Patrick’s Rants

I think
Therefore I’m single

I would like to add two new TLAs to our language. A TLA is simply a Three Letter Acronym. These two, listed in the title may come as a surpise that they don’t already exist - at least where I’ve been reading. The first is the De Materialized Zone (read that carefully) the second is (Accidental) Butt Crack Exposure. Sure, you might be thinking, that’s really a four letter acronym, but this is my blog after all and it’s what I say it is.

These thoughts came to me as we were eating lunch and I had a BCE due to DMZ. That is to say, there was a girl - young “lady” - at the next table who had a DMZ. You know what I mean. The shirt is too short, the pants are hip huggers, riding low on the waist and she sat down inevitably pulling the shirt up and the pants down due to buttock expansion. And she didn’t try to rematerialize. That’s right. Full BCE the entire time she was sitting there, perhaps enjoying the cool breeze at the top of the butt crack split - just south of the 48th parallel.

Normally, fashion grabs me the other way. I marvel at women who dress in the short shirts and the low pants - or even better wear sweats with the top rolled down two inches - and constantly try to prevent the DMZ by tugging their shirts back down. If you really don’t want to show it, wear a longer shirt, properly riding jeans and don’t roll your sweat pants down.

Any time I see BCE, I’m reminded of a plumber who we had come fix the tile in the bathroom when we were kids. He sat at the edge of the tub drinking beer and belching all the while exposing copious amounts of plumber butt crack. That, and I always get the urge to see if I can throw something in there, like maybe an M&M or something - not on the plumber crack - but cute girl BCE… the best part would be seeing them jump around trying to jiggle whatever it was back out.

Grandma’s funeral was Friday morning. It was a simple affair at the LDS church. I overheard one of the ladies comment that she looked good - meaning that the funeral home had done a good job makuping her. Interesting comment.

Our youngest spent quite bit of time looking over the edge of the coffin during the viewing. After a while I coaxed her into stepping away for a little while. Then she looked at me and asked, “is this heaven?”

“No, sweet heart it’s not”

Pointing to the casket twenty feet away, “is that heaven?”

“No.”

“Has grandma been to heaven?”

This would not be the last time today that my beliefs, my distaste of religion and my total skeptism would be tested. Yet, I answered, “yes.” For a four year old that seemed to be enough. For the church it was not.

Actual services were short. A few songs, a rememberance by her brother. The bishop’s words were exactly what devout grandma would have wanted. To remind the heathens, atheists and agnostics that grandma was going to heaven. To tell us that we need to come to church, to recognize Jesus as our Savior. And to hit us over the head with the club of religion, and I’m paraphrasing here, but it works so much better than the slightly veiled threat, “if you wanna see your grandma ever again you will come to church.”

By the way, my next book review will be of, “Letter to a Christian Nation“

I learned that one of my co-workers is a published novelist. One page a day he says and anyone can write a book - it only takes a year. Who knows? Maybe I’ll actually write a page a day.

When I picked up the The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury, I expected that it would follow a path first walked by Dan Brown in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. In that I wasn’t disappointed. Novels that take their own imagined glimpse of the man behind the curtain of the Catholic church of late have followed the rumors and conspiracies regarding the teachings and writings that the entire church is based upon. Tales of the Knights Templar and the Masons as both protectors and victims of the church intrigue the mind and invite historical research to find the threads of truth that make up the story woven through the pages.

Khoury’s storytelling jump us backward and forward through time in an attempt to explain the novel to the reader. Likewise, there are matter-of-fact conversations that border on history lessons rather than fast paced prose, which I had hoped to find. Khoury is unable to maintain the sprint like speed that is set by Dan Brown, instead allowing the reader to breath and even consider putting the book aside for a while.

Templar is set primarily in post-9/11 New York where, allowed by artistic license, the intelligence agencies actually share information and work together. In chapter one a fantastic robbery takes place at the Met drawing in our protaganist archealogist Tess who ends up working with the FBI all the while attempting to make the find that puts her in the history books. The Vatican is victim of the robbery and less than innocent in the subsequent cover up - a cover up that has gone on for thousands of years. Templar does not attempt to find the holy grail as Da Vinci does, instead we are hurtled down a path of intrigue and frames religion more as what was excluded from the bible rather what was included.

Early this morning, my wife’s grandmother stopped fighting and slipped into eternal sleep. Since her stroke about a month ago, which I only mentioned in passing in But They Have Such Good Hot Dogs, she has slowly deteriorated. She was moved from the hospital to a nursing facility and finally home where she suffered a setback that returned her to the ER. Once she was back home in a day or so. Her prognosis went from six months to a few weeks (which totalled around six weeks). It was early in the morning when my sister-in-law came home from work finding grandma laboring to breath. She woke my mother-in-law and they both sat by her side until she finally gave up. I understand that my sister-in-law found it unfair to have witnessed the final breaths of her child and now those of her grandmother as well. Grandma had a living will prompted, I believe, by the government’s interference in the life of a woman named Terri Shiavo. Rest in Peace, grandma.

The old lyrics pop into my head, “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me,” when I hear some of my cow workers playing with the radio scratching a “secret greeting” to each other on the microphone. It’s as bad as someone hitting the page button on their phone to run their fingernail over the mic and then the other person responds in kind. Imagine if you are at the grocery store and “clean up on aisle six” is interrupted by “scratch, scratch, scratch” with a responding “scratch, scratch, scratch”.

This reminds of high school. In Spanish class there was a semi-permanent divider between my class and the one behind it. One day a small rolled up piece of paper was thrust through a tiny hole the diameter of a pencil that someone had made in the divider about eight inches off the floor and a tiny knock could be heard from the wall. A note from the class behind me. And that’s what this little game on the radio reminds me of; semi-pubescent games. Sometimes I wish they would get whatever it is out of their systems so the rest of us can work in peace.

It’s 11:30 pm, I’m finishing paperwork, dropping off the bus “book” at the yard. I lock up the reception area and start heading down the stairs. That’s when I notice that I’m quiet. I normally have the jangle of my keys bouncing off my hip. I reach down where my keys should be feeling nothing but my pant leg. To be sure about what I did I shine my flashlight onto the counter inside reception. Yep, there they are shining back at me from across the room.

It’s a sickening feeling. My wife is in Phoenix, my brother has a key to my place, but all of my extra keys are on rings that my wife has with her and there is no hide a key for the reception area. I decide to call one of the other trip drivers waking her after she had a long day. She agreed to come by and let me in… it only took about ten minutes for her to get to the yard where she dangled the key out the window of her car - too exhausted to get out and hand it to me. I would thank her for coming down at 11:45 pm, maybe even buy her a thank you card or gift or something - but we’ve agreed to never talk about this.