckily, Matt's really good at making my bad drumming sound acceptable so none of you will notice how unskilled I really am...probably.

I'm really excited about this EP, even though its clearly comprised of songs we didn't think were good enough to put on Everyone You Love... I think its going to sound terrific, in fact, I think it may be the best sounding thing we've done. Also, new recordings allow me a certain kind of relief. I'm always writing songs and by the time I get to record those songs, I'm kind of sick of them and excited about a whole new batch of songs. So every recording clears out a handful of songs and lets me get on with my life, at least until I'm frustrated by a different batch. Perhaps it would be better if I could just fully appreciate the work we're currently doing and not be so anxious about the work on the horizon, but then, perhaps it wouldn't.

I'm not a planner, really. My wife is, and she's very good at it. When I try to be, history has revealed that I am not good at it. There is one area of my life where I tend to be able to plan and carry through pretty well, though, and that is with music. I had the songs and the title for Everyone... decided two years before we actually got around to recording it. I knew that I wanted it to have certain themes and to pull heavily from Vonnegut and loosely from Ishmael, and I knew that I wanted it to portray a progression in my personal life and my convictions. I think I did OK at all of those things, for the most part. With the new EP and inevitably the third full length, things are no different. I've already got most of the songs and themes and titles worked out or at least started on. This is how I see the progression going:

Shine Honesty - A young Christian man in love sings songs about his future, and he has a few qualms with his faith.
Everyone You Love Will be Happy Soon - The young man gets married and sings songs about it while his concerns about his faith and his mortality distance him from his religion.
Songs For Staying In (tentative title) EP - The young man sings 4 songs about love and love-making and one song about how his friend dated a tramp once.
We Are All Where We Belong (tentative title) - The young man has become a father and sings songs about that. He completely separates himself from his former faith while celebrating love and life.

While writing for the third record, its becoming apparent what the themes will be and so we considered the idea of basically trying to make a record that pulled on all the same emotions that a praise & worship record would, but have the lyrics centered around Humanist ideas. We just wanted to see if we could do it and make it equally powerful. However, after some thought, it occurred to us that if we tried to do that, we'd, essentially, just be trying to make a U2 record and we decided against it. I love U2 but I'm not trying to recreate The Joshua Tree, although sometimes I wish they were. I've spent a lot of time in and around praise and worship bands and if we're being honest, 90% of them are just trying to make another U2 record but I doubt any of them will ever pen another "Where the Streets Have No Name."

People say we monkey around...

Leah and I had a great weekend. Took it easy, cooked a lot, had friends over. Jen and Jarrod came over for dinner on Saturday and Leah and I made fettuccine Alfredo and some sort of baked tomato with bread crumbs and cheese all over it. Last night Paul and Gina brought over more ribs than I could possibly eat and then we all played with their two year old son, Ryan, in the sprinkler. It occurred to me that if there hadn't been a toddler in the mix, no one would've had a clue how to have fun with a sprinkler. Its weird to think about how you see things as a kid that you just don't see as an adult. I look at a sprinkler and can't fathom on my own how you could possibly derive fun from running through it. To me, it gets you just wet enough to be annoying, but Ryan obviously looks at it and sees a miraculous invention that simply must exist for his enjoyment and no other purpose. But when we watched him playing in the water we found ourselves remembering, at least a little, how sprinklers can be fun and everyone got pretty soaked.

When I was a kid, I'd see a tree and the only thoughts that occurred to me were about how amazing it would be to climb it and all the ways to go about doing so. Now, I still think those things but my thoughts of adventure are more often than not strangled by thoughts of all the different ways I could bust my ass, doing irreparable damage to my body and/or dignity. Maybe its because as a kid you have less invested in the world. As an adult I am conscious of the fear at all times. I can't let anything happen to me because I've got people that count on me and tons of shit I need to get done. Aside from leaving my loved ones, my greatest fear about death is dying before I get to accomplish everything I want to. I would be so pissed if I died in the middle of making a record. Timing is everything.

Harper is pretty much sleeping through the night now, so I'm feeling better rested than I have in about 2 months, which is nice. She loves her mother so much. Leah doesn't agree but I think she smiles way more at Leah than she does at me. I don't mind so much, Leah's pretty great and I certainly understand why someone would prefer her.

Leah and I watched our wedding video yesterday and it was pretty awful. So boring and my brother in law, who filmed it, shot the floor as often as he shot anything else. When it got to the part where Leah was telling me her vows I started tearing up. I didn't cry at the actual wedding, mind you, just while watching a horrible video of it. What is that?!? That was a great day, though. I had so much fun at our wedding and I remember exactly how I felt about my wife on that day. I remember it so well because its still the way I feel about her today, only now I think I respect her a lot more. Not that I didn't respect her then, but watching your wife through pregnancy allows you to see her in a different light, and its a beautiful thing.

OK but this is seriously the last one...

PZ Meyers posted this and I just thought it was so appropriate that I decided to repost it here. Enjoy.

The only magic I believe in is love / The only religion I belong to is music.

I've realized something about myself today. Something that I've known for a while but today, chosen to embrace. Everyone has something that they don't like about themselves and I think I've figured out what my least favorite trait is.

As you may or may not know, I was raised in a devoutly Christian home that was full of both love and support. My parents, believing in Christianity themselves, obviously thought it best to make sure my brother and I were in church as often as possible. I completely understand why they thought and did this so I'm not in anyway questioning their intentions or love for us, its just part of the story. So from an early age, the church teaches you that nothing in the world is as important as your salvation and faith. Only you can be responsible for your salvation and it is more important than your friends or your family or, literally, anything else in life. Because it lasts forever, right? Its the one thing that you'll have forever. The importance of faith was so ingrained in my mind, that by the time I was in high school, I was constantly thinking about religion. It made sense though, because I believed that it was that important and I lived my life by it.

Now its several years later and I don't believe it anymore but now I just think about how I don't believe it all the time. Its maddening and I really hate it about myself. But I guess if we've learned nothing else from the apostle Paul, its that zealous people will always be zealous no matter what side they play for.

I think its admirable and necessary for the faithless to be vocal and if I've made anyone question their faith by what I've written here then I'm very proud of that. I started this blog because I wanted to try my hand at writing and knowing that I would talk about religion because, as I said, I think about it way more than I would like to. Also, religion provides me with a seemingly endless supply of topics with a lot of different angles to discuss. But the Internet is a strange place to talk about heavy issues, and its especially difficult to try and talk about things with a bit of dry wit and have it come across the page the way you intended. Things I write and think are funny, someone else reads and thinks they're inflammatory. So it goes.

So people get offended and while that was certainly not my intention, I'm not a moron, I knew it would happen. Most of the people that get offended are my family, but I told myself (now I'm not so sure), that in the long run this would be good for us all because I haven't felt like my family has really known me in a long long time. Which is my fault. I act differently around them because I know that I think and say things in my normal life that would be gravely offensive to them. So its a labor of love, this censorship. Its the same reason I never told them when I was having faith crippling doubts or flirting with suicide because god's silence had convinced me that he had abandoned me. You just don't want to trouble them, you know?

So I guess, if I have any resentment towards the church, or god, or Christianity, its not towards the people, its towards the belief system and the years I feel like I wasted thinking that god had a plan for me. But I don't think I'm going to write about religion anymore, at least for a little while. I don't feel like I've said too much, in fact, I don't feel like I've said enough but I'd like to try my hand at being a normal person for a little while. I'm not the only skeptic in town though, so if you feel like you'd really like to be offended or agreed with, might I recommend PZ Myer's blog Pharyngula.

One of my favorite songs from 2006 is "Rise Up, Rise Up!" by Cursive, where at the climax of the song Tim Kasher sings "Do you want to hear my confession, my greatest sin? OK, here it is: I wasted half my life on the thought that I'd live forever."

Who do you like better, Belle or Sebastian?

I've heard a lot of people say that the birth of their children solidified their belief that humankind is so beautiful that it could only have been intentionally designed by some higher power, i.e. god. I certainly understand the sentiment when I think about how amazing and beautiful my daughter is. That being said, since she's been born, its only served to further convince me of our evolution from the same family that produced the ape. She's adorable as hell, and sometimes, especially when she's sitting up kind of slumped over, I think she looks very monkey-esque.

Once, when we were on tour in Washington, D.C., Leah and I visited the zoo there and spent the lion's share of our time at the gorilla exhibit. Everything about them, from their facial expressions to the way they move and interact with one another, is so "human" and amazing. I don't understand people who are, essentially, insulted by the idea that we could possibly share almost all of our genes with them (incidentally, their indignity doesn't stop it being true). I guess they would rather believe that god instantaneously created us in his image, because we're arrogant and that belief elevates us above nature. That's one of the biggest problems in the world, if not the single biggest problem. Here's the god's honest truth: if god exists, then you are no more important to him/her/it/them than the mice in the field or the termite in the wall. He/she/it/they don't care if your basketball team beats someone else's basketball team, and it doesn't matter how much you pray for that victory. There's probably someone on the other team, who may or may not have more faith than you, praying for the same thing. When you get badly injured in an accident and seemingly miraculously pull through, its the doctors that worked tirelessly on putting you back together that are the heroes. God's not hanging out above the hospital bed, impressed with himself about how dramatic its about to be when he saves your ass.

The flip side of that, of course, is that while we're no more important, we're certainly no less beautiful.

Our culture has made us so insecure that we have worked diligently to convince ourselves that we exist outside or above nature, but in actuality, we most certainly do not. For some people, the idea that god isn't particularly interested in your day to day is disheartening and they might say that religion is good because at the very least it gives us purpose. Well, I say that I've got no religion and oodles of purpose. For instance, tonight my purpose will be to have a nice dinner with a beautiful lady. As my personal hero, Kurt Vonnegut, so elegantly put it, "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anyone tell you different."

Also, I haven't heard it yet, but our friends Jets Under Fire released their second free EP and its available for download here. As I said, I haven't heard it yet but I'll be downloading it as soon as I get home. Their last one was fantastic and was a notable improvement from their impressive debut record.