Caught In The Act

One thing Evangelical Christianity does, which it does not get any credit for, are the programs which gets the yard ape kids out of the house for an evening or two to learn about a holy and disciplined life. This also enables the Evangelical parents time to get "reacquainted" (wink, wink).

I remember one program in which our son, who was then 15, was going to be away from the house for the entire weekend. Of course, we were interested in what deep spiritual insight he might acquire from this weekend retreat. That and how many times we could get "reacquainted" (wink, wink), yeah come on.

When we dropped our son off at the church, I knew this was going to be a magical weekend, because we went to dinner at Captain D's, which is a great seafood place.

Let me admit this: I love Captain D's. I could probably eat a meal there at least once a day. I love fried fish, hush puppies, the fries and the tartar sauce. I know it is bad for you, but I have an excuse. I am not very smart and I like food that is not good for me.

The problem with Captain D's is that my wife, Lori, does not share my enthusiasm. It was not her fault.

When she was pregnant with our son, we had dinner at Captain D's one evening and we were going somewhere in East Cobb, just tooling down Old Sewell Mill Road. Out of the blue, my wife looked at me, all green in the gills and said "ALAN! I AM GOING TO THROW UP! NOW!"

Well, we had a new car and I didn't want that to happen in the car, so I went on two wheels and whipped into the Weatherstone subdivision like Starsky and Hutch. The car was still moving when Lori jumped out and blessed somebody's yard. I always wondered if the home owners saw this and what they might have thought. I also wonder if grass can grow there even after all these years.

                  I'm not saying this was the house, but......


During the rest of her pregnancy, I could hum the Captain D's jingle and she would get sick, so for years, we didn't go to Captain D's together. But, time had passed and I was able to take my beloved to my favorite fried fish place for a romantic fish dinner.

With our bellies full of fish, we headed to our usual Friday night place, which I called "The Temple": The Target on Dallas Highway. Mentally, I was planning that after we went to Target, we would go home and have our "quiet time" (wink, wink).

At the front of this store was an area called "The Dollar Spot", which had merchandise that cost only a dollar! It was great economics lessons because there was a lot of supply in terms of products but there was very little demand, so Target did everything except give you this plastic cheap stuff just to get rid of it.

My precious wife could not walk past "The Dollar Spot" without stopping. However, this time she really had a reason to browse because it was near Easter time and and "The Dollar Spot" had all of your Easter needs as long as it was cheap. They had a bag of plastic Easter eggs for a dollar. At that time, we still had younger nieces and nephews that hunted Easter eggs and Lori and her sister would fill these plastic eggs up with treats. Then they would make me and my other brother in law Bill "hide" the Easter eggs in my in-laws backyard. (Hide as in "putting it on the ground while talking about work".)

While Lori was doing a cost analysis on the bag of $1 plastic eggs, I began to look around myself and saw something, for once, that I would think about buying: a set of bunny ears that a person could place on their head and resemble a person who bought bunny ears for dollar. Yes, I am that guy.

One thing about Lori and me: our "love language" (you have to be an Evangelical to understand this) is laughter. We spend a lot of time trying to make each other laugh. My wife can do imitations and I have all of these witty asides; we're like a morning drive time radio show.

I decided to put on the bunny ears  and I know this is shocking and if you have young children you might want to escort them out of the room, because I wanted to FLIRT WITH MY WIFE. There, I said it.

I stood there for a while wearing the bunny ears, hoping she would look up and laugh and then we would go home for vespers (wink, wink). Finally, she looked up and gave me "that smile" that I knew meant I hit a home run.

Exactly at the same time I look over her shoulder to the front door of Target and in walks a friend from church, Kelly, and her lovely 12 year old daughter Kimberly.  Kelly saw me and grinned, hurrying Kimberly along. I could only imagine the conversation. It was either like this:

 Kimberly:  "Mommy, why does Mr. Manis have bunny ears on?"
 Kelly:  "Well, honey, when mommies and daddies love each other, sometimes daddies put on bunny ears."

 Or it was something like this:

 Kimberly:  "Mommy, why does Mr. Manis have bunny ears on?" 
 Kelly: "Well, honey, Mr. Manis is insane."

We bought the eggs and went home. I know what you sick people want to know and you should be ashamed of yourselves. (Wink,Wink)

God Rest Ye Hairy Gentlemen

The Christmas Season is a reflective time of year and I like to reflect upon my spiritual roots.

There is a misconception that I was raised as a Southern Baptist. I was not. I was raised a Christian, ha, ha.

Here’s the story. My Uncle was raised in Texas and through a series of jobs found himself in Mississippi and met my Aunt. The next job took him to Marietta, Georgia. World War II came and went. Soon, my Uncle and Aunt had twins. My mother, who was trying to escape Mississippi and a horn dog boyfriend, moved to Georgia to help my Aunt with the twins.  My Uncle was a member of The Christian Church and when mom moved Georgia, she joined that church because “Baptists vote on you”.

Once in Georgia, my mother met my father, who was a Methodist. So, once they married, they went to The Christian Church too, whose minister was a gentleman named Jack Daniels. I am not making that up. 
 
The Christian Church, for you church history buffs out there, is a denomination that doesn’t claim to be a denomination but for the sake of not going crazy when writing about it you call it a denomination. It was part of “The Restoration Movement”, which began in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s and their mission was to “restore” Christianity to back to its First Century roots.

However, like most things Church related, “The Restoration Movement” split into three factions. One was The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). These were the liberal guys. The preachers wore robes (you would not believe how controversial that is) and you heard some really great book reviews as sermons. The most famous member of this branch was Lyndon Baines Johnson. The church with the Jack Daniels pastor was a Disciples church.

Of course, if there is a liberal side, there has to be a conservative side. This faction is The Church of Christ. They do not use musical instruments in these churches. I would advise you not to ask.

Well, in the mid-60’s, Mom and Dad had all of their stair-step kids and moved from our two bedroom house in East Cobb, to a four bedroom house in East Cobb, that was next door to the junior high school and across the street from Wheeler High School. Next door to Wheeler  was built the third kind of “Restoration Movement” church: The Christian Church. It was different from The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) mainly because it was more conservative than that branch but it wasn’t as Conservative as The Church of Christ. Mom decided, in a moment of deep spiritual consideration, that we should go to the church that was closest to us. Thus began my decades long affiliation with The Christian Church that wasn’t The Disciples of Christ.

It was difficult to explain your church to others. When someone asked me what I was and I said “Christian”, they would press further by saying they were a Methodist, Baptist, etc, Christian, and I just said I was a “Christian,Christian”.

It was really a neat a little church and I have life long friends (and a wife) that I met there. Probably, though, when I think back to my childhood days at that church, I think about The Christmas plays that were performed.

Every year, the church allowed the children to put on a Christmas play that would retell the birth of Christ. The year I got my glasses was probably the most memorable.

It was 1967 and I had been alive for eight years. No one ever noticed that I was near sighted. It didn’t make an impression that I sat close to the TV or that I held the book close to my face. Or that I couldn’t catch a ball. That’s just Alan.

But, late that fall there was an eye exam given at school and lo and behold, I was as blind as a bat. I was prescribed a pair of glasses known in the optometry world as “Coke Bottles”. The fuzzy world became clear.

I had my glasses only a few weeks when The Christmas play practice began. I had the part of a Shepherd. We were to watch over our flocks by night. The head shepherd was an adult named Ned and he had the shepherd lines in the play. The problem was he couldn’t remember his lines. I remember being on stage and Ned not remembering to say “Behold, let us go to Bethlehem and find this baby” without another eight year old shepherd boy (Gary) who had memorized the lines repeating it to him.

The director of the play was a rather rotund women who insisted on historical accuracy in this production. So, all us shepherd boys, the oldest was probably eleven, were placed in make up and given beards. I had a white beard. I looked like the abdominal snow man in “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer”.  She also insisted that I should not wear my glasses because they didn’t have glasses back in Biblical times.

I told my mom about that and she hit the ceiling. I remember her coming to the dressing room and telling the director that I had to wear my glasses because I couldn’t see. I also remember her telling the director that “this ain’t Broadway”.

I sit back and I think about this a lot. It didn’t bother the director that an eight boy has a beard, but wearing glasses was just such an historical error. But, it is still a pleasant memory, when I found out what I would look like with a beard and that my mother would stick up for me and my glasses.

The Affordable Care Act Answer Man

As an ongoing public service, here is The Affordable Care Act Answer Man, the man with all of your Affordable Care Act answers that are current, at this present time, which might or might not be in effect depending upon The President’s poll numbers.

Will Healthcare Insurance Coverage become affordable?  Yes, it is in the name of the law “The Affordable Care Act”. DUH. This how Health Insurance works. People (members) pay a fee (premium) to be a policy holder in a health insurance plan so when they do have an illness, like their legs being too hot to touch, as the Answer Man once saw during his career in health insurance. Incidentally, this incident (claim) was denied because hot legs were not covered under this insurance plan and this member had to pay for their hot legs out of pocket and is probably homeless at this moment. The Affordable Care Act will provide affordable coverage so our fellow Americans with hot legs will no longer have to go bankrupt to pay for their hot legs.

That’s funny because my policy this year was $150.00 a month and next year it is going to be $408,555,755.00 a month. That is because your old policy was, in insurance terminology, a long tube of fecal matter. Your new super-duper health insurance covers everything, including certain cosmetic surgeries, your 24 year old Art major college sophomore and her cat.

What are some the Essential Health Benefits of The Affordable Care Act?  It pays for everything. Don’t worry about it. You are now free to live your life. You can now go where you wanna go, do what you wanna do with whoever you want to do it with.

What are my free preventive services that I don’t have to pay for?   It pays for diet counseling. In case you haven't noticed, our country is now a country of fatties. The United States will now pay for a counselor to tell you to put down that Pop Tart and go outside for a walk. If we can put a man on the moon, we can put you back into a pair 34 inch waist jeans. It also pays for Tobacco Screening, just in case you don’t know if you are a cigarette smoker.

What are my birth control benefits?  You get a poster of Harry Reid to put on your bedroom wall. That should get you out of the mood.

Why did insurance companies use “pre-existing conditions” to deny people coverage?  Because they were mean and they hated people. It has nothing to do with the fact that all insurance is based on one word, "risk", and that there is more "risk" involved with health insurance than in any other type of insurance.

What is it with the website?  The internet is part of the magical information super highway and it is very difficult to understand. Try dragging your mouse while you are standing on your chair and hit the side of your computer a couple of times. It might work then. If not, please feel free to call our convicted felons navigators and give your private information like your social security, when you are not at home and where you keep your valuables.

The President said if I liked my policy, I could keep it. Period. Now I have found that my insurance policy has been canceled. What gives?  Look, the President says a lot of things and you can’t hold him to a promise he made on his signature legislation.  It was not the President’s intention to have your insurance policy canceled. He was as surprised as your were. Really. No joke (suddenly the Affordable Care Act Answer Man looks up into the air and starts to whistle)

Going, Going, Gone

Never thought the words you said were true
Never thought you said just what you meant
Never knew how much I needed you
Never thought you'd leave, until you went ~ Kasim Reed  Don McLean

You probably have heard by now that The Atlanta Braves are doing what it seems like everybody on earth has done one time or another: move to Cobb County.

I must admit it; I was shocked and awed by the news. I have never thought about The Braves moving out of Turner Field, which just opened 16 years ago. In comparison to Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, Turner Field was The Taj Mahal.

Even if it was on the dumpy side, I had a spot in my heart for The Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. It was the first place I had ever saw a baseball game: Pirates vs. The Braves in 1967. I sat right up in the top row. I was at the game that Morganna  The Kissing Bandit (she was a , um, blessed stripper, who would run out on the field and kiss ball players) planted one right on Clete Boyer’s mouth. This caused Mr. Boyer to have a walk off home run. I have never seen a smile that big on a baseball player’s face as when he was rounding third base.

It was the stadium in which I took my wife when we were courting. It was there I saw and said hello to the legendary Harry Caray. Our seats were above the WGN booth. I looked down and there he was, reading his mail. I said, “Hey Harry”. He looked, smiled and waved. I told my wife to say hello. When she said “Hey Harry”, he looked and said, “Howa ya doin’ doll?” I will never forget Harry Caray calling my wife "doll".

But The Olympics came to town and we had to build The Olympic Stadium for the world. After the Olympics, The Olympic Stadium was retooled to become a new baseball field and The Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium became a parking lot.

Even though it was new, Turner Field had the systemic problems as the old stadium. It was in a rough part of town (featuring Atlanta's finest winos, junkies, pan handlers and thugs) that was a gigantic pain in the butt to get in and out of.  It was that way in 1966. It was that way in 1976. It was that way in 1986. It was that way in 1996. It was that way in 2006. The City of Atlanta had almost 50 years to solve the problem of traffic and the safety issue but Atlanta never saw it as a big deal. Just a bunch a hicks from the sticks complaining about life in the big city.

The great planners of MARTA, the rapid transit system of Atlanta, put the nearest train station a half of a mile from the stadium. Sometimes they would have buses. Sometimes they would not. I’m sure The Braves noticed that MARTA has a station at The Georgia Dome and Philips Arena.

I remember the last time I went to Turner Field, I took my son, who had just “graduated” fifth grade (to show you how long ago it was) to a game with a set of free tickets given to us by some friends. It cost me ten dollars to park. We were waiting to cross the street when a entrepreneur wanted to sell me his “last” action pictures of The Braves. I told him. “How much will it cost to make you go away?” Seven dollars. We had to eat supper. Twenty dollars. Two hot dogs and two soft drinks.  A monsoon hit in the first hour causing a two hour rain delay. We didn't stay.

Atlanta’s mayor, Kasim Reed, seemed to be as surprised as everyone else. At first, he said it wasn’t a “done deal”when it was obvious it was as done as a Waffle House steak.  Then he held a news conference in which he made this startling announcement: The City of Atlanta is fiscally conservative. This means they use coupons when they bring a Ferris Wheel into town.

Mayor Reed acted like he had no clue that The Braves were unhappy. He moved heaven and earth (almost literally) to ensure The Falcons had a new stadium. When it came to The Braves, the Mayor began channeling his inner Paul Ryan and started talking about budgets.

Actually, Mayor Reed was just following the script that all of the mayors have followed since Ivan Allen. If you build it, they will come and they will just have to put up with it. The Braves got tired of that and took their ball to the land of The Big Chicken, which is only about five miles away from where the new stadium will be.

The Lady And The Fat Man

In case you missed it, we now have our nominees for the 2016 Presidential election.

For the Democrats  the nominee will be Former Secretary of State First Lady Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton because twenty-five years of the Clintons is just not enough. Who is her competition? Joe Biden? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to Joe Biden, woo, woo, woo? Not  going to happen.

The reason for Clinton’s nomination is simple. She was kind enough to “let” President Obama win in 2008 and she was kind enough to “serve” as Secretary of State. It is her turn to be historic, thank you, so shut up and elect her President for eight years.

Clinton’s positives: The largest collection of pant suits in the Western Hemisphere.  She can go days without washing her hair. She has a really big brain and a really big imagination (see Benghazi).

Clinton’s negatives: We have seen this movie before. Do we really want Bill unsupervised in the East Wing? Do we really want to get an invitation that reads, “The First Gentleman Invites You To The White House Christmas Decorations Tour and Wet T-Shirt Party Sponsored By Hooters of DC”?
  

This week, the BIG news was that Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey became the HEAVY favorite to win the Republican nomination despite his obese, plump, pudgy, husky, paunchy, whalelike, gargantuan, roly-poly, oversized, fleshy, large, inflated frame. Governor Christie is fat. How fat is he? He is so fat that they took of picture of him last week and it is still printing. He is so fat that not even Dora could explore him. He is so fat that when he gets on a scale it says “To be continued”. He is fat.

                     
He would be the first fat President since William Howard Taft. Let me tell you, President Taft was fat. He was so fat that when he went to the movies he sat next to EVERYONE. He was so fat that he ate Wheat Thicks. He was so fat that when he went to a restaurant he would just look at the menu and say “Okay”.  He was a fat man.

Christie won re-election as the Governor of New Jersey despite the fact that most of New Jersey sees The GOP as some sort of snake handling church. Christie won all of the major demographics that Republicans generally don’t win including single women, women in “complicated” relationships, women in love with Gay men, transgendered male Eskimo lesbians with Hispanic surnames and the people that understood the song, “What Does The Fox Say?” the first time they heard it.  

Christie’s positives: He’s outspoken. He will tell you what he thinks, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense. He likes Bruce Springsteen (the old good stuff-not the past 20 years stuff). He has survived The Tenth Avenue freeze out. He's been to a lot of  great restaurants. We may be able to settle the great Dunkin Donut/Krsipy Kreme debate that has been tearing this country apart. He may actually be a Democrat.

               Scooter and The Big Man busting the city in half

Christie’s negatives: He’s really fat. Did you know that? You don’t want him coming to your house and sitting on your furniture.  Plus, and this can not be stressed enough, he is from New Jersey and may be in The Mafia. His cabinet will have a lot of men named "Petey" and "Paulie".  His press secretary will be called Jimmy Two Times: "The President will make a speech, make a speech".  He may actually be a Democrat.

                           President Christie's Press Secretary

Schadenfreude

A feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people.




Okay, I will admit it. I had a real immature reaction when I started hearing of all of the problems with the roll out of The Affordable Health Care Act, aka: Obamacare.  It was: Ha-ha. (Pretend you see me at home pointing at the President on TV doing my best Nelson Muntz imitation.)

It has been all over the papers. The big moment in American history: Open Enrollment. It used to be big moments in American History were things like Landing on The Moon and Winning World War II. Thanks to The Obama Administration, now a big moment in American History is getting a quote from Cigna.

However, it didn’t quite work out that way. The website people had to go on to get a quote from The Health Exchanges had a technical computer issue called “a glitch”. According to highly placed White House Information Systems sources, the website’s “thingamajig” didn’t “jeehaw” with the “watchamacallit” and caused the system to go all “out of whack”.

As you might expect, this White House jumped into action. The President asked for the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. No that did not happen. Instead, Sebelius has been given the task of explaining what happened to Healthcare.Gov website when it is obvious that her knowledge of the internet is limited to Pinterest.

The President has promised that the website will be fixed and up and at ‘em by the end of Thanksgiving. Of course, he promised that you could keep your insurance if you liked it (didn’t happen) at the same price (didn’t happen) or you could get a better policy at a cheaper rate (fat chance).

For example, say you are a 54 year old humorist and you want to buy health insurance. You are a non-smoker and non-drinker. Your last medical issue was a sebaceous cyst that you somehow miraculously survived.  You eat a banana a day, unless they are mushy, because  they make you gag. You go to the gym at least five days a week.  What do you think your medical insurance would cost?

Nobody knows because the website doesn’t work. Anyway, Obamacare doesn’t want you to sign up, per se, they want your kids to sign up. So you know it is in trouble.

We were not bad parents to these kids. They got all of the Barneys and Power Rangers they wanted. We taught them not to judge people. They responded by becoming really good at texting and giving us President Obama. Thanks, guys.

What is funny is that this President made it a point to be The Information Super Highway President. He communicated by Twitter! Who can forget where they were when they got the tweet from Candidate Obama that he had selected Joe Biden as his running mate?  Both his campaigns were politico-techno models for the future. Hippie-Commie rag magazine Mother Jones asked Obama’s 2008 techie Clay Johnson why Candidate Obama used the internets so well and President Obama hasn’t, Johnson said, “The first person that you need in order to start a Web company would be a Web developer; the first person you need to start a government-contracting firm is an attorney.”
 
The problem with Obamacare is not a website. It is the product. It is a governmental version of New Coke. Coke spent a lot of time and money to tell us we needed and wanted a Pepsi product called “New Coke”. It didn’t work. This won’t either.

Ha. Ha.

What I Like

Once, when the world began, I heard these words: “Alan, this is Stephanie Pickel”.

Like my wife, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know Stephanie Pickel. She’s Stephanie Harkins now and lives on a farm in Maryland. She has raised three boys (she was from a family of three girls) and had a successful career in nursing. Now, and this is quite troublesome for me because she is very good, Stephanie has become a blogger.

Her blog is Front Porch Tales-Pursuing Purpose and Passion in the Mid-Life Maze. This is much better than my blog Humor Me-Hey Y’all Here’s Another Booger Joke.

I mention Stephanie’s blog because one of latest, “My Happy List” inspired this week’s posting. Because a lot of humor is negative in nature and I admit that my nature is as negative as it comes. We spend a lot of time in the Humor World talking about things we don’t like. I’m going to be a little different today, thanks to Stephanie. I’m going to discuss what I like.

I like the way my wife smiles at me. It gives me the feeling that she adores this stupid lump of flesh. She could have done a lot better than me-I’m just happy she didn’t.

I like that my son can do impressions. I don’t know what it is about impressions I like, but I like it when people do good ones (like Dana Carvey) and my son can do great impressions. He does an impression of Eric Cartman from the awful “South Park” that will cause you to bust a gut laughing.

I like jokes. I like the way jokes give you all of the information you need up front. “A man walks into a bar with a penguin..” that’s all you need to know about the man, the bar, and the penguin.

I like it when an old friend says, “I remember” about an incident from the past that you know you haven’t spoken to him about but he knows it was important to you.

I like making people laugh. There’s something about the moment when people validate that what you are saying is funny. Especially if it is something you thought up by yourself.

I like coffee. But I like my coffee like I like my jazz: smooth. This coffee that knocks you down and makes you spontaneously start sprouting body hair is not for me. There’s something about a smooth cup of coffee that relaxes me.

I like music. I’m glad I grew up in “The Singer-Songwriter Era”. I like the way Jimmy Buffett said “Life is just a tire swing”. I like the way John Prine says “Eggs” (“Eaigs”). I like the way Dylan sounds on “Lay Lady Lay” and bleats “His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean. And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen”.  I like the way Mark Knopfler plays the guitar. I like side one of an album called “The Blue Ridge Rangers”. It is John Fogerty of Credence Clearwater Revivial playing every dang instrument and singing the heck out of some country classics.

 I like that I had parents that took care of me.

I like that I have a job and that I get paid for it. My job has one huge perk: I can leave my work at work when I leave work. That and  I have about 100 weeks of PTO hours.

I like my iPhone. It still gets me that I’m carrying around a miniature computer in my pocket.

I like watching college football even though there are a thousand truck commercials (you need more torque!) and middle aged man pills commercials.

I like finding out something new about people I have known for a long time. Like Stephanie’s writing talent. You can read it here: http://mallardsrunfarm.com/2013/10/13/my-happy-list/