I am declaring war on Jon McNaughton.

Forgive me for this untypically opinionated and finger-wagging post. Some of my readers might happen to like McNaughton. We are still friends. Just know that I will never compliment you for hanging him on your wall.

The man's propaganda is, if I may borrow Huxley's term, "herd-poisoning" the people with the artistic aesthetic of a Thomas Kinkade (had Kinkade painted people instead of cozy cottage landscapes).

(At least cozy cottage landscapes aren't offensive, short-sighted, and self-righteous.)

I've also declared war on Glenn Beck, but at least he's mostly a comic strip character. McNaughton is selling his works to be framed over sofas as religious proclamations (which they are most definitely not). Except instead of being inspirational reminders of our own humility and dependence on God, he has created political allegories that blow into flame whatever ignorant opinions are stereotypical of green Jello culture. Doesn't he realize the riskiness of such overt and shameless symbolism? Does he feel no regret at polarizing complex problems, or refusing to suspend his own judgment long enough to consider other viewpoints as valid as his own?

And how are so many good people fine with accepting his interpretations of God, country, and mankind? Have we lost the art of questioning? Do we believe anything we see if it's been painted with soft lighting, contains familiar faces, and sold at a Deseret Book?

Enough! Propaganda is not art! It's delusive and breeds fear and prejudice. It does not inspire community or brotherhood or self-examination, but rather it builds walls between neighbors and promotes self-congratulation.

I declare war on you, Jon McNaughton. I'm disappointed that a man with access to so much light and knowledge still hasn't learned what it means to think before mass-producing disinformation under the guise of religious art. I've seen your latest, and I'm sick from it. I can't sit down about this any longer.

Didn't President Hinckley teach us that, "There is too much intolerance in the world. There is too much of it in our own society"? In his essay to college students, "Out of Your Experience Here," he says, "How enriched is the individual who, as he or she goes out into the world, knows that all men and women are sons and daughters of God, each endowed with a divine birthright. How beneficial to come to the realization that, since we are all children of God, we all are brothers and sisters in a very real sense." So why paint pictures that are going to turn brothers against brothers with stereotyping and the slandering of people from Charles Darwin to President Obama? Your images are nothing but straw men, but the people look to your work as if you've paved them in brick. Have you no conscience?

If you want to draw a political cartoon, draw one. Make a statement. But don't tout your opinions as if they were gospel. Don't sell them into homes on the premise that it will make their dwellings holy.

I declare war on you, Jon McNaughton.

Ch-Ch-Ch----

I wanted the title to be a classy salute to David Bowie without sounding cliché, when I realized: Bowie isn't the only cat to use the Ch-Ch- intro.

Ch-ch-ch-changes is obvious.

Ch-ch-ch-Chia I had forgotten.

Then there's the cha-cha-cha. This one is important to me because it reminds me of that scene in Real Genius where Val Kilmer makes Mitch "take a step forward...now take a step back...okay, take a step forward...take a step back" and then they're "cha-cha-ing." It's important tonight because when David and I were making huge late-night chocolate chip cookies I started re-enacting that scene until David said, "Quit thinking you're Val Kilmer." (More reasons to love this man. Also, he just gets nervous when I remind him of Val Kilmer because of his not-so-secret man crush on VK.)

Ch-ch-ch-choo choo? Is that where it all derives?

If so, is it also the derivative of "traded in his Chevy for a cadilac-ack-ack-ack-ack?" Perhaps I could get Joel to change it for my post to go: "traded in his caddy for a Ch-ch-ch-ch-Chevrolet!"

Anyway, the point of this post is that I made a big-big move, and I always have severe trauma after big-big moves. Mom drove down with us to Lubbock when we moved in. I was shell-shocked for those first few days; it was great having Mom there, and she and David were champs at keeping me from bursting into tears.

Me: "It smells like cigarettes."
David: "Wow! Look how big this place is!"
Me: "There's disgusting things in the sink. This place hasn't even been cleaned!"
Mom: "Oh, let's get one of those Magic Erasers at Target. They are so cool!" [the Magic Eraser DID end up being successful]
Me: "The shower head only comes up to my chest."
David: "Hey! It feels like we live in Asia again!"

Two and a half days after arriving, we dropped Mom off at the airport, tearfully, and hopped on a plane ourselves to England.

England was lovely. Continental lost our luggage, so for the first two days in York, we were luggage-less (jacket-less, toothbrush-less, etc.). Fortunately, it wasn't too cold. Then, we spent a day up at Hadrian's wall, saw some Roman ruins (live archeological digs!), and then spent five days in the Lake District where we also saw two of my favorite museums ever: the place where pencils were invented, where we also watched clips of that movie about the flying boy and the snowman with the tender music? The one we all loved as kids? Well, the whole thing was penciled with Derwentwater pencils, straight from Keswick. The other museum was called Cars of the Stars. I SAW CHITTY CHITTY BANG-BANG! I saw it! They wouldn't let us take pictures, but I was there! It was the real thing! No gimmick! I saw where Dick Van Dyke sat! We also saw two Batmobiles (Adam West's and Michael Keaton's first one), the Munstermobile, NightRider (the one with Mr. Feeney's voice), the A-Team van, and Mel Gibson's Mad Max vehicle. We wrote down the rest somewhere. Anyway. they were the real deals. From Keswick we went to Stratford-upon-Avon, then down to London for a couple of days, up to Bath (where we took a special tour to Stonehenge before it was open to the public, so we got to walk IN the rocks!), over to see the Glastonbury Tor, and then back to London.

In London, though, I started to feel anxious. This is where my post really begins (but I promise not to make you read much longer). Since coming back to Lubbock, I've had a real mid-life crisis.

I don't want to buy a Porsche, and I'm still very much super in love with my husband, more and more all the time, but I suddenly was very aware at every moment just how mortal I am. I thought a lot about how old the earth is. How long dinosaurs were on it. How loooooooooooooooooong dinosaurs were on it. And how looooooooooooooooong people have been on the earth. I felt like an ant. Like a blink. Like my life was just going to blink away.

And then I started to think about myself as an immortal soul.

And I gulped. And then I wept. And then I stared out the window at all the people and their lives which are very much as real as mine. I felt like Moses after he saw how all the earth went down and how many people were going to crawl all over it. I felt puny. And I thought about all the people that die every day, and I started thinking why shouldn't I be one of them? What's going to save me and keep me safe?

And then I became agoraphobic.

Since school has started, I've begun to normalize myself again.

But it all makes me come down to this: life is so good. It's so good, I want to keep it forEVER. (And that's big of me to say. Those of you who know me know that eternity scares the living pants off me.)

I'm serious, though. I love David so much, I want to keep him in my pocket where I can make sure nothing ever ever happens to him. I want to live in a glass ball, in a secure bubble, in one of those science fiction dome shields that are sort of see-through.

But life doesn't work like that. I can't save the game and then go back to my old files when something tragic happens (psychologists need to start studying the effects of old Macintosh computer games on kids' brains who grew up in the '80s).

I've realized, though, that I surely will miss out on everything if I spend all my time worrying about what-ifs.

So I'm relearning carpe diem. And I'm only going to do and think and say what makes my heart feel big and warm. I once told some kids on the trail that we're all like seeds that got buried in the dirt and we can't tell which way is up or down or right or left. We don't even know that there is a surface out of the dirt. All we know is darkness and worms and sometimes mud. And heat. There's some kind of heat coming from one of the directions of black, and if we lean ourselves toward that heat, at least we'll feel like we're going somewhere. We all know the rest of the story--the little seedling follows the heat until it breaks the surface and realizes that the world ISN'T all dirt and darkness. It's glorious and colorful and bright. And then we bloom or bring forth fruit or whatever kind of plant we turn out to be, we'll do what that plant does. And it's glorious.

So that's all I know right now. I'm getting over this mid-life crisis and throwing away my what-ifs. I'm going to do what feels good. And I feel good. And I have a sickly great life. And David is my best friend. And he watches Val Kilmer movies with me. And I'm glad he still thinks I'm great even when I'm more than a little crazy. I'm so lucky that I get to share this blink of time with him.

P.S. David made us a joint-blog that we'll be using to give family updates. I might just save this blog here for crazy venting purposes. I need to revamp/update this old webpage anyway. Here's the Near—Far link: http://groooover.com/