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As I finished reading through Tyler Stanton‘s book, Everyday Absurdities, a few random thoughts came to mind.

1) Why did he stop at 97 pages? He had me laughing out loud and should have kept going.

2) Why are there 6 blank pages in the back? These would have provided an ideal canvas for more funnyisms.

3) Every bathroom in the world, or at least in Lancaster County, PA, should have a little pouch made especially to hold a copy of Everyday Absurdities. In fact, every one of these pouches should come supplied with a copy of the book.  (Don’t worry Bryan, I didn’t read your copy in the bathroom . . . oops . . . don’t worry, Tyler, I’ve ordered a copy of your book but it didn’t get here in time for me to read and review for today).

Alrighty then.

Before I get myself into any more trouble, here’s an excerpt from the book.

*****

An Open Letter To Hotels

Thank you for housing me every now and then.  I enjoy your HBO and free newspapers. Oh, and your free breakfast. There are, however, a few things that you could do to enhance the experience for all of us who reluctantly pay for your overpriced lodging.

1. Please don’t act mad at me when I’m checking in. . .

2. Please start washing the comforters. We all know that earlier in the day, a naked, sweaty, fat man sat on the comforter while he blow-dried his hair.  I know you can neither confirm nor deny this, but the least you could do is have the housekeeper bring a new comforter to my door, shrink-wrapped like an airline blanket (the cleanest object on planet Earth).

3. Please choose a shampoo that doesn’t smell like a condiment. . . I can’t afford to go to that meeting with my skin smelling like I just bathed in tartar sauce.

*****

There’s sections on eating, shopping, men, entertainment, observations and travel, just to name a few.  Then there’s my personal favorite, A Million Peeves, some of which are Splitting Bills, Hug/Handshake Mixups, Using Another Guy’s Towel, and Post Oil Change Conversation.

We really don’t laugh enough these days, especially while reading.  Everyday Absurdities by Tyler Stanton = guaranteed laughter.

Buy it HERE . . . (it’s the one at the bottom left-hand corner that’s kind of hard to see, what with the white on white.  I guess my bookstore needs a paint job)

*****

If you want to find out more about Tyler Stanton, visit his blog tylerstanton.com .  He’s got some hilarious videos as well.  Check it out.

Problem #1 – This well-dressed dude kept showing up, just about everywhere that I went.

Problem #2 – A lot of the things he said made sense to me.

Problem #3 – He just wouldn’t shut up.

“Is it really fair for you to live out this little dream at the expense of your kids?” he asked me one morning, again in the cafe.  “After all, if you got a real job you would have better insurance for when they got sick, and you could buy them nicer stuff, and they’d probably be happier.  You could feel good about moving out of that basement that sometimes smells like sewage when the washer line gets backed up.”

I sighed.

“It’s not a little dream.  It’s my identity. It’s who I am.”

He laughed, one of those scoffing, reverse sniffs through his nose, as if he was trying to remove the smallest of gnats (the g is silent).

“Your identity.  Whatever.  It’s not your identity- it just makes you happy.  Isn’t that kind of selfish?”

I shook my head, but that one hit below the belt.

“It’s not about happiness,” I insisted.  “It’s about purpose.”

He nodded knowingly, as if he had heard that one far too often.

“Okay, so let’s assume it is your ‘purpose’,” and here he raised his hands and made those annoying little air-quotation marks.  “Don’t you think God also wants you to be practical, to be able to pay the bills, to address that little debt issue you have from your last little business?”

The last part he said with a knowing glance and looked around, as if he may have said it too loud, as if someone else may have heard.

“What should I do?” I asked in a pathetic half whisper, feeling my defenses crumbling.

“Get a job,” he insisted, soothingly.  “Get something that will provide you with a decent income.  A matching 401k.  For goodness sake stop lying to yourself that you can make a life doing whatever you want.  That’s reckless.  That’s irresponsible. You can work 50-60 hours a week and still find plenty of time to write.”

“You are sooooo practical,” I mumbled at first, but something inside of me came alive.  Suddenly I remembered that this is the same guy who wanted to rename my son.  This guy didn’t care about me!

My voice began to rise and got louder with each word.

“Since when do you care if I get out of debt, or pay my bills?  You’re the one who’s always telling me to go look at the big screen tvs when we’re in Walmart – we don’t even watch tv right now!  All you care about is castrating my life so that I wander around like one of those retired bulls they’re getting ready to slaughter!  All you care about is stuffing me in a safe little box where I won’t do anything of consequence!”

By now I was shouting.

“Just shut up!  Stop lying to me!  I have as much security right now as anyone in this country with a full-time job who could get their two-weeks notice any day!  And the big man upstairs is signing my checks!”

I looked wildly around the cafe.  Did I say that stuff out loud?  The big man upstairs?  Were my discussions with this guy turning me into some sort of gigantic cheeseball?

A long breath came in one long gust out of my mouth, and I cracked my neck.  No one was looking at me.  That was a good sign.

And the guy was gone, at least for the time being.  That was even better.

I took out my journal and began to write:

December 18, 2009 8:48am

Feeling lots of uncertainty and a slight tinge of worry recently, regarding this coming year, even though I don’t want to and don’t necessarily have to.  I’ve got enough jobs lined up to keep our bills paid for a few months.  I think I was putting more hope and trust in getting a job than in God.  I need to get back to where I was a few weeks ago – absolute trust in him and the plan that he has, not any sort of half-assed plan that I can put together.

Then I wrote this verse:

Psalm 13 : 5-6 But I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me.  I will sing to the LORD because he has been so good to me.

And this quote by Anne Lamott:

“The opposite of faith isn’t doubt – it’s certainty.”

*****

To read the next post in this storyline, click HERE

If you want to read the VERY BEGINNING of this story click HERE.  It tells about how, as a family of 6, we moved from VA to PA and into my parent’s basement, and how we decided I should give full-time writing a shot.

First, a couple of announcements – the winner of last week’s Imaginary Jesus contest is Andy McCollough.  Congratulations Andy!  Just let me know where you would like your copy of Imaginary Jesus sent (em me at shawnsmucker@yahoo.com)

Secondly, Tuesday’s are normally reserved for Tuesday’s Top Ten, but we’re switching things up a little this week.  I’m going to continue with the story I started yesterday, and Bryan Allain is going to take over the Top Ten as a guest post on Friday.  Rumor has it, he is doing a Top 10 Reasons TV is Good (or some impossible rubbish along those lines) – as some of you know, my wife and I have given up TV for the year, so I find this particularly vexing (but not as vexing as his constant bashing of Sweet Tarts).

Anyway, thanks for reading.  On with the story.

*****

“Hey, how’s it going?” the guy in the suit asked.  The guy with too much cologne on.  The guy that looked like a lawyer from the early 1900s.

“Pretty good,” I said, pushing my headphone earbuds in tighter, turning up the music.  He didn’t get the hint.

“What are you doing?”

“Just writing.”

“Yeah, I hear you think you can make a living doing that?” he said, not in a mocking voice, but more the voice of a concerned, responsible counselor.

“I’ve got a couple deals lined up,” I said, shrugging.  “Should get us started, anyway.”

“Huh,” he said, but I could tell his wheels were turning.

“What do you mean, ‘huh’?”

“Do you really?  A couple of deals?”

“Well, there’s one,” I said defensively.

“Is there?”

“Well, kind of.  Almost for sure.  I’ll find out soon.”

“But what if that one doesn’t come through?”

Silence.

“Are you sure this is responsible?” he asked.  “Doesn’t your family deserve more than this?  I mean, you can always write on the side, right?”

I didn’t know what to say, but decided to continue with my mumbling defense.

“It’ll work out,” I said.  “We’ve got a few months of income left.  I’ll find more work before then.”

He raised his eyebrows.  I stared hard at my computer.  I couldn’t write with this guy over there, chattering like a cricket.

“Can you just shut up so I can concentrate?  You’re driving me crazy!”

“Pardon me?”

I looked up.  It was the waitress.  The guy in the suit was gone.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I’m okay.  I mean, I don’t need anything.”

She looked a little worried, as if I might stand up on one of the tables and start reciting Greek epics.  Or stick a fork in my own eye.

But even though that guy had left, I could still feel him there, peering over my shoulder. Suddenly the whole idea that I could live my life doing something fun and exciting and meaningful felt stupid, and naive, and irresponsible.  I started walking around like a foreign spy, my neck shortened, my eyes darting from side to side.  When we first moved to Pennsylvania I was happy to tell people what I was doing.  Trying to make a living by writing.  But the more time passed, the more this guy in the suit convinced me it was selfish, and unattainable.

I changed the way I interacted with people:

“Hey, Shawn,” they’d say, “welcome back to Lancaster!” And at some point in the conversation: “So what are you up to?”

And instead of just saying, “I’m writing,” I’d say, “Oh, I’m writing for now, just for a few months, to see how it goes, you know, and if it doesn’t work out then I’ll look for something else.”

I started preparing myself for failure.  And soon, even though a few writing projects did come in, I started looking for a full time job.  I was losing faith.

*****

To read the next post in this story, click HERE

To see the VERY beginning of this story, click HERE

We arrived at my parent’s house late that night, about 10:00, and the place was dark and empty.  Mom and Dad were on a trip to Africa, and my only sister still living at home was at a friend’s house.  It felt like a lot of other nights arriving at mom and dad’s house, except now we were there to live.

We carried our four sleeping kids into the house, through the rain, shushing and holding their heads close against our shoulders.  Soon they were deposited in beds, sleeping soundly, totally oblivious to how their lives had just changed.  Maile’s parents found a place to lay down, on some sofa or other.  Maile and I slept on a small bed in the basement.

The house was quiet.  We were there.  It was done.

But I kept thinking about this identity thing.  Who was I?  What was I doing here?  Was this crazy move home all part of me discovering this stuff?  Could there be a purpose to this, or were we just simply experiencing a setback?

Could our situation have God stumped?  Did all of this catch him off guard?

And I couldn’t help feeling forgotten. It seemed we had such high hopes, and none of them had come to fruition.

Hey, God, I whispered to the dark basement ceiling.  Remember me?

Nothing. No answer.  Just quiet.

Hey, God, I whispered again.  Do you know about this?  Have you seen this since the beginning of time?  Or are you flamboozled?  Can you be flamboozled?

Can God be flamboozled?

The next morning we woke up early and started moving in to my parent’s basement, endlessly unpacking boxes.  It’s a real nice basement, with a separate bedroom, bathroom and tiny kitchen-type area.  The three kids would sleep in the bedroom, and Sam, Maile and I would sleep in the main area.  It was a far cry from our huge place in Virginia,  but it would work. Still, every few minutes Maile and I would look at each other and give each other this cringing, smiling sort of expression.

“I can’t believe we are doing this,” she would say.

“I know, me either.  Are we crazy?”

She didn’t answer.

We got our stuff settled.  Whatever we couldn’t fit in my parent’s house ended up in storage.  We were vagabonds, squatters, living in someone else’s place, and most of our belongings were locked up (which made us really wonder, how much of that crap did we actually need?).

I still remember the first Monday after we moved – we had a lot of boxes to search through, but I was determined to get off on the right foot.  Not waste any time.  So at 8:00am I was off to the Angela’s Cafe to write.

I got a hot tea, found a comfy chair, and started typing. It was probably a few hours into my stint as a writer that the flashy guy in the nice suit came into the cafe and sat down beside me, the same one who had barged into my son Sam’s delivery room shortly after he was born.  And I still didn’t like the look of him.

What was his deal?  He just showed up wherever he wanted.  And he smelled good, but I never really trust men that smell that good.

“Hey, how’s it going?” he asked.

(to be continued tomorrow)

***

To read the next part of this story, click here

If you want to go back to the VERY BEGINNING of this story, click here.

***

The winner of last week’s contest is Andy McCullough.  Andy, let me know where you would like your copy of Imaginary Jesus sent!  Congrats, and thanks to everyone for passing on the word last week about Matt Mikalatos’s great book.

This is a guest post by author Matt Mikalatos.  For a review of his book, “Imaginary Jesus”, check out yesterday’s post.  Now take it away Matt!

Embracing Your Inner Weird

I finally had an agent on the phone.  He loved my proposal and hated my sample chapters.  “I can tell you’re a deeply weird person,” he said.  “But you’ve given me the typical Sunday School book that’s the same as everything else out there.”   He didn’t want to represent me, but would look at the next draft to let me know if I was “on the right track.”   Determined to prove that I was as weird as my proposal suggested, I set out to embrace my Weird – that singular place of absolute uniqueness within each person where all of our deepest and strangest skills, thoughts and passions reside .   Here are four lessons I learned along the way about letting that Inner Weird out of your basement and into the living room.

NUMBER ONE: Don’t give them what they want. My first book proposal was written for the wrong audience.   I had attempted to extrapolate what I thought agents and publishers would want to see.   This is not correct.   Agents and publishers don’t want what they want… they want what the audience wants.   If agents and publishers were buying what they wanted it would probably be comic books with no words because they read slush all day and they are tired and would just like to look at some pictures for once.   On the other hand, do you know whose desires are awfully close to the audience’s?   YOURS.   So stop writing what you think other people want and start writing something you enjoy.

NUMERO DOS: Severely damage your internal editor. Studies show that the number one cause of Non-Embracing-Of-Inner-Weirdness-For-Writers is an overactive internal editor.   This is the little voice which says, Hey, should you really be putting a colon in the middle of that sentence? and also Let’s be serious, you know that there is no such thing as a talking cat.     Don’t kill your editor, you’ll need him later.   But you need to at least tie the editor up and stick him in the broom closet until your first draft is done.   Stop re-writing the same page over and over.  Stop asking should I include this? and just write it down. You can always come back later.

NUMBER C: Embrace your inner Weird. You know that apathetic feeling that comes over you at a bookstore sometimes when you are looking for a new book but can’t find one you want?   You are (secretly) thinking to yourself, “I wish someone would write a mystery novel/romance where the main character is an Amish vampire, darn it!”   You should write that book. Other people are wishing for that same book (even if they don’t know it yet). Stop spending time trying to figure out what is hip and what is selling.   By the time you figure it out, it will have changed.   Here are some books no one knew they wanted until they read them:

Endless thousands of pages about an orphan boy learning to be a wizard.

A series of books about Jesus being an inter-dimensional lion.

A book about God living in a shack in the woods and making pancakes.

A semi-autobiographical comedy/theology novel about destroying imaginary Jesuses with the help of the Apostle Peter , a talking donkey and a friendly atheist.   Yup, that one’s mine.

Roman Numeral IV. Be a professional Weirdo. Being a weirdo is not enough.   Just ask Gonzo from the Muppets.   Did he settle for being some sort of bird thing with a crooked nose ?   He did not.   He sharpened his skills until he could teach twelve chickens to water ski while bawking out The William Tell Overture.   Present your weirdness with top notch work.     This is where you can let your internal editor out.   He will say, “GREAT CAESAR’S GHOST WHAT IS THIS MESS?”   That’s fine.   Set him to work, but keep him on a tight leash.   Write your best, re-write diligently, and be polite when you communicate with agents and publishers.

Afterword: Weird love. As for me, I wrote a novel that looked like C.S. Lewis, Dave Eggers and G.K. Chesterton got in a fight and then turned their notes over to Kurt Vonnegut.   I had a blast writing it.   I sent it to the agent who didn’t want to represent me and my phone started ringing the moment I hit send.   A few months later we had two offers on the table to publish the book.   I thought people would be waiting in line to smack me in the face once they read the book, but au contraire, the book I wrote for my deepest self spoke to a lot of other people, too.

Now stop reading blogs and go pound out that Amish Vampire Detective novel, because we all want to read it!

Matt Mikalatos works full time for Campus Crusade for Christ, and his first novel, Imaginary Jesus, came out earlier this month from Tyndale/Barna Books. He is hard at work on his encore presentation, which is the weirdly titled “Night of the Living Dead Christians.”  If you would like to WIN A TRIP TO PORTLAND to hang out with the weirdo and win a bunch of swag (Amazon Kindle, iPod, a hundred bucks to spend at a local bookstore, etc.), then check out the writing contest at http://myimaginaryjesus.com.

* * * * *

If you are new to this site, have a look around! Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are generally dedicated to the topic of identity and purpose, Tuesdays are usually occupied with highly controversial top ten lists, and Thursdays, like yesterday, carry book reviews.  If you don’t know where to begin, click here for my most popular post.

“You’re so afraid of your imagination,” Pete said. “You never use it for good things because you’re worried you’ll end up imagining something pornographic. You need to get control of yourself. The imagination can be purified like any other part of you.” -Imaginary Jesus

As some of you may know, on Thursdays I generally review a book.  So when my friend the literary agent Wes Yoder sent me an email and asked if I would review a book for one of his clients on my blog, I of course said yes.  After all, he said he would send me the book for free, and most of you that know me know I’ll do just about anything for a free book.

Seriously.  Anything.

But I’ll also admit, although I’m not sure why, that I didn’t have high hopes for the book.  I don’t read much contemporary fiction, much less contemporary Christian fiction.  Isn’t most of that about the Amish?  Or just really cheesy? It was a terrible underestimation of Wes, for which he will probably never forgive me (in which case he should reread Think No Evil, the book he represented for us about forgiveness).

ANYWAY, I didn’t read Wes’s email that closely, probably due to my elation at receiving a free book, so by the time the book arrived I had forgotten the title.  But when I saw the package I knew exactly what it was and tore it open.  Inside the padded, manilla envelope I found

Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos.  That got my attention.

Hmmm.  Sounds interesting.  I read the back of the book, including the sentence: “That all ends when a fishy stranger walks in and PUNCHES JESUS IN THE FACE!”

That really got my attention.  Even if the Jesus that got punched isn’t the real Jesus.

Matt takes a theological idea, that being our propensity to create imaginary Jesus’s that support our view of the world, and turns it into a flesh-and-blood adventure story with the narrator racing through Portland streets, tracking down the Real Jesus. The Jesus who lived and spoke and breathed and smiled. The Jesus who wants to mourn alongside you when this world tries to wrench the life out of you.

Still not convinced you should buy this book? Here are three more reasons:

1)  Chapter One (which comes after Chapter Zero) has a chase scene where the narrator and Pete are trying to catch Imaginary Jesus.  This is reminiscent of one of the greatest literary/spiritual chase scenes of all time which takes place at the end of GK Chesterton’s book The Man Who Was Thursday.  If you like GK Chesterton, you should read this book.

2) About halfway through, Imaginary Jesus takes a turn from zany to the sort of reflective that feels a bit like a punch in the gut.  A good punch in the gut.  If you’ve experienced pain in your life, and it’s affected the way you view Jesus, you should read this book.

3) My wife and I are notoriously early-to-bed folks.  If I see 10:00, it’s a rarity.  But on the two nights I was reading this book I didn’t stop until well after 11:00pm.  That’s right, PM.  If you like well-written stories, books that make you want to keep reading, you should read this book.

So there you go.  Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos. Click here for a link to buy. So easy?!

Tune in tomorrow for a guest post by the author!