January 25, 2010

brothers

MB is out of town, up in the deep dark middle of nowhere, hanging out with his brother who’s over from Australia.

I’m here at home.

Because they needed man time. Brother time.

Uhm, clearly ……..

brothers.jpg

I need to stop looking at it, but I can’t. I’m sitting here crying with laughter because there is actual snow on MB’s hat and because I think that’s the stupid hat with the fishing lures on it that I always see lying around their house and because Brother’s eyes are just tiny slits of pain and because Mr. Dozen Black Belts could kill a person with one flick of his wrist, but, well, obviously, not NOW.

MB told me that the night before all of this …… he had to carry Brother home.

Hahahahahahahaha.

January 23, 2010

snippet

Last night, MB and I were reliving days of yore. You know, the Perky Bob lunch dilemma of five months ago. We were applauding ourselves for our choices, telling ourselves how smart we were, etc. The basic stuff that glues a marriage together. At one point, he said, “Well, it’s like we all learned from Oprah: NEVER let yourself be taken to the second location.”

The man is a sage.

January 22, 2010

original banshee says ….

t-new-hair.jpg

“Tee Tee, your hair has stripes in it.”

True dat.

And thank you for not mentioning the wrist stump, kid.

I mean, you tell your stylist to do what she wants and you end up with a wrist stump. No more creative license for her.

Sheesh.

spotty

Hey, pippa, my Internet connection has been spotty here what with the end of days storms here in SD.

Back soon with more regularity. (What, like I’m taking fiber??)

Er, how about more “consistency”?

Yes: “Beyond the Pale. Now with more regularity.”

January 19, 2010

more about c*h*u*r*c*h

I’m still a little paranoid about things regarding Maybe Church aka Not on Your Life Church, but less so. I’m getting closer and closer to not caring anymore who from that organization finds or reads my blog. Bring it on, Slappies!

During our tenure at Maybe Church, MB would take a small sketch book with him, writing and doodling in it during the sermon. Er, “teaching.” I wrote in a composition book I always had with me. You know, outlines for all those slanderous blog posts. If I could have, I would have live-blogged the Sunday service, I imagine. (Or “meeeeeetings” as this “family of churches” likes to call them.) We’d plop ourselves in the farthest reaches of the church, as far as we could sit from anything and anybody and still be sitting IN the church, bend our heads over our respective books, and look very earnest, very notetaker-y, very Onward Christian Soldiers about the whole dealio, when, really, I was just writing blog notes and MB was doodling caricatures of various church members and, when we weren’t doing THAT, we were busily writing notes to each other.

Oh, I miss Maybe Church! I do. For all the wrong reasons, but I DO miss it.

Below are excerpts from one page of Sunday notes to each other. These were written AFTER Outing Person had outed this shameful blog but BEFORE the retarded unsatisfying fallout. (Uhm, that I have yet to even write about.) I’d scan the actual page if I could, because the visuals are priceless, but it has real names on it, so you get my transcription instead.

I do hope you will be as edified by them as we were.

At the top of MB’s page, a list …..

Pastor Talents:

~ Supporting the short-sleeve casual industry
~ Channeling John Lithgow
~ Reviving the mustache

Then various frantic scribbles ….

HE: Hey, Perky Bob has backed off this week.
ME: He is DONE w/us. Maybe he saw the Ned Reyerson thing on my blog. Oops. Oh, THANK YOU, Outing Person!

*********

ME: I need some Icy Hot for my sore ass crack!
HE: In church?? You’re “de-gifted”!

(ed: That one is for Kris)

*********

ME: He’s really stuck on this “intersection” theme …… (several minutes later) ….. he’s talked about it every DAMN week …… (and another several minutes later) ….. if he says “intersection” one more time ….. KAPOW!!! …..(annnd another several minutes later) ….. Jesus must get bored …… zzzzzzzz …….

(Why MB was not moved enough to respond to my “intersection” plight, I do not know. I was clearly suffering.)

**********

ME: Where are they? Grumpy Guy and Nan? Theories?
HE: Hunting for food? Depression festival?
ME: It’s weird. Do you think it’s related to the whole “Tracey-is-a-tramp” extravaganza?
HE: Seems viable.

*********

Then there are various spot-on caricatures of the aforementioned people. It also says “Calvin” with a frowny face — because the pastor mentioned Calvin. Uhm, again.

Ah, yes. Church can be SO edifying, you know?

drunk santa

Remember Drunk Santa?

Well, there’s a postscript to this tale, relayed to me by my sister.

A couple of days after Christmas, a neighbor knocked on my sister’s door. Drunk Santa’s son, who had been on the scene at the time.

“Hey, I just wanted to thank you and your family,” he began.

“Really?”

“Yeah, about my dad. About letting him be Santa for Piper and your nieces.”

“Oh, sure. It was fun.”

“No, you see, uh ….. he’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Well, thanks, but, see, every year he dresses up as Santa. Then he thinks he IS Santa. We usually manage to keep him in the house when he’s dressed up, but he wandered outside and your sister saw him.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I think she was just excited to have the girls see him.”

“I know. Well, I know he wasn’t really ‘all there,’ talking to the girls, but he was so happy afterwards. He was just SO happy. That entire day, he was a different man.”

The neighbor’s voice started to choke.

My sister teared up.

“Oh, I’m glad. It really was fun.”

“Well, thanks again. It meant a lot to him. You have no idea.”

When my sister told me this, I teared up too. I was touched, but I was also chastened. I had simply assumed he was drunk. I had judged him as nothing but a drunk. It staggers me, shames me, that no other alternative even occurred to me.

He was just a drunk, weaving across the street, slurring my niece’s name.

“Drunk” Santa wasn’t drunk, Trace.

The man had Alzheimer’s.

January 17, 2010

uhm, you didn’t pray hard enough

UGH! The perpetual angst of being a Chargers’ fan! We win — what? — 11 in a row and then in our first playoff game, we play our WORST game of the season.

Our field goal kicker, one of the most consistent legs in the game, missed 3 field goals. We get personal foul after personal foul for unsportsmanlike conduct and whatnot. Stuff we NEVER get. Crazy. Stupid.

Final score: NY Jets 17, SD Chargers 14.

Coulda used those 3 field goals, couldn’t we?

We always choke in the post-season.

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

And now we will not speak of the Chargers for the next 9 months.

big game today

So MB is at the coffeehouse this morning, picking up goodies for us, and as he’s leaving, a vaguely homeless looking man in a Chargers’ t-shirt approaches him on the sidewalk. Out of the blue, the man says, “Dude! Pray for the Chargers, man!!”

MB, a good sport, looked at him and said, “Oh, I will, man. I will.”

Oh, yes. Pray for the Chargers, man.

Hahahahaha.

January 13, 2010

more sex in heaven

In the comments of the first post about sex in heaven, someone left a comment that, in part, said this:

I guess the problem I have accepting your logic is that I don’t think we will still be human in heaven. I don’t think we’ll have human bodies (or human appetites)…we will be changed. It’s possible that we won’t have bodies, as we know them, at all…it really is interesting to think about though.

Well, I believe we will absolutely be human. I see no indication in scripture that we will be anything else. Christ’s own resurrected body, which could be touched, was touched, which could eat, shows us, I think, that there’s a basic parallel between the body that dies and the body that rises again. Jesus’ resurrection gives us a foretaste of what our own glorified bodies — yes, bodies — might be like. I’m not saying we’re going to be gods. We’re not. There’s just one of those. (An aside: I’ve never understood the polytheistic belief systems. I mean, just how many gods do you need? If your gods are all-powerful, you only need one, right? And if they’re not, then they’re not gods, right? I mean, wouldn’t that contradict the meaning of a “god”? Eh. Sorry. Just a thought that rattles around my brain from time to time.)

I am saying that we will have bodies, though. Glorified bodies. Sweet, hot, lovely bodies. Again, God created them, in all their glory, and as Peter Kreeft says in his essay I referred to in that previous post, “God may unmake what we make, but He does not unmake what He makes.” By that thinking, God made our bodies and will not unmake our bodies. That our bodies will be glorified, incorruptible, yes, that’s a biblical notion. That we will forever be little floaty things, no, that’s not.

Honestly, does heaven sound heavenly to you if you’re just a little floaty thing? Does heaven sound heavenly to you if you’re forever neutered?

I don’t think so. If I’m just floating around as a spirit for all eternity, then I lose something essential in the transition from earth to this “alleged” heaven: I lose the ability to touch and to feel the touch of another. Think about it. Think about never being touched again. That’s a horror to me, not heaven. I don’t just mean sexually. Think how innate that is to us, that sense of touch. Touching a child’s cheek, running your fingers through your hair, holding a hand. These are so simple, so natural to us that we barely think of them when we do them. But take that away, that touch, render us eternal vapors, and this “heaven” is a place of loss, which, by definition, heaven cannot be. We were created with corporeal bodies — male and female — BEFORE the Fall ever happened, so we must conclude this design we have is part of God’s original plan, and that we will be tangible, touchable, as Jesus is forever tangible and touchable.

We may be improved, but we won’t be changed. In our natures. I will be a woman with big glorified boobs. (And woo-hoo on that.) You will be who you are. With your deep dimples or your grey eyes or your perfect butt. We will be able to see each other and touch each other and know this one as a man and that one as a woman. Would you WANT it to be another way? If you’re someone who wants to be a floaty thing (I borrow that phrase from the long-since-eaten Timothy Treadwell, mad at the “little Hindu floaty thing” that made it storm all around his tent one night), perhaps God will accommodate you, but I imagine people would miss you. The palpability of you. They would miss seeing you and touching you and holding you. Your face, your eyes, your smile, unlike all the other faces and eyes and smiles in heaven. People would miss that. Think of the people you love, then think of all of you in heaven floating around, amorphous, forever unable to see or touch each other. That’s not heaven. That’s loss. That’s grief. And even if you, as a newly minted floaty thing, could see the other floaty things, who cares? You’re a floaty thing. You can’t touch. You can’t feel touch. You can’t eat. You fly and float and can fit through keyholes. Wow. Neat.

And, you know, if MB wants to be a floaty thing in heaven, I am going to be royally pissed. I need the feel of his arms available for me forever.

But, really, I don’t think that choice will be open to us, The Floaty Thing Option, because I think the resurrected body of Jesus should be our model. His body, not his deity.

As to our human appetites, well, again, we will still be human, so I don’t see those disappearing. Being transformed, yes; disappearing, no. I’m distressed at how many people I’ve talked to about heaven think we will be something entirely alien in heaven. That you will not recognize yourself. That you will not recognize others. That you won’t want to eat. That we will all suddenly be monks and nuns. Christians believe that heaven is “home”; that once there, we will sigh and say, “Yesss” because we’re finally where we belong. That some primal unplayed chord in us will finally finally be struck and we will feel a sense of release. We will be in that place that only flickers at us now, in the tiniest glimpses, for the fleetest of seconds. Sometimes, here on earth, heaven peeks through. In a child’s smile. In the sound of a cello. In an evening of laughter with friends. In the feel of flesh on flesh. It will be the ultimate deja vu, but it won’t be a fleeting moment; it will be forever. We will say, “Ohhh. I know this place. I know this place.” Feeling a sense of familiarity and belonging, I think, includes feeling a sense of familiarity and belonging in our own forms and appetites. I will be in a glorified body, but I don’t think I’ll flip out at what that looks like and how it functions. I think it will be better, not different. My appetites may be purified, but I don’t think they’ll be different, either. I think it’s the difference between being improved and being altered.

And human appetites for, say, food and sex are not sinful. They can be corrupted and perverted and abused, but they’re hardwired into us, are they not? We were created with them, right? Did we learn to want orgasm, for instance? To be blunt, do we usually think when we see a toddler playing with his penis it’s because he saw it on TV? Nope. Unless Sesame Street is a LOT freakier than I remember.

We will be as we were created to be — before the Fall. That includes bodies. That includes male and female. And that includes desiring sex. All of these will be glorified, so, no, I don’t know HOW they manifest, just that they will.

The God who created our amazing bodies turns them into vapors? I don’t think so. The God who created male and female clays over our fancy bits? I don’t think so. The God who created eros love denies us that forever? I just don’t think so.

Not in the heaven I’m hoping for, anyway.

January 11, 2010

at the bookstore

Doing what I do best: eavesdropping.

At the table next to me are two young women. One woman is dressed in all black: jeans, sweater, spiky boots. The other woman is dressed in apathy: mom jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers.

I listen to their conversation and really start to dislike one of them.

“So I bought a petticoat.”

“A what?”

“You know, a coat.”

“Uh, well, that’s a skirt.”

“Oh. Yeah. I mean a pea coat.”

“Well, you have no IDEA how cold you’ll be.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“No. You don’t know.”

“I think I’ll be fine.”

“I keep seeing you fight for the right to dress inappropriately.”

“I’ll be fine.

Later …..

“You’re wearing Skechers with a skirt? I didn’t know you could wear Skechers with a skirt.”

And later …..

“Okay. So about you. Somehow you’re making that unemployment thing work — which I don’t get — but tell me about that.”

Oh, I swear, I could feel that old familiar itch in my smackin’ hand. I could visualize my lily white fist connecting with her smug little face: “Hey, hi, Betty! Guess what? Kapow! KAPOW!”

KAPOWW!

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