Too

I am too.

Not as in also, but as in excessively. I'm too much or too little. It's not easy being too. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Too plump, too bald, too loud, too opinionated, too...you get the picture.

The other day a guy at work said I was too far to the right politically. He only said that because he's too far to the left. In my opinion, there are too many people that are too much in the middle. I mean, balance is fine, but at some point someone has to make a decision and do something, and that means taking a turn left or right. Oops, too political. So sorry.

I have a sixth sense, by the way. It kicks in when I'm out and about. In traffic, in malls, in restaurants. It's uncanny, really. It works like this: I can detect stupid people wherever they are. I discuss this with myself all the time. Too much, as a matter of fact. I really think I should let these people be. They can't help it. It's in their genes.

Some can't help driving too slow in the left lane. For others it's an inner impulse too strong to resist that makes them enter the check they just wrote into their registers at the checkout lane. If the math is too hard, they don't mind hauling out the mini calculator, either. And sometimes it's just too hard to decide which value meal to order while snaking through the line at Burger King. It's easier to do your thinking right their in front of the person taking your order.

I'm always too much in a hurry. I hate being late to anything, but I leave too late because there is always too much to do. I'm way too busy all the time. Why can't people understand that about me? Is it asking too much?

I really admire people who aren't too. But I know their dirty little secrets. These people have clean desks, balanced checkbooks, routinely changed oil and day planners with stuff written in them. They join health clubs and actually go there. They eat food grown in dirt in balance with food that walks on it. I see them from my little office at home at 5 a.m. while I'm sorting through piles of papers deciding in what order to procrastinate. They're out there running their dogs while pushing a jogging stroller...

Those people are going to live way, way too long.

Google Your Heart

Some people are so picky! Take companies and their precious trademarks for instance. The NFL recently sued a church to make them stop calling a Sunday gathering a Super Bowl™ Party. Seems if you let one offense slip, the courts don't think you take your trademark seriously, so you have to go after every offender.

Coke™ does the same thing. When I was a kid and you went to a burger joint and ordered a Coke™ you got whatever cola they sold, even it was a Pepsi™. Neither Coke™ nor Pepsi™ found that amusing and started making restaurants get it right. Now if you order the brand not offered, you are promptly offered the correct trademarked drink with a little "can't you read the menu board" attitude. EXcuuuuuse me! Yes, I'll have the Royal Crown™ instead of the Big K™ cola!

Google™ is now in danger of becoming an everyday term. You can write that down as a SARCASTICON prediction. This multi-billion dollar search engine's name is synonymous with looking, seeking, and finding, and we'll hijack if for our own use.

I googled around the house yesterday for an hour until I found my keys.

The officer did an illegal google and seizure and the evidence was thrown out.

I'm waiting for someone to write a new, updated transliteration of the Bible because The Message™ is too hard to understand. "Google my heart, oh God..."

I heard that Garth Brooks thinks he has a trademark on g. That’s right, the little g in Times New Roman. Talk radio host Glenn Beck used the letter on the set of his television show and got a letter from Garth’s attorney. It seems that Beck and everyone else who have typewriters in their attics have to turn their g’s over to the man with “friends in low places.” Beck gave in without a fight. The g™ is gone.

I’m not afraid, though. Let them come after me with all their lawyers and letters and threats. They can google all day, but they’ll never find me.

Trainwrecks - Volume 2

One of my first jobs out of high school was selling uniforms and related equipment to everyone from factory workers to firefighters and policemen. I got that job as a mercy hire. I was working for a competitor and my boss at that company was the father of one of my best high school buds. What I did to lose that job will be covered if I write the prequel to this post.

Small police departments didn't have the clout to place certain orders at a good price, so they used us. I got a call from a medium-sized police department on the western slope and made my biggest sale ever. The chief was ordering new gold badges for all of his detectives, and needed them for a ceremony they were having. He ordered them with plenty of notice, so there would be no problem.

You don't order badges, you build them. You start with a foundation and add emblems and swirls and nameplates, and then you color them. The manufacturer thought terms like Rhodium and Rho_Glo were good ideas to use instead of, oh, I don't know, simple terms like GOLD and SILVER! I got it in my head that Rho-Glo was gold, and ordered the badges. They were to come in about a week before they were needed. They did. They were wrong.

As I proudly opened the box upon their arrival, I was already spending my commission in my head. I'm not sure, but my reaction may have been that of a 6 year-old girl spotting a snake on the playground. That was the sound in my head, anyway. I immediately looked around for someone to blame. If only that stupid company used Gold and Silver. How hard would that be? It was their fault, I reasoned, not mine.

When we are young and immature, taking personal responsibility is not our first impulse. As we grow, that's supposed to change. The problem with this county, with this world, it that it doesn't. We set things in motion and fail see that the motion is almost always perpetual. The results along the way and at the end are a result of what we did at the beginning. It's our doing. The results are ours. Renee Zellweger has a powerful line as Ruby in the movie Cold Mountain. "They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!'"

When a train derails the government sends teams of investigators from a dozen different agencies to discover why it happened. The importance of this is clear - to try to do all we can to keep it from happening again. But in truth, it's going to happen again. It's the people who go to the site and get the train back on the track and moving that have the biggest impact on the most people.

We need less investigations and more solutions.

Blue Collar Christian

Ever feel like you just don't fit in? Like, you're at an "out of your league" party and everyone's eating caviar while you're in the kitchen warming fish sticks? That's me in ministry.

What was God thinking when He decided to let me do what I do? My background is not that of a contemplative. Those who raised me in the faith were antagonistic in their approach. God's grace was His to keep and our job was to jam Him down people's throats with a healthy dose of guilt, rules, and assumptions about decorum. Yuck. Decorum. I hate decorum. It's kind of a sissy word, in my opinion. And, those of you that possess it just bristled at my use of the word "hate." You're not going to like this blog site.

When I first saw the Blue Collar Comedians on television, I found the words to describe who I am...a Blue Collar Christian. By God's grace He is helping me clean the inside of my heart, but there will always be cars on blocks on the outside, grass growing around broken mowers and discarded toilets used as flower pots. It's how I roll.

I lead discussions in a room of about thirty other men who allow my blue collar ways to fly freely. I communicate in politically questionable terms, but try diligently to honor God in the process. I love those guys, and I'd like you to meet them sometime.

What I want to put here are the things I couldn't fit into conversations out there in the real world. This is where I get to actually say the things I'd have said if I could've called that idiot running the talk radio show I was listening to last Wednesday. Man, would I have straightened him out. Where is President Bush when he needs me?

And so I embark on a new venue (sissy words #2 & #3) to express myself. I am a cantankerous conservative who thinks he has all the answers while not fully understanding the questions. Just like on talk radio...