Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part Two

11/6/2007, 11:00 am -- by | 1 Comment

The last of the Best of Job, continued. Part one is here.

My father spent Monday getting my grandmother’s checking account transferred into my name so I could pay contractors, etc., then Mom helped me shop for some things and clean out her fridge to make room.

I threw out my Grandmother’s ketchup, and she put it back.

“It’s over 3/4 full!” She stared at me in amazement. Did she raise this boy?

I pacified her, but as soon as she was on her way home, I threw it away. I’m not going to finish something a dead person started, especially not something like ketchup. That’s a pretty particular food item, fairly intimate, wouldn’t ya say?

I should say so.

I might have enjoyed the sudden responsibility I had to tie this woman’s life up if I:
(a) hadn’t known that they just didn’t want to be bothered with it, and
(b) didn’t want to be bothered with it myself.

But all was not lost. I had use of her boat of a Buick, a big house to roam around in, and an entire town to explore — and hopefully some farm girls to trick.

 

My first week there was filled with poignant things…finding pictures of my grandfather during the war or my dad in diapers on the boot of an old Chevy truck, shopping at the IGA and having my back slapped for being a “good old Thein boy.” All the poignant, soul-awakening things a good author would detail for you — but the things, in this case, that I hope you can just accept as having happened. I can’t do them justice.

Thanks.

Thanks for your support at this time.

 

For all its blossoming effects on me, that first week was incredibly boring also, and I burned through a considerable amount of money. In my scientific study and pursuit of the bands of farm girls who roamed Chap, I had logged much time at the local batting cage and miniature golf oasis, dispatching large portions of root beer floats (they LOVE ’em out there; some of their Bibles even say Jesus was the “Root Beer Float of life”) and trying to attract attention through poetic amounts of time solemnly swatting at balls in the fast-pitch cage.

I’ve got a solid swing, dontchaknow?

But being from New Hampshire marked me more as smarmy than exotic. I made some minor inroads with a girl named Becky (isn’t that a precious Missouri name? She had all the other local effects too — long, carefully braided brown hair, freckles on her cheekbones., the simple dungaree fare that made her the exotic one), but nothing to write home about.

She was more polite than interested, but I’ve exchanged that currency and spent it before.

Speaking of writing home, I was almost out of money and I couldn’t touch Grandma’s account except to get Jessica Thein’s life squared away. My parents don’t hurt for cash even a little, but to their credit, they’ve never been swift to bloat their children’s pockets, and this was no different. My mother told me I had more free time than I knew what to do with, and I should simply get a job in Chap.

I don’t mind working, friend, I just also don’t mind not working.

I know what’s bothering you… My grandmother’s name was Jessica. I think she was one of the first ever, but I need to do some research on that. There’s no Biblical Jessica, no Queen Jessica, no Athenian legends or anything, but now America is just filled with them. You can’t go out without running into 3 or 4 of them, with their silly little perms and cavity-laden smiles. America needs them too. Half the coffee served in America today (the day you read this) was served and stirred by Jessica. They’re an army, them and Jennifer.

Jesum.

But don’t be bothered by it. Somehow she’s a Jessica — was, I mean — and I enjoy the pioneering spirit her parents had to take the first “Jessica” plunge. Either way, the sawmill on the edge of town hired me on the spot. They seemed like a good lot, and as long as my summer had spun that far out of control, I wasn’t going to try to rein it in by working at the local Dairy Queen or something, for familiarity’s sake.

I was gung-ho. Let’s chop up some wood.

–TO BE CONTINUED–

Focus on the Fancy-Free Vol. 2 — Dating or Courtship

11/5/2007, 9:30 am -- by | 5 Comments

Read Volume 1 here!

Q.   How should a young Christian bachelor handle a romantic relationship?

Focus on the Fancy-FreeA.   Hiding in the alleyway to the heart of every desirable, virtuous Christian female I’ve ever pursued was the darkly-shrouded character of Joshua Harris, author of the equally praised and notorious I Kissed Dating Goodbye. In this alleyway I have put up some spirited and tremendous fights, but always seemed to fail, as Harris swung the proverbial tire iron against my mouth just as I uttered a final, desperate “Fascist!” I’d wake up out on the curb the following morning, blinking in the sunlight . . . bruised and battered. Throttled. The loser.

My foil, this Harris fellow. He always seemed to head me off in college, and as time went on, he even seemed to take preemptive steps to ensure my romantic failure. I decided to wait him out, for surely his influence would drop off, and I could mount new offensives on the hearts I treasured. This never happened. I thought these women were asking for the impossible; ironically over-romanticizing our interaction by never allowing for a medium ground. It was go big or go home with these chicks. Suddenly, parents were part of the quotient, friends had to be courted and won over with equal necessity. Anger.

The female I pursued with the greatest amount of energy in my career — Lady Jerusalem of my Crusades — was a devout follower of Harris’s philosophy. In desperation I waited for a time when a friend was working the register at the college bookstore, bought the book with a wink, snuck it back to the dorm and proceeded to read it furiously, not for edification, but as a coach who had miraculously come across his rival’s playbook. Finally, theology to pick apart, poor analogies to dismantle, and an infuriating condescension to inflate and act injured by.

When it was finally fully read (much to the jealousy of my uncracked textbooks), I sat back and realized what was so wrong with the book, where its flaw was most exaggerated.

The book was not written for Americans. It’s written, rather, for some romanticized Victorian-era youth, ripped straight from the pages of Pride and Prejudice. I was infuriated. A little research revealed my suspicions that Harris was homeschooled (as was I; stand by).

I prepared my verbal counter-offensive, deciding that the best way to slip past Harris in the alleyway was to complement him to a degree while roundly dismissing him. I looked to President Hoover for guidance, memorizing his dismissal of prohibition: “Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” Yes, that’s the ticket, I told myself. Americans don’t court, we date. And if we were to attempt a comprehensively Biblical approach to love, we’d do neither, leaving the decision entirely to our parents.

So I played the role of a Benedict Arnold, betraying my homeschooled tribe. I told the object of my desires how flawed his worldview had to be, having been so isolated for so long. I told her I had suffered the same fate, but was smarter than the average bear and came through unscathed. She seemed to be listening anew. I went for the kill, tearing homeschooling a new one, while loving all it had done for me.

Did I feel dirty? Absolutely.
Did I feel bad? Not even a little bit.

It’s a good premise, I assured her, noble and just — just not achievable. I’d love to convince your parents first, but I don’t even know if I want to convince them — eyes sheepishly on the carpet, with a hushed whisper — without knowing if I like you enough. What do you say we catch some mini-golf and a movie this weekend?

I mean, if you had camels, I’d water them for you, but since you don’t, how about we get a couple of slices?

We’re Americans, for the love of Mike — Christian Americans, 8 days a week; but Americans, still. Let’s do it our way. Let’s rebel against this rebellion!

Of course I never offered, and don’t still, any clear response to Harris and his followers, other than the status quo highlighted with Christian integrity. But at the time I was able to offer up a dazzling array of one-liners that kept the defense guessing with every snap.

And while I am, of course, unmarried and hopeless, with zero prospects, I hold it as a point of personal pride (an eternal ego ember, no matter how immature I may have been) that I was able to waltz into that alleyway, after so many repeat beatings, feed Joshy a corner of that proverbial dumpster, then take his recently brain-soiled apostle to see a movie — stealing a kiss during the lull in the story and the climax of our relationship.

Popcorn, Josh. She tasted like hot, buttered popcorn.

Boaz Bloom and Tumble-Down Row, Part One

10/30/2007, 12:00 am -- by | 4 Comments

The last from the Best of Job…

So I’m gonna tell you the story about Boaz Bloom and my run-ins with him down on Tumble-Down Row. If you know me, chances are good you’ve heard me tell bits and pieces about that summer, and a few anecdotes about Boaz, but I’ve never written it all down, or shared the entire story with anyone.

Well, there was Laura, that one day on Zuma Beach, but I don’t think she was really listening.

But buyer beware, this story does not house a happy ending. I won’t spring it on you, or try to punch you in the gut, but every time I hear the name “Boaz,” I get a little . . . a little off. But it’s not a name you run into very often, so I think reading this tale is worth the price.

It was 1983 and my Grandmother had died out in Missouri (don’t cry for me…I didn’t know her really). The rest of the family and I went out for the funeral, and during our three days there we proceeded to open a can of worms. Her house had to be sold, but it needed roof work, electrical work, plumbing, and all the things little old ladies learn to cope with. My parents had to get back to New Hampshire and their busy lives post-haste; my two sisters and brother (and their spouses and ratty little children) had come for the free hotel rooms my parents got for them — and I had only been home a week from my sophomore year in college, anxious to work at the ice cream shop again, to make out with Kim under the bleachers at the state fairgrounds, blah blah blah.

None of us wanted to be in Missouri.

My family is like water that boils towards the edges of the pot . . . we stick to a coast somewhere, either end of the union. That was where my Grandmother got abandoned, I guess. She loved Chap, Missouri to death, and she just wouldn’t boil away with the rest of her blood to California, South Carolina or New Hampshire.

“He’s a good Chap,” said her brick in the town hall mural. They were raising money to clean up some oil spill or something, so they auctioned off bricks. I liked her handwriting.

Eyes fell to me. My family is not all that tight, but we’re capable and know each other pretty well, based purely on intelligence. My Dad wasted no time in telling me I would stay in Chap to tidy things up — but he was just as quick to make the deal sweet for me, so I wouldn’t blow my stack. In exchange for serving (and eating) ice cream all summer, giving up the smell of Kim Cord’s hair, and forfeiting long days at the beach, I would receive a brand-new car when I got home — from the proceeds of the sale of my Grandmother’s house.

I was in. Chap, Missouri, God rest her soul, was a hole — but I was in.

—TO BE CONTINUED—

2007 World Prayer Champion Credits Surgery

10/25/2007, 9:00 am -- by | 7 Comments

-LAS VEGAS, Nevada

Jerry “The Knees” Noble credited his unprecedented fourth consecutive World Prayer Championship to surgery, intercessory sources reported Monday. This marks the first time a WPC champion has singled out surgery — the art, practice, or work of treating diseases, injuries, or deformities through manual or operative procedures — as the key to victory.

“Surgery really brought this victory home for First Pres,” Noble remarked, referring to his sponsor church, First Presbyterian of Greater Houston. “A lot of the young kids came in here praying against natural disasters and for world peace. Not me. Surgery, even dental surgery, is always dangerous — and it’s my bread and butter.”

“It’s like the Protestant rosary,” Noble added, swigging a Gatorade.

Noble’s strategy seemed truly Heaven-sent in a year where great diversity in many contestants’ prayers led to scattered and disjointed petitions, broken up by repeated um’s and Dear Lord God’s — point killers, according to WPC Prayer Pontiff Evan Fielder.

“It’s awfully hard to change your pitches up mid-prayer,” Fielder reported. “We saw a lot of that this weekend, but the true veterans played it close to the vest.”

Surprisingly, this year’s Championship saw an unusually high number of stuttering penalties and “uneasy pauses,” even with an election campaign and two-front war going on.

“They got greedy,” explained Fielder. “Too much speaking in tongues, too many financial prayers and way too much of the Middle East. I understand the lure of the high degree of difficulty, but simple is best. And simple, my friends, is surgery.”

Meanwhile, Noble insists he won’t stop at four championships.

“As long as people keep getting sick and cancer goes uncured, I’ll keep coming back to get another W for my congregation. It’s like shootin’ Jesus fish in a barrel.”

Cannibal Culture

10/22/2007, 10:00 pm -- by | No Comments

Best of Job, September 2006.

I read in Smithsonian about a tribe in New Guinea that still practices cannibalism. The writer went deep up a dark river and found them, eventually, living in houses adorned with bones — with a life-expectancy of 31 years, from a cocktail of disease, war and famine.

Tenderly gaining their confidence, he discovered that they eat those they believe are witches or warlocks, whom they blame for slowly eating their loved ones from the inside out. If someone dies slowly, they blame it on the ones who spent the most time around them…

The brain is our tastiest part, I guess.

The most galling thing was how the writer (and the Dutch missionaries downstream, who had decided not to convert them, in order to save their pristine culture) “teared” up because so many of the people were leaving the jungle to seek life elsewhere.

Within 30 years, he stressed, these people’s way of life would be lost forever.

Which is, of course, 30 years too many.

I remember arguing with Dr. Arensen about this in class once. While he was one of my top three favorite teachers of all time, I took exception when he said a certain African culture was “leagues” ahead of the West because they didn’t have a word for “stealing” — the implication being that there was, therefore, no stealing in their culture.

I asked him if a culture lacked a word for “adultery,” but still practiced it, would it therefore not be a sin?

His exact words I don’t remember, but I recall him outclassing me with extreme and surgical precision…not dissuading me, but silencing me most definitely.

But…

Pristine, untouched — I see the pricelessness of these things in human terms. But while drawing a peace with evil religions, backward societal practices, and life-ending hygienic practices may be cerebral, literary and scientifically comforting, through the lens of Christ, it is still very, very selfish.

I find no reason to embrace Islam on any level. I embrace the Muslim, but only with the caveat of Christ.

I will never make that truce under the guise of accepting them on the basis of my greater depth and understanding — because it’s just selfish to not want to be hated for it.

Maxon’s Folly

10/16/2007, 2:30 pm -- by | 10 Comments

Best of Job, September 2006.

A good friend of mine recently spent $75 and got a huge return on his investment. A shockingly good return that increases its value daily and, by all appearances, has no ceiling.

In fact, if Steve had been alive in March 1867, his $75 could have bought him 3,000 acres of Alaskan real estate — and many would have laughed at him. They would have said, most likely, that those funds could’ve been “spent on a fine buggy and horse of reasonable temperament, the right which being the good of the same, and with a full assortment of bits and collars for the beast.”

I’ve been thinking lately about what the best $75 I ever spent was, and I think it was a trip I made to Houston to thaw out once. Sunny, sublime and solitary, I was very enthusiastic for a while upon my return from the desert…

But that passes.

I spent $75 on my digital camera, the display model at Wal*Mart. I enjoy the thing but it is limited by my ineptitude.

I’ve spent the sum of $75 over and over again…and will many more times I am sure.

But I think the next time I have a disposable $75, I’m going to send it to Steve and tell him to go all Seward’s Folly on it for me.

Do it, Steve.

 

Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

101-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak to President Roosevelt About Son’s WWII Death

10/16/2007, 10:30 am -- by | No Comments

Best of Job, August 2006.

Vera Carter renewed her request Friday to speak to President Roosevelt about the death of her son, Private Hank Carter, a paratrooper who died on D-Day: June 6th, 1944.

“I want to speak to Mr. Roosevelt directly about Harold’s death fighting a rapidly-spreading fascist ideology that demands the violent annihilation of certain races and religions from the face of the planet,” Carter told reporters from her campsite across from Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home, where our 32nd President has been buried since 1945.

“I will not rest until I can tell him how annoyed I am that he had the guts to stand up to much of the world when it suggested that the mass ignorance that fueled Nazism should be left unchallenged and unchecked — and that he actually went ahead and did something about it.”

Vera went on to say that she thinks FDR probably knew about the Pearl Harbor bombing in advance, but allowed it to happen anyway, to give him an excuse to draft 16 million American men and fling them into a pan-global war to fill the pockets of his oil lawyer cronies.

Why I’m A Bad Person

10/9/2007, 2:00 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Best of Job, July 2006.

When I worked at CSJ, the bulk of my compensation was free education in the form of the school’s MBA program. While taking those classes, I also signed up for a web design course, because it was on a morning, between meetings, when I wouldn’t be doing anything else.

When I was tying up loose ends and preparing to leave for good, I got a bill in my campus mailbox for $7.97 in lab fees for that Web course. I know that’s just the price of dinner at Subway, but I was sure it was a mistake, and dropped it off with the accounting office on the way back.

The next day, it was back in my box, the $7.97 circled in red ink, with a note beside it — “Job, please pay this before you leave. Thanks.”

So I went back to my room, scared up my job description and found — in black and white — that my compensation included all tuition, lab and activity fees for any courses I took, up to 16 credits a semester.

With that in my back pocket, I went back down to Accounting and explained I was the men’s RD, and that I shouldn’t be charged. I was referred to the head registrar (the president’s wife). She told me the job description was mistaken, that RDs had paid lab fees for years.

I stared blankly.

“It’s not my mistake on the job description.” I signed a contract based on this — the typo was their problem, not mine.

It was an incredible standoff, one of the more surreal of my life.

She was “sorry,” but “she couldn’t see any way around the billing process,” without me having to pay it.

My boss had already quit and left, and my new boss was my brother — I couldn’t very well have him fight this for me. I felt so dumb that it was over $7.97, but the principle of the matter, and her inability to understand the simple reality of a contract dumbfounded me.

I was very angry. So I asked what would happen if I just didn’t pay it.

They would never release my transcripts.

So I left, not wanting to make the scene any sillier than it already was. At the time I figured I’d never care about the transcripts. But 2 semesters of a master’s degree being what they are, I knew I might eventually want them.

She kept sending me the bill. Once a week. Every week. With a real, live 37-cent stamp placed carefully in the corner. And I remained filled with unholy rage.

So I waited — and I counted the stamps. After week 22, they had spent more money on the stamps to collect the bill than what the actual bill was worth.

22 theses nailed to their door…

 

And I finally found my peace to pay the $7.97.

The Balloon

10/9/2007, 11:00 am -- by | No Comments

Best of Job, July 2006.
Based on a true story.

I knew a guy once with the worst broken heart I’ve ever seen, a sullen, moping, sleepless affair that went on — by my recollection — over a year. He was inconsolable, and no matter how hard we tried to cheer the lad up, or divert his attention, it all failed.

He had this box, see, with all “her” stuff in it. Notes, gifts, tickets to the fair. And he’d pull that dang box out and go through it, picking at that scab. His eyes would get puffy, and his night would melt away into a spiral of despair.

The worst item in the box was the balloon.

It was his birthday party. She’d blown up a bunch of balloons and he’d kept them.

She dumped him the next day.

The string holding the balloons got stuck in his fan and pulled them in, popping them one by one. He awoke with a fright, saw what was happening, and pounced on that poor fan like it were a sentient being. He ripped the cord from the socket and — freeing the tangled mess — tossed it violently against the dresser.

One balloon remained.

It was most precious, you see, because it was her breath inside that latex. Air, “from when she still loved me.” The most precious carbon dioxide on the planet. But the balloon was getting smaller and smaller, as the love air escaped. He was beside himself — he Googled it, he asked science professors roundabout questions. It was an unholy obsession.

He finally decided to place the balloon inside a Ziploc bag, “the best money could buy, with the color-seal guarantee and all that,” then pop it from the outside, containing her breath that way. My friends and I thought about stealing the balloon, popping it right in front of him and just letting the poison bleed out . . . letting him get on with things.

But we wouldn’t have to.

I was there when he put on a pair of gloves and carefully plucked the dimpled, misshapen, somber-looking old balloon from off the desk. He was breathing heavily — enough to fill a thousand balloons. I was holding the best Ziploc bag money could buy, a real humdinger, a double-sealed NASA-looking thing. My breathing was somewhat labored as well.

Carefully, so carefully, he lowered the balloon down inside with both hands.

He stopped.

“What is it?,” I whispered.

“Shhhh,” he said, his face suddenly choked with concern.

His hands moved slightly. It was a tight fit, and he gulped. Pushing it further or removing his hands would require slightly depressing the balloon. He gulped again and looked at me.

He whispered now. “Cut it off.”

“Cut what off?”

“The bag! Abort, abort! Cut the bag loose, it’s gonna pop.”

“Are you sure??”

“Yes!” His eyes flashed. “Do it now,” he snarled.

I grabbed the scissors from his desk and began to cut the bag from around his wrist.

Hiiissssssssssssssssssssss…..

He fell to his knees and I watched the most horrific sight of my life, as he wildly, frantically sucked the air from the breach and then — tears pouring down his cheeks — stuffed the husk of the balloon into his mouth . . . sucking the last air from it.

He crumpled into a heap, sobbing uncontrollably, his shoulders heaving rhythmically into his desk chair.

I could do nothing. I just left him there to mourn in quiet.

Her love — her love had lost its lungs.

The Procrasta’ Masta

10/3/2007, 2:30 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Best of Job, June 2006.

I’ve been dedicated lately to securing the best possible choice for the next stage of my life. I thought I was done with Residence Life, but have felt attracted lately to pursuing another dorm. I’ve also dwelt on the idea of working for the government, perhaps even the United States Army.

It’s been oddly stressful. Perhaps I feel like I’m out of dispensable years and might have to begin envisioning myself as a 40-year-old man, and what all of that will mean.

But when I do…whiskey oscar whiskey, the choke sets in. Poor 40-year-old Jobie.

I can see him there, cursing a blue streak, wishing to heaven he could grab my collar and talk some sense into me. “You worked for an airline for 2 years after college, knowing full well it wasn’t the career you wanted??!!”

What a Dickensian horror that would be — to have myself, in senior, drop in on me. He’d be a little hesitant and careful with his words, probably, seeing me and realizing how much I was enjoying my life at 26. Sentimental, reminiscent. But he’d choke up eventually, put a hand through his thinning hair, and would perhaps beg me, plead with me to get on with things. At 40, crossing his fingers on blistered hands, as he did at 20.

I would feel sympathetic and place a hand on this shoulder. I would tell him I would get on with things, I’d find him a wife and a job with benefits. I would buckle down. I would suck it up. “I am so sorry, old friend,” I’d say. “The past few years must’ve been so hard on you.”

It’d be a hug fest, a cry fest and I would inquire about my family and what has become. Bowden and Obadiah knock ’em dead, don’t they? And while we’re there wiping tears from our eyes, and I’m continuing on with my apologies and promises…

In drops 80-year-old Jobie, a tight line for lips.

One firm punch to 40-year-old Jobie’s jaw, and he turns to face me, hands on my shoulders…

“You’re doing just fine. You think I want his memories right now? You think I want his dang wife hounding me about my pills??”

He stands on 40 year old Jobie’s hand, grinding it into the ground.

“No sirree, Bob. You’re doing just fine.”

I Do All My Own Stunts

10/2/2007, 11:30 am -- by | No Comments

Best of Job, May 2006.

I haven’t slept in a bed in 365 days.

I made this decision rather spuriously one night, when I found myself unemployed, uninsured, heart-broken, soaked, adrift and seething towards God, trying to sleep in the back of a Budget truck, in the parking lot of my former employer. Next to the truck sat my Jeep — steam still rising from beneath its hood, as the newly blown radiator continued to vent and cool.

My internal radiator had blown as well and my engine was fast overheating. I was projecting. I wasn’t angry at God, but the trigonometry of my misery felt so intense, calculated and other-worldly that I felt He could be tricked into taking blame (or credit) for the equation.

When I eventually calmed (and apologized), I told Him about my plan. I felt a great silence in the truck bed, like God was giving me a chance to retract it. A silent guffaw, that only entrenched me further in my decision.

I was gonna fast that fast that lasts. I was electing right there to swear to Him that I wouldn’t sleep in a bed for an entire year. A real humdinger of a plan, sure, but you know what it’s like to get caught up in the moment, delirious with a sense of purpose. It would be a fast of comfort, routine and normalcy, a real sacrifice.

I slept on couches, pull-outs, the ground and my Jeep. I bought a hammock and strung it from my roll-bar to any available tree. I learned to fold myself into roots and rocks. I learned to enjoy rain on my nose.

Stars, my friends, cannot be counted, no matter your resolve.

They cannot.

I had to plan nights ahead to avoid any unforeseen hospitality. I told friends I “had things to do.” In my room at the lakehouse, I piled my belongings on my bed and told my folks I would get to them eventually, but just sleep on the couch for now…and never got to them.

I graciously accepted the bed the Filipinos gave me, then at night opted for the ground. In Albuquerque, I slept in the tub; in Houston, the chair. I swore by Northface and swore at mosquitos.

And I prayed. I was fasting, and my sore neck and back and fatigued brain were awake at 3 am many nights — with no recourse but the recreation of prayer.

I burned out my Indiglo. I invested in bug spray. I found the best rest came from hot pavement in the middle of a sunny afternoon. I loved to be the passenger in a car, reclined, the wind pouring over me.

In truth, at first, I was exhausted — finding my rest only in the solace of a promise kept and the trust in some benefit from the One I had made it to. I tell you all this because I feel it’s key, and might explain my philosophy on life and society. I hope it doesn’t smack of “gimmick.” Truth be told, it’s a cautionary tale. I’m not proud of this, and the “Serta Solution” will not be a devotional coming to a bookstore near you.

But I want you to know —

I have learned the fine art that is a promise. The fine art that is contempt for routine.
I have learned how precious days are when you anxiously count them down.
I have learned that the Lord is not slack in His promises and we should not be either, no matter the circumstances.
I learned these lessons last summer, but the real joy was in maintaining my promise, no matter how silly, or even psychotic, it was.

The Lord, methinks, honors such things. Pride and ego, He does not.

Being certain of having a place to rest your head at night is one of the most fundamental rules of society. But I think I’ve discovered that if you can rest your head anywhere, you fundamentally rule society.

Trust me… I know, having done this, that it is nothing profound. At best, between you and me, it is anecdotal. But between me and my Creator, I have upheld a promise — however fantastic and foolish it may have been — and I stand (or lay) now confident in any other promise I might be willing to make…or He might be willing to request of me.

 

But yes. It was asinine.

Alexander the Tate

09/25/2007, 2:00 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Best of Job, April 2006.

Once during a class I was called on unexpectedly by the professor, and asked my opinion on something. Since all my focus had been trained on the parking lot below, I quickly rebooted my brain to retrieve whatever scraps of the question still lingered before they vaporized with the rest of his lecture. You know what I mean — that auditory echo left by the words last spoken. What I produced was nothing shy of amazing. If I were McGyver, I took a paperclip and some pencil shavings and saved the day.

Since I was obviously and painfully blind to the content of the lecture, I had to create my own reality by asking the good doctor a question instead — seemingly rhetorical, “getting at something,” but in all reality just a total snowstorm to buy some time. But somehow the question captured the rest of the period, impressing the teacher with its depth and ability to lasso everyone’s attention.

This same question has gone on to bail me out of several similar situations, CPR to many a failing conversation.

Here it is: if you had a time machine, 25 yards x 20 yards, could you fill it with enough stuff from today to go back to 1 AD and conquer the entire world?

The answer is, of course, YES.

I’m taking three friends and four Yamaha dirt bikes. Along the walls of the enclosure, I will stack a dazzling array of firepower and ammunition. I want lethality and imagery, explosion and precision.

People will simply have to die.

I will require some loudspeakers and a pretty good selection of music as well, but the rest of the time machine will be filled with crack cocaine.

My friends and I touch down somewhere outside a Mongol city. As the speakers blare Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” we’ll come running and gunning out of the time machine on our dirt bikes. Our mission is to tear through the city, capture their king, bring him back to the time machine, and get the lad hooked on drugs.

Then he will be my puppet.

From there, we’re taking our Mongols (and our crack house) to Rome — to bring the world to its knees.

 

And when professors say the paper is due on Friday, Monday will work out just fine.

At the Movies

09/25/2007, 11:00 am -- by | 1 Comment

Best of Job, May 2006

in the theatre

 

across from me
3 guys
2 girls
they sit: guy girl guy girl guy

i enjoy mission: impossible 3
generally speaking
i am brave
and admit
i usually enjoy tom cruise movies
speaking generally
but i take long draw from straw
lull in movie

i try
to find out
which of the guys is the loser
as if the soda will supply the answer

which guy is the loser
which guy is the fifth wheel

my straw begins to suck air
movie picks up speed again
but i know

 

it is guy girl guy girl guy

 

movie reaches fevered pitch
hollywood flexes its muscles

should i go get free refill?
will i miss anything good?
better not
many important plot twists
cruise might inexplicably start running again
wouldn’t want to miss that
and i’m there alone
no one to brief me with synopsis upon return

then it dawns on me
despite explosions, theatre quiet

it is me

i am loser

 

chair chair chair guy chair

Camp Maranatha

09/18/2007, 10:30 am -- by | 1 Comment

Best of Job, April 2006. Visit Camp Maranatha here!

“Job, the ‘No Running’ sign on the pool deck needs to be repainted,” my boss, Keith, told me. I set to it right after lunch, when I knew the campers wouldn’t be swimming. A simple job requiring a one-inch paint brush and — at best — a capful of red paint.

I brought a brand new 5-gallon pail of paint out to the pool deck and set about to repaint the masterpiece some staff guy had begun years ago. “The 11th Commandment,” I thought to myself, as I colored in the letters that had been faded by the hot California sun. I was quite different from the sign…kin to Casper and hailing from the cool green hills of Vermont, the sun had darkened me considerably. A feat, for sure.

Nearing completion (and proud of my work), I backed up to view the sign from a distance — and straight up waltzed into the 5-gallon pail.

Sweet Moses.

Like the scene of a grisly murder, the paint spread like blood down the slightly slanted pool deck, running straight toward the clear blue water of the pool.

Oh, sweet Moses.

I hopped the fence (again a feat, for sure) and grabbed the hose. But it wasn’t attached!

Feeling sick to my stomach — it had just been last week that I caught the mower blades on a rock — I quickly attached the hose, hopped back over the fence, and began to fight the paint back with the water. Dilute, spread out, turn into a snake, whatever, paint — just please do not go into the pool.

It was the greatest fight of my life so far. As I cleaned up the murder scene, fully intent on the remains never being found, suddenly I heard a gate open on the adjacent basketball court — and I felt the express horror of watching Keith approach, a quizzical look on his face.

Sweet fancy Moses.

“Sign looks good, Job.”

He watched me with the hose.

“Is the pool deck dirty?”

“A little, yeah.”

And away he whistled.

 

Found out later he was color blind.

Youth Pastor Forced To Put Training Wheels On Mountain Bike

09/11/2007, 1:45 pm -- by | No Comments

Best of Job, April 2006.

Local youth worker Tony “The Tiger” Reynolds was ceremoniously forced to put training wheels on his mountain bike Friday, after Pastor Paul caught him delivering a message to the youth group from the apocryphal book of Tobias.

“Tony, you’ve got to stop doing stuff like this,” Pastor Paul scolded Reynolds. “Until you can prove to me that you know which books are divinely inspired and which are heretical, the Board and I have decided to make you ride your bike around with training wheels.”

“Surely this punishment is more than I can bear!,” Tony lamented.

“But surely you prefer it to working the fryer down at Tasty Burger,” Pastor Paul coldly responded.

This step is seen as the most severe by the Board in its dealings with the enthusiastic youth pastor, approached only by the time they forced Reynolds to cut his hair after he told several people in the congregation that “time travel” was the coolest spiritual gift.

“It’s complicated,” explained church elder Roy Mentack. “You can’t just spray him with a water bottle like a cat.”

“Hmm… A water bottle,” Mentack added quietly.

Meanwhile, Tony was attaching the training wheels to his Cannondale bike behind the Youth Lodge. “Yes, this is a great trial set before me, but I am ready to overcome. I now know what it must’ve been like for Judas Maccabeus, and how he felt when he had to fight the Hellenistic oppressors we read about in II Maccabees.”

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