THE SPLINTER

Two days ago I was splitting wood when the axe handle I was using shattered in my hands. The only casualty was the index fnger of my right hand. It looked like I had stuck it though the bars of a have-a-heart trap to taunt a caged raccoon, and didn't get it out in time. I went inside and allowed Sarah to minister to my wounds. She produced tweezers and some hydrogen peroxide (Mom, why did we use iodine when I was little? I mean, honestly, that stuff smarts!), and once everything was cleaned up it was obvious that there was a sizable splinter buried near the knuckle. We both took turns trying to pry it out, but neither of us could get enough purchase on its tip to get the job done. All we did was succeed in removing the visible portions of the splinter which left what remained buried deep enough that any proper effort to find and remove it would have technically qualified as surgery. I decided to just ignore the splinter, reasoning that eventually the flesh would heal around it and my body would make its peace with the hickory it harbored.

The next day my finger was swollen and uncomfortable and I was experiencing difficulty bending it, but still I muddled through the day convinced that the throbbing pain in my finger was better than the pain that would certainly come from trying to get it out. However, after dinner the discomfort became bad enough that I decided to give it another go. Tweezers in hand I sat down, and remembering how Tom Hank's character had popped his bad tooth out in Castaway with the blade of an ice skate and a rock, I set to my task with grim resolve to see the thing through.

It hurt.

The greatest difficulty lay in simply finding the splinter which, as I already told you, was pretty well buried. Then, once it had been located, I had to widen the wound so I could get the tweezers around its blood-pinkened tip which was ensconced in my angry flesh. By the time that was accomplished, beads of sweat were standing out on my forehead. If I had been a character in a western I would have hastily poured out some whiskey into a clinkey little glass cup and downed it in one shakey, desperate gulp before proceeding with the extraction. I took a drink of diet pepsi and thus fortified I took up the tweezers and went back to work.

Several tugs failed to budge the splinter, which thus necessitated sliding the tweezer prongs down along its sides to get a better grip. It hurt. Then squeezing the tweezers tightly and gritting my teeth I pulled smoothly, and the jagged length of hickory, as long as a penny is wide and as thick as a match stick in places, slid out, and blood welled up in the hole it left behind.

I glanced over at Miles (3), who had been standing at my elbow the whole time. He was carefully examining his own knuckles with a look of grave concern on his face.

"Do you have a splinter, Miles?"

He ran into the next room, crying over his shoulder, "I don't have spinter!"

"Miles, let me check."

He started crying.

GUN RIGHTS-''Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Benjamin Franklin

I am not a gun owner.

I do not hunt.

I am a father of four small children.

I have been shot at.

YET

I say confidently that I would rather live in a society that scares me sometimes than one with less liberty. Freedom is frightening but not half so much as the loss of it.

DEAR KIDS-

As I write, (January 17, 2013) I have no way of knowing what kind of America you are reading this in, but I am sure that it is different from the one I know today, and it is certainly different from the one I grew up in. The reason why I can be sure of that is because the American experience has always been a moving target. America's citizens are like passengers on a train for whom the spiritual and socio-political landscape is forever changing. We are steadily rumbling toward the horizon of our national destiny. It has always been so with America. Remember the story of Rip Van Winkle that I read to you at bedtime when you were little? He fell asleep on the train, metaphorically speaking, and look at how much changed during his nap in the Catskills. The scenery is always changing for us Americans. I remember being surprised when my Grandma McCuen told me about seeing Civil War veterans in fourth of July parades when she was a little girl, and now we have an African American President in the White House. That's a good sort of change, but the direction of our country doesn't give me much room for optimism. I can't help but wonder what the view is like from your seat as you are reading this, and, even more, I wonder what you think of it.

I'm worried about you.

The train seems to be picking up speed.

Stay Strong in the Lord,

Daddy

PRODUCT REVIEW- BURGER KING'S ANGRY WHOPPER

I am on record as saying that hamburgers are the best food in the world. Therefore the quest to find the best hamburger in the world is one and the same as trying to find the best food in the world. The official food of the BFZ is Carl's Jr.'s Jalapeno Burger, but I am open minded and always willing to give challengers a fair hearing. I was recently intrigued by commercials I had seen for Burger King's "Angry Whopper." That is easily the best name for a burger that I have ever encountered, but would its taste live up to its name?

Simply put, no. 

The Angry Whopper is wade with spicy crispy onions, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, and spicy Angry Sauce. It was definitely delicious, and also certainly an improvement over the plain old whopper, but the name "Angry Whopper" oversold it a bit I think. It is not a serious challenger to the Jalapeno Burger. The taste just didn't have enough attitude to warrant such a handle. Maybe, the Miffed Whopper, Annoyed Whopper, or Passive-Aggressive Whopper would be more appropriate. I suppose that they could have WAY oversold it with names like "Enraged Whopper," "She-Bear Robbed of its Cubs Whopper," or "Jihadi Whopper," but still it just didn't seem "angry" to me. Maybe it's named the Angry Whopper because it's made from mad cows. One thing I did appreciate about the Angry Whopper was the addition of bacon. I have never known bacon to make a burger worse.

Still, it was a good burger nonetheless. I must concede it had strength. It was better than average.

Wa-Hetch Na-Hay!

MIDNIGHT CITY by M83

You know that feeling when someone is scratching your back and their nails find that perfect spot? When they settle on an itch you didn’t even know you had and begin to scratch round and round and round like a cyclone of satisfaction?

“Oooh, Yeah! Right there!”

If you know what that feels like, then you also know the feeling when their nails move on before you’re ready for them to.

“No, no, no! Go back!”

The other night I was driving home in the car when Midnight City by M83 came on the radio. That song was scratching an itch I didn’t even know I had. It succeeded in creating a mood within me that I can’t seem to reach myself. It’s otherwise inaccessible. My fingers just…won’t…reach! It’s an empty song, I know that, like a Gregorian chant to a vapid lifestyle- “The city is my church,”- but the mood it creates was scratching an itch somewhere in the middle of the back of my consciousness where I can’t seem to reach. It’s a difficult thing to articulate fully, maybe because we can only explain that which we understand. I can’t lay my intellect on the spot any more than my fingers.

But then there’s that awful saxophone at the end of the song. It’s like the nails moving on before I am ready for them to. “No, no, no! Go back!”

ROBERT GRIFFIN III

I buried my heart at wounded knee.

DANIEL 4:19-33

If a man is given up to madness, and like a beast made unsafe and full of raging nonsense- if he becomes unmanageable, unwashed and governed by animal urges- it can not be fairly said that he has been reduced to an unnatural state, but rather that previously he had been elevated by common grace above that which is natural to fallen man. The mad man is altogether in his right and natural mind. It is those who we deem “sane” who exhibit something extraordinary.

"CAMEL CAR"

According to sitemeter, the Bummer-Free Zone was visited today at 10:37am by someone from the city of Muttrah in the nation of Oman. They had googled the phrase "camel car," which brought them to this post. I wonder what they thought of my idea, but even more I wonder what they were looking for.

OVERHEARD

"Girlfriend, I got it. Don't even worry about it!"
Middle-aged woman with two young boys (perhaps ages 9 and 7) to a second woman of like age who was accompanied by a young girl (perhaps 7 years of age). The two women and their respective progeny appeared to be traveling in company. They had brought a cart load of stuff to the check out at Fairway Market and when the second woman offered to chip in for the goods the first woman offered the above response.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah, no worries. I got it no problem"

"Thanks."

"No worries, girlfriend. Were you gonna get some wheat thins?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot."
After the second woman and her daughter shuffled off in search of wheat thins the first woman turned to her boys and said the following;

"I got you boys some diet 7-Up. You can make little cocktails with your OJ."
One of the boys began to speak excitedly in an infantile voice in anticipation of a diet 7-Up and OJ mocktail, which prompted his mother to say the following;

"No baby talk. You're too old for that."

Fairway Market- Idyllwild, CA

Full of worry
Scurry and hurry
Is the life of the mouse

For cats and hawks
The owl and fox
And many more hunt the mouse

In fact there are few
On whose menu
You do not find the mouse

BIGFOOT ZONE (BFZ)

Skeptics and believers are holding their collective breath waiting for the results of a peer-reviewed, five-year study conducted by Texas veterinarian Melba S. Ketchum who claims to have isolated enough DNA samples from alleged Bigfoot hair, blood, saliva and urine to prove the existence of the legendary beast. Check out the article and attendant videos by clicking HERE.

THE ROAD BETWEEN

Here and there is evidence that a road once connected my place to yours. In places, parallel ruts filled with leaves and pine needles are still plainly visible running alongside a water-filled ditch. In other places, however, trees and bushes have found root in the midst of what was once the road, and downed trees and branches further obscure the forgotten route. A culvert, which was originally designed to contain the flow of a seasonal brook which intersected the road, is now plugged with all sorts of debris. At some point the stream flooded against the plugged culvert, and now its banks are littered downstream with crushed white gravel that used to cover the surface of the road.

At one time, someone believed the road important enough to defend it against the encroaching forest and invest money toward its maintenance. It used to be a ribbon of white through the green woods. I wonder why the road was surrendered. Why did people stop coming and going along that way?  Most likely, it was a victim of disuse over the quiet years as leaves settled and trees fell uncontested across the traveled way between my place and yours.

THIS YEAR, I HAVE VOWED TO BREAK MY ALL TIME POSTING RECORD OF 372, WHICH WAS SET IN 2011.

373 POSTS OR BUST!!!

COLORFUL PEOPLE

Imagine a world where people changed colors depending on what emotion they were feeling. Lust, anger, embarassment, envy, love, hate, shame, sadness, etc... would all have a distinct color. In what ways would this change society as we know it?


It would be a colorful time for boys going through puberty. Speaking legally, it would no longer be inadmissable for a person to speak about someone else's feelings and state of mind in court. Politicians couldn't get away with their fakery and false compassion. Christians couldn't get away with their fakery and false compassion. People would certainly wear more clothing and makeup to disguise their emotions. Maybe the practice of covering our emotions would be viewed by the rest of society as shady and untrustworthy, or maybe just understandable. We kind of do the same thing with sunglasses today. Would it possible to control our emotions to the degree that we could actually change our skin color. I've never been able to stop blushing when I wanted to so probably not. It would take all of the drama out of TV, Movies, and the theater- unless actors actually felt the emotion they were portraying or the footage was doctored to appear as if they did. Colors would be so much more symbolic. Everything from national flags to the colors used in advertisements would change. It's interesting to think of certain scenes from the Bible as if the characters skin color was changing with their emotions. Peter's color would have gone from confident and trusting to doubtful as he slipped into the water. Thomas would have changed from a sad and doubting hue to the brightest joy as he felt the nail pierced hands of his savior. It would have been interesting to see the array  of Christ's coloring on the cross as he became sin, or would He have been the deepest shade of love?  And pan to all of the colors in the crowd of onlookers. Things would change profoundly if we could visibly see each others emotions. Color blindness would be considered a horrible affliction like being deaf. What would it mean to be born an albino? 

What if emotions weren't primarily inhabitants of our inner worlds, but equally public? It would completely change society if our emotions were known as soon as we felt them. I wonder if it would be for the better.