And the Lord said...

They've pretty much eliminated one of my big beefs about going to church.  Apparently it's now okay to just roll out of the hay; maybe disguise your bed head with a ballcap, throw on some shorts and make ready to grab some pew at your nearby sanctuary.  As a kid, dressing up to get saved cramped my style.

Nonetheless, having agreed weeks ago to join my daughter, Katie, and her family for Easter services, Linda and I dressed up for a very rare Sunday appearance.  Outside of weddings, funerals and the occasional baptism I have a somewhat spotty record of church attendance.  My brother and I were dragged to both Sunday school and church every week from birth to our much longed for parole from high school.  In addition to getting "duded up", we both hated the music and the constant threats of eternal damnation for questionable deportment the other six days of the week.  It seemed to be a losing proposition.  Other than the fine climate, heaven didn't seem to be worth the effort if all our friends were going to be partying south of there.   As a consequence, since leaving my parents home, I have been to Sunday church services maybe four or five times in forty-five years.  Like I said, a spotty record.

It's not that I don't believe in something bigger and wiser than all of us.  I do.  However, I still don't like the music, ritual, or dogmatic nature of formal religion.  God makes me nervous when you get him indoors.  I also have decided after years of searching for loopholes that the bible is the product of a committee that bothered neither to fact check or even collaborate as they pieced together their collection of allegories and proverbs.  Pretty good stories but, call me a sceptic, certainly all designed to keep us in line.


So, there we were,  Easter Sunday in church with family on a beautiful Southern California day.  Since it had been awhile, I was taking it all in.  There were people in shorts, t-shirts, jeans and even one guy who didn't know enough to remove his University of North Carolina ballcap in one of the nicest churches in downtown San Diego.  I still can't stand the music and the ritual, but the pastor had a quite wonderful message on beauty:  "There is the beauty we see.  More beautiful is what we understand, and MOST beautiful is what we don't understand."  I liked it and I liked him.

During the service my one and only grandson, 18 month-old Dan, was seated on his mother's lap.  He still nurses before going to sleep each night and his mom knows it is closing in on time to ween him.  She is not looking forward to it as the boy clearly enjoys his boob nightcap and she realizes how hard it will be to end this ritual.  At one point during the service young Daniel pulled on the top of Katie's blouse, looked down her front and said, "WOW!"  I laughed hard enough to double my collection "drop" when they passed the plate.  It was a priceless moment.  (Soon I will have to have that chat with Dan about saying good-bye to anything resembling those things until he gets his drivers license.)


Everything considered it was a very pleasant Easter Sunday and one of the select times when I was almost over dressed.  Who knows, maybe I'll be there next year.   Maybe it will be God's turn to look down and say..."WOW!

PRESIDENTIAL FUN ON THE 405

It's a little after 3PM and I am leaving Westwood  headed home to San Diego.  Ordinarily it's a miserable commute until you're south of LAX and some of the freeway merges in Orange County. Today, Thursday, the president is in town raising money for his re-election and the drive is becoming a bit of a challenge.  Surface streets like Santa Monica  and Wilshire Boulevard are being sporadically closed and the San Diego Freeway, the famous 405, is just about in gridlock.  I envision Easter and possibly Christmas passing before my car eats up the hundred miles of freeway needed to reach my home in San Elijo Hills.

With some of those patented Dirty Harry driving moves, I beat any closure of Santa Monica Boulevard and hit the southbound ramp of the 405 just in time...to sit.  And sit some more.  Then, very slowly, I merge with the tide of rubber and iron rolling South.  Luckily I always have audio entertainment with me and today is no exception.  Satellite radio, trusty Ipod and audio books are all sanity savers for situations like this.  Today, however, even these distractions aren't enough to take my mind off the fact that thousands of us are being inconvenienced by a feckless commander-in-chief who is in Los Angeles for only one reason.  He is here to shake down his Hollywood pals for campaign money.  He needs to raise a BILLION dollars to get himself re-elected, more than a year hence, to a job he shows no interest in doing.  He is in full campaign mode and will remain so until November of 2012.  Apparently it matters not that the country is now involved in multiple wars we can't afford, has millions of citizens out of work and enough debt to insure that a baby born today already owes over $46,000 to the treasury before filling his or her first diaper.

I don't think I want to know  the total cost for a presidential road trip like this.  I do know that the aviation fuel for Air Force One was nearly $200,000.  The secret service detail, helicopters, local police and fire personnel expenses have to run to the millions.  The founding fathers, I feel safe in assuming, NEVER had this in mind.

And it's not just this guy.  It's all of our elected officials.  Congress should be IN SESSION right NOW!  We need to get this out of control spending stopped.  It is a national emergency.  We need to get it handled or we all lose.  

I don't know about you, but I would happily vote for the first guy who makes a sincere promise to devote his every waking moment to straightening out the fiscal quicksand we've stepped into.

As I sit here in L.A. smog on the 405 I am willing to bet I could take up a collection from my fellow automotive captives that would top any amount of money the campaigner-in-chief will get from his show biz pals at tonight's Brentwood fund raiser.  At least there is a better chance of that than there is of getting  $46k out of my eighteen month-old grandson.  Maybe he'd take a Cheerios contribution?

Later...

I made it home in three and a half hours.  Math has never been my long suit, but I believe that works out to about a thirty mile-per-hour clip.  If I have cooled down tomorrow I'll delete this.

FAT CHANCE!

Let Bob Take the Wheel

Bob Chamberlain was a car kid.  Southern Michigan, in the 1950s, was full of boys who loved all things auto related.  Most dads worked for companies that either made, sold or fixed cars for the "Big Three": General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.  Bob's dad had the local Chevy dealership in the little town of Leslie where I did my grade school time.  Bob was the guy who was always building a go-cart or attempting to rig up a motor for his bike.  Since he lived next door to us, I was often a stooge in his many attempts at gasoline greatness.  In particular I remember him slapping a Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engine onto a piece of purloined plywood he had requisitioned from a nearby lumber yard.  After  nailing the wheels from his brother Dick's radio flyer wagon to a random 2X4 and attaching it to the front of the plywood frame, he was ready to roll.  A couple of pieces of clothesline rope would do nicely for a steering wheel.  (This was high tech compared to the field expedient clutch he concocted from an old fan belt and washing machine pulleys.)  Bob's total capital outlay for the project was about eight cents.  That's what he paid "Pike" Pixley at Pixley's Hardware store for the nails needed to secure the wheels.  

Eight cents...and the damn thing ran.  It didn't go far.  As I recall, a trip around the block was out of the question because of a massive clutch failure and frequent stalls, but it was an eight cent ride.

Bob and his adventures in the world of motorized transportation popped into my head the other day when I heard the news of a slight glitch with the the new Chevy Cruze. 

Chevrolet has recalled more than two-thousand  Cruze models because___

If you don't like the steering wheel here, you can always move it.

THE STEERING WHEEL FALLS OFF!!!!

This is what happens when, instead of letting a poorly managed business simply fail, the federal government decides to spend billions of your tax dollars to prop up a sclerotic company and its bloated union so that they might continue to manufacture cars we no longer want to buy.   Nice going Chevy!

This news should make you feel better as you prepare to send more of your tax dollars to the mentally challenged mendacious holdup artists in Washington, D.C.  Just remember that no matter what they say there is NO way this money will ever be repaid by GM and Chrysler.  The dough, your dough, has only served to prop up the UAW and insure us a continuing supply of cars featuring removable steering wheels.

By the way, in case you're one of the lucky few who have taken delivery of a Chevy Cruze, I know that Bob still lives in Michigan and has cornered the market on clothesline.

Home And Honked Off

Random rants from a week on the road...

So, shut down the damn government already!

Frankly all I want from the federal government is defense of the borders, mail delivery, and most important of all,  TO LEAVE ME ALONE!  I relish the thought of all "non essential" government employees, (like congress and the president), not showing up for work.  And, by the way, just WHY do we have ANY non essential employees on the federal payroll?

SHUT HER DOWN!

Also on my gourd today...

Air travel...SUCKS!  I have been in the air the past several days and it has finally reached the point where I truly believe that, given the choice, I would rather have another colonoscopy than get on a U.S. commercial airliner.  How have we managed to take what used to be an enjoyable mode of travel and morphed it into an airborne nightmare?  Don't get me wrong, I love a TSA pat down as much as the next guy and can't get enough of those security x-ray machines, but why is it necessary to completely undress and put everything in plastic boxes as we snake our way through mind numbingly long lines?  And, while I'm amped up here, have the geniuses running the Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company, given any serious consideration to charging passengers extra money to CARRY ON baggage instead of checking it?  Because most fliers are cheap, they refuse to pay $50 to check a bag and instead schlep fifty pounds of crap into rollaboards designed to hold ten pounds and then attempt to jam all of that into overhead bins with a capacity of an automobile glove box. 

airborne gas chamber

The "friendly" skies smell like cheese

AND....(you can tell I'm rolling now), why are the U.S. based airlines the worst in the world these days?  Other countries seem to have newer planes, better service, nicer looking flight attendants, (well, at least under 80), and don't STINK.  Most American carriers operate planes that smell like bad food, though they barely offer any, and outhouses.  After a welcome aboard whiff it's tough to tell if passengers,  scouting out the on board facilities,  just decide to pull the pin on an ass grenade right in their seat or maybe just whiz their pants because they're too lazy to climb over the tub of guts strapped in next to them.  Whatever the case, most planes are as lethal as the San Quentin gas chamber in its prime.  (Hmm, maybe California could save some dough by treating the boys on death row to a plane ride?)

If only you could roll down the windows!

Of course there is no need to roll down the windows if you choose to fly Southwest.  Their planes frequently offer a sunroof.

After my week filled with plane travel it felt good to be on the ground again in Southern California.  That is until I read the following in yesterday's paper:  "USC Researchers Say Pollution May Be Harming Our Brains".

Too many rats in the cage

WHAT???!!!

Apparently researchers looked at the smallest particles that are not visible to the naked eye but are found in air samples taken near major California freeways.  They exposed these particles to mice for a ten week period and the results showed brain damage in the little rodents which included memory loss and developmental disorders.  This, of course, confirms just what you always suspected about those of us who call Southern California home.  I concur.  

You might want to stock up on some vintage Tom & Jerry cartoons while you're at it.  If the USC research is to be believed, how much longer can Jerry continue to do his own stunts and outwit Tom in those very fine MGM productions?

There.

Glad that's off my chest.  Maybe it's just the particles talking.

Could somebody please open the sunroof?

Time Travel

She sits by the window with the TV on seeing nothing.
The cancer that took her breast twenty years ago has come for the rest of her.  My mother, now in her ninetieth year, resembles a dying leaf hanging tentatively from a very feeble tree.  Seeing her only once or twice a year, this visit has been more sobering than the last.  She is unsteady on her feet needing assistance for just a trip to the bathroom.  (Incontinence is a fact of life these days.)  Her memory...a memory.  I sense that she doesn't really know who I am; Linda, my wife, maybe.  Like the hostess of a large cocktail party, she seems to know that I have been invited but she searches for a name.

My brother, Linda and I take mom to a scheduled doctor appointment.  The sawbones offers nothing more than "Her oncologist can give her something to keep her comfortable."  Thanks doc!  We got her dressed and in the car for this?  What's the point?  Don't get me started on the medical profession.

If living a long life is nothing more than "keeping comfortable" and watching TV in your pajamas I may consider giving up exercise and returning to my seat at the end of the bar.  Society needs to re-think our approach to old age.

As I pull the car around to pick her up at the front door of the doctor's clinic, my mother asks my wife who is "the old man" messing with our car?  It is the first laugh of a long day for this old man.