Grunt Time in the City

I did my Christ shopping today--shopping for Jesus is fun--especially in the big city. What big city you say? Big City Anytown, USA!!! I'm bound to keeping a loose cloak of anonymity due to the theme of some of my posts. I must protect the innocent, and most importantly, myself. There are few who lurk here--those few that check in from time to time, that never leave comments, but wonder if I'm talking about them--they know where I live, so I've got to be careful. I'm Just kidding. They don't even read this thing.

So, I go into the city to buy gifts and I was treated to an entertaining series of vignettes. The first one involved a couple of drunken bums in front of a deli. I first thought that they were fighting each other, but it turned out that one was falling over, and the other one was helping him fall over. After they got done falling over each other a few times, they went over to a shop and started to look through the bushes, for what, I don't know. But, whatever it was they were looking for must've been a hallucination. They then started to bang on the shop's windows. The shop keep got the door locked before they could get in. One of the bums then stood out front looking in, while the other one went around the back to find treasure. He didn't find treasure, but relieved himself on the neighbor's Volvo. These guys then saw my brother and I in his vintage 'burban parked in this deli's lot. They stumbled up to us with devious intentions. I grabbed a breaker bar from the middle section and played with it in open view in the front seat. They backed off from us, only to hassle a guy coming out of the deli. We didn't stick around after that.

Second vignette happened on the way to a record store. There is this small park, about the size of a large house lot, near this intersection that we were stopped at. I noticed a disheveled man who looked like he had no idea who he was, where he was, or what was going on. I could see that he was in trouble, but because of the hedge, I couldn't see the reason why. As we made our left turn, I saw through a clearing that the man had his pants half way down and was covered from his backside down in his own evacutory sludge. I came pretty close to vomiting. I probably should have called the police to help him, but I didn't. Bad me.

Third vignette happened in a supermarket parking lot. An old man, Methuselah I believe was his name, had tried to park his car in the cage that the shopping carts go in. He finally got in the thing, by golly. He dented the hell out of his fender and door doing it too. Oh yeah, he couldn't get out of his car. A bag boy came out and told him that he couldn't park there. The man smiled, then flashed his handicapped parking badge. He finally figured out that he couldn't park there. Have you ever seen a car drag a shopping cart stable around a parking lot before? Well, I have. A pretty nice Lexus was victimized by this man and his mobile shopping cart station, as well.

Do I sound at all callous? I bet I do. While I bought gifts for Jesus, I didn't help any of these people out. I either felt threatened, repulsed, or amused by them, but did nothing to make their situation better. Christ would've helped them all. Would you?

Cheeseball's Revenge

Who here stuffs themselves with work goodies around this time of year? Everybody, I assume. Sometimes, those holiday goodies strike back. They leave us tormented and disabled, or even worse, we end up in the emergency room with an I.V. drip keeping us from excreting ourselves to death. While I have not had that level of sickness inflict me yet, I count my blessings; because, I'm a damn fool when it comes to what food I choose to eat.

A while ago, I was enjoying a rather bounteous year of holiday booty, snack-wise. People at work kept bringing in the goods and sharing with one another. Such a joyous time, only to go horribly wrong. Come on, humans were involved...it was bound to happen. Somebody left a cheeseball sitting on a computer all day. It was smoked cheddar with bits of ham. My buddy/co-worker and I were not aware that this cheeseball was out as long as it had been. We spent the remainder of our shift polishing this thing off with some crackers. That was on a Friday. Saturday came and all was well. Sunday came and things became interesting.

My buddy looks forward to Christmas, starting December 26th. He compulsively sings Christmas songs throughout the year. If he were just a little more insane, I'd think that he would probably tie a dog to a Red Flyer and throw himself off an overpass, thinking that he and his "reindeer" were out delivering presents to all the good little girls and boys. And for those who are David Lynch fans, think of the character Jingle Dale, from the movie "Wild at Heart". My buddy is alright, but a little ca-ca for coo-coo puffs, or is that the other way around? Anyways, he was going to sing in his church's choir that Sunday. It was this big Christmas program that he'd been looking forward to for a few months. He wanted me to come to see him sing, and so I did.

I'm sitting near the back of the chapel looking at my friend, eagerly waiting for the choir to start singing. I noticed that he couldn't sit still and was grimacing. He's kind of squirrelly anyway, so I thought that he was only anxious. The conductor of the program introduces the choir and their program. I'm seeing an amazingly intense stare coming from my buddy's eyes. He looked really focused. The choir arose and began to sing "Angels We Have Heard on High". So, this man who has been looking forward to this day for months, begins to have trouble singing, but soldiers on. Throughout this first piece he keeps clutching at his belly and wincing. He probably sang most of that song with his eyes closed. Mercifully, the choir finished their first song, and my buddy was still standing up there waiting for the scripture to be read, leading into their next song.

Right before the conductor got up to lead the choir, I noticed that my buddy's eyes started to bulge out. "Oh, no," he exclaimed. People in the congregation and the choir had no idea what the hell was going on--I had no idea what was going on. My friend raced down from the top of the front pulpit area and continued to run for the back of the chapel while groaning. We were all thoroughly confused at this point. The conductor composed herself and got the choir back to business. I decided to go check out what happened to my friend.

I walked down the hall and looked to see if his car was still there and it was. On my way down another hall, I decided to check out the men's room to see if he was in there. I got about ten feet away and I could tell that something was bad was going on in there. I just hoped that there would be something left of my friend after whatever was happening in there was done. I got brave and cracked the door. The smell curled my nose hairs and the air left a hint of acrid sharpness on my tongue. "You alright in there, man?"

"No...leave me alone...I don't feel guh...." I'll spare you the rest of what he said and did after that. The part that made it worse for him was that a couple of late comers had stopped by the restroom to see what all the violence was about. We all knew each other, and some of the guys went and got other guys, which made the whole ordeal for my friend worse. It was hard not to laugh, so we didn't try to stop laughing. I wasn't a good friend. I should've put a stop to it all, but I didn't. I, however, would not get away with the last laugh. Later that day, I got a visit from the ol' fecal fairy, too. It was, rather, more of a screamin' demon, topsy turvy, "Which way did he go, George?" kind of thing, where you don't know whether to sit on the toilet or aim your face into it. Since, I couldn't do both at the same time, I used the waste basket to make the monster noises in. What horrible days those next few turned out to be.

Every now and then, when we're together, all my buddy and I have got to say to each other to start laughing is "cheeseball". Eat carefully.