Are you there God? It's me, Pants, and I don't believe in you.

By request from Big Time, who will soon be basking in my magnificent glow for a few days, is the story of my father's attempts to woo me back into the church.

A brief history of my religious beliefs. I was born. My parents both belong to different, but similar churches. My dad's church meets every week in a medium-small building in Edmond, OK. My mom's church meets once a month at members' houses, depending on one of a number of traveling preachers.

The religion is hard to define. I call it "Mormon-lite." Both churches are off-shoots of the Mormon (or LDS) church and both use a Book of Mormon, though it's different from the one used by the Mormons. Confused yet? Me too. We were allowed to eat sugar and drink caffeine growing up, though cursing was prohibited (including use of the words "butt," "fart," "turds" and "tard" -- the last one because it sounds like "turd" -- we had serious issues with anal, I guess).

I went to church every Sunday until I went to college, when I wasn't forced to go. I went on occasion when I returned to Edmond, but once I moved out of my parents' house and didn't have anyone bugging me to get up, it wasn't a priority.

Lately, as in the last 6 or 7 years, I have made it clear that I don't consider myself a Christian anymore. Not that I'm a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Wiccan, either -- I don't practice religion because I think religion is stupid.

Despite my HILARIOUS post title, I do believe in God. Maybe. I think there's something out there what started the big banging or the small Ppblllllting or whatever it was that made the universe. I just don't think he/she/it/they care even a little bit about what we do.

So my dad, who is a Christian, does believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and thinks they weep when we do bad things, comes over to work on my lawn mower. It was running, but the blade needs sharpening or replacing or something and the oil needed to be changed and the air filter had to go. Long story short, I have not been taking care of my lawn mower.

Anyway, apropos of nothing, my dad asks if I'm an atheist or an agnostic. I say, "I guess I'm agnostic" and he replies, "Good, then there's still a chance."

I know I'm in for it at this point and I kicked myself for giving him an opening. Not that I hate talking to my dad, but religion and politics are kind of a sore point for us. He's a Republican. I'm a dirty, hippie liberal pinko commie.

So he starts telling me his story, or "testimony" as we called it back in the day, about how God changed his life. "I was just like you," he said. "I used to drink and mess around with girls."

(Note: I do not mess around with girls. I am married. I mess around with my hot wife. She is hot.)

And he said that, during his time in Vietnam, he questioned whether or not there was a God. I told him, judging from a number of movies, he wasn't alone. There's something about fighting an unending war for vague reasons and seeing friends die that tends to make people wonder about a divine presence.

He told me that, had he stayed in the military and kept drinking, he might have been an alcoholic.

Me: "Oh, so you drank just to get drunk? Like, all the time?"

Dad: "No, I just had a beer every now and then. Or some wine with dinner. Maybe a pre-dinner cocktail. But I didn't get drunk a lot."

Me: "That doesn't sound like you had a problem. That sounds like you figured out how to drink. You should have taught classes. I'm planning on doing a 'How to drink' course at the Learning Annex."

Then he said that after he quit drinking and went back to church, he met the love of his life, my mom. I told him my hot wife probably wouldn't like me going to church looking for a new wife. He said that wasn't the point he was trying to make.

I'll admit -- I was antagonizing him a bit. But I know where he's coming from. He thinks I'm going to Hell and he doesn't want that. I think the only Hell is the one we make for ourselves here on Earth. If the church wants me back, they'll have to be a very different church.

Things a church needs to get me as a member:
- Total acceptance of sexual orientations
- Dial way fucking back on the pomp
- Hell doesn't exist, because no loving God could let it exist
- Acceptance that, being he/she/it/they are powerful enough to make the universe, he/she/it/they likely don't care if we sing their praises
- Only live by one rule: Hey, try not be such an asshole all the time.

So, there you go. My dad, likely at the behest of my mom, tried to bring me back to the fold. And the guy at Sears gave him the wrong parts, so we didn't even get the lawn mower fixed. So that also sucked.

The End of an Era

Since my entire life revolves around TV, let me regale you with a piece of "How I Met Your Mother."

Ted Evelyn Mosby, the main character, re-returned to his crush's doorstep (very drunk) to confess his love. Instead, he puked on her custom door mat.

His best friend, Marshall, was offended by the story. "So all that 'Puke-Free since '93 stuff was just a lie, huh?'"

Well folks, I was ticket-free since '94. No speeding tickets. No moving violations. No wrecks. My record was blissfully clear -- until Saturday night.

Now, I thought I was going to write about my superior dining experience this morning. And maybe I will, someday, when the hurt ends. But right now, all I can think about is my stupid, expensive, retarded goddamn ticket.

There is a stop sign in my neighborhood. It leads to a little-used road, my personal Bat-entrance, and it's a handy little shortcut around some massive traffic. On Saturday, in my haste to get to the Deep Fork Grill, I rolled that stop sign. Hell, I might have sped up a little. Regardless, it was the wrong thing to do.

And not just because I got caught, though that's certainly a component. No, it was wrong because stop signs are there for stopping. As much as I hate bad drivers, I have to admit, I was behaving like one. And that cop, who was sitting there in his all-black car, knew somebody was going to roll that sign. That's why he was there, after all. It's the end of the month and he has a quota to get through.

So it was bad luck and bad timing but mostly bad driving that netted me a $170 ticket. There goes my streak. There goes some money.

And the worst of it? Honestly? There's no one else to blame. And my anger at that fact scares me.

Shouldn't we want things we can take responsibility for? If it's you that did it, at least you can do better next time. I know every stop sign I see for a while will have me making a deliberate and full stop. No pausing. No slowing down. I will stop stop stop.

But I wished it was somebody else's fault. I wanted so bad to be able to blame anybody but me. And that's a failing. That's a goddamn shame.

I did it. It was me and no one else. Even if there were extenuating circumstances, I don't think anything short of, "Officer, my wife is dying and I must get her to the emergency room" cuts it. And I know rolling a stop sign isn't the end of the world. I know a ticket isn't going to leave me destitute. But I ought to be happy that the blame is squarely on my shoulders, because that way, I can make sure it doesn't happen again.

An amazing meal and my dad's efforts to get me back in the church later on.

David Sedaris loves me

Or, you know, the group of people I was in when I saw him do a reading.

"It’s a good kind of a place to do a reading. Like Tulsa. Because, you know, they would love to attend a book tour but no one ever comes. It makes more sense to go there than, you know, to go to a lot of other cities where people have a reading every day of the week. I had a wonderful time there."

- David Sedaris, in an interview with The Stranger in Seattle

Please to be going here

The hammer...is my penis.

I like booze

I am not a heavy drinker. I do not drink alone, or, at least, very rarely do I drink alone. I like wine. I like beer. If I happen to have the ingredients handy, I like a cocktail on occassion.

But if my employer handed down some sort of no-drinking mandate, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I wouldn't be crushed, either. I might keep my eyes open for a job where they don't mind if you have a glass of Petite Syrah with dinner, off the clock, but I'd sure as hell stop drinking until I had that other job.

So what I can't figure out is how people with much more highly paid jobs than the one I hold can't stop doing illegal drugs. Travis Henry, a pretty decent runningback, is out of a year after being caught (AGAIN!) with marijuana. Matt Jones is in trouble for snorting cocaine in a car in Fayetteville.

In Henry's case, I mean, he knows they test for shit, because he knows he's been caught before. So how do you not go, "I love weed, but for the sake of making enough money to retire and smoke all the pot I want later, I guess I'll put my bong down for a couple of years."

How is quitting pot harder than working out EVERY DAY?

And Matt Jones? That guy had millions from his contract and he's snorting coke in a car. Not that he should be inhaling drugs to begin with, but at least take it inside. Put a wall or three between you and the cops and, guess what?, they can't see you doing the drugs. What a dipshit.

Maybe they're legitimately hooked (though I didn't think marijuana was so habit-forming), but that's just so stupid to not get the help you need to quit in order to continue a very lucrative career. When it's over and nobody's testing you anymore? Go to town. But as long as you're peeing in a cup, maybe lay off the felony-level narcotics.

Now, if my boss told me I couldn't read comics anymore? I guess I'd have to figure out a way around the system. I have friends who don't read comics. Maybe they can pee in a cup for me.

Red means stop, you fuckwit.

My uncle Mike, a man who made much of my childhood a horrible joke by yanking my pants down in front of people, actually taught me something. While working, in high school, at his steel fabrication plant, he told me the secret of driving.

"Stop at yellow lights," he said. "You'll have fewer tickets, fewer wrecks and lower blood pressure."

I'd like to say that I heeded his words immediately, but that was not the case. I spent years afterwards tapping my dashboard as I went through yellows. And then, one day, I stopped.

I still coast through a yellow on occasion, usually when I'm a little too close to stop in time, but for the most part when the green light fades, I apply my brakes rather than gun the engine.

Every once in a while, though, I find myself going through a light and say, "That was a little close, pal."

And every time I chide myself for not stopping in time, I look into my rearview mirror and I see at least one, if not two or three other cars who have stopped running yellow lights and decided to run red ones.

I always wonder what exactly these people are thinking. Certainly they noticed the lights changing color. And since they're behind me, they have at least a couple more car lengths to slow down to stop. But they don't. They just run red lights, like that's what they're supposed to do.

There must have been one time, at some point in my last 12 years of driving, when going through a yellow light has saved me a lot of time. Perhaps I avoided a train. Maybe a wreck occurred and I didn't have to stop to go around it. But I know that most of the time, it doesn't really matter. Going 45 vs. 50 mph doesn't get you anywhere so much more quickly that it's worth the ticket and stopping vs. going doesn't seem to have much effect, either.

So, to the old lady in the crappy truck who decided that red means "why not?" and just barrelled through, I think it's funny that you got stuck at the next light with me and all the people who stopped at the light before caught up to us.

July already?

When we're kids, time moves so slowly. We have so few experiences, I guess, that our brains have to drink in every detail.

Now, nearing six months on my new job, I find that time moves fast-fast-fast. So fast, in fact, that it's July somehow. Already. It kind of snuck up on me.

It's not that I haven't been doing anything -- just not much of anything. I get up, I go to work (which is either engaging or boring) and then I come home. Sometimes I see my friends. Sometimes I watch TV. Sometimes I parody "Bull Durham."

There have certainly been a few slow moments. The wife and I have had way too many talks about money, which are frustrating. The thing with money is that we don't have enough of it, it seems, and have no idea on how to make more. The only thing we can do is use less of it, but we're not terribly good at that. Or, more accurately, I'm not terribly good at that.

We've put the car discussion on hold. I think we're going for the next Prius, scheduled for release in about a year, so the old Camry will have to sputter on a little longer. I'm hoping that by then we'll have paid down most of our credit card debt and built up a decent little down payment. And this isn't just wishing and dreaming -- we're actually doing these things, but they sort of factor into that "not enough money" dilemma.

So here's what I'm thinking -- before the summer gets away from us, how about we hang out? I know some of you live far away and are very busy, so don't worry about it, but if you're local or plan to get local for a little while, let us be the kind of friends that sit awkwardly in the same room, possibly eating hot dogs.