Nappy You Hear

Following last night's revelry of antioxidant-rich, Pomegranate 7-Up and a 500 tournament (in which my fiery crash of defeat was matched only by last year's excursion to Loserville), I spent this morning drifting in and out of slumber with a disorganized parade of thoughts trying to gain my attention:

• Did I remember to make that payment that is always due the first of the month?
• Is anybody else going to buy one of my books (Almost the Truth about Youth Ministry or Almost the Truth: The Blog Archive 2008-2009) this year? (http://stores.lulu.com/deweyroth)
• I really need to write up that book proposal for I Am Legion and get it to some actual-factual publishers, instead of living in the wilderness of self-publishing.
• Is that a raccoon on the roof? (For the source of this stray thought, see a previous post: http://almostthetruth.blogspot.com/2009/05/not-exactly-bats-in-my-belrfy.html)
• Another year, another chance for Lindsay Lohan to hose up her rehab.
• As of this morning, here in Minnesota, if you drive into an intersection and there isn't room ahead of you to drive out, you are now breaking a law...in addition to being fairly stupid.
• Ack! I need to write a meditation today to share at the communion table Sunday!
• Something warm for breakfast would be nice.
• Did I damage our roof when I spent six hours Christmas Eve with a mini-sledgehammer getting rid of the ice that had built up around the eaves? (There's a reason why those are called ice dams and not ice darns.)

May the coming trip around the sun find us all a little wiser, a little more content, and a lot more able to sleep in without a brain battle bending every bouncing bunch of baloney into a weapon of somnolence destruction.

A Christmas Linkfest

Here they are, all in one place for the first time (except on my FaceBook wall), an eclectic collection of links to videos, both new and old, all connected in some way or other to Christmas. Get a cup of hot chocolate, pull up a chair, and enjoy...

Animals "singing" Deck the Halls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-0WVfj76bo

A Canadian mall's food court singing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

The Plunderer's March, my favorite song from Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJBU95pVmw

The Digital Story of the Nativity is how Matthew or Luke may have related the story if they had written The Gospel According to Steve Jobs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHNNPM7pJA&feature=player_embedded

And finally, the True Truth of White Space Christmas:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1754721911627&oid=33475707006&comments&ref=mf

Peace on Earth to you and yours...

There's No Business Like Snow Business

Here in Minnesnowta, we are currently in the midst of what is being advertised as "the largest snowfall since the Halloween Blizzard of '91." Personally, if the scene in my driveway is any indication, I'm glad we didn't move to the tundra until 1994.





To pass the time between shoveling and spinal adjustments, I've been hanging out on FaceBook, of course, and one of my friends came up with the fun idea of inserting the word "snow" into the titles of movies and television shows...which got me thinking...which is a dangerous thing:

• They made a movie about my efforts at raking the snow off my roof and clearing out my driveway: The Chronicles of Suburbia: The Voyage of the Snow Treader
• The 1957 Oscar-winner for best picture, starring Alec Guinness as a prisoner-of-war dealing with a freak blizzard in the jungles of Southeast Asia: Snow on the River Kwai
• Speaking of Alec Guinness, did you see him as Obi Wan BeenFrozen in Snow Wars?
• That Christmas favorite with Jimmy Stewart, where his character finds out what his boring, little town would have been like if there had never been winter: It's a Wonderful Snow
• Harrison Ford's adventurous archaeologist searches Antarctica for a religious relic: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Snow
• A boy wizard does battle with the Dark Lord VoldeFreezemeister: Harry Potter and the Half-Snow Prince
• Steven Spielberg's first blockbuster about a resort town's sheriff hiring a crusty, old snowplow driver to conquer a freakishly large blizzard: Snows (My favorite quote: "You're gonna need a bigger blade.")
• Sandra Bullock stars as a gal who pretends to be the fiance of Old Man Winter: While You Were Snowing
• That classic musical from Hollywood's Golden Era, starring Gene K-K-K-Kelly, Debbie ReynoldsWrap, and Donald O'Icicle: Singing in the Snow
• A man is shipwrecked on an island: Robinson Crusnow
• A Native American helps the European Americans fight the European Europeans: Last of the Snowhicans
• The madcap mishaps and mayhem of a group of Army surgeons stationed in Alaska: S*N*O*W
• A perky gal with a lot of spunk gets a job in a Minneapolis TV newsroom during the largest snowfall since the Halloween Blizzard of '91: The Mary Tyler More Snow Show

I could go on, but our miniature chihuahua, Edgar, is going to need to empty his bladder soon, and I need to either clear him a path or dig him a tunnel.

Minnesota: The Land of 10,000 Boasts

I've mentioned before about my aversion to Minnesotans' aptitude for declaring the state's superiority in practically every measurable circumstance known to mankind. Herewith are some Actual Factual examples:


Minnesota's 49 million turkeys were far and away the most raised in any state and 18 percent of the nation's total.

Minnesota leads the Midwest in a hot trend: cremation

Our state is tops in fishing licenses sold per capita.

Minnesota has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country.

Other states have challenged the accuracy of the decades-old breath test device called the Intoxilyzer 5000EN, but Minnesota is the only place where the case landed in federal and state courts.

Minnesota has been named the "Best Trails" state.

Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the most intoxicated areas of the U.S.

Minneapolis has the purest heroin at the lowest price in the country.

* * * * * * *

Well, well, well...don't you just want to stand up tall and give out a yell?

I saw the light...not

Beloved called me while I was at work and announced that she had a light out.

This confused me a wee bit, as I'm more accustomed to thinking "the lights are on, but nobody's home." (Not that I think that about Beloved, you understand! It's just a common phrase. Seriously, folks!)

Upon cross-examination, it was discovered that the light to which Beloved was referring was the driver's-side headlight of her car.

"No worries," I cheerfully responded, "I'll just pop that puppy out and plug in a new one. In fact, I think I may already have a replacement at home. I'm pretty sure I bought a two-pack the last time I needed one."

"Where would it be?" asked Beloved. "I've been looking for a while and haven't found anything."

"Well, if there is one, it would be on a shelf in the mud room," I jovially offered.

"I looked there."

"No big deal," I chuckled, as this latest development rolled off my back, "I'll just stop on the way home and pick one up."

* * * * * * *

It took a couple passes through our newly-remodeled, super-sized StallMart for me to find the automotive lighting aisle, and the model number I needed had only one representative in the massive display of possibilities (which seemed to have absolutely no logic behind what got hung where), but I eventually arrived home, triumphantly carrying my quarry in its requisite plastic bag.

It was while I was placing said plastic bag in the recycling bin (strategically placed in our mud room) that I saw the previously-purchased automotive headlamp on the shelf. "Ha-ha! How amusing," thought I, as I cheerfully headed out to quickly switch the good for the bad so Beloved could once again drive safely in the dark.

* * * * * * *
NEWSFLASH! THIS JUST IN: Those who design the engine compartments of the modern mechanical marvels we call automobiles are apparently double-jointed contortionists...with an evil streak a mile wide.

It's true...when I finally wormed my hand into the so-called "space" between the battery and the cap sealing the compartment that held the bulb for the headlight, my only option for actually twisting the cap off was to have a friend lift me up and spin my body. And when this was done, I immediately dropped the cap into the interior of the fender/wheel well/labyrinth.

But was this enough humiliation and defeat for this particular day? Apparently not.

Having irretrievably lost the cap/seal/lid-thingy, I then proceeded to be completely unable to remove the faulty bulb...forget about putting in the new one. It was impossible to actually, you know, see what I was doing, so I was stuck feeling around with my fingers, which were fairly well numb with cold at this point. I could unplug the thing, but as for figuring out the combination of yoga and ninja moves necessary for getting it out, I was about as useful as a seeing-eye dog with a blindfold.

I finally submitted to the reality of my ineptitude and drove to my friendly neighborhood oil-changing tire store and asked the grease monkeys if they could save me from my rapidly-increasing frustration. Practically before I finished asking the question, I was on my way, with my bruised ego whimpering in the back seat.

When I asked MonkeyBoy how he got the cap out of the fender, he said, "I'm the one that's always dropping things around here."

So, yeah...I was out-performed by the worst guy in the shop.

Bela Lugosi, where are you?

I gave blood the other day.

Correction: The Red Cross took some blood from me. Giving just isn't the right word to use for the red-tape wrapped, multiple-instruction sheet covered, inquisition-like screened event that I endured Monday afternoon-into-evening.

The unfilling station had been set up in the atrium-formerly-known-as-the-foyer of my church (http://www.valleycc.org), and the lead pastor had shamelessly begged us to fill up the appointment sheet, so I dutifully-obediently-pathetically participated.

Upon entering, I was cheerfully greeted, given a name tag, and issued a forest-killing pile of instructional pages informing me of the importance of my donation ("Give blood, good; use dirty needle, bad") and warning me of the possible-though-not-likely side effects of having blood forcibly removed from my body...including having a bruised arm that may display "a rainbow of colors." (Actual factual quote.)

I had to answer several questions about my personal health and private behavior. The good news is that said questions were privately answered by me on a computer. I'm thinking if the questions had been asked by a human being, face-to-face, we both would have been blushing like a nun at Chippendale's.

I was granted acceptance into the privileged crowd of acceptable donors, and directed to lay down and expose my neck to the incoming bat — er — give the nurse access to my arm. Once she pounded the inside of my elbow and painted my right side with antiseptic, it only took three people to lift the needle that was then twisted into my helpless flesh...all while telling me to relax, which was kind of like telling a person jumping out of a plane to fall up.

However, my attempts at relaxation must have been effective after all, because the next complaint cast in my direction had to do with the lack of speed with which my blood bag was filling. That's right — I wasn't bleeding fast enough for them. They kept jiggling the pipe that was protruding from my arm and milking the hose that ran from the pipe to the blood bag, but it all was taking so long that the wound started clotting over as if my body was saying, "I ain't got time to bleed."

Bottom line was, they couldn't get a full pint out of me and ended up having to discard the 90% of a pint that they got. It's all-or-nothing with those professional vampire types at the Red Cross. They told me not to let it discourage me from giving again in the future, but I said, "You are not the boss of me! It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to!"

But I think I will give it another try at the next opportunity. My arm is looking like a bag of Skittles and I can practically taste the rainbow. Yum!

My financial worries are over

I think I've had an apostrophe.

I've seen my future, and it's so bright, I need to wear shades.

The source of my inspiration and abundant hope is the following Associated Press item I read a few days ago.

McDonald's Pays for Worker's Weight
SAO PAULO - A Brazilian court ruled this week that McDonald's must pay a former franchise manager $17,500 because he gained 65 pounds while working there for a dozen years. The 32-year-old man said he felt forced to sample food each day to ensure quality standards remained high, because McDonald's hired "mystery clients" to randomly visit restaurants and report on the food, service, and cleanliness. The man also said the company offered free lunches to employees, adding to his caloric intake while on the job.

I can see clearly now (welcome to your newest earworm)...there are untapped resources out there waiting to be mined:

• I should be awarded a cash settlement for all the sleep I lost during the nine years I proofread prospectuses for mutual funds...on third shift. Not to mention the damage to my nervous system and arteries from all the caffeinated beverages I had to ingest to ensure my wakefulness.
• There should be a sliding scale of damage payments to my tender sense of well-being and usefulness for all the years I ministered to teens...who turned around and became felons, freeloaders, and insurance agents.
• My current place of employment forces me to actually, you know, show UP, which involves wear and tear on my vehicle, along with other operating expenses that are not fully reimbursed.

If we work this right, ladies and gentlemen, we may never have to work again.