The day after Christmas is always an interesting observation for me. I affectionately refer to it as "Crap Back Day". It's a busy day at the stores because everyone who was given an unwanted or bad gift gets to cash in with Christmas' most twisted form of currency: the receipt. Crap goes back in favor of the present that will stand no better chance at enlightening the gift receiver of the true meaning of Christmas.
On Crap Back Day, Black Friday experiences a departmental butterfly effect. Nowadays, if you return a gift, you'll be able to exchange it for something similar or get a gift card for that store. Stores can at least keep the money in-house. So hundreds upon hundreds of road-weary consumers will be attacking a pre-selected department store for a low-budget spending spree.
This year, I won't be exchanging anything I got, because I asked for very few things. I did, however, need some rather expensive stuff, so any dollars allocated to me got poured into very few precious gifts. I don't think I'll return the Chicago Cubs 2010 calendar, though. The publishing company had the foresight to not include Milton Bradley as one of the monthly players featured.
On Black Friday and on Christmas Eve, we ought to salute every cashier in overcommercialized America. Today, we salute another forgotten cog, a tireless working ant in the ant colony of the American economy... let's see if I can dramatize this into a "We Salute You..."-style beer commerical tribute.
Real men (and women) of genius...
Today, we salute you, Wal-Mart customer service desk representative. You have worked your way up the ranks from shopping cart pusher to overnight stocker to cashier... and now you stand... behind the customer service desk.
Guy in high-pitched voice sings: (How may I help you?)
You sit upon your throne patrolling the storeroom floor for price discrepancies, chargebacks, and jammed cash registers.
(Open the @#$%*! drawer!!)
You normally have nothing to do but to wait... but on Crap Back Day... you have a line of people in front of you from your desk all the way to Montgomery Ward's... and Montgomery Wards went out of business years ago. You secretly long for the days of pushing shopping carts.
(I miss the snow!!)
So crack open a nice cold Miller Lite, you regal eagle of retail.
(Mr. Wal-Mart customer service desk representative!)
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Presents or Presence?
Merry Christmas to my average audience of 3.7 blog-readers. I've upped the average recently due to posted comments from a couple of people I don't know. I only hope to reach that awesome, round-number benchmark of 8.14 one day!
Every year, Christmas comes and goes. I always feel like I'm missing something from the season, as if I'm missing out on some special "experience" from the holidays. The gifts and music and gatherings and Charlie Brown Christmas Special are all great, but I wonder if, each year, some kind of "magic" escaped me.
I can't go through the season without watching Charlie Brown's Christmas at least once. I'll be turning 30 in a couple of months. Something about it turns me into a softened little boy. A while back, when I was living with a roommate, my roommate walked in on me, in the living room, watching Snoopy and Charlie Brown. This was a few years ago. The look on my roommate's face... you would have thought he was witnessing me performing some kind of illegal voodoo ritual with incense burning and dark organ music. But no, I was watching Snoopy win a Christmas decoration contest for his doghouse, and Charlie Brown directing the Christmas play.
You can imagine the picture. I'm built like a tank... I'm about six feet tall, about 220 lbs with a rather muscular build, well-worn jeans or cargo pants, big baggy T-shirts and sweat shirts, typical dude. I'm the last person you would think would be laughing like crazy over Snoopy's shenanigans.
I think it harkens me back to my childhood... and with all of the both declarations of scripture in that show, which ordinarily would never be allowed on network television these days, it provided me with my first, authentic spiritual experiences in my youth. I watched a little group of cartoon kids and a goofy beagle find the true meaning of Christmas.
And I know the true meaning of Christmas more than ever now. But I can't help but wonder if there is some higher level of fulfillment in the season that I missed. I could care less about the presents. But every year, stores go over-commercial, families go nuts trying to please everyone on their lists, hosts of family get-togethers kick it into overdrive to make sure the food it right and the kids are occupied and the living room is set up properly and the tree doesn't get accidentally knocked over landing onto the host family's annoying new puppy. My Christmas still involves hustle and bustle, with everyone around me just trying to survive crowds before the big day, and the stress of the actual day.
And I haven't actually been able to share the joys of true meaning of Christmas with anyone with any level of depth.
I'm not surrounded by the most spiritual people during a holiday, so it all seems like a tired routine. I'm at the point now where I'm willing to spend holidays with someone else, just as a break from a routine that has increasingly diverted from the true meaning of Christmas.
I think the trick is that God blesses people with His presence when a group, no matter how big or small, share with each other, and truly celebrate, the true reason Christmas happens. And God is pleased when people mimic God's sending of Jesus Christ by making a genuine, heartfelt sacrifice for someone else. It's deeper than giving a good gift. It's an expression of love and hope.
And that's what Christmas is. God the Father made a huge sacrifice of love... sending His Son Jesus into the world as a vulnerable, lowly baby, because He loved a dark, broken, and depraved human race. He gave hope to people, as an expression of extreme love.
This season, even after today is over, celebrate Christ in Christmas, and sacrifice for those who mean the most to you.
Every year, Christmas comes and goes. I always feel like I'm missing something from the season, as if I'm missing out on some special "experience" from the holidays. The gifts and music and gatherings and Charlie Brown Christmas Special are all great, but I wonder if, each year, some kind of "magic" escaped me.
I can't go through the season without watching Charlie Brown's Christmas at least once. I'll be turning 30 in a couple of months. Something about it turns me into a softened little boy. A while back, when I was living with a roommate, my roommate walked in on me, in the living room, watching Snoopy and Charlie Brown. This was a few years ago. The look on my roommate's face... you would have thought he was witnessing me performing some kind of illegal voodoo ritual with incense burning and dark organ music. But no, I was watching Snoopy win a Christmas decoration contest for his doghouse, and Charlie Brown directing the Christmas play.
You can imagine the picture. I'm built like a tank... I'm about six feet tall, about 220 lbs with a rather muscular build, well-worn jeans or cargo pants, big baggy T-shirts and sweat shirts, typical dude. I'm the last person you would think would be laughing like crazy over Snoopy's shenanigans.
I think it harkens me back to my childhood... and with all of the both declarations of scripture in that show, which ordinarily would never be allowed on network television these days, it provided me with my first, authentic spiritual experiences in my youth. I watched a little group of cartoon kids and a goofy beagle find the true meaning of Christmas.
And I know the true meaning of Christmas more than ever now. But I can't help but wonder if there is some higher level of fulfillment in the season that I missed. I could care less about the presents. But every year, stores go over-commercial, families go nuts trying to please everyone on their lists, hosts of family get-togethers kick it into overdrive to make sure the food it right and the kids are occupied and the living room is set up properly and the tree doesn't get accidentally knocked over landing onto the host family's annoying new puppy. My Christmas still involves hustle and bustle, with everyone around me just trying to survive crowds before the big day, and the stress of the actual day.
And I haven't actually been able to share the joys of true meaning of Christmas with anyone with any level of depth.
I'm not surrounded by the most spiritual people during a holiday, so it all seems like a tired routine. I'm at the point now where I'm willing to spend holidays with someone else, just as a break from a routine that has increasingly diverted from the true meaning of Christmas.
I think the trick is that God blesses people with His presence when a group, no matter how big or small, share with each other, and truly celebrate, the true reason Christmas happens. And God is pleased when people mimic God's sending of Jesus Christ by making a genuine, heartfelt sacrifice for someone else. It's deeper than giving a good gift. It's an expression of love and hope.
And that's what Christmas is. God the Father made a huge sacrifice of love... sending His Son Jesus into the world as a vulnerable, lowly baby, because He loved a dark, broken, and depraved human race. He gave hope to people, as an expression of extreme love.
This season, even after today is over, celebrate Christ in Christmas, and sacrifice for those who mean the most to you.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Close calls
I drive the same route to work pretty much every morning, and I did exactly that yesterday. There's are sections along the two major east-west roads that get blocked up really easily because two stoplights are so close together... on both roads. Many commuters, who start on the further south east-west road but need to sneak up to more northern one, have found a legal "cheat" along this route, whereby we cut up a side street into the back lot of a WalMart. We go through the lot and can make a right turn onto the further north major east-west road, and you bypass most of the congestion around those stoplights.
It's not a bad tactic, it has saved me time each morning, and it's pretty safe. Yesterday, there was a slight mist in the air and on the ground, and I was cutting through the lot, about to make a right turn onto the road. After the last car in a glut of fast commuters, I had a window of several seconds to make my turn before another glut came. Just as I turned, I got rear-ended by the car behind me, and I ended up in the middle of the two eastbound lanes. I was able to gather myself and drive up to the next parking lot and drive in before the next cars came, and the lady that struck me followed me into the lot. I was able to punch the bumper back into place, and rub most of the paint from her car off of mine. Not much more damage than that, fortunately. I just told her to forget it and go on with our day.
As I drove to work, I realized that the lady didn't hit me because of the opening in traffic. She wasn't paying attention, probably due to a cellphone. And it could have happened at any point, even while fast cars were flying in the lane I was about to turn into. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if I had gotten hit three seconds earlier or five seconds later, I'm in a big pile-up. And the lady is still in the parking lot, safe.
Back in college, I had an intro to religion class, and I remember a discussion about bad things happening to us. A girl in front of me was telling the class about a religious friend of hers that had gotten into an accident, and thanked God that the accident was not worse. She bluntly asked that if God were so good, then why didn't He prevent the whole accident in the first place?
I had a similar situation over three years ago when I was hit by a car on my bike, and I was knocked into a busy Chicago thoroughfare. A few seconds earlier or later, and I'm run over by oncoming traffic. I had some scratches on my leg, and my bike was busted pretty good. But I was fine and I just shook it off. Yesterday, I had a more spiritual approach to the accident.
Back then, I missed the message. The girl in my religion class missed the message.
"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." James 4:14
We all need a reminder of our mortality. It's so easy to assume you have days, weeks, months, years ahead of you. And then I miss the urgency of now. And I may put off an assignment from God another day. Or fail to deliver some time-sensitive blessing to someone else. Or miss a miracle that God has for me.
If you think about the circumstances, I really could have been killed yesterday, or a few years ago. And walking away with a new appreciation for today is a beautiful blessing. In this selfish society, we seek comfort... trouble-free, fear-free, luxury, glamour, pleasure, etc. And any time something bad happens, we fail to see the point. The girl in my religion class thinks that life is about her trying to find residence on Easy Street. But life can be taken away before you find Easy Street on Google Earth.
Yesterday morning, I could have left so much unfinished business in life. And, to an extent, that is going to happen in every death. But I, and so many of us I'm sure, leave unfinished business every day that was supposed to have been taken care of that day... or yesterday... or last week... or a few years ago.
Sometimes, you need to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk for a godly reason.
Today.
You may not have tomorrow.
Why do I assume that my life is less frail now at age 29 than it will be thirty years from now? Whether you live for 100 years or 50 years or 29 years or a couple of days, it all is infinitesimally small compared to ETERNITY.
And the close closes provide us with great reminders of such timeless truths.
It's not a bad tactic, it has saved me time each morning, and it's pretty safe. Yesterday, there was a slight mist in the air and on the ground, and I was cutting through the lot, about to make a right turn onto the road. After the last car in a glut of fast commuters, I had a window of several seconds to make my turn before another glut came. Just as I turned, I got rear-ended by the car behind me, and I ended up in the middle of the two eastbound lanes. I was able to gather myself and drive up to the next parking lot and drive in before the next cars came, and the lady that struck me followed me into the lot. I was able to punch the bumper back into place, and rub most of the paint from her car off of mine. Not much more damage than that, fortunately. I just told her to forget it and go on with our day.
As I drove to work, I realized that the lady didn't hit me because of the opening in traffic. She wasn't paying attention, probably due to a cellphone. And it could have happened at any point, even while fast cars were flying in the lane I was about to turn into. I'm not exaggerating when I say that if I had gotten hit three seconds earlier or five seconds later, I'm in a big pile-up. And the lady is still in the parking lot, safe.
Back in college, I had an intro to religion class, and I remember a discussion about bad things happening to us. A girl in front of me was telling the class about a religious friend of hers that had gotten into an accident, and thanked God that the accident was not worse. She bluntly asked that if God were so good, then why didn't He prevent the whole accident in the first place?
I had a similar situation over three years ago when I was hit by a car on my bike, and I was knocked into a busy Chicago thoroughfare. A few seconds earlier or later, and I'm run over by oncoming traffic. I had some scratches on my leg, and my bike was busted pretty good. But I was fine and I just shook it off. Yesterday, I had a more spiritual approach to the accident.
Back then, I missed the message. The girl in my religion class missed the message.
"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." James 4:14
We all need a reminder of our mortality. It's so easy to assume you have days, weeks, months, years ahead of you. And then I miss the urgency of now. And I may put off an assignment from God another day. Or fail to deliver some time-sensitive blessing to someone else. Or miss a miracle that God has for me.
If you think about the circumstances, I really could have been killed yesterday, or a few years ago. And walking away with a new appreciation for today is a beautiful blessing. In this selfish society, we seek comfort... trouble-free, fear-free, luxury, glamour, pleasure, etc. And any time something bad happens, we fail to see the point. The girl in my religion class thinks that life is about her trying to find residence on Easy Street. But life can be taken away before you find Easy Street on Google Earth.
Yesterday morning, I could have left so much unfinished business in life. And, to an extent, that is going to happen in every death. But I, and so many of us I'm sure, leave unfinished business every day that was supposed to have been taken care of that day... or yesterday... or last week... or a few years ago.
Sometimes, you need to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk for a godly reason.
Today.
You may not have tomorrow.
Why do I assume that my life is less frail now at age 29 than it will be thirty years from now? Whether you live for 100 years or 50 years or 29 years or a couple of days, it all is infinitesimally small compared to ETERNITY.
And the close closes provide us with great reminders of such timeless truths.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Winston
I have a good friend that minored in something called "Women's Studies" in college. As I think about (and, frankly, overanalyze) the term "women's studies", I find this field of study to be more and more of huge scam. It implies that women can be studied, with the intent of attaining actual concrete knowledge about women.
As I've suspected for years, there is no such thing as concrete knowledge about women. Trying to study the unknowable is really a joke. If football jocks in college have music appreciation as their blow-off class, girls have women's studies. Every textbook in one of their classes should be censored. Forget free speech... everything in that class could be responded to with "what are you talking about?" And whenever you say that to a woman, there's a heavy price to pay. So it's not free. And so it shouldn't be studied.
I say all of that because I need to setup my rant about my little brother's bulldog, Winston. I don't understand the appeal of bulldogs. The way a bulldog looks, its analogous counterpart in the human race is the 280 lb, bald, goatee-sporting, leather jacket wearing bouncer at a nightclub.
It doesn't look very cuddly. You can describe most bulldogs, and definitely Winston, as having a face that only a mother could love. He has a weird underbite and has so many wrinkles that he has well over 250% more facial skin that necessary to cover his cranium.
And yet, Winston has this animal magnetism about him that just makes girls swoon. My brother and dad took Winston to the doggie beach in Chicago a few months back, and couldn't get over the attention this pooch got! I don't understand it. If I could walk around fat, wrinkly, and lazy, and attract women at this rate, I shallow enough to admit that I'd happily trade my gym membership for hundred Happy Meals.
And, of course, I'm an "overcomplicate my life" idiot. I could probably just formulate a plan to lease Winston for a weekend from my brother. Instead, I'm trying to psychoanalyze a bulldog as a way of understanding how to grapple with the female mind.
My family's dog of about 15 years died back in March, and Winston coming around every few weeks has rejuvenated the household. But I still fail to see the charm. With most dogs, if you throw a ball, it'll chase the ball. Winston? After you throw the ball, he just looks at you with this nonchalant stare, as if to say, "Yeah. And if you had a bulldog-sized hamster wheel, you would expect me to get in and run 20 miles to nowhere, right? Moron."
This pooch knows how to settle in. 15 years of having our black laborador retriever, and not once did my family let her up on the couch. I come to visit a few weeks ago, and there are sheets covering every sit-able piece of furniture in the house... so that Winston can jump up and lounge on the couch!!!!
I was laying on the couch reading the newspaper on Saturday, and Winston just approached the couch ever so patiently. He sat like a good dog, facing me. Time goes by. I get up to use the washroom. When I return, Winston is laying, sprawled out on the couch, with his head on a pillow. I decide to mess with Winston and I start piling every blanket, quilt, pillow, and sheet on top of him. Little did I realize that Winston didn't care... as far as he was concerned, all those extra layers were just keeping him warm. He didn't get up for another half hour, until he heard my mom arrive home with dinner. My dinner, by the way.
So what is it about this dog? How in the world does this canine deserve such a posh lifestyle and gorgeous women ogling all over him?
Clean up! Please!
I aspired to be a hermit this past weekend, to recuperate and relax. For a variety of reasons, it wasn't going well by the time I went to bed Friday... my mind was wandering too far out of control. So... no more hermit come Saturday. I texted a friend and we ultimately hung out Saturday evening. I went to her Rogers Park apartment, and we decided to go to Guitar Center and play with some "toys".
By the time I got out of the car and we were approaching the store, I noticed that my left foot was slipping ever so slightly as I walked. I figured it was ice, and I just walked more slowly... not fully processing the issue of how my left foot could be a little slippy, but my right foot was as steady as could be.
We get inside and we peruse the instruments, and we eventually make our way to the acoustic guitar room. We both grab something and start noodling around. Eventually we start to strum some lines from a song we both like, and, as I usually do, I start to tap my foot to keep in time. Of course, I tap my left foot. I make a startling discovery...
There's a little brown lump protruding from the side of my shoe. Upon closer inspection... which, in my stupidity, involved taking my shoe off and holding it up near my face to take a "whiff"... I realized that I had, earlier in the night, inadvertantly invaded territory that was marked by a dog.
Just my luck, this must have been a massive dog. It may have been Clifford the big red dog that's the size of a north shore McMansion.
So, I still like guitar playing, my friend is laughing at me, and I decide to keep playing. However, instead of tapping my foot on the ground, I'm pounding my foot full-force into the core of the earth. Of course, then I realize that the "stuff" is just getting more firmly ingrained into the treads of my shoe. So I angle my foot to the side and slam the edge of my shoe, to knock the doo-doo out. Didn't work.
At this point, I have, what I call, a full fledged "poo shoe issue". It didn't stop me from stepping into another room with electric guitars rudely loud amplifers, and jamming on some blues riffs with a few guys in there. I still have my priorities. After the store closed and we got kicked out, I went outside with my friend and started going postal on my left shoe. I scraped it against curbs, slammed it against brink walls, soaking it in rainwater puddles and dragging it along the concrete.
I nearly was the one who flew over the cuckoo's nest. This stunk... literally and figuratively.
We went to Baker's Square for late night pie and a board game, and I conspicuously twisted the bottom of my shoe into the restaurant's carpeting under the table... for an hour. Didn't clean it completely.
We get back to my friend's apartment, and following scene is set: me, a small bathroom, 15 Clorox lemon scented wipes, and 6 Q-tips. If Chris Farley ever tried this set up in a Saturday Night Live skit, I'm telling you, there would have been no need for Matt Foley the motivational speaker.
The moral of my "poo shoe issue" is this... people, CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR FREAKIN' DOG!!!!
By the time I got out of the car and we were approaching the store, I noticed that my left foot was slipping ever so slightly as I walked. I figured it was ice, and I just walked more slowly... not fully processing the issue of how my left foot could be a little slippy, but my right foot was as steady as could be.
We get inside and we peruse the instruments, and we eventually make our way to the acoustic guitar room. We both grab something and start noodling around. Eventually we start to strum some lines from a song we both like, and, as I usually do, I start to tap my foot to keep in time. Of course, I tap my left foot. I make a startling discovery...
There's a little brown lump protruding from the side of my shoe. Upon closer inspection... which, in my stupidity, involved taking my shoe off and holding it up near my face to take a "whiff"... I realized that I had, earlier in the night, inadvertantly invaded territory that was marked by a dog.
Just my luck, this must have been a massive dog. It may have been Clifford the big red dog that's the size of a north shore McMansion.
So, I still like guitar playing, my friend is laughing at me, and I decide to keep playing. However, instead of tapping my foot on the ground, I'm pounding my foot full-force into the core of the earth. Of course, then I realize that the "stuff" is just getting more firmly ingrained into the treads of my shoe. So I angle my foot to the side and slam the edge of my shoe, to knock the doo-doo out. Didn't work.
At this point, I have, what I call, a full fledged "poo shoe issue". It didn't stop me from stepping into another room with electric guitars rudely loud amplifers, and jamming on some blues riffs with a few guys in there. I still have my priorities. After the store closed and we got kicked out, I went outside with my friend and started going postal on my left shoe. I scraped it against curbs, slammed it against brink walls, soaking it in rainwater puddles and dragging it along the concrete.
I nearly was the one who flew over the cuckoo's nest. This stunk... literally and figuratively.
We went to Baker's Square for late night pie and a board game, and I conspicuously twisted the bottom of my shoe into the restaurant's carpeting under the table... for an hour. Didn't clean it completely.
We get back to my friend's apartment, and following scene is set: me, a small bathroom, 15 Clorox lemon scented wipes, and 6 Q-tips. If Chris Farley ever tried this set up in a Saturday Night Live skit, I'm telling you, there would have been no need for Matt Foley the motivational speaker.
The moral of my "poo shoe issue" is this... people, CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR FREAKIN' DOG!!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
