My new column for McSweeney's, "Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me," debuts today on the Tendency. This one is about Ms. Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball, and the Biblical story of Amnon and Tamar. Here's a little preview:

As I sat there, the boom box started playing “Blurred Lines,” and the three frisbee men immediately stopped their game and began twerking in celebration. One of them was actually pretty good. Like, suspiciously good. Like, I have a sneaking feeling that he watched the VMAs and immediately began twerk two-a-days, practicing for this exact moment, and a dozen or so other moments in the years to come, at weddings and clubs and house parties, knowing he would get himself a cheap laugh at Ms. Cyrus’s expense. Well, mission accomplished, Twerking Guy.

Mission accomplished.

You can read the whole column at the McSweeney's Internet Tendency website. Comments are not allowed on the Tendency, so if you have something nice to say, you can do it on this page.

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Jordan Jeffers is currently learning how to twirl baton. This is not a joke, just something funny that's actually happening. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Book review in one tweet

75 frantic pages from a mind that can't stop thinking, and a heart that can't stop breaking.

Favorite quote

Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren't all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering accept to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.

Review

There's this word in philosophy: "theodicy." I learned it during my intro to philosophy course in college. Roll it out to impress your friends. It's basically a kind of philosophical defense of God, a logical argument for the existence of pain in the world, an answer to the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

I hate theodicies. Hate 'em. You know how much I hate 'em because I've slipped into an old-timey dialect.

It's not that the people who write them have the wrong intentions, or even necessarily that they aren't convincing (because some of them are pretty convincing). I hate 'em because any attempt to explain the existence of pain is ultimately hollow. The problem of pain is not a philosophical problem. It's a personal one. It doesn't matter if the geniuses can reason pain out or not, what matters is what you do when the pain comes. Whether you hold onto hope, faith, and love, or whether you let the storm sweep you over the side.

That's why I chose to review A Grief Observed rather than Lewis's own theodicy, The Problem of Pain. Because in this little book, we get to see the greatest popular philosopher of the modern era in pain, living through the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, and all the heartbreak that follows from it. (FYI: He originally wrote the book under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, hence the cover image above. Apparently he really liked abbreviating the first two initials of author names.)

His response is to turn again to his philosophy, to spiral round and round the same old questions. But even when he finds what seem like good answers, the answers don't help him where it really matters. The answers don't "make the pain not to be pain." Basically I'm saying that I really liked this book because it helps me prove a point, which is pretty much why most of us enjoy non-fiction books.

And beyond those larger questions of God and pain, Lewis has a fascinating take on the nature of memory, and his fear of losing the "reality" of his wife, the hard corners and rough edges, the way she would surprise him and disagree with him, the way her presence made it impossible for him to fit her into box of his choosing. This appreciation for reality is refreshing in a philosopher, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it comes in this, his least philosophical book.

Nerd rating

8 wizard staffs (out of 10)

If you're a true Lewis fan, spend the thirteen bucks and get the current HarperCollins edition. It's a beautiful looking book, with old timey pages that are different widths, so it's super annoying when you're trying to flip through it. It'll look good on the shelf though, or on the bus when you're reading it.

Non-nerd rating

8 cold, frosty beers (out of ten)

One of the few books with the same rating for nerds and non-nerds alike. Grief and pain are universal human experiences, and Lewis's style is (as usual) clear and accessible. I'd suggest borrowing it if possible, or getting a used version somewhere. Thirteen bucks is a little steep for 75 pages.

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If you really want to read a theodicy, Jordan Jeffers recommends the Book of Job. You can give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Dear Mother,

There's a document in my Google Drive that I wrote about nine or ten months ago, when I was trying to decide what to do with my website. I titled it "Website Thunder Brain" because I like to be different, and this sounded cooler to me than "Website Brainstorm." It's basically a list of ideas for my website, this light-gray masterpiece that is jordanjeffers.com. Here's a direct quote from part of it:

Blog content should be mostly non-topical, humorous work, in the following order of priority:

1. Fiction - Along the lines of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
2. Nerd appreciation - Thoughts on wizards, books, making friends, and playing games.
3. Christianity - Thoughts on religious life, scripture, and pop culture?
4. Sports - Personal narratives, fun with baseball history, and shameless Cardinals rants

Let's focus on the first item on that list. When I said, "Along the lines of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency", what I really meant was, "Almost identical to McSweeney's Internet Tendency in every way." I basically intended to steal their model as much as possible, focusing on short pieces that smash genres together in different ways. (Stealing other people's ideas, of course, is a writerly tradition that dates back to Shakespeare.) The first two stories I ever wrote for this site -- Letter of recommendation for Ms. Amelia Bedelia and A series of letters to the boy who keeps cutting things off of the Giving Tree -- are pretty classic McSweeney's style stories, though longer than they normally publish.

I never really stopped copying McSweeney's, or "the Tendency" as I like to call it, though much of my work now is a bit less "conceptual," fiction that's closer to being a story than an idea. But I always felt like they had found a niche that was really worth exploring, little ideas that could have a big impact on the way we see little things, like lower back tattoos.

Anyway, this is all behind the scenes sort of stuff, and not particularly interesting. I really just quoted the passage above to show you how much I respect McSweeney's, how much I wanted to emulate them.

And that brings me to a few weeks ago, when the Tendency announced their 5th Annual Column Contest. They do this every year, as you probably picked up on from the word "annual," soliciting columns ideas from random people. The winners all receive a $500 prize and a chance to write for the Tendency for a year. This sounded like something I wanted to do/spend, so I decided to enter. I figured that, at the very least, I could use the opportunity to develop something new for my own site.

It took me about a week and a half to really come up with the topic and write something worth reading, eventually coming back to the third item on that list, "Thoughts on religious life, scripture, and pop culture?" The question mark should tell to you how confident I was about my ability to do this in a way that was both real and humorous at the same time. Writing about religion is dangerous work -- the ground is treacherous and thorny, peppered with land mines and banana peels. It's equally easy to blow yourself up and make yourself look like a fool. Often it's safer to circle around the long way, and try to come at God from an oblique angle.

Then Mr. Robin Thicke and Ms. Miley Cyrus decided to write humorists everywhere a blank check of comedy at the VMAs, and my new column came together around their particular insanity. I called it "Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me," and sent it off like a young child to their first day of school, with a tear, a prayer, and a few shoelaces untied.

A week or so later it came back to me, along with a nice little email from the Tendency informing me that I had not won. [emoticon sad face]

But...[dot dot dot]

I had been honorably mentioned! [emoticon happy face]

Look, you can see my name on the contest results page.

Though this mention comes with no prize money, it does come with much honor and, more importantly, the same chance to write my column for McSweeney's for the next year that the winners get. So starting sometime near the end of September, you'll start to see "Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me," on the Tendency. The columns will all be about pop culture in some way or another, and I'll post links to them on my own site, and tweet them, so you won't miss any.

I'm super excited about this, in a way that's really hard to describe. You know those times when something happens that you can't stop smiling about? This is one of those moments, for me.

Hope you are well and joyful, as I am. Can't wait to see the new baby niece again this weekend! She's going to be so proud of me.

With love always,

Your son Jordan

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Jordan Jeffers writes letters to his mother on the Internet because stamps are a form of witchcraft. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.

Documentary review in one tweet

#wasteoftime

Favorite Quote

There's not a single quote in this movie I really like. See below for a few that I think are ridiculous.

Review

Let me preface this by saying that I was super hopeful going into this documentary, even with the double punctuation marks at the end of the title. Here's the Netflix description:

When she's thrust from her mundane life into an unfamiliar world, Amanda must develop an all-new perception of her surroundings and the people she interacts with in this quirky film that explores neurological processes and quantum uncertainty.

Sounds interesting, right? Well, it does if you are a nerd who spent significant portions of your life tracing the relationship between quantum mechanics and post-modern literature. The cover image is refreshingly 90s (the whole film feels super 90s, from the jeans to the carpet to the underwear, though it was released in 2003). The deaf Amanda in question is joined on the cover by a chubby, sassy looking African American kid who is, naturally, surrounded by a bunch of basketballs. Remember when this country was still refreshingly unaware of racial stereotypes? No question that this character would be an Asian American girl if the movie was made today, or else the black kid would have a bunch of paint brushes flying around him instead.

At any rate, in spite of high hopes and a cover that promised some good unintentional comedy, the doc proved extremely disappointing. Kind of infuriating, actually. Though it starts out rather well, discussing some of the spooky properties of quantum mechanics, the doc quickly moves into a mild form of insanity. Or at least an extreme form of unlogicality. (No, that's not a real word.)

Here are some actual quotes from the movie:

"There is no 'out there' [external reality] out there, independent of what's going on in here [in the brain]" - Balding Guy in Front of Fireplace

"Do I think you're bad? No, I don't think you're bad. Do I think you're good? No, I don't think you are good. I think you're God." - Blond Woman in What Looks Like a Red Drum Major Uniform.

"There is no such thing as good and bad." - Guy in Front of Obvious Blue Screen

You might be asking, "How can statements like this derive from quantum mechanics?" You might not be. I don't know. But if you are asking it, the only answer I can give you is that they don't. You'll notice I didn't put any names to these quotes, because the doc doesn't supply any. I have no idea who these people are, all I know is that the camera angle is supposed to make them seem like experts. Here's my attempt to explain their logic:

First of all, things get really screwed up in quantum physics; the normal categories of existence that we use to understand things start to disintegrate at a rapid pace. Basically, when you look at the absolutely smallest particles (I'm talking about the pieces that make up electrons and protons), it becomes impossible to pinpoint exactly where a particle is or where its going. That probably makes sense so far; little things are hard to see.

The crazy part is that this uncertainty is not due to a lack of adequate instrumentation. Rather, in quantum mechanics, particles with definite locations and speeds do not exist. Rather, these little bitty pieces exist as a range of possibilities. That's what all the basketballs on the cover are trying to teach you. That, left to their own, these little things act more as tiny waves than tiny basketballs. And their existence is so unstable that we can change them merely by observing them.

What this doc does is take that super interesting idea and decide it means that we are all gods, able to change the universe simply by observing it. Oh, and all religions are lies of course. And morality does not exist. But let's do "good" anyway, even if we have no idea what that means.

You can find a lot of takedowns of the doc on the What the #$*! Do We Know!? Wikipedia page, all of them from scientists, mostly critical of how the doc uses a lot of pseudo-scientific ideas to reach untenable conclusions ("untenable" is a fancy person's word for "stupid"). Although observation may change things at the quantum level, once you get to something the size of, say, an atom, that effect is gone. Matter doesn't really care if you observe it or not. If you stare at a rock, it's just going to sit there. If you stare at The Rock, you'll probably get a People's Elbow to the chest. Either way, you're not God.

Final Review

2 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

Your time would be much better spent punching yourself in the leg, or learning how to sew. Sewing, especially, is a valuable skill.

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Jordan Jeffers recommends the New Scientist introduction to quantum mechanics if you want to learn more about how weird it is. Feel free to give him electronic encouragement via the little Facebook and Twitter buttons below. It means more to him than you might think.