Christmas Shopping List

Christmas Shopping List:

This year, I'm doing all my Christmas shopping at Cafe Press. Here's some of my shopping list. I might think of a few more when the bourbon kicks in...

Scuttle Claus

Fritz Eckardt
Paul McCain
David Scaer
Latif Gaba
Jerry Kieschnick
Cameron MacKenzie
Larry Beane
Dave Benke
Herman Otten
John Fenton
Dave Juhl
John Pless
Wally Schultz
Bill Weinrich
BBC
Walter Obare
Shane Cota

The Fort Wayne Blues

For all of the bluster about being so "high church," Kramer Chapel at the Fort Wayne Seminary looks more like an aircraft hangar. Now, don't get me wrong - the addition of the icons helps, but some of those vestments that look like they walked off the set of The Jetsons have really got to go.

When Epiphany rolls around, I expect to see William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy saying Mass. If they're gonna keep using those things, they need to have Barry Marquart cut some crop circles in the lawn. I half expect the New and Improved Art Just Matins Service(tm) to open:

V: The Lord be with you
R: Live long and prosper

And I thought that kid Danny Reuning's stuff was "low church"! Mercy!

And those Lenten vestments and paraments look like they were jacked from a Woodstock museum (and I doubt that LSD will make the LSB any better...). The last time I saw people wearing duds like that, they were protesting Vietnam and peeing in their own pants on my front lawn. I don't understand why these kids do drugs - when a fifth of Jack would do the trick just fine, thank you very much.

But for the time being, Kramer Chapel is as blue as Elvis' suede shoes. If the Papists decided we'd use lime green with polka dots for Advent, Art Just would be lapping at the pope's shoes, whimpering like Michael Richards at the Image Awards.

Anyway, word on the street is that the Fort has introduced yet another church calendar. There's the One Year, the Three Year, and the Fort Year (also known as the Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Army Way, respectively). In the spirit of Vatican II (which, for you seminarians, is not the name of the latest strip joint to open up in Mad Anthony's Town), The Art has created a couple days in liturgical no-man's land. According to the Most Important Man in the Missouri Synod, Advent begins not with the Sunday after St. Andrew's, but on St. Andy's itself!

So, let me see. I want to say daily prayer to myself and some of the fuds here at the home. Okay, St. Andrew is November 30. So, according to Art, that's when Advent starts. So what readings were I supposed to use this year on Friday and Saturday (December 1 and 2)? They aren't the first week of Advent. Friday and Saturday of Advent 1 would be, let's see here, Dec. 8 and 9. Hmmm. Maybe the sign at Kramer (which is not named for Michael Richards) oughtta read Advent 0.

Maybe that's the Festivus for the rest of us?

Score: 4-3-1

Just got my latest expensive glossy from our money-strapped synod's LCMS World Relief. Big surprise, Matt Harrison is all over the place. Yawn. In fact, Matt has put the smackdown on Jerruh in this issue, appearing three times to only one for the Pope of the Trailer Park. Matt is the covergirl this issue, along with two incognito pastors (one being a DiP) who must be ashamed of Jesus or something (at least I gotta give Matt credit for not being too much a "company man" to shun the clerical duds). There is also a layman from Laborers for Christ who looks like a layman. At least he's not ashamed to look like what he is - unlike most of our Council of Politicians.

Matt is also pictured on page 4 taking a page out of Madonna's book, getting a picture of himself surrounded by Africans. Word is still out on whether or not Matt will be adopting one of them. If the Synod can afford sending Matt and his entourage to Africa, why are they sending me beg letters? I guess we know why they're poor. Something tells me Matt didn't stow away on a steamer for $25 (and bring your own oranges to avoid skurvy). And ditto for Jerry's trips all over hell's half acre. He ain't staying at the Red Roof Inn, that's for sure. I guess there's all kind of dough for the bureaus to piss away when you cut off all funds to the seminaries. Great gig, huh?

David "It's Okay to Pray with Heathens" Benke is shown on page 10 in a group shot that includes the mayor of New York. He's not quite in the position of fartcatcher to hizzoner in this photo-op - but give him time. I have faith in his ability to slither just about anywhere.

Jerry is relegated to page 13 with the famous photo of him presenting the Bishop of Kenya with a bovine friend. And no, I'm not referring to the gal in the picture. Boy, Jerry's "milking" this one for all it's worth. At this point, this shot may be as common as the one of Britney Spears showing off "the empresses's new bloomers." At least Jerry hasn't gotten to the point of nudity to keep his mug in the news - but who know's what's next? I'm never surprised. But I'll tell you right now, if Jerry whips it out for the paparazzi (and I don't mean the Bishop of Rome), I'm joining Fenton in the Eastern Orthodox Church - which might be worth it just to watch Paul McCain do the pee-pee dance again.

So the Matt to Jerry ratio of this issue is an impressive 3:1 - with Matt on the cover, and Jerry buried on page 13.

But there's a surprising development in this issue, a dark horse coming around the bend to upset both of our "usual suspects". "Doctor" Robert Roegner, recently elevated to the LCMS World Mission Executive Directorate (no word on whether this includes a red hat), gets a home run this issue, appearing four times, beating Matt out of his hat trick and customary first place in the exposure department (though still trailing Britney in this category, thank God!). Yes, indeed, Roegner's spread (and does he ever) includes pages 6 and 7 (though surprisingly, not the same pic).

We should have seen this coming, given that "Doctor" Roegner was given his honorary "doctor of laws" (yeah, right!) recently. The fact that his "doctorate" is fake is nowhere mentioned, though he is referred to as "Dr." at least seven times. The powers-that-be must have great things in store for the Roegster to annoint him with a phony degree and a promotion. Hmmm, do you think he supports Ablaze!(tm)? Why, I couldn't render a guess!

I would give "Doctor" Roegner some fashion advice based on his layout: avoid stripes, big guy. You look like you're wearing hand-me downs from P.T. Barnum's Three-Ring. And another thing, don't wear gray suits. Gray makes you look like one of Hannibal's cavalry critters (if not the Goodyear blimp).

One would think a skinny non-white in less expensive duds would be a more logical choice to fill a "missionary position" of this nature. I would think a very fat white guy with an Alfalfa hair cut would frighten poor starving kids from primitive cultures. After all, the guy might have become that "full figured" by eating children in the mission field. They say third world kids taste like chicken. At least that's what the missiologists say after a few Jaegers...

But keep your eye on this Roegner fella. It's hard to miss him. He has all the qualifications for becoming the Pope of Misery one day: he shuns clericals, he yammers on about heresies like Ablaze!(tm), he has a fake doctorate from one of our Concordia Trade Schools, and he's capable of eating the competition for lunch - although word on the street in St. Louis is that the Intergalactic Center now has the cannibalism issue relatively under control.

You read it here first. Now get back to your exegesis and don't even think of googling Britney Spears!

Reading Assignment

In case most of you haven't noticed, I'm an old fart. I don't play video games or listen to an Eye-Pod. I have no body parts that are pierced (shrapnel in the "left behind" notwithstanding), and my tattoos are old-school blue ink and tastefully small and blurry.

I'm not a big fan of the Internet. I don't read too many blogs. I certainly don't download music, and if I want to see a naked woman, I have a wife - which is more than I can say for a lot of you losers. But my cousin Fred who lives in Mexico writes a mean column called "Fred On Everything." If you like my hairbrained rants, you'll love Fred. You can probably even see some family resemblance - although Fred has more meat on his bones and I am better looking.

Anyway, Fred puts out columns whenever the spirits move him. He is not on any time table or deadline. And as much as I think the Internet is for Star Trek Convention rejects and Nigerian Scam Artists who want my bank account number - Fred's columns are well worth the time spent drinking them in.

If you're offended by political correctness, don't read Fred, and don't read my blog either. In fact, if you believe in political correctness, please do us all a favor and stick your head in a gas oven and strike a match. The rest of you, become a Fred Reed reader.

Be sure to scroll down the left sidebar and read some of the older stuff too. There's enough there to keep you laughing for weeks.

Now, get off my blog, kid. Do your math homework and tell your mom to get the computer out of your room!

The Lutheran Confessions are Wrong!

Purgatory exists.

The only reason the Dead Orthodox Lutherans got that one wrong is that they didn't have Homo Depot in Germany in the 16th century. If they did, the Lutherans would have retained saying Masses for souls who linger away in Purgatory (i.e. the return counter at Home Depot).

I'm already old. I don't have years to waste away standing in line listening to Spanish curse words being hollered into a cell phone by the guy in front of me, and watching a clueless clerk move in ultra slow motion. I thought someone had hit the "pause" button on this dimwit.

The line is going out the door, I'm about 18th in line, and there's only one line open for returns. She is managing to dispatch about one customer every ten minutes. Do the math. If I had a rosary on me, I'd have been saying beads for myself. I don't know if that technically works or not, but I guess it's better than what I actually was repeating over and over. It was a litany all right, but could not have been aired on network TV (Fox Network cartoons excepted).

If it weren't for my trusty hip flask, the entire afternoon would have been wasted, instead of yours truly. If you can at least stagger out the door, you have accomplished something.

And while I'm on the topic of Homo Depot, that slogan of theirs is pure 100% crap. They don't help anyone, unless the goal is elevated blood pressure and disgruntled customers.

I think the next time I get suckered into "home improvement" projects, I'm either going to Lowe's or I'm hiring a herd of illegal aliens (what the media calls "guest workers") to just do it for me. Most of them are papists, and they can damn well get themselves out of Purgation while I pay them thirty cents an hour to do it.

If you don't like what I have to say...

...get your own blog. They're free. I don't want any more anonymous profanity-laden comments on my blog. If you don't like it, see your proctologist and ask him to dig it out of you. Understood? Now drop and give me fifty...

Wiping my Feet on the Matt

I'm glad the latest LOGIA came. At my age, it's hard to get to sleep at night. And between my blood pressure scrip and my prostate pills, I don't need to be popping any new meds - especially things like NO-DOZ. Hell, at my age, I might not wake up. So I look for alternative sleep-inducing therapies - that's where LOGIA comes in.

For the uninitiated, LOGIA is a journal that only a small subset of clergy of a small subset of Lutherans reads. Oh, you might get a stray seminarian looking at the cartoons (as of now, LOGIA has no centerfold, but Lutheranism is cultic enough to include pin-ups of Luther, Chemnitz, Gerhard and other Teutonic churchmen that only a Lutheran pastor would get excited about). I'm sure there are a few pastors' wives who read it - if only so they can butt into theological discussions (live or on e-mail) and impress their hen-pecked husband's clergy friends by dropping the name of an unknown Wisconsin Synod theologian here or some arcane German dogmatic term there.

And I imagine our Salvation Navy gals read LOGIA the way normal women digest romance novels and submit to their husbands. Well, the way they used to before they all chopped off their hair and started riding Harleys.

But be that as it may (what the hell does that cliche mean anyway?), I usually whip out my LOGIA at 1:00 am when I can't sleep. And no, you pervert, LOGIA doesn't mean what you think it does.

So here I am last night kicked back in the Lazy-Boy with my third or eighth Bass Ale, practically drooling from boredom, poring over the litany of unknown and unimportant 19th century German Americans who apparently liked nothing more than quoting other 19th century German Americans that even less of us have ever heard of - and I finish the article and start thumbing through the mag, and what do I see? An ad for LCMS World Relief and Human Care. And guess whose puss is plastered in a little box in the corner? Guess whose smirking mug I espy above the title "Executive Director"? Yes indeedy, it's Matt Himself. Rev. Matthew Harrison, the putative future candidate for the Missouri Synod Dictatorship, whose face has become more ubiquitous than Paris Hilton's epidermis.

Now, I understand seeing Matt's Borat-like 'stasche and Hartz flea collar in Synodical publications. Harrison and Kieschnick's headshots have become so typical, that I give every synodical and district publication a M&J rating. For example, a 3M2J score means three pics of Matt and two of Jerry. Likewise, a 1M2J would be the rating of a mag with 1 photo of Harrison and 2 for Kieschnick (giving a JerMatt Coefficiant Ratio of 2:1).

LOGIA, however, usually sticks to boring matters of mindless sectarian theological trivia and esoteric somnambulistic historical riprap rather than tipping the hat to more prostitutish pandering like Ablaze!(tm) and sending cows to Africa. And no, that was not a couched reference to the deaconess program. So imagine my surprise to have to rate the current LOGIA a 1M0J score for this month!

Cripes, the way things are going, we'll soon be seeing Matt's face plastered on paperbacks in the cash register line at Wally World - along with Joyce Meyers and Joel O'Steen (a nice Jewish boy from Houston Street in Manhattan...).

Of course, the confessional crowd thinks this is a clever stealth campaign to get Harrison positioned for the Papal Throne of the Show Me Synod. News flash: it ain't stealth when it's in your face all the time. Like the libs and the Jerryites can't see this asteroid coming. I guess that's what months of "secret" e-mail cabals have come up with: "Let's secretly make Matt Harrison's face more common than Ronald McDonald, then we'll run him for president!"

Boy, won't the Satan First(tm) and Different Vices - Shared Division(tm) crowd be surprised! Didn't see that one coming!

I'm waiting for the icon of St. Matt to start popping up in a confessional church near you!

Now, don't get me wrong - we could do a lot worse than MattHarr speaking ex cathedra. Sure, there's be some goofy stuff like Deaconess of the Month Calendars and all the seminarians sporting Freddie Mercury mustaches, leather jackets, and Anglican collars in order to look the political part. But I suppose that's better than what they typically look like now. And can the calendars be any worse than the one from Fort Wayne with Art Just and all the gals? Lord have mercy, all Art needs is a Cadillac with 24-inch wheels, an ermine jacket, and a wide brimmed hat and he'd look the part!

So get used to seeing Nancy Pelosi and Matt Harrison plastered all over everything - at least until after both have served out their time in the presidency.

Memo to Leonard Kline: Please pray to the Blessed Virgin to preserve us - since all we're allowed to do is sing her praises in TLH 475 (and even then the bronzies blow a rod) and debate her virginity (are we a bunch of sick puppies or what?).

Kyrie eleison, and all that!

The Church Screwed Again

Well, they say there's no queen like an old queen.

"Sir" Elton John has become quite a simpering old broad now that he's starting to age. I think the stage lights have cooked his brain. It was one thing when Captain Fagtastic was in the closet, but now that he's the self-appointed Homo-in-Chief of the British Empire, he's just become insufferable. And now he wants to blame the Church for his troubles.

He says religion encourages hatred towards queers. Not at all. I really feel bad for these guys. It already takes me enough time to get ready in the morning having to shave and evacuate. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to pluck my eyebrows, put on mascara, and pull strange objects from my rectum. That's add a good half-hour to the morning routine. I'm too impatient to be a homo.

And then there's the painting of the nails. And the shaving of the legs. And then there's the listening to Barbara Streisand and Air Supply. Holy crap, these guys must be suffering!

Lady Elton figures we Christians are "homophobes." Not true. I'm not afraid of Elton John. I figure I could kick his ass even easier than I could a normal guy.

He says "organized religion doesn't seem to work." Really? The Christian Church has been around a good two thousand years - no thanks to homosexual emperors who tried to turn us all into Purina Lion Chow. I think the Church works pretty damn good. Here's what doesn't work: treating a bodily orifice that nature has designated as a one-way street as an entrance. That works about as well as driving on the right side of the road in London.

(S)He accuses the Roman Papist Church of "ignorance." You're damn right, Ellie. For decades, they ignored the homo priests that were playing "hide the baloney" with altar boys. You almost never hear about Father McRumpranger trying to play spin the bottle with Britney the teen-aged Eucharistic Ministress or Chelsey the Altar Girl. Not that that would be any better, but you gotta be pretty baked not to see these sickoes are gay as all Par-ee. Now that the Catholics are starting to clean house and protect the kids in the parish from these nutjobs, you can hear the screeching from San Fanny from here.

So once again, the Christian faith is taking right where the sun don't shine. It's somehow our fault. We're supposed to look the other way and consider it "normal" for a grown man not to know what his anus is supposed to be used for. Can you imagine if someone honestly thought his spleen was supposed to be used to pound in nails? Hell, we'd lock someone like that up! If you can't figure out where Oscar Meyer is supposed to go, and if you don't realize that your rectum is an exit and not an entrance, you need some very basic help.

I suggest "Sir" Elton and his fellow dirt farmers enroll in a basic community college course on human biology. Start with "Alimentary Canal 101" and then work your way over to "Human Reproduction." It should be quite a startling revelation. For one thing, he'd figure out that the SNL skit called "Appalachian Emergency Room" in which a character always shows up with a different foreign object in his colon is actually comedy, and not a docudrama. There's a reason why it's funny.

In the meantime, Eltie, go sodomize someone who wants it, and leave the Church alone. We'll be around long after you've watched your last Judy Garland pic. And if you ever do figure out what all your parts are for, and come to the conclusion that you had it all wrong, we'll be happy to have you join us. There are a lot of churches out there that could use an organist (and by "organist" I mean a person who can play the instrument by that name).

One Vicar, Ablaze!(tm)

I knew the vicarage program had its problems, but we can see where this whole Ablaze!(tm) "movement" is headed.

When I was on vicarage, believe me, I got "lit up" plenty of nights. I was Ablaze!(tm) more times than I care to remember "back in the day," and the worst that ever happened to me was driving the porcelain bus after Compline and gagging up half-digested beer nuts and stale pepperoni during Matins. And no, they don't taste any better as a stomach-enzyme marinated breakfast - and neither does your vicarage year.

But check out this sad tale of a Lutheran vicar Ablaze!(tm). Somebody needs to teach these seminarians how to deal with vicarage in ways other than being quite so "on fire for the Lord." Maybe the fella was bored and was just trying to light his own flatulence (I hear this is popular in a lot of rural vicarages), or maybe he was really asking for a "Bud" light, or smoking cigars with the Gottesdienst crowd. Who knows?

But I suspect it has something to do with Kieschnick and Ablaze!(tm). I don't know what Kieschnick has to do with this crispy vicar, but I know it's the trendy "confessional" thing to blame Jerruh for everything. Maybe it's a conspiracy with Jesus First and Deathstar(tm) as well. Oh yeah, and those guys that aren't pushing the Beck Bible, they must be in on it too. While we're at it, let's blame John Fenton and Robb Hogg (and don't forget to hold these guys accountable for rising interest rates and ethnic violence in Chechnya...). According to the Hysterical Lutheran Bloggers Association, both of them are already in hell, and they're not even dead yet.

I guess Rick Nuffer must feel pretty bad about this whole vicar ignition business. What a scandal! It can't look too good when a vicar crashes and burns - but it must really be a kick in the sack when one of them literally makes an ash of himself. How does that phrase go, fellas? "Typical Fort Wayne Crap." This kinda thing can really cause division in the parish - especially if there hasn't been a lot of catechesis regarding self-immolation. These things just take time. That kid Hal "Living to Die" Senkbeil will probably write a book about it, and Catechism John Pless will live off the royalties from the study notes.

Word on the street is that the ex-vicar's bishop is really pissed, since he'll now have to start preaching every Sunday and doing the "children's message" again. There's just nothing quite as useless around the parish than a dead vicar - except maybe a living one.

But to all you vicars out there - don't kill yourselves. It's only a year. If you get fall-down drunk every day, it goes by just like a blur. You won't even remember violating AC14 and being bullied into "leading the communion service" any more than you'll remember marrying the only single girl in the county in sheer desperation. You'll just wake up one day and realize the reformers were dead wrong about purgatory - because you will have lived through it.

You'll stagger back to the seminary for your fourth year a new man with fewer brain cells, a smaller liver, but with much thicker skin.

But if you blow yourself up, you don't get to come back to the seminary as a bitter and broken man. You vicars think about that before you go and get involved literally in the Ablaze!(tm) gimmickprogrammovement like this poor toasty Teuton. The only time I would counsel suicide is if you're required to attend the LCMS Ute Gathering. If you can't get out of that, kill yourself. Definitely. It's considered martyrdom, and well worth the pain.

Anyway, may this well-done vicar's soul rest in peace, if not in the VW ashtray.

Testosterone Levels Sagging

From the "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" Department:

Men's testosterone levels declined in last 20 years.

They need a damned study for this? Hell, I could have saved this gonadologist eighteen years of work and probably a good forty or fifty bucks if they just asked me.

Let's see, what have we seen in the last 20 years that suggests men are becoming a little lighter in the grocery sacks? Oh, let me count the ways: Boy bands, Queer Eye, video games, GPS, light beer, no-smoking flights, broads on the sideline and in the locker room, The Dave Matthews Band, vegetarianism, David Spade, contemporary worship, Clint Eastwood crying on film, Michael Jackson, American Idol, stay at home dads, political correctness, Justin Timberlake, earrings for men, Ablaze!(tm), bicycle helmets, Al Franken, cell phones, the ELCA, graphic novels, Lifetime Television, Gene Robinson, and the swishy intern on Jay Leno.

And that's just for openers. I'm sure I could spout (or slur) out a few hundred more after a 12 of PBR.

The study says this decline in nut-juice is unrelated to age. I hate to be contrary, and I'll be as gentle as I know how: what a crock of bullshit! My generation still has the stoneware - it's these fuzzy-chinned mouth-breathing waif-boys with their iPods that are toting empty luggage. Back in my day, we didn't shave our eyebrows and wax our "bikini lines." We didn't pierce our tongues and get tattoos of oriental letters and wring our hands over "gay rights" and the plight of the endangered brown dung rat. We wore tighty-whities, went hunting, and played tackle with no helmets. We drank while driving, and drove while drinking. We cut our hair "high and tight" and went to a "barber" (we most certainly did not go to a "stylist" and get a "shampoo and a "blow dry" - and I don't even want to know what a "facial" is). We wore engineer boots, not sandals. We studied karate, not feng shui. And dammit, we had greasy french fries with our cholesterol burgers - not heart-friendly sprouts and beta-carotine rich baby carrots with our limp-wristed chef salad julienne!

Ours was the last generation to show respect to the "twins." And if you're good to your endochrine glands, they'll be good to you.

The study mentions obesity and a decline in smoking. They're half right. Being a fat slob does indeed slow down "production" for obvious reasons. To put it in economic terms, demand dictates supply. It's the same reason people who attend Star Trek conventions don't need to worry about family planning, if you get my drift.

But smoking doesn't slow down the dynamic duo. In fact, if you want to put hair on your chest and lead in your pencil, smoke a cigar or two a day. And don't make it those little girly-boy smokes either. You need a cheroot you can wrap your lips around - even if it does make Mark Foley think about the Neverland Ranch. I guarandamntee ya that you fire up Fidel's Weed for a good six months, you'll be singing baritone again faster than John Kerry will say something stupid in a political campaign.

Which reminds me, if anyone wants to know how to increase testosterone production, I'm sure Hillary Clinton's e-mail is online somewhere. And if she's not available, write to Rosie O'Donnell, Martina Navratilova, Ellen Degenerate, or Ralph on Green Acres. I'm sure any one of these beasts sport more wood than your average community college dude.

The study also claims "environmental exposure" is to blame - but then turn around and claim that this would only be "conjecture." Conjecture? Hell, a perfect example is George Michael. His pair of dice has has seen quite a bit of "environmental exposure," more than their fair share of fresh air - and a Barbie doll has more male hormone than this dirt farming freak of nature.

Look, Georgie, find yourself a woman. You know what that is, don't you? If you're not sure, look for the Adam's apple. If you find one, that ain't no broad - even if the bologna has been sliced. This sad-sack Wham-boy needs to find himself a filly instead of a colt - let him who has "meat and two veg'" understand.

Anyway, fellas, treat the family jewels with respect. They're the only two you get. You can always get new teeth - but you lose Moon Unit One and Moon Unit Two, you're basically Martha Stewart in a wifebeater. Just ask Lance "Oneball" Armstrong. Better yet, ask Cheryl Crowe. Of course, wearing tights and riding a bike through France will kill the manhood faster than Lorena Bobbit with a jack-knife.

At the rate we're going, by the year 2080 all of the men will shave their legs and use maxi pads. I'm glad I won't be around to see it. And I'm also glad I checked "no" on my "organ donor card." I'm taking my marbles with me when I go home.

New LCMS Handbook Published!

The old 2004 book has gathered dust on my bookshelf (right next to Oscar Feucht and Robert Schuller) for how many years now? I do use it from time to time when I want to be depressed for Lent.

Whenever I begin to feel good about the Missouri Synod (yes, I know this seems unlikely, but anything's possible after the sixth margarita), I pull the old handbook out, look at the Ablaze!(tm) cover, flip through the table of contents, and I return to my ordinary, despondent self.

It's either that, or I gotta go and read the latest pastoral letter from you-know-who. Hell, I just need to come back to planet earth, not become suicidal!

So, the handbook has its purposes.

Besides, it ensures the Council of Presidents will read something, anything other than the latest issue of "Maxim" or the back of the Cookie Crisp box. I did meet a DP once who actually did read a real book, but he's retired. Last I heard, he's trying to regain his sanity, and still can't get the reek of Aqua Velva out of his jacket from all the hugs from the COP guys. By the way, never ever trust a man who wants to give you a hug - especially if he smells of cheap cologne - and double especially if he's just finished his shower at the locker room in the health club. Chances are he wants his hands near your back to stick a knife in - unless, of course, he's a fruit, and then he has an alternative agenda (not to mention "lifestyle").

So, anyway, you can just imagine my joy (yawn) upon receiving the latest LCMS Handbook from Amazon.com as a gift from an anonymous reader (thanks, Jerry, but you really shouldn't have...).

But, you know something, this new edition of the Handbook is downright useful for dealing with the suits! For once, I have to suck it up and actually commend them for giving me something I can really use! Now, I can finally understand what the hell these people are talking about every time I get a Distorter, a Witless, or any of the usual district flatulence.

The dictionary format is far better than the old handbook layout with all the dots and dashes. Hell, I haven't used Morse since they invented the microphone, so I can barely figure out the old book. I think Al Qaida are using it for codes. I knew an IRS guy who once gave up trying to figure the damn thing out.

But this new book is really user-friendly. It gives me all sorts of plain English definitions to bureaucratic "office speak." And this is a must for anyone who wants to understand what the LCMS is trying to say when they start talking about "mission statements" and using all kinds of cutesy rhyming slogans and sticking "(tm)" all over everything. Hell, I could understand the inebriated Cockney sailors back in "Dubya Dubya Eye Eye" better than this uppidy St. Looney crowd - but I am starting to figure them out now.

I'm just friggin' Ablaze!(tm) about this new handbook, and I think the LCMS Mission Statement should be amended to make the LCMS Handbook (also known as The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit) required reading for every member (no pun intended) of synod!

The wife tells me I'm becoming a real "company man" in my old age. Yeah, well just don't expect me to get a $150,000 salary any time soon, toots. Any more smartass comments from the Trouble and Strife and she'll have to say bye-bye to that $5 allowance.

I have questions...

...every time I hear that song called Aqualung by that crazy Limey kid Jethro Tull.

+ What the hell is an "aqualung" anyway?

+ And why is snot running down his nose?

+ Was Jethro Tull named after the guy on Beverly Hillbillies?

+ Why does it sound like he's holding his nose for half the song?

+ What is a dog-end?

+ Why would your feet get warm in a bog?

+ How did a six-foot-six long-haired bearded goon get to be a flute player?

+ What's a flute player doing in a rock band?

One of my pony-tailed parishioners here at the retirement home drives me nuts with the Jethro Tull. I try to understand these "adult-lescents" - I really do. But every time I listen to their music, I just get confused.

And it's not just this Jethro guy either.

I still don't know what a "bustle" is and why it's in a "hedge row" - nor do I have a clue why Lucy is in the sky with diamonds. And is this guy Pink Floyd queer, or is he just a labor-union socialist?

A Juhl in my Crown

Hey troops, check this out! I got a salute from Dave Juhl, an LCMS(tm) pastor from Illinois.

Word on the street is that Juhl is a damn fine pastor. In the unlikely event I find myself on a senior citizen tour bus of Iuka ("... and over here on your left, ladies and gentlemen, is a corn silo..."), I'm gonna drag this geezer into the VFW and buy him a few St. Pauli Girls.

I don't know this kid, but I gotta admit, I like his sermons, and I'm developing a real case of Chasuble Envy. Plus, this guy has appeared in plays: The Wizard of Oz, and Arsenic and Old Lace - which, correct me if I'm wrong, have both recently been made into films. I hear that Wizard even has color!

If he plays his cards right, someday Juhl can be a movie priest just like Bing Crosby. That is, if he doesn't bust his head wide open falling off the stage charging up San Juan Hill like Teddy Roosevelt in a pair of pince-nez glasses. This seems to be a problem with some of the clergy in states that begin with the letter "I".

I do have to take issue with one thing he wrote about me, though. He says: "His views are not necessarily my views. But he is laugh-out-loud funny!"

So, Juhl, what's on my blog to disagree with? I haven't exactly said anything controversial. Hell, everybody tells me they agree with everything I say. And what makes you think I'm funny? I just tell it like it is. I'll tell you who's funny: the chick with all the makeup on CBN. Cripes, there's a Victorian home out there somewhere that's missing some paint!

I can't figure these young kids out. They can't seem to recognize serious writing when they see it. But anyway, I appreciate the fan mail, and I gotta say if every spanked-ass kid in the Misery Cyanide(tm) ministry were like this one, there might be hope for the LCMS.

Keep up the good work, Juhl. "Keep it real, Gee." I don't know what that means exactly, but I heard some kid say it to his grandmother here at the Home last week. He made some kind of hand gesture, and then grandma responded by flipping him the bird.

Another New Hymnal?

Cripes, I'm out of the loop!

What's this about a new new hymnal? We just had a new hymnal a couple years ago (that awful Blue ELCA knock-off). Hell, I'm still fighting to keep that blue goo out of the pew racks!

I don't like the new hymnal, and from the looks of it, I'll like this new new hymnal even less.

Here at the Blessed Reformer Retirement Home chapel we use the God-Almighty Inspired Dead Orthodox 19-by-God-41 Lutheran Hymnal. We like our orthodoxy the way the Russians like their former heads of state: dead and red. The blue hymnals in the rack makes the church look like a clip from Yellow Submarine. A little too Jimi Hendrix for my tastes. It's Dylan going electric all over again.

But this new purple thing looks downright homo. What's with the frufru etchings on the side? I mean, there are wheat stalks and grapes on the cover. If you ask me, that's one step from a wine and cheese party. And everybody knows where that leads - show tunes and a fear of bending over for the Zest (say, where does that unsightly film come from anyway?). They should have put wrenches or footballs or fishing poles on the cover. I'm just not into this whole metrosexual thing. I'm a quia guy, but I'm no queer. Well, at least Ace and Gary aren't in the commemorations - although I hear the gals at the ELCA are working on another hymnal - so maybe the Ambiguously Gay Duo can still have their shot at Lutheran sainthood. Hell, the ELCA will probably call their new book a "hernal" and make it pink. Well, at least we have a slightly higher TPM (testicles per minister) rating on our clergy roster. Thank the Lordy for small favors, and whoop-de-doo!

Anyway, here at the Home, a lot of the Greatest Generation(tm) are assuming room temperature at an alarming rate, which is shifting the balance of power to these smelly baby-boomers: men with white pony tails and gray beards, and old broads with bell bottoms and hairy pits. They live in a retirement center, but they all wanna look like teenagers with pierced navels and nipple rings - and then there are the women! Look, if I see one more old fart in a tye dye shirt or hear one more request for Puff the Magic Dragon in this crypt, I'm gonna puke. This is an old folks home, dammit, not a Woodstock reunion. And anyone that doesn't like shuffleboard is a parlor pink, plain and simple.

But anyway, these newbies are coming in here by the dozens with their technology (like cassette tapes and electric typewriters) and are trying to change everything. They started a push for the new hymnal, and I had to take charge. One of these boomers got so belligerent that I had to do an old-fashioned o soto gari and follow up with a punch to the mouth to get some peace and quiet in the sacristy. Man, that broad was pushy. If she had any teeth when she arrived, she doesn't anymore - at least not counting the jar with the Efferdent. Me, I got all my choppers except those three I lost in Wicheta in '79. But that's another story.

I had to excommunicate a guy last week for singing: "And also with you." What? Does this smartass think he's Howard Stern or something? I told my parish that if I hear any more bitching, I would take a strop to them and make them all use Latif Gaba's breviary. You want rid of Thee's and Thou's? Fine, you can have Tu's and Tibi's. I didn't hear any more whining after that. Damn, I'm glad I read that book Antagonists in the Church! That Ken Haugk really helped my ministry. He should re-relaease it as Kick Ass and Take Names.


Nosiree Bob. We use TLH. That newfangled crap doesn't fly here, things like:

+ Red rubrics - more than one color of ink in the hymnal is a slippery slope. It only leads to pictures. Next thing you know, CPH will be buying full color ads, and synod will be offering corporate sponsorships in the hymnal: "Divine Service One brought to you by Pepto Bismol." Well, at least that'd be a helpful commercial. That novus ordo gives me the runs. I say just print all the pages in old-school black. Color is for fairies.

+ No fractur font for the hymn titles - Next thing you know, the whole damn book is going to be printed in some kind of Star Wars typeset. Older is always better. Besides, it looks menacingly German and medieval - which has a way of frightening off the happy-clappies and the Agraze!(tm) crowd.

+ Morning and Evening Prayer - If Matins and Vespers were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for me. Nuff said.

+ Easy to read - We need people squinting at the page. It makes them more likely to memorize. If it's too easy to read, they will read the entire Mass out of the book and will never even look up. At that point, they might as well watch that vomitorious "Worship for Shut Ins" show and never get their asses out of bed. Then they expect me to come around and deliver the Eucharist like the Domino's guy. Bad idea, guys!

+ Pastor's chant notes printed out - This encourages laziness. The pastor should have his chants memorized - but if the notes are in there, any monkey with a kazoo can lead the service. Hell, in some LCMS churches, a primate with a mouth organ would be a step in the right direction!

+ No awkward page turns - like on TLH Matins on page 33 when we sing the Vee Knight. This is the closest thing we in the LCMS have to a rosary. There is something contemplative about the rythmic and frequent page turns, back and forth, back and forth, that these newby hymnals have gotten rid of. There you go, score another one for the Protties!

+ No General Prayer - I'm tired of all this antiphonal prayer. I want my sheep to shut up and listen to the whole "General Scuttlebutt prayer." It's nice and long and doesn't change every week. Too much of this namby-pamby Vatican II get-the-laity-involved crap in the new hymnals. I like the good old days of "Ja wohl, Herr Pastor" and "pray, pay, and obey." That's how we did it back in the day. And none of these cutesy prayers written by the Commission on Warships either! Does synod have to wipe the pastor's hindquarters too? I mean, shouldn't the pastor actually do some work?


Now, I know I'm kicking against the goats here in not getting on board and wetting myself in ecstasy over this new LW - let alone the LSB. I know there are some guys like that kid Billy Weedon who are as excited as Elton John at a Nathan's Hotdog Stand over the thing. Good for him. He can say "Holy Spirit" all he wants - with his color TV set and transistor radio. Me, I'll stick with the old 78 records, the straight razor, and the Holy Ghost, thank you very much!

To paraphrase Artie Just: "TLH yesterday, today, and forever." Or as Robb Hogg would say: "Unto the ages of ages" which I like better because it pisses off the boomers who wince every time the word "age" is used.

New Scaer Book Released

I was trolling around Amazon and ran across this brand new release from David Scaer. This kid has some pretty good stuff in print, although I thought his Baptism book could have had more pictures. It'd give the DELTO guys something to color.

Of course, one of Scaer's lackeys (read: Grad Asses) may have ghost-written it, but it has Scaer's name on it, so at least part of it is his. Probably the cover, anyway.

So far, neither CPH nor the CTS Bookstore are carrying it. Maybe if enough people call and ask about it, they'll start selling it. Then again, maybe not. If they did, Paul McCain might threaten to sue me for putting the book cover on my blog. I hear CPH is trying to copyright the letters C, P, and H, and they're planning on suing Sesame Street and the author of the Alphabet Song for copyright infringement. You know, funding the mission, and all that. This may explain why the sign down at Our Lady of Perpetual Reruns says: "ROMAN -AT-OLI- --UR-- ". Boy, those St. Louis legal eagles are pretty tough!

So, maybe we better just keep this quiet...

Anyway, chapters in the book include:

+ Why the Brief Statement is Abbreviated B.S.
+ A (Very) Short History of Congregational Polity
+ The LCMS: Lead Poisoning for the Soul
+ Who the Hell is Grandma Schmidt, Anyway?
+ Demythologizing the Twenty Minute Mass
+ The Non-Sacrament of Ordination
+ 1000 Sermon Illustrations (Yuck!)
+ The Priesthood of All Believers (Except the Priests)
+ Does He, or Doesn't He: the Real Truth about Naomichi Masaki and his fluency in Klingon
+ 101 Ways to Ditch Marie Meyer
+ Why Lutheranism Gets Me Down
+ Hotel California, Lift High the Cross, and Other LCMS Hymns your Methodist Aunt Loves
+ Rube Goldberg and LCMS Dogmatic Theology
+ Why Iowa Always Finds You
+ "Lawn Gospel," "Wurden Sacrament," and other Lutheranisms
+ Jeepers, Creepers, where'd ya get those Piepers?
+ Dr. Strangedoug or How I Learned to Stop Rectilinealism and Love Typology
+ "Speak Up!" or Why Soft-Spoken Pastors and False Humility Make Me Sick!
+ With All Due Respect to the Late Robert Preus (May His Soul Rest in Peace)...
+ A History of Defeated World War II Peoples at Concordia Theological Seminary


I've put in my order, and can't wait to get started. Hopefully, this Dummies book will come with a little card of Scaerisms(tm) fully translated into plain English, as well as a handy Symbolicum Nicaenum cheat sheet. I hear some of the Fort Wayne students are already bitching because the book has some untranslated Greek in it, and there is no interlinear edition of LCMS Lutheranism for Dummies out yet. Also, none of the Scripture citations are in the NIV, especially the parts from the Apocrypha.

"Gentlemen, if we don't destroy Lutheranism, it will destroy us."
- David Scaer

Amen.

Domino's Nabiscum

What the hell is Larry Beane smoking? I'm reading the guy's blog, and I run across this endorsement of a sermon by one of our church's muckety-mucks. Now, I'm used to the typical drivel that passes (like gas) for preaching by the suits in our synod. But this one is supposed to be different, thus saith Father Hollywood.

I'm thinking: "Finally! A hierarch in our little country club who can actually sermonize (and I don't mean rust proof the '61 T-Bird). I'm hoping to hear the reincarnation of John Chrysostom, the Second Coming of Gregory the Great, a Martin Luther of our age, and what do I get?

This: a 17 minute infomercial for pizza and chicken. A very bad Joel Osteen imitation by a guy who obviously has a fixation on his belly. I'll lay down half my army pension check this month that this Pastor Little ain't Little. I suspect he ain't much of the former either.

Thanks a lot, Beane. If you think this is the kind of thing that ought to go on in the church, you've got a lot to learn about preaching. I will never walk by Pizza Hut without the need to pop a Zoloft again. Thanks for ruining my Friday nights.

Vicar's Secret coming to a mall near you...

Well, I finally ran across something that redeems two kinds of people I used to think were worthless: New Zealanders and Vicars.

If the seminaries are finding it difficult to justify the vicarage program, here's some ammo to keep this gravy train running... Vicar's knicker run rescues New Zealand town - Yahoo! News UK. Make sure Rick Nuffer gets hold of this. It might save his job some day.

I've just never been a big fan of the vicarage program ever since I saw that BBC show about the vicar who is an annoying fat British broad - kind of like Rachel Ray with slightly worse teeth. I guess that's the English version of the deaconess program.

But at least the Kiwis have got their vicars doing something within the realm of their authority and level of experience: panty raids - unlike our vicars who are violating Augustana XIV so their lazy and stupid "bishops" can take the brats to Disney and destroy the doctrine of the ministry (not necessarily in that order).

I don't think this women's underwear thing would work for some of our vicars.

First, we'd have to teach them what underwear is, and second, we'd have to teach them what a woman is. I think it's just easier to have them read Francis Pieper and listen to David Scaer's caustic remarks about Iowa for two years before sending them off to the twelve months of loneliness and drunkenness that we call "vicarage."

CPH oughtta carry this...

Finally, something I really can use for a Christmas present. Every Lutheran pastor should be equipped with a Nutty Buddy.

Of course, not EVERY Lutheran pastor can use this product, e.g. (say, what the hell does "e.g." stand for anyway? Does anybody speak American anymore? I'm getting really tired of all this Spanish everywhere I look. If I see one more sign at the VA hospital that says: "Piso Mojado," I'm going to piso all over the floor.), anyway, the following Lutheran pastors don't need protection of the "ballbearings" for obvious reasons: ELCA priestesses, synodical and district presidents, advocates of "contemporary worship" and Ablows!(tm), and church bureaucrats of either major gender.

But I gotta tell ya, I could have used one of these puppies at many a voter's meeting. I see no reason CPH and the Lutheran Half-Hour Radio Variety and Comedy Show couldn't stick their corporate logos on these Nutty Buddies and market them to the clergy. The DPs should give these things out with a tube of Vaseline when they start putting the squeeze on us for SET and PIF forms. You know, these two acronymns look suspiciously like two common words for the excretory fuctions. Coincidence or the divine sense of humor? Who knows, but I used to get very PIFfed off about them, but now I really don't give a SET. Nowadays, I let the Magic 8-Ball fill out mine. Last time I did it, I just sent the form back with "Ask Again Later" written in green ink on the front page.

I hadn't heard this much silence from the suits since I wore my "Make Seven Up Yours" t-shirt to the district convention. I guess they must be Coke drinkers or something...

But anyway, I urge every red-blooded black-shirted confessional Missouri Synod pastor who is in fact properly equipped (and wants to stay that way, see Deut 23:1) for the office of the holy ministry to watch this sales pitch. And it is a pitch all right, a fastball right in the strike zone, if you get my drift.

In fact, wear one of these things the next time you get summoned to the district office. Oh, and don't bend down to pick up any change on the floor while you're there: that's the oldest LCMS trick in the book. I think they may have learned it from former Catholic altar boys who used to serve in Congress.

And when they try to tell you they gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, tell them to break someone else's eggs, 'cause you're decked out in your Nutty Buddy!

Would You Buy a Used Cow from This Man?

Why do I read synodical publications? Why do I do it? Can someone get me a nitro pill and a double of Wild Turkey? This Mickey Mouse synod is going to be the death of me.

Read this...

The Lutheran Church - Missouri Cyanide - African Lut'rans holding nose and embracing `Ablaze!(tm),` sez Pope Jerruh

Now, let's get a couple things straight: Ablaze!(tm) is a silly white middle class program to make Grandma Schmidt(tm) feel good and give LCMS World Mission the patina of relevance. It has also become a "loyalty oath" to Jerruh. It's part of El Presidente's "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" vision of the LCMS, and you damn well better be on board (in all evangelical love, of course).

Now, think if you're a poor struggling African church. You need dinero. The fat Americans have it. Hell, just look at Kieschnick's suits - not to mention the wife's baubles. $150,000 a year ain't chicken scratch.

Okay, so you're poor, but you need rich friends. So, they want you to kiss Kieschnick's ass? Then you say: "Left or right cheek." Everyone knows the African Christians have a few more pressing matters on their minds than pushing numbers around on a website counter. Let's see, AIDS, civil wars, poverty, corrupt government, Christians being slaughtered... not to mention Bono and Madonna. But hey, our dusky brethren can now order balloons and DVD's that have to do with the Ablaze!(tm) program (the program that's not a program). I'm sure the Africans can't wait to get the fancy-schmancy Ablaze!(tm) pens that glow in the dark - let alone the wrist bands.

I don't claim to be a multiculturalist, but we did have coloreds in the army. I'll bet the last time Kieschnick saw a black bishop it was in a chess set.

And so, here comes Doofus the Redneck to present the Archbishop of Kenya with a cow. A friggin cow! Why not just give him a bucket of KFC and a watermelon, Jer? Did you offer to shoot some dice with him and share a bottle of Mad Dog? You know, if Obare needed a cow, why not just wire him the money? Why pay to fly a bunch of well-fed white people over from the Violet Vatican(tm)? How much did that cost? No wonder Jer wants to tax the congregations. No wonder the sai-nod is broke. So what's the point of all this? Well, like the Bible says: "Sir, you know." It's called a "photo op."

Damned expensive picture.

They could have just photoshopped the whole thing for a lot less money - kind of like the folks at NASA did when they claim they were walking around on the moon.

And how about that "sermon": rubbing his hands together? Could he have been more condescending to third world Christians than to treat them like children? Maybe Jerruh thought he could buy a few while he was there. Great conversation pieces, don't you know. Every home needs a Masai warrior to put the Splenda in the Earl Grey and to hose down the Mercedes. So, did they sing a round of "Jesus Loves Me" (oh, I forgot, that's what they do with American adults)? Of course, when the Kenyans started rubbing their hands together in response, it didn't occured to Jerruh that maybe they're making fun of him. I know when I hear the guy preach, I make all kinds of gestures with my hands. For all we know, the Pope of Misery(tm) might have been thinking they were getting ready to eat him.

What a rube.

All I have to say is that it's a good thing you can't read Obare's mind in this picture. I think he's probably pondering the ancient Kenyan proverb: "You can take the white out of the trash, but you can't take the trash out of the white."

The Missionary Position

I was feeling a little down the other day, so to get a laugh, I started reading some stuff from LCMS World Mission that I had sitting next to the crapper. I can't believe some people actually believe this stuff! They don't seem to understand that it's not real. It's sort of a Lut'ran version of The Onion, you know, to bring some humor to the troops on the front.

What could be better for a pastor whose ass is being chewed out by some blue haired alligatress whose grand niece is getting married and wants to have her little angel's day to be perfect, not ruined by some sermon about Jesus - than to have a few laughs from the suits at the Intergalactic Center? Or how about a guy who's catching hell from his parish for not communing Aunt Sally the Methodist, and whose DP is content to through him to the wild beasts faster than the Emperor Nero? Hey, a fella's gotta get a laugh somewhere - it might as well be from the synod (at least they send this junk mail to us for free).

Take this issue I got the other day...

There's this mission bureaucrat on the front yammering about sending missionaries to the third world, you know, places where the people don't have two pots to piss in to rub together nor a window to throw the pennies out, however that saying goes. Anyway, the Great White Kahuna is not only fat, but he's wearing a tailor-made button-down French cuff monogrammed shirt that could be the envy of Yves Saint Laurent (who, I believe, appears in the list of commemorations in the LSB).

Now, what do you think third-world people are to think of that? Maybe the LCMS is all about the "prosperity gospel," or maybe we just don't like to hold ourselves back from that seventh slice of Papa John's. So much for "gluttony" as one of the Deadly Seven. I don't know, but I laughed my ass off. Can you just imagine if this were real? In the real world, a fat missionary might find himself in a big iron cauldron. I hear the Lutherans "taste like chicken"...

It reminds me of the Ablaze!(tm) stuff I got in the mail. There's a picture of a bunch of little starving African boys smiling for the camera. What do you think they're holding in their hands? Sandwiches? Potable water? Nope. They have Ablaze!(tm) stickers! Yeah, like that would play in Ethiopia, or the Sudan, or Bechuanaland (or whatever the hell they call it these days, I learned my geography during the brighter, whiter days of colonialism). Maybe the hungry kids can eat the decals instead of putting them on their DVD players, gameboys, skateboards, and expensive bikes. Ya think? What a laugh riot!

Of course, the real deal is that we pagan Americans could use a few African missionaries to come over here, not with stupid stickers and balloons, but with the Gospel. And I can think of where they oughtta start: the Purple Palace. The suits wouldn't know the Gospel if it bit them on their ample buttocks, right through the Armani trousers and the SpongeBob boxers.

Thanks, LCMS World Mission, for giving us the best satire since MAD Magazine!

Party's over, out of time...

While I don't believe in the "rupture," and I have no desire to show off my "left behind," and even though I think Hal Lindsey is goofier than the Archbishop of Canturbury, I gotta admit, I think time is about to run out. The times, they are a changin'! Here are some of the reasons why I believe the parousia is near:

A conservative German pope who appreciates the Augsburg Confession, lay "ministers" in the LCMS (and the Judasizers on the COP who promote them), queer "marriage," "Contemporary" worship, a more than 50% vote in favor of priestesses in the Church of Hermann Sasse and Kurt Marquart, broads in the pulpit in historic Christian communions, anyone with two brain cells promoting Ablaze!(tm) with a straight face, rednecks listening to rap, the deaconess program, Brokebackside Mountain, a praise band performing during worship at the St. Louis Seminary, elderettes in the LCMS, numbskull Republicans promoting big government, more laws, and increased government spending, "outraged" Democrats denouncing the sexual deviance of a homosexual pederast elected official, etc.

But the number one reason, the clincher, the kicker, the fire-in-the-hole is this...

I recently got a synodical publication that didn't have Matt Harrison's picture in it, anywhere! Now you tell me the end isn't near! Hell, I think John Stephenson oughtta put that in his Eschatology book. I think a day without a photo-op of Harrison coming the the mail is worth at least as much as St. Malachy's prophecy.

May the Queen of Angels have mercy on us!

Welcome to the Machine (or, Can Latif Gaba go out in the sun?)

Hell's bells, these computers are small! My grandson Billy got me set up to write "blogs" - which I thought was an ethnic slur for some group or another. The bad news is I gotta type on this little keyboard and squint at the screen - but it's still better than trying to pass a kidney stone on a rice patty.

I was looking at some of these other blogs to get an idea of how they work. I like this blog by Latif Gaba. He's a smart dude. I'm with him on Latin. Back when I was in "the system," we learned German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew before even thinking about going to seminary - which gave us time to drink once we got there. These kids today spend all their time parsing and not enough time purging. I'm convinced the average seminarian doesn't even know what beer is. This is why we have so many guys quit the ministry. They didn't have enough training at the sem in "coping skills" (i.e. alcohol) - especially now that Doug Judisch and his cassock have been sent to the glue factory. Forget all that psychobabble and crisis counseling crap. The pastor's best friends can be found mentioned by name in George Thoroughgood's "I drink alone."

I even heard a rumor that the St. Louie sem has made it a rule that our "boys in black" (and presumably, our Salvation Navy gals as well) can only have one beer at a seminary event. If they expect these guys to stay in the ministry for any time at all, they better be selling half-gallon mugs at the bookstore. Of course, the Russian students at Fart Wayne had it all figured out: drink vodka in an oversized iced tea glass. One drink might get it then. That could explain why Tim Quill is always smiling.

But anyway, this Latif fella is all right in my book - even though he's Albanian. Those people give me the creeps: the pink eyes and skin whiter than a klansman smeared with sunscreen. The white hair is also creepy - even though what's left of mine is pretty Albanian. I don't mind it in a rabbit or even those tigers at the zoo, but Albanian people just weird me out. I know they can't help it, but dammit, neither can I! Should I lie about it?

Just the same, I like this Gaba fella, and I'll continue to read his blog - but I don't think I want to spend the day at the beach with him - lest he'd come back looking like a lobster that ended up in the fryer at KFC.

Keep writing, Gaba, but stay the hell out of the sun!

If our seminaries had ball one, they'd snap this guy up, lay hands on him, and have him teach liturgics. Otherwise, our guys have to learn rubrics the way I did - by sneaking off to Anglican services - where the liturgy isn't Just Art, if you know what I mean.

Introduction

Dear blog reader,

My name is Billy, and I’m a student at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, studying for the ministry. I set up a blog for my great-grandpa, C.F.W. Scuttlebutt, mainly so we can stay in touch, but I think his insights are worth sharing with the world.

Grandpa is from a different time, before political correctness and all that. Sometimes, he says things that are offensive. I ask you to forgive him for his insensitivities, he just wasn’t raised to speak the way we’re accustomed to these days.

Also, keep in mind that Grandpa was a chaplain in the army - retiring with the rank of brigadier general. He saw combat in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. He doesn’t talk much about it, but he did pick up a lot of the soldier’s shall-we-say colorful language. If you’re easily offended by such talk, please don’t read his blog.

Grandpa is technically retired, but he still unofficially preaches and conducts the liturgy every Sunday at the Lutheran retirement home he lives in. He had run off the chaplain. Literally. Maybe he’ll tell you about it some day. He and Grandma share a small apartment at the home. Both are in good health, and Grandpa enjoys driving around in his rusted out 1974 AMC matador. I don’t think his drivers license is valid anymore, but he won’t talk about it.

He carries a gun, but to my knowledge has never used it. He does, however, teach a self-defense class to the other residents of Blessed Reformer Retirement Home – that is, when he’s not down at the VFW drinking Pearl beer, smoking Luckies, reading Christian News, and bitching about the church with his chaplain buddies.

He also tends a rose garden, and lectures on prostate health. He has also developed a strange fascination with Bob Dylan. Some think he’s lost his mind, but actually he’s always been kind of all over the place.

Grandpa is very blunt – to the point of rudeness. But I think he’s funny. He makes a lot of sense - at least sometimes. Anyway, he doesn’t care what people think. I asked him one day if he was worried about getting removed from the clergy roster, and he said: “As long as the pension check rolls in, who gives a flying [expletive deleted]. I’m an old man. What are they going to do to me? Besides, I still know how to kick a fella in the cashews, and no jury in the U.S. of A. will convict me.”

He's got a point. They think he's crazy enough to just leave him alone. Grandpa was wearing chasubles before Hitler invaded Poland, so he's always been dismissed as a nut. I'm not so sure...

So, I hope this experiment doesn’t get me kicked out of seminary. Just remember, with the exception of this post, the rest is my Grandpa. His views do not reflect those of myself, the seminary, the LCMS, the U.S. Army, or the United States Prostate Health and Rose Gardening Association.

Oh, I almost forgot. Grandpa is in the witness protection program. That’s another thing he doesn’t talk about. But that’s why he avoids any mention of geography on his blog. His name is, however, quite real. For some reason, it doesn’t appear on the clergy roster of the LCMS, but I assure you, he is a real pastor, and hasn’t been removed from the rolls. At least not yet.

Billy