Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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Imagine that Everyone Is Enlightened

So I finished The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay.  In its place I have placed in the “meditation room” a book by Richard Carlson, Ph.D. entitled Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff… and it’s all small stuff. The title of the essay I read this morning was Imagine that Everyone Is Enlightened Except You. It immediately made me think of my first rule of driving:  Everyone on the road is an idiot except me, AND I should not be too sure about myself.

The base premise of the essay is that every obnoxious driver, discourteous clerk, line cutter, etc is actually an enlightened person that is trying to teach you a necessary lesson. They are teaching you about patience, forbearance, acceptance, etc.

Part of me finds this an interesting concept of how to go through your day and deal with all the frustrations, big and little, that come our way.  It would certainly help to maintain your blood pressure in an acceptable range.  But it does remind me a bit of the old joke about the man who prayed for patience.  Boy, did the deity send him some lessons to learn patience.

But then part of me thinks, “Well, Grasshopper, maybe you’re the enlightened person trying to teach them a lesson when you flip them off or get in their face…”

But then you say, “Oh Grasshopper, cannot you see that is two sides of the same coin?”

Must be a lot of us out there needing to get us some learning!

And so it goes…

Keep well.

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…and a HUG around the Neck

A while back I wrote a little story, A bushel and a peck… about buying a small painting while we  were in New Orleans. The painting has a little bird with the saying, “I Love You, a Bushel and a Peck”.  I speculated in that posting about completing the ditty with another painting that said “…and a Hug around the Neck”. 

I contacted the artist, Katie Leese, at her website JeanBird.com.  I told her what I wanted. She sent me a couple pictures of possible backgrounds, and the artistic Señora picked one. Katie’s surcharge for custom work was only $10 more than the price of one of her paintings on her website or at her stand in New Orleans  I think the pair display very nicely in our kitchen. Most importantly, they make both our hearts glad when we see them.  It was money well spent.

Keep well.

 

 

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Sarah’s Smiles

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” ~~ Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

There are many different words that I could and do use to describe my wife, Robin. One such word would be charismatic; people are just attracted to her. She genuinely loves people, and people love her back.  She is kind and patient, qualities that served her well during her 30 plus years as a special education teacher. She is also a bit ADHD, but she uses it to good stead, getting a lot done with her need to keep moving and to be doing something.

She has also experienced great strife and loss in her life.  She and her mother had a very “complicated” relationship. Continue reading “Sarah’s Smiles”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #876

yeah I know you did not ask!

Okay, this one is a little off-color.

For some reason I began to think of the word junk as being used as an euphemism for the male genitalia.  A brief search on the Internet describes the origin of this use of the word as murky.  First use in print with this context was in gay literature.  To me, it seems a little counter-intuitive to use the word, junk, this way.  Most guys that I know strive to keep their “junk” very well polished, one way or another, not something you typically do with junk. (Insert your own comedic rim shot here.)

Just for grins and giggles, if you are interested here are a couple links of the multitude of articles on the subject.

Origins of ‘junk’ as slang are murky

Even the New York Times weighed in: On Language:Junk

 

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,294

yeah I know you did not ask!

Okay, I am officially totally sick and tired of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  I almost never read these celebrity stories, and these two are all over my Internet news feeds. Perhaps my aversion is the result of my opinion that Prince Harry is one of the most henpecked men on the planet. She just cannot be that good!

Henpecked was not my first word choice, but I try to keep it somewhat clean unless I truly need the seasoning of profanity.

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That Old Time Gospel Music

I had passed the following around in an email.  In response to a reply I decided to post it on Curmudgeon-Alley and add a little something to it. My Jewish wife was playing Amazing Grace on the piano and was singing along… She just loves the music, but I still find it humorous, her selection  of this song as it is epitomical Christian hymn. Many years in various choirs has also resulted in her singing many  Christmas songs this time of year.  On the other hand (my hand),  I find it ironic that as an agnostic that I like gospel music so much.  It harkens back to my childhood.  My mother’s mother, Mama Carr, seemed to always have had a gospel station tuned in on her big plastic desk top radio.  I have many fond memories of her and her house.

Now just for Jeanne… I know you were looking for Robin’s performance, but you will have to settle for Elvis.

 

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #6,629

yeah I know you did not ask!

I want to add a new phrase to the lexicon, that being the “Amazon peek“.

We have not had problems, that I have heard of, with porch pirates in this neighborhood.  And I know that from some delivery entities I receive emails when a package is out for delivery and another when it has been delivered.  And I have a built in loud and insistent announcer of strange happenings in our yard in the form of a fierce 15 pound heap of fur named Lily. Brave is the delivery/postal personnel  that comes to our front porch .

But I still find myself peeking out the front door to see if Amazon/Walmart/USPS/FedEx/UPS has delivered whatever urgent item I have recently decided I could not do without… and 2 dang days is too freaking long to wait for any package anyway.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,132

yeah I know you did not ask!

One of the things I have been doing to pass the COVID-19 slow down is revisiting a lot of the science fiction novels I read years ago.

I’ve been focusing on other authors, but I have also started to reread Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series.  Just in case you do not know, these are 11 short novels involving an earth man from the 1860s, John Carter, who is transported to Mars by mystical means.  There he weds a fabulously beautiful princess and has all sort of swashbuckling adventures involving much sword play and mountains of corpses.

Reading his novels I begin to feel sorry for authors that followed him.  If any individual adjective has a finite number of times it can used across the space-time continuum, then Burroughs has certainly used more than his fair share.  This leaves a dearth of available adjectives for those authors who wrote after him.  But then again not putting one or more adjectives with every noun might  not be a bad thing.  Perhaps by forcing this scarcity of adjectives it was a blessing for the readers of those subsequent writers.

Be well.

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Presidential Monkey Poop

First, let me confess that sometimes my mind makes strange connections…

Señora has not been feeling well the last few days.  This morning she was staying in bed and passing time with her smart phone.  She had leaned over the precipice and fallen, careening wildly, into the YouTube rabbit hole. She was watching a video of the Jimmy Kimmel Live show from 2017.  This particular segment was Clip of the Year, showing various short videos that went viral . As I came in with fresh coffee, the venturi effect took hold and I was sucked down with Alice.  Unable to fight the maelstrom I just entered,  I watched this one video with her.

My favorite was of a sports star from Europe or Africa that was receiving an award.   He was remarking on how glad he was to receive it and was thanking various folks.  He then went on to thank his wife and girlfriend. Realizing what he had just said, he gave the classic double take. He then worked diligently to backtrack that comment and only thank his wife!

The winner was a clip of a monkey who threw his poop and nailed a zoo goer right in the nose where the poop stuck. Ouch!

There were also a couple clips of Trump.  In one he tried 2 or 3 times to pronounce Puerto Rico correctly, never succeeding. And then… was the much seen clip of him throwing paper towels to people when he visited Puerto Rico after the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria.  For some reason it struck me as much the same as the monkey nailing the tourist with poop.

If you want to see the video here is the link:  Jimmy Kimmel Declares Viral Clip of the Year 2017

Keep well.