yeah I know you did not ask!
Sometimes when I am listening to really good music that moves me, I think, if life has any meaning at all, it is music.
Yeah, I know…
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #9,809
yeah I know you did not ask!
Way, way back in the day, but not quite Mr. Peabody way back, I used to have a t-shirt that had written large upon on it, “Nuke a Gay Whale for Christ.”
I loved it because it satirized multiple tropes current at that period of time. I always wondered, though, why they did not get the ubiquitous milk of this time period in there somehow…Got Milk?
What brought this up is that I saw a bumper sticker today that I have seen a few times before. It reads in large letters, “JESUS LOVES YOU“, and below that in a smaller font is “But I am his favorite.”
I have never quite figured out if the folks displaying these bumper stickers are evangelizing, satirizing or both. Or perhaps, given the epidemic of narcissism in this country, they really believe they are the favorite of one branch of the Christian trilogy. Going even further afield, perchance, the bumper sticker is referring to that well known playboy, the Mexican Mac Daddy, the gardener named Jesus.
On so it goes upon the highways and byways of the metropolis known as St. Louis.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #330
yeah I know you did not ask!
As the 3.141592 regular readers of my silliness might remember, I have written about the blue birds in our yard in the past. One such story was Señora’s Bluebird House.
I was mowing the yard today, and the last thing on my mind were birds, blue or otherwise. As I went along the eastern fence in the back yard I suddenly felt a slight breeze, heard a fluttering sound, experienced light touches on my hair. I had forgotten about the blue bird house there and as I went by it the occupants were attempting to protect their property. The blue bird of happiness was driving me away.
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #1,193
yeah I know you did not ask!
Definition: Suburbanite – a person who spends half their time trying to get grass to grow and the other half of their time trying to keep the grass in check!
And so it goes.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #6,149
yeah I know you did not ask!
You are sitting in your vehicular mode of transportation. You are at a traffic light. The traffic light is red. You are second in line. The vehicle in front of you is a Dodge Durango. It is a Chesterfield police cruiser.
The light changes from red to green. The member of Chesterfield’s Police Department driving the SUV must be involved with his cell phone, his on board computer, daydreaming… who knows. He does not move.
My question is to you is, do you give this Chesterfield’s finest a little toot of your horn to alert him to the change in the status of the traffic light, or do you just sit there, gnashing your teeth, impatiently drumming your fingers on the steering wheel, ruing the day you were born, waiting for him to come back down to earth?
I once followed a Chesterfield police cruiser going the same direction as me. We made three left turns with him making a final left as I turned right. He never once used his turn signal. I guarantee (as my Cajun coworker use to say,,,drawing the word out) I was diligently using my factory installed method of indicating a change in direction in order to be courteous and safe… and to avoid any possible ticket.
Can you make a citizen’s arrest for traffic violations?
And so it goes.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #4,831
yeah I know you did not ask!
At times, it is so very, very hard being a sarcastic SOB.
I was filling out a medical form, and even though it was a computerized form that could have been carrying redundant information from section to section, it was not.
One question it kept asking, besides my name, DOB, etc., was sex. It got where it was all I could do to not put “Yes, and often please.” But I kept reminding myself that it was a very tired, old joke, even by my standards.
Why they had not provided a drop down box with the two options – male, female – is beyond me. A free form text box seemed to be exactly the wrong option for gathering an either/or piece of data . Perhaps they were trying to be “woke”. It just struck me as stupid programming.
On a related note…
A while back a doctor asked me, “Do you drink?”
“Sure,” I replied, “Scotch neat with a splash of water, otherwise I will take whatever you are drinking.”
Apparently that was an inappropriate response in a medical setting.
And so it goes.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #8,089
yeah I know you did not ask!
Florida is the American state with the highest percentage of retirees. While folks can retire from the work-a-day world at an early age, most commonly do so in their 60s. This obviously implies that there are a lot of old geezers in the Sunshine State.
There is an Oscar Wilde quote based on the venerable adage, “With age comes wisdom.” The complete Wilde quote is “With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.”
Given the gawd awful politicians that Florida voters keep electing to national and state offices, I do believe Oscar had it right. There is not a lot of wisdom in Florida’s selection of politicians. I frequently wonder what is in the water down there, or what they are smoking.
And so it goes.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #3,726
yeah I know you did not ask!
File this under ironic.
When I first moved in with Señora around 2012 in this St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield (population 49,703), there was a big discussion going on in the media about racial profiling, The city of Chesterfield was listed as one of the most egregious cities in Missouri for profiling of black drivers. A quick search on Google did not bring up any current articles, however. Chesterfield is 77% white, 13% Asian, and only 3.5% black. Hispanics are 2.9% and the rest vary.
Continuing through the pandemic until now, home deliveries of whatever has become and remains massively popular. There seems to be delivery vans constantly driving down our street.
The ironic part… the vast majority of the folks driving these vans are exactly the type of persons that the Chesterfield PD was accused of profiling a decade ago. Apparently it is okay if these folks are delivering your goodies and wearing a corporate uniform.
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #8,069
yeah I know you did not ask!
As you surely know, the primary sensory input for canines is the sense of smell. Our particular canine, Princess Lily, has the common but troubling habit of rolling in whatever odoriferous substance she can find. This seems to be some sort of bold statement for dogs – here I am, I know you can smell me now.
Of course, this results in Señora giving The Wee Dog frequent baths. Lily tolerates these baths, but just barely. But she is so happy when they are over that she runs around the house crazily for five minutes. Señora being Señora, chases the ecstatic Lily and everyone is having a good time.
Thinking about this other day I came to the conclusion that if our precious little dog was human she would dress in wild, bold, colorful clothes that would generate jokes about needing sunglasses.
Loud smells, loud clothes, all in the same ballpark… smell me, look at me!
And so it goes
Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #1,560
yeah I know you did not ask!
I wonder if at the various universities and colleges that teach Internet technologies if there are special writing classes, perhaps in the Marketing Department under Internet.
There seems to a certain, very common style of article on many websites. There is a teaser headline that grabs your attention, so you open the article. You then start reading or perhaps scanning to through the article to find the tidbit that attracted you, but it is not readily apparent. So you scroll, and scroll some more trying to find it. As you do so you go past one advertisement after another. If you are exceedingly lucky you find the tidbit towards the end of the article, but it frequently has an O. Henry twist to it. Not uncommonly, however, there is nothing in article that relates to the teaser.
It is amazing what we humans are willing to do to other humans in the endeavor to extract money from them.
And so it should not go.