Yearly Archives: 2014

Bah, Humbug: A Christmas Rant Just For You

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture, Religion, Wives

Ok, I’ll admit it: I’ve had it with Christmas this year. I just can’t get into the spirit of things. I tried. I really did. I helped the wonderfully naughty and divinely nice Jess put up the tree and the lights on the house. I went Christmas shopping for the Grandkids, and felt like we got them some pretty cool stuff that was both inexpensive and useful/practical/fun.

Then I went shopping for Jess, and things just nosedived. I found what she had asked for pretty quickly, but I also always try to get her something as a surprise. Nothing expensive, just something not mass-produced, or at least not in this century. Every store I went to to try to find her something special or cool and unusual/unexpected this year was closed. That was disappointing.

I also had to get something for our family White Elephant gift exchange. I thought I’d go to the local “bookstore”, because they’ve got a lot of different stuff, and I thought I should be able to find something suitably stupid/funny. Wrong. First of all, I don’t think it really qualifies as a bookstore anymore. There are hardly any books, and of the books there are, 75 % of them are kid’s books, or “young adult” books. “Young adult”. Who are they kidding? Although it is a much nicer term than “basically grown-up and functionally illiterate, but still thinks carrying a book around will make them look smart”.

They do usually have a pretty good selection of novelty items (cheap, stupid junk that’s good for at least a half-hearted laugh), but not this year. Not unless you’re in the market for a Dr. Who action figure, or even worse, a Game of Thrones action figure (at least Dr. Who has been around for 40 or 50 years). It left me wondering, who do they sell this crap to? Who would want it? Let’s face it, if you’re old enough to watch Game of Thrones, then your action figure days really should be behind you. Way behind you.

Then of course, my guts went sideways on me. You know the feeling. You’re standing there, minding your own business, and suddenly it feels like giant hands are twisting your guts into balloon animals at the world’s worst children’s party. Somehow, this always happens to me when I’m in a bookstore, I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the smell of the books. It gets me all excited I guess. The only thing surprising about all this is that there are still enough real books in the place to get to me. Anyway, I head for the bathroom in that tense, walking-from-the-knees-down-only, whole body clinch (don’t try to deny it, you know what I’m talking about), and when I get there, what do I find? No seat. Seriously. It was deeply, deeply disappointing to say the least.

Now, I don’t have particularly high standards when it comes to bathrooms. I’m not overly finicky, but I do have some minimal expectations. Enough toilet paper, some perfunctory attempt at cleanliness, and a seat. That’s all I ask. The door doesn’t have to latch, I can hold it shut. The seat doesn’t even have to be bolted down securely. I prefer it to be, of course, but I can deal with some swivel in the seat. But there does have to be a seat. Now I’ll admit that I’ve gone into bathrooms that didn’t even have a toilet, just a hole in the floor, with a ceramic footprint on either side of it, but that was in places like Turkey and Kuwait, and it’s a matter of culture, not basic maintenance. At least those were clean.

This was no matter of culture . . . or was it? You know what? I’ll save that rant for another day. Suffice to say that thanks to an act of will perhaps unparallelled in modern times, I managed to duck-walk my way to the parking lot, climbed into my way-too-tall pickup, carefully worked the clutch and standard transmission all the way home, climbed down from my still way-too-tall truck, got into the house, ran the gauntlet of dogs, and made it to my own fully functioning bathroom without befouling myself. That turned out to be the highlight of my day. A little bit later, I went out to get the mail, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A membership application from AARP.

Honestly, I think Christmas started going south on me a couple of weeks ago when I joined the choir at church. I’m not much of a singer, although I can do a pretty good Neil Young or Tom Petty, but they said they needed help, so I said why not. Now I wake up every morning with those horrible songs running through my head. In case you hadn’t guessed, I really don’t care much for religious music, much less religious Christmas music. It always just seems kind of vapid and fake. All that silent night, no crying, Mary smiling sweetly, Joseph looking on in wonder, Wise Men, solemn shepherds, everything just so . . . precious.

Think about it. Mary had just arrived in Bethlehem after walking, or at best, riding a donkey who knows how far in the extremely late stages of pregnancy. Think about how miserable women today are on a car ride to the hospital to give birth. Imagine if you asked one of them to give birth in a stable, with no drugs, no doctor, just her, Joseph, and maybe a bale or two of hay. There would not be a lot of sweet smiling going on. Not to mention the practical side of a virgin birth. Sure, it sounds wonderful to us, but how would you like to try squeezing a kid out through an intact hymen? Yikes. And then 3 weird rich guys turn up bearing gifts. The gold and the frankincense would be ok, but myrrh was used in funeral preparations. How would you like it if someone brought a coffin to your baby shower?

I think about Joseph, and I think; that poor guy. It’s tough enough for anybody to be a Step-Father, let alone Step-Father when God is the Baby Daddy. Talk about pressure. If he screws this kid up, he’s not going to end up in court. Plus he’s got all the neighbors whispering and giggling (you know they did, and you know we would too), and gossiping. How’s he going to discipline this kid. When this kid says, “You’re not the boss of me,” he’s right. Look closely at your Nativity set. Joseph’s not looking on in wonder, he’s catatonic with shock.

Now, I know some of you are saying that it wasn’t like that, it was just like in Silent Night. God could make it nice, and sweet, and painless, and wonderful. He’s God, he can do anything he wants. My response to that is why would he. God never pulled his punches on any of his other chosen people. He never even held back suffering from his own son.

When we think of all the heroes of the bible, we think of suffering. John and Paul in prison, Peter being crucified, Stephen being stoned (and not in a good way), and most of all, Jesus on the cross, suffering for all of us. It seems to me that maybe by sanitizing and preciousizing Christ’s birth, we do Mary and Joseph an injustice. That maybe we minimize and marginalize their roles, the roles that God chose them for. Because they did have to be very special people. Very strong people, very Godly people, people who knew right from wrong, and good, not only from evil, but from legal. What they did was extremely important, and like anything truly important, it could not have been easy.

Of course, maybe I just picked the wrong time of the year to quit smoking. Bah Humbug, and Merry Christmas anyway.

 

 

Things I don’t understand #3: Harry Potter and the Epicization of Everything

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Movies, Politics & Culture

So I’m sitting in class today, and the professor is telling us about a meeting of the Honors Club that she’d like us to go to. She’s very excited about it, and then drops what she apparently thinks will be the big draw: the subject for discussion at the meeting will be . . . wait for it . . . HARRY POTTER!!!!! I’ll wait while you seethe in jealousy at the fact that you won’t be able to attend. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Oddly enough, I lost all interest in attending at that precise moment. I mean, seriously, this is college. This is where you’re supposed to get educated, to learn about new ideas, big ideas, and discuss them, and solve all the problems of the world, and harness all of our youthful enthusiasm (and I’m writing as a typical college student here, and not the crusty old fart that I actually am. What can I say, I got to the game late. Very Very Late.) to go out and set the world to rights. And the Honors Club (Arguably, perhaps even dubiously) the best and the brightest that the campus has to offer is meeting to discuss HARRY POTTER!!!!!

To be honest, I found it to be more than a little disconcerting. Can anybody please explain to me what is the big deal? Now I’ll admit that I’ve never actually read any of them. I did watch the first movie, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the others. Nothing that I’ve seen has made me think that I’m missing anything. And yet, I’m surrounded by people, intelligent people (or at least people that I consider intelligent) and they freaking’ looooove HARRY POTTER!!!!! (Note. Please understand that the exclamation marks are an attempt to mimic the enthusiasm that otherwise normal people feel for HARRY POTTER!!!!! They are not meant to affect the entire sentence preceding the name HARRY POTTER!!!!! Please also note that I am using 5 exclamation marks, and all capital letters, both universally accepted signs of a diseased mind.)

Why are all these otherwise reasonably intelligent people so worked up about a series of children’s books? Is there anything actually original in them? Anything that hasn’t been done before about a thousand times? Or is it, as I suspect, just a matter of packaging and marketing? The special effects are SOOOO good!

Honestly, HARRY POTTER!!!!! isn’t the only aspect of modern popular culture (and I’m using the term loosely) that I don’t understand. Take the Hunger Games. Please. I took this kid I know to see one of them, and he was so excited. When it was over, I asked him what the big deal is. He started going on about how new and fresh it was, how it had never been done before, etc., etc. He was pretty much unfazed, even when I told him that it had been done before, in the Richard Bachman stories The Long Walk, and The Running Man, and that they had even made a movie out of The Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, complete with people killing each other on a game show with a flaky host in a dystopian future, and it was done 30-40 years ago. Ok, I’ll grant you that Jennifer Lawrence is a whole lot hotter than Arnold, but still. Why did they need three books to basically cover something that Stephen King (Bachman was a nom de plume) did in two short and unrelated novellas?

Why does everything have to be so epic? Look at The Hobbit. One of the greatest and best-loved adventure stories of the 20th century. Then Peter Jackson gets hold of it, and it becomes a 9-hour epic. Of course, he had to make up a ton of stuff that wasn’t in the book in order to pad a great adventure into an epic. Granted, the movies are well made (as are the HARRY POTTER!!!!! and Hunger Games movies), but that’s not the point. My dad had a saying, “10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag” to describe a situation where too much stuff is crammed in. These epics have the opposite problem, “5 pounds of gold in a 10 pound bag of shit”. There is lots of good stuff, even in these movies, but it’s completely overwhelmed by all the pointless, repetitious, and just dull filler. And seriously, what’s the deal with the freaking Elves defying gravity and skateboarding across everything? That looked stupid, even in the Disney animated version of  Tarzan.

It’s not just movies, or movie series either. This epicization extends to individual scenes. The interminable fight scenes where, 5 minutes into it, I’m thinking, don’t any of these bad guys have a gun? Somebody please take two steps back and shoot Bruce Willis (or Stallone, or Jason Statham, or Jet Li, or whoever’s kung-fuing his way through hordes of bad guys tonight), so it can end. I don’t care if the bad guys win, I just want this fight to end. Then there’s the ever-popular chase scene. Those have gotten so endless that I don’t even pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Frankly, they’ve gotten so big they’re just dull. Everybody is so busy making things bigger, better, louder, (insert your own favorite _____er here).

It’s really kind of silly, but we just keep buying it. Literally. We bought the DVD, and the video game, and the movie-tie-in version of the book, and the soundtrack, and then the Blur-Ray, and then the Director’s Cut, and then the 10th anniversary edition (because it’s got all those cool “special” features), and the DVD’s and Blu-Rays of all the sequels, because, even though they weren’t really as good as the first, and the last 2 or 3 sucked, it would be aesthetically wrong to not have the whole epic.

It’s even affecting real life. People can’t just like anything any more, they have to be “obsessed” with it. I know people who are “obsessed” with this book, that author, that director, that movie series, those shoes, that tv show, the new flavor at Starbucks. Just liking it isn’t enough. Even loving it isn’t enough. Of course, maybe those people need to become obsessed briefly with a dictionary.

Now I’ll grant that when I was a kid, I got pretty carried away with a lot of things. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings were my big things. But I got over it. I still really like them, but I’m certainly not obsessed with them. Honestly, I’ve still got a few things like authors that I get carried away with, and will buy pretty much anything they write. I like them a lot, and recommend them to everybody. But I also realize that they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Frankly, I’d feel a little silly enthusing over a book or movie like a 12 year-old girl with a new copy of Tiger Beat with a fold-out of Justin Bieber (speaking of things I don’t understand).

I think it probably concerns me most because it makes me feel more mature in comparison to those overly enthusiastic fans of anything. Honestly, anything that makes me feel like the adult in any situation concerns me because I know how phenomenally immature I really am.

I just don’t understand.

 

Michigan Renaissance Festival: A little slice of Heaven?

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture, Religion, Wives

Last month my wife, the lovely and no-longer-dying Jess, and I went up to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, Michigan. I’ve got to admit, I approached the whole thing with significantly less enthusiasm than curiosity. Neither Jess nor I are into that sort of thing. We only went because it was an opportunity to hang out with her sister and her boyfriend, who are into that whole thing.

My initial impression was, I’ll admit, kind of judgmental. Anachronisms abounded. There were pirates with Ray-Bans, elves with cameras, Vikings with laptops, a couple of noblemen on scooters, and of course everyone had a cell phone.

As far as I can recall, the Renaissance was mostly the Black Death, art, music, literature, religion, architecture, and philosophy, and more Black Death. It had something for everybody, especially MOOOORE BLACK DEATH! Now with EXTRA DEATH! Ok I just checked Wikipedia (it’s ok, this is just a blog. Accuracy is optional) and I’m right. Art, science, literature, philosophy, religion, architecture and MOOOORE BLACK DEATH! (admit it, you laughed). However, plague sufferers were entirely absent at the fair (there weren’t even any funny, Monty Python-type sufferers).

There were a lot of really cool and elaborate costumes,  but again, many seemed wildly inaccurate if not just out of place. I quickly realized that the term “Renaissance” was applied very loosely. There were (in addition to the expected pirates, priests, nobles, merchants and peasants) scores of elves, hobbits, wizards, video game assassins, fairies, at least one Shrek, an Ash (from “Army of Darkness”, complete with chainsaw hand) and Spiderman in the costume of a Knight Templar.

Also, I never realized that bare midriffs were so popular during the renaissance. They were certainly in abundance at the festival. All kinds of bare midriffs. Toned ones, muscular ones, less-than toned ones, paunchy ones, even a couple of pregnant ones. Everywhere you looked, there were bare midriffs. Bare midriffs and cleavage. Lots of cleavage. Possibly even miles of cleavage. There was elf cleavage, pirate cleavage, peasant cleavage, noble cleavage, tattooed cleavage, sparkly cleavage, celtic cleavage, fairy cleavage, gypsy cleavage, young cleavage, old cleavage, sparse cleavage, ample cleavage, and even, in one or two unfortunate cases, long cleavage. There was every degree of cleavage, from reasonably demure, to the more brash, if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it type, to the extreme one-hop-and-she’s-topless type. Just to be clear, there was a LOT of cleavage.

Oh yeah, there was some shopping as well.

Anyway, at some point, I got to thinking about the world, and Heaven. I’m not sure why (it wasn’t the cleavage and bare midriffs, or at least not entirely). I think it was just because everyone was so happy. They were all just doing their own thing, together. I didn’t see any groups of Ladies in elaborate gowns bad-mouthing the “trampy” pirate girls. The Vikings weren’t beating up the Fairies. There were no hardcore Renaissance types complaining about how the hobbits were making a travesty of their festival. There were no hardbodies making fun of the heavy-set set for showing a little skin (or even a lot). Those who had probably made their own costumes weren’t looking down on those who’d bought theirs. Those who’d obviously spent hundreds, or even thousands of dollars on their costumes weren’t making fun of those who obviously hadn’t, and the ones who either couldn’t or wouldn’t spend much didn’t seem envious or intimidated by those who had. Everybody just seemed to take it for granted that everybody belonged. They were all free to be who they were (or maybe who they wish they were, or who they are in their hearts).

There was a real live-and-let-live vibe going on that I think we could use in the real world. I’m not talking about abandoning all principles and social norms, I’m just suggesting that maybe we should stop taking them quite so seriously. Just because someone votes Democrat doesn’t mean they want to destroy freedom and enslave us all to the government. Most Republicans probably don’t want to destroy the government and enslave us all to our capitalist overlords. Most Muslims don’t want to kill all Christians any more than most Christians want to kill all Muslims. Most gays don’t want to destroy your marriage. Certainly none of them seem intent on destroying mine. There are no gay guys beating down my door to convince me to switch teams (and what’s the deal with that anyway? Not that I’m interested, but it’d be nice to be asked, ya know? Hurtful bastards.), and most of the lesbians we know are related to me, so they’re leaving Jess alone. I mean, that would just be weird.

We’ve gotten so good at making mountains out of molehills, that we’ve forgotten what mountains look like. Nazi Germany was a mountain. 9/11 was a mountain. AIDS is a mountain. Hunger, poverty, racism,and disease are mountains. Obama doing the same thing that every other president before him has done is a molehill.

It seems to me that it would be a much better world if we all stepped back, and kind of re-prioritized things. Spent more time doing something about the actual mountains and less time bitching about the lowering of standards because the kid at the drive-through has turned his earlobes into handles.

Sometimes I think that Heaven’s gonna be kind of like that Renaissance Fair. Everybody (or at least everybody who gets in) free to worship God as they are, as He created them. There will be room for the guys from the Heavy-Metal Church of Christ (seriously, there is such a thing) and the Methodists, etc. We Christians all like to joke (usually smugly) about how we’re all going to be surprised by who will actually get into heaven and who won’t make the cut. Oddly enough though, I get the feeling that when the surprise sets in, everybody there is going to be pissed.

Of course, I could be wrong and Heaven’s just gonna be one big Southern Baptist Jamboree.

Revenge: A dish best left alone

All About Me, Home Life, Wives
Jess and I at Lake Windemere before she perfected her method for manufacturing fish food.
Jess and I at Lake Windemere before she perfected her method for manufacturing fish food.

The Sicilians say that revenge is a dish best served cold. Alfred Hitchcock said that, “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.” George Herbert said, “The best revenge is living well.” There are, of course, lots of quotes about how revenge is bad, but they’re not nearly as much fun.

What nobody seems to talk about is how messy and disgusting revenge often is. I’m not talking about messy and disgusting philosophically or emotionally, although it is that too. No, what I’m talking about is just full-on physical disgustingness.

You know what I’m talking about. When Joe Pesci beats that dude up for asking for a shoeshine in “Goodfellas”, there’s blood everywhere. Actually, most Mafia movies center around revenge, and it’s always a blood-bath. It’s the same with all horror movies, and really anything dramatizing revenge. It’s always a helluva mess. I always think, “Man, I pity the poor schmuck who’s gonna have to clean up after that.”

In the movies, somebody else always has to clean up the mess. In real life it’s usually you. You know when somebody really makes a mess in the bathroom at work, that whoever’s in dutch with the boss is gonna have to clean it up (at least if your company doesn’t employ a janitor). Even when it’s just a matter of making the new guy do it, there’s an aspect of revenge (I had to do it when I was the new guy, so it’s his turn. Kind of a pay-it-forward revenge).

Let’s face it, revenge is a nasty business, even when it’s accidental.

Last week, I posted about accidentally serving my wife, the lovely and currently recuperating Jess, a glass of spoiled milk for her upset stomach. Although she was pretty put out with me at the time, eventually even she had to admit it was kind of funny, and at the very least gave her ammunition to punish me with later.

Unfortunately, that incident seems to have put us on a path of accidentally assured mutual destruction.

After a week, she was getting worse rather than better, so our doctor changed her prescription to a more powerful antibiotic. The two main side-effects of this medicine are feeling nauseous, and vomiting. So, a couple of nights later, we’re getting ready for bed. I’m sitting on the john reading (it sits in it’s own secluded little cubbyhole. We’re not savages), and she decided to use her Neti-Pot (or as I call it her snot-pot) to wash out her sinuses, a practice which I personally find disgusting and singularly abhorrent.

It did not go well. While I’m not sure of the efficacy of the snot-pot to clean out her sinuses, it did an amazing job of triggering her gag reflex. Naturally, since I was firmly ensconced on the fixture normally reserved for voiding the guts, she hurled (and hurled, and hurled, and hurled some more) in the sink.

Sadly, our bathroom sink was draining slow as it was, due to the enormous amount of Jess’ bounteous hair that gets washed down it every day. The introduction into it of everything she had eaten that day did not help matters. Equally sadly, at least as far as I’m concerned anyway, I’m the family plumber, which is how I ended up wrist-deep in used Taco Bell and Oreo Blizzard the other night.

Now I love my wife, and since I’ve been telling her for 20 years that I’d do anything for her, this could be seen as a golden (actually more of a grayish-brown) opportunity to prove it. I tried to take that approach. I really did. I tried to stay cheerful and upbeat about it. I know she felt terrible before THE INCIDENT, and felt even worse after, so I tried not to make her feel even worse about it, telling her it was ok, and cracking jokes as I fished . . . insert the worst imaginable thing you can think of here. . . out of the sink.

I’ve got to admit though, the joking diminished as I worked. It had pretty much completely disappeared by the time I’d worked my way down to the drain and it was still refusing to drain. As I fumbled around trying to unscrew the drain stopper and trying to control my own involuntary gagging, my good humor became more and more forced.

By the time I was forced to go looking for a pair of needle-nosed pliers to try to reach down the drain, it had pretty much vanished. Naturally, I couldn’t find the pliers. I decided to try plunging the sink, maybe I could force the blockage through.

Nope. Thanks to the overflow channel, all plunging the sink accomplished was turning the sink into a kind of puke fountain. Not a good thing. Next, I went out to my truck to get my leatherman, hoping it would reach far enough down the drain to get it flowing. Nope. Nothing was working.

Adding hot water to dilute “things” certainly didn’t help. It just re-warmed everything and got the odor going again.

Finally, I decided that the only thing left to do was to take the drain apart below the sink. Of course, by now, both hands were too wet and slick (on a side note, I think it was probably good for my hands. Fresh stomach acid – softens your hands while it exfoliates. VOMIT – You’re soaking in it. Even Madge might have a hard time selling that one.) to get a good grip on the pipes, so the search for tools was back on.

I’ve kept a couple pairs of Channel-lock pliers in my truck for years now. Naturally, they had magically disappeared. By this time, my mood had definitely taken a darker turn. There’s really nothing like a little late-night plumbing right before bed to put you in the mood . . . for homicide.

Eventually, I found a pair of channel-locks and got the pipes apart. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details of what it took to get the drain unstopped. Suffice to say that it was not at all pleasant, and by the time it was all over, I had to take a shower, because simply washing my hands just was not gonna do it.

By the time it was all finished up, we both agreed that it wasn’t her fault, and that however inadvertent it may have been, her vengeance for the spoiled milk incident was more than complete, that she was, in fact, way ahead on the Mullins Gross-o-Meter.

We decided that we would just call it even, and say no more about it.

Obviously, no cease-fire lasts forever. Ours lasted until the following morning.

The morning started out normal enough. I got up took the dogs out, had a smoke, took a shower, and got dressed, just my morning routine. It all went horribly wrong though, when I headed for the kitchen. I’m not a big breakfast eater, but I do have a glass of juice with my morning pills (to be honest, by the time I get all my pills down, between medicine and various supplements and what-not that Jess has me on, there’s no room for food).

I am, and always have been, a creature of habit. I’m not a neat freak or anything, but some things have a specific place where they belong, and moving them has consequences. Jess knows this and yet she still insists on moving things. Personally, I think she does it on purpose, because she thinks it’s funny to see me standing there, staring at the cabinet, wondering where the damned paper plates are. I mean, we’ve kept them in that cabinet for years, and it’s always worked perfectly well. Why mess with it? But I digress.

So, on the morning in question, I fixed my juice, and turned to the microwave to get my pill container (we keep them on top, not inside, in case you’re wondering). I dumped the a.m. side into my hand and jauntily flung them into my mouth (I hate taking pills, but if you gotta do it, you might as well do it with panache). I was just reaching for the juice, when it occurred to me, where’d that blue one come from? I don’t take any blue pills.

I looked to the pill container, and sure enough, Jess’ pill container was sitting on the left, exactly where mine should be. Well, I don’t even like taking my own pills. I’m certainly not going to take someone else’s. So naturally, I spit them back into my hand.

Well now what do I do with them? I don’t want to throw them in the trash, those things are expensive. I’ve got to act quick, because they’re really starting to stick to my hand. Well, I’ll just put them back where I got them from. I mean really, what’s the harm, it’s not like we’re strangers to the concept of swapping spit, although we normally prefer to do it on a more personal level.

Anyway, I figured I’d call her from work and warn her. Unfortunately, I got caught up in stuff at work, and forgot all about it until I got home. Fortunately, by that time, she was feeling quite a bit better and eventually was able to see the humor in it. I was also relieved to find that I had made the right decision about not just swallowing them. Although most of the stuff we’re on is pretty much identical (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) I’m pretty sure her estrogen pill would not have done me a bit of good.

So all’s well that ends well, I guess. I just hope we can finally break the cycle of disgusting and inadvertent revenge.

Darth Vader, Swamp Things, and the Short-Winded Valkyrie of Vengeance

All About Me, Home Life, Wives
Jess and I in happier times.
Jess and I in happier times.

Well, I’ve done it again.

First, a little background: last weekend my wife, the currently respiratorially impaired and humor deficient Jess Vader (or should that be Darth Jess?) caught a cold which quickly turned into bronchitis. She is not a happy camper. Just getting off the couch wipes her out. Her breathing makes noises that you would never guess had any connection with the passage of air.

Most of the time, her breathing sounds like a rock crusher crossed with an espresso machine, but then it will change and sound like somebody slowly letting the air out of balloon. The other night, we were watching tv, and I could swear that there was a dog howling in pain behind our house. I muted the tv to listen, and the noise stopped. I started the tv up again, and the noise started up again. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, or if there was something wrong with the tv, or if there really was a dog in terrible trouble.

I paused the tv a couple more times to listen, and was on the verge of getting up to go outside to look for Ralph, the stray dog who’s lived with us for the last 7 or so years, when I realized that the noise was Jess breathing. Every time I’d stop the tv to listen, she’d hold her breath to listen too.

Well, I was glad that Ralph was ok, but I was really starting to worry about Jess.

Anyway, with her being so miserable, she was obviously not in the mood to do any cooking, so I’ve been trying to help out by picking up carryout on the way home. Now, I’ll grant you that I’m probably the last person that anybody would (or should) choose to cater their imminent demise, but I do my best.

To be honest, cockroaches would probably die of malnutrition if they had to rely on me. Even Keith Richards probably eats healthier than I do when left to my own devices, but hey, at least I try.

Well, 2 or 3 days into her affliction, Jess was struck down even further, this time by heartburn and indigestion (in retrospect, we probably should have seen this coming), rendering her even more miserable and dejected. However, not being the sort to be kept down for long by anything, and realizing that after 3 days she was approaching a level of personal hygiene that even the French would turn up their noses at (in her own words, she was feeling “kinda swampy”), she announced that she was going to take a shower.

I pulled her up off the couch and kept her upright while she adjusted to verticality, and then went into the den to play Spider Solitaire. I heard her rattling around in the kitchen, so I looked over to see what she was doing. She was pouring a glass of milk. I asked if she was ok (I’m not completely insensitive), and she said “yeah, just some indigestion,” so I went back to my game (she’s a strong, independent woman, and I’m far too considerate to take that away from her. Besides, I was winning.).

I will admit (at the price of sounding condescending) that I left the sound off so I could hear her if she fell or called for help (I’m not a monster, you know). After a successful hosing down of all her bits, apparently her stomach was still bothering her, so she called for me, and I immediately sprang into action. She asked me to fix her a glass of milk to calm her stomach, so I went to the kitchen to get it. I got a glass, and was going to the fridge for the milk, when I noticed that she’d left the milk on the counter.

Now, that seemed a little irresponsible, even to me. I just figured that she wasn’t feeling good, and probably thought she’d need some more. So I poured the rest of the milk into the glass, and carried it in to her. She drank it, and I took the glass and set it aside.

I asked if there was anything else I could do for her, and she asked if I would comb out her hair for her. Well, I’ll try anything for her. At this point, I should explain that Jess has lovely long, very thick hair. At this time, of course, it was also very wet and looked awfully tangled to me. I grabbed the comb, and told her I’d try not to hurt her too much (give me a break. Most of the time, I don’t even comb my own hair. I just run my hand through it and trap it under a hat until it gives up and lays down.)

She stopped me before I even got started, and told me to squirt some hair goo onto my hands and to rub it into her hair. Well, I did it, and I have to say, it looked even more bedraggled and tangled than before. I got about halfway through the 1st swipe with the comb, and she took it away from me.

Then, she sort of burped (you know, the kind of inverted burp you do when you’re trying to keep your insides inside), and asked me if I’d gotten the milk out of the fridge. I said, “No, you left the milk on the counter. You know that’s not a good idea, don’t you?”

Wrong answer. Then, after she’d told me that the milk on the counter had gone bad, and that there was a jug of fresh milk in the refrigerator, I compounded the error by asking her why didn’t she dump the bad milk out. She explained (unnecessarily heatedly, I felt) that she hadn’t bothered to dump it out because SHE FELT LOUSY.

Well, you know me (or at least you’re starting to), I’m not one to stop while I’m only a little bit behind, so I laughed and asked her why she didn’t at least tell me about it. Again, she curtly explained that it was because SHE DIDN”T THINK I”D BE DUMBASS ENOUGH TO NOT LOOK IN THE FRIDGE FOR MILK! 

Well, while it’s nice to know that after 20 years of marriage I can still surprise her, I was kind of hurt by her tone. I mean, that’s just, . . . well, mean, you know? Think about it. Here I was, at her beck and call (more or less), even willing to leave a winning streak at Spider Solitaire (and if you’ve ever played, you know how rare that is), existing only to serve her. When you think about it, my only real mistake was in being overly eager to service her needs quickly, and she acts like that. Women (even the best of them, which Jess certainly is) can be so ungrateful.

On the other hand, after having her hair wadded into industrial-strength tangles and pulled and then being served bad milk on an upset stomach when she can’t breathe well enough to comb her own hair, I suppose I’ll just have to be the bigger man and forgive her. She’s a lucky, lucky girl. And I, of course, am a lucky guy, especially in that, in her current condition, my bronchial Goddess of Grumpiness, my wheezy Valkyrie of Vengeance, my not-quite-so-sweet-as-usual little Swamp Thing can’t draw enough breath to even the score.

God help me the next time I get sick.

Choices: Things I don’t understand #2

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture
Thanks to Kim Waggoner for the picture!
Thanks to Kim Waggoner for the picture!

I hate going to the store, especially if I have to get stuff from the pharmacy section or anything health-related. There are just too many choices. It’s way too complicated. I mean, just trying to buy toothpaste is enough to induce an anxiety attack.

When I was a kid, you had Crest or Colgate, and, for the late 70’s equivalent of a metro-sexual, Aqua Fresh. That’s it. We were Crest people, so if we needed toothpaste, all mom had to decide was what size tube to get. It was simple. Those days are over. The last time I went to buy toothpaste, my brain just about melted.

Which Crest should I get? Should I get the one with baking soda, or the one with extra whitening? Ooooh, maybe I should get the one with Scope. Or how about the tarter control one? That sounds pretty important. But wait, there’s the Crest Total. Maybe that one would cover all the bases. Of course, if it’s so “total” then why do they need all those other ones? My teeth could all fall out waiting for me to decide.

I decided to get some toothpaste for my wife, the orally hygienic and toothsome Jess. She grew up in a Colgate house, and refuses to recognize the superiority of Crest, so I humor her. Unfortunately, it’s the same with Colgate. 42 varieties.

Ok, I decided, you’re a smart guy, reason it out. . .

Turns out, I’m not that smart. I know, compare the ingredients. Nope, they’re all pretty much identical, and (I’m not too proud to admit), I have no idea what any of them are, or what they do.

Finally, I just closed my eyes, and grabbed one of Crest and one of Colgate, regardless of their purported properties.

It’s the same thing with everything these days. Toothpaste, shampoo, soap, shaving cream, mouthwash, toothbrushes. Even razor blades. Should I get the old twin blade razor, or go for the 6-blade “Decapitator” model?

Why should I have to know what kind of hair I have before I can buy shampoo? Is my hair dry or oily, or frizzy? It really depends on the time of day, doesn’t it? About mid-morning, it’s dry. Towards evening, I guess it’s getting kind of oily (especially on weekends when showers are on more of an as really needed, or as I like to put it, European basis. You know you’re like that too). If I just woke up, it’s definitely frizzy. Do I have problems with split ends? I don’t really even know what split ends are, but it sounds painful.

I don’t want to have to think about what kind of skin I’ve got. I’m not that sensitive (although if I were, there are about 40 “different” soaps for it). I just want soap that will get the dirt off of me.

Who cares what the shaving cream smells like? I don’t know that I want eucalyptus in my shaving cream. I just want to be able to scrape the hair off without losing too much hide. Is that too much to ask?

God help you if you get a cold. There are 10 different types of every cold remedy, no single one of which actually covers all your symptoms. It’s ridiculous.

Even generics have jumped on the choice bandwagon. I remember when generics first came out. Just plain old white containers with labels like “green beans”, or “toothpaste” or even “beer”. Not anymore. Even generics have brand names like “Equate” and just as many choices as the brand names.

This kind of stuff can really get to you when taken on an individual basis, but think about the trauma of a single guy at the store. He makes all his selections, then spends some time cruising up and down, looking for the line with the cutest cashier (you know you do it), waits in line behind all the other guys, puts his purchases on the conveyor belt, flashes her his most winning smile, and, just as she starts to scan his items, he realizes that he’s bought soap for sensitive skin, shampoo for oily hair, shaving cream that smells like a field of daisies in Australia, toothpaste for sensitive teeth, extra-strength mouthwash, and a pink shower puff (I thought it was light red!).

Not only does he look like he’s preparing for a remake of the end of “Blazing Saddles”, but it totally contradicts the manly look he’s so carefully calculated with his Realtree camouflage pants and “Who Farted” t-shirt. Plus, it’s all “Equate” brand stuff. Sure, it looks like brand-name packaging, but they’re not fooling her. This dude is broke. This dude is never going to get a date.

Don’t get me wrong, I like choices in some things, even most things. Pizza toppings? The more the merrier. Ice cream flavors? Bring it on. Books, movies, music, tv, news outlets, any number of things really. I’m all about having choices.

Unfortunately, when it comes to choices I like, they seem to actually be diminishing. Movies and TV shows are becoming more and more the same. Endless car chases, fight scenes that go on so long you don’t even hit pause to go to the bathroom, fart jokes, inappropriate behavior from children, foul-mouthed women, gratuitous nudity (particularly male. When did that start seeming like a good idea?), CGI characters, bottomless gun magazines, and stuff blowing up (mind you, I’m not saying all this stuff is bad, just unimaginative. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which of these I don’t mind). And let’s not forget all those stupid, cookie cutter romantic comedies (does Jennifer Aniston really need that much work?).

Some film-makers have abandoned all pretense at originality. Do we really need 12 “Fast and Furious” movies, or 7 “Transformers”? Anyone who’s seen it knows that the world would be a better place with one less “Die Hard” movie. How many knock-offs of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “CSI”, or “Law & Order” before TV reaches critical mass and collapses into a black hole under the weight of all that accumulated apathy (and yes, I realize that looking at it from a physics point of view, that sentence probably made no sense at all. Get over it, I’m a writer, not a physics guy, and you’ve got to admit, it sounds good).

It’s the same for books, music, etc. For every truly original writer like Joe R. Lansdale or Christopher Moore making due with little more than a cult following, there are a dozen John Grisham or Tom Clancy knockoffs topping the best-sellers lists, and getting movie deals. It’s kind of depressing, really.

It seems like I spend way too much time having to make choices that really don’t make any difference to me, and like the choices I spend time on because they do matter to me turn out to be pointless. I just don’t understand.

Things I don’t understand #1: Tattoos

All About Me, Culture, Politics & Culture

Hi there, and welcome back to my blog. This is the 1st in an ongoing series that will examine things I don’t understand, and why I don’t understand them. I find as I get older, the list of things I don’t understand gets longer and longer, so this may be a lengthy series. I want to say here at the outset, that I’m not meaning to condemn or judge anyone, because I’m just as guilty as anyone about a lot of these. If, at some point, I do want to condemn or judge anyone (and lets face it, I probably won’t be able to help myself), I’ll try to make it pretty obvious. Enjoy!

Things I don’t understand #1: Tattoos

I just don’t understand. I’ve known a lot of people with tattoos, in fact, many of my favorite people have them. And I’m not talking about the “normal” military tattoos. Those I understand. I even kind of understand prison tattoos or those Russian mob tattoos. I personally think they’re kind of like walking around with a billboard saying, “Attention police personell! I am a criminal! Make sure you keep an eye on me!!!,” but, you know, to each his own. At the very least, those tattoos have some actual significance.

What I’m talking about is the tattoos all these young kids (and some not so young) are getting. Like tribal tattoos. It’s one thing if you’re an actual member of an actual tribe, and that’s your tribe’s thing, or you’re an actual 7th century Celtic warrior, but most of the people who I’ve seen with them should be getting a wasp as a tribal tattoo. If I was a guessing man (and I am), I’d guess that very few of them could even trace their geneology back more than two generations.

I looked up tribal tattoos on the interweb, just to make sure I was talking about what I thought I was talking about. Yep, I was. You know what I’m talking about, those twisty, cur-le-que ones with all the pointy bits. I looked up some sites to see what they meant. I didn’t get much information on what they actually mean, but I did find out that they’re supposed to make you look valiant, courageous, tough, fertile (who would want to advertise that?), religious, and (this is my favorite one) ethnic.

For more info on tribal tattoo meanings, here’s a place to start. http://stylesatlife.com/articles/best-tribal-tattoo-designs/

I thought you were what made you look ethnic. I mean, look at me. I don’t need a tattoo to let people know what tribe I’m a part of. I’m obviously a member of the Doughboy tribe. I don’t need a tattoo to warn people that I belong to a dangerous tribe. It’s pretty obvious that there are tons of us. So watch what you say.

Then there’s the universally-acknowledged stupidity of getting your boyfriend/girlfriend’s name tattooed on yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody that thought that was a good idea. Especially people who’ve had it done. And yet, people just keep on doing it. I’ll also add in getting any band name, celebrity’s name or face and things like that into this category. Let’s face it, most of the people who get these tattoos have trouble committing to a game system for more than a year, but “I’m gonna love you forever!!!,” or they’re gonna love Dale Earnhart Jr. forever, or Justin Bieber, or Green Day. Too obvious product placement in a movie or TV show annoys me, but it’s big money, so I can understand why they do it. I just don’t understand why someone would pay to do that to themself.

I also don’t get the “it expresses who I am on the inside, the real me” tattoo. Seriously? On the inside, the real you is a unicorn? Are you saying you don’t really exist? The same applies for the innumerable tattoos of teddy bears, kittens, dolphins, roses, skulls, lions, sharks, etc. A tattoo isn’t going to make you cute, or cuddly, or sensitive. It’s certainly not going to make you a badass. Most of the real badasses I’ve ever known, you never knew they were a badass until it was too late (for you, that is).

If a tattoo could make you something you’re not, then I’d just get two full-length tattoos of skinny guys and be thin siamese twins. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about losing weight anymore.

Or how about the broken heart tattoo? Now I’ll admit I’ve done a lot of stupid things, romantically speaking, but, to tell the truth, some of the people I was doing those stupid things with had broken heart tattoos, and it didn’t seem to slow them down. I get all the reminders I need of the stupid things I’ve done by just looking in the mirror (here’s a hint for all of you recently broken-hearted: you never forget. The best you can do is get over it, and don’t do it again. A tattoo isn’t gonna help with that.)

Tramp stamps are pretty much incomprehensible to me. Why get a tattoo that you can’t even see? How do you even know they gave you what you want until it’s too late? I suppose some think it’s sexy. I’ll even concede that on some women, it is, but honestly, I’d think it would ultimately just be distracting.

When it comes to kids, the worst is the “I’m gonna piss off mom or dad” tattoo. Kids do a lot of stupid things to piss off their parents. Besides tattoos, They do all kinds of weird stuff with their hair, they get their ears, noses, lips, tongues, eyebrows, and pretty much anything else that you can shove a needle through pierced, etc., and all of those things work equally well. The only difference is hair will grow out. Earrings and piercings come out. They’ll piss your folks off, but won’t keep you from getting a good job later.

I know tattoos are becoming more and more popular all the time. There are magazines and even TV shows devoted to them. Like I said, most of my favorite people in the world have tattoos, and most are quite happy about them, even proud of them. The tattoos don’t affect how I feel about them, or what I think of them. I just don’t understand the appeal. If you do, feel free to comment below, and help me understand (or just tell me I’m being an pinhead. It’s ok, I can take it. I’ve got pretty thick skin, even without a tattoo of a rhino to prove it).

Coming soon!!!

More stuff I don’t understand

Like

Why do they put the toilet paper dispensers below the rail in handicapped bathroom stalls?

Why does anybody care what Donald Trump, Ted Nugent, or really, any of those guys have to say?

Why do websites like Facebook, Netflix, etc., keep moving things?

Why do I actually know so few of my Facebook friends?

Why am I, and apparently everybody else in the world, so fascinated with Facebook?

and much, much more. Let’s face it, there is virtually no end to the things I don’t understand.

Happy reading!

Grandkids, Knowing Your Limitations, and the Wayne County Fair Carnival of Death

All About Me, Home Life, Kids & Grandkids
Me in one of my preferred recreational activities
Me in one of my preferred recreational activities

I’ve always prided myself on being kind of a tough guy. Not particularly strong or courageous, but tough, in the sense that I could absorb a lot of punishment and keep going. Lately, I find myself forced to rethink that. It seems that the older I get, the less tough I get, and to add insult to injury, I don’t seem to be getting any smarter in order to compensate for it.

Last friday, my wife, the fun-loving and adventurous Jess and I took our grandson, Austin, age 12, and granddaughter Sharon, age 3 1/2, to the Wayne county fair. It had already been a long day for me, covering the livestock auction for our local paper, where I’m currently employed as the world’s oldest unpaid intern. I got home that evening soaked with sweat and covered with bug bites.

We loaded the kids up and headed into town. We stopped at Clara’s Pizza King for supper, because neither Jess nor I had had anything to eat all day. This was my first tragic error in judgement for the night. Not that there was anything wrong with the food or the service, both were excellent, but it showed an astonishing lack of foresight on my part.

In choosing pizza, we failed to take into consideration my complete inability to know when to stop (and frankly, I blame Jess for this particular failure), as well as the heat at the fair, which was hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell.

Then we went to the fair. When I was a kid, I loved all the rides. The wilder the better, as far as I was concerned. Nothing ever bothered me. I saw no reason to suspect that anything had changed. We started off with Jess taking Sharon on the “Crazy Bus” kiddie ride, just to see how she would do on the rides. Austin and I got quite a few laughs, watching Jess trapped in that tiny bus with about 50 screaming little kids, going up and down in circles. Jess survived, Sharon loved it, and I had no idea how quickly I’d be getting my comeuppance.

Austin wanted to ride the “Sizzler”, one of those old classics where you’re locked into a seat and flung around in circles. Sharon was really disappointed that she wasn’t tall enough to ride. Austin still wanted to ride it, and I remembered that those rides are not nearly as much fun by yourself. When I was a kid, my little brother David and I always rode them together, and since we didn’t have any other kids with us, I decided to be a good Grandpa and ride it with him. Tragic error in judgement #2.

Like I said before, I wasn’t worried. When I was a kid, I loved those freakin’ things. David and I would ride them over and over again, waiving our hands in the air, and trying to find ways to make them even worse. I thought, “Sure I’m older and fatter, but so what? Gravity hasn’t changed. Besides, in the Air Force, I learned techniques for dealing with G-forces. I’ll just put that training to good use, and show this kid that the old man can still be a fun guy.” I wasn’t even fazed by the fact that it was a tight fit (embarrassingly so, actually). I just figured that it would just hold me in place even better, so I could just sit back and enjoy the ride while Austin’s skinny little body would be skidding all over the place.

Wrong.

The ride started up, and I really enjoyed it. For about the 1st 30 seconds or so. The next 2 1/2 hours of the 3 minute ride, not so much. Rarely ever, in a lifetime of being wrong, have I ever been so completely wrong about anything. Austin didn’t skid around, he was mashed securely and fairly comfortably right up against me, laughing like an idiot.

Gravity hadn’t changed since I was a kid, but I had neglected to consider how the changes in me would allow the same old gravity to affect me. I had absolutely failed to realize that the more of me there is, the more of me there is to be affected by gravity (and believe me, there’s a lot more of me now than there was back in my daredevil heyday). My Air Force training was all for nothing. I had thought that the safety rail crushing into me would kind of act like a G-suit, giving me something to push against. It didn’t. In fact, it seemed completely useless. I was wedged into the corner of the seat so tightly that no force on earth could have forced me out, even without the safety bar.

Frankly, it seemed to me that the only purpose it served was to put so much pressure on my midsection that I wasn’t sure which way I was going to lose my pizza, up or down (although if I was a betting man, and I am, my money would have been on both, simultaneously). After about 45 seconds, my neck muscles locked into place from the strain of keeping my massive skull from being ripped off my shoulders (it takes a huge cranium to store all these apparently dead brain cells) by the centrifugal forces, so I couldn’t turn my head. All I could do was sit there with a grimace of pain etched on my face (it’s finally starting to relax), and try to accomplish the near-impossible task of pushing against the G-forces while simultaneously trying to keep all possible exits from my body clamped tightly shut. At one point, I’m pretty sure I lost a partially digested breadstick through my right ear.

Eventually, the giant portable instrument of torture slowed to a stop, and the bar unlocked. I sat there and let Austin get out first. I’ll admit it, I was only pretending to be polite. I just couldn’t move. Austin jumped up and bounded out of the diabolical machine like it had never moved. It took a minute for me to even begin to be able to move. Finally, I mustered all the strength and determination I had left and climbed out, thanking God that the carny had stopped it when our car was over the platform. If it had been over the ground, I’d have never made it down without ending up flat on my face. As it was, my shoe came off, and it took me three tries to get it back on.

The carny came up and asked me if I was ok. “I’ve never seen someone in such a hurry to get off this thing that they walked out of their shoes,” he said. I tried to bluff my way through, muttering something about being fine, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t fooling anyone.

After that, I sicced Austin on the naive and good-natured Jess. Let her entertain the fearless, grandpa-killing little brute. I told her I’d take Sharon over to ride the kiddie train. As Jess and Austin went tra-la-la-ing on their way to the bumper cars, I slowly walked with Sharon over to the train. At this point, I was feeling nauseous, weak in the knees, and was soaked in flop-sweat. Not the usual flop-sweat that entertainers and comedians get when their act is dying, but the kind of flop-sweat you get when you’re in fear of actually flopping over dead. I was not a happy guy.

While we waited for the next train ride to start, Sharon started kind of dancing around. It wasn’t, as I had hoped, the I’m-so-happy excitement dance, but the dreaded pee-pee dance. Of course the only facilities nearby were Port-a-Johns. We had to wait for one of the handicapped ones to open up, because there’s no way we were going to both fit into a regular sized one without me knocking her into the hole. Finally one opened up, and in we went. Now I’ve had to use the bathroom in a lot of unpleasant circumstances, but even I balked at this. Sharon took one look at it, then looked at me and said, “Grandpa, I don’t have to potty.” She’s young, but she’s not stupid.

So back to the midway we went. Minutes later, of course, she’s doing the pee-pee dance again, so off we go, as fast as I could stagger, to try to find someplace where she could take care of business with a minimal risk of contamination. We finally found a clean bathroom in a building about a quarter mile away, where the goats, chickens, and rabbits were kept. Then, it was back to the midway to try to find Jess and Austin.

After searching high and low, all over the midway, we finally found them, about 20 feet from the entrance. Austin had talked Jess into several wild rides, so she was ready to turn him back over to me. That’s when he decided he wanted to ride the loop-de-loop roller coaster. That’s all it is, just a big loop. I said alright, and took him over so he could ride it.

While we’re standing in line, I tell him to have fun, and he says, “You’re coming with me aren’t you?” At this point, I abandoned all pretense at tough-guyness. I said, “Look kid, I’m old, I’m fat, I’m tired, I’ve already had one heart attack, and that last ride almost killed me. You’re on your own.”

Then he looks at me with those big, 12-year-old puppy dog eyes, filled with all the sadness of a child whose hero has fallen and says, “But I’m scared to ride it by myself.”

Well, shit. I’m not made of stone, dammit. Manipulative little jerk.

So a couple minutes later, I’m strapped into this mechanized instrument of death, telling myself, it’s okay, at least this one only goes two directions, forward and backward, and it has to stop before it can change directions. I’m telling Austin, “If I puke, I’m puking on you.”

And then, we were off. Once again, I quite enjoyed the first few seconds, but that quickly faded into a repeat of the “Sizzler” experience.

At last, I was right about something. It did stop to change directions. Repeatedly. At the top. Where we were hanging upside down.

I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Those things aren’t safe. Nothing that does that that gets put up in 30 minutes can be safe.” Those people are wrong. I know, because I spent the entire ride praying, “Please God, make it stop, or make it crash, or just take me now, but just please God, MAKE IT STOP!!!!!”

God must have been busy in the middle-east or something, because he was certainly taking no interest in my suffering at that moment. Eventually, the carny took pity on me, or time ran out, but finally it stopped. Once again, it took a few moments for me to collect myself before I could get down from it.

Even Austin had started to get worried about me. After it was all over, I heard him tell Jess, “I didn’t know someone’s head could turn that purple.” Then they laughed and laughed. Maybe he wasn’t all that worried after all.

The rest of the evening is just a blur of staggering from ride to ride, looking for a place to sit and sweat while the kids and Jess enjoyed the rides.

Frederick Nietzsche once said, “What does not kill us, only makes us stronger.”

I feel quite strongly that Herr Nietzsche was full of what I almost sprayed all over the midway. A more accurate saying, I believe, would be, “What does not kill us softens us up so that the next thing that comes along has a better chance.”

Clint Eastwood said, in one of his movies, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” Never forget, loyal readers, those limitations are on a sliding scale, and slip lower as we get older.

Pine Ridge mission trip – A few thoughts: Okay, more than a few

Culture, Politics, Politics & Culture, Religion, Travel

 

The whole motley crew after devotions in the Badlands
The whole motley crew after devotions in the Badlands

The hard-driving and long-suffering Jess and I got home from a mission trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation last Saturday night at about 11:00 p.m. I won’t kid you, it was a tough trip, starting about 3 days before we left. Trying to get everything packed into that trailer and my truck is always a challenge, not just because we take a lot of camping gear, but because of the enormous amount of stuff, both clothing and food, that people donate for us to take out there.

The amount of donations is both awesome and terrible. Awesome because people are so generous and eager to help. Many who have never gone on the trip have been our most consistent supporters, and many, I know, have truly given until it hurts, and God bless ’em for it.

It is terrible because we have so much to give, and so many of the Lakota have so little. None of us back here in Indiana think of ourselves as rich, at least nobody I know of. Most of us consider ourselves middle- or at worst, lower-middle-class (although late at night, when we’re lying sleepless in bed worrying about bills, or our kids’ college, or is our car going to make it another year, it’s awfully easy to secretly suspect we don’t even qualify for upper-lower-class).

We get as much love from them as they do from us.
We get as much love from them as they do from us.

Until we get out there, that is. Nothing makes you feel rich like going to the Rez. It’s a real eye-opener, especially the 1st time. We pull up to do our VBS at the playgrounds, and see the grass and weeds anywhere from ankle- to knee-high, and full of ticks, trash, snakes, and who knows what else. We see the basketball court covered with glass from so many broken liquor bottles that it looks like the court is paved with diamonds sparkling in the sun, and the shattered, and frequently shotgunned backboards. All surrounded by shabby, graffiti-scarred government-built houses with yards, some weed-strewn and unkempt, some as neatly maintained as any back home, some surrounded by field fence, some fortified with barbed-wire.

Someone once asked me why some of them will mow their own yard, but not just go on and mow the playground. I asked them, if you lived there, and are lucky enough to have a mower that works, and lucky enough to have a job so you can afford gas for the mower, and are motivated enough to give your own kids a decent, relatively safe place to play, would you take a chance on destroying your equipment and not be able to take care of your own kids’ needs, just to be a nice guy?

How many of us when we’re home go mow or maintain rundown public lands, or even our neighbors’ yards, or do we just bitch about why doesn’t the city or our neighbor do something about that damn dump? Why should we expect more from them than we do from ourselves?

No matter how tired you get, it's hard to say no.
No matter how tired you get, it’s hard to say no.

And then the kids show up, and you kind of forget what a nasty place it must be to live. They are so excited to see us, and especially those of us who’ve made this trip before. They are so grateful and hungry for the attention that it breaks your heart and uplifts it all at the same time. They just can’t seem to get enough. A kid will often pick out one of us and stick like glue. In many ways, it’s like they’re starved for human contact. Although some of them (especially the older ones) want to run and play games, it seems like most just want piggy-back rides, or to sit and talk with us while they draw with sidewalk chalk or do crafts, or they just want to be held, to be touched in a wholesome, loving way.

Of course, it’s not all beauty and light and Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood with the kids either. Just like our kids, some of them will test you. They want to see if you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is. They know that it’s easy for us to come out there and fling Jesus at them, and make ourselves feel good about ourselves for playing with the “poor little indian kids”. They want (and need) to be loved, not patronized. So they push you to see if you’re the real deal. There’s nothing like the look on the face of a white middle-class, middle-aged housewife and mother after being told to “go F%&@ yourself” by a 6-year-old. They’ll swipe your stuff and taunt you with it. A favorite trick is to get you to let them take a picture of you with your phone. Then, you’ve got to spend maybe 15 minutes, maybe an hour trying to get them to give it back. They want to see if you’ll get mad. They want to see what’s really more important to you, your rich white-guy stuff or your words about Jesus.

Their teenagers like to challenge ours, especially the boys. They love sports, like most kids, and take great pleasure in schooling our guys. They will often try intimidation, to see what our boys will do. It’s a tough position for a teenage boy. If you back down, you’re a pussy, but if you don’t, are you being a christian? Does being a Christian equate to being a pussy? It’s a complicated theological question for a teenage boy in the middle of a pick-up basketball game. There’s also the possibility that if you come back too strong that you’re going to be Custer (although given the pitiful state of history instruction in our schools, there’s very little chance of any of our kids even knowing who Custer was. You can bet the Lakota kids do though.)

Usually, the testing dies off after the 1st day or two. Often the kids who tested you the most are the ones who are most upset at the end of the week when you have to leave.

This is why we do what we do.
This is why we do what we do.

Speaking of our piss-poor education in our own history, it always kinda cracks me up when I’m telling someone about the trip, and they ask me, “Do they still live in Teepee’s?” and stuff like that. It’s not just kids either. It’s educated adults who often ask this. It’s not just a question of education, it’s a matter of complete and utter disregard and neglect of these people by the entire nation. Nobody ever asks do Hawaiians live in grass huts or if Eskimo’s still live in igloos. I’ve actually stood on the Reservation, talking to whites passing through, and been asked, “Are there Indians around here?”

The ignorance of whites about conditions on Indian Reservations, and about Indians in general, is really shocking to me, even though I know I shouldn’t be surprised. Isolation is exactly why we put the reservations where they are. We looked around after taking everything worth taking from them, and, not having the heart to just exterminate them outright, benevolently “gave” them the most worthless bits of land we could find. At least until we found out there was something underneath that worthless ground that we did want, like uranium. Even then, we didn’t make them move, we just went in, took what we wanted, and left them poisoned water sources by way of thanks.

We cheated them, killed them, poisoned them, crushed them and penned up those who were left, to be further cheated, poisoned, and exploited. We did everything we could to make them helpless and dependent on us so we could do what we wanted without resistance, and now many of us have the nerve to talk about those lucky Indians with their government checks and casinos, and shame on them for being drunk, stoned, lazy, and unemployed. I mean what’s wrong with those people? You’d think they’d be eager to learn our ways now that we’ve shown them how awesome we are. Didn’t we even carve our presidents heads into their holy land, just as a constant reminder?

Sorry, I get a little carried away. It’s been said of the Lakota that they were a stone-age people who were unable to even discover the wheel, but that is simply not true. They knew about the wheel centuries ago. Their whole world was a wheel. The sky was a circle, the earth was a ball, even their homes were circular. The plains Indians even made wheels, like the Medicine Wheel in Wyoming. The difference is, that, while we use the wheel to move our stuff around, have to have the wheel, because we have so much stuff, to the Lakota, the wheel anchored their world. The entire earth was their wheel and wagon, and provided everything they needed. They didn’t need the wooden wheel. They lived in their wagon and it provided everything they needed. They didn’t need to take so much stuff with them because they never left the source of their stuff, and didn’t need anything it didn’t provide.

We took that away from them. We took away their wheel and gave them little squares and boxes, with lots of nice sharp corners. Boxes to live in, squares to live on. Imaginary boundaries on a boundless plain. It took the Catholic Church roughly 300 years to accept that the world was round (1492-1822), yet we expected the Lakota (among others) to accept that it was square in roughly 50. Once again, I digress.

Back to the mission trip. This year, we were a bit more disorganized than usual. The last few years, we’ve adopted the philosophy that we’ll go out there with a very loose plan, and be ready to do whatever work God sent our way. This year, we really had no plan at all. The Tennessee group who usually goes out the week following us had to go the same week as us. They are a lot more numerous, and better organized than we are, so it was decided that we’d just follow their lead, and help them out where needed. It turned out, they didn’t really need us. Those guys really have it going on. We expected to help them build a playground set and shelter at Potato Creek. We got there on Monday, saw what they were doing and realized we’d literally just be in their way. Those guys were good.

I think that our VBS/Street Ministry teams were more useful, just because it meant more attention to each kid. The only part of our trip that was unaffected was the Adult Ministry. Still, God sent us plenty of opportunities.

Dave McCoy, Caleb Carithers, and I were driving back to camp one afternoon when we passed a young woman walking along the road with a bunch of little kids, out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped and asked if they needed a ride, and she said they were going to Kyle. That’s about 20 miles from where we met her. Since we camp just outside of Kyle, we offered her a lift. We figured she was going to stay with someone there, but she said she was just going to Kyle to get diapers for her babies. She had 5 little kids with her, the oldest being about 4 or 5, and it was obvious that she’d set out for Kyle a little too late for at least one of the littlest ones

When we got to Kyle, we stopped at the grocery, and Caleb went into the store with her and got them all something to drink. Then we took her over to the police station to get the diapers, which seemed odd to us, but hey, it’s the Rez. There was no one there, so we invited her to dinner at the camp. We took her out there, and had dinner with her and her kids. After dinner we invited her to stay for devotions with us, but she wanted to get her kids home, so we loaded her down with diapers, wipes, leftovers, etc. and Troy Beckner gave them and another Native family a ride home.

Well, this is really getting long, so I’ll wrap it up with this. I get asked frequently if we’re doing any good, if we’re making any kind of difference out there, and I never really know what to say. I think we do. I know that helping people is good. Putting a smile on a sad little kid’s face is good. Putting a warm meal in a hungry kid’s belly is good. Giving desperately poor people the basics for survival, even if it’s only enough for a day or two is good. Giving people a safe place for their kids to play, or for them to camp while they worship is good. Making friends with the isolated and neglected is good. These good things are good not only for the Lakota, but for us as well.

As far as making a difference, I hope we do, but I know that if we do, it’s only because God takes our pitiful, inefficient, flailing efforts and uses them for his purposes.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to writing stupid stuff about embarrassing bodily functions soon.

For those of you interested in learning more about any of this, just google Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Here are a few links to help you get started.

www.redcloudschool.org/reservation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Ridge_Indian_Reservation

www.4aihf.org/id40.html

 

God’s Mysterious Ways, or Was He Just Messing With Us? A Few Thoughts On Male Nipples

All About Me, Religion, Uncategorized

People love to claim that God has a sense of humor. We also hear a lot about his “mysterious ways”. Something happened to me the other day that got me to thinking about that. I was outside working, clearing some brush. It was hot, and I was sweating like a preacher on Judgement Day. I had put my cigarettes in the pocket of my T-shirt, and after a couple of hours, my left nipple was killing me. I mean it really hurt. Apparently those cellophane wrappers are a lot more abrasive than you’d think. I was miserable, and it reminded me of a time when I was working at a sporting goods store. We had those stupid name tags that we had to  wear. I was trying to lower a treestand down from a shelf, and it knocked the pin loose. That sucker dug in, and I thought I’d torn my nipple off. I was more than a little put out, and needless to say, I never put that name tag on again. Thinking back about that, really got me to thinking (that’s me, I’m a thinker) about creation (ok, maybe not a very good thinker), and I thought, “Why do men even have these damned things?”

Think about it. If you believe the Bible (and I do) God created Man first, then Women. So why did he give us nipples? We certainly don’t need them. They serve absolutely no purpose on a man. Can you think of any other part of the body that serves absolutely no purpose? Granted, there’s the appendix, but I don’t think they’re quite sure about that one. Now, believe me, I’m the first to admit that my knowledge of sciencey stuff is not great, so I Googled it. I quickly discovered that I needed to refine my search to “why do men have nipples”, because just Googling “Nipples” led me to a number of websites that, while interesting, were not really answering my question, although I did learn that people can be quite ingenious and startling when they set out to find a use for something.

Once I refined my search, I did find some useful websites. They weren’t nearly as interesting, but certainly of more use on a philosophical, theological, and scientific level. What I discovered was that no one really knows why men have nipples. No one really even had any good theories. Not the evolution guys, not the religious guys, not even the regular sciencey guys. The closest any of them came was, oddly enough, the religious guys, who seemed to think they were designed by God as a spare erogenous zone, or maybe just decoration.

I’m not so sure about that. I mean, for one thing, there are a lot of parts of my body that would benefit from a little sprucing up or decorating, but if God was so concerned with our appearance and/or attractiveness, He’d have made broccoli a source of fat and cheeseburgers a fat-burning food (c’mon, you know he had to know what we’d like). As far as erogenous zones go, pretty much all the others have other purposes (at least all the ones I can think of, although I don’t get out much. I may have to do some more research on Google). All the other bits that men and women share (hands, feet, brains, etc., and yes ladies, we men do have brains, we just save them for important things like sports stats and Clint Eastwood quotes) have a purpose that both sexes need, and the bits we don’t share aren’t needed by both.

Which brings me back to the original question, “Why do men have nipples?” Was God just thinking ahead, and, knowing that women were going to need them, think, “It would look weird if men don’t have ’em too.” Was he thinking, “You know, men don’t have enough erogenous zones with just the necessary equipment. I’d hate for them to not enjoy sex.” You know he knows us better than that.

I’m left with two different conclusions, and can’t decide between them: Conclusion #1. God knew how much women were going to suffer with that whole childbirth thing, and putting up with men (most of us mean well, but let’s face it, we’ve gotta be a pain in the ass), and deciding to even the score, went with nipples because he knew that if he stuck us with anything as painful as childbirth, most of us would just die. or Conclusion #2. He was just messing with us, and thought, “Let’s see what they think about this. hahahahahahahahahaha.”

Now I know that I’m pretty theologically wonky, so if any of you lovely readers out there ever run into one of those guys who know what God thinks about everything (and we all know there are plenty of them out there), be sure to ask them about this. It should be easy to answer for someone who knows what God thinks about really complex stuff like homosexuality, war, poverty, capitalism, politics, and that kind of stuff. The only thing I’m really sure about is that He loves us, and wants us to love him and each other (if you want to see what God thinks about loving each other, either check the Bible, or be very careful in forming your Google query).

Let me know what they say.