I Work for A.I.G.!

I heard there was a recession
But I ain’t felt a thing
That’s why I fly
On my private jet
And wear this hidden bling

I work for A.I.G.!
Yeah you know me!
I work for A.I.G.!
Let’s throw a party!

My maid, she has been crying
Says she can’t feed her child
I had to let her go
Cause don’t you know
Her emotions were too wild

I work for A.I.G.!
Yeah you know me!
I work for A.I.G.!
Do you see me?

I heard my company’s tankin’
But that’s ok, I found a chump
Hey Uncle Sam,
Could you lend me hand?
And get me over this financial hump?

I work for A.I.G.!
Yeah you know me!
I work for A.I.G.!
So give me more money!

They said there was a ruckus
Up on Capital Hill
But I never saw a thing
(cha ching!)
Except my stimulus bill!

I work for A.I.G.!
Yeah you know me!
I work for A.I.G.!
Gimme my bonus please!

Dinner for Two

Drinks at this resteruant were around $4.00 each. A minimally decent tip would be $13.00, which makes this dinner $60.00 per person. OR you can buy this stuff on sale at Safeway and have the same dinner for about $7.00-$10.00 per person. I'm just saying...

That's One Way to Feel Special

I heard recently about what must be some really good ice cream. You can find it at a place called Serendipity in New York city. It’s a sundae, created to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary, and it only costs $1000. Yeah, one-thousand. Now, I’m not going to go into huge detail about what goes in to the sundae because that would bore me, with the exception of mentioning two ingredients: The first is the 23k gold topping (yeah, it’s edible) and the caviar that goes on the very top. Now, I truly like both gold and snails, but I think you would have to pay me $1000 to eat either one. Besides, that makes up a significant chunk of my mortgage, so I really can’t justify spending it on a bit of ice cream. I do like how the sundae is shaped like a middle finger pointed at all the middle and lower socioeconomic folks struggling through this economy, and a special fist shaped version is available for people like to mock Third World countries (ok, I made that last bit up, but you get what I mean).

Hmmm....

What I Wish I Had Blogged About

So I’ve been on a blogging hiatus, but I am not making a real attempt to get back to it, so the two of you who read this will have that to look forward to. There have been a number of things that I would have liked to comment on here on my online podium, but I know that I will never give them each the treatment they deserve. Never-the-less, Here are the top 5 things I wish I would have blogged on (and a summary of what I would have said). In no particular order:

1. Jatropha. Heard of it? Me either! At least not until recently. But it seems to be worth hearing about. Jatropha is a neat little plant (actually, there are several varieties) who’s nuts produce an oil that can be used as fuel. Three reasons why this is a big deal: 1. It burns clean. Unlike our terrorist-provided oil it doesn’t pollute as it is used. 2. It comes from Latin America and the Caribbean. They grow it in India too, I think. The double bonus here is that these shamefully destitute places may have found a way to make some money, while our frenemies in OPEC will be losing some. 3. Unlike ethanol, cultivating jatropha won’t drive up food prices because you can’t eat it, so there is no competition.

2. Chimps Should Live in Trees. More to the point, they shouldn’t live in houses. And they shouldn’t share your bed or drink wine with you because THEY GO NUTS AND PEOPLE GET HURT. As a general rule, I’m not a fan of animals in cages (and a house constitutes a cage for a chimp. For that matter, so does almost every exhibit at the zoo, including the Portland zoo and most especially the Boise zoo). Now, to be fair, I have had “caged” pets before. My tarantula, for instance. But he (or she, I never asked) lived in a 65 gallon aquarium. I’ve had pet rats, and their cage was two stories and almost as big as my bed. The point is, if you cage any creature, or treat it as anything other than the creature it is (a chimp is not a human, for instance), bad things happen.

3. Ted Haggard is an Insurance Salesman. This honestly makes me very sad. I’ve never thought of myself as having a whole lot in common with Haggard (even less now), but as president of the NEA he was one of the family, you know? Granted, he was dishonest and immoral and absolutely should have been removed from his position as president and as pastor of New Life Church, but even then he should have been able to turn to the church for help. Instead, they literally kick him out of Colorado (they later changed their minds on that one). Look, guys, Jesus was not very image-conscious, so get over yourself and help the guy out. And Ted, don’t ever think about preaching again.

4. Christian Bale is a Jerk! You have probably heard by now about his little tirade on the set of the new Terminator movie (unrelated note: Really? Another one?). He threw a temper tantrum like a little girl and humiliated an employee on the set. Apparently he believes he really is as special as our celebrity-worshipping society has told him he is. Assistant Director and Associate Producer Bruce Franklin is defending him though, saying he was interrupted during a very emotional scene (in a Terminator movie?). Sounds like Bruce is hoping Christian will want to work with him in later movies. Not likely Bruce. The whole thing kind of reminds me of Alec Baldwin’s verbal abuse of his daughter in which he called her a pig (amongst other things) in a phone message. Celebrities really are different from us.

5. Obama Opposes Reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine. Good on you, Mr. President. You are now entitled to a tirade because you are special. The Fairness Doctrine was adopted in 1949 and held that broadcasters were obligated to provide opposing points of views on controversial issues of national importance. It was halted under the Reagan administration. What it comes down to is that at the very least it gives whiners a chance to whine and at its worst it provides a legal way to force others to support your point of view. Maybe I’ll send Obama a thank you note and few suggestions for some other ways to really wow the public is his first 100 days. Oh hell, I’ll just run for president in 2016.

One last thing….we’ve bailed out big business (i.e. gave them those bonuses they SO deserved), we’ve bailed out the car makers, we’ve bailed out those banks who can’t be bothered by people such as myself, and now we’re bailing out homeowners who shouldn’t have bought the house in the first place because you couldn’t afford it. Where’s my bail out?

Show Me the Money

I received a phone call last night from a former professor of mine from my wild and crazy Bible college days (they really were fairly wild a crazy-but that’s a different story). I wasn’t able to get to the phone in time, but he left me a message. He said that he just wanted to check-in and see how I was doing and ask about any prayer requests that I might have that he and the alumni association could pray about. It was nice, considering my not so tight relationship with the alumni association.

Shortly after graduating from Bible college I received a nice letter from the association, which said two things: 1) Congratulations of graduating, and 2) Please send in your dues right away. Now, I’m not sure if that’s how it was supposed to work, or if all alumni associations do business this way, but I couldn’t help but notice that there was never any invitation to join. I remember being so caught off guard by the tone of the dues request (there was a definite sense of “you owe us this money”) that I even looked through past mail and asked around to see if I or anyone else had been asked to join, or if they had simply been asked to pay up. I think it wouldn’t have been such a big deal had we (me and my small merry band) ever been invited to join anything at the school. As I neared the end of my time there I met with the academic dean who commented, rightly, that we had always been a bit of a separate group. I told him, “At the risk of sounding juvenile, they started it.” You see, before being invited to join, we were told to conform, but my long haired, New Living Translation loving self couldn’t do it. (I realize there is probably more than one side to this, but it’s my blog so it’s my side).

I never did send in any dues, and after several attempts they stopped asking. I check-up on the college from time to time, but we never really hear any news from them, I don’t know if all the good dues payers hear more information than us. I have always been a little sad that I didn’t have a closer relationship with the school (though in saying that I’m not sure how a human and a school have a relationship, but I think they can), so it was nice to hear from them the other day.

The problem is, he kept talking. “We’d like to hear any prayer requests you might have, and don’t forget that we still need help finishing the new men’s dorm! You can send……” Thanks for the call, guys.

Too Poor to Sleep

It’s 5:00 in the morning and I am at work. I remembered that I was scheduled to come in at 5:00 at some point in the coming days, but I couldn’t remember hen, so I called and they said this was the day. They were wrong. I’m not supposed to be in until 8:30 or 9:00, and even then I have official errands to run which would have kept me away until almost lunch time. Oh well. I can use the extra money.

But I’m one of the richest guys in the world! Seriously, that’s not delusional or metaphorical. If you take into account the population of the whole world and how most everyone else on the planet lives I’m pretty stinkin’ wealthy. But it sure doesn’t feel like it right now. I commented the other day on the irony (tragedy) that Americans are dieing from eating too much while much of the world dies from eating too little. This same dichotomy is present in our consumption of stuff too. The irony of course is that the more stuff we get to make our lives more convenient and comfortable the more we become a slave to material things. I get a new lap top, that way I can write a school paper no matter where I am at. I get a nifty cell phone, that way I’m never out of touch with work. I get a new remote control so I can sit on my butt all that much more and get fatter while I watch my giant screen t.v. that is all that much more damaging to my eyes. When I do have to force myself off the couch I get in my fancy new car; funny how much more effort and stress is required to worry about a fancy new car than a crappy old one. Whoa, diatribe.

My niece is one of the more popular girls in her school. She’s pretty, and works for hours everyday to stay that way (slave). She wears only specific brands of clothes, because to do anything else would cause her social status to plummet (slave). And of course she has her cell phone with her all the time because to lose contact with a supposed friend and miss any gossip will rob her of the chance be the one with the knowledge (slave). Insert lengthy quote here:

“Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply `things.' They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.
But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and `things' were allowed to enter. Within the human heart `things' have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my' and `mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things when He said to His disciples, `If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.' (Matt. 16:24-25).”

That was from The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, from the chapter titled “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.” I wish I could live a life free of possessions. Understand what I’m saying and not saying: I’m not saying I want to give up all my stuff, I am saying I wish I were strong enough that I could want to give up all my stuff. But I like my stuff, so rather than remove the “stuff” I will try to remove the “my.” I will try to remember that I am a steward, a care taker, not an owner; this is a freeing thought-if I can do it.
He who collects the most toys—dies anyway.