Friday, November 30, 2012

Color Me Corrected


Well, tie my face to the belly of a sow and roll me in the mud!

In last week's post, I implied that a search on the name Bildad wouldn't bring up many hits on the World Wide Wackfest. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to most of the assembled masses to find out that I was wrong. Just look at some of the top responses to the search for "Bildad is".



Bildad is introduced (Job 2:11) as a Shuhite, probably a member of a nomadic tribe dwelling in southeastern Palestine.
Bildad is a religious dogmatist of the superficial kind, whose dogmatism rests upon tradition and upon proverbial wisdom and approved pious phrases.
Bildad is a little bit hypocritical, because he won’t shed the blood of men on land, but he’s slaughtered lots of whales on the sea.
Bildad is quite appalled by Job's statements; particularly his closing remarks in which Job suggests that God may have been unfair in His dealings with him.
Bildad is a skunk.
Bildad is asking Job to ask God for help.
Bildad is a God-fearing man.
Bildad is one of those guys in life that we have all encountered.
Bildad is offended.
Bildad is absolutely correct.
Bildad is asking if Job thinks the whole moral order of the world should be interrupted for his sake.
Bildad is contradicting the theory of exact retribution wherein God is compelled to respond in accordance with an established formula.
Bildad is a nursing student, registered in Compassion’s Leadership Development Program.
Bildad is (or pretends to be) crustier than Peleg in negotiations over wages.
Bildad is not a man who suffers fools gladly.
Bildad is misapplying his theology.
Bildad is openly angry.
Bildad is wrong on most counts.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Dewey should...


The concept is simple enough. Go to your World Wide Wackfest search engine of choice (I choose GoodSearch.com, and support Rest in Him Ministry with every click of the mouse). Enter your name, followed by a verb of some sort. Assuming your name isn't Bildad, the result of your search will be a list of where that phrase is used and a plethora of suggestions of, in this particular case, what you should be, have, or do.


Dewey should be easy to spot.
Dewey should have demanded recount after recount.
Dewey should just shut up and search.
Dewey should expect to experience an outage about four hours in length, beginning at about 9 a.m. Thursday.
Dewey should try to follow his ideas.
Dewey should survive the entire new trilogy.
Dewey should have their numbers retired.
Dewey should be required reading for all teachers and extensively so for administrators.
Dewey should provide ample "time, talk, and tools."
Dewey should have beaten Truman.
Dewey should meet Joebot.
Dewey should have been offed in Scream 3.
Dewey should follow in his sire's footsteps as a talented show-jumping prospect.
Dewey should receive thousands.
Dewey should start his own text message marketing service.
Dewey should be single in this plot.
Dewey should just be allowed to die, i.e., slip into a straight-up liquidation.
Dewey should be the defendant in the case.
Dewey should go down as the greatest experiment on the secondary level in the 20th century.

For the record (and the truly bored), here are links to previous posts using this technique:
Dewey is...
Dewey wants...
Dewey has...
Dewey needs...

Friday, November 16, 2012

MY FIRST TIME: Episode Five: Cleanliness is next to Godliness


Synopsis: Our intrepid author and his Beloved are on their very first cross-cultural missions experience. To truly get caught up, and because it's been so long since Episode Four, maybe you should go read the previous posts in this series: Episode One: This is your captain speakingEpisode Two: And the Grammy goes to...Episode Three: How much is that urinal in the window?Episode Four: You can't get there from here

Beloved and I were the only married couple on the trip, but we fully anticipated separate housing...and, like almost everything else while we were in Panama, we found that our expectations were wrong. We were matched up with a local banker and actually had our own "guest house" in the family's backyard.

It was small/cozy, to be sure, but very comfortable with a ceiling fan over the mattress and box springs, which were on the cement floor, and our own bathroom: a sink, a commode, and a shower curtain separating the part of the room that had a shower head in the wall and a drain in the floor.


Two special notes about that shower...

Every afternoon, when we got back from our work project and as we were cleaning up for the evening's activity, we shared that shower with at least one gecko, clinging to the wall and enjoying the shade. We were told by our hosts that those were good lizards because they ate bugs, which made us particularly sad when we opened our front door one afternoon to find that we had inadvertently squished one of those suckers flat in the door jamb.

The other thing to note is that, unlike every other showering experience we had in our subsequent two trips to Panama, our water was actually heated. True Truth: most water in Central America is not artificially heated except on a stovetop, so all our other showers were experiments in self-torture as we turned the water on just long enough to have a heart attack and get wet, lathered up, then rinsed off to the sound of our own screams.

The magic of having a hot shower was accomplished by flipping a switch on the wall. That switch was connected to a mechanism that was wired to the shower head.

I tried desperately to forget that the contraption was called a widowmaker.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Daffy On Demand


ActorBoy and the 5-year-old he was "babysitting" for the day were watching a DVD of classic Looney Tunes cartoons. They were being mildly amused, and ActorBoy was glad to not have to be rolling in leaves or playing hide-and-seek...when suddenly, they both started laughing so hard I thought someone had just announced a moratorium on political advertising.

I trundled downstairs to get in on the merriment and found them "rewinding" to the scene about three minutes into Yankee Doodle Daffy, when Daffy Duck is doing his best Carmen Miranda impression:


For whatever reason, they both just thought that was the funniest thing since God invented banana peels.

Fast forward four days. ActorBoy and I are standing around Archivers while Beloved, KayJay, and TheWind (KayJay's fiance, Dustin...see what I did there?) are deciphering the difference between Bavarian Beige and Latte Tan paper for wedding invitations. Translation: ActorBoy and I are fairly well bored.

I lean my head close to his and quote Daffy as Carmen: "Boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom."

That's all it takes for him to burst out laughing. And then he says, "I need to look up the words to that song." So, being a member of the Digital Generation, ActorBoy speaks into his phone, which is apparently far smarter than mine...heckfire...his phone is far smarter than me...and clearly enunciates "Old Daffy Duck cartoon, boom-chicka-boom."

In 1.87 seconds, his phone's screen is filled with links available for clicking, the first one of which takes him to a site on the World Wide Wackfest dedicated to sharing the lyric of "When She Loves Him," as sung by Daffy Duck in the Looney Tunes cartoon, Yankee Doodle Daffy.

I...I mean...I'm just...how...why...


One...that ActorBoy doesn't even have to type anything, but just speak a non-sentence into his phone...this astounds me.

Two...I am absolutely befuddled as to why anyone would feel it necessary to have posted the words of a song sung by Daffy Duck in a 1943 cartoon short for the world's betterment. Why...what...who decided that was important enough to spend the time, money, and bandwidth to insure the availability of that info?!?!?

I...I mean...I'm just...how...why...you're dithpicable...

Friday, November 2, 2012

Here's My Number, So Call Me Earworm

There are a couple trivia challenges in this quarter's list of morning musical meanderings...songs that I'm pretty sure could only be swimming around in MY head.



AUGUST
1-15 – No sense trying to post individual days here. This period, I was awash in the songs of the 2012 edition of the Dakota Chautauqua, which ActorBoy and I performed in at the Dakota County (MN) Fair, August 6-12, 2012.
16 – Nothing Ever Changes (Larry Norman) Almost five bucks to any reader who can honestly say they ever heard of this song before now.
19 – Tragedy (Bee Gees)
23 – When the Saints Go Marching In
27 – Cantina Band Theme (Star Wars)

SEPTEMBER
4 – At Calvary
6 – I Don’t Know How to Love Him (Yvonne Elliman, Jesus Christ Superstar)
15 – Live For Today (Grass Roots)
19 – Billy Jean (Michael Jackson, sans pet chimp)
20 – Hokey Pokey
24 – The Battle of New Orleans (Johnny Horton) “And when we lit the powder off, the gator lost his mind…”
25 – Beautiful One (Jeremy Camp)
26 – The Things We Do For Love/The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) (10cc/Simon & Garfunkel)
27 – Dust in the Wind (Kansas)

OCTOBER
1 – Kiss On My List (Daryl Hall and John Oates) This one is absolutely insidious.
3 – How Great Thou Art
5 – Mademoiselle from Armentieres (Hinky Dinky Parley Vous)
6 – Authority Song – John Mellencamp
8 – Get Right or Get Left (Farrell & Farrell) Seriously…is there anyone among my readers that has ever heard this ancient “Jesus Music” song?
9 – Africa (Toto)
16 – Jesus is Coming Again (“May be morning, may be noon, may be evening, and may be soon”)
17 – Battle Hymn of the Republic
18 – Windy (The Association)
26 – Rub Some Bacon On It (Rhett & Link) I made the mistake of having Beloved watch the video of this last night. Now all I can hear in my head is the chorus, and all I can envision is Link’s dorky beach boy. Watch this if you dare!