Waffle House Conversations

Back in the day, my friends and I often found ourselves at Waffle House after a night of heavy drinking and heavy laughing. Many of those memories are irretrievably lost to the great alcohol abyss. But many live on.

In what may be part 1 of a series — there may be more, maybe not — below is a fictitious snippet that is representative of those late night exchanges The names have been changed to protect the retarded.

If you see yourself and your friends in this conversation, then give me some feedback. If you don’t, then I suggest you grab some friends, drink a few (lot), and head to a Waffle House (or IHOP). The memories are worth the next day’s pain.

The scene: 2:45 a.m. The boys have been out drinking for quite a while and they’ve stopped at Waffle House for some late night grub before heading home to pass out, which they refer to as “sleep.”

Jack: What are you doing?

Robert: Looking at the pictures I took tonight. Do you know that I can now take a video with my phone and post it on facebook or twitter or any of that crap within seconds? Pretty soon, we’ll all have cameras on our heads with the ability to publicize our every move.

Paul: It’s amazing. It’s like that old saying about stuff messing with other stuff, ya know? (Takes a drag from the straw in his tea glass.)

Jack and Robert look at each other puzzled.

Jack: No.

Robert: Not really. No.

Paul: Yeah, you do. Like if a boy farts in Arizona it kills a butterfly in Thailand.

Jack: What in the fuck are you talking about?

Paul: The saying. The thing. You know, about how we’re all interconnected and shit.

Robert: What the hell does that have to do with facebook?

Paul: I just mean that we’re all tied in together. What we do affects other people.

Jack: Posting pictures on twitter doesn’t affect anyone. It sure doesn’t kill butterflies. (Gets incredulous.) Do you have pictures of boys farting? How can you take a picture of a fart? There’s no visual to a fart. That can’t be.

Paul: Just forget it.

Robert: Good idea.

Long period of silence broken only by the tinkering of their silverware as they eat.

Robert (nonchalantly): Besides, they don’t let butterflies on facebook.

In The WTF Department…

In keeping with this blog’s spotlight on cows, check out the story below. We’ve all heard of murder-suicide, which usually involves a deranged man killing a woman. I’ve even contemplated the possibility of a suicide-murder, but good lordy, I didn’t see this one coming. Maybe these were the killer cows I talked about here. As usual, my comments are in red.

Dean Pierson, Dairy Farmer, Kills 51 Cows Then Commits Suicide.

COPAKE, N.Y. — State police in New York say an upstate dairy farmer shot and killed 51 of his milk cows in his barn before turning the rifle on himself. (He fell just 3 cows shy of the all-time Freak Show Bovine Killer record of 55 cows owned by Zeke Yarbrough of Altus, Oklahoma.)

State police found the body of 59-year-old Dean Pierson in his Copake barn on Thursday. A visitor found a note Pierson had left on the barn door that said not to come in and to call police. (Wait. Does that mean “don’t come in and DON’T call the police?” Crap, what do I do? Who’s going to clean up all these cows?)

State police would only say that Pierson was having personal issues. (No shit.)

The Columbia County hamlet of Copake is about 115 miles north of New York City.

Local farmers buried the cows outside the barn Friday. They would not discuss Pierson or what had happened, but one of the men said these are hard times to be a farmer. (Apparently it’s even harder being a cow, you insensitive bastard.)

Paranormal Activity At The Daily Wit’s House

About a month ago, I was meandering through the 187 pictures on my iPhone, all of which are pictures of my children, all of which I remember taking. Except this one:

Shadow figure (original light)

What you’re seeing is a view from my bedroom down the hallway. The next room on the right is the spare bedroom. There’s obviously a person coming out of that room (or walking in backwards).

When I first saw this picture, I assumed it was a picture I took of my wife — I’m certain that those are my legs under the cover in my bed, and my wife is the only other adult in the house.

But, again, I didn’t remember taking this picture. Also, when you take a picture from an iPhone, you have to first touch the icon of the camera app, then wait for it to open up, then you can take the picture. I couldn’t imagine why I would take a random picture of my wife coming out of the spare bedroom. The picture before it was of my kids and the same goes for the picture after it. Curious, I downloaded the picture to my computer and looked at the properties of the picture.

The picture was taken at 1:42 a.m.; in the early morning hours of a Wednesday.

I have chronic insomnia, but it’s rare that my wife and I are both up at 1:42 in the morning.

My wife swears the picture is not of her. Also, the bedroom light is on. We don’t sleep with the bedroom light on.

So, for this to be a picture (1) that I took (2) of my wife, then we were both up at 1:42 a.m. with the lights on and for some reason my wife decided to enter, then exit, the spare bedroom and I thought it a hoot to grap a snapshot of it — and do it with impeccable timing.

Here’s a version of the picture at full brightness.

Shadow figure picture with extreme brightness

That has to be a person. Right?

I’m not trying to convince you that there are goblins, ghouls, or spirits in this house or even in this world. I’m simply telling you there’s a picture on my camera that I don’t remember taking of a person coming out of my spare bedroom that my wife swears is not her that was taken at 1:42 a.m.

I thought it worth a post. I’d love for some tech person to enhance the image. There has to be a rational explanation. Hasn’t there?

Chris Kelly on S.E. Cupp’s New Book

Below is Chris Kelly’s, one of my favorite writers, latest essay. It’s entitled “S.E. Cupp Will Not be Silenced and/or Fact Checked.” As usual, every other line is hilarious.

S.E. Cupp has appeared, by her own reckoning, on CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, FOX News, Al Harra, Hannity, Geraldo, Red Eye and “dozens of radio shows” including Dennis Miller, Curtis Sliwa, Mancow and Bubba the Love Sponge. She’s been published in the New York Daily News, Washington Post, Newsmax, Slate, Human Events, American Spectator, Townhall and Maxim online. So it follows that she’s writing a book called Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity.

That damn liberal media. They won’t let anyone else get a word in edgewise.

Ms. Cupp also says she’s an atheist, so I don’t exactly know how she has a dog in this fight, but what the hell. No one’s crapped out a book with the words “liberal” “media” “attack” and “Christianity” in at least a month. Perhaps it’s just her turn.

Why keep writing this book? Why not just go to the homes of the credulous and beat the shit out of them and take their money?

So what kind of hard hitting anti-anti-Christian muckraking will culture warriors get for their $25 bucks when Losing Our Religion comes out this Spring? We don’t know. (But watch out, Glee.) S.E. Cupp puts a lot of sweaty effort into letting you know she’s a goodtime gal and a thinker. (It’s so creepy when she talks about sports, like getting side boob from George Will.) But judging by her columns, her thesis will be pursued with the intellectual rigor of Glenn Beck reading Chariots of the Gods.

Here’s one of her columns now:

Jihadism Doesn’t Want Converts – It Wants ScalpsRemember when Islamist terrorism wasn’t just about exploding underwear, but religious conversion?

Of course you don’t, because that was a really long time ago.

Spunky!

But transport yourself a few centuries back – and religious fanatics like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab wouldn’t have simply tried to blow us up.

What do you mean “us?” I thought I was just transporting myself. Who invited you? How do you lose track of the object in a sentence this simple?

First, they would have given us the chance to convert to Islam. It was a last-minute stay of execution, a way to escape certain death.

Not what “stay” means, but okay.

Considering the thousands murdered on 9/11 and since – people who never had the option – it was a pretty good deal.

“Us” deaths in Iraq since 2003: 4,373
“Islamist” deaths from violence in Iraq since 2003: 95,021

Not to say it was very much fun. Not if you were a Coptic Egyptian in the 13th century, when members of the Mamluk Dynasty forcibly converted countless of your brethren to Islam.

Never mind Iraq. Have you forgotten Egypt under the Mamluks? I’m pretty sure there’s a Darryl Worley song about it. Ms. Cupp doesn’t mention – doesn’t care/doesn’t know — that this terrible act of unprovoked Islamist fanaticism occurred after about a hundred years of Crusades. I don’t want to be one of those liberals who always blames Edward I first, but this might have been a factor.

Or if you were Catholic in 1480, when the Italian city of Otranto was invaded by the Ottomans and nearly 1,000 of your neighbors who refused to convert were beheaded on the Hill of Minerva.

There weren’t “nearly 1,000″ Martyrs of Otranto. There were 800. That’s why we call them The 800 Martyrs of Otranto. Calling them “nearly 1,000″ is like calling The Magnificent Seven “The Magnificent More or Less Ten.” It’s not just a needlessly imprecise exaggeration — Martyrs in the four figures!? Now I’m really pissed off! — it’s the kind of thing a lazy undergrad changes when she’s plagiarizing the encyclopedia.

Or if you were a British merchant seaman in the early 1800s, when Islamic pirates from the Barbary Coast captured, imprisoned and slave-traded more than 1 million European Christians…

Yes, that’s right. One million white slaves in Africa in 1812. That’s how they got country music.

This is the kind of black-is-white stat that TV conservatives love to drop to confuse Alan Colmes. All he has is a general sense from the preponderance of evidence vouched for by all historians, everywhere. S.E. Cupp has a one book from 2005 called Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters.

Its author, Robert Davis, concedes that everyone else who’s ever written a word about Barbary Coast piracy puts the number of Christian slaves at a few thousand. He also admits that he doesn’t have any new evidence besides some math he did in his head: “The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down.” Davis’ – oh, let’s call it a theory – has been accepted by, well, no one. That’s good enough for S.E. Cupp.

And she even fucks that up. Davis’ million slaves were captured over 300 years, between 1500 and 1800. Cupp’s million white people are enslaved “in the early 1800s.” This is not the same thing. This is a liar who doesn’t even know what she’s lying about.

I can’t wait for the book.

Source: Chris Kelly: S.E. Cupp Will Not be Silenced and/or Fact Checked.

Sorry For The Inconvenience

My domain host has raised its price for hosting my domain. Considering that blogging is just an idle hobby for me, I figure my money is best spent elsewhere. Therefore, I’m going back to my first blog site: http://supercynic.wordpress.com. Hopefully, you were automatically redirected here.

In the words of the late great John Candy in Vacation, “Park’s closed. The moose out front should have told ya.” But the park’s not closed. We’re just in a new (actually old) location.

Please update your RSS feeds/email subscriptions so you don’t miss out on anything. Also, I promise this is the last change I ever make. Ever.

My Semi-Annual Post About The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 1968, Rev. King was assassinated. Just the day before, he prophetically stated that he may not live a long life but that he just wanted “to do God’s will.” For once, I’ll shut up. His own words below are his best tribute. Also, below are links to two amazing performances of the song “Pride.” The first is a remake by John Legend and the 2nd is from U2’s Rattle & Hum tour in which they encourage the crowd to join them in remembering Rev. King.

MLK’s quote at the end of this John Legend video makes it even more worthwhile. If you don’t want to watch the video, he urges those in the civil rights movement, “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means — keep moving!”

“Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

A Counseling Session

Transcript from an imaginary session with a psychologist.

Doc: Good morning. Let’s jump right in, shall we? Tell me why you’re here.

TDW: Ooo boy. Why am I here? Getting deep right off the bat. (nervous laugh) No, seriously, I’m here because I have a love/hate relationship with blogging. I quit my blog a month ago and now I want it back. I think. Maybe.

Doc: Ah. Well, it’s obvious you like it or you never would have started one. So, let’s start with the hate part. What caused you to hate it?

TDW: After awhile, I started feeling pressure to entertain, to get comments, to get stats. I didn’t start blogging for all that. I started blogging to make myself laugh, and then if people were entertained or challenged to think about something in a different way, then all the better.

Doc: So you felt like you had to come up with entertaining stuff all the time and that you were no longer writing for the sheer pleasure of it.

TDW: That’s right. Wow, you’re good. Nailed it in 4 minutes. How much I owe? $8? (Doc makes no reaction.) That’s a joke, doc.

Doc: Yes, right. Of course. So, why not just go back to writing whenever you feel like it?

TDW: Well, it’s not that simple. If you don’t write often, people tend to move on. And I can’t write on a regular basis. I have a day job that often turns into a day/night job, so I get as busy as a bee and I just don’t have time to post on a reg–

Doc: Sorry to interrupt. But which would you say is busier, a bee or a beaver?

TDW: Pardon?

Doc: Some people say, “Busy as a beaver” and others say, “Busy as a bee.” You said you’re busy as a bee and I’d like to explore why you chose a bee over a beaver.

TDW: Ah, good one. Ok, so anyway, I get really busy at work–

Doc: No, wait. I really think we should explore this.

TDW: Seriously? Whether I think a beaver or a bee is the busiest?

Doc: Yes absolutely.

TDW (sighs & ponders): Are we talking sheer volume or as a percentage of body weight?

Doc: I don’t understand the question.

TDW: Well, it was your question; I’m just trying to determine the proper measure. Obviously, a beaver moves more stuff than a bee. I’ve never heard of bees moving entire trees and damming a river. On the other hand, bees pollinate our vegetation and, as a percentage of body mass, perhaps all that flying around actually involves more work than building a dam.

Doc: Do you analyze most things with this sort of intensity?

TDW: Frankly, doc, I didn’t choose to analyze this. I simply threw out a lame cliche about my workload and you asked about bees vs. beavers. You know, I probably chose “bee” because the word “beaver” makes me think of a vagina. I know that’s juvenile, but I can’t help it. Call it immature word association. It makes no sense to say, “I’m as busy as a vagina.” (Pauses to think then says slowly.) Unless, of course, you’re talking about a prostitute. That would be a busy vagina. Or perhaps a woman with a bladder issue.

Doc (stares mouth slightly agape)

TDW: What?

Doc (recovering): If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

TDW (exasperated): Oh, for fu– I refuse to answer that question.

Doc: Interesting.

TDW: Sorry, no. There’s nothing interesting about that comment, and there’s certainly nothing interesting about that question. Can we please get back to the topic of blogging.

Doc: There’s a lot here to digest. I think we’re going to need a few more sessions.

TDW (shrugs carelessly): Okey doke. Do you validate? Ha. That’s funny. Get it? Validate? Parking? You’re a psychologist dealing with the validation of people’s feelings? No? Whew. Tough crowd.

Not Brett Favre Gone. Really Gone.

Interviewer: TDW, are you really hanging up the keyboard so to speak and calling it quits on the blog?

TDW: Yep. Like Jimmy Dean, I’m going out in a blaze of glory.

Interviewer: Jimmy Dean? You mean James Dean. You know he’s dead. Are you telling me you’re off to die in a car crash?

TDW: James Dean? Never heard of him. No, Jimmy Dean. The sausage guy. He cooks tasty sausage — blaze, cooking, you don’t get it?

Interviewer [Amazed look on face]: You’re going out like a sausage maker?

TDW:   Forget it. I guess culinary metaphors don’t translate. I’ve decided to try my hand at something a little more involved than my blog.

Interviewer: So you’re going to write a book? I don’t mean to offend, but that sounds a bit cliche.

TDW: Offend who?

Interviewer: You. I said, “I don’t mean to offend you.”

TDW: That’s not what you said. You said you don’t mean to offend. You didn’t say who.  Seemed a little open-ended there. For all I know, you could have been talking about your guy here with the ponytail holding the fuzzy dildo over our heads.

Interviewer: That’s a boom mic. The fuzzy part keeps the outside noise down. Are you drunk?

TDW: I don’t think that’s germane to the topic we’re discussing. Lookit, I’m tired of blogging. I want to fail at something new. Something a little more challenging. And, no, I’m not off to write a book necessarily. I don’t know what I’m going to write. I may write nothing. I may write little poems on the back of cocktail napkins that I keep folded neatly in a hidden drawer behind the China cabinet that I only bring out on Arbor Day.

Interviewer: Did you just think of that off the top of your head?

TDW: Yep. And I got a million of ‘em.

Interviewer: Why not have as your last post some compilation of your best blogs with links to them? That seems like a good way to go out.

TDW: Now that’s cliche. If there’s one thing I learned from Jimi Hendrix, it’s don’t screw around with a “best of.” Make them think they are all the best of.

Interviewer: You were 2 years old when Hendrix died.

TDW: I didn’t say I learned it from him in person.

Interviewer: And there is a “best of” Hendrix album.

TDW: He was a drug addict! You think I’m going to listen to him?

Interviewer: I’d prefer if you told me you were drunk. That might explain more.

TDW [faking deafness]: Pardon? You say something?

Interviewer [resigned to the futility of having a serious discussion]: Ok, best of luck on your book/haiku/essay/screenplay/manifesto.

TDW: Thanks. You take care now. Oh, hey, you got $10 I could borrow?

The Book of Psalms In Eight Paragraphs

The Book of Psalms contains 150 psalms or songs supposedly written by King David.

Many people love them. Many people find solace in them. Many people see their own triumphs and tribulations reflected in the words of the psalms. I’m not one of those people.

I’ve read them all numerous times. Part of my daily routine involves reading an excerpt from the Psalms. Rarely do I find the inspiration from the Psalms that I do from, say, the Gospels or Paul’s letter to the Romans.

So, after yet another frustrating read through the Psalms, I decided to give voice to my frustration. Below is my summation of all 150 psalms in today’s language. For those who may find this irreverent, please read to the end of this post. You’ll see that I’m not a demoniac Satanist hell bent on destroying Christianity — that’s Obama’s job, remember?

The Book of Psalms as translated by The Daily Wit:

Lord, my life sucks.
There are bastards on the left of me.
Bastards on the right.
I can’t get through a day without
some bastard getting on my case.

Bills, bills, bills. I work my tail off
And for what? There are just more
bills to pay, and I seem to make less
money the more I work.
Again, my life sucks.

And where are you?
Day and night I look for you
But you’re hiding from me.
I can’t find you anywhere.
I’m surrounded by problems
And you’re MIA.

I give up. Life’s too hard.
All these bastards can pick
my bones dry. I just don’t give
a damn anymore what happens to me.

But then I called out for you once more.
And you heard me. I don’t know what
changed, but something sure has.
For no apparent reason, I’m changing my tune.
You’re coming to help!

Oh thank you so much for your abundant goodness.
As I totally change my attitude you can almost see
The sun shining behind me. A blue bird on my shoulder.
Boy, this is awesome.

Yes, here you are now.
We are going to show these bastards
A thing or two. C’mon you bastards!
What do you have to say for yourselves now?
Huh? Y’all want some of this?

Thank you Lord for kicking the crap
Out of all those bastards.
I’ll sing your praises from here on out.
You’re the best.

There you go. All 150 psalms boiled down to 8 paragraphs.

Now, for the more serious part. While I won’t bare my soul on this goofy-ass blog, I will give you a small glimpse into my view on religion, spirituality, and what it means to worship God.

This is from Thomas Merton:

[I]t is the will to pray that is the essence of prayer, and the desire to find God, to see Him and to love Him is the one thing that matters. If you have desired to know Him and love Him, you have already done what is expected of you, and it is much better to desire God without being able to think clearly of Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will.

The Trouble With Rocket Science

Listening to the news this morning on my daily drive into work, I heard the ubiquitous phrase, “It’s not like it’s rocket science.” This got my noggin to thinking.

I feel sorry for rocket scientists because this phrase puts them in certain conundrums. There are at least two problems these poor guys and gals face.

First, what do they say when they’re talking about something that should be easy? “It’s not like it’s . . . what I do.” That sounds too arrogant. They can’t reel that phrase out in a social setting. They have to adjust the phrase. But adjust it to what? There’s the problem. “It’s not like it’s quantum physics” just doesn’t have the same zip to it.

Second, when a rocket scientist is faced with something he’s unfamiliar with like, say, the automated checkout machine at the grocery store, this cliche can lead to some absurd interchanges.

Automated checkout machine (ACM): “Please scan the item and place it in the bag.”

Rocket Scientist: “I am scanning the item.” [Growing frustrated as he repeatedly swipes a gallon of milk over the scanner plate.] “I’m scanning, dammit, I’m scanning.”

ACM: “Please scan the item and place it in the bag.”

Rocket Scientist: “I’m scanning, you devil woman. You read the scan and I’ll place it in the bag. Deal?” [Scan doesn't register.] “Agh! Scan dammit. Scan dammit. Scan dammit!!!”

Customer waiting in line: “C’mon buddy. Could you hurry it up? This ain’t rocket science, you know?”

Rocket Scientist: “I know it’s not rocket science! If it were, I’d be done by now. You just back off before-”

ACM: “Please scan the item and place it in the bag.”

Next thing we know, the poor fish-out-of-water rocket scientist is punching the machine. All because of a worn-out cliche.

And it is worn out, isn’t it? It’s certainly outdated. Is rocket science really that hard anymore? We launch the space shuttle so often it’s like a Delta Airlines flight leaving Atlanta-Hartsfeld Airport. We’ve launched thousands of satellites, so I think it’s time for a new cliche.

Let’s give the rocket scientists a break.