Don't Try

I'm Dax Shepard and I'm 20 years late to the blog game. Let's roll!

[daxtumbler-blog]

WARNING: Not a show business opinion!

I learned about “Kate’s Law’ during the first Republican Debate. It’s a bill that was introduced by Senator Cruz entitled “the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry.” In short, this bill would set a minimum sentence of five years in prison for anyone caught trying to enter the country illegally for a second time.     It is called “Kate’s Law” because it is in response to the murder of Kate Steinle by an “illegal alien” who had been previously deported five times. He also had, and probably more importantly, several  felony convictions. It is, by anyone’s account, a horrific, senseless tragedy.     When something terrible like this happens, we try to make sense of it. Try to understand it, in hopes of preventing it from ever happening again. We try to isolate a specific factor that lead to the tragedy; some crucial ingredient we can identify and work to eradicate. In this instance, the drafters of the legislation feel like the crucial ingredient, or defining characteristic of the murderer was his repeated entry into the country illegally. This has to be their conclusion, or the bill would have asked for minimum sentencing based on other criteria the murderer exhibited. They must not have thought his multiple felonies were the key ingredient, or they would have asked for minimum sentencing for people committing their second felony.     I disagree with their conclusion. This should come as no surprise, as I am a well documented “faggy libtard.” I could moan on and on about the hypocrisy of xenophobia in a country whose economy is built on a foundation of cheap migrant labor, but who would listen? I understand. Thinking about the “aliens” as real, human beings with children and parents and siblings and favorite songs is not on the table. The fact that a large portion of these repeat offenders are simply trying to reconnect with family members who weren’t deported shall hold little sway. So I will instead keep my thoughts strictly fiscal:     Incarcerating someone in prison is pricy. In 2011, the average cost per inmate in a Federal prison was $28,893.40. So if Kate’s Law is enacted, we can expect to spend  $144,467 per conviction, (not including the considerable cost of apprehension, detention, prosecution and court appointed defense attorneys). Now, of the 188,382 “criminal aliens” deported in 2011, 86,699 had been previously deported and had returned illegally. That was in 2011. The number of deportations has risen dramatically since then, so the 86K number is light. I will use it anyway (because I can’t find 2014 figures, and I’m not CNN). So…with 86,699 annual offenders, we will be committing to pay $12,525,144,433 every year. That’s billion. A twelve-and-a-half billion dollar commitment. Year in and year out. Over the next 10 years we (or rather our Chinese lenders) will be paying well over a trillion dollars for Kate’s Law. And again, I am using the very conservative 2011 figures.     I like people who have a different, or even opposite point of view from my own. I married someone who is diametrically opposed to 70-80% of my opinions, and I enjoy the challenge of seeing things through her eyes. The only thing that could take the fun out of it, is if her stance shifted radically from day to day. I would have a hard time understanding where she’s coming from if her place of origin was fluid. And herein lies my frustration with “The Right” on this issue. How can their platform be fiscal conservatism when this is so blatantly wasteful? How can the folks who think we can’t afford Sesame Street think we can afford this? It’s perplexing and inconsistent. And the candidates’ reactions to this bill at the debate was overwhelmingly supportive.     It is tempting to frame this as an immigration reform bill of sorts. But it’s not. It’s called “Kate’s Law” for a reason. It is in response to a murder. And we should be diligent in determining what the “active ingredient” in this murder was before enacting legislation to address it. As it stands, the “illegal alien” component is what’s being targeted as the culprit. The problem with that is that there are 11.5 million people in this country that fit that description. This would be no different that determining that someone’s Blackness was the determining factor in a homicide, and that legislation for all African Americans was imperative. It’s just too broad and illogical. Not to mention a humongous waste of China’s money.     If we are going to commit a trillion dollars to something, I hope it will create some jobs and opportunity. I hope it will be an investment, and not interest payments on a principal that we refuse to address. One in every hundred adults in Americans is already incarcerated. We can do better than that. And better isn’t one in every fifty.

[mollimcrey-blog]

I’m confused about something, When you read Kate’s Law, do you glean from it that the “illegal alien” the target, or is  the target the more specifically the “criminal illegal immigrant”? I see those as two different issues and from what I have read about Kate’s Law, the target is the latter; repeat criminal offender. The majority of the11.5 million people, who are considered to be here illegally, don’t have any sort of sort of criminal background, accept the technicality of not having gone through the proper channels to come to the United States. I don’t think they have anything to do with Kate’s Law, nor should there be any reason it would apply to them.

I would say, that it is this “criminal” component that is being targeted and that may be for good reason. By my account, you can find in the news, about one murder(s) per week, where the suspect is an illegal immigrant, with a criminal record, who was not deported, even if –legally, they should have been.

[daxtumbler-blog]

Anyone who is deported becomes a “criminal illegal immigrant.” The word criminal is very misleading here. 100% of people who enter a second time are criminals, because their first entry was a crime. They are not targeting perpetrators of violence crimes. 

[daxtumbler-blog]

WARNING: Not a show business opinion!

I learned about “Kate’s Law’ during the first Republican Debate. It’s a bill that was introduced by Senator Cruz entitled “the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry.” In short, this bill would set a minimum sentence of five years in prison for anyone caught trying to enter the country illegally for a second time.     It is called “Kate’s Law” because it is in response to the murder of Kate Steinle by an “illegal alien” who had been previously deported five times. He also had, and probably more importantly, several  felony convictions. It is, by anyone’s account, a horrific, senseless tragedy.     When something terrible like this happens, we try to make sense of it. Try to understand it, in hopes of preventing it from ever happening again. We try to isolate a specific factor that lead to the tragedy; some crucial ingredient we can identify and work to eradicate. In this instance, the drafters of the legislation feel like the crucial ingredient, or defining characteristic of the murderer was his repeated entry into the country illegally. This has to be their conclusion, or the bill would have asked for minimum sentencing based on other criteria the murderer exhibited. They must not have thought his multiple felonies were the key ingredient, or they would have asked for minimum sentencing for people committing their second felony.     I disagree with their conclusion. This should come as no surprise, as I am a well documented “faggy libtard.” I could moan on and on about the hypocrisy of xenophobia in a country whose economy is built on a foundation of cheap migrant labor, but who would listen? I understand. Thinking about the “aliens” as real, human beings with children and parents and siblings and favorite songs is not on the table. The fact that a large portion of these repeat offenders are simply trying to reconnect with family members who weren’t deported shall hold little sway. So I will instead keep my thoughts strictly fiscal:     Incarcerating someone in prison is pricy. In 2011, the average cost per inmate in a Federal prison was $28,893.40. So if Kate’s Law is enacted, we can expect to spend  $144,467 per conviction, (not including the considerable cost of apprehension, detention, prosecution and court appointed defense attorneys). Now, of the 188,382 “criminal aliens” deported in 2011, 86,699 had been previously deported and had returned illegally. That was in 2011. The number of deportations has risen dramatically since then, so the 86K number is light. I will use it anyway (because I can’t find 2014 figures, and I’m not CNN). So…with 86,699 annual offenders, we will be committing to pay $12,525,144,433 every year. That’s billion. A twelve-and-a-half billion dollar commitment. Year in and year out. Over the next 10 years we (or rather our Chinese lenders) will be paying well over a trillion dollars for Kate’s Law. And again, I am using the very conservative 2011 figures.     I like people who have a different, or even opposite point of view from my own. I married someone who is diametrically opposed to 70-80% of my opinions, and I enjoy the challenge of seeing things through her eyes. The only thing that could take the fun out of it, is if her stance shifted radically from day to day. I would have a hard time understanding where she’s coming from if her place of origin was fluid. And herein lies my frustration with “The Right” on this issue. How can their platform be fiscal conservatism when this is so blatantly wasteful? How can the folks who think we can’t afford Sesame Street think we can afford this? It’s perplexing and inconsistent. And the candidates’ reactions to this bill at the debate was overwhelmingly supportive.     It is tempting to frame this as an immigration reform bill of sorts. But it’s not. It’s called “Kate’s Law” for a reason. It is in response to a murder. And we should be diligent in determining what the “active ingredient” in this murder was before enacting legislation to address it. As it stands, the “illegal alien” component is what’s being targeted as the culprit. The problem with that is that there are 11.5 million people in this country that fit that description. This would be no different that determining that someone’s Blackness was the determining factor in a homicide, and that legislation for all African Americans was imperative. It’s just too broad and illogical. Not to mention a humongous waste of China’s money.     If we are going to commit a trillion dollars to something, I hope it will create some jobs and opportunity. I hope it will be an investment, and not interest payments on a principal that we refuse to address. One in every hundred adults in Americans is already incarcerated. We can do better than that. And better isn’t one in every fifty.

[daxtumbler-blog]

Celebrity Orgy

A few days ago my wife and I wrote tweets urging folks to boycott publications that buy photos of celebrities' children without the consent of their parents (paparazzi generated pics). We got a myriad of responses, ranging from heartfelt solidarity to vitriolic rage. The overwhelming majority was very supportive, and for that we are very thankful. There were a few common threads that ran through the hateful responses, and I hope to address those here. First, however, I'd like to explain what lead us to tweet in the first place.

A few months ago we were invited to a gathering at the home of Jennifer Garner. The bulk of the attendees were actors and musicians. I was excited. We had finally been invited to a celebrity orgy. I had heard about these as a 15 year-old boy from Michigan, and now, 23 years later, I was at one. Jennifer addressed the crowd, but instead of discussing boundaries, safe-words and hygiene, she walked us through California Senate Bill 606, which made it illegal to photograph a child because of their parent's employment in a manner that "seriously alarms, annoys, torment, or terrorizes" them

She and Halle Berry had worked tirelessly, and at their own expense, to get this bill passed. I think I speak for everyone there when I say we were all incredibly grateful for Jennifer and Halle's momentous achievement.

The meeting had some of the key lawmakers who had drafted the bill, as well as law enforcement representatives who helped explain how to best enforce the law. Implicit in the bill are some obvious First Amendment issues. It does, at the end of the day, limit the rights of the "press" to "alarm, annoy, torment or terrorize" children in the pursuit of "news gathering." I am starting to use a lot of quotes. This is my snarky way of hinting that I don't believe entertainment paparazzi are actually "press" any more than a peeping tom using a "shoe-cam" at the local mall is "press." Nor do I think photographing children being held by a famous parent can be considered "news gathering" by any definition. All that aside, I deeply value the freedom of the press and think it is an indispensable facet of a healthy democracy that should be protected fervently.

I left that night feeling like the implementation of this new law was going to be difficult. I hoped in my bones it would hold up in court, where it will eventually land and play out. I also left with the nagging feeling that this new law mirrored the "war on drugs" in one key way: it only really addressed the supply side of the equation, and not the demand. We Americans have proven time and time again that if we want something, through hell or high water, we will get it. So as long as people pay good money to buy magazines featuring famous people's children, there will be men popping out of bushes and lurking around playgrounds to get those pics. Those are just the facts.

The consumer is the only one that can put an end to this. They are the only ones with real power.

This issue wasn't even on our radar ten months ago. We didn't have a baby yet, and like many couples without children, we thought of kids as gremlins who willfully dropped their food items on the floor to distract their parents from having adult conversations with us. Then we had our daughter, and every corny cliché became instantly relevant and true. It was immediate. A love like we'd never known. My heart ached when I looked at her, the way it did in eighth grade when I would listen to The Cure whilst writing letters to my girlfriend. My wife and I have both had wonderful lives filled with lots of highlights, and this dwarfed them all.

On day two of our hospital stay, within an hour of filling out her birth certificate, we got an email from our publicist saying a popular tabloid was going to run an announcement with the baby's sex, full name, time of birth and weight. That was a bummer. We hadn't yet shared that info with our extended family. We thought, rightly or wrongly, that it would be best at that point to announce it ourselves on Twitter to deny the tabloid the chance at an "exclusive." I don't know that it mattered one way or another, but I do know it was a sobering warning of more things to come. Since bringing her home ten months ago, there has been a car or two parked across the street from our house, waiting at all times for us to leave. We go to great lengths to keep her anonymous, and have been, for the most part, successful. They have photographed her at five of her eight doctor's appointments, a bunch of times leaving our favorite restaurant, and during a few set visits to mom's work. In all of those instances we were able to keep her covered with a blanket.

Last Saturday we went to our friend's house in a tiny, nondescript neighborhood in The San Fernando Valley. We were there playing for three hours. I didn't think we had been followed, but on Sunday morning my mother emailed me pictures of our daughter, clear as day, being carried and put into the car by me. This broke my heart in a way that's not entirely reasonable. I had charged myself, as her dad, with protecting her. I personally believe, and I understand a lot of people differ on this point, that protecting her includes keeping her life private until the moment she decides otherwise. I think she is entitled to that. I think every minor is entitled to that. My wife and I, ever the approval-junkies, made a decision to get into show business and become public figures, but she has not. She hasn't even decided if she prefers pureed carrots to peanut butter.

So we took to Twitter urging consumers to stop buying magazines that print unsolicited photos of minors. We recognize that the odds of this happening are exceedingly low. We are not naive. We have hope, though. We think that people who like looking at children in magazines must actually like children. We are betting on the chance that they like them enough to protect them from constantly being shadowed by strange men (not trying to be sexist- I'm sure there are plenty of strange women in the 'razzi game). We pray that one of the classier weeklies, like People, will enact a no-kids policy, and that they will be rewarded by the consumer for doing so. And we hope that leads to others following suit. It would be miraculous if the situation changed and celebrities' children got to be just children. And it would be even more miraculous if that change came from the will of the people and not legislation. I think this could be a good step in our ever evolving social consciousness. It could fold nicely into the same wave of change that wants to see gay people happily married, orcas freed, and pot smokers decriminalized. It would be a slightly better version of ourselves and our culture, and we are mildly optimistic.

Now, against the advice of my better half, I am going to address some of those Twitter detractors:

"You knew what you were getting into when you signed up to be famous." 

First of all, god how I wish there had been an actual "sign-up" sheet. That would have saved me the eight years of no work I endured. Secondly, yes, I do know what comes with the job, which is why I'm NOT asking you to boycott magazines with my photo in them. I'm only asking on behalf of my child who did not "sign up."

"There are way more important things to boycott than your rich kid getting her picture taken."

I couldn't agree more. This is very low on the list indeed. But, it is, nevertheless, on the list. We aren't asking you to ignore a man on fire for this cause, but after you've helped extinguish him, there's no reason you can't whisper in his ear, "Hey, don't buy Us Weekly. They display photos of children being stalked."

"Celebrities call the paparazzi on their own kids and exploit them for personal exposure."

This may happen. I would have no way of knowing. It's a vile notion, and I'm happy to say none of our actor friends do this. But if you really believe this happens, isn't that all the more reason to boycott? Don't you want to take that option away from those vomitus parents?

"Why don't you just post your own pics so it will devalue the paparazzi's?"

We don't believe it works that way. A photo from us won't satiate curiosity; it will simply introduce a new character into the soap opera. We think out-of-sight, out-of-mind is the best defense.

"Boo-hoo. Cry me a river. Why don't you get a real job and stop whining."

Hmm. Well, I understand you resent what I do for a living. There is no arguing that there is very little lifting involved. However, there couldn't be a more detestable racket than Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, and yet, I would never want to see his two year-old sons ambushed for his repugnance.

"Stop acting like you're Brad and Angelina. No one cares about you or your kid."

Another strong point. This is very true. We don't deal with anything close to what they deal with. If paps were cancer, they'd have small cell carcinoma and we'd have a suspicious looking mole that should probably come off just to be safe. Despite the different threat level, it's still best to seek treatment.

"You're a shitty actor and your movies suck." …that's subjective?

[daxtumbler-blog]

My Father's Horniness

 My father, Dave Robert Shepard Sr., died on either December 30th or December 31st, depending on what time zone you were in. I received the call on the 30th at 11:30PM in Los Angeles, but the caller, positioned in Detroit, was two hours deep into the 31st. He was dead at 62 years old. Small cell carcinoma was to blame. It originated in the lungs and then travelled with great speed to all corners of his body.

     I had been back to Detroit just six days before and was disappointed I couldn't be with him at the actual finish line. We were partners. We had taken on this cancer project together. He chose me to deal with all the doctors and creditors and landlords. It was the only project we ever teamed up on. We never built a tree house or a soap box derby car together, but you would have never known it by watching us tear through chemo decisions and radiation plans. We were two great minds with one single thought: get into the end zone gracefully.

     He had noticed a lump in his neck in August. A biopsy was taken and some chest x-rays. "A mass" was detected on the lungs. Those were his words to me, "a mass," which sounded much more like the words of a doctor than the retired car salesman that he was. He was much more prone to use the word "fuck," and I wondered while he was telling me this news if he realized how serious that word was. Test results from the "lump," which turned out to be a swollen lymph node, came back positive for cancer. It was the phone call you see on TV and in movies. It was happening to me now, and I found the timing to be exceedingly inconvenient. In movies, news of this kind seems to always coincide with a huge hole in the lead character's schedule. He or she is able to spend vast amounts of time at the bedside of the loved one, or at a diner having coffee and pie with estranged family members. This flexible schedule allows for some high quality catharsis to take place.

     I was acting full time on a TV show based in LA when I got the call. He was in Detroit. On my days off from the TV show I was traveling around the country promoting a movie I had directed. During the month of August I went to Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, San Diego, Nashville, Memphis and New York. Compounding all of this was the recent and incredibly fortuitous news that my wife and I were pregnant with our first baby. Whoever was writing my life couldn't figure out which storyline they wanted to tell, and decided to tell them all at once. 

     As tends to happen in real life, despite it being inconvenient, it all worked out. Pockets of time opened up here and there and I was able to go back to Detroit often. My initial response was to get him to do chemo in LA. Surely the weather would be better. He wasn't having it. I then made a strong push for him to go to Oregon to be with my brother. Nope. He was staying in Detroit. He had a huge support system of friends there, and in the end, it was the right decision.

     His friends. This is relevant. One of the few upsides of my father being dead is that I can now break his anonymity and state plainly that he was a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous for over 25 years. During that quarter-of-a-century span, he  accumulated the most colorful, caring, fucked-up group of friends you'd ever want to see. It was a rag-tag band of misfits bound together only by their shared desire to not get loaded anymore. What a group. It was truly his greatest accomplishment. They all loved him in a way that even my brother and I had a hard time doing. He hadn't missed any of their birthdays or soccer games, and they saw only the man who had helped so many struggling folks get sober. They were by his side, uninterrupted, from diagnosis to death. Often annoying, but always a blessing, they gave him the greatest gift possible: their time. He was never alone. Not for one second.

     When I visited we would break up the chemo routine with trips to the cineplex or restaurants of his choosing.  He loved to eat. Holy shit could he eat. Of all of his addictions, and there were many (drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, sex, cars, houses, shiny things), eating was his number one. He never did get a handle on that vice. He could hunker down in front of the TV for hours, nibbling with comma-inducing ferocity the entire time. Nothing in the pantry was safe. He would come up with the most counter-intuitive combinations of food. Like a true alchemist, he'd put salsa on oatmeal, or smother frozen waffles with a can of black beans. He was like a perpetually stoned, pregnant woman. No permutation of ingredients was out of the question; anything was possible. It was a sight to behold. 

     We had a lot of fun together during those four months. We took long car rides through the back roads of rural Michigan. We spent a weekend visiting every single house and apartment the two of us had ever lived in. There were 28 between the two of us. Together we had only shared three of those places: a single-wide mobile home from 0-1 years-old, a small, brick ranch on a few acres in the middle of nowhere from 1-3 years-old, and a modern, middle-class home in a McMansion-ee neighborhood from 15-16 years-old. It was that gap between 3 and 15 years-old that caused most of our issues. He was a selfish asshole, and I lived to hold a grudge, so it was a thoroughly symbiotic pairing. The car rides proved to be shockingly therapeutic. One of the hidden benefits of cancer is that it can erode grudges the way WD-40 dissolves rust. It just finds it's way into all the nooks and crannies and starts loosening. Before long, the once formidable chip on my shoulder had melded into something the size of a nicotine patch. Apologies were exchanged. Tears were had. Hugs were frequent and lingering. I spent the majority of our time together running my hand lightly over the tiny little hairs peaking out from the back of his soft, bald head. He let me do that for hours. Without any awareness of it at the time, the trips home turned into a proper Alexander Payne Movie. It became one of the more beautiful experiences of my life.

     Things got worse, as they do. Car rides gave way to hospitals and senior care facilities. His last two months were spent dealing with cancer, heart disease and gout. He had an increasingly difficult time walking and spent most of his time in bed. On my last trip home, just before Christmas, I took him on his final jailbreak. I threw him in a wheelchair and rolled him through 20 degree weather to his favorite restaurant, where I watched him pick at his waffles and bacon. He couldn't have had more than four bites over the course of an hour. It was a very clear signal to me that the end was near. I took him, for the last time, to his house. I gave him his percocet and sat him in front of the TV. He held the remote in his right hand like a six-shooter, splitting his attention between the TV, the view of the lake through the sliding glass door, and me. It was wonderful. We sat that way for over three hours. 

     I took him back to the hospital right around dinner time. They brought him a full meal, complete with dessert. He didn't even touch the dessert. I never thought I'd see that. I had always imagined he would be chewing WHILE he died. When the nurse came to get the tray, my father thanked her and then went straight into his normal schpeel about taking her to the movies and maybe dancing. These invitations were always laden with less-than-subtle, yet just-charming-enough, sexual innuendoes. I had seen this fearless maneuver millions of times since I was a boy. My brother and I were routinely embarrassed by him at Big Boy's, where he would tell female servers they had "nice assets." We would hide our faces in shame as he flashed his warm, sincere smile. Shockingly, these gals often blushed or said something flirty in return. Now, I don't think that is a testament to my father's sex appeal as much as it is an indictment of Big Boy's monotonous work environment, but regardless, he did manage to get away with murder, and that deserves some recognition. And as hard as it is for my brother and I to accept, he did have a "way with woman." He did date, and sometimes even marry, women vastly outside of his pay grade (said the pot to the kettle).

     The next day I showed up to the hospital to find that he had taken a very sharp turn for the worse. It was not what I was expecting. I had let myself believe that the fun we had the day before was some kind of magic antidote. I half expected to see him eating a full breakfast when I walked in, but instead he was dazed and motionless. He could no longer sit up on his own, and talking was proving to be too much for him. So we sat quietly. I climbed in the bed with him and rubbed the little hairs on the back of his neck. I squeezed him. I'd never seen him so cute and little. He was a 250 pound baby. We spent most of the day that way. 

     At one point, and unbeknownst to both of us, my wife walked into the room. She had flown in from LA without any warning. It was a surprise. It was an amazing, incredible, perfectly timed surprise. She lifted her shirt up and he put his hand on her swollen stomach. He left it there for the better part of an hour. He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contently, unable to put together a sentence, but still capable of connecting to the new family member we were creating. He wasn't going to make it to the birth, but that didn't get in the way of him meeting the new baby. It was an emotional and triumphant moment. One I will never forget. If I live to be a thousand, I will still be in debt to my wife for giving him that one last thrill.

     But there was still another thrill left to be had. One that is equally memorable. Just as day was turning into evening, the nurse came in to assist him with his pee jug. She was manipulating his penis into the mouth of the jug when he mustered up the strength and focus to say something pervy into her ear. It was too quiet for me to make out the whole sentence. I heard snippets of words and then, "…when I get out of here…" and then more snippets followed by her laughing and giving him a playful nudge. I couldn't believe my eyes. He could barely muster a "hello" when I came in, and here he was waxing poetically to this 20-something stranger. As she walked away, he was smiling like a teenager behind the wheel of his first car. My normal reaction would have been to defend the poor nurse's right to work in a harassment-free environment, but on this day, I was just too shocked by the eleventh hour show of virility. Here was a man, a bona-fide food addict, who had lost his will to eat. He couldn't walk, and up until then, had stopped talking. He was wearing a diaper for Pete's sake. But here he was, horny as hell and ready to party. It was his only vital sign still thriving. It was indomitable; impervious to the suite of diseases ravaging his body.

     Witnessing the sheer power of that drive was eye opening. It put a few historical things into perspective for me. If this force was stronger than my Dad's will to walk, talk, use a toilet or EAT, surely it was strong enough to lead Kennedy, King, Haggard and Clinton into the weeds. This was some powerful shit we were dealing with here. Putting the moral implications to the side, the strength in and of itself was astonishing. It almost deserved a round of applause.

     I left the following day. I got updates from my uncle on Christmas and the four days that followed. Each was progressively worse. The light was getting dimmer and dimmer. He was slowly transitioning to whatever is next. Through all of those updates, there were no reports of pain, seizures, or bed sores. Only accounts of gently drifting away. And so it was, that on December 30th or 31st, we made it pain-free and with grace into the end zone; a feat that, as I write this, overwhelms me with gratitude. Our first project together was a total success. My only regret is that we didn't take on more together. 

[daxtumbler-blog]

Dearest Constitutional Conservatives,

I understand your desire for there to be a document that answers all questions, settles all disputes, and relinquish us all from the duty of critical thinking in perpetuity. It would be great. It would really free up a lot of time. A magic document that anticipates every conceivable permutation the future has to offer, and contains ALL solutions? Right at our finger tips? Who wouldn't want that?!

An oracle would also be great. Like the Oracle Of Delphi. Ask it a question. Get an answer. Get the right answer, always. Your way, right away. 

Thomas Jefferson and the gang did not think the document they were constructing was flawless, which is why they designed it in a way that allowed it to be changed. It was designed to evolve and be amended. There are mechanisms in place to do so. They knew that as kick-ass as the constitution was, it wasn't magic. It would need to grow and keep pace with the world it attempts to organize.

People have the same desire for the Bible; for it to be beyond reproach. Forget that it said every known species filed two-by-two onto an ark, or that Earth was formed in under a week. Just forget that stuff. It doesn't matter.

I suppose it's because some people, out of a sense of loyalty, will always chose respect over truth. They will defend a lie if it somehow honors this bigger thing they are committed to, or to perpetuate some hero-worship. That would be great if there really were infallible people or concepts. But there aren't. People are messy, and the world is messy. We have to constantly reevaluate. We have to think and discuss and try to make the best decision based on whatever new information comes to light. Sure we would have sent our kids over to Mike Jackson's house for a sleepover between "Off The Wall" and "Thriller," but not between "HiStory" and "Invincible." No way. Things change and we can't be blindly committed to earlier decisions.

Lastly, our "Founding Fathers" are not mythical creatures. They're not deities. They were just men, and the collective intelligence has not plummeted since 1775. In fact, by most indicators: infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy rates, education level, human rights, we are quite a few steps ahead of them. So we shouldn't fear making our own decisions. We shouldn't strive to honor historic decisions in the face of obvious contradictions and concrete data for the sake of piety. We should believe in ourselves and our ability to be compassionate and judicious. I don't want to live in a world where we think all of our best thinking is behind us. I want to live in a world were the future holds dazzling and mind-boggling solutions to yet-unseen challenges. I want us to be open to that.

[daxtumbler-blog]

I'm not sure what it is about this photo that gives me so much delight. I just love it. The scarf is top shelf to say the least. It's thrown on with true "who gives a fuck" attitude. The conflicting textures of a straw hat, cashmere sweater, denim pant and silky scarf have me dying to let the tactile pads of my finger tips explore his person. I have to imagine that's the intended purpose of this ensemble: drum up some touchy feely business.

The chest is laughing at the cardigan's attempt to contain it. It's explosively powerful. That much is obvious. High percentage of rapid-twitch-muscles in those hairy mounds. I'd hate to be the bench press bar on the business end of those fuckers. Its a rocket-paced ride to full extension. 

The stance says it all. Dropped shoulder and a half-cocked smile that screams, "You'll never know if I'm in on this joke, suckas."

[daxtumbler-blog]

Excited

I am tremendously excited to do this. Breaking free from the shackles of twitter's 140 characters. I plan to meander with great impunity. I will expound on things that deserve little or no attention. This will prove to be my most wasteful endeavor.