I have been away from Xanga for about six months. No, I’m not in jail; no, I’m not in the Federal Witness Protection Program; and no, I haven’t been spending my time flying 747’s over lower Manhattan for photo ops. Instead I’ve been going through some major life changes while seriously trying to determine if blogging about them is a good idea.

To blog, or not to blog, this is the question.

Before I address that ominous question, let’s talk about the changes. Let me begin by saying I don’t do change well. I have underwear older than my son (and my son is 26.) I will use a toothbrush until it is so used up that all I’m doing is scraping a plastic stick across my teeth. I stop so often at the very same convenience store to buy diet Mt. Dews that I have my own parking spot and am the God Parent of many of the clerk’s children. I am the ultimate creature of habit and have been known to stand patiently in line at the bank behind someone attempting to refinance their mortgage at the window just because It’s too much effort to change lines.

For the past 15 years I have worked for a particular firm. I was very successful at that firm. I was the longest tenured salesperson there. In fact, my friggin portrait is even hanging in the friggin lobby. I can’t go into what happened in detail, but I will say that late last fall I was stabbed in the back so hard you could have driven a Volkswagen Beetle through the gaping wound.

I held on a for a few more months because I hate change but the working environment became such a nightmare that I did something I thought I would never do; I waited until everyone left one evening, I cleaned out my office, sent an email with notice of my immediate resignation to the CEO. left my key on the receptionist’s desk, and walked away.

It’s pretty stupid to resign from a job in the middle of a tanking economy and I was scared shitless. I, however, seem to be the most fortunate human being in all the world. I was offered the position of National Sales Manager with a competitor at twice the salary I was making. I have been in my position for two months and things are going well. If things continue to go well there is a very good possibility I will be moved into a VP position in a few more months. In this case, change worked out better than I ever could have dreamed, but it still took me WAY outside my comfort zone.

That’s why I decided in the middle of all of that fiasco that it would be a good idea to sell the house I had been planning to live in until I died. After all, if you’re going to quit your job when the economy is in the toilet doesn’t it make sense to sell your house when the national housing market has collapsed? Of course it does!

I bought the house seven years ago. It sold in 2 1/2 weeks at a 35% profit. If you would like to drive to Oklahoma and touch me for good luck, I only charge $100.00.

My wife, who grew up next to Laura Ingalls in the Little House on the Prairie,  wanted to move back into the country so we began looking for land to build on (My new employer, whose corporate office is in another city, allows me to work out of my home, so I don’t care where we live). We found a nice size waterfront lot on the Lake west of Tulsa and made an offer on it. They accepted the offer yesterday.

Come to think of it, I may need to charge $200.00 to touch me for good luck.

So, I guess change doesn’t always suck, but blogging about it is a different subject.

It had come to my attention that several of my customers had found my blog. You need to remember that I am a bright blue person living in a bright red state. A state where people don’t cotton very well to my baby killin, homo lovin, tree huggin ways. It would be nice to think that people are open minded enough to do business with others who's political views might be different from their own. If you think that, please put your bong pipe down right now and go take a breath of fresh air. It was suggested to me that I might want to rethink what I put out on the internet. It was also suggested to me that there could be legal repercussions for discussing my job situation in an open forum.

While that irks me beyond belief, it is probably good advice.

You will probably want to point out that I was stupid enough to set up my Xanga account with my real name. If you wanted to do that you would have an excellent point. It makes my silly rantings immediately retrievable with a single search string. Of course, I could delete this account and set up one “incognito” but everything I’ve already posted is out there forever anyway. I could leave this account open and simply post about gardening or the weather but if I did that I would have no choice but to slit my own throat.

I have set up the obligatory Facebook account where I never say anything more controversial than suggesting Adam Lambert on American Idol has more talent in one of his pock marks than all the other contestants combined, but there are a lot of people from high school who have found me on Facebook. I didn’t like them then, why should I want to be friends with them now?

I haven’t decided what to do. What do you think?

I WILL NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

My 50^th birthday has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who expressed birthday wishes and condolences.

On my 45^th birthday I learned how to skydive. For my 50^th birthday my wife enrolled us in a scuba diving certification course (we have completed the class work and our confined water dives, and next weekend we do four open water dives to finish certification.) In a few months I’m going whitewater rafting in Wyoming, and for my next birthday I’m considering learning how to base jump while I’m on fire and simultaneously wrestling an alligator.

I bet you’re thinking that my pursuit of these hazardous diversions is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to hold onto the fading remnants of my youth and the waning vestiges of my masculinity. My reply to that is…duh…of course it is. By God, I’m not going gently into that good night; on my 60^th birthday I’m going over Niagara Falls in a barrel even if I have to take my walker with me.

I started to post pictures of me in my wet suit from this weekend, but you would have been forced to gouge out your eyes.

Speaking of the waning vestiges of my masculinity, my wife and I went to see “Nights in Rodanthe.” I realize that this admission will revoke my membership in the man club, but I happen to like romantic movies. Of course this was one of those movies that is so predictable you know in the first 30 seconds that somebody is going to die, but I’m ok with predictability. Sometimes it’s nice to go along for the ride even if you know where you’re going. My favorite thing about the movie was that there were several teenagers in the theater and you could almost audibly hear them groan; “old people having sex…that is sooooo gross.”

It was a great weekend. There was a semi-surprise party on Friday night at a Mexican restaurant where many margaritas met their demise, my fabulous son came up for the entire weekend and on Saturday night he fixed dinner for us (pan seared steaks…mmm), on Sunday we scuba dived, and on Monday my wife and I took half a day to go to the state fair, the above mentioned movie, and dinner. Does life get any better than that?…I don’t think so. Many thanks to my wonderful and beautiful wife for planning such a great birthday.

I’ve got to go…I’m taking off work early today because I’ve enrolled in a class on how to repel off sky-scrapers. I only hope they give an AARP discount.

PIMP MY CRIB

I’m an avid watcher of home improvement shows. Curb Appeal, Property Ladder, Pimp my Crib; I watch them all. One of my favorites is “Flip this House.” Every time I watch it I tell my wife that I’d like to quit my job and start flipping houses. After all, I’ve changed a light bulb or two in my lifetime, I’m sure that provides me with the experience and skill set I need to do major home renovations.

Well, a few months ago I got my wish. No, I didn’t quit my job, but I did get to flip a house.

When my wife and I got married she owned a cute little 1500 sq ft. three bedroom, two bath home on five acres located in the middle of BFE (google it if you’re not familiar with the acronym). In fact, it is so far out in the country that she thought I had stood her up on our first date because I was an hour late to pick her up. This is because I turned back at least twice on my way there because I was certain NO ONE lived that far from actual civilization. When we got married I moved her into the big city, and her mom moved into her house.  Fast forward six and a half years and her mother has gotten to the age that living in a house only accessible by pack mule was not the best idea. Her mom decided to move into a mother-in-law suite at my wife’s sisters and we decided to sell the house.

We asked a real estate agent that goes to our church to come by and take a look at the property and tell us what we needed to do to get it ready to sell. She came out, took a look around, took us aside, and with pity in her voice gently explained that our house appeared to have been built by a troop of blind monkeys, and not only that, but they appeared to have been a troop of blind monkeys with bad taste.

This is not a reflection on my wife. She has great taste, but the people who built the house did not. For example, all of the countertops were a shade of periwinkle so bright that they and the Great Wall of China are the only two man made objects visible from space.

Our agent stopped just shy of telling us to tear down the house and start over, but she did give us quite a list of things to do. Armed with only a Home Depot Credit Card and no idea what we were getting ourselves into we started on her list. We began on Memorial Day weekend. After 14 hours days every weekend, and several evenings during each week, we finished the list on Labor Day Weekend.

I won’t go into everything we did to the house, but I can say that there was not a single surface in the house that was not replaced, repaired, repainted, or refinished.  Some of this work proved to be quite difficult. For example; all of the doors and trim in the house were stained pine. Our agent suggested that all of the doors and trim needed to be “bone” white and the walls needed to be tan. Do you know how many coats of paint it takes to change stained trim to white trim? It requires 47 coats of Kilz and 11 coats of paint.  Our agent also suggested that all of the popcorn ceilings be taken down and the drywall on the ceilings be patched, sanded, and painted. This makes the people scraping off the popcorn texture look like they have been sandblasted with baking flour.

One thing the people on Flip this House don’t talk about is what I call the “spiraling remodel vortex of death.” This is how it works: I was going to simply put new, more subtle, Formica over the existing laminate on the bathroom vanities. Since I had never done this before and my router skills are a little uncertain I was looking for alternatives to this idea. While making my 932^nd trip to Home Depot I found some beige Granite vanity tops with built in sinks on sale. I decided this would save me lots of time and money (You see it coming don’t you?). When I got them to the house I discovered that the two vanities were not the same size. The one in the master bath was three inches wider than the one in the hall bath (the one I had measured). This meant that I had to completely tear the master bath vanity apart and cut three inches out of it so the granite vanity top would work. Of course this meant that the doors no longer fit so I had a custom cabinet shop build new doors for it. The old vanity tops had the sinks on one end of the vanity and the granite tops had the sinks in the middle. Of course this meant I had to completely re-plumb the sinks. It also meant that the top drawer in both vanities would no longer slide in all the way without hitting the new sink. The old sinks had faucets that were on four inch centers. The new sinks required faucets on eight inch centers. This is when I discovered that faucets built on eight inch centers cost more than a hospital stay after open heart surgery. I finally found a set that were discontinued at a reasonable price. My wife told me to get silver fixtures. The ones I bought were brushed nickel. The rest of the fixtures in the bathrooms are chrome. That’s all silver, right? Apparently not, because my wife took me aside, and talking the way one might talk to a severely mentally handicapped person, explained that they did not match. This meant I had to replace all of the remaining bathroom fixtures with new brushed nickel fixtures.

My attempt to save time and money cost me 80 hours and a thousand dollars.

The story does have a happy ending. We finished the house and listed it, and…. (drum roll please)….it sold in four days, and we made a little money. In today’s housing market, I consider that a slam dunk.

So…am I going to quit my job and start flipping houses?

Not only no…HELL no.

Here are a few pictures of the finished project:

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

As my toes dangle precariously over the chasm of senility, incontinence, and prostate exams which is my 50^th birthday, I have begun to reflect on my life. Specifically, I have been thinking lately about the things that made me happy as a younger man verses the things that make me happy as I approach the half-century mark. Let’s compare:

Things that made me happy when I was a 25 year old man:

1.         The pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment.

2.         The study of theology and Man’s desire to connect to a higher power.

3.         Existential philosophy and contemplating our place in the universe.

4.         Seeking justice and attempting to eradicate inequality wherever I encountered it.

5.         Struggling to be a role model and a positive influence in the lives of those around me.

Things that make me happy as a 50 year old man:

1.         A really good bowel movement.

What can I say? I’m a much less complicated person that I used to be.

ARE YOU HAVING A BAD DAY?

Are you having a bad day? Let’s put in perspective…

Imagine being 17 again.

Imagine being a 17 year old girl.

Imagine being a 17 year old girl who is guilty of an indiscretion.

Imagine being a 17 year old girl who is guilty of an indiscretion committed in a moment of passion that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

All of that is tough enough; the embarrassment, the self-recrimination, the difficult decisions that are suddenly facing you.

Now…imagine waking up to discover that your indiscretion is the leading story of every major news outlet in the entire world.

That has GOT to suck.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

It’s really easy to get in touch with me. You can call me on my land line, or you can text me or call me on my cell phone. If that doesn’t work send me a message through Xanga, or leave a comment on my MySpace or Facebook page or even classmates.com. You could also leave a message for me at my registered domain name at www.marklabouff.com. If that doesn’t work, send me an email at my personal email address or at my work email address, or any one of 10 other email addresses I’ve had over the last several years and have abandoned but probably still work except that I never check them. Or you could call me at work and leave me a voice message which (since we have VOIP) interfaces directly with Outlook and sends it to me as a .wav file attachment to an email so I can pick it up wherever I am on my Treo. You could try something as old fashioned as sending me a fax, cause when you do it transmits it digitally to my Treo as well so that I can look at it with the built in document viewer. Or you could do what I’ve started doing lately and call jott.com and leave a voice mail which is transcribed into an email and sent to one of my email addresses or as a text message to my phone. Of course I also have a Cisco IP Communicator on my desktop which emulates the phone in the office, so if I’m on the road I can plug in a headset and pick up voice mail messages and maybe even give you call back directly through my laptop. If you happen to have video conferencing capability, I’ll give you the IP address at my office and we can set up an muti-point high definition video conference. If you happen to miss the conference it will be recorded and stored on a server via Media Site Live and you can go back and watch it at your convenience.

I’m so friggin’ connected to the universe that I haven’t had an actual face to face conversation with a real human being in at least six months. 

NO HABLO CHRISTIANESE

Every profession, academic discipline, social group, and Dungeons and Dragons conclave has its own vocabulary or “jargon.” For example, when my son talks about neuroscience I wrinkle my forehead and nod knowingly, despite the fact that I don’t have a friggin’ clue what he’s talking about. That’s because I know nothing about neuroscience, although I believe it has something to do with your head.

The problem with jargon is that it often comes off as pedantic or exclusionary. I think this is especially true of “Christianese.” I’ve been thinking about this lately because several of the responses I got to my last two posts were written in Christianese. That’s ok; I knew what they were talking about because I happen to be fluent in Christianese. In fact, that’s pretty much the only language I spoke during my years in the ministry.

However, having stepped slightly outside of that paradigm several years ago my ears have begun to hear Christianese the way someone who is not familiar with that language might hear it.

In other words, it’s started to sound pretty silly.

Let me give you some examples. One of my favorites is; “I just received a word from God.” For those of you who routinely use that phrase it sounds normal, but try to imagine how that phrase sounds to someone who did not grow up in an evangelical church.

It sounds like the person saying it is completely nuts.

In fact, when someone says that to me today I typically respond with something like; “and what was that word? Porcupine? Pogonotrophy? Perambulator? Did you get any words from the Increase Your Word Power page in last month’s Reader’s Digest?

I say things like to people because I am (as one of the commenters on my last post so eloquently put it) an “asshat.”

Christianese becomes really fun when someone strings several patented Christianese phrases together such as; “I feel led to intercede for you because of the chasm that exists between you and the savior due to your iniquities. I pray that you will heed God’s call to repent and seek his face as you accept his invitation to become a born again and spirit filled believer.”

Huh??

Come on now…those of you with a background like mine. You’ve said something very close to that, haven’t you? You know you have…you can admit it.

So, to all of my fellow evangelicals out there, allow me to speak some Christianese directly to you: If you really want to be salt and light, stop talking like a televangelist with a bad suit and even worse hair, just speak English.

No Hablo Christianese.  

THE RESOLUTION

Thank you to everyone who offered their advice on how to best handle my recent “less than professional” behavioral episode. I thought you might be interested in the outcome.

I called the young man and offered to take him to lunch. During lunch, I apologized for the manner in which I had spoken to him, but asserted that my basic message remained the same. I wished him the best of luck with his future and told him that if there was ever anything I could do for him, not to hesitate to call.

Then I put my arm around his shoulder, walked him out to the parking lot, and shot him in the back of the head.

Ok…actually, I didn’t do any of that. I was planning too, but then I got some news. I didn’t mention in my last post that in addition to working part time for the church, he is also a part time middle school music teacher. Several of the middle school students who attend our church happen to be in his class. It seems that he has been telling them that he had to leave because everyone at their church was mean to him and that their church is filled with some bad people.

I’m sorry, but if you feel it is appropriate to whine about your lot in life to 12 years olds and to try and turn them against their church, you are simply slime.

I didn’t have a great deal of respect for him to begin with, but what little I had has gone out the window.

There won’t be any apology from me. In fact, he should probably stay clear…

I’m packing.

I’M A BAD, BAD MAN

It’s true; I’m a bad, bad man. I’ve done something I’m not terribly proud of and I’m trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Don’t get your hopes up. Despite my recent postings about prostitution, picnic table sex, and consenting livestock, it was nothing immoral. In a nutshell, I was a jerk.

I’ve got this whole Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on, but I’ve come by it honestly.

As you know, the first half of my professional life was spent in the ministry. During that time I became very adept at church politics. For those of you not involved in a church, you might think that in a church situation everyone always deals with each other in a mature, loving, and compassionate way. Please...don’t make me break out in maniacal laughter. Churches are made up of people, and people occasionally get their panties in a wad and if you’re on the church staff you have deal with people in a very gentle and diplomatic way. At church I’ve always been the kindly Dr. Jekyll.  

15 years ago, I left the ministry and entered the business world. When I interviewed for the job I now hold I was told that if I had thin skin or wore my feelings on my shoulder I would not survive. They weren’t kidding…not even a little bit. I was worried about being able to adapt to that kind of environment. I found, however, that I not only adapted to that environment, I’ve learned to thrive in it.

Perhaps its being in a situation where you can actually say what you think, but I’ve found it to be incredibly liberating. I’m in the systems contracting business. It’s a business that moves very, very quickly. When you have a crew 500  miles a way from home and hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake and problems arise, those problems must be solved quickly and efficiently, and there is not time to worry about people’s feelings.

The procedure is simple: When there is a problem, those involved have a quick meeting and a plan to solve the problem is strategized and put into place. Then the person or persons who caused the problem are “ripped a new one,” and then they are taken out in the parking lot and shot in the back of the head with a small caliber weapon.

It might seem barbaric, but it’s actually very efficient, and I LIKE efficient.

At work I can become the demonic Mr. Hyde.

I’ve filled in directing music at the church I now attend many times over the past several years. Two years ago our music director retired and I was asked to take over his position on a part time basis which I agreed to do. My official staff title is “Pastor for Worship and Arts.” It may sound like a fancy position, but trust me, it ain’t.  When I first started they paid me a small amount of money. I always signed the checks back over to the church. After about six months of this the pastor decided it was kind of a silly arrangement from a book keeping point of view, so they stopped paying me altogether. This was just peachy with me, because if they don’t pay me, they can’t tell me what to do.

Because I’m a busy person the church was gracious enough to offer to hire a part time music associate to help me. A few months ago they hired a very nice and very talented young man in his early twenties. The young man turned out to be a fabulous musician, but a less than stellar employee. To say that his work ethic and communication skills could stand some improvement would be like saying George Bush could probably use some vocabulary lessons. After about six months on the job he had alienated so many people that when he walked into the building crowds with torches and pitchforks would begin to assemble and would have to be dispersed.

This past Sunday morning he was late, he had not done what he was supposed to do to prepare for the services, and he was in an uncooperative mood. As the old saying goes; “I only had one nerve left, and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t standing on it.” That’s when it happened. I transformed into Mr. Hyde and I had a little discussion with him. I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, and I could hear the tone I was using, but it was like I was outside of my own body unable to stop myself. When I had finished, he burst into tears and ran out of the building. He called the chairman of the board of directors that afternoon and tendered his resignation, effective immediately.

When I was his age and had just started in the ministry, there was a deacon in one of the churches I served who had talked to me on several occasions like I talked to this young man last Sunday. I remember how wounded I felt and how bitter I became whenever I thought about him. I realized that I have now become that deacon in his life, and I really hate that.

I know that he needed to hear some of the things I was saying, and I know that if he doesn’t change, he’s going to have a very difficult life in the ministry (or in any profession for that matter), but I could have handled it better. I could have tried to build him up instead of tearing him down. Yes, I was a jerk…

…but at least I was efficient.

TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

I dream every night; vivid dreams in full Technicolor, with casts of thousands and Cecil B. DeMille production values. As is the case in the world of dreams, they often lack a cohesive story line. For example, my dream may have me walking out my front door to find that my lawn has been replaced by a swamp which I must swim through naked until I emerge on the other shore to find myself in a ballerina costume, riding a flying elephant, on the way to an important meeting while listening to Liza Minnelli cover ZZ Top songs. (Yes, the 60’s were really good to me)

A couple of nights ago, however, I had a dream that I found very disturbing. I was convicted of a murder (which I was guilty of, although I don’t remember who I expunged) and subsequently sentenced to death in the electric chair.  In my dream I remember being strapped into the chair, the wet sponge being placed on my head before the helmet was locked in place, and the switch being thrown. I remember feeling the first jolt of electricity, and my jaw clamping shut. Everything went black and I woke up in a green tiled room. I was strapped to a gurney with a doctor standing over me. The doctor was the character actor Neal McDonough who has played the bad guy in about 800 movies. He was smiling pleasantly as he tapped a syringe. He explained that the electric chair didn’t kill me so he was there to administer a lethal injection.  As he plunged the needle into my arm I woke up and made a note to myself to lay off the Bloody Mary’s right before bedtime.

I was curious as to what this dream might mean so I went to the ultimate authority on dream interpretation – www.dreammoods.com (actually, it was the first site that popped up when I googled “dream interpretation”.) The pros at Dream Moods said (and I quote): “A dream about your own death indicates a desperate desire to escape the responsibilities of your everyday life.”

Duh…

I think all of us would rather be independently weathly, sitting on the beach, drinking Pina Coladas and reading Danielle Steel novels. I decided to probe a little deeper. Since I murdered someone in my dream, I typed in “Murder” and got back this quote: “You may have some repressed rage at others.”

Duh…

I can think of at least three people I’d be very happy to “expunge” at this very moment. Finally, I decided that most unique aspect of the dream was that there was a character actor in it trying to kill me, so I typed in “actor” and got back this quote: “Seeing an actor or an actress in your dream represents your pursuit for pleasure.”

So...according to Dream Moods, my dream is telling me that I’m a shiftless homicidal narcissist.

I can live with that.