Caustically Optimistic

by oneself

One of the questions posted to me when I had more opportunities to write and more stories to tell was if my stories were true – because they are too absurd to be true and these things cannot honestly be happening.  The other one questions if I am indeed as rude and uncouth as I present myself.  My stories are true and I am downplaying my unpleasantness.

I was at the local corporate pharmacy picking up something for my boss – something to fend off the malaise due jour so that I could remain on the floor while my counterpart was regaining his health.  While I was waiting for the clerk to bring what I needed from the stockroom I wandered the store and found myself in the aisle with the condoms.  I stopped to respond to a text message and an old lady lit into me for being a fornicator, etc, because I was buying birth control and was obviously having sex outside of marriage.  She was just working up a lather in her mouth when the clerk came, handed me the package, and asked if I needed anything else.  I did. 

I picked up a package of condoms, handed them to her and asked, “Do these come in a smaller size?  These are too big.”  She looked at me, obviously trying to suppress nervous laughter and I went on, “no one wants to make love to a loose plastic bag, is there something smaller?”  I can neither confirm nor deny that I made illustrating gestures to make my point clear. 

One cannot fornicate by oneself.  

shooting blanks

Valerie, you asked why I am not returning your calls.  I am not feeling well and cannot take a phone call. 

I’m having one of those weeks where I feel like Kevin from Home Alone – not the icky “I fathered Michael Jackson’s baby” feeling but the, “I think everyone is out to get me – even if I know that’s false, right???”  I hate feeling paranoid, I feel it lumps me in with the Wal Martians at those Tea Parties about the taxes in brackets they’re not a part of. 

I came to this realization at lunch.  On Saturdays our firm buys everyone lunch – we have it ordered in and we all eat the same thing.  It’s always garbage.  It’s also ordered by the office bully – and I’ll never understand how or why under performing people are always tolerated but those of who produce have to have lazy, fat-lards nipping at our heals.  I also don’t understand why, when we have pizza for lunch, we have to have several over-sized “gourmet” pizzas piled with low-grade meats and questionable vegetables but having a plain, cheese pizza is unthinkable.  I’m not asking for my own pizza or something special, I’m asking for something basic.

But there is a lot about human activity that I don’t understand.  I don’t understand how women can car around those enormous bags full of the detritus of the fall of humanity from Eden but somehow exclude their wallet and keys from the mix.  I would never stick my hand into someone’s bag – that’s rude, but I find women confusing in general but this whole shtick of carrying around a duffle bag with apparently nothing in it is mystifying.  My same lady-friends who send e-mails about how men are stupid will comment on this about, “not getting it,” but I always know where my iPhone, keys, and wallet are. 

I understand that when I was teenager people found it tacky that we wore out-sized clothing but apparently they’ve only run clothing for men once because ‘kids today’ seem to be all wearing jeans that don’t fit them but in a way that makes you wonder if they’ll ever be able to have children – and secretly hope they cannot.  It must be parenting because if your son were able to get himself out those nut-huggers, he’d be shooting blanks.  I had friends whose parents had to keep their sisters out of their clothing but I never dreamed I’d see the day when we’d be asking our sons, “Are you wearing your sisters pants?”  I will no longer be taking complaints about how much money my parents had to spend so I’d look like a hobo in high school. 

I am tired of looking out into the world and not understanding it, and I don’t understand why I want to understand it. Why would I want to understand Humans, Wal Martians, and the other inhabitants of the planet? 

Well, whatever, I out performed the office bully two to one last month and carried a quarter of all production on a staff of ten and I think I deserve my own damned plain cheese pizza. 

Yes, other readers, I do have these conversations with Valerie – well, before becoming consumed with worry about the contents of my belly button.  

Mc Rib

One of the things I loved about teaching directly under the sun in Phoenix was the ability to leave for lunch.  We would usually just go to Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and when the gods of cellulite smiled on us, Chino Bandito.  One of the things I don’t like about schlepping cars is all the eating we do. 

Now, we do eat better as we make more money than teachers.  Yes, Valerie, I come home and roll around in my money.  We eat well, but we eat a great deal and often.  I’m still a big fan of the fast food but my coworkers are not.  They want to keep the local restaurants open and vibrant. 

I was surprised the other day, when my friend Sara posted on her Facebook that she had a Mc Rib, when we were thrown into a frenzy to find them.  My coworkers love barbeque and are very discerning about what barbeque they eat.  I was shocked that they not only wanted to find as badly as I did, but also engaged in my practice of calling everyone and everywhere that might have the answer to my question.  We called every McDonald’s in our county, the close ones in surrounding counties in Kentucky and Indiana.  I also called a few in Cincinnati that were (falsely) reported to have them. 

I mean, really, it’s probably not even pork and I have no delusions that it is actually rib meat. 

We then sent juvenile text and Facebook messages to Sara about her Mc Rib eating self.  How dare she bring up yet another Mcdeficiency of Kentucky and high point of Nebraska?  I regret that because I hate to be the tool that is an Internet/Text Message tough guy.  I just want to have a Mc Rib.  Today at Qdoba, the tool at the counter was telling my mother and I about how they do things in Germany – without realizing that she’s German and I grew up there – all I could think about was, “Great, now he’s ruined my burrito by reminding me it isn’t a Mc Rib.” 

I felt like an oldster on the phone telling the one guy, Nick, that in my country when I was his age they had Mc Ribs all the time and it was as ordinary as a hamburger to see it there.  Nick promised that he’d call us as soon as they bring it back because it is apparently not a big mover here in Kentucky – the fattest state where they’ll eat just about anything and the highlight of their life is a horse race that, if it lasts two minutes, is a bad one.  I promised Nick that in return that I’d name my first son after him but Sarah asked me to stop doing that because the poor kid already has a name longer than most princes of minor principalities. 

Please feel free to mail me a Mc Rib.  Just don’t mail it to work, because while I will still eat it I wouldn’t want to have to share.  

$65.50

We now have a swear jar at work, if we say a bad word then money goes into the jar.  Our Boss thinks this will clean up our language. I work with an attorney who is taking a break from practicing law and we were tasked with developing the rules and payment schedules.  The system is byzantine and complicated and there have been, in the two days we’ve had it, at least twenty appeals.

Our boss’ tab is about $65.50. 

Before you comment that it is ridiculous that an adult would need a swear jar at work to curb their enthusiasm please consider the fact that we are a step below prostitution in the hierarchy of noble professions.  I call the system bzyantine, not just because I love anachronistic and antediluvian words, but also because I’ve drawn up rules and payment schedules around people I don’t like.  There are people who will pay dearly just for greeting me in the morning, at least until we have a meeting to formalize the rules, payment schedule, and appeals process. 

Before I downed about seven dollars into the jar myself, I agonized about how to use this jar to my advantage.  The first rule clearly indicates that the traditionally accepted four and five letter words couldn’t be used – even if they were found in scripture.  I did not get it included that replacements for those words when clearly intended to be replacements would count.  I did get included that hate speech toward demographic groups – even when one is a member of said group – included but I couldn’t get ‘assault on the English language’ included because only three of us are native speakers.  I am happy that I got unkind nicknames thrown in there because I am tired of anyone who isn’t my father calling me, “junior.”  Well, if you were Sean Connery I’d let you do it so I could pretend for a hot minute that I was Indiana Jones.

I was able to write in many things I wanted to stop at the office, but I am unable to get people to stop talking about their personal lives.  I have a coworker who is into something I find distasteful and I almost threw up in the trashcan today when our coworkers interrogated him about it.  Now, before you send me a barrage of comments about being a judgmental cracker, I know. I really don’t care about what you do in your personal life.  I sincerely do not care; don’t tell me about it – even if I do it my personal life.  I care if it presents a public health hazard or if it makes me heave into my own trashcan.  It’s the one time I miss working for my last principal: a woman who had an ironic detachment between her own foibles and her persecution of others – she’d have crucified the offending individual long ago.  This drek doesn't fly in an office full of women, it does in an office full of men (exception number four is that you can curse in a foreign language if you're the only one who understands what you're saying).

It’s also impossible to speak intelligently on the topic of Mazda or Honda’s engineering without using the word, “shit.”  I’m going to learn the Japanese word for “shit” so I can say that instead.  I’m sure no one will look it up when I say, “The Japanese word for this engineering is, ‘daiben,’ and the German word is, ‘überlegen.’”  In fact, I can think of nothing else I want to do all day beyond use the prefix über and curse in foreign languages – besides put in eight to sixteen hours of honest labor. Beyond the ability to earn a decent living I want to be able to curse in Japanese and add über to words higgledy-piggledy.  Bubbe always said if you didn’t have anything nice to say, say it in Yiddish.  Hondas are drek.    

It’s going to be überimpossible for us to clean our farkakt mouths if we keep building and discovering loopholes in the system.  Then again, if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be America.  

When in Rome

Valerie is back to work and that means that I am back to distracting her.  This may seem political at first, but rest assured, politics is way too boring. 

There is a lot of serious debate about what it means to be an American, and what you should do to be an American if you weren’t born here or if your ancestors didn’t walk here from Korea via the Bering Strait.  Much of this focuses on if people should learn to speak English – a fun debate to watch as the people who insist upon others learning the language butcher it.  I don’t want people to learn English for me because I will never talk to them anyway.  In fact, I prefer that they not learn English because then the barrier to being antisocial is theirs and not mine. 

What I would like people to change is the way they smell.  Of all the things people can do to make themselves more acceptable, in my opinion, is to wear deodorant.  I realize that in other countries this isn’t the norm and other cultures don’t put the emphasis on smelling pretty that Americans do.  However, we are not in those countries or living in those cultures – at least my nose isn’t living there.

When I lived outside of the United States I will own up to the fact that I continued to make sure I smelled clean before leaving the house but otherwise did my best to blend in with the local population or appear Canadian as much as possible.  I’m not ashamed of being an American but people have axes to grind with Americans but not Canadians.  No one has a problem with Canada, although they should. 

You’re supposed to do things to show respect to local sensibilities when you visit faraway places.  It annoys my nose that – while people expect this of Americans – they don’t do this in America.  There are so many things that can be done to bring people closer together but that will never happen when you smell like you haven’t bathed in months and used paprika to cover it up.  Besides, it won’t matter how well you speak English if I can’t get close enough to you to communicate with you without gagging. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  When in America, do as the Americans do.  Daily, and with products for under the arms.  

 

Bachelor Pizza

Sunday is a “Stuff White People Like Dot Com” day for me.  I go to church, listen to NPR, go to brunch, and then do something in the afternoon that would be featured at Stuff White People Like.  One of the things that I listen to on NPR is Splendid Table which is probably named that because the website was free.  I imagine that goes into consideration for many people when naming things since Al Gore linked up the series of tubes we call the Internets.

For the uninitiated, Splendid Table is the radio show for people who love to eat.  You can read all about it other places but the radio host’s raspy voice inspires you to cook neat things and eat well.  Today was a peculiar Sunday because I went to church and left alone so I was listening to the host talk about cooking Mongolian rabbits while sitting in traffic eating Chicken McNuggets.

Another person who inspires me to cook is my friend Emily, author of the Singing Culinista.  One of her first entries was about making an Italian style pizza and I think you’ll enjoy reading it.  I decided to make pizza as well.  Before you read on, you should read her post and Valerie, make sure Tyler takes notes since it will be a while before I can teach him this in person.

 

Bachelor Pizza, a recipe for Tyler

Emily’s blog exists for Emily’s reasons and she explains that pretty well.  My blog exists to entertain people, mainly Valerie who is teaching partner from long ago, and to do a third task which is to educate her son, Tyler - crown prince of Coo-Coostan.  Ashley and I were anointed his aunt and uncle but since I am so far away I cannot teach him in person and must write.  This recipe is a recipe that Tyler should be able to cook – but my money is on the house burning down.  I say that as someone who loves you Tyler.  Please only do this if Kinley is there to supervise.  

Emily’s post begins with a martini and from the beginning we diverge.  I started mine with a good bottle of Samuel Adams.  I chose the Samuel Adams because there is history between Sam, Emily, and I – also Elizabeth.  We three used to vacation together before Elizabeth was married and I was stupid.  We’re hoping I un-stupid soon and can vacation again.  

 

The first thing that Emily did was make dough; I bought dough at the grocer.  At this point my partner in crime, Cindy, is probably having a fit.  Her pizza recipe involves a bottle of red wine and a telephone but the idea of the Pillsbury Doughboy kneading your Italian bread needs is a blasphemy that may drive her back to the rosary.  However, I don’t feel too bad considering the garbage her mother Nettie has feed me, sullying the good name of Italy. 

The next step in making a bachelor pizza is to spread some sauce onto the dough, unfortunately I couldn’t find any pizza sauce at the grocer and I didn't know if we  had any at home.  My father is trained as a chef and told met had he known I was going to do this would have made sauce or let me use a good can of it.  Instead of traditional sauce I used a jar or spaghetti sauce because it is tomato based but not ketchup.  I am not above using ketchup because I am a bachelor but I didn’t want Cindy to disown me.

Spreading the sauce around was a task to be done carefully because you want sauce over the whole thing but you don’t want it too think.  The other issue I had was that I intentionally picked a sauce with vegetables and garlic in it so I wanted to make sure there were chunks of vegetables all over the pan and not just in one location.  My father was pretty pissed that I used a jar that makes a decent back up when homemade sauce is time prohibitive. 

After that you need put on a good layer of mozzarella.  We had two varieties of mozzarella at home but since I was using dough from a can and spaghetti sauce I figured that some cheese in a bag would be just as well.  My parents – especially my father – have a bad habit of not using the American pronunciations of things AND using a fake accent when saying things like muzzarell.  I bought cheese because I didn’t want to have to ask where it was and then stab my father with a pen when I thought one of the Mario brothers had come in through the pipes. 

I’m not a huge fan of cheese so I spread it out in a thin, consistent layer.  I like mozzarella and it’s important to pizza but I’m not a fan of a pizza that’s mainly a piece of bread with melted cheese on top.  I’m also not a fan of a pizza so thick with toppings that you can’t appreciate the flavors of what you’ve put on it.  Getting the right amount of cheese on the pizza was very important to the success of the pizza. 

  Then I put pepperoni on.  Pepperoni pizza is one of my favorite kinds and I’ll confess an affinity for Pizza Hut’s because their pepperoni is crispy like bacon and not chewy.  My family has several different stories about why we converted from Judaism to Christianity but the version I made up in my head goes something along the lines of, “there is a lot of good Italian food that relies on pork products and/or mixing meats with dairy.”  Normally, I would have planned ahead and gone to the Italian deli for sausage or pepperoni but this was spur of the moment and I didn’t want to break up my bachelor theme by using good ingredients. 

Following along with the idea of this being a bachelor pizza I put a layer of pepperoni on the pizza covering it from one end to the other, not overlapping and un-stacked.  If I were making this pizza for friends or company I would have actually made some sausage, peppers, and onions in a frying pan, drained the grease, and used that as a topping.  That’s a bit cost prohibitive for me to make for myself, I can’t justify the expense or the time spent. 

The final step before putting the pizza in the oven is another layer of cheese.  I went light on the first layer of cheese so that I could put another layer of cheese on top without sacrificing the idea of crispy pepperoni.  Now, it is not going to end up as crispy as restaurant style pepperoni but if we went to the root of why that pepperoni is thin we’d probably discover that its sliced thin to save money and not to go for bacon-y goodness. 

Finally, you put it in the toaster oven.  We have been using a toaster oven because cooking is more energy efficient that way.  This would have been a disaster if my father hadn’t intervened because it was set to cook a frozen pizza – something that mystified us because Cindy’s mother hasn’t been there – and it would have cooked my pizza at a lower temperature but for a longer time. 

It was also fortuitous that my father was wandering back through the kitchen when my pizza was done because the timing suggested by the manufacturers didn’t include toaster oven directions meaning my pizza didn’t need to cook so long.  I was reading the labels on all the packages to ensure there were no corn-based products in the bachelor pizza.  My friend Casey cannot have anything corn or she’ll turn into a pillar of salt.  While that would keep the cows happy for a season or two it wouldn’t be that great for a friend. 

When your Dad uses his chef training (and his nose) to rescue your pizza you can be confident that it is ready.  Cut it into squares and serve with a cold beer, because that is how Lutherans do. It is also advisable to save your sister a piece or two – even though she’s protested this pizza being made – and clean the kitchen before your mother comes home.  This is a recipe that every man should know how to make in case there is some catastrophe like poor phone service which would prevent from calling out for pizza.  This is so easy even Tyler can do it, I did and so far no one has died. 

I know what you're thinking, Tyler.  "All pizza is bachelor pizza," which isn't false but this is pizza you would make with your own hands.  Speaking of your hands, I know where they've been and you should wash them before you do anything with food.  No one wants what you picked up at school or in all the other public places you go before you run into soap.  The beer is medicinal, it's a cure for craziness - a hereditary disease we get from our children.  

 

 

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.  

Hymn of the Lutherans

This post is full of Lutheran humor, if you aren’t able to handle Lutheran humor – or if you’re not really Lutheran (ELCANS, I’m talking to you!) then please stop by again tomorrow.  The title, Hymn of the Lutherans references a hymn written for Emily's forth-coming book, Life Among the Lutherans.

On Sunday, I went to church.  My parents weren’t up when I left and must have gone to a different service (they skipped church) and the people I would usually sit by were also absent from church.  I spied my friend Linda sitting with her family so I went over to talk to her before church knowing that she’d invite me to sit with her.  Linda is sweet and good so you’d never expect that sitting by her in church would be eventful.  It was.  It opened my eyes to the whole church experience.  I have been sitting in the wrong part of the church for far too long. 

The first thing that I notice was when Pastor said, “good morning!”  He is always cheerful and we all say, “good morning,” in response the same cheery way.  Linda uttered it in the manner of someone caught before her coffee.  It reminded me of the one time our Pastor has ever lost his cool and that was when someone told a visitor they were in her seat.  Pastor came unglued the next Sunday.  It was fantastic; he will always be my favorite Pastor.  Lutherans are creatures of habit and we may have started the Reformation of Christendom but after that we’ve looked at change this way: we just want to have Christ and the right to be dumb. 

Linda’s “good morning” opened my eyes: there is a lot of crazy going on at church. 

I noticed our Elder who greets people.  I have never spoken to him personally and I am sure he’s a nice old man.  He looks like a bouncer.  Pastor tells us, “if anyone is visiting for the first time,” and we should be able to tell visitors by who is sitting in unassigned seats, “to please give Jim a hand signal and he’ll give them a welcome packet.”  Yes, I am tempted to give that hand signal but he knows I am not a visitor.  This Sunday it occurred to me that he’s probably on the look out for any lost ELCA who occasionally wander into our sanctuary.  We had to restrain Melissa when she came to visit because even though she’s become LCMS we weren’t confident that anyone had taught her the secret handshake.  We let all kinds of people in: Methodists, Democrats, the homeless, but not those ELCA ruffians.  I am about all the riffraff my church can handle, after me we’d pass the saturation point. 

Sometimes I have to miss church for work and this might have been the Sunday to miss.  It was the fifth Sunday and we do a, “Hymn Sing” where people shout out hymns and then we sign the first verse and move on.  There has to be a better method but to do things differently would be, ‘change’ and we don’t change.  However, Pastor reminded us that it was Lent and we omit the alleluias from our worship.  This prompted two ideas in our heads.  First, I sang the refrain from Emily’s Hymn of the Lutherans for Linda – and all the octogenarians in Belltone Hearing Range – It’s Lent and we’re Lutheran, we won’t sing, “Alleluia!”  We sing thee, “Hosanna!”  It means the same thing.  Linda and I considered looking for all the hymns that had an alleluia in the first verse and shouting out that hymn number but reconsidered when we remembered the watchful eye of Jim and the possibility of being stoned to death by hymnals.  The hymnals are new which would make it a great deal worse than being pelted by the antediluvian Red Hymnals. 

Our fellow parishioners have a bad habit of picking their favorite hymns.  The problem is that Pastor always calls on the old and they always pick songs that have been poorly translated from German and are impossible to sing in English.  It makes me miserable.  I was pleasantly surprised by their choices – they picked mainly Methodist hymns (meaning: written first in English) when they weren’t picking absurd hymns.  The first hymn they picked was Great is Thy Faithfulness which Leah Monster will play on her accordion and sing at my funeral, either that or Our God Our Hope in Ages Past.  The next hymn sung was, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling, which has the second line of, who will go and work today? This is noteworthy because Linda introduced me to her sister as the person who doesn’t do anything around here to help.  This may or may not be true, but I still have a hangover from being a Lutheran teacher.  Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling is also the hymn I like to change the words to the most of any hymn in the Lutheran arsenal.  Poor Nathan can’t sing that hymn without thinking of my miserable heresies.  After this we sang the Navy Hymn. 

The next hymn would have given away any ELCA in our midst: Onward Christian Soldiers because far from being some GOP jam-fest this song gets my ELCA Grandmother out of her seat and marching in place while she sings.  It’s comical for everyone not related to or sitting with her. We rounded this out with, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  A hymn I never mock.

After this we had Special Music, which was so special the man in front of us ripped out his hearing aids.  The choir sang four verses of a hymn and then we were supposed to sing the fifth with them.  For this verse we were conducted by the choir director – which was absurd because I don’t know what he’s doing with his hands and I was a band nerd.  If I don’t know I’m guessing he was just confusing everyone else as well – if they were paying attention.  I ignored the conducting because it’s enough for me to just sit, stand, and kneel when told to by the Pastor or the field worker. 

To ask me to sing in some sort of order is too much.  I will admit that I liked to randomly stand up during hymns when I was younger because LCMS people are like trained dogs – they’ll all stand up if someone is standing as well.  Linda did this when there was a part of a prayer that the Pastor (or the field worker) reads and we follow along with.  Linda was reading along so everyone around her started and it spread through the church.  Sure, it was an accident on the field worker’s part to tell us to but it was neat how we’re so afraid of not following along that we can gum up the service.

This was followed, more or less, by the reading of the Scriptures.  This part is always good because I don’t have to disagree with anyone’s interpretation and I can read along and not do a “running record” of reading errors.  Not so today.  Today someone read the scripture dramatically.  It was like watching a college speech tournament – yes, Renea, it was that bad.  Linda said, “you can always tell the newly Lutheran because we don’t get excited about anything, ever.” I'm sure the prophet was all "fire and brimstone" when he went at it with the Hebrews, we are not Hebrews.  We are Lutheran.  Don't get excited and NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.

Thankfully, this was the point at which Pastor took control of the service from the field worker and gave his children’s sermon (I tuned in for that, they played follow-the-leader,  and talked about following Jesus when you hit a ‘fork in the road’), I was switching channels through the adult sermon (it’s a longer version of the children’s sermon), we prayed (without incident), confirmed some new members and had our benediction.  There was a social hour after church, which I know didn’t happen without incident but I had to deliver a hatchback and missed the social. 

I learned an important lesson though: sitting in the balcony means you’re missing a great deal and missing church at all is missing 

Kianauts

I am happy to report that the United States Government is not the only one wasting tax money.  I heard on NPR (I know, a new-source of ill repute!) that the Government of South Korea had spent money to find a way to make kimchi fit for space-travel.  Apparently, gamma rays in space will mix with the bacteria in the kimchi and making it do something we’d hear from Melody about from a Science Fiction entertainment and kill the cosmonauts and astronauts in the space station.  Either that or it’d do something to the bacteria and it would come back to Earth and kill us all or mutate the humans. 

According to NPR the Koreans cannot live without kimchi.  I think the Koreans need to toughen up but I don’t pay taxes in Korea so who I am to judge?  I just hope they have Hyundai making their spaceship and not Kia; the poor bastard won’t make it to the stratosphere in a Kia and they would have wasted all that money on irradiated cabbages.   Yes that is what they did: they irradiated the kimchi so it wouldn’t have the bacteria that make kimchi, kimchi.  Essentially, they put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and everything was fine.  One of my art professors at the University once said that some of the best things in Art happened on accident and perhaps this is true as well about science – I think he was wrong but he has a classroom and I do not so I’ll keep my opinions to myself.  No, no I won’t. 

I have no idea what you’d call a Korean astronaut or cosmonaut.  I’d call them a Kianaut since that is what I am alleging they’ll be strapped to.  I will delete all the comments that will come flooding in about how people have a Kia and love it or that they’re reliable or safe.  I know that some of them have high safety ratings but those come from the government – the same geniuses that brought us our economic situation, the Iraq war, unmitigated climate change, and a world-class public transportation network.  Okay, we don’t have the last one but I think you’re getting my point: they’re not exactly good what they do, or don’t do. 

Also, you do not love that Kia: you love what you paid for it.  I can’t wait to see you try and trade that bucket in.  I had a Saturn once and I would have told you that I loved it.  I would have sworn up and down that I loved that Saturn, but I am a liar and I was lying then.  I was very happy with the Saturn.  I was very happy that I wasn’t walking. I did not love it.  I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and ride all the way to Connecticut again or from Connecticut to Arizona and I wouldn’t want to be strapped to it and shot into space.  I am sure the trade-in value of the Saturn directly correlates to the amount of change stuffed in the cushions and their ability to take the tires off the car and put them on another vehicle. 

And I wouldn’t want to go to space anyway, not if there is radiation that could somehow make kimchi worse.  Methinks the Korean government is actually using kimchi to control its people – both in the north and the south, around the world, and if they let it go into space it might lose its opiate qualities and allow the Korean Kianauts to see the truth.  They’d come back to earth and they’d free their enslaved brethren that have hitherto been drugged into believing that their government was good and kimchi was edible.  Don’t laugh, Australia, I know what you’re up to with the vegemite.  I’m very hard to fool.

 I just don’t see the point in going into space: we already have Tang and Velcro.  What else are we going to find in space?  They’re always telling us that we find a lot of inventions in getting ready to go to space and in going to space.  Considering our current situation the time of having so much money to waste on earth meant needing to waste it in space as well are long gone.  Why do we need to go into space?  Do we need to go to Mars?  We don’t need to bring back Martians for day labor or to outsource our jobs to Mars; going to Jupiter would be stupider.  Going to space to say we did it is stupid.  I’ve done a lot of things to do them and to say that I’ve done them and, ‘for science.’ 

Anyone who reads this knows that I do a lot of stupid things and if I am any example to anyone, if I’ve brought anything to the world through the work of my writing it should be this:  I am an idiot.  I do dumb, dumb things.  I am not an example to follow.  So please, lets not send the Kianauts into space, it seems foolhardy at best.  I’m also pretty confident, as confident as I am about anything, that kimchi and Tang being separately disgusting will not mix together very well at all.