• This “story map” was distributed to guests at a wedding. “We made this graphic to help start conversations and allow, say, our college friends to enjoy my wife’s father’s friends without too much awkwardness.” Very cool idea and great execution as well. Reminds me of something Dave Eggers would do in a novel. 05/29/2007

The Wonder Register

It’s been a busy time for me lately. Graduation, job-hunting, moving back home, etc., have all kept me from blogging as frequently as I’d like. I’ll post about all that stuff in due time, but while you wait, here is an essay I wrote for the Des Moines Register. They’re seeking “a new group of Young Adult Contributors… to bring new voices and fresh viewpoints to the Register’s online site and our opinion pages,” and in addition, “those selected will get a blog at DesMoinesRegister.com/blogs and will be invited to the Register for a discussion of issues of interest to young Iowans.” I’ll let you know if I am selected. The following is my application essay:

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Recently I pulled the car to the side of the road and purchased a twenty-five cent cup of raspberry lemonade from a child entrepreneur. Sitting on the table beside the requisite cups and pitcher was a toy cash register. I assumed the toy was just for looks – a subliminal message of legitimacy to drive up sales – but when I paid with a dollar bill I could not have been more astounded. The girl pressed a button on the thing and the next five seconds can only be described as surreal. Surely time has inflated my memory of the incident, but I remember bells ringing, plastic pieces moving in perfect harmony, and a large container of cash whirring out from underneath the device. She coolly changed out my dollar bill, closed the wonder-register and politely said thank you. Frankly, I don’t even remember if the lemonade was any good; I couldn’t stop thinking about the toy cash register.

It hasn’t always been this way. When I was a kid, anything that mom and dad didn’t mind breaking was a toy. In fact, something that broke was preferable – two toys for the price of one. An enormous rock in the yard was the tip of massive underground castle. A fallen branch of a tree was a bazooka (boys will be boys). The only real toy I actually remember having was the set of successively smaller colored rings on the spindle, and even those presented a world of possibilities: donuts in the morning and jewelry after dinner. I can’t help but wonder if, as toys become increasingly realistic, children are slowly losing the ability to use their imagination. More realistic does not equal superior. Perhaps it would be better to send them out into the yard for the afternoon. Their imaginations won’t let them down.

Senior paper redux

I lied. It was an honest mistake, though, because I really did think the previous post regarding my senior paper would be the last. Several things have happened, however, that necessitated a follow-up post.

The first is that I couldn’t help posting the picture on the right of myself presenting the paper at the Research Symposium for Senior Recognition Day. An entire semester’s worth of work and I am holding up a cartoon.

The second – and more exciting – reason for the post is that it has been published(!) in an online magazine. Precipice Magazine is an “online Christian resource for dialogue, interaction and opinion about… the postmodern era; as well as the subsequent rise of the emergent church”; I have blogged about it previously (here and here). The article, which is word-for-word what I wrote for my senior paper (minus citations and footnotes, unfortunately) can be found here.

But that’s not all. A condensed version will soon be published in another, more prominent online magazine. All I have to do is some how hack off 2,000-3,000 words in the next couple of days (it’s 4,379 words, remember?). Blogger TallSkinnyKiwi has called the aforementioned publication “possibly the greatest emerging church online publication ever.” More on this when it’s published.

Also, I want to thank people for reading the paper and giving me constructive criticism, comments, and questions. I would like to take the time to answer all of them, but I’ve been so busy finishing the school year and preparing for/taking finals. I’ll be home in a week, and I should have more time then to respond to various comments.

• Sweet-ass ice sculptures I’m going to make with a chain saw one day. “The planet Saturn is rendered in ice, with a huge ice python emerging from Saturn’s north pole. I know what you’re thinking—’That’s been done a million times.’ But what hasn’t been done is to stage a badass ice eclipse where ice Saturn blocks the ice sun completely and all the ice aliens on a darkened ice Neptune freak out. I’d probably need a grant for this one.” 05/08/2007
• Grumpy teenager visits Atlantis. “Day Three: Night – Attempted to kiss Jenny through air helmet. She called to dump me after I got to the hotel. Dad unable to restrain himself from ‘Plenty of other fish in the sea.’” 05/02/2007
• Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal are going to play an exhibition tennis match on a customized half-clay, half-grass court. “Organizers needed 19 days and $1.63 million to create the court, which divides the surfaces by halves for a unique match in which a player can receive on clay and hit a winner on grass — or vice versa.” 05/02/2007

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