Jesus hand-me-down

when i was a kid, i think we were a lil poor. one day i was getting ready to go to soccer practice and all my shirts were in the wash or dirty or something. i complain to my mom and she procures a grocery bag of hand-me-downs from a friend of hers who had two boys about 5 years older than me. there was only one shirt that was not a dress shirt. i put it on and to my horror it said "keep on truckin' for Jesus". beneath it was a picture of a 4X4 looking truck. i was mortified to wear it but desperate.

i wore it and tried to keep my arms crossed so that no one would see my embarrassing shirt. unfortunately within minutes someone shouts, "HAHA Oh my God, 'truckin' for Jesus"! several others looked and laughed then moved on. i was about 10 or 11 but the memory left its mark on me.

why was i embarrassed? probably because i anticipated the reaction i got. but why did i anticipate it? at that young age was i already aware that this was an unacceptable mark to wear in an enemy's camp. like waving a U.S. flag at a Hitler parade. and if one is so apprehensive to wear Jesus on their chest, how much more so are they to reveal that he is in their hearts?

so many questions, so little time to answer them.

passing the time while in traffic

i have driven so many miles in my life that i practically drive on auto-pilot anymore. i just get in the car with destination in mind and my body takes over to do the rest. it does this with only the minimal need of brain capacity. automatic responses. like a bus passenger, sometimes im surprised that ive reached my destination. "oh were here already!", my brain will say. i say all this to say that my brain is often bored while driving. so ive come up with a few activities to pass the time:

sometimes i'll imagine i have the power to move things. like cars in front of me. i'll imagine i can focus on a car and throw it thousands of feet in the air. or i can look at a line of traffic and cause it to part. like moses red sea, allowing me to drive down the middle.

another thing i'll do when at a stop sign where traffic is turning in front of me: i'lll study the faces of the drivers as they pass. its interesting, theyre almost all sad looking. rarely do you see a happy or tranquil face. very telling of our world i think. sometimes rather than focus on their face i'll note how many have a phone glued to their ear. many do. its like were afraid of silence and alone-time anymore.

another game i'll play is conceptualizing other drivers babyhood. driving around you see a variety of characters on the road. some are quite used looking as though life has given them a rough haul. they'res ruffians, wrinkled tough ladies, sex-pots, thugs, and the like. when i see them i'll give careful consideration that they were once babies. i'll imagine what they looked like as a baby. then i'll consider how life and their choises in life led them to their particular genre, outlook and life. once innocent, during life they bought into a schema which says, "i have to be tough", "i have to be mean", "i have to stand out and be different" or "i have to be sexy".


when i arrive at my destination, i put the game away, until the next time my brain catches a ride with my body.

killing the weak

i'm sick. la grippe: the phlegm, draining, snorting, sniffing, spitting up blood and gasping for air. you know, the usual. over the years ive noticed a pattern when i get sick. the wife keeps her distance. this morning im sitting on the couch watching the morning news and shes nowhere around (normally she sits on the chair next to me, sipping a cup of coffee like me). i look around and shes all the way in the dining room, standing up, drinking coffee and watching tv from there. a full 15 feet out of the room that i'm in. i know what shes doing, she doesnt want to catch it. i laugh to myself about it. while her demeanor here is not particularly florence nightengale-ish, at least she's not malevolent with me when im ill.

the dog is another story. he gets primal when im sick. he'll bark and growl when i cough and hes particularly vicious when i need to cough up phlegm. its like he knows the sound of a cough which elicits phlegm and he goes on the attack following me to the bathroom growling. i tell my wife that he senses im sick and he'd like to kill me to take on the alpha male role. i swear at him and tell him not to mess with me thus asserting my alpha-maleness is still intact. he reluctantly backs off. but as soon as the coughing resumes, it happens again though hes right back at it, moving in for a potential kill to dethrone the king.

it reminds me of my cat archimedes. he was 18 or 19 years old and dying. i dont know what of, he was just not eating anymore and kept skulting off hiding here and there trying to find a safe place to die. i found him in a neighbors yard behind a stack of wood and carried him back to our garage. he could barely walk. we made a bed for him and doted on him for a while. then our younger stray cat, tiger, the most loving animal ive ever seen, walks in. he looks at poor dying archimedes he hisses at him and started making weird fighting noises, id never heard him make. i took tiger outide. it was strange, they always got along before. actualy seemed like friends...now tiger acted like he wanted to kill the old man (archimedes).

its the natural way i guess, the way animals kill the weak. but it also points to the unnatural (i.e. supernatural) way people care for their sick. even those not related to them. even those who will not get better.

the soul of man transcending the animal flesh.

dictator of the world, pt. 1

i often think about how i'll handle my power when i become dictator of the world. i will definitely implement some changes as i'm pretty unsatisfied with how things are being run currently.

1. to begin with, no more free welfare for able-bodied & able-minded individuals. if you dont have a job, dont worry the government will put you to work doing menial labor. you may be building prisons or sewing government uniforms or paving roads but you will be working.

2. no more baby-making to gain tax and welfare benefits. having children will cost parents. they will have to pay the government a baby tax to have more than one child.

3. if a mother (and father) chooses to have kids anyway in spite of being unable to pay for them, the children will be removed from their custody and placed with parents who can afford them.

4. everyone will serve their government for 2 years. this may be in a civilian or military role.

5. jails are no longer places for the criminal to sit and wait. in my new world it is a place of forced penance. the criminal labors while in prison. that labor is more or less hard labor based on the severity of the crime. you may make clothes or licence plates, or break boulders. it just depends. heres the beauty of it. the prisoners are paid a low sum and 95% goes directly to their victim or victims family.

6. certain violent crimes are dealt with severely in my world. if one is convicted of rape, murder, terrorism or child molestation the punishment is death. by hanging. the executions are viewable on public television. lesser crimes are dealt with less severely of course but more severely than in todays world.

7. if convicted of a violent crime, one is entitled to one appeal. this appeal is made by ones lawyer and the lawyer has a maximum of 1 year to make the appeal. people are no longer in a prison for a decade prior to execution. executions happen the week after a failed appeals.

8. there is no more lottery. this just has poor people spending the little they have on false hopes.

9. there are no more vanity licence tags. vanity is a sin afterall.

10. automakers must have 50% of their vehicles as electric or hybrid.

11. land developers must keep all large trees intact and build around them. if thats difficult or impossible, too bad.

more to come...