Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living

by Nick Offerman

My sisters and brother are the cut of folk who I’d be damn glad to stand beside in a bar brawl, a square dance, or a pie-eating competition, and preferably the latter.

We didn’t have to do anything to have a good time. It’s an incredible gift to be able to make your own fun.

If there is a God, no part of the Bible or Christian doctrine will convince me of his existence half as much as the flavor of a barbecued pork rib.

I have never had need of a firearm in my life, not remotely, but I’ll happily sport a bumper sticker that reads, “You can have my rib eye when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers,” or even write a bit of poetry.

There is no part of this country where one cannot find a source of fresh, organic meat and produce. I’m not talking about Whole Foods, I’m referring to farmers’ markets and local butchers and fishermen and -women.

I eat a bunch of spinach, but only to clean out my pipes to make room for more ribs, fool! I will submit to fruit and zucchini, yes, with gusto, so that my steak-eating machine will continue to masticate delicious charred flesh at an optimal running speed. By consuming kale, I am buying myself bonus years of life, during which I can eat a shit-ton more delicious meat. You don’t put oil in your truck because it tastes good. You do it so your truck can continue burning sweet gasoline and hauling a manly payload.

I generally think that organized religion has a lot of great attributes, and I think the Bible is largely an amazing and beautiful book of fictional stories from which we can glean the most wholesome lessons about how to treat one another decently.

That’s what church is all about, right? The $$$?

Again, church seemed pretty cool, with a couple of sweet Alexander Hamiltons in my pocket.

It’s all the other shitty parts—like when priests tell you who to vote for in a presidential race, because they’re personally opposed to a woman’s right to choose—that irk me. That’s where church crosses my line. When the clergy get too big for their britches, they take these wonderfully benevolent writings from the Bible and crumble their intended integrity by slathering them with human nature.

The holy Bible. This “good book” is a book of fairy tales. What? Yes, folks, for a fairy tale, by definition, is a fictional story that contains some sort of supernatural creature or occurrence. The Bible is chock-full of both.

You know the form; it’s old-school cautionary tale: “Jahedickus did walk him to the woodpile after dark to fetch some wood so that the women about the place could cook for him and the men some whey-cakes, so long as the women be clean and their flowers be not upon them, which would be super gross. Because of the darkness, Jahedickus did notice not the woodchuck resting on the woodpile, until it did bite of his hand flesh. When Jesus heard tell of this in the marketplace, he did laugh his ass off, and then Jesus spake unto the peoples, ‘Gather ye not your fire from the darkness, but instead seek it in the light of day.’ Then Jesus said to his apostle Steve, ‘Steve,’ he said, ‘go thee to the woodpile and put the woodchuck to death, taking care that it not nibble at thy hand.’”

Just don’t fucking tell me we should kill all the woodchucks because the Bible says so. That’s it. That’s all I’m driving at. It’s a book of stories that should be treated as suggestions. It is not a book of rules for the citizens of the United States of America. Do me a favor and read that last sentence again.

You and your fellow creationists profess belief in a magical story. You are welcome to do so. Sing and chant, and eat crackers and drink wine that you claim are magically infused with the blood and flesh of your church’s original grand wizard, the Prince of Peace. I personally think that’s just a touch squirrelly, but that’s your business, not mine.

But I do think the vast majority of your fellow Americans would appreciate it, kind creationists, if you silly motherfuckers would keep that bullshit out of our schools.

Now, here’s the deal: Invoking the Bible in any public school or at any government function? Un-American. Making a witness in a court of law place his or her hand on the Bible? Un-American. Disputing legislation based upon what it says in your holy book? NOT PATRIOTIC.

The thing that makes me mad is when a person suggests that I CANNOT be a nice person or live a life of goodness WITHOUT reading the Bible and attending church.

churchgoers: fine and dandy; those who try to force it on me and my fellow Americans: assholes. Areas in which “they” try to force it on us: premarital sex abstention, abortion laws, birth control, gay marriage. The fact that creationism can even be a conversation is a goddamn shame and blight upon our nation’s character.

Muslims are not slinging their shibboleths down on the congressmen or -women’s desks, nor are they the insane freaks committing violence upon abortion clinics shouting slogans from the Torah. The Koran is full of wisdom. The Tao Te Ching is an amazing resource of life lessons.

If I were to coin a phrase, I don’t know, I might suggest A SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, just like old Tommy Jefferson did. Time to re-up that shit. Forgive my eloquence.

Life is hard enough when you’re operating 6-2 and even, which is one of my dad’s favorite phrases (it means a racing horse’s odds are 6-1 to win, 2-1 to place, and even money to show—which I always interpreted to simply mean “decent”).

“If you ladies want to be treated as equals, then shouldn’t you be able to open your own car door?” The answer to that is, quite simply, “No, dude. You’re an asshole.” Women are, quite clearly, powerful and smart, quite often more than us bros. Their literal bodily connection to the forces of the moon’s gravity and resultant tides, not to mention their quite regular performance of the medicine-ball-through-a-needle’s-eye MIRACLE of childbirth, renders them superior to men in many important ways. However, when ladies like to wear shoes that are difficult to move around in, or perhaps a foxy skirt that limits their choices in sitting positions, then it’s simply nice to lend them a sympathetic hand.

if a man is on hand to provide ease to a lady’s cause, I think he’s a shitheel if he stands idly by when she could use an umbrella, a handkerchief, or a steady arm.

I know not everybody can build a canoe, or even a Popsicle stick. That doesn’t mean you need to throw your hands in the air and say, “I’m useless.”

It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Pursue decency in all dealings with your fellow man and woman. Simply put? Don’t be an asshole.

When things get bad enough, all you can do is laugh.

“Excuse me, Jorge? That other family is in front of you in line at the Reuben Truck. Your own family could claim all of the delicious sandwiches and grow stronger if you simply kill that first family.”

But wait, I thought this book was a lighthearted look at living one’s life deliciously? That’s all well and good, fat boy, but you cannot just blithely drift through life in your canoe whilst turning a blind eye to the bullshit going on around you.

The teachings of Jesus, of Muhammad, of Buddha, of Yahweh, Dionysus, Oprah, Yoda, and the rest. Confucius. All we need to be told is that we are all presented with a similar challenge in life, which is, “You will encounter tests every day. You can serve yourself, or you can serve others.”

The technique is: Let the others go first. At the airport, at the grocery store, at the Pleasure Chest (hey-o!). The calmer I become, the more I enjoy my day. The more I enjoy my day, the more people enjoy me and the more they want to see me in my enjoyment.

Ryan was always the more modest and decent of the two of us, and now he’s a paramedic, and I’m full of shit for a living. Amazing.

I’m here to tell you that we’ve been duped on a societal level.

I’m just going to proffer this opinion: The people making stuff are generally less wealthy but much happier overall. Less bored, less bitter, more satisfied.

Many of these pastimes could be considered strange by the general public, but nobody’s asking the public. NOBODY’S ASKING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY THINK. That’s such a nefarious social paranoia—“What will people say?” WHO FUCKING CARES? We engage in these activities because it’s what we feel like doing. It’s our reaction to modern society, to our time and place, and it is extremely healthy to our dispositions. It’s remunerative nonconformity.

It’s important to me, when I finish any pursuit, to be able to look back at my work and see a tangible result. Obviously, when I complete a canoe paddle, I can hold it and feel it and use it and thereby know the value of the time I spent making it.

It’s been said that luck is when opportunity meets with preparation, so I will always remember to thank my teachers and taskmasters for giving me the necessary preparation to get goddamn lucky, time and time again.

As I have asserted, much of the Bible holds excellent lessons in the pursuit of modesty and living as a straight shooter, but I would invite you all to investigate the WHOLE DOCUMENT.

Leviticus 20:13. This passage tells us that our fellow human beings should be killed, basically, for engaging in an act of love. Um. Ridiculous and upsetting? No shit, and then some. “Put to death”? Really? Seems just a bit over-the-top, but at least people are finally starting to realize that. If two people want to love each other and build a life together, I say more power to them. Let’s encourage solid, loving households with open-minded policy, and perhaps we’ll foster a new era of tolerance in which we can turn our attention to actual issues that need our attention, like, I don’t know, killing/bullying the citizens of other nations to maintain control of their oil? What exactly was Jesus’ take on violent capitalism?

The debate over the semantics of “preference” versus “orientation” is utter nonsense, and if you even suggest to me that one might “pray the gay away,” I will kick you soundly in your nuts or your juice box, just like I believe Jesus would have.

This wrong stems from centuries of tradition based on fear, and I comprehend that, but I am encouraging us all to take a deep breath and have the guts to give everybody a fair shake.

When your folks tell you to “make sure you have something to fall back on,” don’t take it lightly. There are many modern schools of thought and action by which one can educate oneself to conduct some remunerative activity or other, often without the necessity of a crippling college price tag.

I am 100 percent sure that the theater faculty at the U of I weighed my “monologues,” my essay, and my interview and thought, “Well, he looks like he could carry some shit.”

a theater is holding up a mirror to our hilarious and tragic human foibles so that we, society, may see ourselves therein and thereby receive a dose of social medicine.

The moral of this story? Clearly, when the po-po give you a hassle, stand your ground and talk to them. Don’t run. Just be cool.

I am a supersweet teddy bear, but when I drink tequila, I want to knife somebody.

When I smoke pot, I want to look at nature and laugh about everything and eat some delicious things and then sleep. For Willie’s sake, do the math.

The sense of it is, come to the edge of the cliff, face the leap, and be afraid. Then acknowledge your fear, step forward once more, and then push yourself off the cliff.

Pulling weeds in his garden one day, he casually dropped this bomb: “The act of pulling weeds has the very same impetus that causes war. We’re killing these bad shoots so the ones we favor can receive all the sunlight, nutrients, and water. That’s all war is: killing weeds.”