TheologyWebsite: Fun / Humor Archives

January 24, 2007

The day I learned to ride a bike

I guess a lot of my young life was not that different from other boys. However, I did live in the mountains of Colorado in my early years, and that perhaps made some difference.

For instance, waking up to the sound of a cow, and seeing a herd of cattle out the bedroom window, grazing in the yard. The ranchers in our area let their cows run loose. Another was knowing that the our “playground” was haunted by rattlesnakes and mountain lions. That scared the snot out of our sissy relatives who came to visit – Eastern city folks – but we kids didn’t much care. We were, after all, bullet proof, like all boys.

And speaking of relatives, the summer when I was 16, one of Mom’s eastern, citified uncles came to visit, and he wanted to spend a night camping out. He was, oh, maybe in his 40s, and had never slept outside. My mother told Dean – he’s my brother, two years younger – and me to take him out, so we did.

When we arrived at our chosen spot – not in a “campground,” but in a pretty spot we liked. It was way back, several miles down a rutted dirt trail, alongside a mountain lake. We were Alone. There, Dean and I cut a bunch of branches from bushes and trees and made ourselves a foot-thick pile. Then we threw a tarp on top and our sleeping bags on that. By then it was getting dark, and without a thought, we undressed, climbed into our sleeping bags, and went quickly and happily to sleep, the stars in our faces. We didn’t give a second thought to our guest.

We didn’t know until later – after he had left town – that our uncle had locked himself in the car and stayed awake all night, terrified of what sort of monster or wild beast might devour us, unprotected out there in the wilderness. When Mom told us about it later, we were surprised, and thought the guy was either some sort of pansy, or just had a screw loose. Dean made a comment, something about the uncle’s undergarments and lace. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but Mom didn’t think it was funny.

But back to riding a bike. In my younger days, we faced one problem, living where we did, and that was that there was no flat ground, and no straight roads. Unlike Kansas, where the ground goes from side to side, like all well-mannered dirt, in the Rockies it goes mostly up and down. And it’s not so much dirt as it is a whole bunch of rocks.

Our town, Idledale, was a couple hundred people scattered up steep, windy dirt roads running off of a canyon with a “crick” and a two-lane highway in it. “Downtown” included a small general store, a liquor store and a post office. The liquor store burned down one night when I was about 6 or 7, and it was the biggest event in town all year. I had nightmares for a week.

Our location and the lack of flat land and decent roads were a problem when we got old enough to want to ride a bike. But we were bright and innovative, and with the help of some older boys in town, we adapted. It was a team effort because there were only a couple guys in town who owned bikes, and they had to be willing for us to use them.
So that’s how I found myself up a rocky, steep, winding dirt road one day, with a half dozen other guys. I was going to learn to ride a bike. The routine was simple and fast, there was only one lesson, and there was a big incentive for success.

The victim, er, learner was placed astride the machine while a couple guys held it upright and still. Then, when the “rider” was in place and set – that was me, remember – the two-boy launch crew stepped back and gave the bike a little push. It went like a jet off an aircraft carrier, and reached warp speed in about 3 seconds, bouncing from rock to rock on the way down the hill. I think the tires were even on the ground for a little bit of the time.

Now this somewhat terrifying course of study had a couple tests. To pass, you had to meet two standards. First, you had to make it to the bottom of the road with all your skin and bones unbroken, and with you still on the top and the bike on the bottom. Second, you could not have peed your pants.

Simple, right? No grading on the curve – in fact, you might say the curve did the grading – and no staying up all night, cramming for the test. Just step up to the bike, turn off any hint of good sense you had, and in a state of utter stupidity, climb on. The experience had a wonderfully focusing effect on a young mind.

On the other side was a sort of barrier, consisting of a cable strung between posts about 18 inches above the ground, beyond which the ground fell straight away in a drop of 10 to 75 or so feet, depending on where you were dumb enough to go over the edge. At the bottom was the only paved road around, the highway through town. If the fall didn’t get you, the cars would.

So to fail the test was no small matter. But we thought that was good. Those sissy city kids, with their training wheels and all sorts of helpers and protection, never learned to ride as quickly as we did. No way. Of course, they spent a lot less time in pain, too.

Oh, I forgot to tell you: I passed. I reached the bottom, unbloodied and unpeed. Perhaps that explains why now, old and gray-bearded, I am most at home on my mountain bike, hauling down a fast trail. It’s great fun, and I have an impressive array of scars to prove it.

Posted by at 07:53 PM | Comments (4)

December 23, 2006

The night my brother shot at me

As you might reasonably expect in keeping with our superior status, Dean – my brother, two years younger – and I lived in our own private domain. We were, after all, the first and second of seven. Our domain was strictly off limits to any of our brothers, under threat of serious pain.

We were poor growing up. Money was hard to come by, but we were resourceful, and Dean and I had accumulated a small arsenal of rifles, pistols, and other assorted weaponry in the room we shared. I was, at the time, in junior high school, probably seventh or eighth grade.

I hesitate to say we actually lived in a room, because in fact we lived in the attic. It was not a “room in the attic,” just an unfinished attic, with an area of floor so we didn’t fall through the ceiling of the room below. It was above the insulation level, so it was very hot in the summer, and very cold in the winter. In fact, one winter morning we woke up to find our turtle, who lived in a fishbowl, had overnight been frozen in a block of ice.

Our closet was a pipe hung from the open rafters by wire. We had a bed for Dean, a mattress on the floor for me, and a desk. I think perhaps we had a small chest of drawers, too. For summer ventilation, we opened the window by twisting a couple nails aside. They held the window in the opening in the wall, and we pulled the entire window out of the wall and placed it on the floor, leaving a framed hole in the wall. Nice ventilation.

For heat in winter, we… well, the truth is, we were cold a lot. We did not live in luxury, but we liked it, because it was our place, and nobody bothered us up there.

The reason is evident: To get “up there,” we had to go into my parents’ bedroom, into their closet, and climb up a vertical ladder through a trap door into the attic. This door was fairly large, about 3 feet by 4 feet, fairly heavy, and hinged on one side. It stayed open, propped against a post at the foot of Dean’s bed. Usually.

One time we were up there, Dean tinkering with something, and me laying on his bed, reading a book. We heard a noise in the closet below, and it sounded too stealthy to be Mom or Dad. After a moment, I reached out with my foot and quietly gave the trap door a shove.

BAM!

There was a very loud noise when it slammed shut. As it turned out, the BAM! happened just above the head of another brother, Tom, who was sneaking up to explore. I think he had to go change his pants. Fortunately, he was a bit slow, or he would have had a fractured skull. Or worse.

But perhaps my most vivid memory of that place was the evening Dean shot at me.

Before you think badly of him, I assure you it was not his intent to shoot me. He scared the pee out of both me and himself -- we both thought at first that I was on my way to the happy hunting ground -- but he didn’t do it maliciously. Let me explain.

I was at the desk by the window, reading, and Dean was sitting on his bed, just feet behind me, messing around with his collection of old rifle cartridges. He had picked them up individually in our frequent wandering in the mountains. We were in what we called the “hills” a lot, camping, shooting, skinny dipping, and generally messing around. And of course, when we came across something interesting, like an old knife or a cartridge, we picked it up and brought it home. It joined our collection of useless but cool objects. All boys are required to have such a collection, of course. I still own one such knife.

For some reason that must have made sense to him then, he was taking the cartridges one at a time, putting them in a 22-caliber, single-shot rifle, and pulling the trigger. Normally, one would expect a certain and predictable result from these actions. Normally, there was a loud bang followed by some potentially unpleasant consequences, especially if one was indoors. Our parents had, in fact, strongly discouraged such practices.

But Dean had tested each of the cartridges many times outside, so he was just going through the motions, just messing around. He knew they wouldn’t fire, and so did I. I am not sure to this day why he was even doing it.

So I was caught up In my book, paying no attention to him when, suddenly, very close behind me and to my left, BOOM!

Immediately, I became aware that my right arm hurt and I saw that it had a red liquid substance on it. I looked over my shoulder, and Dean was sitting there with his mouth agape and his eyes bugged out. I don't think he was breathing, but I'm not certain. His old cartridge –- misfiring on perhaps 10 tries before -– had fired, and the bullet had missed my head by perhaps the width of my hand.

We sat silently for a bit, waiting for our pulse rates to drop below a thousand, and for the inevitable stampede of my parents up the ladder. We knew what would happen. “What’s going on up there? What was that noise?” And then, it would become a very bad day.

But...silence. No stampede. Just silence. Nothing. Turns out the entire family was in the basement, watching television, and heard nothing. Whew! There is a God in heaven, and he really does love us!
As we surveyed the situation, I realized the pain I felt in my right arm was real enough, but was caused by an array of small pieces of glass, not a bullet.

The blood was both real and mine, but it was mixed with a considerable amount of red liquid shoe polish. It seems that there was a bottle of such polish on the window sill, and the bullet had flown through it, shattering it, before striking a nail and shattering itself.

So I had some glass in my arm, nothing serious, but it hurt and looked like a real wound. I had to do something, and so when I was sure the coast was clear, I quietly went down to the bathroom and washed my arm off with soap and water. The glass came out and the bleeding stopped, and I considered that was all the medical help I needed, since anything more would involve my parents. For a while I wore only long-sleeved shirts, until the cuts healed, and I thought of a plausible explanation of the scabs for Mom.

Dean and I were shaken, but we recovered fast, and began to think it was a little funny, too. Knowing I was going to live, and more importantly that we were undiscovered, considerably brightened our mood. So we began to figure out how to get all of our “good” shirts cleaned, because the shattered bottle had also sprayed red polish on one side of our clothes – shirts, mostly – hanging from the pipe.
We solved the problem by wearing two shirts to school. One – the “bloody” one – we dropped off at the dry cleaners, and paid for it with our lunch money. This lasted for some weeks.

Dean and I were very good at keeping secrets, especially when our wellbeing was involved, and nobody in the family found out, until about 30 years later.

We were all together then, my brothers and I, gathered for some family occasion. Mom was there, too, enjoying her now grown boys. I think she was also enjoying a far more sane and simple life since we were no longer living in her house.

Dean and I were in the kitchen, alone, laughing and talking about the shooting. It was much funnier after 30 years. Mom heard us laughing, came in and asked what was so funny. We looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Sit down, Mom. We want to tell you a story.” And with great mirth and merriment, we told her about the shooting.

She sat silently for a moment afterwards, then said, without a smile, “If you know any other stories like that, I don’t want to hear them.” And she left the room.

Well, Mom, we thought, if you can’t stand the answer, don’t ask the question! But we never told her more stories. She died years later in her old age, blissfully unaware of the real world of her boys.

Posted by at 04:12 PM | Comments (3)

December 22, 2006

Is there a Santa Claus? A scientific analysis

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has seen.

2. There are an estimated 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn’t – apparently – handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – a mere 378 million, according to the Population Census Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child to each home.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west, which seems logical. This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each ‘Christian’ household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh, and move on to the next house.

Assuming that these 91,800,000 stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but which for purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .76 miles per household, a total trip of 75,500,000 miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours. This means that Santa’s sled is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times faster than the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the ability of ‘flying reindeer’ (see point 1) to pull perhaps ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine. We need more. Actually, we need 214,191 more, or a total of 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,420 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth.

5. This 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, which will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14,300,000,000,000,000,000 (14.3 quintillion) joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will almost instantaneously burst into flames, exposing the reindeer behind them, who will repeat the process, and they will also create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to acceleration forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

Posted by at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2006

The day I learned to ride a bike

I guess a lot of my young life was not that different from other boys. However, I did live in the mountains of Colorado in my early years, and that perhaps made some difference.

For instance, waking up to the sound of a cow, and seeing a herd of cattle out the bedroom window, grazing in the yard. The ranchers in our area let their cows run loose. Another was knowing that the our “play ground” was haunted by rattlesnakes and mountain lions. That scared the snot out of our sissy relatives who came to visit – Eastern city folks – but we kids didn’t much care. We were, after all, bullet proof, like all boys.

So that’s how I found myself up a rocky, steep, winding dirt road one day, with a half dozen other guys. I was going to learn to ride a bike. The routine was simple and fast, there was only one lesson, and there was a big incentive for success.

You might understand the situation better if you knew that on the right side of the road was a solid wall of rough, jagged rocks, because the road was cut into the side of a steep hill. They were big rocks, a sort of light rust color, and just sat there, waiting to rip the skin off your body. Trust me, you did not want to hit them. On the other side was a sort of barrier, consisting of a cable strung between posts about 18 inches above the ground, beyond which the ground fell straight away in a drop of 10 to 75 or so feet, depending on where you were dumb enough to go over the edge. At the bottom was the only paved road around, the highway through town. If the fall didn’t get you, the cars would.

Posted by at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2006

Robertson's Ignorant Remarks Caused by God’s Wrath

I am so VERY tired of Pat Roberston! My jaw dropped (again) when I read his truly embarassing prognostication that God has smitten Ariel Sharon with a stroke. What a BUFFOON.

In any event, this funny piece from ScrappleFace hits the nail right on the head:

Robertson: Ignorant Remarks Caused by God’s Wrath
by Scott Ott
(2006-01-06) — Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, who yesterday told viewers that God’s wrath spurred Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke, today said his own “ignorant remarks are another manifestation of God’s anger.”
The popular TV personality said God punished Mr. Sharon, 77, for dividing the land that God gave to the Israelites, and that Mr. Robertson’s own periodic claims to know the Lord’s motivation behind specific events are part of God’s judgment on the American church.

“If Christians would read the Bible, instead of just watching TV, they would understand that people who claim to know exactly why God does what He does are usually false teachers,” said Mr. Robertson. “God disciplines American Christians for their willful ignorance of the Scriptures by having me embarrass them every 60 days or so with another ridiculous remark.”
Mr. Robertson said that God had judged Ariel Sharon by making him “old and morbidly obese” and thus a high risk for cardio-vascular problems.

“It’s like a lightning bolt from heaven,” he said.

Amen.

Posted by sdf at 03:09 PM | Comments (4)

November 03, 2005

For the want of a letter...

Brother Joseph was new to the monastery, and as a novice, was assigned to Brother Thomas, who would be his mentor and teacher. Brother Thomas schooled his charge in monastery life, explaining to him the routines, the required tasks and everything from times of prayer to the requirement for a celibate life.

Brother Joseph, a curious sort, asked many questions, all of which Thomas patiently answered. Joseph, among other matters, wanted to know the source of the requirement for celibacy. And Thomas explained how it was based in the clear command of Scripture to be celibate.

Their daily task was copying ancient manuscripts, a slow, meticulous and very important task. Brother Joseph asked his teacher, “How can we be certain that we don’t make mistakes? I mean, these are very large documents. How can we be certain?”

Brother Thomas explained to him the process, how they counted letters, how they checked the number of letters on each line, in each book, and in an array of ways to ensure accuracy. “It’s almost impossible for an error to slip through the process,” he said.

One day, Thomas started Joseph on a copying project, and he left and went to the monastery library. Some time later, when he had not returned, Joseph went looking for him.

He found him sitting in the corner of the library, with an ancient text on the table in front of him, and tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Brother Thomas,” said the surprised Joseph, “what’s the matter?”

Looking up, with tears falling through his beard, Brother Thomas said, “The word is ‘celebrate,’ Joseph, ‘celebrate.’”

Posted by at 09:36 PM | Comments (1)

October 14, 2005

And at the resurrection...?

Remains of Star Trek's 'Scotty' headed for space

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Evidently "Star Trek" actor James "Scotty" Doohan took the catchphrase "beam me up" very seriously -- his cremated remains will be launched into space in accord with his last wishes.

Commercial space flight operator Space Services Inc. will launch the late actor's remains into space aboard its Explorers Flight on December 6, a company spokeswoman said on Friday.

She said the remains of more than 120 others will be aboard the flight, including those of an unidentified astronaut and Mareta West, the astrogeologist who determined the site for the first spacecraft landing on the moon.

Space Services spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld declined to identify the astronaut whose cremated remains will be launched into space. She said the name would be announced the day of the launch.

Doohan, who portrayed feisty chief engineer Montgomery

"Scotty" Scott on the "Star Trek" television series, died in July at age 85.

On the program, when Capt. James Kirk ventured off the spaceship Enterprise and faced peril, he would demand Scotty "beam" his body up to the safety of the ship.

The actual phrase "Beam me up, Scotty," was not used on the show, but it entered pop culture.

To mark the flight into his final frontier, Doohan's family will hold a service for fans on a 60-acre site near Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles the day of the launch to pay tribute to him. Some fans are expected to attend in the formal white suit of a Star Fleet commander.

"I can't think of a more fitting send-off than having some of his fans attend this, his final journey," his widow, Wende Doohan, said in an open invitation to the service.

"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry also had his remains shot into space after his death in 1991. They returned to Earth in 2002, Schonfeld said.

Doohan's cremated remains will be packed into a special tube that is ejected from the rocket and expected to orbit Earth for about 50 to 200 years before plunging into the planet's atmosphere and burning up.

Fans can post tributes to Doohan at the Space Services Web site. Those messages will be digitized, packed with "Scotty" and blasted into space.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/14/doohan.remains.reut/index.html

Posted by at 09:12 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

And While You're At It...

Check these out:

The Brick Testament - The entire biblical story recreated with Lego bricks
The Bible According to Cheese - Biblical stories recreated using... cheese.
BIBLE BOBBLEHEADS!!

Posted by sdf at 09:45 AM | Comments (1)

September 25, 2005

God Smokes A Pipe

You know He does.

After watching you monkeys frantically run around all day, every day, its no wonder He settles down with a chosen few of the Angelic Host and lights up a fragrant bowl of heavenly herb.

But I'm sure He has one of those really cool divine pipes which allows Him to freely type with both Hands.

Posted by sdf at 02:53 AM | Comments (4)