I got this email yesterday:

"Ah! The enchilada comment made me cringe and laugh. Mostly laugh- I hate to admit. I thought you and your readers might enjoy a free razor. I'm writing on behalf of Schick and I'd love to send you out one of their new Quattro Titanium Trimmers..."

It took me a good 60 seconds to figure out what in the world was going on with this email... Until I figured out that someone had gotten my email from this very blog and was referencing the "Enchilada Abortion" posting from a month or two ago.

I thought: Either this is a really savvy spammer robot, or else someone actually read my blog and thought that the "Enchilada abortion" guy might make a good sales rep for Schick Quattro. The emailer offered me some sort of fancy razor if I would mention it on my blog. This strikes me as a lot of work reading blogs and writing emails for very little pay off. But it worked on me... I responded and gave my seminary mailbox as a mailing address in case this dude is going to junk mail the hell out of me, or try and stalk me to see how well shaven I am.

Ironically, I actually have been buying the disposable Schick Quattro for a few months now (but this free Quattro will be a much nicer than my 'low-end' Quattro). So perhaps this very perceptive emailer sensed my innate kinship with the Schick Quattro line of products.

I have not yet received this razor, nor do I know if it is any good. But, readers of Teenage Fatherhood Digest, know this: Schick Quattro has some hard-working PR flacks emailing overtime to get out the news about their razors, which is more than I can say about those lazy $#*@*! at Bic or Gillette.

In other news, my iPod shuffle died, so if Mac wants to get out the word about their new, obscure line of iPods, this blogger will post about anything nicer than a disposable razor.

Okay, has this happened to anyone else?

Out of the three recent friend requests I received on Facebook, all three were from girls were I knew in Junior High..... AND all three of three of these Junior High friends I asked out.... only to be rejected (with varying degrees of humiliation).

What really strikes me as odd is that these girls did not become friends in any meaningful sense. We did not speak to each other in High School... much less in college or via email.

I wonder if Facebook now affords them the small consolation of feeling as if they could make good on their promise to "still be friends"?

...Or do I somehow still remind them of more innocent days? Perhaps in their minds I remain a totem of unrequited affection, a perpetual Dawson to their Joey.

At any rate, I did grant the friend request.

...Now to see if they FINALLY want to come over to my house and listen to Vanilla Ice together.

two days ago the weather was beautiful, and we were sitting out in the backyard eating dinner: Karen, Mimi, Dad, Marnie and Marion, and me.

Karen was serving up this Mexican dish that was really runny. I asked what it was, and she hesitated in replying.

As she lifted up a really gooey red and yellow spoonful, I said, "Enchilada Abortion?"

Only Karen heard me and we both giggled and snorted uncontrollably for a while, until Marnie asked what we were laughing about...

Has anybody else noticed that the new Applebee's logo looks a lot like the design team responsible just cribbed from a box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios?

I am sitting in Solomon's Porch, a Wilmore-based cafe solicited primarily by seminary students. I'm waiting for a lunch meeting, and getting a little bit done.

Walking over to the restaurant, I reflected to myself that the only thing I didn't like about Solomon's Porch was the food.

The ambiance is normally pleasant, with a hushed tone and good lighting. But not today...

As soon as I walk in, I go to put down my stuff. But I want to make sure the internet code I entered in a month ago still works, so I open up my computer and take off my coat, while the college student working in the back comes out and asks in a 'stentorian' tone if I want anything. I hold up a finger and tell him I'll be right over. He shouts (stentorian-ly) that there is "no hurry" and then sits on a stool and watches me while I fiddle with the internet.

After a minute, I order french toast and then sit down.

Twenty minutes later I hear the college kid upbraiding the other college kid to start making my french toast. Fifteen minutes after that I am eating french toast and listening to this same Asbury student talk about the following subjects:

1) How his mother owns a much prettier but less effective shotgun.

2) His list of "man things" he wants to do, including, scare off a home intruder by sheer force of intimidation, kiss a girl until she is literally speechless, beat someone badly in a fight, as well as assorted, but un-named "military things".

3) How, after watching "The Godfather", he wants three hours of his life back.

4) How his female friends are all too flirty, even though they are all in committed relationships.

5) How he hates it when people consider themselves "history majors" when they have one key area of history knowledge.

6) How he was born in Melbourne, FL. (He shares this with someone completely independent of any conversation with me. I have yet to share that I am from Melbourne.)

7) How he likes the current president of France.

8) How he needs something else to "numb his tongue" before he drinks beer.

For anyone who has seen "The Shining", here's a real treat.

After months of little to no rain, the storm clouds have finally broken. Many of my plants (tomatoes, squash, and peppers) struggled to grow this summer. Though I watered regularly, there was no help from above, and the yield was low. Though I wanted to sacrifice a few animals to appease the sky-gods, Karen wouldn't let me.

When you go long enough without rain, you start to realize how important is regular precipitation. When Jesus talks about rain falling on the just and unjust, its easy to miss what a great commodity rain really is and how central it is to agrarian life... Hence its easy to miss what an amazing concept Jesus is preaching, that the essential life-giving liquid is bestowed without moral discrimination.

Amazon's Listmania as experimental art.

When Marnie goes to "time out", she sits on the step at the bottom of the stairs. This step has a big piece of contact paper on it. (That's all the information you need to know for this story. That, and Marnie just turned three a few months ago.)

Karen sent her to time out yesterday, and after a few minutes I overheard this exchange:

Karen (calmly, but firmly): Marnie, I told you that when you are in time out that there are two things you can't do. You need to sit quietly, and not make noise. And you aren't allowed to play while you're in time out. And, also, don't pull on this sticker.

Marnie (plaintively): That's THREE things!

***

Sitting in my office, I started laughing, and Karen, still firmly reprimanding Marnie, almost bust out laughing as well. As much as anything, these kids make me laugh, even when they're being terrible.

For "Star Trek and Philosophy", I need a clever TNG-related closing line for my bio. Here's an example of another bio with a Star Trek 'closer':

Jerry Walls has taught at Asbury Seminary since 1987. Among his books, Jerry has edited The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (coedited with Gregory Bassham) and Basketball and Philosophy (co-edited with Gregory Bassham, The University of Kentucky Press). He has authored a variety of professional and popular articles, on topics ranging from Foreknowledge and Freedom to Harry Potter. Like Captain Picard, he is an avid fan of 'tea, Earl Grey, hot'.

Seeing as we have at least four readers of "Teenage Fatherhood Digest" who are Trek fans, any suggestions?

Philip Tallon is a Ph.D. Candidate at St Andrews University, Scotland. Among his recent publications are “The Problem of Evil in Psycho: Hitchcock and Horrendous Evil” in Hitchcock and Philosophy, and “Evil and the Cosmic Dance: C. S. Lewis on Beauty’s Place in Theodicy” in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher. ...

I got this email yesterday:

I am a talent scout for Blogger's Choice Awards, http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com.

I have been scouting for best-of-breed blogs and bloggers and discovered your blog, Teenage Fatherhood Digest, http://philip-tallon.livejournal.com/. If you would grant me permission, I would like to nominate Teenage Fatherhood Digest for Hottest Daddy Blogger.

Let me know if that would be OK.

To which I replied:

Feel free to nominate the blog. But, by way of caveat, let me say that it is only marginally about Fatherhood, and, I assure you, will win no awards.

Best,

Phil Tallon.

Reading this makes one even more uneasy about the war on terror. MSNBC reports that the groups behind the subway bombing and airport attacks in Britain are connected. But that isn't the disturbing part. What unnerved me at first was the idea that, as the piece reports, as many as 4 UK doctors may be involved in the plot.

That, not scruffy Afghans or Saudis, but groomed UK physicians are working to harm the public at large is, perhaps, the more terrifying than Michael Moore's new movie SiCKO. Its scary to think that that physicians, normally the bastion of Western capitalist ideals, might not secretly be interested in screwing us out of our money but rather secretly dreaming of blowing us to bits.

But... Strangely, after reading this article I felt a sense of peace, a settling realization that, despite how comfortable I may well be, no final comfort is to be found in this world. Perhaps it is a good sign that we can only be so frightened, before we begin to give up on our (false) sense of security.

By far the most comforting movie I saw last year was "The Departed" for the honest/ridiculous final scene, where Scorsese intervenes before the credits to make a final comment: "The world is shot through with corruption." Law Enforcement. Religion. Medicine. Whatever bastions of civilization we hold dear are undoubtedly diseased and untrustworthy.

Only on these foundations, I think, can a proper hope be constructed.

Karen and I sat down with our financial advisor today and went over our investments, life-insurance, and savings. This is a painful task, to be sure, but I'd recommend it for all of you (assuming the average "Teenage Fatherhood Digest" reader is between 20 and 40).

Karen and I have been putting money in a retirement account for about 5 years. Its not really a lot per month, but we just set up the auto-withdrawal and forgot about it.

Now, looking back over the money we've put in, it looks pretty substantial. (I'm guessing that most of the people reading this are hating me for talking about this right now, but if you aren't regularly chunking money the old mattress that is mutual-funds, get on it.)

The slogan for retirement accounts is, "Its not how much, but how long". (This sounds like a dirty bumper sticker).

Karen and I set a goal for a 3 million dollar retirement fund, which seems like a stupidly large amount of money for us to save - but by investing the money early, and adding to it, interest accrues and the process snowballs. So by the end, even if we're still putting in the same, lame amount that we put in originally, but the money we put in all those years ago is still earning interest. So I guess that number is feasible so long as we let the years pile up.

Just looking at an interest calculator online - assuming you are 30 years old, and want to retire at 65, if you put away $333 dollars a month into a few decent mutual funds (assuming 9% return), the end result would be a million dollars. If you retired at 70 it would be 1.6 million dollars.

Even if you put in 83 dollars a month, starting at 30, when you turn 80, which most of you will, you would get a million bucks. So really, the odds are pretty good, with a little bit of continual saving, that anyone could be a millionaire. The bad news is you won't be able to do a happy dance when you win the geriatric lottery - because you will have a recent hip replacement still bothering you.

***
We also took out life-insurance on Marion. Marnie, Karen and I all have policies. I guess they are helpful to set up early so that if you get sick you can increase your coverage without paying ridiculous premiums. Dad took one out on me when I was a baby, I've still got it, in fact, and so we've followed suit with the girls.

The thing with these plans, though, is that you see the money again. Term-life insurance doesn't cost much but it goes away eventually. Essentially its the death lottery - it pays out of you die in a certain time frame. But 'whole life' will definitely pay off, even if I die at 120. I think it can also be 'cashed out', so its kind of like a really morbid savings plan as well.

A 50K life insurance policy for Marion, it costs, like, 14 dollars a month.

After we signed the paperwork I said, "So, if Marion dies, we get Fifty-THOUSAND DOLLARS" in a really excited voice. Karen laughed at this for a while, as did I. The investment guy thought we were both disturbed.

Saw LLL @ Equus Vineyards.

Good starters, but the second string was weak.

A decent rendition of a delightful play.

The best lines are all Biron's, as below:

Therefore, ladies,
Our love being yours, the error that love makes
Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false,
By being once false for ever to be true
To those that make us both,--fair ladies, you:
And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,
Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.

As requested, a house picture. More on Flickr.

Karen introduced me to a restaurant in town, "The Mellow Mushroom", which is like Chuck E. Cheese, if that place was run by total pot-heads.

Filled with molded sculptures of trees and mushrooms, and painted with the visages of Jerry Garcia and Bob Marley, The Mellow Mushroom might have been just a second-rate pizzeria in a college town. But with forty good beers on tap and gourmet pizza, it transcends its silly/superficial aesthetic. Who really listens to "The Grateful Dead" anyway?

We rode our bikes up to the restaurant, with Marion in the bike seat that sits in between my seat and handlebars, and Marnie in the bike stroller which Karen towed.

Marion shifted and lurched, grabbing my legs and my hands, until I had to switch. After we traded kids, Marnie sat patiently, if not silently, in the seat, while Marion slouched in the stroller, with the helmet pushed down over her face.

Riding a bike, one is reminded of a line of Douglas Adams. In Hitchhiker's Guide one of the aliens is named "Ford Prefect". When asked about the name, Ford remarks that he had taken it to 'blend in' on earth, because he assumed that cars were the dominant form of life.

Riding bike, one feels Amish. Though most drivers are considerate, there's just something about driving in a car that makes you want to go fast. Even towing a kid, people still race past, dangerously close to you.

I think we're going to get "Give 'em Space" license plates, which are dedicated to "bicyclist awareness"

We arrived safe at The Mellow Mushroom. Once there, Karen served me a piece of "Caribbean Jerk Pizza", in the process dropping a large chunk of chicken into my half-empty beer. They brought me another one at no cost. This place now tops my list.

Those who have been reading beyond the pages of US Weekly will have noticed a new, very distinctive trend developing over the last few years. In 2006 and 2007, this trend has become a phenomenon - and one that Christians should be aware of.

The Post-Denominational Church is big on following the superficial trends of culture but not the deep changes in philosophical climate. Pastors grow goatees but not an environmental conscience. Churches understand PowerPoint but not Postmodernism.

This is understandable. Its easy to grasp the visual trends but not intellectual ones. So, for the fashion conscious we could say it this way: Atheism is the new black. ( MORE ROUGH WRITING )

I'm never paying for a hair cut again.

I hate paying for haircuts, and going to get them, and having to chat with the stylist.

Karen, in the backyard, with some clippers, can top Fred's Heads any day of the week.