The Leader of the Universe.

I told earlier in this blog that I don't tell anybody what my religion is because I don't want to get into contests over whether or not I am 'saved' in the appropriate manner or if my morals are Bible-based, therefore 'true.'

But every now and then on Sunday I get the urge to go to church and pay my respects with my brothers and sisters..  The Catholics come in the morning at 10 and the Protestants, usually Baptists, show up about three in the afternoon.  And I usually hit the Baptists because they have the most seriously good fast piano music that seems to come out like rock n roll without the sex and drugs, and still stirring for all that.

For a full fifteen minutes before the service last Sunday, the minister played a continuous medley of songs that rivaled some professionals I've heard do the same thing.  Then we sang one or two.  I had goose bumps.  But from that point it all started going down like a bomb picking up speed as it lost altitude.  The country is in terrible shape. (True.)  This may be the last days. (Maybe..) Lots and lots and lots of people are going to hell because they didn't make an adult decision to designate Jesus Christ as their personal savior.  (I guess sex, drugs and rock n roll are OK after that, you just say 'I'm sorry' after the smoke clears.)

By the time we got to the part where the preacher's wife was sorrowful about a girl she knew who had been killed in an automobile accident, and who is undoubtedly experiencing the pleasures of eternal hell because she hadn't made an adult declaration for Jesus Christ, I was ready for a nice quiet read of Sigmund Freud and a good cry.  I had an English murder mystery instead and found great comfort in that.

 

                                                         

I have a new amulet that I am wearing around my neck.  (There used to be an Orthodox cross, a gift from a fireman friend in Russia.  And most people around here seem to think I am Orthodox although they're not sure what that is.)  Now I have a creation from China that looks like a round amoeba and is surely 99% lead and one percent pot metal to hold it together. Three dollars and niiney-nine!  Must be having a burnout on Christians.  I have to figure out what to tell people it represents.   Jesus blessing the Flying Saucers sounds good.  It's that big round thing in the picture, not the colorful stringy thing.  That is some true jewelry, a tourmaline tennis bracelet set in sterling silver.

Your religion, my religion, who flung poo!  I don't know what God is, energy, the Universe.  Or maybe we all just wink out when we die.  Hope not.  Can't tell from here.  I know what I call God and I have deeply felt and firm principles about how my God would like me to live this life.  Don't we all?  As much as I hate organized religions, I think Jesus Christ is just fine and led an exemplary life worthy of emulation.  It's his Fan Club who screws it all up.  Ta!

The murky bottom of Catfish Bay.

I asked a woman for a date today. For supper.  At Frischs'. It turned out not to be a fortuitous question. She replied "Probably, but do you know Jesus Christ?"  That should have warned me about something right then.  I told her he was a pretty good friend and great conversationalist.  Perversely she has to pray about it and 'take counsel.'  I am thinking that I am getting into something way to deep for me.  I need to pick possible supper dates more wisely.  Like a nice trailer trash girl. Or a heavily muscled biker bitch. When she got to the Personal Savior bit, I mentioned, in addition to Jesus, Allah, I Am Who Am, Buddha, Freya, Jack and Diane, and Vishnu.  I think that might have scared her off.  She started breathing heavily. It was not excitement.

We had a deal here in town last year where the wife in a very religious family disappeared and turned up later in Florida with the husband of a lady who had 14 cats.  Not a great way to start a relationship.  Married and all.  The In Depth commentaries were attempting to solve the puzzle of why two otherwise perfectly normal people would do something like this.  Hell, I knew all the time:  he got tired of cat hair in his Fruit of the Looms and she got tired of being beaten to death with church, bible and Jesus.  (Been there and have the t-shirt.)  They divorced their respective spouses and are now living together in the real world.  Do I approve?  Well, you never know what you can do until you're choking to death.

In the sixties, in college, we had a group of people we called PK's - Preacher's Kids.  After twelve or more years of having religion crammed down their throats, they were inevitably the first ones who got into the kind of mischief we were all warned by our mothers about - sex, drugs, booze and rock 'n roll.

If you think this is a statement on religion, it isn't.  It's about who you date.  Whenever I discuss my religion with anybody they always want to convert me because I am not somehow Saved in the proper manner. Like the lady in the first part of this story.

 

 

This tiny lake we have here outside my window is about one hundred feet deep.  Used to be a limestone quarry.  Every boat I've seen out there this summer contains people who show no vestige of a life vest of any kind.  The first one was a grandmother and three grand kids, little grand kids.  Happily splashing along in a paddle boat.  Today there were some bass fishermen doing the same thing.

Now you can most assuredly drown in two inches of water, and in one if you're really creative.  But you drown a lot better in one hundred feet.  Kind of like, more completely.  If you get far enough down the catfish and snapping turtles will eat you and save us the trouble of calling the Police and Fire Department.  Makes me think you might get to know Jesus and company very intimately and pretty fast.

Ta!

Two's a Crowd.

                                                    

There are two issues today that I think worth commenting about and I'm going to start with the school test cheating scandal in Atlanta, Georgia.

BUT CAN YOU MAKE CHANGE ?   The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released an eight hundred page report that a number of teachers and administrators in the Atlanta school system have deliberately cheated on tests designed to indicate where students stand in educational areas of language, math and other subjects.  There is a great  froo-frah going on including claims that teachers were told by principals and supervisors that students would pass achievement tests or else.  Presumably meaning they would be fired from their jobs if scores weren't up to snuff.

When did we Americans start getting the idea that the object of education was to pass achievement tests?   During my education in the 50's and 60's I learned reading, writing, arithmetic.  I had it drilled into me.  I also almost flunked Chemistry, Latin and something else, I forget.  Did a fine job in Biology and American Government. I didn't have to take a standardized test to enter a community college in 1986.  I just had to have passed high school. In spite of all that...

I write something almost every day of my life including this blog.  I know good words to use that I get from a cornucopian vocabulary mostly amassed before I graduated from college.  I've used math almost daily, especially in work settings, and particularly when I worked with fertilizers and pesticides in the business of grounds maintenance.  Did some pretty complicated calculations with a pencil and a note pad standing in the middle of a forty-acre field. Sometimes just in my head. Got it right. And I know what the capital of Sri Lanka is - it was Ceylon back in the olden days.  (Now you guess...)  And where most rubber comes from, and from what kind of living tissue (guess that one too...).  And I don't need a fancy cash register to tell me how much change somebody's owed.  I do that in my head.  Have done since I was 13 with a paper route.

I like my way better.  They didn't have to fire any teachers for teaching me writing with no tests.  I learned to write.  Period.

CREDIT RATING.   Is this one of those "we should have seen it coming" matters?  Of course it is!    President Obama has told us and the world that we are still a triple-A country no matter if we only officially now have a AA.  

If I apply for a credit card and the bank I apply to does a financial check on me and finds that I have four other ones and owe a total of over ten thousand dollars, they are going to send me a form letter back saying "No you can't.  You are so extended in relation to your income that we don't think you can reasonably pay us back on time."  Standard & Poors did precisely the financially correct thing.  This country is so over extended with debt it's no wonder Apple has more money than the United States government.  Possibly Apple should run the country.

Ta!

Relationship Locomotive.

When I was  old enough to roam part of the town by myself, trains looked like this. Except for steam engines. I thought they were gigantic, a little scary, and probably a lot of fun to drive.  This railroad is long gone and so is the engine, an F-series EMD (General Motors) locomotive.  It might be pulling a train across the bridge from Louisville to eventually run down 15th Street past my Uncle Benny's lumberyard in New Albany.

The Dodge Coronet over on the right side is a beauty too.  Send one for Christmas please.  Nobody makes nice cars in America anymore.  Since about 1995 they have all looked like suppositories or turds depending on how you feel about them.

I had a conversation with Bee-Bee last night. Pretty short.  She had some troubles on her mind and I asked her if she might want to sit on a bench by the lake and talk about it.  In front of God and everybody.

"Well I don't know, I thought you were going with Jinx.

"What's that got to do with it?  I'm not going with anybody.

"Well I'm not ready for a relationship right now, and I don't want to be seen running around with some other woman's man.

"Wait a minute.  I'm just talking about a conversation.

"Well you know when Flay was going to school she walked in with some guy who belonged to another woman and she threw a rock at her and cut her head. And she needed ten stitches.

"When was this?

"About 1943. 

Bring me Little Abner and a Doctor Pepper!  I think that when all little girls from Kentucky were about 11, some preacher, or nun, or mother, or uncle, told them that whatever a man asks if you, it's about having sex. No matter how he frames it. Or a relationship. (Infer sex...)  Well there you go.  And you wonder why I read mysteries and take naps.

I am going to find the Meals On Wheels lady and help her with her deliveries.  Ta!

How Tom went to the hospital. Maybe.

 

	Hans Zimmer - Show Me Your Firetruck .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Mabel Ruth and I were standing in the hallway.  We do that a lot, we are trying to start a Senior Residence scandal, being visible enough so that people start talking about us and rumors fly through the air conditioning.  We actually need a couple stools and a little table so we can sit comfortably and drink our coffee as we pretend to paw at each other.  This whole business will become pretty problematic when we become romantically involved.  There is only so much that you can pretend to do in a hallway before some old bitch calls the police. 



Anyway Mabel and I were groping in the hallway when a group of folks with speed in their step and intensity in their eyes came down and asked if we'd seen Tom.  Tom Bomb (remember him?) not Tom K. recently famous.  He was supposed to meet them for church and he didn't show up. 

One short, muscled woman with her feet apart in a fighting stance, lugging a huge Bible: "He always shows up when he's supposed to."  I think she was calling the shots because she told somebody to call the VA Hospital and see if he was visiting folks there.  Also everybody else shut up when she started talking. We told them to call Maintenance, and we gave them the phone number, and somebody would come up with a passkey and open the door to figure out if Tom was dead on the floor.  Or in his bed.

Ed Maintenance (that might be his last name) came up and opened the door:

"is he dead?"
"He's asleep.  On the floor."
"He has a coat and tie on and no pants."
"It must have been the heat.  That can kill people you know."
"He's waking up."
"He helps a lot of people, you know."
"He's confused, he doesn't know where he is."
"I still think it's the heat, it can kill people you know."

Mabel and I recommended the paramedics.  We were unheard.   Tim Wonderful came down the hall and asked a lot of questions and then said he had to go back to his room to get his blood pressure stuff.  He is a former something-having-to-do-with-emergencies kind of guy.  He took Tom's blood pressure and said it was ok.  "I think we will just take him to the hospital," said the fighting woman.

Somebody else was trying to talk some sense into a receptionist at the VA and pretty soon Tom came feebly out the door, with pants on, in a check suit, briefcase and umbrella and said he was ready to go to church.  They all disappeared.  Mabel and I stared at each other then laughed.

When the church smell disappeared from the hallway, I said urgently to Mabel,"If you ever find me dead in bed or on the floor, just call the paramedics right away and tell them to take me to Kettering Med."  "But then what would we do about the fun in the hallway?," she said. 

Ta!

Where have you seen this picture before

Friday got interrupted by a flash from Oslo about a bombing and chaos in the building where the Prime Minister has his offices.  It's early days yet but at this hour the police are trying to count the dead and numerous injured.  Including some campers, some of them children?, on an island about eighty miles away. The picture is graphic.  Don't click on it if you don't like graphic.
                                               
The toll will go up, of course. Apparently the perpetrator is a home-grown terrorist who was dressed in a police uniform, who detonated the bomb in the City center and then drove to the island to wreak his havoc there.  The pictures reminded me graphically of the Oklahoma City bombing some fifteen or so years ago.  Poor Norwegians.  Everybody is taking their turn, USA, Spain, Russia, Great Britain. I am shocked again just now, 11:00 pm.  Another flash.  Norway Police are now saying that eighty people have been killed in the youth camp on the island.  I am totally shocked.

The gossip here tonight is about Tom and Loretta.  Tom lives on our floor and Loretta went into his apartment two nights ago and stayed for some time.  I have no idea why she was there.  Possibly to discuss the Book of Moses or have high tea.  Loretta is black (diversity is terrific until it hits the second floor here) and Tom is not.  Last week they were all talking about Tom and how he just isn't the man he was and his faculties are weakening, and he's opinionated. Decided they didn't like him much. 

All the old lady wags had their say ("No fool like an old fool..." ) Tonight they believe Loretta went in to rob him and they are going to tell him how to handle things so Loretta can be asked to leave as a tenant.  Laughing all the way, I told them they were all jealous, Tom was getting sex and they weren't.  Then I walked away before they could start in on me.  I will be the villain tomorrow and then I will have something to gossip about with Mabel.  We both keep fighting fit laughing at everybody else.  Ta!

Blew it right down the street - 2

More on the storm last night:  Actually there was more than one area of severe damage, another being Woodman Drive and Dorothy Lane.  Tonight (the following night) there are 19,000 customers without power and line crews from Tennessee and Indiana have arrived to help the locals.  I know because I saw strange trucks at Steak and Shake where a friend and I went for supper tonight and I walked over to look at one.  Indianapolis.  I fancied that over a peach milkshake and a guacamole cheeseburger.  Which was not on the diet.  Our favorite Frisch's was closed because of no power.

                                                          
I would like to say that the storm blew the few bitchy people here out of the 11th story windows but, unfortunately, they are walking around today. Picking up their mail.  Having cat fights.  It must be the heat.  Right now I am sitting in front of a fan AND air conditioner saying "Oh God!  That feels so good!"  Ta!
                                                

Blew it right down the street....

We had a hell of a storm here last night about 9 or so.  The first time in years that I put my book down during a storm and walked over to the window and just watched it.  An hour and fifteen minutes of storm with lots of lightning and twenty continuous minutes of hail which made a lot of noise bouncing off my air conditioner.  There are some pictures here, none of which were taken by me, they were viewer submissions to one of the local TV stations.

I live about half a mile from the point of the most damage (Woodman and Woodbine for those who live in Dayton) and there were a lot of traffic lights out this morning.  Some roofs came off newer apartments.  Thank God for my solid 1960's building.  I think a couple windows blew out on the upper floors and I know some screens came off.  No dents in the top of my car from the hail, if there were I would have left them there as souvenirs. More hot and humid today.  Maybe more storms tonight.  I have a couple good books ready if the promised entertainment doesn't materialize.  Ta! 

Poodles, Fire, Beggars and Traffic.

I got my favorite and only nurse riled up last night when I told her the news story about the guy who tried to beat his wife with the family poodle.  (The dog died, she had minor bruising, he's in jail).  Nurse jumped out of her chair and started screaming about family violence, God, white slavery and something else I didn't get because I walked away laughing.  She launched!  Well I thought it was a hoot.  If I were the cop that got called to this I would have requested a photographer before I even went in the house.  Uh, watch out who you get your medical advice from.  She may hit you with a dog!

                                                         


The Canada geese are gone.  I think somebody from the new management brought a team in the middle of one night and absconded with them.  Things are looking up! 


And we had a fire call one day last week.  The alarm went off.  I felt my door to see if it was warm (it wasn't), opened it and didn't smell any smoke, and went back to sleep.  My afternoon nap.  In a few minutes two engines and a ladder pulled up along with a Chief.  I am told.  Apparently one of the nice old ladies on another floor put some eggs on to boil and then got in her car and went to the Dayton Mall.  The burnt eggs exploded all over the kitchen and part of the entrance way and the entire floor smelled like somebody tried to fast-cook a possum. With fur.  I gather something like this happens about once every 2 months or so.  Thank God for a steel and concrete building!


                                                                                         

                                                                                    

The City of Dayton has a new ordinance.  Homeless people ( panhandlers to the landed gentry) can no longer stand on street corners or freeway entrances and beg "Will work for food."  Or, "Not hungry, just want beer money."  The Chief of Police whines that they don't want people stepping out in front of cars and getting hit.  Most people really know that the landed majority just don't want their neighborhoods looking tattered around the edges. I think that for every stop or arrest the officers make, the Chief should buy that person (homeless) one decent meal.  If he is willing to afford it.  What you see is not what you get.....

Same deal with the Red Light Traffic Cameras.  Some few have been in operation for 8 or 9 years and more are being installed.  "It is to save lives" say the City leaders.  Oh for heaven's sake!  It was about money then and it's about money now.  The City gets $55 for every red light ticket (even though they don't have the personnel to identify and collect the offenders.  Some collection agency is doing it now).  When I was a little kid I was told that it was a sin to lie.  I must have been the only one they told.  Ta!

Why I love dead people in Iceland

If you're not fond of the occasional book you can feed this one to the birds.  I love dead people in Iceland because that country suddenly is producing mystery authors of some talent.  The plots are all murder but the locations, language, customs, values and myths are as different as a bat from a buffalo.  Yrsa Sigurdardottir has written a couple fine stories with great skill, including My Soul To Take, and a fellow named Arnaldur Indridason has a good handful in print, of which my favorite is Jar City.  

                                                                   

I am having great fun reading these.  The Swedes have come up with some equally capable new authors and there is a homicide in Lapland called Snow Angels,  a land that is totally dark twenty four hours a day in winter.  Or if you want something grubby and familiar to read, go to the grocery and get a copy of the National Enquirer.


An idea for a greeting card from a dead people book:

(front) "This has been a stressful time for both of us..."

(inside) "...so would you please go to the nearest piranha farm and throw yourself in one of the tanks." 


Ta!