Surprise! Weiner.

Last night I was laying in bed, as I am wont to do. All of the sudden, looming out of the semi-darkness of the AutoZone parking lot next to our apartment, a huge, flesh-colored tube came to a slow stop. It's engine turned off, and a small, Asian woman dismounted from her WienerMobile. That's right. The Oscar Meyer WienerMobile parked in our alley.

Ummmm... is it just me or is the meat WAY out of proportion to the bun?

The WM's driver is a friend of our neighbor. It almost makes me sad that instead of staying here and getting to know the WM and it's driver, and maybe getting to drive the WienerMobile myself, I'll be going here:

Hate me just a little bit.

Trade offs in life are a bitch. But hot DAMN! The WienerMobile! How many more times can I type wiener? Wiener!

Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Afternoon Grump

Ever felt like you really wanted to stab people in the eye?

Yeah. Me too. Right in the eye. With a pen. I’d start with this guy.

Wouldn't I look better with a bic in my retina? Yes. Yes I would.

Then move on to these two. I become enraged at the sight of them.

"Look at us! We are both misshapen! Let's date and then not and everyone shall care! Oh no, Lance! No one is paying enough attention? What ever shall we do?" Bics to the eyes boys, bics to the eyes.

I’d finish up with this lady.

No no, stop, it's not about the hate. It's about my boobs, and their hate. For others. Ahhh! My eye!

No, I’d probably go for one more.

Nothing can express my worthlessness. Not my precious eyes!

I mean, they wouldn’t die. They’d just be paying for the pain they cause the world. With a bleeding eye socket. Seems fair to me.

Yeah, I didn’t sleep so good last night. I might should find some coffee.

Church Shopping

Yeah, I know. It’s not very nice to judge something like a spiritual community the same way one might judge a restaurant, but really, what else do we have?

I went to mass on Sunday. My reasoning to do so? Unclear. I haven’t really been a regular attendee of ye olde churche since I moved to Asia, where there are about four catholics.

Now 18% more tolerant!

I can’t say I missed it all that much. I wish I could say that, but really, not so much. I’m not sure I even believe in it all anymore. Seriously people, the story doesn’t stand up to the bright white light of day. Some white guy who lives in the sky impregnates a Syrian girl, and it is fantastically important that it didn’t happen in the normal way that we were created/evolved to reproduce. No, it was magic. Like Harry Potter. Her son gets to be about thirty and all the sudden has a midlife crisis, tells a bunch of crazy stories and ends up getting killed by the state, but he is actually just doing the bidding of his father, who is omnipotent but seemed unable to create a people that didn’t need redemption. Also, still needs the Romans to convict his son of being the king of an unimportant tribe. But before he is killed he discusses cannibalism with his groupies who, it should be mentioned, abandoned their families to wander around the countryside with this guy. Then, according to a document written at least EIGHTY years after the events transpired by a bunch of rather unreliable fellows, this son awoke from the dead and flew around saying howdy before returning to the fortress of solitude, aka heaven. We are to learn from this that someone’s death can somehow atone for our own sins, and that after we die we go to the fortress of solitude as well. But only if we were good enough, according to the Catholics, or only if we meant to do good, according to some of the sane protestants, or only if we were born again/bitten by a snake/filled with the holy spirit/dunked in a river/voted for Bush, according to the crazy protestants. It remains unclear, two thousand years after the fact.

I have my doubts about all of that. I suppose to decide about something one has to study. Maybe that’s why I went to mass.

Anyway, I went to Nativity Catholic Church on Georgia Ave, way up by Murlnd. I give it a three out of five.

• Stained glass windows? Staid, but with out any insane headless horsemen, devils poking babies with tridents or other gore favored by papists for one reason or another. Check.
• Statuary? The usual suspects were present, Ol’ St. Francis cavorting with birds, St Gregory who did something at somepoint, and standard-bearer Mary, eyes full of mercy. Or booze. Who can know? Check.

He's a joker, a smoker, a midnight toker.

• Music? Hmmmm. Gospel. And LOTS of clapping. The program didn’t say anything about it being Gospel Mass. Are Catholics allowed to clap at church? Note to self: check canonical law.
• Priest? Polish. Or Ukrainian. Something not Irish. Probably from one of those countries that American Catholics use like a ATM machine for priests because we have so much money we can’t imagine being poor and asexual for more than like five minutes. Check.
• Architecture? Good. High ceilings, stone floors, none of this modern convention center crap. Dark pews, dark religion. Check.

Masturbation makes Jesus cry.

• Congregation? Sparse. I don’t like sparse; it’s way too hard to blend in. Also, this congregation was HANDS ON. For those of you, dear readers, who are not of the mainstream Christian persuasion (Yes, I’m judging you. Judging you like a fox! Kidding) there is usually a part of the service where everyone shakes hands and promises not to kill each other.

In the Midwest, where I come from, the meet-and-do-not-kill portion of the service is conducted in the following manner:

1. Shake hands with/ hug IMMEDIATE family members.
2. Look around nervously, attempting to make eye contact with someone close by so you can shake their hand and pledge to not kill them. Ensure you do not make them feel guilty by making eye contact when they have just initiated hand shaking with a third party.
3. Make proper eye contact, extend hand, grasp firmly. No limp hands, people.
4. Say the line, something like “Peace be with you”. Follow the priest’s lead.
5. DO NOT HUG.
6. Locate next Christian. Repeat.
7. After shaking the hands of all of the people in your personal three foot radius, mission complete. Get ready for communion.

On Georgia Avenue, the rules are modified thusly:

1. Shake hands with/ hug IMMEDIATE family members EVERYONE.

2. Look around nervously, attempting to make eye contact with someone close by so you can shake their hand and pledge to not kill them. Ensure you do not make them feel guilty by making eye contact when they have just initiated hand shaking with a third party. No seriously, get to hugging.

3. Make proper eye contact, extend hand, grasp firmly. No limp hands, people. HUG!

4. Say the line, something like “Peace be with you”. Follow the priests lead. Or make up your own! My favorite was “Oh baby! Christ be all around you!”.

5. DO NOT HUG.

6. Locate next Christian. Repeat.

7. After shaking the hands of Continue HUGGING all of the people in your personal three foot radius, mission complete. Get ready for communion. in existence.

8. Ensure to leave your pew and wander around for about ten minutes, hugging everyone that you hugged already. Already hugged everyone twice? Go for thrice. Peace be with everyone, multiple peaces.

I’ll be honest. It was disconcerting. I could get used to it with time, but we might have to speed that up. I can’t have my mass lasting an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s twenty minutes too long. Check.

• Communion Wine? What was that? Kool-Aid spiked with vodka? A travesty.

In summary, Nativity Catholic Church: a bright medley of traditionalist format enriched with some unorthodox notes of hugging and gospel singing. Undertones of earthy Calvinism with wisps of the elderly. Not as robust as it could be, but plenty of Mary statues to distract parishioners from the fact the new Pope looks like pure evil. All in all, fine, but missing incense and alter boys.

Maybe next Sunday I can start thinking about theology. But all that hugging. Makes a man nervous.

Evening Commute

Crystal, sparkly, unblinking cold.

Breath clouding in billows like tired factories wheezing quietly.

Leaves slick underneath the feet, softy smoothy slick. Wet? No, dry and rustling, but slick.

Still stars, sole scuffles against concrete slabs.

Quiet car shooshes by.

Home not far now, warm and smelling like cooking fat and spice.

Week Long Meetings

I’m in a boring IT meeting all week long. This is my paper blog. Otherwise known as writing.

9:15
Our Job: select massive new database system.
The Forum: conference room, nine am, Monday.
The Word of the Hour: Scalability.
Where I Would Rather Be: in bed. Covers over the head. Toes, toasty warm.

10:05
Word of the Hour: Granular. Misused in reference to the concept of limiting access to certain user groups. “As you can see this system is very granular.” Really? It’s made of small, evenly sized pieces? Like sand? Cause I can see that causing problems in an office environment. Who wants database grains in their power suit? Nobody, that’s who.
Where I Would Rather Be: still in bed. But now I am reading. I built a fort with the pillows and no one breaches my defenses. Unless I have to pee.

10:55
This exchange demonstrates why I will never go into IT:

Presenter: “All of these are native SQL+ processi [sic], not some sort of API/Call Up script.”
Audience laughs.

Jesus wept.

11:03
Word of the Hour: “best-practices-out-of-the-box”. As far as I can tell, this is a big word for “appropriate”, as in “best-practices-out-of-the-box solutions”. Seriously: just say “appropriate solutions.” It won’t hurt you. But me hitting you with a lead pipe will, which I think we can all agree is the best-practice-out-of-the-box solution for unnecessary corporate speak.

11:52
Word of the Hour: Lunch.
Where I Would Rather Be: eating a patty melt. I feel it is a much maligned sandwich.

12:55
Word of the Hour: Recency. McWhat?
Where I Would Rather Be: being stoned to death by radical clerics.

2:02
I don’t even know what they are discussing now, but it does seem that our RFM assets will be integrated vertically. Well good. We were all worried about that.

2:34
I wonder if it is possible to cause my thumb to explode if I concentrate real hard? What about other peoples’ thumbs?

3:51
No. Concentration does not cause thumb explosions.