A Most Precious Sweetheart

Afton has her mother's everything, and she's the beautifulest little girl I've ever heard of.

This Is Where the Tape Goes, and That Button Plays Rush Records

In preperation for our second kid we went ahead and got four doors... four awesome doors of a 1995 Honda Odyssey. I found this image in the online owner's manual, and needless to say, it rules.

A Little About Me

Medieval Rhymes

I've decided to start a KJV-only rap band called Sir Loin.

Divers rhymes hitch ya joints and marrow
goadin' thine ass down the straight 'n narrow

That's all I've got so far..

Paul's Poll Performance Perplexes Pundits (Plus Pic!)

I only caught the post-debate spin session for a minute last night, but in that time I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Sean Hannity's verbal disgust at seeing that their "Who Won?" poll had been jammed yet again by Ron Paul supporters.

The first iteration of the poll results came in while H&C were interviewing Fred Thompson, and when Paul pulled down 35% with second place being at like 18%, you could actually hear Hannity utter a "phlgrhaargh" of pissed incredulousness under his breath. (You'll recall that Sean got pretty riled about these hijinx after the last GOP debate, when he hotly denounced the Paul supporters for allegedly spamming their poll with multiplte votes.)

I don't know who Hannity's endorsed-- probly McRomniani-- but he's obviously not a fan of the revolution.

And while we're here, I should point out that Father Burly is right there in the shot at the end of Sean's fingers(!). This was actually at the last GOP debate, and it was right after this scene that my dad somehow managed to actually get me on the phone with Ron Paul. Yep, we exchanged pleasantries and thanked each other for being awesome for about 30 seconds, and it ruled.

Intemperate Thoughts on Global Warming

-- I keep seeing "green" issues of this and that outdoor magazine. But if they really wanted to save the environment, they should do a "green nonissue" and go a month without printing millions of magazine pages (which are mostly ads anyway).

-- People creep me out by how emotional they get about Priuses. Promise you bro, those extra couple MPGs really aren't the meaning of life.

-- Forgive me if I don't trust a single word Newsweek has to say on the subject considering their not-too-distant cool-mongering. And anyway, if they really were so hot and bothered about global cooling thirty years ago, wouldn't the advent of warming be an answer to prayer? In other words, shouldn't the effects of this warming trend be welcomed with grateful relief as being the noncatastrophic solution to our parents' worst fears?

-- Read the Copenhagen Consensus 2004, do the cost/benefit, and then try and tell me with a straight face that spending trillions (with a "t") to gain a couple degrees over the next 100 years is not absurd.

-- The hypocrisy of the mansion-owning, motorcade-driving, private-jet-flying Reverends of Climatology really pisses me off. I'll listen to their breathless warnings when they start to live like they really believe it. (And anyway, there's not much more I could personally be doing as it is- I recycle, use those fancy light bulbs, share 800 square feet and a 40mpg car with my wife and baby, and walk to work. And funnily enough, I somehow do all of that without taxing you to death or regulating the hell out of your business.)

-- Carbon offsetting is a joke. But Tetzel would be proud.

-- Read Scrappleface.

-- And Steyn:

"A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.
For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."
I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.
And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.

[...] That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".
Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.
[...] Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.
221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot."

Get...Their...Attention

I'm on a 10 minute break from "Management and Leadership Training," so I thought what better way to spend it than to post one of the more classic scenes from The Office (UK version, obviously. Are you serious?).

If It Is, It's Not Funny

What Happens in Nashville...

... Gets turned into a country song and told to millions of hicks worldwide.

I'm sorry, that wasn't very nice-- the rest of the world doesn't listen to that stuff. So yeah, this humble-og has been decidely unburled lately, and for that I do apologize. As you can see we went to Nashville for a little while to help a friend move, so it's in that spirit that I'll drop a couple of my favorite Nash-related things:

--Dave Ramsey
--Varsity Internship Program
--George Grant
--David Dark
--Boots

As for David Dark, he recently wrote a piece on Arcade Fire for Books & Culture that I thought was a good read. And he's a fan of Tom Waits, so you can trust his opinion.

Burly and Banks

The Deepest Offense

I was recently accused of being a hippie.

A couple weeks ago as we were driving back from my family reunion down South, we found ourselves in the thick of post-hippy-fest traffic. Pulling up to the drive-through window at a Starbucks on I-81 North, the attendant saw my beard and thought she could peg me- "Ya'll coming back from Bonaroo?"

"No," I said flatly, but with a gentle smile that admitted fault for giving such an appearance of evil.

Too Precious

With a baby this precious, I doubt you can blame me for not having been around these parts in a little while. But now that she's napping safely 'neath her Bach-playing mobile animals, I'd just like to thank you kindly for your patience and let you know that I'm back to stay, if you'll have me.

She Is Indeed Wonderfully Made

Please meet our most precious Afton Adele. She was ushered into this world by angels and the OB/GYN at 12:37am on Friday, March 9th, 2007. And as you can see, she is perfect.

This video is set to Nickel Creek's rendition of Robert Burns's Flow Gently Sweet Afton, which is actually about a river. But I'm sure you'll agree that Sweet is Sweet.

Wonderful are the Lord's works; we know it very well.

Forget the Cowbell, You Need More Hair!

Kind reader, I hope you'll allow me to tell you a story. It's kind of a sad story, and I think it's true. And just in case it is, the names involved have been changed to protect the (probably) guilty. It goes something like this...

Last winter, as I was minding mine and my wife's own business on a cold Sunday afternoon, I received a phone call from an old friend. Years before, see, this old friend and I used to be in bands that played an awful lot of shows together up and down the East coast, and because of this time together we'd acquired a fair estimation of each other's musical talents and abilities (whatever they might've been at the time). The phone call was due precisely to this shared history, my friend said, because as it turns out they're still a band and they're doing better than ever with a future bright and shiny. "Thing is, well, Karl left the band to pursue other things, and we've always said that if Karl ever quit we would love to call you, so..."

The conversation thus deepened towards specifics and details, and as it turned out their band had gotten signed to a major label and they were about to record their debut album. So, what did I think, and would I be at all interested in coming to check out their new stuff at the 9:15 Club on Saturday? I said "sure" as my head spun at the dramatic implications of this possible and entirely unexpected career-- no life-- change. What about babies? Rent? Would Mrs. Burly come on tour too? Will the music rock or be lame? etc. So Mrs. and I spent many subsequent hours talking about it all and trying to chart the best course through the approaching dawn of this new world. And see, that's just it-- from the very beginning we had simply assumed that, for all intents and purposes, it was our decision to make, because that's just usually the kind of assumption you make when you hear things like "we've always wanted you," "we love your stuff," "you're the best thing that's ever existed."

But nevertheless-- and for historical reasons beyond the skill of my fingers to trace-- I'd had an instinctive concern from the first four minutes of that fated phone call, which was Lead Singer Tad's singular obsession with his fragile mane, and more specifically, his probable horror at discovering my present lack thereof. See, back in our old days, I too was beginning to have challenges of that sort as well, so we used to spend no small amount of time talking about it all. Strategizing and commiserating our respective follicle fates, no option was off the table-- "I use Rogaine every day, you should try it too. It's gotten pretty cheap at Wal-mart." "Yeah. Have you looked into Bosley transplants? They seem legit. My folks will either get me that or a truck." The thing is, while that had most certainly been a shared concern during that time of our lives (what college boy takes baldness with ease?), I had since gone on to accept, nay, embrace my hairless future. But my concern right here and now on the phone was that the Tad I knew would never make such a peace with his.

So we small-talked our way through the rest of the conversation and ended with an expectant "see you Saturday at the 9:15!"

And being the type that doesn't like to spring stuff on people unawares-- and so I wouldn't walk backstage with a pre-emptively sweaty forehead-- I tried to not-so-subtly suggest via emailed photos that I'd long since given up the fight (my forehead always gets sweaty in awkward situations). (And since I know you're a visual learner, I'll give you an image: my appearance is one part Will Oldham, one part Stonewall Jackson, and two parts my parents. It was the trait that I'd acquired from the Good General-- that is, the secession of my hairline-- that, as mentioned, I just knew was gonna turn out to be the real problem.)

So Saturday night finally came and I entered their backstage room cautiously confident, but no sooner than the deep, warm hugs were over Tad was turning the conversation towards containment strategies-- hats and razors and new miracle pills-- and by such a maneuver immediately confirmed my suspicions that this indeed was a problem. Who goes straight to unfortunate-hairline-concealment tactics as the starter conversation when there's years' worth of catching up to be done???

My forehead was sweating.

So shortly later the show ended and we said our goodbyes and said we'd be in touch. Now it is true that I was invited to come back up to town to "jam" on some of their new stuff a couple weeks later, but if my thesis is correct that was merely a goodwill gesture and a concealment tactic in its own right-- "stylistic differences" makes for a much better pretext than does "you're bald." I guess I've already tipped my hand (is it reflecting off my forehead again?); this burgeoning new world went South fast. Feeling the winds blowing that way, I called Tad on my way home from the practice and told him that I didn't want him to feel pressured into giving me special treatment in their replacement search on account of our past, and that I wanted him to make whatever decision that was best for the band. No worries either way.

A long while of unreplied-to emails goes by, and eventually I get the "thanks so much! but no" response that I'd been expecting all along. They just haven't found the perfect fit yet, but they really do appreciate my time. Now, if you've read this far and you still think that I was rebuffed because of a few flubbed notes in practice, well, I don't know what to say. Don't you see? Hair has always been the over-arching concern for Tad, and, contrary to my hopes, they hadn't turned into the kind of band that rejoices in or flaunts its beautiful naturalness (read: indie as heck).

So, at the end of this whole affair all I could do was paraphrase Marx (Groucho, not Richard): I don't ever wanna be in a band that's "too cool" to be bald. They can have their gels and their carefully-messed swoops and their TRL teenage fanclub, and they can all go straight to the hot place.

All the best, guys!

The Great Attempt

[Note: If Mark Steyn can shamelessly recycle old material, then I can too. Mrs. The Burly Gates and I just celebrated our second year of marriage, so it is with joy that I submit the courtship/engagement story that I sent around to my friends that were thoroughly in the dark-- which was all of them.]

Well fortunately for all of us the day has finally come that I get to be in one place for more than a few hours and that I get sustained internet connectivity. I think I wrote a sentence or two last week saying that I was on the road playing [__] shows throughout the Northeast and the upper Midwest. Well that all ended Saturday night in Charlotte, NC, and we drove straight back up to VA where I picked up JLB and drove to Baltimore, MD to hop on a 10:30 Sunday morning flight to her hometown of Tulsa, OK. You think you know what 'culture' and 'hip' are, but you don't. Tulsa does. But you are exactly right in deducing that since I'm in her hometown I must be 'meeting the family.' The 2 days here have been really great and I don't think anyone hates me. But all of this is putting the cart before the horse, as it were, since yall are still wondering how we got here to begin with. Oh yeah, when the [___] was in NYC I got to skate through Times Square traffic and I saw Jeff Daniels in a music store and I thanked him for being awesome.

Anyway,

about the Advent of Us. It all started on April 26th, 2002, on a deaf and mute date (not blind, because we'd seen each other before) that our friend KT set us up on. The event was our school's 'Jr/Sr banquet,' and neither of us wanted to go. But we did, and we ended up having a really good time. No big deal. So after that we were nominal friends, hanging out here and there in general friend settings with others like X, Y, Z, etc. After a year of this we had become better friends, naturally. That's when I left to hike the AT. We kept in good touch while I was gone, and I was always really psyched to get postcards and such from her even though we were always 'just friends' (by default- it's not that we'd talked about anything of that nature).

Well she was spending the summer at her stepmom's in N. VA, and she came to hang out with me one night when when I was going through there on the trail. Possibly detecting affections for me that Jenny herself didn't know she had, her stepmom asked her what we were gonna do together, "just sit around giggling and blushing?", which was a prospect that Jenny flatly denied. But then it turned out that night as we were eating at Pizza Hut that in a specific instance Jenny became aware of some form of 'like' or 'love' or desire to be with me, though she very wisely and maturely said or made nothing of this for the 8 months that followed. So we kept keeping in touch throughout the trail and my 2 months at home, mostly through (awesome and cherished) emails and postcards and whatnot. Then when I moved back up I made a weekly habit of hanging out with her and Kristen on Sunday afternoons, since I was commuting back to Lynchburg from Charlottesville for church. Well this whole time- especially through the fall and winter of '03- I knew rationally that she was an amazingly beautiful saint of a woman that I thought would have no reason to be with me. I thought that if somehow she did ever want to be with me, that she would in fact be a perfect wife, mother, and best friend. Then as time went on, I thought that maybe she did want to be with me but a handful of my irrationalities, cynicisms, and hangups were making it impossible for me to act or even to want to act on starting something with her. Sounds kinda fruity, I know. But it's true.

So this is the state we were in from roughly September '03 to February '04- one of a solidly growing and deepening friendship, honestly come by and built on the realities of who and what each of us was as opposed to some false self that was propped up in the name of putting one's 'best foot forward' in that whole silliness called the Dating Game; a state where she liked and wanted to be with me but couldn't tell if I was nice and sweet to her because I liked her too or because I was like that with everybody; a state where I knew she was perfect but yet could not want to be with her; and apparently this was all a state where everyone around us knew we were really into each other and that we would end up together despite the fact that we made no pretenses or airs of being together. I suppose that there was some Spirit among and between Us.

And so Ricardo, knowing all these things, was constantly asking me whether or not Jenny and I had "talked" yet, and I was always saying no but that I wanted to at sometime. I wanted us to talk about whatever it was that was going on because it got to a point where I was definitely sensing this positive vibe between us, and I knew that just going on forever in this state of friends-maybe-hoping-for-more would be unwise and destructive. But I was stalling the conversation because the only outcome I could possibly imagine was one where I affirmed my desire to want to want her, but this self-erected Wall of separation around me was effectively cutting me off from everyone around me- including her. I was at a point where I could not even fathom actually and fully loving someone and pursuing depth and connection and intimacy with anyone. I thought the whole game of Love and Relationships was absurd, and a crutch for weak persons who couldn't 'man up' and go it alone. So given all this, it just didn't make any sense to me to initiate the Talk because that would've just messed up the good, no-nonsense friendship that we had. Plus, we weren't acting or talking like we were anything more anyway, so what's the point and where's the good in making an issue out of a non-issue?

Then came Sunday, February 8th. I was sitting in her living room and listening to her talk to her friend/sister-in-law Ellen about some boy who'd been leading their friend Christen S. on and not telling her his "intentions," and just being generally lame and stuff. Well the whole time Jenny was telling this story I thought she was talking in code to me, trying to communicate to me "hey, you're kinda doing this too." "What are your intentions?" etc. And instantaneously- right then and there, and despite every single (known) dimension of myself which, given even a second to rebut, would've been in vehement opposition- two thoughts, rather Truths, permeated my being as I sat there on her couch: 1) was that I was not leaving that night without talking to her about Us, and 2) that we HAD to be together.

What?! how could those thoughts have possibly arisen from my cold and isolated self? The same self that even that very morning could not imagine the idea of being in a relationship? Given all that was given, Divine Inspiration and Providence is the only possible answer- even down to the fact that what I was interpreting as a pre-planned setting to tell a story "to Ellen" while really telling me in code to tighten up was actually just some innocuous story that Jenny had no idea I was listening to. So that very night at 1:53 am as we were sitting alone at her dining room table I initiated a 2+ hour long conversation in which we affirmed that we both really wanted to make a Great Attempt at togetherness; that W would be our goals and X would be our parameters and Y&Z would be the foundation upon which we would build Us- with Christ as our Cornerstone, to be sure; and that whatever it was exactly that we had and were building, that it was admittedly and desirably serious from the very beginning. We already knew each other in very real, true, and organic ways, so there was no reason be kids about this. Neither of us talked of marriage that night, but we were both thinking it.

"So what about all that rubbish going on inside you?", you ask. Well, that very night, as I left for Charlottesville at 4:30 am, I had an ineffable Peace coursing through my entire person. The whole wall that I'd so carefully built around myself one brick at a time had once and for all been breached by Christ Himself-- and He brought Jenny through with Him. All the hangups and strongholds were gone immediately. Completely. For good. And now in just the same way that I could not even fathom being with her or anyone else, I cannot fathom not being with her, nor can I imagine being with anyone else. The Old Paradox became reality: on that Sunday when Christ pushed me into all of this because He knew that I would not and could not venture in by my own will, when He said "you don't think you want this or can have this, but you do and you can. Deal with it.", when my life was finally laid down to myself, Christ Himself raised it to a glorious resurrection through and with Jenny-Lynn Bragg. I have been Redeemed, and I will say So.

The next two weeks were spent drinking coffee and taking wonderfully long and aimless drives through the countryside and mountains of central Virginia as Jenny and I set off to explore the new frontiers of each other's heart, mind, and soul. It was in this vast expanse of our newfound togetherness that each of us truly took shape and multi-dimension, for we had broken through into a whole new realm of co-existence and connection (metaphysically speaking, that is). So with all this as the context, it only makes sense that what happened next happened next; and so soon.

We were sitting on her couch one night after we'd effectively condensed ages of communication into two weeks (plus two years), and I was singing as true the lyrics to the Beach Boys song: "wouldn't it be nice if we were older / and we wouldn't have to wait so long," when Jenny reminded me that, "well, we are 24," and right then and there the talk became about, well, how long do we have to wait to be married? No hand-wringing or anguish. No years of breaking up and getting back together. No despairing or seasons of trying to "figure things out." No. Nothing but the long, easy road,-- the light burden-- to surefooted Fact. We both just knew. Knew as surely as either of us had ever known anything. And we still do, and we will always choose to. No matter what.

This is the story of our Great Attempt.

In Fact, I'm Cowardly

Dufayel: Is she in love with him?
Amelie: Yes.
D: I think it's time she took a real risk.
A: She might. She's devising a strategem.
D: She's fond of stratagems.
A: Yes.
D: In fact, she's cowardly.

It's true-- like Amelie, I too am a coward. Not when it comes to everything, necessarily (the other day I pursued and caught a cricket in our apartment, for example), but at least in the sense that I typically find it easier (and safer) to plan, organize, and schematize my thoughts in my moleskin rather than subject them to this rough and dirty external world, where I just might fall and scrape my knees. But that's just the point: when I was a kid, the blood running down my shins more often than not meant that I was having fun and doing something totally rad.

So with the training wheels now on the shelf in the garage and my imitation Reeboks tightly velcroed, I will wobble my way down the road towards the sun of bright, new things. And if I end up in the ditch instead, muddy and bruised? Well that'll just make the ride all the more fun...