Get Ready for The Greatest Show on Earth!!!

Friday September 28, 2012 is the first day I really think I got it.  Everything came together for me in one single moment of clarity.  I was punched in the face with truth, and the truth set me free.  The undisputable morsel of knowledge was this:

I am tremendously thankful that I am a man who does not have a vagina or the ability to grow life in my uterus (if I had one).

I mean, up until this point, pregnancy kind of just turned Whitney into a man….She has been gassy, burps a lot, and doesn’t sit like a lady anymore.  Let’s get this straight, she is dead sexy and glowing, but she has her Al Bundy–Married with Children moments.  I conveyed this to her the other day, but to my dismay, somehow this comment wasn’t met with the merriment I expected.

Friday, September 28, 2012, at a routine pre-labor appointment, turned close but no cigar for delivery, I realized exactly what is going down here—literally.  There were metal tools, monitors, multiple women peering into the nether regions of my wife as she sat in motorcycle rider position on a table.  I had this distinct feeling that the nurses were setting up some form of camp in my wife’s birthing area.  Seriously, it looked like they were the advanced party for a circus that is coming to town and their job was to get the big top set up ahead of the carnies’ arrival.  The sounds confirmed my suspicions.  The clanking of metal sounded like tent posts and stakes being prepared for assembly.  Nurses clamoring about grabbing straps and chains excitedly mumbling random things to one another filled the air with the same nostalgic feelings I had before the State Fair in Albuquerque, NM as a kid (minus the potential to be stabbed or killed by gang members or propositioned by local prostitutes).  Things were getting real.  And more importantly, things were getting really invasive.

I offered my hand to Whit as she lay there victim to the carnival occurring just two feet down from her head.  Whitney looked beautiful, but nervous, and rightfully so.  I needed to say something to calm her down while the nurses resurrected the biggest show on earth, so I blurted the first thing that I thought of, “Whitney, you are doing so much better than I would if the nurses were checking my cervix.”  That was it; that was the best I had.

I mean, what does a man say to a woman in this moment that really contains any meaning?  I don’t want to be a coach who just says motivational phrases.  I want to be a valuable member of the push towards life.  I don’t want to say things for the sake of saying things.  I wanted her to hear my words and know that I understand her pain.  I thought I conveyed it.  I am certain that if the nurses were checking my cervix, it would not be met with the calm look of absolute resolution that Whitney met the moment with.

Whitney was like Xena, Warrior Princess sitting there.  I was proud of her, but I cannot say that there was a moment when I thought, “let me take this pain for her.”  I think women are somehow better suited to deal with this moment than men.  Plus, I want to reiterate that Eve ate the apple, and we men just felt compelled to follow suit, because since the dawn of creation, we have just followed our ladies around hoping for a little attention, and we thought that if we were cast out of paradise at the woman’s side, she might give us a little lovin’ later.  I cannot change history…

In the end, the trip was just the beginning of what looks to be a process that is winding down.  I keep trying to coerce Whit into labor by making her do Jumping Jacks, and through a steady diet of spicy foods, but Whitney is hell bent on an October Baby—and make no if, ands, or buts about it, Whitney is this circus’s ringleader.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Today, I am Man.

Earlier this week I happened upon.  No, no, no, let me be honest, because Whitney is going to read this and she will know that I am being dishonest lying.  About a month ago a tragedy happened.  My wife and I were leaving our home to attend a movie together.  Our driveway is above average in length, which means that things that happen at the end of the driveway are far enough away from the house that they occur unbeknownst to us.  As we got to end of the driveway, we saw it…the scene of a crime, a horrible, unsolicited attack on my mailbox.  There it was frail, barely clinging to life, its mouth flung open like a boxer just hit with a left hook.  Its red flag pointing downward bent beyond the joint’s range of motion.  Nails were broken out of the wood, but somehow, the post was still able to support the aluminum house for travelling letters.  Only now, the box was ripped 90 degrees to the left from the destructive nature of the impact from the vehicle that hit it.  It needed to be fixed, so what did I do?  I did what any self respecting young man on his way to the movies would do—I stood it back up and drove off vowing to Whitney that I would fix it.  Whitney muddled something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like sarcasm with a side of doubt and disappointment.

Okay, so for reals now, yesterday I happened upon slow agonizing death in action.  I pulled up to my home and saw what was coming for a month now.  On the ground, in two pieces lay the beat up mailbox and two feet from its lonely grave rested the post, which once supported the box through rain, sleet, and snow.  I was to be tested this morning, and I would prove myself—MAN.

With a hammer and nails, I created life!!  I took a mailbox destroyed by a teenager who sucks at life and at driving, and with the tools that have been the staple of manhood for years, brought it back to all its mail holding potential.   I was a man today for thirty entire minutes.  I swung that hammer with authority and purpose driving the nails into the post.  Two cars drove by and noticed the swagger with which I made two into one.  They saw what a man does out there, and they were impressed.  I waved at them as they passed, and our eyes met momentarily and they approved.

I grabbed my man tools and headed into the house where I was certain I would receive the praise of a king returning to his kingdom from the battlefield—victorious.  In a black nightgown up at the top of the stairs was my fair, impregnated maiden.  She saw it too.  She saw a man walk through the doors of her castle, and she was impressed with his tone of walk.  I shouted out, letting it echo through the house, “I am Man!”  I was going to grab my crotch and spit on the floor, but it seemed like it would have been met with disappointment.  Instead, I flexed every muscle in my body and drooled.

I marched around the entryway of our home and moved things, and stomped, and grunted, and said things like, “I created fire!”  When I calmed down and let things get quiet, I heard Whitney say the following statement:

“A man’s job is never finished.”  Without letting a second past, she retracted and corrected her statement, “Well, with you, Heath, a man’s job is always halfway finished.”

Either way, people.  I fixed the hell out of that mailbox, and for today, that is enough for me.  I will thrive off of this for two weeks.   The day that the baby decides to introduce itself here, I am sure will be another day of unabashed masculinity.  I will have created life.  Just like I did today with that mailbox.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Things I swear to God I will do, or things I swear to God I want to do:

1. I swear to God I will bring up to people I see in the future that have un-friended me on Facebook the fact that they un-friended me on Facebook.  Facebook lets passive aggressive people feel powerful because they never have to talk to someone face to face.  I am going to force people to confront their actions head on and own them.  I am going to do it right off too, and then I promise I will let it go.  I am going to say to them, “Hey, brother, it’s good to see ya, why did you un-friend me?”  To make it more awkward, I won’t tell them I don’t really care that they did it.
2. I want to pick a random friend I have on Facebook and copy word for word every post they put on their wall.  I want to do this until it makes them awkward and then I want them to un-friend me.  Then, I will confront them about it if and when we run into each other in the real world. 
3. I swear to God, I will never run a marathon.  I don’t care if running a marathon becomes as popular as Bieber, I will never run one.  Of note, I will run a marathon if the zombie apocalypse happens and it is required of me to survive.  However, I will only run it just faster than one person more than the amount of zombies that are chasing us.  To clarify:  if six zombies are chasing me and a group of nine others, I only need to run finish the marathon in fourth place.  If a group of twenty zombies are chasing a group of ten survivors, I will injure some of my fellow survivors in hopes that more than one zombie will crowd around the fallen survivor and this will allow me a window to escape. 
4. I swear to God, I will choose the persons that I injure based off of a well defined thought process of how much each survivor offers to the group.  Or, if you didn’t laugh at my jokes, you will be injured. 
5. I swear to God that I want to get in a fight at a diner to defend my wife’s honor.  I want to be sitting in a circular chair that is attached to the floor that spins.  As the individual attempts to subjugate my wife’s honor, I will spin around and quote a bible verse, but I want the bible verse to be relevant only in a manner that takes a second to comprehend.  Like, I spin around and say, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  This relates.  It is a biblical way of saying, “I am going to tax your ass.”  Or it’s a biblical way of saying, “dude, you should pay your taxes, because you should avoid breaking the law.”  Either way, there is a second where the subjugator of my wife’s honor is going to struggle to find relevance in my ramblings–enter my fists of rage.
6. I swear to God that interpretive dancing makes little to no sense to me.  If you are doing your own interpretive dance routine and mess up, do you really mess up?  It all looks like you are just doing the next thing that pops into your head anyway.  If the next thing that you think of is to fall down clumsily, then you just did it.  Its dancing. 
7. I swear to God, I want to join a hip-hop dance troop and design a routine for said troop.  I want to get involved in a horrible romantic relationship with the lead dancer that causes the rest of the group to suffer.  Right before the big day where we reveal our dance, that I created the lead dancer and I have a falling out that jeopardizes the entire show.  Everything is in chaos, will the show happen?  Will my hot female dance lead and I be able to get our stuff together in time and have a dance performance that gets us into dance college?  I don’t know.  Dance is a tough, tough world for lovers. 
8. I swear to God that I will be better about judging other people before I talk to them.  I have this horrible habit of assuming that all people are not worth my while, initially.  To clarify:  I will not do better about my judgment of the teenagers, because the teenagers are bat-shit crazy.  The worst part about teenagers is that they keep growing more of themselves.
9. I swear to God that when I get famous, I will take the 50 dedicated readers of this blog with me like MC Hammer did in the early nineties.  I will take care of all of you.  I will buy you houses and let you hang out all the time by my dollar sign shaped pool.  It will be like a mix between Adam Sandler movies and Hannah Montana.  I was thinking about it the other day when driving to work.  When I drive to work, I like to think about things that will never happen.  It starts when I am singing the song that is playing on the radio, and singing it ten times better than the person being paid to sing it (in my head).ed  I have full on fantasies about it like in Saved by the Bell when Zach Morris and his crazy gang of friends form that band, Zach Attack.   I go through the entire rise to fame and subsequent life of drug induced turmoil, and then finally realize that I was happy all along.  However,
10. I swear to God that when I get rich and famous, I will not regret being rich and famous.  Money absolutely can buy my happiness.  I am a petty, petty man.
11. I swear to God that I will put more thought into this blog in the future. 

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Beware of Teenagers, They are Roughians and Need Help…

I saw the teenagers out tonight, and I noticed one thing.  Besides the fact that none of them wore respectable clothing and most decided skinny jeans were a great idea, all teenagers now are kind of weird and unruly.  I don’t think I was ever this bad as a teenager, myself.  I don’t want to get you all hyped up first thing on a Sunday morning, but these teens were… maybe, you should sit down before you read this…these teens were, well, they were being loud in the mall.  I had to usher my pregnant wife away from the craziness of these teens and their reckless bantering back and forth.   I made eye contact with everyone of them, and my eyes said in a stern and unwavering manner, “STOP BEING LOUD IN THE MALL!”  It would have worked except these teens were looking through their bangs at me.  They were Bieber-Blinded and therefore did not get the full on effect of my enraged stare. 

There was this specific band of teenagers that kept converging on my wife and my journey through the mall.  Once, the teens had hijacked a shopping cart from some poor store owner and decided it would be a good idea to put the fattest member of their group in the cart and push him or her around (could have been a girl, but the boys dress like girls, and I don’t want to offend this teen and make him or her want to shoot up a school or something).  They all laughed and carried on like they were the first to think of this—like, as if teenagers of yesteryear were so inept that we were never put together enough to grab a shopping cart and push a fat kid around. 

I love being hypocritical in my views of teenagers.  I think as 30 plus year olds, we earned our hypocrisy.  Furthermore, I think that teenagers today are so awkward and goofy that their trouble is just annoying.  I know that I am different.  I know that I am a man now, because I look at teens in groups of three or more, and I cast judgment upon them, and they are all GUILTY.  My looks are no longer based in a nostalgic longing to feel young and unbound by the chains and shackles of life that we attach ourselves to in our adult years.  Maybe, I look at these teenagers being loud in the mall and think, “this is the best idea you could come up with, huh?” 

I also worry about how my daughter is going to want to dress.  I have to believe that every father and mother of the girls I saw in the mall yesterday started out with a hard-line stance against phrases written across the asses of their daughters.  In the very least, and maybe more importantly,  these parents were dead set on the idea that the asses of their daughters were going to be covered completely…

The teenagers all walk around the mall like they own the place.  They looked at the pregnant lady to my right as if she was too slow and needed to get out of the way.  And, while I agree that the pregnant lady to my right is very slow, she has a right to waddle down the same path these kids do.  Who is more likely to spend money?  Probably me, and I proved it.  The teenagers all have conversations.  I hate when teenagers have conversations, because their conversations are superficial, I can just tell.  I wanted to walk into the crowd of loud teenagers conversating* superficially and get all of their parents’ names and numbers and call them.  I would say, over the phone, in a very rhythmic and well enunciated tirade, “Do you have any idea what your kids are doing right now?  Well, I will tell you.  Your kids are being loud in the mall.  If that isn’t bad enough, they are doing it dressed like court jesters and whores.”  That would show them.

Teens in groups are all slowly marching to trouble or some lawless behavior.  Townships and cities need to make rules addressing this and they need to act quickly.  Even if your teen is a calm and collected responsible nerd, when he or she is in a group of three or more like-minded fools, trouble is a second away.  Sometimes nerd trouble is worse than pushing a fat kid in a shopping cart.  Just saying.

The teenagers are a powerful force because they have no fear.  Fear is important in a society.  I know they have no fear, because they wear stupid clothes.  Fear starts in the home.  I recommend instilling fear into your children today.  We need to rise against this barbaric movement of teenagers and their loudness.  We need to take the power back.  We need to stop fooling ourselves that our kids are trustworthy and are all on the sacred and pure walk to heaven.  They are not.  They are at the mall right now and they are loud and obnoxious. 

Step it up parents.  Get up, Stand up!  It starts by taking away their skinny jeans and making these kids dress like real people, like we did in the nineties.  Make them wear corduroys, and make them put on a pair of Doc Martins and dress like decent people preparing to be men and women.  If they want a different hair style make them shave the sides of their heads and let the top grow long, that was okay, because it was cool.  Remind them that the music they listen to is nothing when compared to bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, and bands that actually had lead singers that used their man voices.   Do your best and may God have mercy on your souls…

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

 

*Conversating should be a word.  Conversing is cool, but conversating is more cool.

The Two Types of Fathers During the Evolution of Labor

I can feel it, there is a baby eager to make her way into the world and meet her father….and her mother too, I guess, but she has been with her mother for a good nine months now, so that is probably nowhere near as exciting as meeting me.  I would want to meet me if I was her. 

There are two types of fathers in this world.  Trust me; I have done extensive research (meaning I asked three people their opinions and a simple majority confirmed it).  First there is the father who will not venture below the waistline during the evolution of labor.  They want nothing to do with what is going on in the nether regions during the most critical stage of the birthing miracle.  The “above the waisters,” henceforth referred to as ATWs, are not wrong for their longing to keep clear of the “zone of the unimaginable,” because what happens down there doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense. 

For one moment in time, all the pressure and energy of a woman’s being is centered on an area that the man has been centering all of his pressure, energy, and attention on for years.  Now, in an ironic twist, the ATW has decided this magical place we men never quite understood, but were lured to like a moth to a flame, is best left alone and he becomes a cheerleader rooting his wife on, face to face.  He leans into her, giving her an arm or finger to squeeze, and says glittering generalities surrounding motivational phrases we used to scream from sidelines, dugouts, and bleachers during sporting events. 

Trust me, ATWs say the same things to their wives during labor that they would when a man gets up to bat and there are two runners on in the late innings of a baseball game.  They just make it sound more breathy and motivating.  During a game, we yell to our teammates, “This is your time, brother, pick one and drive it, don’t leave them stranded out there on base, bring ‘em home.”  During labor, the ATWs go with what they know, they lean in and say, “This is your time, you’re a mother, concentrate and drive through the next push, don’t leave that girl in there, we need to bring her home.”  ATWs never stray too far from what they know.  The mother has become a teammate and they are going to get her through this very individual moment in what is generally a team sport.

The second type of father is a militaristic man (MM), not to imply that he is more of a man than his counterpart, ATW, but that he is very different.  He is a man who is trained to be at the most chaotic point of any evolution.  He believes that is the place where he can provide the best support to the woman in her moment of peril.  The MM believes that the point of friction is where he should be shouting out orders and organizing the next combative muscle movements.  He needs to see the breach point and somehow find a way to gain the initiative and exploit the enemy.  In the case of labor, nature is the enemy, and the natural process of birth is a thinking, breathing, and adaptive enemy at that. 

The MM thinks in terms of objectives, phase lines, stages, and culminating points.  He has divided up “Operation Baby Boom” into distinct phases, and even more specifically, into smaller stages.  He is looking for the best moment to mass his combat power and engage the enemy in what he refers to decisive action.  The woman lying on the bed is his main effort, and the doctors surrounding her are all supporting efforts.  Should something go wrong, the doctors are poised, and ready to assume the main effort.  The MM has briefed all parties involved and he is ready to cross the line of departure. 

The MM has his head right into the business area of his wife’s nether area.  He is fighting back pushing the doctors out of the way and doing this himself.  He is intrigued by the entire process.  Sure, he shouts out motivational phrases, but they are less like cheerleading and much more specific.  After a push, he looks up and gives his wife a situation report (SITREP).  The SITREP includes basic information about the evolution.  “Good push, I believe the baby is close to crowning, the next push is going to be an important one for us, I need you to really bear down; we have the enemy on their heels, and I think that they are just about out of options. The contraction lasted 90 seconds, and was three minutes and thirty seconds from your last.  Using this as a gauge for the next one I believe we can consolidate and rest for two more minutes, but then we will need to press forward. Stand by.” 

Without restraint from hospital personnel, the MM will not contain himself when the baby crowns, he will reach up there and pull the baby through the obstacle belt.  The MM doesn’t understand why the labor takes more than 15 to 20 minutes, and seems to be rushing the process the entire time.  And, as is the case with many military planners, the MM doesn’t necessarily have the best exit strategy.  Once the baby is out of the womb and laying there in all of his or her glory, the MM is overly emotional, and cannot figure out what to do with his hands.  He doesn’t know how to hold a baby, but he is dying to try.  The MM has never felt more masculine than he does at the moment he sees his baby, and this baby is his next General Officer…

I am certain that I will be the father who is all up in my wife’s business.  I am excited and ready for this to occur, and all signs in my house are that this kid is coming with a vengeance in the next few weeks.  I cannot write anymore today, as I have to put together a crib.  Earlier this week I put together a stroller, and a car seat thingy.  We are surrounded by bottle whozits, and pink whatzits, and breast feeding thing-a-mbobs, and some kind of diaper changing magic place.  I have been tasked by my wife to help her nest and I have some required reading to complete on the subject of sleep schedules.  Right now, she is snoring to my left because she can only sleep in small bursts.  The baby has infiltrated every aspect of her life.  This baby, not yet born, has infiltrated every aspect of my life, and I couldn’t be happier.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

The Art of Driving Your Wife Crazy.

Weekends are where life really happens in the Phillips household.  Weekdays are like a pause in what we really want to do around here.  As fall sets in, the mood in our home always brightens.  Everything about the season is happy to me.  I think the fall reminds me to slow down and relax, to look out the window and see the show that nature is putting on, and to look at my wife and remember who it is I married.  She is a fun, fun lady, and during this time of year, we do a lot of “us” stuff.  We work together around the house, we set it up to look like a harvest scene, and most importantly we enjoy ourselves.  Don’t get all weird with me, I am not going to spend the rest of this blog writing about how incredible my relationship is, because those of you who have been reading my blog, already know that.  I am going to tell you about the training I have put my wife through.   She has passed a rigorous program that would have broken a lesser woman.  I started thinking about this earlier this week and felt like you needed to hear what it is like to be married to me.  I think you all would love it (being married to me), and therefore you need to catch a glimpse.

Being married to me is awesome.  I am not a braggart; I am an honest man who tells stories.  Being married to me is awesome (This is my thesis).  Besides being generally easy to deal with, I am an inciter of chaos.  I induce into an otherwise relaxing lifestyle—turmoil.

I like spending time with my wife.  I like sitting around with her while she reads smutty novels, and on occasion, I like to pick the book up, and read the passages in a very dramatic manner.  Dramatic renditions of raunchiness are awesome, and they make Whitney very happy.  She loves it when I do this and shows me by giving me the “stink eye.”   I am going to teach my daughter to do this as well.  Once a husband or child grabs the book and begins an overly dramatic monologue entitled “Saddle up and Ride (an actual book title I found on our kindle),” it probably gets a little difficult for the reader to re-engross themselves in their fantastic voyage through word porn.   If there are any men reading this, I challenge you to do the same; it will either lead to a bonding moment between you and your wife, or your wife will never feel comfortable to read around you again.  Either way, you have succeeded in the one thing all husbands love to do….terrorize their wives momentarily.  Don’t mistake what I say for wanting to hurt our wives.  We don’t want to hurt them; we want to drive them crazy.  Only crazy to a point, and then we want our wives to chill out and prepare themselves for the next battle.  (This may actually be my thesis).

We do it in little criminal actions.  A great example:  In our home, Whitney is a Nazi-like organizer of the refrigerator.  She has a very systematic method for how she sees things fit together inside, and she hold briefings on them every time she opens up the door.  On shopping days, she will actually address the press in the middle of our house where she will outline the proper shelf for beverages, dairy products, where snacks will reside, and where random products that don’t fall in line with other things will go.  It’s simple.  Whitney would have done well in Napoleon’s Army as she has a knack for ensuring her orders are always understood at the lowest level of the chain of command.  They sound  something like, “Heath, in your brain, I know you think ground turkey is a dairy product, but here in the real world it is not and, therefore, should find itself in the lowest drawer of the refrigerator.”  Sometimes when I go to the fridge, I put things back in there in the wrong spot on purpose, and I get an amazing sense of rebelliousness swelling from my soul to the tip of my head.  Then I go and hide, and I wait, and I wait, and then it happens.  Whitney goes to the fridge and notices that her yogurt has been moved to the “random fridge item” shelf.  I come out from hiding, I walk past and say this, “Whitney, you know yogurt is a dairy item, right?” I continue, “Why would you put it in the ‘random fridge item’ area?”  Because Whitney is pregnant, she can only remember 17 minutes before the current moment.  I have used this to convince her she is slowly losing it.  As I walk away, she is mumbling to herself the same way the people in the movies act like when they are in the crazy house.  This is a victory for me—a yogurt induced victory.

Adding to her frustration, I like to pretend that every time she explains to me where items should go in the fridge is the first time she has explained it.  Furthermore, I like to patronize her by saying things like, “Dude, this is weird, I was thinking the other day how disorganized the fridge is, and that we needed to get on the same page in this house.”  If there is one thing my wife loves, it is being patronized—this is just another thing I recommend all husbands start doing in their homes…good times.  This is all out of love.  I love messing with my wife, because she is the only person in the world who could deal with it.

As Whitney has progressed through this pregnancy, things have become funnier and funnier to watch.   One of the things that has quickly become a great past time for me is watching her walk, stand up, sit down.  It is similar to when a turtle is put on their shell and just kind of flailing their arms about hoping they can develop the momentum to propel themselves into the standing position.  Before you all think I am calloused, I help out.  From wherever I am sitting, I cheer her on and time the evolution to see if she is getting better at it.  Awesomeness.

A final thing that I have liked to do is slowly reveal ways I got in trouble when I was a kid.  I explain to her about the time I stole people’s mail around the neighborhood.  I remind her I am a convicted shoplifter, I remind her that I joined a gang in Idaho Falls, Idaho.  We were the “gang that wore denim jackets.”  I wore headgear and in a gang fight, which subsequently got shoved through my cheek.  How many gangsters were ginger kids with headgear?  I was.  I remind her that I one time took a knife to our neighbors tree and shaved off all of the bark.  Apparently, the neighbors weren’t happy with the makeover.  I remind her that my high school friends and I were drunkards who would have sold our siblings if it meant we could get a twelve pack of Milwaukee’s Best (higher alcohol content).  I tell her that I used to torture my sister about her hair and how she had the exact same hairstyle George Washington had.  What kind of ginger kid with headgear would have the audacity to make fun of other kids?  This guy.  I tell Whitney, of the time I was taking another friend to baseball practice and wanted to change the cd out in the car and wrecked it into a jeep.  Right as the car hit the jeep, Tres Delinquentes’ “Step into the Madness” blared over the car stereo and it could not have been more appropriate.  I tell her all of these stories and then remind Whitney that our child will pay us back the hell we caused our parents; get ready.

Tomorrow I will tell you the story of how I convinced another blogger to give me a blogging award.

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.

Lane Phillips for President

If you ever want to feel good about yourself and your beliefs, you should call my father.  My dad and I agree on just about everything, but somehow, by the end of the phone call, we are yelling about how much we agree.  Take everything going on in politics right now.  I won’t even call my dad, because we would yell at each other for hours about everything.  I believe that whomever my dad is talking to as he gets amped up actually morphs into the people he is fed up with.  I so badly want to go on a tirade over politics, but I am certain that I would lose all ten loyal readers of this blog.  But isn’t that what writing is supposed to do, get people spun up and make them think even if they think that what I wrote is incorrect?

Recently, I handed in a writing assignment.  The assignment was to answer a question.  The question was the thesis of the paper then.  So, I answered the question, and then the teacher said there was no real thesis in the paper.  I told her that the question she handed out was the thesis.  She said that is not the way it works.  I told her I had the same degree she did.   I lost.  But, in my head, I won, and knowing is half the battle.

So, here is the thesis of this blog.  Lane Phillips, my father should be President of the United States.

I want my dad to be president.  I want to watch the news in the morning and see my old man walking down the hallway, out the doors, and then I want my old man to brief the press.  I want the press to piss my dad right off, and then I want to watch.  I want my scary, conservative father to stand up in front of a nation and fix the shit out it.   More specifically, I want the nation run like our house was.  My dad never takes more than four seconds to make a decision, and he is right every time.  He can take a square peg and make it fit into a round hole.  He can do it by scaring the square peg round.  There is no problem my dad cannot fix.  My dad uses three things to fix everything, and they are as follows:  New skin (that stuff you put on wounds to seal them), Quicken (the program you use to balance your checking account), and empty coffee cans (you would be surprised how much an empty coffee can will do during any situation you may find yourself in).

My dad understands economics better than any man I know.  He would use Quicken to balance the entire nation’s budget, and somehow, using the same program he would have money stashed everywhere so that he always had enough to get a bigger TV.  He would only borrow money from China on the “6 Months, Same As Cash” method, and he would always let China believe he wouldn’t pay in full on time, only to screw them over on the sixth month.  You see, my dad gets this weird sense of satisfaction from setting aside the monthly payment for six months, except the minimum required (which never gets the debt paid before interest hits) and then boom, he pays that shit off.  He has relayed to me on multiple occasions a fantasy he has where some pretentious accountant is crying when Best Buy receives his payment just before they were going to make a killing off of interest.  These are things a President dreams about.

My dad understands military tactics and how to employ our nation’s most powerful asset.  He was a member of the Navy for 20 plus years, and now continues to serve by playing first person shooter games.  He would be the only president in history that could explain to you how to correctly knife the enemy while simultaneously switching to your pistol and shooting him in the face.  He has also proven that, regardless of the age of the person he is playing online, he will drop an “F” bomb into his headset and remind the kid that wisdom will beat stupid and inexperienced youth every time.  I want my president to do that.

I have told you in previous blogs that my dad hates everybody equally.  This is a required trait for a president.  Hating everybody is essential to running a country where no one ever agrees.  Every American is the smartest person in the room when it comes to politics.  We all cannot believe how asinine the opposing opinions are.  Some of the most ignorant people I have ever known, during a politically charged conversation, suddenly develop opinions, and there is nothing worse than ignorant people who believe in something.  It’s usually based off of getting something for free, but whatever.

Religious values will not dominate my father’s campaign.  The family is the most important unit of America, and thusly, he would concentrate on the family’s role in government.  Religious values should be taught in the home and fostered and nurtured in the home.  My dad would concentrate on making families function better by fixing the economy with Quicken and giving America’s families freedom of movement.  Because my dad is brilliant, he would remind all of the fathers and mothers out there:

“Your kids should fear you.  Your kid should respect you.  Your kid is not your friend; do not be afraid to lay the smack down when your kid acts like an ass in public.  More importantly, do not let your kid just get by and don’t give him or her everything they want.  Don’t pretend that giving your children more opportunities than you had as a child means losing discipline and handing them everything.  Teach your child about losing, because they will lose.  They will lose something awful, and it will suck.  Teach them how to get back up, so that when they lose in real life, they don’t look to the government to take care of them.  Mothers and fathers have helped create an environment where entitlement trumps hard work and perseverance.”

My dad would not care who you love.  You love a tree, marry the damn thing—just don’t be a jackass, pay your debt, and quit looking to me to bail you out.  You love a man, marry the man, just don’t be a jackass, and pay your debt and quit looking to me to bail you out.  You want to be a religious whatever—do it, but don’t be a jackass, and pay your debt.  Jackassery leads to failure and failure just might be what you need to remind you that people lose in real life.  You’re gay, congratulations, get married, but for the love of god, be gay, fiscally responsible, and don’t be a jackass.  My dad would point out that the government is getting caught up on things that should be left to the individual.  The government should be working to give its citizens a stable platform in which to work and live.  Just as important, my dad would remind the individual citizen that relying on the government to save you from yourself and your own irresponsibility is futile.  The government doesn’t’ work that way, except recently.  Then my dad would kick in a door and make Harry Reid resign, and he would do it solely because Harry Reid sounds like an idiot.  My dad cannot stand people who sound like an idiot.  Idiots have no place in society.   He would also say that an empty chair would be a more effective president than some that have been elected.

The people that would suffer the most under the 8 year reign of my father are criminals.  Criminals deserve it.   Criminals are terrorists, and need to be treated as such.  I guess communists would suffer too, but they would be fiscally responsible while they are suffering, and probably more successful than they are used to.

Dad, I cannot wait to see your name in every front yard.  If you win, you will be my boss again….

I just wanted you to know, because I have been holding it in for years.