Lesser angels

I should have known the minute he approached me that he was trouble. That opening line — “Excuse me. Do you go to church?” — is a red flag on top of a  shining beacon mounted on an orange traffic cone holding a bullhorn screaming at me to get away. And yet, I felt like I needed to be honest with the stranger at the bus stop.

“I do not,” I replied. Because lying to the man and saying “yes” seemed likely to elicit a series of questions about where and what kind and my favorite book of the Bible that I wasn’t prepared to answer. [Pretty sure it's Leviticus, because I like rules.]

“Well then you should go to church. I want tell you about a book. It’s by a minister…

And here my mind started to wander. I looked at him, scuffed and careworn but clearly not on PCP or looking to cut out my spleen and wear it like a hat. And really, I was at the Pentagon. The only place with more guns in close proximity is a Secret Service happy hour.

So I wondered, as he kept talking, what I could get away with. I tried this:

“What if I told you I was Jewish?” [It's not a lie. It's a hypothetical. Different.]

God bless him, the man didn’t miss a beat. “Jews can go to church too! We love Jews!”

He won. I tuned back in, because, really, the man had earned my attention.

“…and so this minister, she died and went to heaven, and she saw an angel 13 feet tall!”

“Wow, that’s a tall angel.” [Really? 13 feet? Not really that tall. If I'm God and I'm making angels, or, for that matter, if I'm a minister and I'm making up angels to sell books, they're going to be taller than 13 feet. They're going to be, like, a million feet tall. Those would be impressive angels.]

“I know. That’s how you know they’re angels. Because, see, if they were professional basketball players, they might be seven feet tall. Those angels, they were even taller than pro basketball players!”

“…And this minister, when she went to heaven — You know how all those ladies who got pregnant and got abortions because they didn’t want their babies [Danger, Will Rodgers. Do not talk about abortion in public, crazy man. Do. Not.] ? Well this minister, she said when you get to heaven you get to hang out with those aborted babies.”

Dude. That’s just gross.

My bus showed up then, so I don’t know what else was coming down the pike, but the crazy man then shook my hand and toddled away. I never did get the title of that book. But I still have my spleen.

I’m not your content monkey!

This is not a post about how, hey, sorry. I haven’t posted for a while. ‘Cause those are lame.

But I will say that when weird things happen to me (or when I think weird things) I need a place to put them. But I have a job that demands that I put a certain number of words to page each and every month. So my desire to do that in my free time comes and goes. So no false promises about daily/weekly/monthly posts. I’m capricious.

Learn to love it.

Dopey statements by Olympics broadcasters (Part 2)

Wha???

“That is a devastating look of devastation on his face.”

“90 percent of people in Canada live between their border and ours.” [I can't even figure out what she was TRYING to say here. Because yes, most of the time people in a country live within that country's borders.]

Dopey statements by Olympics broadcasters (Part 1)

The kind of extemporaneous speaking required of Olympics broadcasters, who are often asked to fill time between the actual doing of sports, lends itself to nonsensical — and occasionally hilarious — musings. I’m collecting them to remind myself that even professionals aren’t immune from butchering the language.

Saturday, Feb. 13:

“Before he died, Nodar Kumaritashvili called his parents…” [When else would he have called?]

To do list for the snowbound weekend.

Having already been to the store for my supply of milk, eggs, and, in my own special twist, Nutella, all that remains in the face of the impending snowpocalypse is a to-do list I can consult when the cabin fever sets in.

1. Learn to make risotto.

2. Watch “The Cutting Edge” in preparation for the start of the Olympics. (Toe pick!)

3. Finally start writing that children’s book.

4. Clean bathtub.

5. Teach Douglas to play dead.

6. Try to get Douglas to wear his boots so we can go for a walk.

Go and do.

I rarely issue edicts, but here’s one: Go read Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin.” Amazing. Devastating. And rad.

(Full disclosure: I haven’t finished it yet. Regardless, it’s that good.)

Next up: “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

Grrr. Argh. (Like a monster.)

I realized quite recently that I am a terrifying person.

I can even quantify my terrifyingness to the degree that I can say with virtual certainty that I am scarier than the Taliban.

I work best on deadline

That’s an understatement. I work best when the deadline is within the next hour. Just for example, and to keep myself honest, here’s how the last hour has gone.

Tweet: Settling in with a cup of tea to watch football (if that’s what you call what the Redskins are doing) and write a story for Shannon.

Whew!

So it’s been whirl-windy up in here (here being my life) recently, with turning 29, buying a condo, moving into the condo, yelling at Comcast about cable in the condo, dodging an alarmingly persistent sailor, and driving 12 hours for a five-hour wedding in Pittsburgh.

Murder most satisfying

I don’t like bugs. I don’t like them when I’m standing outside with my pants tucked into my shitkicker boots and a beekeeping bonnet on my head. And I really don’t like them when I’m naked.