Urinal Cakes

Times are bad.  The Dow Jones Index closed under ten thousand again yesterday.  The stimulus package that was to create American jobs has done nothing more than cause traffic jams wherever the government has contracted road improvements.  Those jobs were called "shovel ready".  Too bad they'll take into the next century to finish.  American unemployment numbers are so bad that people are starting to think the Carter Presidency wasn't as terrible as they thought (That wasn't nice.  My dad really liked Carter.)  In the news I hear the phrase "double dip recession" about as much as I hear Obama blaming Bush...for everything.  Yeah, times are bad.

The Muller household is feeling the brunt of it as well.  I've taken a significant hit in my annual income.  Mrs. Muller has made adjustments, but sometimes it's not enough.  Just today she bought groceries.  Her receipt shows she spent $68.45 while saving $72.83.  Nice one, babe!  But at one point she considered having me killed in order to collect the life insurance payola.  Not nice, babe!  Fortunately, she came to her senses and realized I'm a keeper.  And I am.  Still, financial ruin and the threat of murder can cause a lot of stress.  I'm stressed.

That's why I was happy to see that my employer took an interest in my and my fellow cohorts mental well being.  It's the little things that make a difference.  It's the effort that shows they care.  I noticed it when I went to the bathroom.  While standing at the urinal I looked down and noticed something there that wasn't there before, a urinal cake.  A urinal cake is that block of disinfectant found in a urinal.  Guys pee on it and it causes urine to splash everywhere.  This particular urinal cake turned the little puddle of water in the urinal blue.  As I peed the water turned green.  That made me smile.  I told my friend, Juice Man Gary, about the urinal cake and he said that he'd also noticed it.  It made him think of the beach.  Now, isn't that something.  This little block of disinfectant had brought a smile to at least two stressed out employees.

They also put aerosol cans of air freshener in the bathroom stalls...you know, for a courtesy spray.  This made me think of a joke I heard.  It went something like this; a man and a woman were on an elevator.  Much to the woman's embarrassment, she farted.  The man told her it was OK, he had a can of pine scented air freshener.  She thanked the man.  At the next floor the doors opened and a man got in and exclaimed, "Wow!  It smells like someone crapped on a Christmas tree in here!"  In the men's room of my office it smells like someone crapped on a cinnamon stick.  Still, it makes the whole trip to the bathroom more enjoyable, so I'm not complaining.

So, things are hard, but we need to focus on the big picture.  I'm not sure exactly what that means, or what the big picture is, but it sounds good.  I'm just glad they put urinal cakes in the urinals and air freshener in the stalls.  It's a small thing that has, at the very least, inspired a mulling.  And I like to think when I find something funny that it helps alleviate stress.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  Still, I would take more money...just sayin'.

A post script here:  I made up the part about Mrs. Muller killing me for the life insurance.  She actually was going to have me maimed in order to collect on a disability policy she recently took out on me.  I knew that policy was a bad idea.

A post script-script here:  OK, I made that part up, too.  I still think she'd like to kill me sometimes, though.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

I lost my mind just for the briefest of  seconds; a momentary lapse of reason.  It could only be a moment because I was driving.  Psychotic breaks while driving can lead to all sorts of calamity; even death.  My survival instincts are as developed as any other homo sapien's (if you discount my twenties), so I was able to fight through the incredulity that befuddled all my cognitive ability.  It was this church's marquee that put me in a tizzy.  It said, The last time things got this bad I sent a flood - God.  Indeed.

Take a drive through the Bible Belt and you'll probably conclude, as I have, that churches seem to be vying for the dubious honor of having the most annoying  marquee.  I'm going to assume that marquee sayings are used to attract attention to the church in hopes of gaining more Sunday morning attendees, but I can't imagine a marquee alluding to a wrathful God destroying the Earth by full immersion as being enticing.  Something about a violent death by drowning seems to me to be unappealing.  Yet, there it was.

My incredulity lies in the gulf that separates the gospel message of Christianity of an all loving God and his redemptive plan, and the wrathful God that destroyed Noah's world by flood waters.  There seems to be a disconnect between these two opposing ideas of God.  Now understand, I'm not addressing this from a theological perspective, but more as a visceral reaction to the sign itself.  I can't help but wonder how that saying could persuade someone to attend that church, and further, I wonder what kind of person gets jazzed over God wiping out every living thing on Earth by a most heinous death like drowning.  Pretty crazy.

I remember Sunday School as a kid; the cookies and candy, singing songs, gold stars by my name for saying a Bible verse, and having the Hell literally scared out of me with Bible stories like the one of the Flood and Noah's Ark.  Of course, scaring the Hell out of the kids was the intention, and led to many a young child trembling on their knees and asking Jesus in their heart in order to stave off a the flames of Hell.  Felt boards and cute pictures of animals were used to relate the story to us, and I believe also to soften the reality of the fact that God drowns everything that breaths air.  Adorable pictures of koala bears and giraffes seem to have a calming effect on the young and impressionable.  The child is sent home with a newly colored page of the animals going aboard the ark two by two and images of humanity dog paddling for forty days and forty nights before their ultimate demise.  Really scary stuff.

Here' the thing, Genesis 6:13 (that's a Bible verse for all you heathens out there) says, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth."   Later Genesis 7:21 says, Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. (Both verses NIV.)    So, God did it.  Life was wiped out by water asphyxiation.  A violent response to a violent humanity. When this church's marquee implies he'll do it again, I couldn't help but to be a little flummoxed.  This is a good thing?  

It was the juxtaposition of the two concepts of God that sent me loony for a bit.  As I drove by I was hit with the reality that a church that teaches of Jesus' sacrifice for all mankind also thinks to draw in the unwashed masses with a story of God wiping out humanity, along with all the koala bears and giraffes.  People with theological training have a hard time reconciling the wrathful God of the Old Testament with the God of love in the New Testament, so why does this church think the nonbeliever won't?  I certainly have a hard time with it, and did that day on the road.  Fortunately, I recovered quickly, but I keep having these recurring dreams of cute and cuddly koalas drowning.  I just might need psychiatric help yet.

The Prelude to a Mull

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.   -Steven Wright

 On a recent walk with my son I admitted that I daydream...a lot.  Not that I get lost in reverie from time to time, but that I actively revert to a daydream whenever I can detach my mind from the monotony of the day and drift off to the fantasies floating around in my cranium.  He said that he does, too.  A chip off the old block.  Wikipedia, the repository of all knowledge on the web, says that; a daydream is a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.  Yep, I believe that to be accurate, at least in my case.

Of course, one has to ask if daydreams are a healthy and normal activity to participate in, or should they be considered counterproductive and the mental bastion of the lazy. Historically, daydreaming was considered the latter by those who studied such things long ago, but more recently it's seen as the former.  My son and I figured that creative types like authors and movie directors must be avid daydreamers.  I think Christopher Nolan's Inception could indirectly speak to that.  Author Neil Gaiman says, "You get ideas from daydreaming.  You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time.  The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."  I'd love to ask Stephen King if his Gunslinger Series was the product of some glorious daydreaming.  I'd bet it was.

Interestingly, a study by Eric Klinger, cited by Wikipedia, found that 75% of people in boring jobs use daydreaming to deal with the mundane.  True that, I say.  In fact, I have a couple or three I like to drift into when the time presence itself.  I tried to share my daydreams with my son on our walk, but he explained that if I were to share them and he were to criticize them that I would no longer enjoy them as before, so it was best I not to share.  I think he just didn't want to here them.  His loss.

Another interesting statistic in Eric Klinger's study is that only 5% of daydreams are of a sexual or violent nature.  When I did a Google search for daydreaming one of the top website choices was Google images and right there on the search engine page was a nude gal representing daydreaming.  5% indeed!  Actually, that was the only one I found, but I didn't go looking, either.

So, in one of my favorite daydreams I'm a vampire slayer that can slow down time to the point that I can avoid danger and dispatch the evil bloodsuckers.  I thought of that special ability before Heroes came out, so don't think I plagiarized the show.  In another daydream I'm a guy who has fused with an intergalactic parasite that lives off  the energy my body metabolizes, causing the body to waste away, while the parasite sustains body functions and renders me practically indestructible.  My only weakness is extreme heat.  I can take on any appearance by some sort of cloaking thing the parasite provides, so others don't see the emaciated me.  Also, I have no sense of smell or feeling, which sucks.  Then I go around and do good deeds.  I think that one could be a good graphic novel.  I daydream about Ten Years Gone a lot now, a fiction blog I write with my compatriot, SJ Smith.  It's a post apocalyptic love story that is peppered with mutant monsters and evil gunslingers.   Hours of good daydreaming there.  And don't worry, my son never reads this stuff, so he still won't know about my daydreams.  Again, his loss.

With that, I'll bid the dear reader farewell as I drift off to some night dreams.  Remember, it's OK to daydream, just don't do it when you wife is talking to you.  And I'd like to leave you with a quote I found that I liked and I'm sure you will too;

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 Good times.

One Guy's Trash is Another Guy's Treasure...Or Some Such

There are three things I can count on to foul up a perfectly good Saturday; Bike Nazis, Jehovah's Witnesses and garage sales.  And I really dislike a garage sale.  I think that in the current economic climate many people are trying their luck at making a few bucks by shoving some of their house clutter out onto the driveway and selling it off at 25 cents a pop.  Try to drive or walk through the neighborhood on a bright, clear Saturday morning and you find the streets lined with the cars of bargain hunters trying to haggle some poor person out of their precious memories.  Of course, there will come the calls from the garage of the prospective proprietor to come and browse through the stuff they deemed unworthy to continue gracing their storage containers in hopes you will drop a few bucks on items you will then place in your own storage containers. Yeah, I really do dislike a garage sale.

So, Mrs. Muller had a garage sale today.  We spent last night dusting and cleaning nick-nacks, arguing over the value of items and slapping  price tags on them, and organizing the stuff on display tables.  My son and I moved the picnic table from the back yard to the front, which proved to be quite heavy.  It was water logged from a good rain we had received and, though we are both pretty strong, had to set it down a half dozen times before we were successful (I actually tried to move it by myself.  I managed to pick it up, but couldn't walk with it.  Sometimes I do silly things).  We organized and dusted the books we planned to sell, and with four avid readers in the house that proved to be a bunch of books (and before you criticize me for selling off books, you have to realize that a person simply isn't going to re-read James Patterson and John Sanford novels.  Once is enough).  We stacked and prepped and we were finally ready. Yay.

6:30 this morning we started lining the drive with our display tables and book shelves.  I plugged up a treadmill I was hoping to get rid of.  Like most exercise equipment it was used three times and then placed in the garage.  I was really hoping to get that thing out of there.  I placed signs at neighborhood intersections to entice prospective suckers our way.  Unfortunately for the ladies, my son and I had to work and couldn't stick around for all the sun and fun.  My poor ladies sat out there all morning, suffering the effects of all those green house gases and cow farts as the temperature and humidity soared (They're like dainty little flowers.  Poor things).

I got a call late morning informing me that things weren't going as we hoped.  There was traffic coming by, but obviously our stuff wasn't attracting any interest from the road.  The old adage that one guy's trash in another guy's treasure didn't seem to apply to our trash.  That was a bummer.  When all was said and done Mrs. Muller informed me she didn't even make enough money to cover the costs of the garage sale signs.  And that was a bummer, too.

Yeah, I really dislike garage sales.