not here to help, only to observe and pass judgment

I was thinking about alternative energy sources the other day while I was walking back to the portable I teach in when I heard to teachers disputing about some point of Lutheranism. I was horrified, I left Lutheran teaching and I did not want to hear bickering over the finer points of the Book of Concord. This made me realize that if we have alternative energy sources we should look to hydrogen cells over some sort of bio-diesel.

Certainly, the argument stands to reason that in hydrogen nothing is burned so you remove the harm of carcinogens from the environment but really the negative effects of a huge bio-diesel industry cannot be underestimated.

Right now much of the money we spend on oil ends up back in the Middle East or Venezuela – places we are not very popular. I do not find this surprising because mall employees and people who pretend to work at Wal Mart tend to be a bit surly as well toward the people who butter their bread.

I think it is a bad idea to turn corn into diesel and by extension into gold. If you think the fighting between Sunni and Shiitte is fierce then you are ignorant of the different factions of Lutheranism and have no idea what a bad idea it would be to give those people money, and they make up the bulk of the population of corn growing states.

I know you are thinking. I am not a Lutheran, I am a ________, and Lutherans hate us. Certainly, it is true: we hate you. But it is more important to note that we hate each other much more than we could ever hate you. We would sooner say a Hail Mary then break bread with someone of a different Lutheran sect.

Lutheran infighting is very ugly. This is usually found in inter-sect relations and each group claims the others are the nastiest. There is no way to quantify who is the meanest but I will say this: my group may be liberal but we don’t eat babies like that other, more liberal group.

When there is not another sect around to bicker with we tend to bicker amongst ourselves. Right now at the church I used to work at they are more concerned about the color of the carpet then anything else – there is no plan or need to change it, people are just unhappy with it and this takes our minds off the more pressing matter of spreading the Gospel or keeping the doors open. I know people who have not talked to each other in years over disagreements that if they happened anywhere else it would be considered absurd.

The last thing you want to do is give this Mickey Mouse outfit a ton of money. Sure, it would help the economy of the whole United States but in the end what are you doing with this? You are starting an absurd civil war as sectarian bickering turns to open warfare.

If we go to bio diesel you can keep your SUV – just make sure it is armor plated.

Today Goldie, Cowboy Jon and I were in search of a housewarming gift for our friend Dr. Candie Horowitz. I had noticed that Candie’s house lacked a mezuzah, an important part of any Jewish home and we decided in committee that we would round up a mezuzah for Candie.

I wanted to buy said mezuzah online but Goldie thought it better that Jon help us pick one out because I am only Jewish by association, it is my ethnicity and heritage, it is not my faith – but it is Jon’s faith and his life so we waited for him and for his day off to go to the Jewish Supply Store in Scottsdale.

Unfortunately, Jon’s day off is Saturday; he and I should have remembered that Saturday is the Sabbath and the Jewish Supply Store would be closed until sundown. Goldie drove us there in my Volkswagen because I drive like a grandmother. After driving across Phoenix and points between we arrived at the Jewish Supply Store to realize to Goldie’s great annoyance that the store was closed.

I did try to pry their mezuzah off the door. It was on there pretty good.

I wish they call could be Arizona girls.

She was furious. There is no expectation that a good Catholic girl like her would know that the Jewish Supply Store was closed on Saturday, not considering that all good Catholics go to bingo in their parish halls on Wednesdays. We will also not question the credentials for a good Catholic girl dating a good Jewish boy and friends with a Jewish Lutheran. How could we be so stupid? This ruined everything.

Realizing that the Jewish Community is in Scottsdale and the Jewish Community Center was there as well we traveled to it and their gift shop to buy one of their mezuzahs because the gym seems like a logical place to buy an important religious implement.

Upon arriving at the community center Goldie refused to go in, we would have to go in ourselves and call her if it was worth her walking around in 107-degree weather. It was not. At the entrance we were interdicted by security to provide picture ID and sign in. Later, I claimed we had to prove we were Jewish and since I was not wearing a chai, I was taken to the men’s room and was not allowed to leave until the laughter subsided.

Once in the community center Jon and I quickly found that there was a gift shop that indeed sold mezuzahs but the oldster at the gift shop would not sell us anything because it was the Sabbath – and he did not have the keys to anything or he would have because he is a mensch.

We left the community center empty-handed but arrived at the Volkswagen to find Goldie in a much better mood. We then went to a gallery that Candie likes to see if they had anything reasonable to hold the place of the mezuzah. The gallery had many nice things as well as the clever kitsch that you might find laying around at an Urban Outfitters. We decided on a clever binder of paperwork – a great love of PhD school administrators like Candie – as our gift.


Now, at this gallery they had a horrible painting. It looked like one of our friends, Barbara, but it was the back of our friend Barbara’s head on the body of a woman sitting in a bathtub with some sort of abstract art going on around it.

While we were waiting for our turn at the register someone lazy and careless placed that painting on the floor near where I was fidgeting. Someone was going to buy that horrible waste of canvas.

I pace. I wander. I dance in place. I cannot hold still. While I was pacing, wandering and dancing in place near the register. I put my foot through that painting, that painting costs more than I make in a week.

Jon started laughing. It was an ugly painting and I did the world of art a service by stepping through it but Goldie had it right when she said, “I cannot take you boys anywhere,” before leaving me in the gallery to wait and pay by myself with a piece of that painting stuck to my shoe like toilet paper. I do not blame her; it was all she could do to remain indignant before bursting into a deluge of laughter herself.

Luckily, I was not held responsible for my actions (a recurring theme in my life) because it was not my fault that the painting was left on the floor and apparently they are insured against meshuginas. Later, after walking around that area of Scottsdale a little longer one of the clerks at the gallery found me and asked me for the scrap of the painting back as it was still stuck to my shoe.

Thankfully, being a meshugina is in itself insurance against life. Your clumsiness endears you to people and this story was better than any gift we could have given Dr. Candie Horowitz. In the end you cannot help but love me.

I have never claimed to be mature and the name "Bangkok" has always made me giggle, that this went down in Bangkok is funny to me.  Too funny. 

Sunday LR and I went to the Outlet Mall with Dr. Deb (Cowboy Jon was working). Outlet Mall’s feature many things: stores with overpriced, second quality merchandise; a food court with a zoo-like atmosphere; and unattended children running around – out of boredom and a lack of discipline. Part of me thinks that these irritating children are a part of the scheme to get you to spend more money – you get what you want and leave without thinking because you are so irritated with the kids running around everywhere.

This cannot be true because the ill-mannered children of the world are of the world and can be found all over it. It was one thing to have children causing brouhaha at the IZOD outlet store; it is another thing to have them using the cars on the Volkswagen showroom floor as a jungle gym. If your daughter knocks down a rack of polo or golf shirts it is annoying, but not a big deal. If your daughter scratches up a luxury automobile while climbing all over it in her patent leather shoes then you have a problem.

I can see a child getting bored at the outlet mall and dad getting a little lax as they wait for mom to try on yet another pair of identical shoes at the Nine West outlet, it is a long day. However, the car dealer is another issue – these children cannot possibly be bored beyond self-control that quickly. If they get out of control this quickly then they were never really under control.

Concurrently, the Human Society has been having a telethon to raise money for ill-treated or unwanted pets. It is not a pet’s fault when it is poorly trained, much like it is not a child’s fault that it was raised improperly. Pets have a place to go when they are mistreated and raised improperly, why not children?

I submit there should either be a humane society for children – especially the children with parents in the “More Money than Brains” club where they can be brought while waiting for those unfortunate people in the sick dichotomy of life that people who would make poor parents are incredibly fertile, while capable parents have few children if any! This is always balanced by the fact that really ugly people have very cute babies.

However, why isn’t parenthood something people take a little more seriously? If you own a Pit Bull or three, as LR does, you would never take their care and feeding to be something that was optional. Yet we treat human children as if they have no potential for dangerous behaviors when indeed an ill trained child is worse than the meanest Pit Bull. I’m not saying that a mean Kindergartener should be put to sleep but I am not sure that bad parents should not be spayed or neutered. I suppose at the very least we could ask them not have any more children.