Owes Me a Beer

In college I worked with a fella named Len. Len (his real name btw) was big on trying to get laid and chased ANYTHING in a skirt. I hesitated when he told me how he fixed us up with these two girls he met, but I said yes, since he agreed to drive and pay our way into the comedy club that he said we were going to. I figured I’d get snockered, have a few laughs and watch him try to do a Captain Kirk.

We drove to Hamtramck to pick up the girls, and they’re a no show, but her mom tells Len of this bar they were going out to, they wanted to see the band.

We’re off to Roseville. I guess they were so hot for Len’s bod that they needed to drive across town to get a beer to cool down. Did I mention that it’s now about 6:00 on a Friday? Van Dyke to Seven Mile to Groesbeck, rush hour traffic northbound on a Friday, if you haven’t been a passenger in a car driven by a hormonally desperate boy hot on the trail of some polish chick, don’t, the life you save may be your own.

We make it to the bar, alive. I pay my two bucks. There is one table left, next to the stage half hidden behind the stage and a stack of speakers. The waitress comes buy and takes our order. This guy wearing a beard and shoulder length scraggly hair comes over and asks if he can join our table. I really don’t want him to but there isn’t another seat.

About then the manager gets on stage and announces the band isn't comming and folks start to head out the door to get their money back. Len is still convinced that the girls will show, wants to wait. My beer shows up and the waitress asks the scruffy man if he wants anything, he orders a Strohs. The waitress is a little slow getting back to our table, Len gets up to scout for our dates and I end up talking to Scruffy the Bum.

The waitress brings Scruffy his beer, he pats himself down looking for his nonexistent wallet, that he “forgot”. No dates, no comedy club, no band and now I’m buying beers for bums. This sucks. The place is mostly empty now but Scruffy is still hanging out talking about lots of crap. I’m not really paying attention. After about round four the manger comes by. Scruffy the Bum asks him if he’d mind if he played a few songs. The manager gets a big smile on his face and tells him ok.

Scruffy the bum finds a guitar, tunes it up, sets up on a bar stool, fools with the mike and then…

“On a long lonesome highway east of Omaha…”

After that tune he did another and another and it turned into a two and half hour set. About half way in he stopped and said, “I get a lot of flack for this song cause some think I sold out doing it.” Then he told us about how he was setting in bar in Detroit and some UAW guys were talking about how the industry was going down and they asked him to do something to help it out because they just got laid off from Chevrolet. Then he sang “Like a Rock”.

We never did catch up to those girls but, once I saw Bob Seger play acoustic for two bucks while setting 10 feet from the stage, and now you know how Chevy got their longest lasting theme song.

Coming for a Better Life?

I think Taylor is the only person here who knows this about me. In college I met a girl, we started a friendship and it might have been going someplace more. I decided to learn about her culture and even took some lessons to learn her native language. The reason for this little glimpse into the nearly romantic relationships of my past will be clear in a minute.

I have had the privilege to travel around to many countries. One small talent I have is the ability to guess with a great deal of accuracy the language someone is speaking, even if I can’t always follow 100% of what’s being said. For instance, spoken German sounds very different in Munich, than in Geneva. Both are speaking German but the Swiss have an entirely different language going. I can tell them apart even though my vocabulary is limited.

As you know I live in BFE Wyoming. Today I made a trip to the gas station to get a coke and a bag of chips. There were four other guys in the station. All four had dark hair and olive skin. The first two were Mexicans who were speaking Spanish.

The Mexicans got in line ahead of me, paid and left. I was next and paid for my chips and started to leave. That’s when I heard the other two olive skinned men dressed like day workers talking. They were having a disagreement about whether the hot dogs were (Taylor correct me here if I’m messing this part up) “houb hasty”.

For those of you who don’t know or can’t make out my phonetic spelling “houb hasty” is Farsi for religiously good. In the context of the conversation we’d probably say kosher. They were trying to figure out if the dogs had pork in them.

I went out to my truck and got in and started backing out to leave. The two Iranians got into the SUV with the Mexicans. We've got a lot more than wet backs coming through that southern boarder.

Ephesians 5

Eph 5:22-25

22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. 24 But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her;
NASB

I have had this verse explained to me thus:

Women are to submit/respect their husbands if he is a good Christian man who is loving her like Christ loved the Church.

Do you agree?

I don’t, although I was taught to see this verse this way since I was a small child. We tend to see the right to be loved as unconditional. The man is to love his wife unconditionally, as Christ loved the Church.

In our culture we often say that respect is earned. Is that what is being taught here? It’s not uncommon for a wife to say she’ll submit/respect her husband when he does X. This is just a way of her putting a condition on her respect/submission. What if her husband put similar conditions on his love for her?

I believe that this passage applies unconditionally to both men and women. The Christian woman is to be in unconditional submission to her husband and the Christian man is to unconditionally love and care for his wife. This passage has nothing to say to unbelievers, indeed the Bible has little to say to an unbeliever at all, beyond repent.

You might be thinking that this is all well and good if both the man and women are doing this for each other. So what happens if one spouse believes and the other does not, or one is doing their part and the other is not? The person with the most spiritual maturity will implement God’s requirement on their life first, and trust Him to work out the rest.

OK go ahead and word em up.

WTW – Red Neck Store Keepers

This don’t qualify as white trash, but it sure is redneck. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Arkansans ain’t tolerant of folks of different heritages. Look here at this special they ran for Passover.

Beth Fails to Grasp

While wasting time at Vox’s today I ran across this little comment:

“I just love these posts! They go so far in restoring my faith in a completely male led society.”

Not sure if she was serious, I clicked the link to the Homepage of God’s Warrior Princes . Wait, don’t go there yet, you need at least one more cup of coffee and a hit of acid.

The first thread on the page was “Don’t Tell…Be Silent”. Just reading the title you’d think its about the evils of a women not running her mouth 24/7. Unfortunately not, that might have been interesting.

Instead what we have is post about a Bible passage, 1 Peter 3:1-4. For those of you who haven’t seen a Bible since your friend dragged you to Sunday School in 2^nd grade, the passage is about how a women can lead her husband to Christ by being a good wife and good example. That’s it, that’s the entire meaning behind what’s said in those verses. Apparently men aren’t prone to being nagged into heaven.

Beth goes on to rant against some book someone wrote about the verse:

“They are going to tell us what God REALLY meant. I must say that this is my favorite sentence: He knows she is not going to discuss him with her pastor or friend. What a gift! He knows that he can abuse her and the children, but he has managed to skillfully silence her so that she cannot even seek help.”

Follow the femilogic here: Being a good example equals being an abused wife. Honey here’s a clue for you, men don’t like every intimate detail of their life shared with your friends, that’s all these folks are saying. When you blab about your husbands faults you are running him down and disrespecting him as a man. Exactly how deeply should a good Christian woman be allowed to wound her mate?

The verse you allude to in your title 1 Cor 14:34, isn’t about keeping silent so you can be abused, its about keeping silent in church, arguably because you’re not making any sense.

Insufficient Brain Activity

A South American scientist from Argentina, after a lengthy study, has discovered that people with "IBA" or insufficient brain activity read blogs with their hand on the mouse.


Don't bother taking it off now, it's too late…


Was your hand on the mouse? Yes or no in the comments please. We don't need to know what the other hand was doing.