I was Only Gone for a Minute

I know God is supposed to see everything. I've heard how He sees the smallest sparrow fall and the insincere man fake piety. But what if He doesn’t? What if He checks in once in awhile just to see if the water is boiling or whether the toast has burned? What if He goes out to feed the meter right when I take His name in vain? What if He misses a sparrow falling and when He gets back, there it is, dead right in the middle of His living room? What if God is out for a minute, and a minute to Him might be a millennia to us? He could leave just as Pilot is washing his hands and come back this Tuesday. Think of all we’ve done since then; we've had two wars that were so big we had to call them World Wars, we killed of entire species of some of His animals, we’ve invented music videos, and we’ve dirtied His water and His air to the point where we have warnings when the air is too dangerous to breathe, and birds are washing up on His beaches wearing a suit of tar.

Have you ever seen The Odd Couple? Not the TV show but the movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon? There is a scene in that movie, and I believe the play, where Felix and Oscar are entertaining two women over at their apartment, most likely hoping to get laid. Everything is going fine when Oscar steps into the kitchen to make some drinks or something. While he is out of the room Felix starts pining for his ex-wife and his old life, and eventually starts crying. The two women start crying too. It’s at this point when Oscar bursts out of the kitchen and in the bandleader-at-the-nightclub voice says, “Is everybody happy.” He sees the three of them there, Niagara Falls spilling out onto the sofa, and he yells, “What the hell happened?”

What if that happens to God? What if he goes out into the kitchen to mix us up something really nice? “Here everybody, a brand new Tahiti,” or “I just made a new color! It’s kind of like blue and kind of like sparklers.” So he comes bursting out of the kitchen, just like Oscar, only instead of drinks he has a second Tahiti on his tray, and his tray is blue/sparkler colored, and He says, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” He is expecting to see everything as he left it but instead his pet parrot is missing and we’ve got feathers on our lips, He is coughing because the air is toxic, and he slips on an oily harp seal and falls on His ass?

If I remember correctly, it was at this point in the movie that Oscar kicked Felix out.

Photoshop 'Till you Drop

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The Lord is my shepherd
He leadeth me in pastures green
He gave us this day
Our daily bread and gasoline.

-Mark Knopfler, Balony Again

If location, location, location is the mantra of the business and real estate world, then timing, timing, timing should probably serve the same purpose for the world of corporate damage control. Yes, you want a home in a nice neighborhood or a business where your target customers will find it, but you probably also want your good news, that comes after 85 unrelenting days of bad news, to come at a time when it can stand on its own, strong and tough, and perhaps just as importantly, unsullied.

Just when BP got a plug in the massive oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, when they finally got a finger in the dike, when for just a moment it looked like no more oil would be added to the country-sized turtle-killing glob that has already escaped, when the hero strode in and said, “everything is going to be okay,” another example of their corporate cut-and-paste mindset walked in and barfed on his shoes. Remember the Caribbean walrus they were worried about?

This weekend BP posted on their website a photo of workers diligently staring at 10 screens that monitor underwater images of the leaking oil well. Inasmuch as you and stare diligently. That image had been altered to show more workers than were actually in the room when the photo was taken, and images had been pasted on two screens that were blank in the original photo.

BP took down the image and said it was just a company photographer showing off his Photoshop skills, and that they were not trying to fool anyone. I hope they weren’t trying to fool anyone, because how could it matter? I don’t have the skill set to decide that there were too few technicians in that room or that too few monitors were lit. Who does? Hell, eight screens pointing at one spot on the ocean floor seems like overkill to me already. Look, I really believe there are people currently working for BP who are trying everything they can think of to stop this leak, and that it really bothers those same people that they haven’t been able to.

I also understand that oil, or our need for oil, is not going away any time soon. Aside from fueling our cars we need oil for a million other uses. Let's just try not too spill so much and have a plan for cleaning it up if we do.

I don’t believe, however, the line about the company photographer showing off is Photoshop skills any more than I believe people actually pay to watch Adam Sandler movies. If you take a look, not a long look either, at the photo it’s easy to see it has been altered, and altered poorly. If those skills allow you to get and keep a photographer job with BP, perhaps I should send them a resume because dude, your “Photoshop skills” suck. What I think is they have guys whose job it is to stomp out fires and it’s like the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” So I guess when you’re a clueless corporate fire stomper-outer, you see fires everywhere, and you just start a-stompin’.

So BP, we’re all behind you on your efforts to stop the oil leaking and we don’t need “proof” that you’re working on it. But please stop pissing in our coffee and telling us it's cream.

The Dickens

"There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing." — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451



I always have a book with me. From the disappearing library, from the used book store, or borrowed. I read at home, during lunch at work, and defiantly at the doctor’s office. Yes I know that there are magazines that the doctor very generously lays out, but how anyone can read Golf Magazine is beyond my understanding. How much can continue to be written about golf anyway? They might as well publish Get Off The Sofa And Walk Into The Kitchen Magazine. I understand how to play golf; hit the ball with the club, walk a bit and hit it again, then hit it into the hole. You explain to me how to get from the living room to the kitchen once, twice tops, and I’ve got it down. I don’t need a magazine telling my how once a month.

I have a reoccurring appointment for a treatment that takes an average of four hours. Can you imagine being stuck in a chair for four hours with no book and only Golf, or worst yet CEO Magazine to read? Really, there was a copy of CEO magazine on the table in the waiting room of a doctor’s office I visited once. Really, there is a magazine named CEO. How many CEOs are out there, yearning for a magazine that would cater to their special needs? “Oh, did you see the article in CEO Magazine about how to pick which of your 10 garages to park your Mercedes Benz fleet ?”

But I digress, which probably should have been the name of this blog. I was talking about books. I read, mostly fiction, for entertainment. If a little knowledge seeps in, well that’s just a bonus. When choosing a book to read I usually use two criteria; has the author written something else I liked or is the idea interesting? That doesn’t exclude other ways of finding new books like recommendations and a cool looking cover.

When searching by author I may not always choose to read what I find, but I’ll look at books by Stephen King, Denise Lehane, Jasper Fforde (Thanks Ken), Dan Simmons and Philip Kerr, to name a few. I used to have Alistair MacLean, James Michener, Ray Bradbury, and Clive Cussler on this list but one of those guys doesn’t write any more, one has fallen into boilerplate plots, and two up and died. But just because someone has passed on or stopped writing doesn’t mean I’ll not read them anymore. After all, I’ve read Something Wicked This Way Comes about four times.

I'm not proud. I'll tell you straight up who I read. Dickens be damned, I'm going to read a Michael Crichton book.

When someone has an interesting idea, like Mr. Corley’s unusable bombs in my previous post, I can’t wait to see how the author works it out. Some interesting ideas that worked on me in the past; what if we absolutely needed to raise the Titanic (Cussler), what if everyone who had a cell phone suddenly turned into a semi-cannibalistic maniac (King), or what if a good man was forced to take on the identity of a known Nazi criminal in order to get the help he needed to escape from Germany in 1949? (Kerr). So there are many other authors I will read and sometimes the cover of a book gets me in the showroom, but it’s the story that gets me to buy the car.

The last two books I’ve read are Under the Dome by Stephen King and Poland by James Michener. Between the two it’s a total of about 1,500 pages, Stephen King’s book totaling over 1,000. But I like a thick, heavy book now and then. I meal if you will. I like the weight of it, the rough edges of the pages, and the how the corners of the cover get worn from its weight.

Mr. King’s book, although maybe his longest, was not his best. My sister once told me she doesn’t read Stephen King because she was tired of just when you began to care about a character, “snakes would come shooting out of their eyes” or something. I’d be okay with the snakes, but in this book they didn’t make an appearance. But snakes, or the lack of snakes, is not why I was disappointed in this book. I didn’t care too much for it, although I did finish it, because after all was said and done, and a lot was said in 1,00 pages, not much was done. Hopefully I won’t be spoiling this for anyone, at least I know I won’t be for my sister, but the hero of this book really doesn’t do anything.

Poland while long, but not nearly as long, was much more interesting. First off, James Michener doesn’t write short books. I gave up on Hawaii after the 400th page about the asshole missionary. Not that all missionaries are assholes but if you've read the book, you know who I'm talking about. I think I may have stopped reading 3 or 4 books in my life and I’m sure that if James Michener took phone messages for an afternoon, all of those scribbling on Post-It Notes would have been far superior to the other 2 or 3 books I abandoned. So I felt I owed Mr. Michener. So I picked up Poland and I loved it. How the Polish people’s ability to screw in light bulbs ever came into question is a mystery to me.

But while I love books, and with a couple of exceptions the longer the better, I find that many people around me, and I assume many people everywhere, seldom read. When I was at my long medical appointment with the 1,000 page Under the Dome, a block of wood really, a nurse said, “That’s a big book. How long does that take to read?” And when I was at another appointment with Poland, my doctor said pretty much the same thing. Neither asked me what the book was about nor if I was enjoying it. I felt a little sad for them. They see a large book, and probably any book, as a chore; something that has to be slogged through. I doubt either has read a book for the simple enjoyment in years. Maybe that fear of reading is where Scare the Dickens comes from. Well, I guess someone has to keep Golf Magazine in business.

Right now I’m reading Drood by Dan Simmons. It clocks in at just over 700 pages. I was sitting in the little patio area at lunch reading it and two different coworkers passed by, saw the book and said, “How long to read that?” Luckily for me, neither would most likely be reading CEO.

The Jesus Factor

Years ago (many, many years ago) I read a book called The Jesus Factor. Probably left behind by my brother Ken. The gist of the story is that nuclear weapons only work when they are stationary, thus rendering them useless in a bomb or missile. The titular term is used by the scientists of the book who can’t explain why their bombs don’t work when dropped on, or shot at, their intended targets; it didn’t work because Jesus didn’t want it to work. With every country unsure of whether or not it’s only their bombs that won’t work, it makes for an interesting deterrence. I don’t remember much of the actual story, other than there was a very convoluted explanation of how we pulled off Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I think I enjoyed it. But don’t’ read too much into that. I thought Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was better than Iron Man.

But where has The Jesus Factor gone as a term for explaining the unexplainable? I imagine some 1940s lab coat adorned, wild-haired man of science dashing his abacus to the ground in frustration when some experiment fails for the thousandth time, screaming, “Again with The Jesus Factor?” Are our greatest minds still able to accept that some things just stay a mystery or must everything be explained, flow-charted, white-boarded, reverse engineered, deciphered-defined-described, and generally cleansed of all mystery and fantasy?

I liked the idea that the very people who managed to put men on the moon, 12 men to be exact, couldn’t explain how a bumble bee with its awkward assemblage of tiny wings and fat body could fly. I liked knowing that we have created all art, literature, chocolate covered pretzels, and ice in the 105-degree Fresno summers by using only 10% or our brains.

But as it turns out, those ideas are folklore. Bees fly because their muscles controlling their wings vibrate about 200 times a second, making those little wings move up and down and create lift like a helicopter. Did I need to know that? Does that change anything about how bees and humans interact? Does not pollination still happen without knowing that? Do not bee stings still happen? Had bee flight dynamics remained a mystery, would honey stop showing up on the shelves at the local VONS?

And most scientists, well all scientists, agree that we use much more than 10% or our brains. In fact, they say that we pretty much use all of 'em. I probably should have known that. No ten-percenter could have every come up with the self inflating tire, sign language, fire, the clock, the compass, the condom, and the Japanese tanning shirt (see graphic below).

Maybe the Jesus Factor is archaic, and has been tossed out like buggy whips and turn tables. So goodnight to The Jesus Factor. Sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite, or bees sting.

I may have spoken too soon. Right now there are people who bent The Jesus Factor for explaining not the actual flight of bees, nor the fictional (unfortunately) uselessness of atomic bombs, but instead, the entire knowable world. These people contend that all of creation; from the mightiest redwood to the oldest bristlecone pine, from the largest blue whale to the smallest virus, from the most pious believer to the most skeptical nonbeliever were all created by…they don’t know what. Or can’t prove what. Distrustful of natural selection they say the creation of everything was God. Jesus himself if you will. They are the Creationists and their mantra seems to be, “We can’t explain how all this happened, so God did it.” That is like me saying, I can’t remember where I put my keys, so Jesus must have moved them to test me. Why he put them in the refrigerator I’ll never understand.

Well maybe he did. Maybe he actually created all those trees, bees, the Japanese, and my keys with a snap of his divine fingers. If so, why couldn’t he really have put the out-of-order signs all those nuclear firecrackers? But how does that exclude Him creating all of this through natural selection or survival of the most fit?

Oh, science still can't explain arous borealis; the Northern Lights.



Oh 2.0, the guy who wrote The Jesus Factor was named Edwin Corley. Just in case you want to add it to your Kindle.

"Downfall" of Civilization?

Right now they are having the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Maybe the world’s oldest game show, although I’m uncertain of what one would win. As I understand it, the bulls that die during those nine days of machismo chest pounding and anal goring are slaughtered and their meat is served in Pamplona restaurants. Okay, if the bulls were going to die anyway, at least their meat is not wasted. So I guess to the runners, it’s either get run over and face possible impalement, or finish the “race” and have a nice steak.


At the same time a new game show has started up here in the New World. It’s called Downfall. The way this show works, as I understand it with my limited exposure, is that a contestant answers trivia questions while the prizes he is trying to win move by on a conveyor belt. If he answers the questions correctly then the conveyor slows down, but if he doesn’t then the conveyor speeds up and those prizes fall off the end of the belt.


The hook is that this show is filmed on the roof of what looks like a ten-story building and those items that fall off the end of the belt, fall 100 feet or so, where they smash to splinters in the alley below. Don’t know the capital of Idaho? Kerpow! There goes your new dining room set. Forgot which vampire in Twilight is the cutest? Sploosh! Say goodbye to that above ground pool.


I understand that a TV show, especially a game show, needs a certain amount of sensationalism to cut through the clutter and thousands of fine programs our hard working producers, actors, and key grips create and display for us, but is it necessary to destroy perfectly good items in the process? Couldn’t the items just be removed from the contestant’s field of vision? Maybe saved for the next episode? Donated to a charity? Is this how it’s done on other game shows? If I look in the dumpster behind the Wheel of Fortune set, will I see a brand new Nissan Ultima? If I check the curb side in front of the studio where they film The Price is Right, will I have my choice between Peter Pan Peanut Butter, Pampers, or Spam?


Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the country where we had a program called Cash for Clunkers that taught us to throw away perfectly usable cars.


By the way, Downfall was also the title of a movie about the last days of Adolf Hitler. Coincidence? And I believe there was an officer in that bunker named Anal Goring, who was Hermann’s excessively neat brother.