Tagged: family
Reaction to a Couple Obituaries, to Include the First Ever (for this blog) Mildly Approved Sentiment
“(Person) loved his family and he spent his life in service of their welfare and happiness. Most recently, he found great joy in being a grandfather, investing an enormous amount of time and love doting on his dearest (two named grandsons). He also cared deeply for the larger community around him.”
– What is being hidden here? A “lifetime in service of their welfare and happiness”? That kind of lie can only mean bitter, bitter relationships and it also evinces a total misunderstanding of language. Sorry, it was rough being in his family folks, but a few words in the Sunday paper after he’s dead is not going to “manifest” anything pretty, let alone reach back into the past and fix the issues. And why is it wrong to pick out one or two people (from the billions) to love? Ever since whites learned the power of the phrase “black community”, they feel guilty if they don’t use part or all of it during supposedly momentous occasions. Just stop. We don’t live as members of some group which needs fancy and false descriptors any different than T-Rex or George Washington did.
****
Onto the first ever approved, if mildly, obituary assertion.
“He got a black lab puppy last year in April named Oslo. She was the best thing that had happen to him in quite some time. He never went anywhere without her, and they spent hours every day playing fetch with the tennis ball. He loved telling jokes and always had a smile on his face, despite away being described as grumpy ass sometimes.”
– What makes these sentiments worthy is they are fearless. Do you see? This dude lived a kinda shitty life (if a dog is the best thing to happen to you, then you’re having a “sour go”). I love the use of “tennis” to describe the ball—like anyone really cares what kind of ball it was. So quaint. I could do without the “ass”, and I wonder why no “air quotes” around “grumpy ass”, but the beauty is that whoever wrote this had some respect for the dead. I repeat: whoever wrote this respected this man. And the dead man obviously had threatened, or lived in a way which threatened, haunting whoever lied about him after his death.
So good work. This pairing of deceased and writer can teach us all a thing or two.
Reaction to Kiefer’s Sentiment About His Father’s Passing
Kiefer Sutherland said, “He loved what he did, and did what he loved. And one can never ask for more than that.”
I disagree. I can ask for far more than that.
I have felt bliss. I want instant bliss.
I want more time than I’m slated for, and when my body was twenty-one.
I want sane women.
I want a job that requires no concern about “pleasing people” or making people “happy”.
I want my daughter.
I want every human on earth to have discernment.
I want every human on earth to acknowledge and live according to their strength of memory and speed of thought.
I want pizza on a rotating schedule from all my favorite restaurants served at a place of my choosing as I feel, and new types coming out according to a timeline of my fancy.
I want to be adored.
I want to be listened to.
Back to the time thing; I want time enough to flesh out this post and have my afternoon coffee stay hot until I say so.
In short, Mr. Kiefer Sutherland, you’re wrong. No. Doing what you love or loving what you do, or both, is not all anyone can ask.
Instead of failing at sounding wise, please just tell us how you feel at the news that your father died. Or don’t.
People: we must do better at this death thing.
What I Would’ve Told Myself About Getting Married a Second Time Had I Known Then What I Know Now
Besides the Vindictive Little Hussy Tamar from Genesis story, during our last spat, my wife also asked if I knew what a “Phrase” was and recommended that I read about “the prostitute women bring her to Jesus.”
Again, you have to really want to understand the speaker—it’s my wife; I do—in order to figure out what the hell they are saying in moments like these, but if you work within the given context, “Phrase” can be a heavily accented “Pharisee”.
Unlike the account of VLH Tamar (which is on the whole depressing and kinda embarrassing to the patriarchs of our faith—let alone Scripture itself), I could imagine why my wife would think the LORD in heaven would use the infamous “cast the first stone” story to convict a wretched sinner like me (America’s Husband) and hope that, in so doing, she will create marital bliss in the form of an unquestioned matriarchy.
My wife states plainly that “I accuse her” all the time. (I would say that I speak with truth. Can I get a witness?!)
Naturally, then, she reads about the “Phrases’s” bringing a woman caught in adultery to Jesus (keep in mind, I am not 100% that this is the correct passage. But I think it is. Also informing my guess is the international megachurch’s absolute love and reliance and incessant preaching of this account) and sees the action of accusation and puts two and two together and here we are.
A careful, objective reading of the story, however, does not persuade me (and does not include) that it has anything to offer humanity as regards interpersonal communication or family dynamics or nation building.
After the accusation (apparently uncontested), the text has:
They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have evidence to accuse Him.
If there is one aspect of the Gospel that preachers and teachers looking to cherry-pick “scriptural applications” from the text miss whole-heartedly all the day long, it is that the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead!
How these men (and now women, #metoo) always miss this, considering the Pharisees did get their way and have him killed, is incredible, but miss it they do! And when you don’t teach what the Bible says, when you don’t do your job and help people to focus on the text, you end up screwing up a whole lot more than just one little pericope (that’s “purr-i-co-pee”, long o). You end up messing with my marriage! Marriage supposedly based in the Judeo-Christian worldview, no less.
Yes, yes. I am currently accusing. I am doing the very thing I am defending myself against.
But I am right.
How can I be sure? Because I have some special power? Not special in extraterrestrial or mutation, but yes, I have a special as in precious or rare power. I can read!
And literacy leads to other things, like answering relevant questions like,
Does Jesus, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, want humans to stop “accusing” each other of mistakes and wrongdoings?
My answer is, “How would we determine such a thing? I mean, for example, I can imagine that we could read up and discover whether he ever forbids the making of accusations. (He does not.) Then we could, if we cared to, read with an eye out for whether biblical authors themselves accuse or offer stories where the protagonist accuses—and are lauded for it. (Text doesn’t have much to offer on either side of this perspective, but Titus 1:6 hardly makes sense if all accusing is to cease.)”
Over and above my literacy power, though, is something simpler. We could simply ask, “What are your intentions, my wife? Because mine are to be head of the best family I possibly can. And yours do not seem to align with mine.”
****
But this post is truly about warning myself regarding a second marriage and especially a second marriage that makes new babies.
The warning is this: Pete. You have had the worst divorce in human history—your ex steals your money daily and has kidnapped your daughter. I’m not telling you “don’t do it”. But please consider that this “felt experience” is going to feed into a heavy dread of the same thing happening again. And this means that there will be informed and resultant overreactions to the normal(?) downs of associating with the weaker sex. In short, you are entering into what may, at times, feel like a hostage situation, your kids as the leverage. A veritable, “Want to keep seeing your children? Then do as I say!” Only this time, you know all too well that everyone, including the guys (and gals, #metoo) with guns, will take her side against you.
Consider yourself warned.
****
And had I known this, I would’ve proceeded as I have, optimistically, perhaps blindly, because, as the story goes, Jesus did not come to condemn people. If my wife has the Holy Spirit inside her, as she professes and I believe to be the case, then Jesus isn’t coming for me.
Want to take my kids (#metoo)? Good luck! You won’t find any fight from me. Instead, you’ll find yourself fighting the living god.
Wait, what? It’s not about the kids? What’s this? You merely want me to change my thinking? Good luck! All you have to do is remove my ability to read (or burn all Bibles—better make it all books), wipe my memory of scripture, and drop me off anytime after, say, 1900 AD when women have decided they are head of the family. I think if you pray real hard for that, the LORD will give you that good gift. (And you’ll also get that book deal and your “healing” and “blessing” along with the thousand other attendees at your “church”.)
Lord, if you’re listening (I know, I know), do not tarry.
Hotness
I mentioned that I have a little thing I say to the toddlers every night before bed. I want to use that fact to expand on a larger concept—perhaps the largest concept of them all—understanding.
My estranged daughter, H- (now 14), from the old days of mostly happy-go-lucky blogging, asked if I could have her half-siblings say something different before bed than the routine we had. I agreed—you know, ‘cuz children are so gentle. After all, as a divorced dad with limited parenting time because I have a job unlike her worthless mother, I wouldn’t want to do anything would’ve caused H- to stop talking to me.
Anyhow, here’s what I came up with instead of the Boy Scout Law and Apostle’s Creed. It’s far simpler and more focused. I simply started saying, “Everyone goes to sleep the same way. Big people and little people. Tall people and short people. Fat people and skinny people. Old people and young people. Beautiful people and ugly people. They all go to sleep the same way. They lay down and close their eyes.”
Pretty great, eh?
Of course I have developed little flourishes here and there—because I can’t help but want the kids to laugh.
Here’s the kicker. At some point I started asking, “Do you wanna know something?” And then A- would excitedly answer in kind. And soon she knew it wasn’t some new fact or whatever she had imagined the first few times, but just the intro to the thing.
Well, that got old quickly, so recently, and because I judged she could handle it after seeing how she seems to understand certain types of humor, I started connecting the litany to some earlier part of the concluding day. Maybe, “Did I tell you want I saw on a sign today?” Or, “Do you remember that funny looking man? Do you known what he told me today?”
And you know what? She understands. I know she understands because she no longer is parroting anything, but considers context and then chuckles—and get this—even though she knows the event mentioned never happened, she knows what is next.
In contradistinction to this (I’ve written about this before) I have witnessed—been horrified to learn—that it is possible to simply parrot. Folks acquire some sort of skill to get what they want, but they have no understanding. In a sense, they simply bully their way through life.
How does it work, Pete?
Good question.
Just like the bird. The person repeats whatever phrase they have noticed through trial and error achieves the goal. But try to talk to the person or ask them a question, and, as I think Thoreau or Emerson said of the Injuns, “It’s like catechizing rabbits.”
Where does “hotness” fit in? I am hot today. Every Sunday home I am hot.
Why Sundays? Because on Sundays, church day, the fullness of the lack of understanding comes to a point.
Blended families are terribly difficult—maybe completely impossible. But ones in which there are members who constantly illustrate their absolute lack of understanding may just be the dumbest idea mankind has ever allowed.
One family going to separate churches Sunday mornings not only breaks every understanding of “family” to pieces, but everything that family is responsible for—which is everything.
Christian, You’re Wrong About the Rainbow Flag. It Is Wholly the Alphabet Mafia’s Symbol. Let Them Display it Proudly.
I put My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. And it will be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud…
So the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
(The above should be thought of as “axioms” or “definitions”.)
What is most curious, to an Eagle Scout/combat veteran’s mind like mine, is the use of the word “bow”. It really drives home how early man was always struggling to find analogy for their language. They saw in the sky something new and in the shape of, well, what object would ancient man have had to analogize from? The shape of…hmm. Oh, I know. It looks like the bow and arrow’s bow! Perfect.
But more importantly, for you, Christian, is that nowhere is fabric or any tangible good mentioned.
If this doesn’t add divine peace to your life, something is wrong with you and you should use this moment to align yourself with some truth.
The Living God is not messing around, nor ever has, with his creation or his plan.
If you see a bow in the sky, like an archery bow, then be thankful that Yahweh is God (and a faithful one at that), and not some other punk deity.
If you see a colorful flag, then…do whatever conscience dictates. It really doesn’t matter and shouldn’t disturb you.
For Men Only: A Disturbing, But True, Analysis of White and Black Women’s Options for Kidnapping Children from Fathers
In college I was fascinated by the cafeteria scene with its Black lunch tables. There we were, 40+ years after the civil rights movement, and segregation still existed. Freely chosen, to boot.
Years later, I began attending Black Baptist churches (still do) because the music and reliance on the Bible (both of these centered exclusively on the Gospel) is second to none.
I share these details to highlight that the following was not something I was looking to learn. But learn it I have.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that black women have neatly exchanged black men for Uncle Sam. Even-steven. The women have probably even come out ahead, by most measures, in the exchange. And Uncle Sam couldn’t be more flattered. The numbers, I won’t bore you with them here, are staggering. In a word, black children would likely report that they didn’t even know that their mom has touched the man that is their father, let alone wrapped her legs around him in the throes of passion.
What is wrong with these women? Why are they so “easy” in the “willing to sleep with anyone” sense? Is it that lonely at night? I just don’t see it.
And why would they want to raise children by themselves? Why? I have tried and tried, but I do not understand it.
I want to ask, shouting, “Ever hear of birth control?”
None of it makes any sense.
But that’s black women.
White women have a different tactic to get to the same result of kidnapping children from fathers.
They wait. They linger among the crowd for years, usually four more than any black woman, never doing anything too remarkable. They just sit back and watch.
Meanwhile, some of the white men are laboriously studying and working diligently towards their goal of becoming successful men. Respected men.
Eventually, the men begin their profession, one of the most respected available (still carrying a certain mystique), that of the aircraft pilot.
Mind you, the white men and women know that pilots travel for their job. The expression is “banker’s hours”, not “pilot’s hours.”
Only now do the white women (btw, by black women I mean skin color, but by white women I mean culturally white) see their chance and begin to woo whichever pilot they fancy. Some woo all the pilots and it is a poor soul indeed who ends up with her.
In the end, the white women use birth control (or perhaps they wait to consummate the marriage), but whatever the case, the pair, for their own unique, if coincident, reasons, formally bind themselves according the Law of the land before they mix the baby batter.
Shortly thereafter, sometimes only two years, other times ten or twelve years, these white women complain that their husband—the father—is gone all the time. And they feign misery and divorce follows.
Meaningfully no different than how Uncle Sam welcomes his many black step-children, Uncle Sam happily opens his arms to Billy and Susie, under the premise, “Sir, you’re gone all the time. How can you possibly have time to raise them?”
Kidnap complete and sanctioned.
Law or no law, both white and black dads are now outta the picture. Generally the black dads are viewed as shiftless and drug addicted men who would probably beat their women if the relationship continued, while the white dads are viewed with more attention to the specific caricatures available to each relationship. Regardless, the point here is not the dads—but the women, the moms.
What is wrong with these women? Why don’t they want fathers for their children? How can today’s boys and young men possibly hope to raise their own children when considering these facts?
It’s as if the Universe has said, “Congratulations, boys. You live in opulence and unlimited wealth compared to your ancestors. But there’s a catch! You don’t get to be fathers.”
Obviously, gentlemen of all colors and backgrounds, don’t make a baby before being married to the woman. That goes without saying. (Even as it ultimately doesn’t matter.)
But are we saying no pilots can be fathers? Are we saying no children should be raised by pilots? (Obviously “pilot” is merely a very concrete example to be used as an analogy to the many other hard-to-acquire jobs which make white men strive to obtain and which are appealing to white women.)
****
To any women or future women (God Bless You) that have made it this far, you now know your options. You can either have babies via one night stands (starting at pretty much any post-pubescent age) and then raise them by yourself, or you can wait a bit, get married, have babies, and then divorce the stud and raise them by yourself. I’m not sure which option is right for you. (And there are likely others.)
Just rest assured, ladies, whether you are A. lonely and start early, or B. scheming and wait, you can achieve your goal of raising kids without their father.
One One-Liner Heard Inside Mardel’s and Why Seminary Costs Money—and Should
Here in Colorado Springs, the “Sierra” store is in the same spot as a “Mardel Christian and Education” store. I needed Mother’s Day gear, so after perusing Sierra to price compare “Expert Voice” “deals”, I took the kids across the lot to Mardel. (Sierra seems to be winning on every level, if curious.)
While perusing the Bibles (specifically interested to learn the LSB has made it to retailers yet), I passed by a couple of ladies (the types which strike everyone as just as permanently affixed to the spot as the bookshelves behind them) who were putting on a show of “enjoying” some restful repose inside a great store.
I made eye-contact with the elder and listener as I heard the other one say, “I am done reading theology. I tried for a while but, honestly, just give me Jesus.”
It’s a fairly trite and common assertion among under-achieving wives and over-achieving baptist ministers, so I cannot say for sure whether she was the echo chamber or in earnest. But it called to mind a conversation I had with my mom the other day about church.
Sunday School was the topic, or the setting of the topic. The real topic was the morons who lob terribly uninformed opinions about terribly vague and uninteresting parts of scripture at all comers.
I told my mom, “Remember when Charlie Sheen was in all that drama and his show fell apart? At one point he said, ‘You don’t pay prostitutes for sex, you pay them to leave.’”
“Oh, yeah. I remember. Ugh.”
“Well, with that nature of flip-sided perspective in mind, as I get farther and farther from my time at Seminary, I believe that is how the money part works. If churches aren’t doing it for ya, you finally decide to pay money to try to find meaning in silence. The nicest way of putting this perspective being that seminary students want to be around other people as serious as themselves (calling or no), but the truth (and cynical perspective) is that seminary students want to be around people who are able to keep their mouth shut when they don’t know what they are talking about. And the money has something to do with segregating those two groups.”
Oh Give Thanks Unto the LORD. Six Figures is Enough.
If you happen to run into me while we’re out and about, the conversation—after weather—will likely turn to cost of living. It may be me, it may be you, who brings it up. But if we’re out and about, then we’re probably spending money and so the topic is at hand regardless.
A common refrain you’ll hear me utter, “My whole life six figures has meant, ‘You made it,’ and, ‘That’s a good job.’ But the truth is in 2024, while six figure jobs are still hard to find, it isn’t enough.”
(Forgive me, Father. It is enough is the biblical sense. But you know what I mean. The amount isn’t enough to live like six figures has allowed others to live.)
****
I remember one of the first times I heard six figures was from a knucklehead kid, probably in middle school. He said, “Well your dad makes six figures doesn’t he?”
It seemed like so much money. Six figures.
Most of my time in the Air Force I made six figures but I never knew it. I always guessed I was around $70k for some reason. I think it just seemed so out of reach for a measly military member, and I never really cared about money so I never totaled it up.
****
But something funny happened to me the other day as I had time to consider my life. I support myself and my wife and her son and our two toddlers. (That’s five.) Then, I support my ex wife, her husband, our daughter, and their daughter. (That’s four more, for a total of nine.)
Six figures in 2024 can support nine people, four adults and five kids. Maybe six figures is enough. Maybe I need to shut my pie-hole and stop complaining.
****
For he is good. Yes, he is good.
The Dumbest Sentence You Will Read This Week
Keep in mind, taking a moment to review this sentence isn’t an exercise in futility. Instead, try to think of it like a crossword puzzle, word search, or Word Jumble. Better yet, think of it like one of those mensa questions, “How many words can you make out of the letters in the name, ‘Peter Piper’?” As in, “How many inconsistencies can you find with the reasoning inherent to this sentence’s claim(s)?” And then divide that number by the number value your highest completed grade (ie 3 for 3rd grade, 16 for an ungrad degree completed in 4 years etc). Whoever has the highest number wins.
Here’s the doozy:
Experts estimate that nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, so limits to abortion access could affect the number of births.
Happy Hunting!
Flattery for Women. Like in This Post I Am Complimenting a Woman. Seriously.
Women don’t get “a pass” in my book. People who know me truly, know this about me truly.
The “compliment” that I read in a book and inspired this post is great (still included at the end), but in truth, “Women don’t get ‘a pass’ in my book,” (my hook for the post) is actually about the best compliment I could ever pay y’all.
You’re not weak; you’re not “special” in some “need extra allowances” sort of way. Dishes are dirty after you do them, same as men. You can figure out how to pull into a garage correctly, same as men. Wooden utensils still get ruined when left to soak absentmindedly in the sink for long periods of time. Some ice cream scoops are not dishwasher safe, for me and for you too. Kids don’t learn obedience only from fathers. Neither do they learn strength and steely character only from fathers. You do not get a pass, women. Hear me?
The following comes from Jack London’s short story, “The Wisdom of the Trail.” Sitka Charley is an injun, back when there were those. As for nearly all London tales, the setting is the great white Northlands. The only two words I would add is, “…land…sea…and air!”
****
“Sitka Charley did not know this kind of woman. Five minutes before, he did not even dream of taking charge of the expedi-tion; but when she came to him with her wonderful smile and her straight clean English, and talked to the point, without pleading or persuading, he had incontinently yielded. Had there been a softness and appeal to mercy in the eyes, a tremble to the voice, a taking advantage of sex, he would have stiffened to steel; instead her clear-searching eyes and clear-ringing voice, her utter frankness and tacit assumption of equality, had robbed him of his reason. He felt, then, that this was a new breed of woman; and ere they had been trail mates for many days he knew why the sons of such women mastered the land and the sea, and why the sons of his own womankind could not prevail against them. Tender and soft! Day after day he watched her, muscle-weary, exhausted, indomitable, and the words beat in upon him in a perennial refrain. Tender and soft! He knew her feet had been born to easy paths and sunny lands, strangers to the moccasined pain of the North, unkissed by the chill lips of the frost, and he watched and marveled at them twinkling ever through the weary day.”
Captain’s Log 