Hi-jinks and shenanigans at church this morning

This morning I got up early and went to church for the 7:00 am liturgy.  There were only three people there besides myself and Ben, so it was a small affair.  I read the Hours, Ben read the Epistles, and we both sang the liturgy together.  I, of course, started the service off with a nice, big SPLAT as I began to read the Hours before Fr. Justin had said the first prayer.  Intent on yammering my fool head off, I got about as far as "Holy God, Holy -" when I heard Fr. Justin go "TSSST TSSST TSSST!" from the altar... oops.  Hey, I'm still an infant when it comes to churchly and spiritual matters, mmmk?  Anywho.

After that, Ben and I sang the liturgy, with Fr. Justin starting us off and guiding us every now and then when we bumbled and flubbled.  Actually, I was surprised and pleased at how smoothly everything went... right up until communion, that is.  Ben went to assist Fr. Justin when we began the communion hymn, and as I stood there singing 'Receive the BOOOOOOODY of CHRIIIIIIST...", all by myself and in my own little world, I suddenly saw Fr. Justin gesticulating in my direction.  It took about three seconds for my brain to engage the clutch and to switch gears, at which point I realized that he wanted me to hop up there onto the uh... manoualia?  Is that the right word?  ...that little raised platform in front of the altar, to help Ben hold the communion cloth.  So, hoppeth up there I did, and while Dave and Sam and Louise took communion, I took one end of the communion cloth and stood there, holding it.  I didn't do anything else with it until Fr. Justin indicated that I should actually hold it up close to the communicant so that it would catch any stray drops that tried to escape.  At one point I almost pulled it out of Ben's hands, I think.

Anywho, after a very short while, it was my turn to receive communion.  Being at an odd angle, and trying to hold the cloth under my chin while taking a big bite of Mystery at the same time, I promptly knocked the Body of Christ off of the spoon and onto the communion cloth as I was trying to slurp it into my mouth.  Oops, again.  It seemed to me that Fr. Justin exhaled slowly as he dug around with the spoon in the folds of the cloth for the wayward Bread.  As he was trying to retreive it, I thought to myself... "Self, Fr. Justin is gonna have to burn that cloth now, all because you have clumsy lips."  After what seemed like an interminably long period, but which was probably just a few seconds, Fr. Justin retreived the Bread and we finally got the thing down my gullet without further incident.

Tidbits

Before work:

I scheduled a confession with my priest this afternoon before work.  All through it, thunder was booming and lightning was flashing, accentuating the sins which I uttered, as if I were receiving admonishment from God.  Afterward I walked back home in torrential rain.

Things that happened at work:

A couple walked in.  The guy said to the girl, "Why are you being so argumentative today?"  The girl replied, "Because you're always wrong."  Brittney commented, "The typical dynamic between men and women."

A customer approached my counter with an old, dusty gas can.  She asked me if I could open it for her.  I did, and a spider immediately JUMPED out and rapelled down to the floor on a string of silk, then vanished underneath the counter.  I can imagine its relief to be out of that smelly gas can.

I had eyes rolled at me by a flamboyantly gay man because I wasn't able to read his mind when he presented me with 21 dollars, declaring "I want a dollar fifty!"  In gas, apparently, after my psychic abilities kicked in.

I invented a new taquito today... the floppy tortilla flavored taquito.  Great for fast days.  I can't wait to present my new product to Chiy.

I also learned from Brittney that getting angry is ubiquitous among all human beings, and that I'm not defective.

After work:

As I said

This morning I watched The Iron Giant, a fun movie.  I've seen it several times.  This time, however, there was a long stretch of the movie that I didn't remember ever seeing before.  I thought that maybe I'd downloaded a 'directors cut' or something, but they don't just cut scenes from animated movies.  They either animate them, or they don't, because it's expensive to animate 15 minutes worth of movie and then just cut it.  It just doesn't happen like that.  Deleted scenes of animated movies consist of storyboards, not fully fleshed out animation.  And they're in the 'special features' section, not in the movie proper.

Oh well.  Maybe I've got a brain tumor.

Freestyling

Tonight Brittney played some more of her music for me.  She was rapping, and it sounded good.  I thought to myself, self, you may not be able to sing worth a damn, but I bet you could rap.  So I said to Brittney, "I bet I could rap!"  Brittney said that she was freestyling on that song, and I thought... hmmm.  Self, I bet you could could freestyle too.  So I said, "I bet I could freestyle too!"

So Brittney loaded up some Slim Shady on YouTube without the vocals, and here's what I freestyled:

"If you're bored with Star Wars, I'll bore a hole like a mole in your head till you're dead, then I'll steal your Keds and make treads so fast my shift is red, like the expanding universe, my verse will curse your purse strings, all your bling gone from being to not being, while I sing my account goes ka-ching, you feel the sting 'cause I'm king of the rhyming, double timing like a pod racer, I'll chase her with fur 'cause she's PETA, she don't like meata so I'll beat 'er with a tortilla, then I'll say 'see ya' and take off like a boss in my hyperdrive hoss, I live my life by the coin toss!"

Uh huh.  Yeah.  That's right.

My continuing descent into madness

One day, long after I'm dead of course, someone will run across this journal in some online repository and recognize it as pure genius and mourn over the fact that I never finished my astronaut novel.  This blog will be published posthumously in book form, and trillions of people across the galaxy will know the life story of the brilliant unsung hero of his time who went batshit insane.  Therefore, I feel that it is important to document these episodes, for the benefit of posterity.  

The other day I was getting ready for work and talking to Matt at the same time, all the while checking the clock on the microwave to make sure I wouldn't be late.  I even checked my arcade cab computer clock a couple of times.  The last clock I checked was my phone, right before I left... it was 1:55.  When I got to work, Brian said, "You're early!"  I thought he was kidding around with me, because I was exactly on time, and I usually show up at 2:04.  I laughed and said, "Yeah, I am."  I went to clock in and Chiy said, "Why you so early?  It only 1:00!"  I looked at my phone.  It was 1:00.  I was incredulous.  I was in a state of disbelief.  I was shocked.  I was just a tad bit unnerved.  I had looked at three different clocks several times as I was getting ready for work, and I read each of them as an hour later than the actual time, each time.

Yesterday I was perusing this comic.  When you move the cursor on top of one of the images and leave it, a little text box pops up that says 'The 98% Degree'.  Well, the first time I did this, it didn't read that.  It read, 'imaginary breaks'.  WTF are imaginary breaks?  I tried it again and again, on different panels and different places in the panels, and it never ever popped up with 'imaginary breaks' again.  Yup, I'm going insane.  

A life full of sin.

I don't have to put myself through hell every day.  It's an unconscious choice that I don't notice a lot of the time, but it's still a choice.  I just said to myself, out loud, "A life full of sin is what I -" and I meant to say 'lead'.  What came out was 'leave'.  I didn't mean to say that.  I guess it wasn't a conscious choice, but it was still a choice.

Happy - part 6

Happy happy happy!  Unprecedented happiness.  I'm not high, I'm not in love, I'm just happy.  It happened again today.  It's almost like when I crossed the threshold saying the Jesus Prayer those two times.  I've wondered and wondered about this, why it's been happening, and I think it's because I've been in Communion.  It's like being in love, or high on the best opiate.  Is this what it feels like to ride the coattails of God?

It's not consistent, but neither have I been with Communion.  But this is happening, I think, as a direct result of prayer and Communion, and involvement with the Church.  I have no excuse to ever be sad or self pitying or angry again.  It can be like this all the time, not just at work.  I've wondered why it's just at work that I feel like this... and I think it's because of all the people I see every day.  Fr. Justin said to be a ministry at work.  I think God is helping me to do that.  When I'm happy at work, everybody around me is happy.  I see the positive effect on people.  They smile, they talk to me, they laugh, they say I'm silly and funny.  It's just the best thing in the world.  I could be in prison, or on the street, or sick in bed with terminal cancer and I would only feel pure joy.

I hope I become worthy one day so that I can share this with someone; a wife, and a family.  And if I don't ever find anyone, I'll share it with everybody.

I'm so happy.  There's nothing like the sight of a gaggle of foonting turlingdromes, corkscrewing a swath of decimation through their natural habitat, the sublimating butter gardens of the Cydonian Bubble Flats.

Stained glass sketches by Roger McIntosh

My friend Julie gave me some original stained glass art that has been in her family for a long time.  Roger McIntosh is the artist, and his stained glass appears in lots of churches throughout Texas.  One of his pieces decorates a window at the SMU.  I didn't know how valuable these sketches are until just a few minutes ago.  Apparently they're worth hundreds of dollars each.  I'm stunned by her generosity.  These compositions are nearly a hundred years old.  One is signed R D McIntosh, designer, 1919.  And she just gave them to me.  Just gave them to me.  I had it in my mind to give one to someone close to me, and now it makes it mean even more that I should give one of these away as a gift, knowing how... just singularly unique and valuable they are.  I'm just bowled over and wow'd and kind of feel a little bit as if I've been poleaxed.

It's funny how you never know what's going to happen next in life... the next day, or the next week, or the next year.  There's always something interesting in store, some little thing or big thing that happens.  Events which transpire that come right out of the blue.  Sometimes they're ugly things, and sometimes they're surprising things... but sometimes they are little wondrous things.  And they all spill out at me constantly, and I can count on nothing to be what I expected. 

Cake Wrecks

My new favorite blog:

Cake Wrecks

And is it a coincidence that my dad forwarded  me this picture of a cake that a friend of his got for her birthday?

 

Now, granted, this is supposed to be the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars, and I have to admit, it does sort of resemble it.  However, this looks more like clunky robot version.  The forward nacelles look sort of kind of like legs, the cockpit resembles a giant fist, and that part between the 'nacelles'... the safest thing I can come up with to compare that to is mechanical underoos.

How much harder would have been, what with all of the work and detail that obviously went into this cake, to make it look like the actual ship instead of some kind of Hasbro/Kenner mutation?

I hammered out this Photoshop edit in about 5 minutes.  It's sloppy, but heck, it still looks more like the Millenium Falcon than that cake.

 

 

Pick-up lines

Yesterday at the Jazz Fest I had decided to do something I've never done before... try some pick-up lines on women.  Here are the ones I decided on, in order of their deployment:

"Hey, I'm writing a telephone book... may I have your number please?"
"This isn't a beer belly, it's a high performance fuel tank."
"You should be someone's wife." 
"I once knew a squirrel named Marvin.  Man oh man are you hot.  Marvin is in Africa now."
"Hi. Are you cute?"
"What the hell are you looking at?"

I realize now, after the fact, that somehow I got less and less witty the more beer I drank.  I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?

Workin' the cool

My sister Michele is coming into town today.  Yipee!  And we're all going to the Jazz Fest.  Which reminds me of a Jazz Fest memory:

Back in '08, we all went to the Jazz Fest.  I was all decked out on my grungified gear... combat boots, cut off jeans shorts, flannel shirt, shades, and my dragon doo-rag.  I had brought a book with me because, hey, I'm likely to get bored at a place where there are 10 different stages with bands playing and 5000 people dancing and drinking.  So, I'm sitting in a lawn chair, reading my book with people dancing all around me and the band blaring, looking just as cool as a cucumber, and I feel this tap on my shoulder.  A guy is standing there with a fancy schmancy camera, one of those film kinds with a long lens.  He says, "Hey man, I got some great shots of you.  I just wanted to say thanks!"

Wow!  I must have really been working the cool factor.

Later I was wandering around aimlessly, drinking a beer and exhuding cool, when Heather's mom pranced up to me, grabbed one of my hands and put another around me, and danced me in a circle to the music of the band that was playing on stage.  When she was done, she smiled this big tipsy smile, and said, "Thanks!"

That was the second time someone had just up and taken advantage of my cool factor that day.  Man, my ego was fit to be tied, I can tell you.

So, today, I'm gonna BRING THE COOL to the Jazz Fest.  Unlike last year when I just moped around and left after an hour.

Oh dear.

It's a distinct possibility that I might be going batshit insane.  Allow me to elucidate.  For years now, my brain has been hiding things from me.  Para ejemplo... if I'm looking for my lighter, or my phone, or a pen, or anything that is about the size of a pack of cigarettes (or when I'm looking for my cigarettes), every once in a while my brain will find it hilarious to just block these things from my vision while I'm looking for them.  On numerous occasions I've been looking directly at the thing I was looking for, and just DID. NOT. SEE. IT.

This started, I think, about 20 years ago, when I was looking for a library book I'd checked out from the local community college I was attending.  I scoured my room for that book, but finally I just gave up and paid for the damn thing.  About a week after that, I was going through my closet for whatever reason, and there was the book, sitting right on top of everything, in plain view.  That was the first time this kind of thing had happened that I remember, and for a long time nothing like it ever happened again.

Now though, for the past several years, this has been happening more and more frequently.  Like I said... lighters, keys, smokes, phone, jewelry, flash drives, anything that's sufficiently small... my brain will just ix-nay it from my vision.  Then, usually minutes or hours later, I'll discover it lying right out in the great wide open where I'd already looked.  Is this funny, brain?  Do you get a kick out of driving me to the brink of insanity?

The day before yesterday was the grandaddy of all practical jokes that my brain has decided to play on me up to this point... that is, unless my entire life and everything I've seen and heard and felt up to now has been just one big joke, and all of these little incidents are just jokes within the joke.  Now wouldn't that be funny?  I bet my brain thinks it would be... anywho.  The things I'm about to describe, I remember clearly, as if they really happened.  They are distinct memories, and I can refer to them.  I remember them happening, just like I remember, say... picking up my cigarettes, pulling one out of the pack, lighting it, taking a drag, and setting it in the ashtray about 45 seconds ago.  I remember them just like that. 

So, the day before yesterday, I distinctly remember picking up my phone charger and putting it in my left breast pocket, right above my smokes, before walking to work.  When I got to work, I clocked in and then went over to the register to wait for Steve to finish counting.  When he was done, I removed all of the items from my pockets... smokes, phone, charger, prayer book, and lighter... just like I always do, habitually, every day... and put them next to the register.  I checked a few customers, and then went into the cooler to order beer.

That took about an hour, and when I came back to my register, my charger was gone.  I looked high and low for that thing, because I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER putting it down next to the register, just as I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER putting it in my breast pocket before walking to work.  I asked Chiy and Lin and Brian and Matius and everybody if they'd seen it, and nobody had.  It was a frikin mystery.  My phone charger had spontaneously evaporated.

That night I came home and looked for it in the usual places... my computer desk, on the arcade cab, on the dresser, plugged into the wall... but I didn't find it.  I went to work yesterday and looked some more, and yup, you guessed it.  It still wasn't there.  Every now and then Chiy would ask me, 'You find your charger?  Why it not there if you put it there?  If you put it there, it should be there!'  Yeah, Chiy, I agree 100%.  You're absolutely right.  I've never heard more irrefutable logic.  It should definitely be there if I put it there, and I believed whole-heartedly that I had, in fact, put it there.  I finally gave up and resigned myself to getting used to life minus phone charger for a while, and decided to just order another one.  And although the odds are a godzillian to one, it is scientifically and statistically possible that my phone charger had simply undergone spontaneous existence failure.

So, here I am, sitting at my laptop, and just before I started writing this, about 15 minutes ago, I was checking to see if my Wacom was plugged in so I could photoshop this comic I'm working on, and FUCK ME if my phone charger wasn't RIGHT THERE.  Right where I'd looked yesterday!  Sitting there, in plain view, an inch from my mouse.  The same mouse I'd been using last night to cavort all over the internet. 

This is the first time my brain has invented a memory of me seeing something that wasn't there, as opposed to vice versa.  What's next?  Will I be in the cooler, ordering beer, and completely miss the six foot stack of Miller Lite 12 packs and order 20 more, thinking that we're out?  Or will I see a stack of Budweiser 18 packs that isn't there, decide that we have enough, and then stare like a drooling retard at the empty spot in the cooler when we run out two days later ?  Or will I finally just frolic off to La-La-Land with Julie when she comes to pick me up in the Mothership?

I think I might be going slightly mad.  Yes, I'm going slightly mad.  It finally happened, I'm slightly mad.  Oh dear! 

And there you have it.

I'm a genius

I've discovered a cure for depression!  Write limericks about it until the situation just seems absurd. 

Limericks about whatnot and somethingoranother.

One of these days I'll get around to just being over this already, and I'll move on to a brand new something or another that will make me crazy or miserable or deliriously happy or scared shitless.  Always something new to look forward to!  Ain't life awesome?


There once was a girl named Leah
With whom I just wanted to be-ah
Although it's a year
Since she said 'goodbye, dear'
I'm still wishing that she was with me-ah.


When he and she both became friends,
There was one thing which I didn't ken...
That once he unfurled
His designs on my girl,
She'd be gone just like dust in the wind.


Those limericks are both full of shit
They're full of self pity, not wit
'Cause the times that were good
Are the things that I should
Keep inside me and never forget.


In Soviet Russia we rhyme
About love, which undone, becomes crime
Such doggerel is rough,
For in battle is tough
To dodge bullets and scrawl at same time.


In Soviet Russia we say,
'You don't break heart, heart breaks you, okay?'
If is too hard to take,
Well, then go jump in lake.
What?  Is not even frozen today!

...and the one I wrote for her

There once was a girl named Julie
Who gave not a shit 'bout the rule-ie(s)
She gave us the slip
When the great mothership
Picked her up because she was so coolie.

She's always talking about being picked up by the mothership, for anyone who's reading this.  And I figure some people might be, because in my stats, it shows that people from around the world type strings into Google like 'photomasks' and are presented with my 'Science of Fart Eating' blog.