The Duck Award of Excellence

This post is pure diatribe. Pure, beautiful diatribe.

The Duck Award of Excellence

It's unfortunate but true: a lot of good literature doesn't make sense. It's like to be considered good a book must have attempted to make it as difficult as possible for their readers to understand what they are reading. I'm half kidding because I absolutely love painful old-school stuff like Shakespeare but Shakespeare has a good excuse for being difficult to understand: it's old. If it was difficult to understand then, everyone would have left the theatre frustrated and sent him to the guillotine (it was very violent back then). Many books that win awards are not very friendly to readers, though they may be doing all sorts of wonderful things like pushing boundaries and dealing with important subjects. But if I'm not enjoying a book, which doesn't mean it has to be a happy story or that it can't educate me on something, then what's the point? If I wanted to be educated on important topics only, I would just watch The Onion News. Seriously people. Many of the books I really love have not won any awards, or at least not the really important ones, like Christy, The Dwelling Place, Fortune's Rocks, I Capture the Castle, or fantasy book series like Dave Duncan's books, or CS Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia which do not necessarily have the most amazing writing in the history of the world, but they are the kind of stories that you get lost in. And there is nothing quite like getting lost in a book. Often I find I can't trust those little awards on books at all, I'll get all excited reading a book with an award, thinking, "This book can't possibly let me down, it won an award!" And then find myself feeling horrendously betrayed by the awards people when the books just plain sucks. Sadly, awards just can't be trusted. I believe the awards people are corrupt and give awards in exchange for bribes and personal favors (like those little kazoos in party favors or doing their laundry). I think there should fake awards for crappy books to warn readers. They could have a sticker with a picture of a duck on crutches and call it "The Duck Award of Excellence" and hope the authors don't notice the mini crutches. Only readers would secretly know it was a courtesy sticker that meant not to waste their precious reading time on such a lame book.

Naturopathic

A lot of people, Christians especially, are afraid of different approaches to medicine, such as naturopaths and acupuncture. And they're legitimate fears. Eastern medicine is often closely tied to, in my humble opinion, weird sh*t, pardon my political incorrectness. Whereas eastern culture is very spirit oriented, western culture is often obsessed with body, body, body (insert "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha" inflection). It's all, "Be fit! Eat healthy!" or, "Eat that Big Mac! Watch TV forever!" creating a deadly war between what you want and what's good for you, while forgetting that a healthy body with an unhealthy mind is fairly pointless, and a healthy body with a nonexistent spirit is fairly empty. But I do NOT believe that your spirit and your mind are the same thing. I believe your spirit is separate and pure and shouldn't be messed around with, so yes, you do have to be careful taking part in something that could have spiritual elements that you don't believe in.

This is me after acupuncture.

But bear with me if you don't believe in spirituality in the first place, because part of me doesn't either. I'm pretty skeptical when it comes to anything spiritual, unless it's related to Jesus, which isn't very convincing if you also don't believe in Jesus or God for that matter. We think it's easier separating body and mind than mind and spirit but that's just because our bodies are pretty hard to ignore. Bodies are like whiny, needy babies. They smell and hurt and are constantly reminding you that they are there. Right now my body is saying, "I have to pee," "I'm hungry," and "Get back to work." Oh, no wait, that's my boss. But most people go their whole lives without experiencing anything spiritual, and I mean spiritual to the point that you can't explain it away by anything you have ever known. But not all different approaches to medicine are bad. And instead of being afraid of them we should be aware of what they are really all about and stay clear of anything we don't agree with. And I'm not going to water it down for you. I truly believe there is a spiritual world out there warring for your soul and you are either on the right side, Jesus' side, or the wrong side, Satan's side, whether you know it or not. So no doubt you have to be careful what kind of things you take part in, because it's no joke. Well, that is----→

Campy

Every year I go to this weird cult thing called "camp" where I have gone since I was seven and where parents everywhere love to ship their children off for a week away from home so they can wonder what it would have been like if they never went down that road (Parenthood Rd). My parents shipped me off to a camp called Camp Imadene as a child and I will ship my future children off to camp in a generational cycle of party-time-for-parents. Little do the parents know that CAMP IS THE BEST THING EVER! Actually, I think they probably do know, but that's beside the point, I believe the children have won by subterfuge. As a child I looked forward to camp throughout the entire year. It was the quintessence of summer to me. One thing I do miss though is the Crow's Nest, a high tower with a big flotation ball on the bottom and a basket-like nest on top, maybe twenty feet up, that sat in the lake. You'd climb up into the nest and rock it back and forth until it touched the water and swung like a pendulum to the other side. It freaked the heck out of me, but it was worth it. And then it sunk. I think it may still be at the bottom of the lake and kind of hope it is because I have an unrealistic dream to resurrect it.

I love the safari cutouts because I never get
to see them with the older camps.

Just to get one thing straight, if there was a fight to the death between all the camps in all the universes, the camp that would beat them all would be Camp Imadene. It is the best place on earth, and I am one of the lucky few who have discovered the secret. Therefore I cannot divulge its whereabouts. But I can tell you that Mesachie Lake is the most beautiful lake in the world and that when it comes to camps, smaller is usually better, regardless of whether other camps have cooler stuff. Imadene could consist of a straw hut and a row-boat and it would still be the best camp ever. Call me biased.... because I am. The crazy thing is that Imadene now owns the mountain across the lake as well as the property on the other side of the road (they're trying their hand at world domination...). But it isn't that, and it isn't the canoeing, climbing wall, repelling, wakeboarding, tubing or BMX track, it's the entire camp atmosphere. You walk onto that camp and you feel love, pure and simple. And I can tell you why - before entering the camp grounds two old wooden signs sway in the wind, one says, "Camp Imadene," the other says, "Bible Camp." That's why. Because Camp Imadene is a Bible Camp.