The Humor Page

That’s what I thought I was reading – the Humor Page!  Then I looked up at the top, and realized that it was the Religion Page of the newspaper; two Christian articles, both by women.

The first was the usual tale of a young woman being told that having unmarried sex made her a terrible sinner. After slipping, and giving it away once, she lost all self-respect and began throwing it away indiscriminately.

The article was titled, ‘Why I chose abstinence again.’ The sub-title was, ‘Despite feeling let down by my Church, I still want to walk in the way of my faith.’ Oh….  So many qualified psychotherapists!  So few people who really, REALLY need the help, actually getting it.

This is masochism! ‘You’ve hurt me before, so go ahead and hurt me again.’ This is hypocrisy!  She, and others, was told that ‘sex was the cause of all the problems in a romantic relationship,’…. and she wants to let this Church run/ruin her life again.

KARMA, KARMA, KARMA, KAMELEON

The second article had my “Tough luck! Couldn’t happen to a nicer person” meter pegged over to maximum.  It was titled, “On our second date, we went to Church.”

A 26-year-old, single, white female, perhaps getting a little desperate, set up a Meet-A-Pervert (No, wait.  That’s Craigslist) Tinder account.  Seeing several others who listed as atheist or pagan, she made sure to include the descriptor, “Jesus is my homeboy.”

During a nice, restaurant first-date, her Good Christian young lad mentioned that he was surprised at the number of non-Christians listed, and asked her exactly what she meant by her statement. Following a chaste, curbside, goodnight handshake, she suggested that their next date should be going to church.

He laughed, and she thought it was because he felt that she was joking.

He took her to his Catholic Church that Sunday. He taught her when to stand, when to kneel, and when to wave her hands magically in the air – but he wouldn’t let her go up to the front for the juice and cookies buffet.

Still hungry, they went for a lovely brunch afterward, and she believed that God had a plan for her.  They parted company amiably, and she believed that He had provided her a companion.

A couple of days later, choir boy sent her a message, saying that he just felt that something was missing.  He dumped her, by text, because she wasn’t a good enough Christian (Catholic)!   😆

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Marriage Isn’t Just A Word: It’s A Sentence

The wife found her husband sitting on the back
porch crying. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Do you remember when we were dating and your
father, the judge, told me that if I didn’t marry you, he
would send me to prison for 20 years?” he said.

“Yes” she responded, “so what?”

“I would have got out of prison today!” he sobbed.

***

An attorney was sitting in his office late one
night, when Satan appeared before him. The Devil
told the lawyer, ‘I have a proposition for you.
You can win every case you try, for the rest of
your life. Your clients will adore you, your
colleagues will stand in awe of you, and you will
make embarrassing sums of money. All I want in
exchange is your soul, your wife’s soul, your
children’s souls, the souls of your parents,
grandparents, and parents in law, and the souls
of all your friends and law partners.’

The lawyer thought about this for a moment, then
asked, ‘So, what’s the catch?’

***

Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.

***

If it looks easy, it’s hard.
If it looks hard, it’s impossible.
If it looks impossible,
it’s due tomorrow. At 8 AM.

***

I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather…
Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in
his car.

***

What did the blonde say when she looked inside
the box of Cheerios?

‘Oh look, donut seeds’

***

I didn’t work my way to the top of the food chain
to eat vegetables.

***

A young couple met with their pastor to set a date for their wedding. When the pastor asked whether they preferred a contemporary or a traditional service, they opted for the contemporary.

On the big day, a major storm forced the groom to take an alternate route to the church. The streets were flooded, so he rolled up his pant legs to keep his trousers dry. When he finally reached the church, his best man rushed him into the sanctuary and up to the altar, just as the ceremony was starting.

“Pull down your pants,” the pastor whispered.

“Uh, Reverend, I’ve changed my mind,” the groom responded. “I think I would prefer the traditional service.”

*********************

😆

If Wishes Were Horses

If wishes were horses….there’d be a big pile of manure around any significant discussion. We are a strange species, willing – anxious – to deny, or argue what others among us regard as perceived truth.

On my recent, A View Of Islam post, it was all going so well, seemingly, until I got the following response to this paragraph:

‘In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now dozens of “no-go” zones within major cities across the country that the police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.’

What a load of ****. There are absolutely NO ‘no-go’ zones of any description in the UK. British law applies and is enforced throughout the UK, without exception.  Donald Trump had to apologise after making a similar, and untrue, statement about the UK city of Birmingham. I appreciate that you are only quoting from someone else in your blog but to give publicity to a totally untrue statement is demeaning to your blog and yourself.

I snidely protested;

Enforced the way it is in the barrios of East L.A. or Little Cuba in Miami? In my quiet, well-behaved city of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, two blocks from my home, is an enclave of 75 houses, full of people with beige skin and head coverings. In 15 years of living here, I have never seen a police car enter or patrol it.

That earned me this reply;

 In the UK, British law applies to everyone. ‘No-go’ areas that police do not enter just don’t exist. I cannot comment on Canada, I have only been there twice.

He reminds me of a militant atheist, desperately trying to ‘prove that there is no God.’  He knows what he wants, what he feels should be, what he believes, and what he wants others to believe, and just ignores any evidence to the contrary.

I especially liked his ad hominem attack on Canada, and his implied claim that he is well enough off to have travelled here a couple of times, to set us Colonials straight.

He’s right that British law applies everywhere in the country, but if he truly believes that there are no areas where policemen don’t bother to go, his ass is in the air, right beside the ostrich with its head in the sand.

I recently read a post from a young female who attended Catholic Church, but disagreed with almost everything the priest propounded as Church tenets – no gay marriage, hate and fear homosexuals, no divorce, no birth control, and no married priests.

I congratulated her on her independent thinking, and asked her what she was going to do about her contrary beliefs. Other than her blog, was she going to go public, to the priest, to her family, to the congregation? Would she leave the Church?

“Oh, no,” she replied, “I’m going to keep going to Church.” But she’s not! Now she’s just attending a social club – and there’s nothing wrong with that – if she, and others like her, have the integrity to admit it.

If your cat has kittens in the barn, you can call them horses; just don’t try to ride them.  If wishes were horses, beggars might ride.  These buggers are riding the hobby-horse of their own imagination.

A blonde, who has always wanted to ride a horse, decides to try it one day. She carefully mounts, clutches the reins, and they’re off.  Not used to the powerful motion, she has trouble staying in the saddle.  Suddenly one of her feet comes out of the stirrup, and she falls forward onto the horse’s neck.

She holds on desperately, but begins to slide off the side of the horse. Lower and lower she hangs.  Her other foot is now jammed in the stirrup, and she winds up hanging almost upside down.  Finally, her head touches, and the horse’s strong movements begin to bang it against the ground.

She feels pain, and begins to see stars. Just when she fears that she will lose consciousness and die….the manager of the Wal-Mart rushes over and unplugs the horse.  😉

Flash Fiction #107

PHOTO PROMPT – © Adam Ickes

BRIDGE OF SIZE

It was love at first sight when Rintoo and Sasheen first met at the little church at the bottom of their long, marshy valley, when they were 14.

It was much too far to walk all the way around, but Rintoo had a plan. Whenever he had some free time; post by post, plank by plank, the causeway grew. Finally, it was finished.

On his way back from a visit to Sasheen, he met a local farmer, wandering across.
“But I spent my labor and timber!”

He became rich when he put a tollbooth in the middle – and married Sasheen.

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

THE DAY I FELL DOWN

Chantry Island lighthouse off Southampton Ontario

 

Did I lead a charmed life as an active, adventurous young boy?? Did I actually put enough preventive thought and safety planning into some of my more life-and-limb-threatening activities?  Or is it just that what was, to a horrified adult retrospect, not really that dangerous?

How did some of us ever survive to grow up? Most (but not all) of my questionable young antics involved getting high – I loved to climb things.  I have written of being 9 years old, and scrambling to the topmost branches of a mighty, old oak, located on the highest elevation in town.

When I entered my teens, a trusted friend and I often crossed the river on the arching steel support trusses, beneath the new bridge, ignoring the possible 50 foot plunge to the river below. In the summer by boat, and in the winter by walking across frozen lake ice, groups of us went to an island a mile offshore, and climbed to the top of the 100 foot lighthouse.

It is possible that large rocks, and chunks of logs got up the inner stairways, and accidently fell on the roof of the attached, unused, derelict, century-old storage shed.  When the caretakers bricked up the entrance and added a steel door with a stout padlock, I went around the back, and used the 1 ½ inch copper lightning-ground cable to reach the observation level.  Apparently, only to prove I could.  These were reconnaissance missions only – no bombing runs.  The view of a flat lake, whether liquid or frozen, isn’t really that spectacular.

In the early 1950s, what passed for the cognoscenti of our little town were all agog, waiting for the release of a book. A ‘famous writer’ from Toronto, 100 miles south, had researched 8 lighthouses in the north end of Lake Huron, including ours.  When the book finally arrived at the General Store, I managed to sneak a copy off the shelf, and quickly read what he’d written.

He said that, after climbing the circular metal stairway inside the lighthouse, the view from the top was magnificent…. only; our lighthouse had solid wooden floors every ten feet, for storage, with unrailed wooden stairs ascending from level to level, East to West, then North to South, etc.

I don’t know if he ever actually set foot on the island, or just did his research from the pub. It was the first time I caught an author lying to me.  Sadly, it wasn’t the last.

Alone, and with my friend’s help, I reached the top of many of the town’s public buildings. The arena was easy, but boring.  I got to the roof of one church, and the top of the bell-tower of another.  He and I sat on the roof of the three-storey bank building at the main intersection.  When his mother was late, and he was locked out of the second floor apartment in the building next to it, we scampered up the front and went in the balcony door, or up to the roof and down through the skylight.

The view from the top of the 120 foot water tower, next to the oak on the hill, was worth it. The climb was simple.  A steel ladder reached to within 10 feet of the ground, but was right beside the overflow pipe.  A foot placed here, and a grab there, and soon we were at the top.

It was so easy that my girlfriend caught us lurking near it one evening, as she walked to the library, and wanted to know what we were up to.  When we explained, she demanded to accompany us.  With him pulling and me providing a shoulder, we all soon enjoyed the lights in the town 5 miles away.  Crazy!

The day I fell down, I started with my feet firmly on the ground. I was in Grade 7, and returned to school after a September lunch break, to find a gaggle of boys surrounding a burly Grade 8 lad.  Slowing to eavesdrop on the conversation, I heard that he was bragging that he knew a way to make someone unconscious. ‘Bet you don’t!’ ‘I bet I do!’

To prove his claim, he needed a victim willing volunteer.  Why is everyone looking at me?  “Now you need to take a deep breath and hold it.  I’m gonna get behind you and give you a bear-hug, and squeeze you really, really hard.  Don’t forget to hold your breath!”

….and I woke up with my face embedded in the blacktop. My nose was bloody.  My lips, especially the top one, were swollen, and I’d lost a tiny chip off the corner of one front incisor.  None of us, me included, really thought this thing through, did we?

“Why did you let me fall down?” “Well, you didn’t collapse.”  “How could I?  You were holding me up.”  He’d set me down, but apparently my knees were locked.  Instead of winding up in a limp pile at his feet, (would that have been any better?) I had pitched forward, like the mighty oak up the street, plowing a furrow with my face.

Nowadays, I ingest an OxyContin, and take along a pillow if I have to wind down a window in the car. Surely none of you readers were as foolish as me.  Do you have a childhood escapade you wish to admit to?   😉

Book Review #12

This will be a review/discussion of a somewhat older book with the odd, Latin title of Cymbalum Mundi. First, let me just say that if, like me, you ever get a chance to read this book….DON’T!

Some time ago, I published a post about how The Church, at the beginning of the Renaissance, made torture a competitive sport, offering rewards, both secular and spiritual, for winners. Jim Wheeler made me aware of a book titled A World Lit Only By Fire, a history of the excesses and hypocrisies of the time.

I obtained it by asking for an inter-library loan. Within its pages, it mentioned another book which listed and mocked certain Church practices.  Always willing to learn more of the failures of the best of the Good Christians, when I returned ‘World’, I requested another special loan.

This book was written in 1537. The title is in Latin, because back then, all serious works were written in Latin, so that educated people in different countries could all read them.  I requested an English translation.  Two weeks later, I got a call to pick it up.  I left the wife in the car, and when I brought it out, I tossed it into her lap.  Fortunately, before I got out of the parking lot, she asked, “Do you read French?”

The author was a Frenchman named Bonaventure Des Periers. While he titled it in Latin, the original text is all French.  I might get the gist of a current French document, but not the detail this book required.  I immediately returned it, and the Library Lady told me, “You should have told us you wanted an English version.”   👿

Two weeks later, I got another call, and carefully checked it before taking delivery. The French copy came from the University of Waterloo, 5 miles north, in our twin city.  The second, English copy, also came from U of W.  I’ve personally borrowed from Wilfrid Laurier University, our neighbors’ second, smaller school, but let the librarians do the work on this one.

The Book – Cymbalum Mundi [The Noise of the World]
(The anticipated applause of his adoring readers)

The Author – Bonaventure Des Periers

The Review – I don’t know what I expected to get with this book, but I didn’t get it. It came with 4 pages of Foreword, 28 pages of Introduction, 5 pages of Notes, and 4 pages of Literary References – and none of it actually explained only 74 pages of allegory and allusion.

It consists of five small segments, beginning with a fake letter to a fake friend, explaining how he carefully translated this from the original Greek. This is followed by four small scenes from a Shakespeare-like play; only, A Midsummer’s Night Dream is lucid and crystal clear, compared to this.

Jupiter sends his son Mercury to Earth, to have an old book rebound. He falls in with three brigands who steal the book from his bag, by replacing it with a worthless book, the same size and shape, while they are drinking at an inn.

NOW:

Does Jupiter represent God?
Does Mercury, the Messenger, represent Jesus?
Is the book Mercury brings, the tattered Old Testament?
Does the new, rebound book represent the New Testament?
Are the thieves the rulers of the Church, who steal The Word, to sell to the masses and enrich themselves?
Is the fake book they substitute, the code of rules the Church uses to control the laity?
Is the hostess of the inn a stand-in for the Virgin Mary?
Is the real food and wine she serves them a denial of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation?

The problem is, he never actually says. One well-known historian, with a pile of evidence, says yes, while another, just as renowned, and with as big a pile of proof, says the exact opposite.  You can ‘make’ this book say anything you want it to.

I had hoped that it might show more of the excesses and failings of the Church. What it shows, is the tap-dancing necessary for any writer of this period to present some doubt, and cause people to think, without ending up chained to a post, tap-dancing on a large bonfire.

It was interesting, and in the end educational, but not really fulfilling.

Institute Of Higher Learning

On the first day of college, the Dean addressed
the students, pointing out some of the rules:

“The female dormitory will be out-of-bounds
for all male students, and the male dormitory to
the female students.

Anybody caught breaking this rule will be fined
$20 the first time.” He continued, “Anybody caught
breaking this rule the second time will be fined
$60. Being caught a third time will cost you a
fine of $180. Are there any questions?”

At this point, a male student in the crowd
inquired: “How much for a season pass?”

***

Little Johnny missed his final exam due to the
flu, but he’d done so well during the year that
the teacher suggested to the principal that they
gave him an oral exam to make up for the test he
missed. The principal agreed so they called
Little Johnny into the office and explained to
him what they were going to do.

First the teacher asked, “Johnny, what does a
cow have four of, that I only have two of?”
Little Johnny replied, “Legs.”

Next the teacher asked, “Johnny, what do you
have in your pants that I don’t have in my
pants?” Little Johnny replied, “Pockets.”

Finally the teacher asked, “Johnny, what is
the capital of Italy?” Little Johnny replied.
“Rome.”

The teacher turned to the principal and asked,
“What do you think, should we pass him?” The
principal replied, “Better not ask me, I got
the first two wrong.”

***

This guy keeps falling asleep in church and his
wife’s getting sick of it. She decides she’ll
bring a pin to church with her and poke him when
he starts falling asleep. They’re in church the next
Sunday and he starts falling asleep right as the
preacher’s saying, “and the Lord God created the
heavens and the earth.” His wife pokes him and
he jumps up yelling “HALLELUIA!!”

The preacher, looking startled, says “very good, very
good.” A little while later he starts falling
asleep again as the preacher’s saying, “and the
Lord parted the Red Sea for Moses”. His wife
pokes him and he jumps up yelling, “PRAISE THE LORD!!”

The preacher exclaims, “Very good, very
good!” A little while later he falls asleep again
just as the preacher says, “and what did Eve say
to Adam after they had their second child?” His
wife pokes him again and he jumps up yelling,
“STICK THAT THING IN ME AGAIN AND I’M GONNA
BREAK IT OFF!”