terrible puns

I am not a fan of puns.  When I accidentally make a pun in casual conversation I don't even bother saying "pardon the pun" because people who know me already know that no pun is intended unless otherwise indicated.  It's part of the rider on being my friend.  

So when I saw this picture I was not surprised.  A little appalled, but not surprised. Christ followers are called to be in the world not of it.  This applies to the the stuff we read and watch on TV to the places we go and the things we do.  We are set apart.  However, in terms of good taste, we shouldn't be.  

Got Jesus? It's Hell without Him.   

Got an original thought?  Seriously, stop using this one.  

Here are some other personal Fav's:

Fight Truth decay

Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Practice Random Acts of Praise and Worship

Life is Fragile, Handle With Prayer.

TGIF = Thank God I'm Forgiven

Miracles Happen 

- (I prefer the original.)

God Created Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve.  

- Good one.  I know six people who got saved by that one.  Turned them right around. 

As you can see, puns, especially Christian puns, can drive a man from anger to violence.  It only takes a spark to get a pun going.  That's not punny at all, I'm sorry.  It's all pun and games until someone pokes their eye out.

Peace Out.

Our Neighbor Gale (aka Mrs Kravitz)

We have a neighbor who...hmm...(say something nice, say something nice)...who is challenged by reality.

So she goes around the neighborhood checking in on dogs and cats. This is the woman who will come into your backyard uninvited because she hears a puppy yapping. Weird.

Grace. Mercy. Must....over....come....I can't do it.

OK. Here's the story. Gail owns two houses right next to each other. One is for her dogs and the other is for her cats. She got into a fight with our other neighbor, the Frito Lay guy. Every day Frito Lay guy parks his Frito Lay truck more and more in front of the Gail's dog house. Granted, no person actually lives there but Gail had enough.
Gail borrowed a friend's boat and parked it in front of the cat house. Then she rented a 24 ft Uhaul truck and parked it in front of the dog house.
Frito lay guy got super mad and calls the cops. Nothing can be done.
This is where it gets a little weird. Like it took a Rhald Dahl turn.
-Gail puts up security cameras on her house. It ends up they were fake but annoying.
-Frito Lay guy finds out that Gail has been watering his bushes that make up a virtual wall between the two of their properties. She waters their plants every day to grow taller. FL guy cuts them to the ground. I mean stumps.
I'm not making this stuff up.
Finally, Gail decides she liked it better with the virtual wall. So she buys the biggest wooden cow cut out I've ever seen and places it just on her property line resurrecting the virtual wall. Eventually, the cops got involved. Talked her into putting the cut out cow away. No one was hurt.
Gail is her own worst enemy. But at the same time, she's also watching over my house when I'm not there. It's kind of a sense of security with a tinge of Mrs Kravitz from Bewitched.

Obama's Mom

In the whole scheme of things, I know that God will be the King of of whoever is selected to be president, so in the large picture, I'm not worried. I will always be human and always get distracted by the day-to-day stuff of what to wear, what I will eat, and who to vote for.
So when it comes time to select a running mate for the candidates there is a major disability to speak of. I'm talking about Senator Obama.
With a name like his, there are certain limitations. It's something that has plagued him since childhood. For instance, he can't call his mother "mama" otherwise her name would be Obama's Mama.
Other things Obama can't do:

• He can't buy a llama.
• He can't go to the Bahamas.
• Can't join drama.
• Can't wear pajamas.
• Can't participate in Ramadon.
• Cannot be seen eating or mention Hostess products (Obama Ding Dong)
• He must stay away from inverted commas.
• He mmust never visit the Dalai Lama
• And finally he must avoid things that are sensational or that could conjure up thoughts of a great movement among people, otherwise people will refer to the movement as an Obama-rama.

So he chose Biden. He really dodged a bullet on that one.

Scripture Tattoo

On the cuff of that last tattoo blog, I recently traveled to Dallas and back. On the last leg of the flight I overheard this young woman (mid 20s) talking about how she wanted to get a tatoo. She really couldn't stop talking about it. And unfortunately I was in the worst possible place: too close to block it out and too far away to engage her and influence her discussion.

Side note: if you ever want to stop someone from talking, never underestimate the power of a creepy man. All I had to do was ask a couple questions like: 'Hey I like tattoos, where are you going to put it?' Or maybe 'Hey my friend does tattoos. I bet he would be willing to work you a deal,' swiftly followed up by a wink. Creepy can be a curse or a gift.

Anyhoo, she went on and on about her friends who had them. How large or small they were. Mainly she spoke about putting this tattoo on her back. It's impossible for me to want to be some place else more than at that moment. While I'm stuck on a plane after three hours of unexpected layover, nothing but the weather channel being broadcast because I wouldn't pay the $5.95 for 80 minutes of cable, and tattoo girl won't quit talking.

Then there was the idea of scripture. She kept on saying scripture. Now I'm not anti-scripture. In fact I'm quite for it. But if that was the only word I knew for God's word it might seem that I didn't know very much about 'scripture.'
"I'm thinking of putting a scripture on my shoulder. What do you think?"
It seems like scripture would be so neat to have.
Some sort of scripture
scripture would be cool
I swear, if there weren't Federal laws about threatening people on a plane...
So at the end of the flight, I did the only thing I could. I told her I couldn't help but over hear her and made a 'scripture' suggestion. Job 8:2.
I told her from what I could tell, it applied to her.

Man. Scripture memorization really came in handy that time.

"How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind."

Here's Johnny

I used to work with this other lady who was mental. By mental, I mean she was probably a day’s meds away from really hurting someone. Best practices for mental co-workers.

1. Look them straight in the eye. A stapler or other heavy office supply can be a deadly tool in the hands of someone like this.
2. No matter what they say, no matter how odd or dangerous, act as though everything is normal.
3. Offer up handy suggestions that may temporarily stun them so you can escape.

Case in point: This girl, I’ll describe her as a short version of Elvira, was always talking smack about her boyfriend or her fight with him or a fight with someone who had just talked to her boyfriend.
I noticed a tattoo on short Elvira’s arm that was majorly messed up. It looked like someone had grafted skin over skin just to cover this thing up.

Now remember what I said about step two, no matter what they say.

She told me that the tattoo said “Johnny,” her ex boyfriend. The day they broke up she took a hot iron and burned his name clear off. Quickly honing in on an advanced combo of step 1 & step 3, I looked her in the eyes and asked her, “Why didn’t you just find another boyfriend named Johnny?” That was my chance. She starred into oblivion thoroughly stunned. I grabbed my stapler and bolted for the door.

Super Genius

Mason is my 3 year old son, I have two boys. The whole terrible twos thing is a boldface lie. It’s the threes. Or maybe it’s the twos and threes but they’re still so cute at two you hardly notice, and the bites aren’t as potent.

So Mason is known for pushing the limits and defying authority, totally his mother’s influence. So when he drew me this picture I was so proud because it showed he was really taking time away from the daily fits to make this special picture for me. I even took it to work.

Some people asked me about the clown robot (Miles). This one woman at work asked me about this one. She was clearly impressed. She stared hard. Too hard. She asked how he drew it. I told her that my son had just done the colored parts.

What the (expletive) ?!?!? Did she seriously thinka three year old would draw this rendition of Green Lantern and then forget the lines he drew only to go all artsy with a crayon? If so, I’m never sending him to art school. I think I’ll send him straight to ‘good decision' school.

Samsonite

I reread 1st Kings recently. I always love the part about Samson. Great read. His long hair enabled him to have ultimate strength. God gave him that strength and he abused it. Samson did what he pleased and even married a foreign woman, the modern day stigma equivalent to marrying a French-Canadian. Samson was believed to be the strongest thing on earth until his undoing. To this day, anything that is stronger than Samson is referred to as Samsonite®.

Samson was tricked into dumb contests and battles of wit (sans iocaine powder). Each time he lost it was his own fault and usually because of his pride. He took it out on everyone around him, or whatever animals available. He was super duped over and over again. And he refused to take anyone’s advice. This, my dear readers, is the same as me. I am a lot like Samson. Sometimes I don’t listen to reason from friends and family and I even take it out on those around me including small animals. In fact, I am just like Samson...except the long hair...and my arms are near atrophy. And I would not be caught dead in boots like the ones in the picture. And I would never, EVER, marry a French-Canadian.

Clown Robots and the Land of the Lost

My Son Miles made this picture. He’s five so he’s not some sort of 2 year old crayon savant or anything but he put a lot more thought in to this drawing than I gave him credit.

First he explained the clown, showing me that it was a clown robot with all the trimmings: swords, blades, rockets. Then he told me about the ground under the robot feet: green grass, then dirt, then rocks, then LAVA. Pretty good, little one. I had to tell him about Sleestacks and that they live somewhere between the rocks and the dirt.

I told him that clown robots were pretty creepy. He told me, “no dad, clown robot MONSTERS are creepy!” I stand corrected.

Book of Daniel

So I went to this bible study on Daniel and last night and we get to chapter 7, 8, and 9, you know, the freaky deeky stuff. Lions, Leopards and hunched over bears fighting each other like an Ultra Man battle sequence. While we listened to the theories of what all this means there was this couple of ladies who interrupted over and over again with alternative views to the teacher. The questions part was fine. I liked hearing that the Lions alternatively represent England and the Bears represent the Soviet Union. Interesting...

But then we got more into and they became more defiant. They challenged the teacher more and more throughout the night and people started groaning each time the ladies raised their hands.

After the study I waited around to ask my burning question (‘At what point does Kirk Cameron come into Daniel’s vision?’) only to be cut in front of by the ladies. I use the term ladies because I vowed not to cuss to get laughs. I’ll do just about anything else but that.

They cut in front of me like I was the make-a-wish foundation. Not Cool.

I spoke to one of the ladies for almost 4 minutes. She said her Husband was was 100% preterist. I told her how sorry I was and asked how long he had to live. Like most sarcasm, this too was lost on the passionate. She asked me if I knew what Preterism was and I told her it was a joke. She didn’t laugh. Then she told me that I had a ‘strange point of view’ for not ‘believing that Jesus already came back’ in like 34 AD and then something about the sacrifices being reinstated. I asked her, “so now that sacrifice has been reinstated, what have you been sacrificing? Alpacas?”

(Crickets chirping...) And I never got to tell my Kirk Cameron joke.

Pacific Resources

I sat in a meeting yesterday for four long hours justifying my job again. I don’t mind it, so it is to live in a corporation. But in this meeting I had just one take away: business people don’t need to learn formal English in order to run a business. I’m not talking about immigrants (most likely Canadian) who are coming to the country and taking our comedian jobs. I mean people who have lived here their whole life. These are the people who never bothered to memorize the difference between their, there, and they’re or two, to, and too.

These words they spoke were like angry ferret nails on a brand new sun burn. And all I could do to keep it in was to remember God’s grace, God’s mercy. It really helped me get through it.

God is so good to me.

“Let me ‘confer’ you too some ‘pacific’ resources.”

Dang I’m awesome.

Morrisey and the Eagles

A few years back I remember talking to a friend of mine who plays with a big Christian artist.

(I just earned a ‘no name-dropping’ star).

I asked him what style of music he preferred to compose. Since this artist was just trying to ‘find his place in this world’ (take the star back) and had a very mainstream audience, I wanted to find out how one of his band members differed from the mainstream.

I’ve always wondered how any performer can find people who truly dig his/her music. Do the musicians of Shakira love the music? What about the people pretending to play with the Jonas Brothers or Ashley Simpson? Do they really respect the artists for whom they perform?

So I asked my friend from the “Michael W Smurf” band. He said his personal style was a lot like Phil Collins.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

(expletive) Phil Collins?!!?! really? That’s your thing!?!? Listening to PC is like like eating a dry, cold bagel with butter and sand on it. This may sound a lot nicer than I mean it but there are only a few performers I would like NEVER to be saved, or, at least not until the performer is on his or her death bed. Phil Collins is number one on that hit list.

Solemnly consider what would happen. He’d be doing crappy covers of Heart of Worship and Shout to the Lord and every mother of a deadbeat in his 30s would have hope again.

Here’s my official list. Singers/Artists I hope do NOT become saved until death bed:

1. Phil Collins - sand butter, remember?
   
2. The Cyrus' - both Father and Daughter.
3. P-Diddy - It would be MC Hammer all over again.
   
4. Morrisey - The equivalent of a blues singer making Christian music. And you know he'd keep the hair.
   
5. The Eagles. Do you really want to hear the “revised” version of Hotel California?

End the Madness

Thrown under the bus.

I've used this phrase often. My wife uses this phrase. EVERYONE IS USING IT! So let’s just retire it and call it a day before things get out of hand.

Do we want our parents using this side-splitting reference?

I rest my case.

Besides, did this ever actually happen? There are all kinds of phrases that work their way into the English language that have origins in history. In fact I've never heard a bus driver use the term. You know why? Because IT NEVER HAPPENED. NEVER.

Do we want a nation of shopkeepers all saying the same thing: The laundry mat forgot to get out the lipstick stain on my collor. They threw me under the bus. Let’s nip this in the bud right now and stop the bleeding. It’s time to rain in on this parade and stop treating this series of words like a sacred cow. These emerging cliches need to end like the plague.

God’s Beautiful Countryside

God really does have a way with making beautiful things. From clouds that billow to rivers that stream seemingly forever, never the same way twice. I think God really does design us to see this type of beauty as awe inducing. It reminds me how small we all are and how little control or affect we humans have. Even changes in seasons are never ending and beautiful. All this is stuff that the West takes for granted. The only land worth saving requires a law or an injunction.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have the locals build a ramp (skateboard or other) so you could literally ride all the way down from the top of a mountain to the bottom. Or, better yet, how about ripping everything up in a four by four. Yeah.

Mother Theresa

Yeah. I got nothing.

Blind People

A radio talk show host was talking about how it says in the bible not to put a stumbling block in front of a blind person. He worked the blind bit it into his rant but I was interested to look it up. Radio guy was totally right. It’s in Leviticus, “Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind.” Interesting...People actually did that sort of thing to blind people. That is pretty messed up. I wondered how rare this act of unseen (pardon mon pun) terrorism was. But then I searched in the bible and found several instances. This was apparently a rampant problem back in bible times.

Ezekiel 3:20 "and I put a stumbling block before him...”

Romans 14:13 “make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way.”

2 Corinthians 6:3 “put no stumbling block in anyone's path, so that our ministry will not be discredited.”

Dang. I had no idea. And who made the stumbling blocks? You know there had to be some guy in every town who made these blocks out of wood. "How big of a blind person? Ahh I have just the thing."

How do you take pride in work like that. "I've been a member of the stumble block-maker's guild for 22 years." But upon more investigation, check out what I found. The guild is still around! This is their seal:

Cult Leaders Got it going on...

You’re old. Dating is tough,especially in today’s day and age. You’ve diverted from God at some point and whatever is wrong with you is probably not covered by medicare. Your future is unclear and there are bills to pay. What options do you have?

You begin to ponder: I could start my own cult. That’s it! You mull over your qualifications: I took drama in high school, my friend’s children say I’m creepy, and I don’t even like coffee. I CAN DO THIS!

People start to hang on your every word. You have a growing following. Women commit themselves to you so you suddenly make multiple marriages a recent ‘revelation.’

Soon the followers of your cult ask where they should buy property so that you can build the compound you’ve always wanted.

You subtly suggest bling, you get bling.

You mention more wives, you get more wives.

Anything you want is at your fingertips.

Now the question still remains: If you had all this at your finger tips, why would you insist people dress like Little House on the Prairie?

Eye for an Eye

I was thinking about Ghandi and what he stood for. I was also reminded of the phrase, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Very insightful. I think about all the times when I would like to get revenge for the wrong someone committed. Sometimes I play the scenario back in my mind, playing judge and jury. I think, if only I had said THIS or if only I had done THAT. Then I get a short-lived satisfaction from it as though what was imagined really just happened.

I spent a great deal of my life in bitterness. As a Christian I worked very hard to hide it. Sometimes when my pettiness peaked out it would shove it’s head back inside so quickly that I could rely on my charm or humor to cover it up. I’ve hurt a great many people. And I’ve said sorry to a lot of people.

My kids see a different side of me, different than the person I used to be. I’m glad because I’ve changed for the better. I’d say I’m much more proactive and I no longer search for ways to get people back after the fact.

If I had to re-word this phrase about an ‘eye for an eye,’ I would put it like this: "An eye for an eye does make the world blind. So my personal goal would be to be the last guy with one eye. Then I could just pretend I was blind. I’d be the only one who knew which people were ugly."

Eat my dust SUCKUHS!

Meeting Shania

I have a name-dropping problem. Sometimes I just can’t stop. At least that’s what my friend from the Shania Twain Band tells me. Speaking of him I had a run in with Shania a couple years ago when she came to town.

My wife and I met up with my friend (did I mention he plays in Shania’s band) and we hung out back stage talking before the show. When it was time for him to go up on stage my wife and I walked out to go watch the concert but we were still back stage.

There is a thing called a “Meet and Greet” and it’s usually something for radio contest winners to meet the famous person back stage. It promotes the show. Anyhoo, I saw a line of a bunch of kids and parents with baseball hats and t-shirts and posters with Shania’s picture on it. I saw her making her way toward the line of fans. I told my wife to get ready. As she approached I cut in the line, explained who I was (did I mention I know this guy from her band?) and tell her that I would like to get a quick picture with her. She kind of snapped back, “Yes but make it quick” but in a Canadian accent. So the picture is taken and she walks to the line of people waiting. By this time the music from the show had started and I had just outsmarted a bunch of lame contest winners.

Here’s where it got lame. My wife jabs me explaining what had happened. “You just cut in front of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.” Hmm. I looked. It was true. The kids, the parents, all waiting for their one chance to meet a famous person.

I was torn. On the one hand I felt awful. I couldn’t have done anything more selfish. But was it really selfish? The picture I got with Shania, I will (marginally) treasure for many years, maybe 35 years if the ticker doesn’t give out. However, how long did these kids have, 5, maybe 10? Now who’s being selfish?

I’m a pretty terrible human being sometimes. Thanks for reading.

Does God Recycle?

I was watching Celebrity Circus last night and I saw the host Joey Fatone introduce the next act Rachel Hunter. I asked my wife why these people were famous. She said Rachel Hunter was a super model from 20 years ago and Joey Fatone who was originally from the NSYNC, my second favorite boy band (BSB 4ever!)

The premise of the show is to get people on the D list to show up, smile, and act like they’re concentration is for some purpose.

(By the way, if you’re wondering if I, myself, would ever participate in a show like this the answer is “where do I sign?”)

So yes I’d do it but I’d be constantly weighing the humiliation against the paycheck.

I digress.

Hunter and Fatone were recently on another show called dancing with the stars, arguably the same premise as the former show mentioned except it’s met with former C listers and much more popular. Also, dancing peeps are less creepy than circus folk. So at what point do you think the two made the jump from C list to D list when they were clearly at one point solid Bs?

I thought back to shopping with my mom when I was a kid. We used to go to Marshall’s. Marshall’s always had a ton of cheap stuff but where did it come from? Did fashionistas in Paris dream of designing blouses and skirts to be featured on the sales rack at Marshall’s? No. Their stuff started out at Macy’s. And when they couldn’t sell there, Macy’s sold the blouses and skirts to Kohls. From Kohls to Mervyns to J.C. Penny to Sears to Ross ending up finally at Marshall’s.

So what was God intending when he made me? I was probably going to be a minister or an executive in a large corporation making huge donations to charities and writing books about how humble I was. Then when I was little I sinned. I sinned again. Fast forward 33 years. Now I’m on the Y list writing blogs to losers.