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.

JUST SHOOT ME

 

I made a reference to gun control and poked some fun at the gun culture here in Oklahoma in my last post.  A person who, apparently, is decidedly passionate about the 2^nd amendment left a couple of comments. This is not a person who would have just wandered by my site, so I’m assuming that they arrived by doing a Xanga search on gun control, or perhaps a Xanga search on “pagan, pierced-nose, Volvo-driving, France-loving, left-wing, communist, latte-sucking, tofu-chomping, holistic-wacko, neurotic weenie Democrats;”  either might have brought them to me.

 

What’s funny is that I probably have more in common with my heavily armed friend that he realizes. I tend to base my political philosophy around personal freedom issues. This is why I am pro-choice, pro-first amendment, pro-gay marriage, and why I get a little miffed when my president wire taps my phone without a warrant. However, a philosophy which venerates personal freedom occasionally puts me at odds with some of my Democratic brethren.

 

I’m not an expert on gun control issues but the 2^nd amendment does protect the right to bear arms, and if you believe in personal freedom you can’t pick and choose which ones you like.

 

I grew up with an arsenal in my home and while I don’t currently own any guns I don’t have any problems with those that do.  I do think any issue can be taken to silly extremes, however, and I would like to ask a couple of questions and make the following observations:

 

• Be honest…do you really need your own rocket launcher to hunt deer?
  
• If you believe the castle doctrine should be extended outside the walls of your home, would you mind telling me where you live so I can stay the hell away from your city? (I already canceled a vacation to Florida because I’m concerned about roving gangs of 85 year old vigilantes with guns strapped to their walkers).
  
• I know that Kurt Russell did a great job of playing Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, but there really are other, more positive, role models out there.
  
• Guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people. This is why I agree with the comedian Eddie Izzard who proposes that bullets should be available to everyone, they should just cost $2,000.00 each. More gang members would re-think those drive-by shootings if their ammo cost more than their crack cocaine.
  
• A well equipped and well regulated militia is all well and good; I just wish our troops in Iraq were actually well equipped.
  
• A “cooling off” period before buying a firearm is simply common sense. I just wish that Microsoft Outlook had a similar feature so that it would hold pissy emails that I’ve composed to unreasonable clients for a few hours until I’ve had time to cool off and reconsider whether I really want to call a customer a “sniveling twit.”
  
• I’d just like to point out that if your concept of the effects of violence was formed playing “Commando: Strike Force” on your X-Box; that when you shoot people in real life, they actually bleed. Just ask Harry Whittington.

Finally, a direct comment to my gun-packing buddy: I noticed you sparred a little with my son in the comments section on my post. Let me assure you that I’m an easy “target” when it comes to debating statistical evidence in the gun control debate because I’ve done very little research on the subject. However, if you want to debate with my son who does quantitative research every day of his life as he finishes his Ph.D, you better have all your shooting gallery ducks in a row.

 

I’m afraid that if you have a duel of the wits with my son, you’re going to find that you’re fighting unarmed. 

WHY OKLAHOMA IS A WEIRD PLACE TO LIVE

 

• We had six inches of snow the day before yesterday. I mowed my lawn in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt this morning.
  
• Oklahoma has only recently begun a state lottery. This is because the incredibly influential Southern Baptist coalition here in the Sooner state successfully campaigned against it as being sinful for many, many years. Yet, on Sundays, when I go to the convenience store close to my home (which sits directly across the street from a Southern Baptist Church) I have to wait in line forever to check out because people in nice clothing coming from the church are in line ahead of me buying lottery tickets.
  
• Oklahoma feels very strongly about gun control. If you are driving through our state while on vacation, you will be stopped at the state line and your vehicle will be searched for guns. If you do not have any, you will be issued some.
  
• Don’t even think about making condoms available at a high school in Oklahoma, you would be drawn and quartered.  We preach abstinence here, the way God intended. Besides, we are proud of the fact that our teen pregnancy rate is three times the national average. We like to excel in things!
  
• On a similar note, we Oklahomans don’t cotton to them homosexuals because they will destroy our families. Oddly, right here in the buckle of the Bible belt, Oklahoma has the second highest divorce rate in the nation at 76% (yes, you read that correctly…76%).
  
• While we talk a great deal about religion here in Oklahoma, there is a God who is worshipped here much more fervently that the one prayed too in our churches on Sunday morning. His name is High School and College football and he is all powerful.
  
• We believe in protecting our children in Oklahoma which is why we recently passed legislation in the House limiting access to certain books in our libraries and banning violent video games.  Those two issues alone should make a big dent in the 17,000 reported cases of child abuse in the state last year.
  
• No one here finds the fact that giant farm machines routinely drive on the expressways odd at all.
  
• We believe that religion brings happiness and fulfillment to people. I always found it strange, however, that when I was in the ministry and was getting my health insurance through my state denomination office, when I read the report each year about what percentages of benefits were paid out for what types of claims among ministers in the state, over 60% of claims were for mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Despite my bitching, Oklahoma is a nice place to live, what with all the waving wheat and the wind that comes sweeping down the plain and all. The cost of living is low since 40% of our residents live below the national poverty level, which means you can pick up a nice used double-wide for next to nothing!

 

I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

 

Although I try all the time.

SLUTTY TEENAGE VIXENS

 

Now that I have your attention…

 

Well, actually I AM going to write about slutty teenage vixens.

 

I’m currently sitting in the St. Louis airport across from a teenage girl I’m guessing is 16 or 17 years old, and her mother, who appears to be about my age.

 

The teenage girl could easily play the bitchy prom queen in any John Hughes movie, and her mother appears desperate to be mistaken for the girl’s sister rather than her mom.

 

They are attracting a great deal of attention, and as I sit and observe them over the screen of my laptop, I’m wondering four things:

 

First, I can tell by the way the daughter flips her perfect blond hair, and observes everyone around her with a look of repulsion (like she just looked under the rim of a gas station toilet) that she is one of those girls that would not even acknowledge my existence were I her contemporary in high school. What I’m wondering is why this pisses me off even though I graduated from High School 30 years ago.

 

I’m also wondering why, when it’s 22 degree outside, the daughter is dressed the way she is.

 

She is wearing a pair of hip-hugger jeans cut so low that a fraction of an inch more would probably reveal whether she is a natural blond or not. She is also wearing a dangerously low cut; skin-tight tank top that prominently displays an unnaturally copious endowment that probably makes all her girl friends jealous. She looks like she should be wearing a name tag that says: “Hi, my name is Tiffany and I’d like to introduce you to my breasts!”

 

Thirdly, I’m curious why the mother feels the need to compete with her daughter in the “I can dress younger/sluttier than you” category. Mom is sporting spiked brunette hair with bright blond tips and jeans that surely required industrial lubricant to slide into. She topped off her “ensemble” with a Hollister T-shirt even tighter than her daughter’s tank top, and a pair of pink high heels a stripper would kill for (not that I have any direct knowledge about whether strippers wear high heels).

 

Finally, the thing I’m most curious about is their reactions to the men ogling them.

 

Several guys have walked by with their eyes locked firmly on the daughter’s chest. The girl has rolled her eyes numerous times at this behavior and the mother has become visably upset at these men and shot them a “get your fucking eyes off my little girl” look. (Guys can be so frigging obvious. At least I’m discrete enough to pretend I’m typing).

 

Ladies, help me out here. Surely these women must know they are going to get this reaction if they dress this way. One would assume that getting that kind of reaction is the point.

 

I know this is an age old question, but does the mother have the right to be annoyed at the men starring at her daughter? After all, she let her out of the house dressed that way.

 

On the other hand, do men have the right to stare just because a woman is dressed provocatively?

 

In reality, middle aged men starring at a 16 year old girl’s chest is downright creepy behavior. But, should women/girls be able to dress in any fashion they wish and still expect every man they encounter to behave with the decorum of a eunuch?

 

I’d like to know what you think.