Caustically Optimistic

spritopias flu

I think the Swine Flu should have been called something else.  I think it would have been much more popular an illness if it had been named after something less popular than the blessed beast who brings us bacon.  I think more people would have met this disease with scorn if they had just called it spinach flu or broccoli flu; Casey would like it to be called the corn flu.  We could have named it after an animal that isn’t as cute or useful as pigs are, or can be.  Would anyone have objected to it being called the rat flu or the ferret flu?  They should have tacked on “guinea” to pig flu and everyone would have been agreeable.

I think they should have called it the donkey flu, because everyone around me has been acting like a jackass.  There are people who are incredibly nonchalant about any public health risk that they impose upon the rest of us and then there are people who overreact.  There are people who have always and will always just cough at you without covering up.  I am doing that currently so we’ll turn the air conditioning on so that I’m not assaulted by my allergies while I sleep.  Then there are people who’ve broken out their SARS masks from back-in-the-day and are wearing them to work and McDonald’s. 

I love the opportunity to constantly, constantly wash my hands.  I have washed my hands several times before even getting to this paragraph.  I am enjoying using hand-sanitizing lotions even if that is actually a dangerous practice.  I wash my hands after using the lotions as well because you’ve killed the germs but they’re still on your hands and I have no proof they’re dead so I need to wash them off my hands.  Also, people are not looking at me like a freak when I wash my hands all the time or at least I am not as paranoid about it.  These are amazing silver linings for me. 

There are some other silver linings to the cloud of the swine flu.  We cannot blame this on George W. Bush or the Republican Party or on Barack Obama and the Democrats.  If it could be linked intelligently to the Republicans or if there were a witty way to link this to the twenty-third letter I would have already done it.  We’ve fallen into the bad habit of knee-jerk blaming he-who-falls-between-v-and-x and his retinue for everything instead of trying to learn a lesson from the event.  This also gives us good practice for what we might and might not do when something like this happens again, if we survive this epidemic and don’t all die.  I had a third thing because that’s how I roll by I forgot it while I was washing my hands.  

Sola Sarcasm

  Whenever you teach a concept lessons are learned.  First, people learn what you intended to teach them.  Through the gift of language information is successfully transmitted.  Second, people learn other information through application or discussion.  You didn’t mean to teach it but it was learned anyway (good teachers know how to make this happen to their liking organically).  Third, there are things that you did not intend to be learned and are tangential and beside the point. 

 Today was a lesson in the third power.  We are taking membership class at our church.  So far I’ve learned that after tens of thousands spent on a Lutheran University education and years as a Lutheran teacher much of what I know of the history of the Bible – as a document, not content – was learned from Indiana Jones movies.  I’ve also learned that Biblical Hebrew really doesn’t have vowels and that what the Hebrews called God was Elohim a word that expresses the divinity of God without using his name Yahweh; the word Jehovah comes from putting the vowels from Elohim with the consonants from Yahweh.  Jehovah is a made up word and Pastor spoke of taking your first name and middle name and doing the same thing.  You still come up with the same word using my names. 

Today’s lesson was the Ten Commandments.  Rightly understood the Ten Commandments teach us in two tables how to, in alternation, love God and each other.  Pastor was explaining them using Luther’s Small Catechism.  We would discuss a commandment, how we break them and how that applies to our lives.  Luckily, Lutherans operate Sola Gratia and as we are saved by grace alone.  We still learned a great deal of third power lessons. 

 For instance, Pastor asked Linda how she broke the Fourth Commandment (honor thy father and thy mother) and she asked, “Today or in general?”  Pastor then asked me the question and I said, “regrettably my mother reminds me daily that there is no statute of limitations on the Fourth Commandment.”  Penny seemed to direct the attention of the class to me when the Commandments would refer to cheating people and the Pastor used examples of used car salesmen.  Linda, a true friend, defended me: I would have no idea how to rig a car to work and cheat you.  I am not that clever. 

When attention was turned to coveting Pastor again turned his examples to automobiles.  He spoke of coveting your neighbor’s sport car I felt that I should pipe in and say, “If you’re struggling with coveting your neighbor’s car I can help you with that.”  When it came time to discuss slandering your neighbor I shared that this was the commandment I broke the most often to diffuse the awkwardness about someone we’ll call “Linda” discussing how she broke the one about keeping your pants on until you’re married. 

 I am interested in what we’ll learn next week when we study the creeds.  One of the few things that I miss from University would be: friends who are now pastors, who I measure other pastors against.  I am being conceited calling James, Jon, or Brian my friends, it is not a conceit to say that while some pastors and most of the faithful can recite the catechism, they don’t feel it, that these gentlemen feel it.  I am hoping that I continue to get my first and second lessons, but the third ones are what making reporting it fun.  I am hoping that I feel what I can recite a little bit more each time.  

pepper in a reunion

Last week Emily’s Facebook status indicated that she was having a margarita; since I was working I was able to monitor Facebook with a singular fastidiousness.  I was talking to Erin – senior year Erin – and we agreed that we needed a margarita as well, but that wasn’t our day.  Last night I was released from work early and I text-messaged Erin arranging that we too would have our margaritas. 

This was an exciting night – not because Erin and I were getting our drink on but because our patron saint, Amanda would be with us.  Amanda’s religious beliefs differ from ours and she does not drink alcohol but because were going to Chili’s, which isn’t strictly a bar, she would go with us.  We respect Amanda’s religious beliefs and once threatened to gut two freshmen like fish if they continued to make fun of her when she sang an anthem to Jesus at the school’s talent show.  Also, our work schedules keep us apart or we would meet more often.  Dee couldn’t make it because we call can’t be in one place at one time – the Secret Service won’t allow it in case of a catastrophe. 

I do not drink often enough because I have little tolerance for alcohol.  This is comical in most people, but I have a complete lack of discretion as it is and very little tact.  Imagine if you will someone whose tongue is loose having that tongue loosened? 

Here is a brief rundown of what I remember babbling about:

• Women go to the bathroom in groups.  One time, while on a double date with my friend Andy and some hussies from our University, he decided to make fun of this by accompanying me to the bathroom when I excused myself.  I normally do not linger in a public restroom and I certainly do not sit but this time I had to because Montezuma was having his revenge and when Montezuma wants revenge he not only gets it, but he gets it when wants to regardless of your accommodation.  So, Andy, thinking he was just following me as a joke upon the floozies had to be in the room when I cast out the most horrible of demons.  I know you’re as glad to have read that as I was to tell it because that was a story that we were never going to repeat, to anyone.  Coincidentally, when Andy, the Reverend Doctor James, and I went to that same diner to study for our African American History Exam every – and I do mean every – black person in Nebraska was present.  It was a bit awkward, as it was Nebraska. 

•  Amanda was sharing a secret and I announced that we already knew and Erin corroborated the fact that we (Erin and I) share everything.  We’re not so much gossips; we’re more into information.  We don’t want to destroy you – we just want to know all your business.  Then I shared how James and I, when we’d eat together, had a seating arrangement where we would sit across from each other to give us a three-hundred-sixty degree view of who was coming or going because we didn’t gossip but if you decided to mention how a girl on the debate team had an easier time of growing a beard than you did, well then she’d show up out of now where. 

• I don’t remember the other embarrassing story that I intended keep to myself that I shared, but I will share this one since it goes along with the theme and is a story from University that doesn’t involve the Reverend Doctor James or Melissa, Bishop of the Lutheran Church Melissa-Synod (to which James and I secretly and heretically belong).  There was this girl we went to university with who pierced one of her womanly features.  There were several results to this.  First, she blamed me for telling the whole campus about it but this isn’t true.  It’s true that I told some people about it but she told me about it in Dr. Jewett’s class and as I didn’t know what a clitoris was I had no idea what I was telling people when I told them and told them because I didn’t know what I was talking about.  One of my roommates (not the Reverend Doctor - he wasn’t at university yet, he was in the Army being a paratrooper in the First Amish Paratrooper Brigade), had to show me on the Internet what exactly she had pierced (remember, this was before the internet was common and used to educate children about the birds and the bees).  However, weeks later the girl got her pictures developed of her piercing and Petina and Becky contrived to make me look at them.  It must be noted that Becky was a “good girl” and it was probably all Petina, but I had gone to the girl’s dorm to study/have an audience with Candace of Jurchen.  Instead of studying as planned, the girl with the piercing had left her room unlocked and like the good Lutherans her dorm-mates where trashing her room.  I was asked to help them and as a gentleman I could not refuse to help a lady when help was needed.  Upon entering the room Becky handed me an envelope of pictures and said, “here, take a look at these!”  Bad idea: flipping through innocuous pictures of homecoming, a trip to Lincoln, and other things was the other girl’s, um, modification.  Of all the naughty parts on any of the young ladies we went to school with that you might want to take a peek at, she was not that girl and these were not those parts.  It was a trauma, but also when Amber (Ambre in Spanish) and I became friends because she thought it was terrible of them to spring such disgusting pictures on such a virginal soul as mine.  Amber had previously tried to kill me not three steps away from where she stood admonishing her friends for their awful crime.  If I spelled clitoris wrong, I apologize: Tara said I don’t need to know how to spell it (or pluralize it) as long as I could find it.  This also gives an alternate meaning to, "What's in your wallet?" in our group.  

And this is why I only drink with friends because my babbling becomes worse and worse and I tell stories I didn’t want to tell anyone.  However, given the money and a designated driver I would spend every night at Chili’s with Erin and Amanda drinking and telling horrible stories – albeit a different Chili’s because our waiter was tres creepy. 

rules, regulations, and requirements

Everyone has rules they want everyone to follow and rules that they ignore because they think those rules are stupid.  Driving offers us a plethora of examples.  I think that using blinkers is more important than obeying the speed limit.  I don’t think that people aren’t handicapped should park in handicapped parking but the handicapped shouldn’t park in our spaces either.  I jaywalk like it’s my job on Dixie Highway no less but I’d like you to be ticketed when you do it – especially if you’re the [insert feminine hygiene product here] that stairs me down while doing it.  I’m a terrible driver so I’m not going to talk a great deal about how to move a car around.

The area where I am most concerned about rules, regulations, and my hypocritical application thereof would be in the writing, speaking, and presentation of the English language.  The English language follows Jesus, comes before the Republic, and ties my family and students in the order of things that I love with my whole heart.  Studies in the English Language was my favorite class at University and I would have taken Language and Linguistics but there was the small matter of a nervous breakdown and a larger matter of an oppositional/defiant disorder when in a formal learning setting with my debate coach who was the instructor. 

There are words I’d like you to stop using, “a lot,” and “got” are the ones that run to the front of my mind.  There are a multitude of better words to use when you’re describing the state of having heaps of stuff.  When I teach English I teach two lessons early in the year where we go over better methods to express one self than using those two words.  I lose my religion quickly when someone writes “a lot” as one word instead of two.  Consequently motherfucker is one word, not two and I’d rather have that dropped into conversations and formal writing than other words. 

Another rule I am a big fan of serial commas; you call them Oxford/Harvard Commas.  I have permission from Dr. Jewett to use them as well as Chaos Bean.  There are several authorities whom would argue against the use of the serial comma but the last time I was told not Dr. Jewett referred to the rule as “Canadian” which probably meant “normative in Canada” but I took with the pejorative Midwestern, “not quite Minnesotan” meaning of the word.  I like them because they add form and cadence to the visual form of writing chiefly since my writing turns into rants where I rattle off a list of adjectives without warning, credence, or need. 

However, double negatives and ending sentences in prepositions are things that are not Canadian rules but rather Latin.  The prohibition against double negatives comes from a time before time when monks were conforming English to Latin grammar so that we might have grammar at all.  Double negatives add emphasis to words written and spoken and go well with soda crackers, and serial commas.  I add the double negative rule because it one that I don’t follow along with the idea of ending sentences in prepositions being tawdry.  Hemmingway did it, so it does imply that the practice is suspect and probably crude, but the difference between Hemmingway, and you and I would be that Hemmingway moved paper and we’re reliant on other bored nerds surfing the internet begging for attention, validation, and companionship. 

There are a ton of rules that I get wrong and don’t care about.  You have your rules about the English Language that you’d like everyone to adhere to.  I know I am putting myself in jeopardy of my comments being spammed unto death by people who are barely clever inundating it with words like, “a lot” and “got.” 

If you find her: I am looking for a woman who follows these rules without trepidation, and breaks the other rules with abandon.   Also, a woman who knows how to use a semicolon and ‘whom’ correctly is more important to me than anything. 

 

never touched a frying pan

The other night we went for Japanese food.  I am always torn between getting sushi or hibachi.  The people I am with usually get hibachi and it’s fun to watch the chef cook.  However, this time I was conniving and realized that I always have left over food and so does my father: I could get the sushi and have dad’s left over food the next day for lunch.  Our friend Linda was coming too and she would abstain from eating rice so I would not only have food for the next day, I’d eat like a king.  I was free to enjoy sushi and hibachi.

Whoa, getting the subject/verb agreement right in the sentence about Linda and the rice was a bear! 

Normally, Sushi for me is a team sport.  I started eating sushi with my father when we were another family from church who I feared was trying to impose their daughter on me.  The daughter has the bad habit of talking like a baby; apparently there are people turned on by that.  I always thought those people were called pedophiles but I could be wrong.  I rarely am.  Well, she mentioned that she thought sushi was, “icky” so I decided to eat sushi with my father in order to be repulsive.  It worked. 

I also discovered that I liked sushi.  We should have never doubted this.  I would revel in the absurdity of enjoying food that you pay extra to eat uncooked.  Other people I enjoy eating sushi with would be my friend Amber-san – who lost her sushi virginity (sushinity) with me (don’t worry Amber it was circumcised), Emily who does all things adventurous, and of course the teachers and Laura in Phoenix who always made it a competition.  I don't know what you do with your friends but apparently teachers and their friends imbibe.  I am amazed and appalled at how much sushi I am able to eat.

The waitress had trouble with English and I ordered enough sushi for two people.  One of the advantages of eating sushi with friends is getting a variety without paying an arm and a leg.  I didn't get the bill this time but next time I would insist upon it after seeing plate after plate of sushi.  It was good, but next time I may have to call for back up.  Amber-san, be ready! I can put away a lot of sushi but this was ridiculous.  

Of course, wasabi is an important part of eating sushi.  You mix the wasabi paste in soy sauce and then dip your sushi in it.  I have been tricked into, and tricked others into, doing shots of the mixture.  It’s cruel and funny.  Somehow while eating the sushi someone bumped into my air and caused wasabi to get into my nose.

It was the most pain I’ve been in, and I have been hit by a bus and struck by lightening (not at the same time).  Truly, I tell you: I am surprised I haven’t been hit by lightening more often and I don’t believe the person who told me I was struck by lightening but I am not going to let this get in the way of my story.  This was awful pain.  It was agonizing, excrutiating pain.  During the time it was in my nose I hit Linda, who was sitting next to me, writhed about, and offered prayers and supplications to the Lord because I believed Jesus would be coming to take me home.  I also had a thought bubble wherein DeAnn, the embodiment of my conscience, was saying, “Shame on you!  Hirsh!  Hirsh!”  DeAnn will be unhappy to learn that I orchestrated and planned my menu around eating other people’s leftovers.  You can’t eat today’s sushi tomorrow. 

The best part of this story is that my parents, so used to me being an idiot, didn’t even notice.