SPRINGTIME IN OKLAHOMA

 

Sing it with me: “OOOOOOOOklahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. The waving wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain!!!”

 

 

(Picture of tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma yesterday)

 

Ah…spring time in Oklahoma has now arrived. We may have had record temperatures in the 90’s for weeks now but springtime doesn’t become official here in Grapes of Wrath Ville until at least 30 mobile homes and a car dealership are carried into Missouri or Kansas on the winds of a tornado. If several thousand cars are beaten into salvage yard fodder by tennis ball sized hail…well, that just makes the arrival of spring even more special.

 

I was conducting choir rehearsal at church last night when we heard the first tornado sirens of the year go off. We immediately stopped rehearsing, proceeded to the middle of the building, laid down flat on the floor, and covered our heads with cushions from nearby furniture.

 

HA!  If you believe that, you’re obviously not from Oklahoma. I continued rehearsing the group until the sirens got so loud we couldn’t hear the piano any more. Then we scattered outside the sanctuary where half of the choir gathered in our all-glass atrium to look up at the sky and the other half went out into the parking lot so they could experience any tornadoes coming over up close and personal. A few of us gathered around a TV and found out the center of the storm was going to pass about two miles north of us. So…we did what any choir in Oklahoma would do under such dire circumstances…we went back to rehearsing.

 

Yes, we are a little jaded when it comes to Tornadoes in Oklahoma. Thousand of people lose property and are injured (or even killed) each year, so ignoring them is our folly. However, we have so many of them that people tend to be pretty nonchalant about it unless the tornado is actually knocking on their front door like an Amway salesman.   

 

Oklahoma television weather men are not nonchalant about tornadoes, however. Being a weather man in Oklahoma must be weather man Nirvana because when these guys are reporting on tornadoes they look like they are on the verge of having an orgasm.  They report for six or seven hours straight without breaking for commercials, standing in front of green-screens, droning on and on about how their Triple-Double-Doppler radar is TWICE as accurate as the one those hacks at Channel Eight have.  They fly helicopters over the tornadoes, and guys named Bubba chase them in their pick up trucks. If you saw the movie “Twister” and you thought Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton were stupid for getting so close to a tornado, they have nothing on how crazy the people are that actually do this for a living. If you don’t believe me, watch this video from yesterday:

 

Sneaking up on a twister
	watch this Meteorologist David Payne and Photojournalist Kevin Josefy snuck up on a tornado and captured this F1 or F2 from about 100 yards away.
(If the video doesn’t start – scroll down the page to “Stories in Video” and click on “Sneaking up on a Twister”)

I’d better get off the computer.  The sky is turning that familiar green color, it’s starting to rain, and I think I just saw a cow fly by my office window. Maybe that means that Helen Hunt will be by soon in that white tank top she wore in the movie. We can only hope.

EDIT:  In the post below I said that if I was wrong, I would admit it.

 

I’m admitting it.

 

(My wife should probably mark this day in her calendar)

 

After several thoughtful responses, emails, and being pointed to online research documenting horrific cases of cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying, I’m changing my stance on this issue.

 

From what I’m reading, cyber-bullying (especially among teens) has become a frightening phenomenon.  It seems that whispering being each other’s backs between classes is small potatoes if you have the World Wide Web to post your acidic comments on. I read of numerous instances of teens committing suicide after their peers had posted inflammatory messages or, in some cases, pictures of them in compromising situations.

 

Apparently the problem doesn’t stop there. There are literally thousands upon thousands of middle aged perverts out there cruising sites like Xanga, My Space, Fotki, and Buddy Pic, looking for prey. I was certainly aware this was happening, but I didn’t realize on what scale. There are literally hundreds of reported cases of horrible things happening to people after being stalked or preyed upon online on almost a daily basis.

 

I now suggest that everyone block your sites, build a moat around your computer, and cover it with a giant cyber-condom,  because there are all sorts of wackos out there waiting to do you harm.

 

On a related note, I put a counter on my site when I began posting, but I used it only to see how many people had stopped by. I had never really played with it. I spent about an hour this morning looking at all the features. I didn’t realize that it tracked IP addresses and gave me a full map of the world with little dots pointing out the geographical locations of those who have visited my site. It also gives me the birth date, address, and social security number of every visitor. Ok, I’m kidding about those last three, but it does give an amazing amount of information, and I found it fascinating to see where everyone was from. I have a feeling I’m going to become obsessed with these features now that I know I have them.

 

So… I extend my sincere apologies to anyone who has their site blocked or who is using tracking software. Block and track away!

XANGA STALKERS!!!  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

 

 

 

I need someone to explain something to me. I’m noticing more and more Xanga sites that are blocking everyone who is not signed in. Apparently these individuals wish to be able to track every person who visits their site. Many of these folks mention that they want to ward off “stalkers,” and they define “stalker” as anyone who visits the site and does not leave a comment.

 

Are these people nuts?

 

I would define “stalker” as anyone who is like that psycho chic I dumped in college who continually painted broken hearts in red fingernail polish on my car for the next three years.

 

A person who reads your post and does not leave a comment is not a stalker. They are a surfer. A person who leaves dead cats on your lawn is a stalker.

 

I surf from Xanga site to Xanga site if something catches my fancy, but I don’t always leave comments. If I don’t leave a comment, it’s probably because I’m busy, or it might be because you spent four pages detailing your grocery shopping list and you bored the hell out of me. This does not make me a stalker.

 

According to the little counter at the bottom of my site, I’ve had 18,674 visitors since I began posting just over a year ago. I’m very grateful to the people who take the time to stop by, and I’m even more grateful to those who are kind enough to take the time to leave a thoughtful comment. But I thank God that all 18,674 people who have visited this site have not left comments.

 

Why would I feel that way? Have you read the comments on The Theologian’s Café site? The first 20 comments on each post are people who are patting their backs because they were one of the first 20 to comment! This is not exciting reading!

 

If I’m not mistaken, the internet is a public forum. If you must know who every person is who reads your posts I suggest getting a diary so that you can be certain that only your parents, spouses, or significant others are breaking into it to read your innermost thoughts.

 

I understand that from time to time you may want to limit your audience to a select few and that “protecting” a post is appropriate, but if you must know the identity of every individual who visits your site, perhaps you need some heavy couch time to work on those control issues.

 

I’m grateful for my Xanga experiences, because I’ve “met” some of the brightest, wittiest, and most talented people I could ever hope to meet; folks I would have never met in “real life.”  Even though I’ve enjoyed getting to know so many of you, I just don’t feel the need to know who everyone is who stops by.

 

Perhaps I do not understand the situation. Perhaps these people have motivations that I’m not picking up on. I’ll be the first to admit when I’m wrong about something. If you are a person who blocks “stalkers” I’d love to hear why. However, if you read this and don’t feel like leaving a comment, I don’t mind at all.

 

But you might want to watch and see if I’m hiding in the bushes outside your house for awhile.

THE WORST JOB IN AMERICA

 

 

 

Forget being an under-water plumber in a sewage treatment plant. Forget being the person who mops the floors at an all night porno theater. Even forget being Rosanne Barr’s proctologist. The worst job in America has to be White House Press Secretary. Can you imagine getting up every day and trying to figure out a way to put a positive spin on the zany antics of George W. Bush? Can you imagine trying to explain quotes like “I want to appreciate those of you who wear our nation’s uniform for your sacrifice” – Jacksonville, Florida; January 14, 2005  to a room full of blood thirsty reporters?

 

While I love to pick on Bush, being the press secretary for Bill Clinton would not have been a picnic either.  You know Joe Lockhart had to wake up every day wondering which intern the president had shown his cigar trick too the night before.

 

Scott McClellan resigned Wednesday as press secretary. I can’t imagine how he lasted this long. I’ve enjoyed watching a lot of press secretaries over the years do the shuffle in front of the big blue curtain, but no one did it quite like Scott did. To begin with, he always looked constipated. He also always looked like he truly loathed every human being in the room. Ari Fleischer occasionally looked like he was enjoying himself, but McClellan always looked like he had just stepped in something that smelled very, very bad.

 

I’ll miss Scott’s sullen demeanor. I’ll miss his barely hidden contempt for the press corps. But mostly, I’ll miss the non-stop, voluminous piles of pure bull shit that came out of that man’s mouth.

 

There is already speculation about who his replacement will be. I’d like it to be someone who will take on the press corps’ tough questions with a no-nonsense, straight to the point, take no prisoners approach.

 

I nominate Wanda Sykes.

 

“TO FOSTER OR NOT TO FOSTER, THIS IS THE QUESTION”

 

My wife and I have lost our minds; we are considering taking in a foster child.

 

“You’re still relatively young,” I hear you say. “Your kids are grown and out of the house. You can pick up and leave at a moments notice. You can spend the financial resources that you’ve spent decades building on pure, unapologetic, self-indulgence. What the hell are you thinking?!?!?”

 

I’m not sure we are thinking…at least in any manner that can be considered rational.

 

My wife and I have discussed in passing that we own a home that has several bedrooms that we no longer go into for months at a time. We’ve also discussed that we talk a big game when it comes to our bleeding heart, liberal, help-the-less-fortunate, political agenda, but that we aren’t really putting our home and our financial resources where our mouth is. In other words, the idea of taking in a foster child has come up. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of mentioning this to a couple that has a foster daughter.

 

They called us a couple of weeks ago to say that their foster daughter’s older sister wanted to move to Tulsa to be closer to her sibling and were we really serious about taking in a foster child?

 

Oh my God! This suddenly seems a lot more serious when it’s not some lofty “what if” scenario, and we are talking about a real, live, teenage girl.

 

This young woman is 17 years old and is a sophomore in High School. Apparently, no father is in the picture and the mother is a drug addict and is unable to care for her children. The two girls have been in and out of foster care most of their lives and seem to have done pretty well. We got to meet her on Easter Sunday, and on the surface, at least, she seems like a very pleasant young woman.

 

But what the hell do I know about teenage girls? And troubled ones at that? My only parenting experience comes in raising a son, and I’m pretty sure my experience was not entirely typical.

 

My son has never brought me anything other than reasons to be so proud that people run when they see me coming because they know I’m going to spring into a litany of how incredible he is. Trust me, he is not this way because of my great parenting skills; he is this way in spite of my parenting and because he appears to be some sort of genetic-mutant, Stepford-like child that also happens to be the world’s coolest human being. The worst trouble he ever got into as a teenager is when he was suspended from school for three days in eighth grade for popping a girl’s bra strap. I am the worlds most blessed and fortunate parent. My wife has experience raising a teenage girl, but her daughter also seems to have come from the same Stepford-genetic lab that my son did.

 

The young woman in question, however, has to have some baggage with that kind of background. Are my wife and I capable of dealing with whatever that baggage is? Only God knows.

 

I also understand that going through the qualification process for foster parenting makes the most invasive proctological examination seem tame in comparison.

 

So why would we want to do this? I have no idea, but we can’t seem to shake the feeling that this is something we should be doing.

 

So…we are getting more information, and we will see where it leads us.

 

Are any of you foster parents? Are any of you foster children? I’d love to hear about your experiences and whether you think we should move ahead or just up our medication.

MY GOOD FRIDAY “SERMON”

 

If you’ve been reading my blog long, you know I have a strange love/hate relationship with my Christian beliefs. Having been in the ministry for almost 20 years and then going into the business world where my main customers are churches (and other religious institutions) all across the United States; I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of Christianity in America. My faith is a central part of my daily life and yet I never cease to be amazed at the absolutely absurdities of the faith I hold so dear.

 

I had two messages on my voice mail when I came into the office this morning which may help you to understand why I find Christianity to be a perplexing, profound, confusing, and often hilarious belief system.

 

The first message was from a deacon at a church in which I recently installed a video projection system. This deacon owns a small firm that also does video projection installs. He was upset that his church didn’t give him the contract, and he called me up to tell me the work our firm does is (and I quote) a “fucking mess.”

 

The second message was from one of my Jewish clients for whom I’m installing a small television studio. He didn’t need anything in particular; he was just calling to wish me and my family a happy Easter. That my friends, is about as classy as you can get.

 

So…in light of these voice messages, I will now step back into my roll of minister (putting on vestments and pulling out oversized Bible) and offer you this Good Friday sermon:

 

If you believe that Christ died for your sins on this Friday two thousand years ago…don’t be a fucking prick…show a little class.

 

Amen.

COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE SEXES

(AND WHY IT’S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN)

 

My wife and I have been married for four years now. During that time, one would think that we would have worked out all the kinks in communicating effectively.

 

HA!!! If you think that, you’re obviously not married.

 

A case in point involves the simple decision about where to go out to eat. We are both extremely busy individuals and we probably eat out four times a week or more.  Deciding which restaurant to go too should be a simple thing, but for us, it typically involves more subtle negotiations than a peace accord in the Middle East.

 

Here’s the drill – We are both on the maintenance phase of this crazy LA weight loss program, so what we can eat when we eat out is fairly limited and there are only a handful of restaurants that make the cut. If all I’m going to eat is a grilled chicken breast and steamed vegetables, I could really care less which restaurant prepares it.  Because my wife is a wonderful woman who cares about my needs and my opinion, she will ask where I would like to go out to eat. She also does this because she is a woman and mistakenly assumes that, as a man, I have an opinion. Those of you, who are men, are quite aware, that it possible for us to not have actual opinions about a huge variety of things, including; where we live, what we wear, and the names of our children.

 

Because I know that it frustrates her when I say that I have no opinion, I will list two or three restaurants as possibilities, and if pressed, will even make up reasons why I would like to go to these particular restaurants.

 

My wife will have begun this conversation by stating that she doesn’t care where we go. However, as soon as I give her the above mentioned list, she will invariably shoot down all of them. This means that she actually DID care where we were going to eat, which brings up the whole question of why she asked me in the first place.

 

Being a man (read – jerk) this seems like an incredible waste of time to me, so I have tried the tactic of trying to guess the secret list of restaurants that she apparently already has in her head before she asked me where I wanted to go to eat. If I’m successful at guessing one of these restaurants, then we have solved the issue and we are off to eat yet another boring chicken breast!

 

The problem is that she has now caught onto the fact that I’m trying to guess what I think she wants to hear instead of giving her my real opinion (which I never had to begin with). This makes her even crazier than when I say I don’t have an opinion in the first place.

 

To her, the solution to this issue would be for me to have an opinion about where we go, to express that opinion openly and honestly, and for us to have a discussion in which we weigh the options and come to a joint decision about where to go.

 

The problem is that this is never going to happen.

 

To me, the solution would be for her to say “we’re going to TGI Friday’s…you gotta a problem with that bub?” I would say, “no” and we would be happily on our way to eat that boring chicken breast.

 

The problem is that this is never going to happen either, because she’s much too sweet to ever do that.

 

I’m thinking maybe we could put up a dart board in the kitchen with the names of all of the restaurants we frequent on it. Whoever hits the restaurant name with the highest number of darts picks the restaurant.

 

It could work.

WEEK FROM HELL

 

I realize it’s been over a week since I updated. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth; I simply had the “week from hell.” Have you ever had one of those weeks that was so full of ups and downs and was so busy that you “survived” it rather than “lived it”? This was such a week. I don’t usually do play by plays of my life, but I did this time. Here’s all the news from the week:

 

SUNDAY – (Bad News) I am the interim music director at my church. They stopped looking for someone to fill the position when I took over. Whenever I take my pastor aside and explain that he apparently does not understand the definition of “interim” he throws his head back, laughs maniacally, and walks away.  Our organist and choir accompanist of the last 20 years (who is one of the sweetest most wonderful people on the planet) has been battling ovarian cancer for the last several months. She has been doing better lately and was actually able to come home from the hospital last week. On Sunday morning a blood clot lodged in the base of her brain and she was gone in a matter of minutes. The choir and I got the message that she had died 10 minutes before the service. Sunday pretty much sucked.

 

MONDAY – (Good News) Every Monday morning the sales staff at my job has a video conference which links our offices in eight cities together. This way we can waste our time on a national level, as opposed to just a local level.  Each week a different sales person has to make a presentation to the group. This was my week.  These presentations tend to be painfully dull and I was determined to make mine funny. I thought I could get away with this because our company President never attends these meetings. I’m sure you see what’s coming. About two minutes before I was to present, I see our President walk into the conference room in our Oklahoma City office. I went ahead and gave my rather “tongue-firmly-in-cheek” presentation and waited to get an unhappy phone call. Instead I got an email from the President later in the day addressed to me and all the division managers. It congratulated me on a great presentation and asked the division mangers to please preview their employee’s future presentations to make certain they were on par with the presentation I had done. Later in the day they had to increase the size of my office door so my enormous ego could get into the room.

 

TUESDAY – (Mixed News) For those of you who don’t know, I’m in the commercial sound & video contracting business. On Tuesday morning I made a presentation to a local casino for large video wall they had requested. This will show you where the money is in our society: I did a video wall last year for the Bank of New York in a critical 24/7 Network Operations Command Center. The project total was about ¾’s of a million dollars. The wall for the casino is much larger and the project total is well over a million, and all they are going to do with it is blow up cable TV sporting events that people are betting on. The good news is that the presentation went well; the bad news is that I lost $50.00 on the slots before I left the casino.

 

WEDNESDAY – (Frustrating News) I spent all day frantically putting a proposal together for a project in St. Louis.  I was frantic because the architect on the project won’t send us CAD files and won’t return my phone calls. I have this problem with architects all the time. My apologies to those of you who are reading this who are architects, but as a species you are vermin and should be eradicated from the planet.

 

THURSDAY – (Bad News) Thursday morning was the funeral. Eight million people attended. I helped officiate and directed the choir. It was a very difficult morning.

 

Later that afternoon I had to fly out to St. Louis to present the proposal I worked on the day before. There were tornadoes touching down all over the area. My flight was delayed five times and once we finally got off the ground it was like being inside a bag of “Shake and Bake.”

 

FRIDAY – (Mixed News, Weird News) The presentation in St. Louis went well. The casino called and asked if I would put together a graphic showing what the wall would look like in their facility. I spent about six hours putting a photo shop image together. Luckily, I had time to do this at the airport because the tornadoes that had been in Tulsa had moved to St. Louis and my flight back was delayed several times.

 

My pastor had left to go to Ohio for the burial of our organist and had asked me to cover a wedding for him while he was gone. I barely made it back in time Friday afternoon to make the rehearsal. I had never met the couple before and it turns out they are Goth.

 

I also got an email Friday afternoon from our national sales manager saying they enjoyed my presentation Monday so much, would I mind putting together another one for this Monday?

 

SATURDAY – (Bizarre News) I performed the wedding for the interesting couple. The wedding gown was solid black.  I’m all for whatever people are into, but I wish I had a photo of this dress, you would have to see it to believe it. 

 

Just after the wedding was over I got a call from the casino saying that they really liked the photo shop image I sent them, but would I mind doing four or five more from different angles so that they could see how large the wall would be in relationship to the remainder of the casino. Oh, and by the way, can we have those by Monday morning?

  

SUNDAY – (Good News, Bad News) It was Palm Sunday and the children were supposed to march into the morning service with Palm branches while the choir sang an anthem. The Children’s Minister (who just gave their notice last week) didn’t bother to actually organize this, so only three kids showed up to march in. Our “Triumphant Entry” was a little less than triumphant.  

 

As soon as church was over I raced out to the casino to take additional pictures from different views. Does it seem weird to you that I left church to go to a casino?  It seems weird to me.

 

I got home and spent the rest of the day working on the new photo shop images and my power point presentation for this morning. I finished about midnight.

 

Final News from the week - The casino called and loved the images. Out of the four companies that bid on the project they have chosen our design to take to their board of directors.

 

My presentation this morning included pictures of Bill Murray as Private Winger from the movie “Stripes” so I’m sure you can guess how serious it was.

 

If you’ll excuse me now, I’m going to go lapse into a coma.

 

SAVING DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

 

Many of you have been using your blogs as a forum to express your very passionate feelings about Daylight Savings Time.  The consensus seems to be that you would like to passionately decapitate the person who came up with the idea. I think shortandsnarky summed it up best on her post.

 

I have to admit that I don’t understand this. I happen to LOVE Daylight Savings Time.  Many of you have expressed the belief that Bush’s plan to extend Daylight Savings Time is the final straw that should signal impeachment proceedings. I, on the other hand, thought it was the first time Bush had a decent idea (although I’m sure that extending Daylight Savings Time secretly benefits Halliburton in some fashion, and Cheney is the brains behind the idea).

 

I love cold weather but I despise winter because I hate the fact that it starts getting dark at 5:00 in the afternoon. It’s such a relief when spring arrives and the days start to grow longer. DST extends that daylight by an hour in the evenings, which means that in the summer I can mow my lawn at 9:00 p.m. if I want too. I’ve never wanted too, but it’s nice to know I can.

 

Of course that extra hour of sunlight in the evenings has to come from somewhere so the sun comes up an hour later now. If I was a morning person this would probably bother me, but I’m one of those people who can’t stand to stay in bed once I smell lunch cooking. I haven’t been up before dawn since Carter was president.

 

I realize that losing an hour of sleep and having to wait for your body clock to adjust is a bummer. This is why I propose that we make Daylight Savings Time permanent.  I realize that this would mean that many of you would have to get up and go to work in the dark.  My personal needs and wants are more important than yours, however, so I simply don’t care.

 

So get on the bandwagon with me; write your elected official, and let’s get this grass roots movement to make DST permanent going!

 

Just don’t decapitate me.

MY FAVORITE APRIL FOOLS

 

One of my favorite memories of a “holiday” is of an April Fools Day when my son Jordan was seven years old. We were driving down the road together when he suddenly screamed “watermelons!!!” at the top of his lungs. I slammed on the brakes, assuming that some truck must have dumped a load of watermelons on the highway. I looked frantically all around me, but I couldn’t find a watermelon on the road anywhere. I looked over at Jordan through the haze of burning rubber and brake dust and he was bent over in the seat laughing hysterically. Through tears of delight he looked at me and said “April Fools!”

 

I still don’t know how the idea of screaming “watermelons!” popped into the mind of a seven year old. It is, however, the best April Fools gag of all time as far as I’m concerned.

 

Yes, he was a twisted and devious child, and he has grown into a twisted and devious adult.

 

And I wouldn’t change a thing about him.