no more time to waste

Evil has a long leash, and he is running about like a dog with rabies, threatening to pull the stake out of the yard…longing to tear into something, anything…to gnash his teeth, to taste the frenzy…heart and mouth full of impatience…he senses a time to fulfill, to satisfy.

he is easily discernable to the naked eye, yet so many stumble in the darkness that Evil nips at the heels of passersby. they forget the sounds of deception, these naked men and women…naked in thought and deed…so they are easily bruised at the back.

how long will you sleep, oh sluggard?

how long will you whittle away the day?

how long until you open your eyes?

the days are here, there is no sign that they are not. it is a useless question, to question the times and seasons when the season is obvious. when the sun sets, you call it night, when the sun rises you call it day. how then can you not see the sun going down when it is fading in the west?

there are more than wars and rumors of wars. more than plagues, fires, and pestilence. more than lawlessness about every turn of the corner.

this is our time- we are born for these last days. the time to wait is over. the time to waste is past. the time for being deliberate is now.

deliberate in selfless love

deliberate in boundless hope

deliberate in fear-shattering faith

post-natural…yuck!

way back in the day, there was a short-lived craze where men…and boys…and even some females…purchased and wore military surplus coats, hats, scarves…and yes, even military grade wool. wool socks. wool hats. wool thick enough to hold off a Siberian windstorm at 20 below zero. but at many surplus stores, the latter usually came in the form of these super-itchy blankets the color of a conglomerate of SOS pads.

so perhaps I was feeling a bit nostalgic when I purposed to purchase a nice pair of thermal wool underwear to place on the peak of my waffle-knit-wear mountain in the corner of my bedroom…something to throw on for a special occasion, like during a Level 4 doomsday warning.

after searching and searching for ages… I parked the car, closed the laptop lid, and hunkered down in a fit of reality- – for there was no wool in the end, and certainly not for my back end. No wool socks for under $40 a pair. No wool hat in the old familiar places. Not even a discarded mark-down on the shelves at TJ Max. And certainly, no 100% wool long underwear.

like a weary man settling for a day-old bag of waffle fries, I resigned myself to synthetic.

on a cold and lonely night, I will still be shivering, watching the cars go by as the snow falls outside, as I tape the last .5 millimeter thick material on the windows. and as the lamps alight, and the Christmas lights blink, I will sit down to drink a cup of hot chocolate and daydream…back to the days when the army surplus store sold those itchy grey blankets…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weaker week

In the course of human events, the ancient world was rife with conflicting schedules for the unit we call “the week,” from five days to ten days, with some societies choosing alternating numbers of days in the week to balance the year. In the so-called “West,” it was a Roman Emperor, Constantine, who endowed us with a much more reliable measurement, standardizing the week into seven days….which, of course, made him look like a super genius. Constantine, who appears to have been a wee bit of a super narcissist, stole the idea from the ancient Hebrews, Babylonians,  and other empires….and God.

The average man or woman in 322AD, in the area influenced by the Roman Empire, went to work on “A” and might go shopping on “H.” The Romans were less original with their days of the week than just about any other civilization ever to wake up from a bed in the morning. This might explain why there were so many murders among the imperial family, who must have taken the blame for not exciting workers into more production on “Day E,” and for the shopping day fiasco “Black F,” our predecessor to “Black Flag,” which is always a nasty surprise to insects, infidels, and 16 year old Snowflakes…

And while everyone- including the Hobbits, elves, unicorns, My Little Ponies, Democrats and Cybermen- could rationally argue which day Christ was born in Bethlehem, and which calendar should be consulted for that….and which day is the true seventh day…and which element should be used to calculate when a day is officially over…and which calendar is the most accurate for predicting the end of the world…there is  enough history revealing how corrupted and inaccurate ancient time-keeping was that it is simply a waste of time in the end.

What does not make sense is that the names used for the days of the week in much of the western world is still attached to long forgotten pagan mythology that makes little sense to use in the 21st century. And while there have been mostly forgotten attempts, like those by Pope Sylvester, to change the names to more reasonable and useful references, none has shaken, nor officially changed the days of the Western World.

Strangely enough, Sunday, the first day of the week now, is closest to some semblance of usefulness. Sunday, like Son-Day, the day celebrated as the day when Christ rose from the grave, at least makes a bit of sense. Monday, on the other hand, sounds like “Mun-day,” the Day of The Mundane.

Many of us have to get up early and go to work on this Monday, Mundane Day, not nearly as happy as Son-Day, because it is most likely to be the least exciting day of the week. Hence, it is more appropriate to rename it “Munday,” short for “Mundane Day.”

Tuesday…well, who knows what in the world that refers to, other than it is “Twos Day.” On Twos Days, we know that it is the second day of the standard Western workweek, still so far from the weekend. Twos Days are good days for Two For One specials because we…those of us who must take time to stop into a restaurant to eat our meals while working in our fields…are more likely to succumb to this two-for-one deal as it is early in the week, and we are still hungry from the terrible day we had on Munday (Mundane Day).

The third Day of the week, sometimes called Hump Day, which is not helpful for the chronically single, is Wednesday, which makes absolutely no sense. No one I know says “Wed-ness.” Can I get a Wed-ness that it is Wed-ness-day? Wind, yes. Winds-day- that I hear all the time. Of course, this Winds-Day is the day when it can go  either way- good or bad- being the third day of the work week, and the day when you do not know which way the wind blows, nor which way the week will blow…

The fourth day of the week is Thursday, or “Turzday.” I prefer those who pronounce it in the latter form, as it reminds me of just how frustrating the day can be. Turz is like Turds, and while it is not Friday, you can certainly smell it from here…

Back in the day, I remember the lads talking about “getting fried.” Well, if you have a really terrific job, you don’t have such pathetic days. But if your job is a pile of Turds, Fry-day is the day you either eat all the fried chicken, chickfry (deep fried breaded anything fried in the same grease as fried fish), or some other ghastly grease-enriched gastrointestinal adventure…or….because your brain is so “fried,”you need to go do something stupid like watch every season of Deep Space Nine until your eyeballs bug out, or you collapse like a three-toed sloth on the bedroom floor…

And then, there is Saturday. What can you say about Saturday? Nothing bad, surely. It is a good day to relax from all the hectic work days. Some of us do have to work on Saturdays, but even then, there is something uniquely pleasing about Saturday that says to us that it is a good day to sit at some time. So, Saturday is not too far off from Sat-ur-day, or sit down and do nothing so stressful as what was done the previous five days. But then again, some of us do not have this freedom.

And that is a shame. There should be some kind of freedom to call a day what you will, as long as somebody out there relates to the idea. So, Turds Day might be more popular in Ireland than in the USA, where it is more like to be The Day After Hump Day, or Humpless Day, which is not good for just about anyone.

While there is currently no mass movement to change the names of the days of the week…this post should inspire you to come up with your own ideas for new names for the days of the week. After all, how long is the western world going to be writing “Wednesday,” when practically nobody pronounces it that way?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a sad little trip to dramaville

the last time i did my laundry, i was assaulted by a soap opera. that is because the screen overpowered the sound of washers, dryers, and ringing cellphones…

three transients washed their clothes. one emptied two duffle bags. another, who sort of resembled Morgan Freeman, switched his washed clothes into a corner dryer. an older-looking blonde played with an electronic device, ignoring reality. i leaned back against “my” washer and stared at the screen above the “dead washer” wall…

“Like sands through the hourglass…”

and then, like a never ending groundhog day movie, the sands slipped through the hourglass, changing sides…but never filling. sort of like being caught in a sad little adventure in dramaville…with everlasting reruns.

and unfortunately, it reflects a great portion of society today, at least in America.

everywhere i look, someone is texting someone about some little sad event or comment, often without thinking of the consequences…in their cars (get off the road, please!), at work, at the grocery (careful with that carriage/cart/buggy), at the restaurant, and even at the laundromat. it is a sad commentary of the state of social affairs when a vast tidal wave of texting drama queens and drama kings flood cyberspace with potty mouth messages, accusations (remember, satan is called “the accuser”) and verbage resembling voracious verbal diarrhea. it sickens me like that free flowing illness, and makes me wonder why so many brain dead idiots have succumbed to such reckless behavior.

it is obvious that it stems from so great a mass of sin…so prevalent in this western world that behavior considered psychologically unstable just thirty years ago (and since the beginning of time) is hailed as welcome in a sick, decaying society.

in fact, i remember the days when we were not allowed to watch soap operas because they were “filthy.” yet today, if you watch one…apart from bad script writing or acting, many of the characters pale in comparison to the lives of our drama kings and queens.

my question is: what is going to take to wake up the drama-infatuated from their dysfunctional lives?

 

 

 

 

 

sexy but wholesome…

whenever i hear the word “pony tails,” or “pig tails,” i can imagine a convention full of stiff tailed girls converging on some grand Beauty and Hair Styling Convention, all energized like Monster-induced energizer bunny-women. and somewhere in that male-fantasy-dream, a spunky looking farm-bred castaway would lead the others to a hall where everyone would sit down, introduce themselves, and begin an endless discussion on the massive task of their morning hair preparation rituals. But after a few hours of this endless chatter, the poster child of all pigtails would emerge…like Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 woman, without signs of aging, as beautiful as she was in black and white back…or color…in 1967, and in the era of the rerun, when I watched…

as a child growing into a boy with hormones. No one could rock my world like Mary Ann.

not even Ginger.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love all gingers…even Ginger Beer, but Mary Ann had a certain dreaminess every growing boy could love…sexy, but too wholesome…just cute enough we didn’t care if she was really THAT intelligent unless she was sweet to poor Gilligan…

it might have been the dumbest show on television, but we sure loved Mary Ann.

but that was a long time ago. now, as men of the generations that grew up in “The Age of the Rerun,” we have older women we are supposed to get excited about.

well, i don’t know about you, but i haven’t seen many that come close to “sexy but wholesome.” somewhere along the line, many women lost touch with the concept of true beauty and opted for piercings, tattoos, and other marks of  distinction, as if that somehow improved on God’s design. well, I think not. God made you beautiful so you can be beautiful. So, why are so many women making themselves look ugly?

 

God made you in His image. What part of that truth do you not understand?

is it time to take a look in the mirror and see if you reflect that wholesomeness? because it is only when the beauty that comes from God will you ever look truly sexy.

 

flappy bird hits the windshield

if you have seen a kid, with fingers flying across an iphone/ipad/electronic-thing, he or she is likely playing flappy bird. not flippy bird, which in my younger days meant a not-very-nice-person told you to perform an anatomically impossible act upon your own person. no, flappy bird is a video game as addicting as Donkey Kong and looks as retro. It should be called Retro Bird or maybe even Silent Bird. No child addicted to flappy bird will assail you with flappy lipped conversation…but it can produce a flabby bird, which might materialize in pseudo-human form after several weeks of ingesting massive amounts of Pringles, Doritos, Tayto Couch Invasions, pizza, and other carbo-enriched goodies while marathoning flappy bird rounds 1 through 9,000.

now i am not an addictive personality. yes, it is true that there were times in the past when a pint of the world’s best potato salad lured me into a room and made me turn the channel on the television, but that was in my youth. now, i am a grown up. i have no time for addictive behavior. and no time for flappy bird.

what i do have time for is a time to listen to one who needs compassion. unless he or she is addicted to games like flappy bird. then, it is like trying to convert a hashtag-addict to coherant communication. yes, flappy bird is so prevelent, so obnoxiously interrupting…that it rivals incessant Beiber coverage for mindless torture and serial hashtagging.

which brings me to hashtags. if i have to listen to another “hashtag this” or “hashtag that” i may just retire to a nice little island off the coast of Bolivia and ignore the rest of Tweetland. I am so sick of Twitter. I don’t tweet, I talk. Real language. Like CUH-MYUN-I-CAY-SHUN. yeah. Like GET A LIFE. If you are tweeting your life away, get rid of your hashtags and get off your backside and go communicate to the people around you instead of ignoring them. We would all be a whole lot better off. oh…and…turn off that irritating flappy bird.

Flappy Bird Update (2/10/14): Flappy Bird, aged less than one year, died of natural causes today when his creator pulled the plug. Flappy Bird is survived by one uncle, Donkey Kong, one grandfather, Pac Man, and grandmother, Missus Pac Man, and several cousins. A mental cremation ceremony replaced the common burial. No flowers will be accepted at this time. 

Let’s all go to the leeching

there’s something Medieval about our healthcare system when we shoot flu-free patients with a “flu vaccine” made from…the flu. It is about as practical as herding sheep with a salad shooter…a hit and miss proposition. Perhaps if we just go full circle, and adopt original Middle Age techniques, we could cure a whole lot of stuff…

By using leeches to cure the sick…

Ah yes, that ever popular practice of securing live leeches on the body of an ill patient to “cleanse the blood.” A practice, which I have read, is “coming back” into vogue in some circles of the world. After all, if it worked for Theodoric of York, it can surely work for us…

and in today’s lemming-like society, we could shove a whole group of (insert favorite profession here) + s  into a line and “mass leech” every one, saving significant time and money, and control the unwieldy masses.

OR, just like a neurosurgeon, chiropractor, herbologist, or a family doctor, the leechologist could provide a service to the community- – providing bloodletting services, freeing the body from toxic wastes, lifting the spirits, and providing preventative medical techniques to ward off consumption.

Either way, we will be making a giant step forward while utilizing the same rationalization to solve medical issues. And since we know leeching techniques do work…I mean look at how maize is leeching the soil around the world…we could do away with vaccines completely since we know that leeching cleans the blood, thereby healing  the body. It might even be employed to treat diabetes, plaque build-up within the arteries, and heart surgery. Think of  the medical advances that could come  from utilizing modern leeching techniques! And…it will make certain poor, jungle infested countries rich! What a brilliant, global idea!

So let’s take the initiative and “tell your doctor about leeching.” You’ll be glad you did….

(Photo Credit: NBC, Saturday Night Live, starring Steve Martin as “Theodoric of York”), 3/18/1978

Things That Did Not Happen This Year

As I look back on the year, it is cumbersome for me  to dissect all the posts and events that filled my life in 2013. So- I have decided to treat you to a list of some of the more important things that did not happen to me this year…

1. I did not get abducted by aliens from Chu’lak. Although I watched nearly every episode of the Stargate series, the stargate did not lock onto my coordinates.

2. Miley Cyrus did not visit my house in the nude. Not sure whether that was bad or good.

3. I never learned what the fox says. I have been in therapy ever since.

4. The doctors did not remove an eight foot intestinal worm from my bowels. However, there were many web news accounts of spiders, birds, tiny snakes, salamanders, mold, fungi, mitochondria, baba ganoush, and more…invading men, women, children, and bacon…

5. I never got to ride in a gypsy caravan, dance with a beautiful gypsy woman, nor gallop away on a horse called Tir Na N’Og…

6. My ex did not return to my neighborhood via a wormhole. Thank God.

7.  No giant sinkhole, meteor, hurricane, nor tsunami swallowed my apartment, my car, my refrigerator, my stove, my snow shovel, nor my elf hat…

8. I did not get lost forever in a giant Walmart parking lot and discover a black hole. Not even at Christmas.

9. I never found myself singing “O Canada” in French, while skating with baguettes, at an NHL hockey game in Ottawa during a blizzard. Although it might actually happen in Canada…to some guy… 

10. I never saw Sasquatch at one of the reported sighting areas…of course, I forgot to bring any beef jerky, so…

By the way, check out my colleague “Gimpet” at repressedexpressions.com. It was her blog post that got me thinking about doing a “year-end” type post.

Amarillo Tuesday

In a new twist to substantially increase Post-Thanksgiving Celebration Shopping Events, a group of the 30 largest US retailers have announced the kick-off of “Amarillo Tuesday.” The event, which will coordinate retailer savings with participation in Mexican restaurant promotions, will go national at 4:30PM EST Tuesday.

Richard Los Lobos, a spokesman for the group “The Society for the Promotion of Mexican-American Cuisine” stated that many chain and local restaurants will participate.

“Every retailer displaying an Amarillo Tag Sale Event (or a picture of a Large Yellow Tortilla Chip) will offer a paired dining experience with a locally-owned or chain restaurant selling Mexican food. Shoppers will need only follow posted rules in each store,” Los Lobos said.

When asked if he thought there might be confusion with the retailer’s rules, Los Lobos stated, “We don’t anticipate that. After all, these are Americans, and by and large, they’re a pretty smart group- most of the time.”

But not everyone is so confident. Dale Weinbrenner, a spokesman for The Walnut Grove Retail Association in Walnut Grove, believes US shoppers will be utterly confused.

“In my neck of the woods nobody knows what the (heck) Ammarilla is. If they go shopping, huntin’ for it, who is gonna know where to put it so you can find it? It ain’t like going to ask for a Big Mac or somethin’,” Weinbrenner admitted.

Weinbrenner isn’t alone. A number of retailers in neighboring cities have dropped out of the event, claiming it is racist.

“This here is America. If ya can’t put it in English, ya ought to be deported,” Allie Huck, owner of Nascar Collectibles, argues. “It ain’t right to have these Mexicans comin’ up here and makin’ us eat their food.”

Huck believes retailers should extend the special shopping deals to Saturday, the day after Black Friday, and offer “American” products that day at a 10% discount to all legal citizens. She would call it the “White Trash Weekend Sale.”

“Just bring your birth certificate in, and we’ll give you a 10% discount on anything in the store- even the Richard Petty Collectible Dog Dishes.” Huck announced. “I’ll be doin’ that every Saturday after Thanksgiving for any God-gifted American.”

And she is not alone. Down the road from her, Bob Barnes, manager of the “Get and Gas.” states he will offer a 15% discount to all shoppers wearing a Duck Dynasty Shirt. “It’s American, that’s it,” he stated, when asked why he was joining Huck next year in the White Trash Weekend Spectacular. “Gotta make money some way.”

Barnes, along with Huck and their supporters are already planning an advertising blitz for the event, slated for “Thanksgiving Saturday” next year in the USA. They have enlisted ZZ Top to do a “White Trash Weekend” advertising campaign in 27 cities and towns across the South and Midwest.

“I’m sure we’ll take down that Tuesday thing,” Barnes said, when asked about the new marketing campaigns. “We can’t afford any more changes to the gene pool.”

But while the Amarillio Tuesday event offers a chance for extending cultural awareness, Barnes and Huck, want no part of it. Theirs is an America lost in a relative time warp, perpetuated by shallow television shows and misconceptions about the cultural makeup of the country.  Unfortunately, they are not alone.

They mirror the divisions among an increasingly weary public, one that a recent poll highlighted as being “untrusting” of not just neighbors, but everyone not like them. This is a dangerous time for the USA; if this trend continues, the very social fabric of the nation is at stake. It is as if the once great economic and military power is collapsing in on itself, in fear and mistrust. In this climate, corruption has increased, and class division has substantially widened.

My purpose in writing this “hypothetical news article” is to point out the condition of the country, reflecting on it through the very American “Black Friday/Post Thanksgiving Sales” phenomenon. I welcome your comments, but only if  you have read the entire piece, and understand the biting humor.

A Day At The Fair: 8/11/2013

This is what I saw at the fair today, in between spurts of lashing rain…