Salesman of the Year
I’m sitting here at the Kia dealership getting my oil changed (for only $20!) and I just ran into the guy who sold us our new car in January. I jokingly asked how his finger was to see if he remembered me. He did.
You see, when we were first looking at cars, we were narrowing it down and he was showing us the interior of a Hyundai when I slammed the poor schmuck’s fingers in the car door. I was speechless. So was he, though you could tell he was really struggling to keep the expletives behind sealed lips. I urged him to go inside and walk it off or to put some ice on it, anything to make the situation a little less awkward. He valiantly stuck around and began to point and explain about the cupholders before shaking his head and going inside, leaving us the keys and telling us to take our time driving around the neighborhood.
We thankfully left ol’ Eight Finger Freddy and cruised around a little bit, wondering whether his digits would be all right; wondering how anyone in their right mind, who sold cars for a living, who got paid showing cars to strangers day in and day out, could be so dense as to leave their fingers directly on the part of the car door everyone’s mom most feared. His hand had been splayed out across the rib of the frame between the driver’s side front and back door. He was peering through the open front door; I was peering through the rear. He had finished a sentence and I nodded and shut the door. Simple as that. His right hand fingers got smushed by the rear door at the worst point possible – where, if you remember your physics class, the movement of the lever is at its shortest length but the applied force is the most magnified.
Then we thought, maybe he’s trying to take us for a ride. Maybe this is his thing. He sacrifices a few fingers in the name of a sale. If he did, I thought, he earned it. We ended up buying the Kia Sorento we test-drove earlier, and though we’re very happy with the car and I’m pretty sure we made our minds up before circumcising his right hand, there’s a part of me that wonders how much those nearly severed digits played into the sale. I’d like to think not at all, but the skeptic in me says I’d be a fool to rule out the possibility.
Fast forward to today, when I get the oil changed and run into him in the main waiting area. I jokingly ask about his fingers and he smiles and holds up his right hand, and that’s when I notice the splint holding his ring finger straight, wrapped in an athletic bandage. He says that some other customer had smashed his hand in the car door, just like I did three months ago.
I bet he made that sale, too.
Happy Easter!
“Jesus died for your sins.” How does one affect the other? I fucking hit myself in the foot with a shovel for your mortgage. I don’t get it. And if there is a correlation, why would you do that? Why would you die for someone’s sins? Your sins are the only interesting thing about you dreary, bleak motherfuckers. Your sins are what make you fantastic. You should wear your sins on your sleeve.
- Doug Stanhope
I Traded My Jeep for a Pile of Human Kidneys
The National Kidney Foundation came by today to pick up my Jeep. They’ve got a donation program where you give them your car and they give you a sack full of human kidneys in about thirty days, after they auction off the vehicle and convert its value to kidney currency. At the going street rate, I’m expecting one, maybe two pillow sacks full of kidneys. I probably won’t keep them. Probably.
We tried selling the Jeep, but people from the internet are too quick to low-ball you. That, and I’m a horrible salesman. I figure, if I’m up front and honest, they’ll find out what an upstanding person I am and that in and of itself should raise its net worth. Instead, they’re all like, “I’m not buying a Jeep with an engine that goes CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK when you turn it on. Is there something wrong with you?” And I tell them no, you read the ad; I was straight up, now give me some money. And they don’t. They try to haggle by asking me to cut the price in half, and instead, after I bid them farewell, I just raise the price on Craigslist. But even that doesn’t work. They just keep going lower. I don’t think they understand haggling.
What they truly don’t understand is that its sentimental value is through the roof. I got this Jeep when I got my wife, though at that time I had only duped her into dating me. It was on one of our first dates that I asked her to drive it home for me from the car shop. I trusted her even then.
I have always been disappointed in this Jeep. I only got it out of necessity after I spun out my old black Cherokee on the East Beltline and slammed into the side of a car three vehicles ahead of me while leaving the in-between cars unscathed and slack-jawed. Ta-da! The Grand Cherokee was a step down from the Cherokee. I seemed to have lots of problems with it. It got horrible pick-up and, when driving up slowly sloping inclines, it would often feel the need to jump down two or three gears at a time, sending the RPMs and your heart-rate sky-high. I had to get the transmission replaced after it started swapping spit with the radiator. The back hatch wouldn’t open for a few years. The cruise control and air conditioning went in and out regularly. My wife’s favorite was the windshield wipers which were tragically crippled and sporadic, and it was they who decided when the time was right to oscillate, not you. Three of the four electric windows’ mechanical arms failed and left the window flaccid in the down position. A few months ago, the water pump went out on the first snowy day and my toes were cold while I waited for a tow-truck. And then the engine started making its death knell, a loud clacking sound that signaled an imminent and potentially catastrophic explosion. On top of all that, I was regularly taunted about the fact that it looked more like a van than a Jeep; a fact which I could not argue. It was time to move on.
That’s not to say we haven’t had our good times as well. We drove that thing everywhere. It has seen both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. We’ve had it on countless trips up to northern Michigan where, during the twilight hours, you can build up a exterior shell of blackflies an inch thick. We drove it to Cape Cod with the engine coughing and sputtering, forcing us to get new spark plugs, and I’m pretty sure the guy ripped me off by replacing something else unnecessarily. We drove it to California loaded with everything we needed to keep us going for four months on the road and, on the way back, we had a brake caliper seize up somewhere east of Lake Tahoe and we drove back to Michigan with a horrible grinding sound that you could feel in your feet. Ah, the memories of me yelling at my wife on the highway not to use the brakes. You can’t put a price on that.
That Jeep had a wonderful aroma that will be hard to reproduce. Last night I just sat in it for a minute, trying to capture what remained of it, remembering all the good times. It’s got a hint of dirty mountain biking socks hidden under the seats for weeks, mixed with a broken bottle of Aftershock and two broken bottles of Guinness absorbed into the back seat carpet (we weren’t drinking, only transporting); the remnant aroma of a bag of weed which cooked in the hot summer sun for a weekend in the seat pockets, left by an unnamed acquaintance; it has absorbed the campfire smoke of trees in the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Coastline, as well as trees from the West Coast near Big Sur and Yosemite; it’s got a year’s worth of dog hair, mud, and saliva seeped into the carpet and seats without the slightest chance of ever coming out; and years of sand and sweat from biking, hiking, running, and beach excursions. I don’t think they make an air freshener powerful enough to take that aroma away, and that’s good, because I kind of like it.
But now it’s time to part. We’ve had some good times, but there comes a point when you painfully realize it’s time to move on. I’ve managed to avoid the catastrophic engine explosion so far, and I think that she’s holding out just long enough so I don’t have to see her die. I’ve made my peace, but it’s hard to watch her go. She left quietly today while no one was around. Some people came by in white suits and a long white truck, and silently loaded her up to take her away. You know, I don’t even need that sack of kidneys. There are other people who could probably use them way more than me. I’ll let the Kidney Foundation keep them and distribute them however they see fit. It’s what she would have wanted.
My Dog is a Luddite
Piper spontaneously developed a new and unfounded fear this past week as Jen and I were watching The Time Traveler’s Wife. She wasn’t frightened by the complexity of the narrative, or by pondering the nature of the lead character’s debilitating temporal handicap, or even by the thought of knowing the time and place of your own death. No, it was the mundane explosion of an on-screen firework which startled her from her sleep, awakening her to an entirely terrifying world in which nothing would ever be the same; a world dominated by a big-screen TV and loud, unearthly noises emanating from the walls.
Her acknowledgement of the TV has changed her life forever. Up until this firework explosion, Piper never quite got the concept of TV. No matter what was showing or how loud the speakers became, she never paid it the least amount of attention. This goes for computer screens too. While Jen and I were away for a few months in California, we would Skype home occasionally, and Piper would be immune to our faces and barely register our voices. This has all now changed.
She has now become a quivering wreck of a canine whenever we watch a movie or play a video game on the big screen. She’ll spend the duration of the movie trying to force her face between your leg and the couch, often stretching her facial skin beyond what even Barbara Walters’ face could handle. She’ll hide under the end table with only her nose peeking out, wide-eyed and panicked at the large, moving images coming from across the room. Several times, she has sneaked up from the side and half-climbed up onto the back of the couch before we shooed her down, at which point she just runs to the front of the couch where you barely have enough time to snap your legs shut before she stabs her head into your crotch.
It doesn’t even matter what’s on the TV. The fireworks freaked her out, so we tried out a nature documentary showing whales and a bunch of fish. Who wouldn’t be soothed by the lush and calming voice of David Attenborough? My dog, apparently.
Instead, she finds comfort in unfathomable things. Like tonight, I see her happily sitting on the rug with both arms outstretched, merrily nuzzling the ground between her elbows; licking and peeking at the space between her arms over and over again, content as could be. I figure she’s got a disemboweled toy down there, void of stuffing, as she so often entertains. This goes on for a good fifteen minutes before curiosity overcomes my placidness, and I take a look at what she’s doing. I’m horrified to see a spider; really, half a spider, covered in saliva and mushed into the carpet. She’s so proud of her new friend that I just leave her to finish the dirty business. I mean, come on! A freaking spider?!? And a slow painful death for the thing? What, did my dog love the feel of those eight, then seven, then six legs scrambling against her tongue? What kind of monstrosity is this? I certainly didn’t teach her that.
It’s yet another one of those differences I’m finding between my dog and me. For example, if I were to be suddenly awoken by a gummy fruit snack hitting me in the head and landing on the ground, I would have a few questions; like, who the hell is throwing fruit snacks, why would you waste them like that, and where has this tainted gummy snack been prior to bumping into my head? Piper has been observed to take no more than one second to come out of a deep and sublime sleep to being alert enough that she eats the fruit snack without question, hesitation, or chewing. I think she gets that part from Jen. I’ll have to test that theory the next time Jen is napping.
Regardless, I’m coming to realize that there is a large distance between my dog and me that goes beyond our oft-attempted but always failed attempts at verbal communication. We may never cross that divide. She’s going to continue to be utterly freaked out by romantic dramas and nature documentaries while being hypnotically entranced by the possibility of a live arachnid on which to slowly feast, or by the occasional magic fruit snack falling from the sky like a sweet, chewy gift from above. Despite her wildly illogical idiosyncrasies, she’s a lot of fun, very entertaining, and keeps the house mostly spider-free.
Review: Heaven is for Real for Kids
Heaven is For Real for Kids is an amazing first-hand account of the reality of heaven filled with more truth than you’ll find in any science textbook. It is a fitting addition to any home-school parent’s arsenal, as it is a first person account of truth, more real than any theory so-called scientists have ever made up by digging around in the dirt. I believe this book is inappropriately labeled a children’s book when it should fall squarely under nonfiction, in the TRUTH section.
So is Santa Claus
Colton Burpo has done this world a great service by bringing this story back from the other side with such precise details, and Todd Burpo has given this world an incredible gift by not dismissing Colton’s story, as so many parents would, as the delusional ramblings of a four year old, or as the result of an overactive imagination from the son of a fundamentalist Christian pastor. We are blessed that Todd Burpo had the strength to buy everything Colton said, hook, line, and sinker. What a blessing!
The facts in this book chill me to the bone! Now we know, without a doubt, the fate of anyone going under general anesthesia. They go to heaven! Temporarily! You see, tiny Colton had a burst appendix because of his or his parents’ sin (we aren’t told which), and he is taken to the hospital to be operated upon. This is where the story picks up; when an angel swoops down to bring him to heaven for an afternoon of revelation.
Heaven is for Real for Kids was directed and approved by Colton, so we know we can trust the illustrations in the book to be TRUTH. The Bible speaks of Jesus and crowns in heaven, and we now know what Jesus’ crown looks like. The King of Kings’ crown is remarkably similar to the King of Burgers’ crown. Praise Him!
It’s also worth noting that God is probably still as appalled by your naughty bits in heaven as he is on earth. All the illustrations approved by Colton show that the people and angels in heaven all wear the same white Snuggie, draped with a sash colored with one of the colors of the rainbow. It’s clear that Jesus doesn’t want anyone wandering around heaven with their tally-whacker or dirty pillows flopping around for all the angels to see. We get to bring our modesty to heaven, where God will reward us with perfect bodies that we can hide from everyone!
Colton sees all sorts of people in heaven. I was amazed that he saw King David and Samson in heaven. They weren’t even Christians! They could never have believed in Jesus or said the sinners prayer, yet there they were, hanging out with Colton. This is ground-breaking stuff! I always thought the Jews had it wrong and only Christians were allowed into heaven! We may have to rethink some of our theology, but that’s how good science is done: go where Jesus leads you for the evidence!
Another remarkable thing Colton saw was his older sister. Colton’s older sister was never born, she was a miscarriage. And she’s in heaven! This has vast implications. If all the aborted and miscarried fetuses are in heaven, this is great news! What’s more, is that if you extrapolate just a little bit, you realize that life doesn’t necessarily begin at conception, but it begins when two living cells, the sperm and the egg, join together. I may be going out on a limb, but if zygotes and blastocysts can make it into heaven, what’s to say that wasted eggs and sperm don’t get to heaven as well? This is great news! I’m in my mid-thirties, and I’ve been jerking off ever since I figured out how. And I mean a lot. How exciting is it going to be when I get to heaven and come face to face with all those billions upon billions of unrealized children that I thought were wasted in a tissue! What a joyous reunion we’ll have! They must be having a grand time right now in heaven, partying with Jesus, even as I write this!
Colton Burpo is very clear in the book that heaven is a very real, very physical place. He presents some very astounding things in the book which boggle my mind. For instance, everyone has wings except, oddly enough, Jesus, who just has a horse with homosexual rainbow hair color. He says that people can use the wings to fly if they want to, but if you inspect the pictures diagramming peoples’ wings, it’s easy to spot that the physical structure of the wings would be far too fragile for regular use. Or would they? People thought the same thing here on earth about bumblebees, that their wings were far too fragile for flight, until it was found that they just flap their wings super fast to achieve a hovering state. Imagine how much faster people in heaven must have to flap their wings in order to remain aloft! Imagine how much faster still the typical fat-ass American will have to flap their wings to keep their flabby bellies in the air. God is Great!
Halos 'n shit
And if you wrongly thought angelic wings were only the fever-induced dream of the schizophrenic author of the Book of Revelation, you’ll also be surprised to learn that circular halos hovering above the head are one hundred percent absolute fact! Take a look at Colton’s picture above. Everyone has halos! Even the upside-down guy on the left has one and it’s still hovering inches from his cranium despite gravity. Creepy! I don’t see any steel rods jammed into their skulls so I’m assuming God’s using another one of his unexplainable tricks: Magnets! How do they work?
If, like me, you thought it was crazy that God allowed a few Jews into heaven, get ready for this: Colton played with elephants and kangaroos in heaven! I thought C.S. Lewis was out of his gourd when he portrayed Jesus as an actual lion in the Narnia books, but apparently, that’s all true too! Animals also need to accept Jesus into their hearts! This must be especially joyous for animals that have multiple hearts. The squid has three hearts! Triple the Jesus! Lucky!
I told you the horse was gay
One of the themes that keeps coming up is that, in heaven, rank is determined by size. Colton describes the more important angels as being as tall as giants. One of them carries around a flaming sword that’s reportedly as big as Colton’s father. I bet Colton’s mom would disagree with that!
The most important one in heaven, and the largest in stature, is of course, God the Father. Colton visits the cold and sterile throne room of the Trinity, reporting that it’s his favorite place. To me, the thrones just look unnecessary and uncomfortable, but the same can be said of English royalty. It’s probably just God’s way of looking down on us, something he must do regularly because, at his size, we are about as small as kittens. Boy, no wonder Mary lived life as a virgin! After taking something the size of the Holy Wang, she probably couldn’t walk for days!
From here, we can almost see up God's Snuggie!
This dispels yet another myth for me. I was always under the impression that God sat on an Aeron chair. Thanks for the clarification, Colton! Now we know that the three Gods sit in straight-backed uncomfortable chairs with no padding, and that the Holy Spirit sits awkwardly to the left of God and Jesus. He always gets the shaft! And, he doesn’t even get a Burger King crown to wear; just a shitty magnetic halo hoop like any old angel.
Truly, this is the Chair of the Gods
I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone, so if you don’t want to know the ending, stop here. Spoiler Alert!
Colton doesn’t die! Ever! He’s just unconscious for a little while as the doctors perform surgery to save his life Jesus miraculously and inexplicably saves his life! He brings back great tidings of joy and the never before heard message that – wait for it – Jesus really, really loves children! It’s just that ridiculously simple. Or, more aptly, simply ridiculous!
Disclaimer: booksneeze.com unwittingly provided me with this book in exchange for a review. It seems to be a website for Christian-only books and reviewers. Let’s see how long I last before they catch on.
People Actually Believe this Crap?
When I saw a billboard advertising that the author of the book, Heaven is For Real, Todd Burpo, was coming to town, I knew I had to go. What luck! He preached today at the local party church, Daybreak, and it was every bit as absurd as I hoped it would be.
Sounds legit
I wanted to read the book first, but I’m on the library waiting list behind 42 other people. Welcome to West Michigan. There’s no way I’d pay for that crap. I was, however, able to get my hands on the kids’ version of this book from the site, booksneeze.com, which gives you a crappy selection of books you can have if you promise to blog about them. There will be a review of the kids’ book soon, but it may not be kid-safe.
Regardless, I’ve watched interviews and read excerpts and reviews about Heaven is For Real, so I’ve got a good understanding of the premise. It goes something like this.
Dubious.
Successful Troll is Successful
Todd Burpo is a fundamentalist Christian pastor with a high degree of credulity and a complete lack of critical thinking skills. His son becomes sick and they mistake a burst appendix for the flu. Before it’s too late, the boy has surgery to fix him up and clean out his insides. Surgery, it turns out, works much better than prayer. The boy, Colton Burpo, is nearly four years old at the time.
Over the next few months, Colton tells his dad that during the surgery, he visited a stylized cartoon version of heaven in which people had wings and God sat on a throne and showed his superiority by being physically large and wearing a crown. The boy’s parents believe this because Colton says he was hugged by his dead sister, which the parents immediately take as proof because of a previously undisclosed miscarriage.
Todd fiercely encourages his son’s delusions, then writes a book about the ordeal and parades the youth around the country, appearing on talk shows and in churches throughout the land. This brings us to Daybreak Church.
The book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 62 weeks now, a fact mentioned several times during Todd’s sermon today. He’s also got a kids’ version of the book which is doing quite well, and he let slip that there is a movie in progress. He kept saying how his constant prayer is that God uses him; “Use me! Use me,” he says, completely oblivious to the fact that he is indeed being used by the publishers and the producers because they know shit like this sells.
It disturbs me that this book is doing so well. It disturbs me that it is topping out the nonfiction bestseller’s list. Why are people so accepting of it? Is it the cuteness factor?
Colton wasn’t in the service today, but his dad said that the times when he is there, they usually close out the sermon by singing Amazing Grace together on stage. I feel sorry for that kid, being paraded around like a circus freak, having all his delusions affirmed by his adoring fans. He’s going to have that follow him his whole life. He might make a great skeptic someday if he can break free of this curse his father has put on him. It only takes a rudimentary level of critical thinking skills to break the mirage of anything miraculous.
I don’t have kids, but I know a few basic facts about them that the Burpos have conveniently forgotten: Kids have wild and vivid imaginations, often misunderstanding where imagination ends and reality begins. As their brains mature, their minds are sponges that soak up every nuanced detail around them. Todd Burpo was a fundamentalist pastor. Colton was absorbed in religious imagery and sermons his whole existence. Todd was amazed when Colton described markers that were on Jesus’ hands because he, a pastor, didn’t understand how his son could have possibly known that Jesus had nail wounds. That makes him either a shitty preacher or incredibly dense. Maybe both.
Actually, yes. He is a shitty preacher, as evidenced by today’s sermon. To be fair, I tend to think this about most preachers. His talk today was empty fluff meant to raise the emotional pitch of the room. There was no substance whatsoever. It was a nauseating retelling of his son’s illness and recovery, complete with forced tears I’m sure he squeezes out at every performance. He’s amazed, as am I, at the great reception his book has gotten and concludes, unlike I, that it’s a miracle instead of correctly attributing it to our country’s appetite for mindless Christian drivel. For good measure, he also tossed in a few statements about the dismal state of the nation because of prayer being forced out of schools and evolution being taught as science, even though it’s just a theory. This led to bragging because his book was recently approved to be included in public school libraries, or so he says. Great! It would be an excellent resource for a class in critical thinking.
I would be remiss if I didn’t spend a minute talking about the train wreck that is Daybreak Church. My visit was wildly entertaining. Everything is very polished and dramatic, and they’ve got an abundant number of graphic designers and media people who ensure that there is never a moment of silence. The service started out with a rock band singing Footloose – I still have no idea why – complete with sexy dancers and shoes hanging from the ceiling. At every stage change, of which there were many, there was a professionally crafted commercial on the big screen, even a ridiculous guy pretending to be an SNL super-fan talking about the Super Bowl – again, I have no idea why. Then a bunch of dancers came out on the stage, the men wearing football uniforms complete with shoulderpads, the women wearing sexy oversized jersies, and they all danced for a while and threw a few passes. It was all very confusing. They awarded Todd Burpo with the Daybreak Seeker’s Award; I guess, for his outstanding Quidditch performance.
The best part about it is the fact that I am now entered in their Win a Caribbean Cruise for Two drawing, which will occur next week. Nothing would make me happier than to have a cruise paid for by church tithings.
