Fred On Armchair Warriors

Another one knocked "out of the park" by my cousin Fred down in Mexico. In the spirit of the ubiquitous pharmaceutical ads, before you hit the link down below, here are a few warnings:

1) There is salty USMC language used in this column. If that is going to make you wet your Depends(tm), stay out. My cuz is not a clergyman, but a hard-drinkin' combat vet, former Marine, and ex-cop with a sharp tongue and an even sharper pen. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the bitchin'. And make sure you have a decent dictionary at the ready, because this is one redneck with a vocabulary. Clear?

2) I am not Fred. I do not write Fred's column, nor does Fred write mine. Fred is my kid cousin. I am better looking and could still knock his block off in spite of being old enough to be his dad. In fact, I have told him I'm his daddy on many occasions. It's an inside joke.

3) I'm an old army chaplain, not a combat soldier. I'm no-nonsense brown-shoe army, I support the troops, I bend the elbow with the vets, but being a chaplain, I have never fired a weapon in anger (pellets shot at possums being the exception). But I too have dealt with what Fred calls REMFs - both in church and in state. They are alligator mouthed and canary assed. They are a scourge, a boil on the buttocks of the country and a hindrance to the Gospel.

In their ecclesiastical variety, they are easily identified by their golf shirts, Ablaze!(tm) pins, and inability to read a simple sentence in Greek. They make fat salaries (and often have matching waistlines) but have no altar or pulpit. But they claim to be experts in keeping people out of hell. Believe me, every five seconds (snap) someone somewhere has to (snap) speak with them, and that ain't (snap) heaven. They employ jargon designed to make them seem literate and relevant, meaningless buzzwords like "emergent," "postmodern," "twenty-first century," "missional," and "critical event" - a style of speaking unknown to real Christian clergy of any time or place. They know the LCMS handbook way better than they can cite the Augsburg Confession, and they have the Mission Statement of the LCMS(tm) committed to memory - and with the possible exception of Number 23, they could not recite a single Psalm. They love resorts, and all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets. They are the kind of people who go overseas and embarrass the U. S. of A. We all know the typology - even though they don't believe in such things.

So, ask your doctor if Fred is right for you. If gluteal redness and burning commence, cease reading Fred immediately and start watching the Lifetime Network and Oprah.

But the rest of you troops, pop open a Corona, make sure you have on your asbestos BVDs, clean your service revolvers, and click here for the latest bombast from my cousin.

Hoo rah!

Don't do us any more favors, Boomers!

I am determined to outlive every baby boomer - even if I have to be on a respirator for half a century. My goal in life is to hear the last ponytailed graybeard wheeze out the final chorus of Kumbaya before commencing the dirt nap. Then I shall sing Simeon's Song and check out of the Chaplain's residence at the Blessed Reformer. Of course, I have left instructions to be buried upside down to make it easier for synodical and district officials to pay their final respects.

To hear the Baby Boomers tell the tale, they brought about Paradise on earth. Sure, if your idea of Eden is queer "marriage", AIDS, the Nanny State, the midlife crisis, Viagra, megachurches, CCM, relaxed-fit blue jeans, high divorce and illegitimacy rates, left wing politics, the non-smoking section, emasculated men, women in combat, brats in day care, broads in the pulpit, the novus ordo Mass, Marty Haugen, Jerry Kieschnick, Elton John, the Lutheran Book of Worship, Bill and Hillary Clinton, altar girls, lay readers, liturgical dance, and the Beatles.

As if the total devastation of western civilization, the destruction of the American family, and the catastrophic end of good taste and decorum were not enough to lay at the feet of the "Me Generation," how about adding the disintigration of the entire financial infrastructure as yet another achievement of the eternal adolescent crowd.

Thanks a lot, Boomers!

Coffee break's over...

... back on my head.

I had a decent few weeks of R&R in Florida visiting my kid brother that just made it to his ninetieth. All in all, it was a good trip to the Sunshine State, although nobody told me about all the old people. I mean, Judas Priest, I live and work in a friggin' retirement home. Talk about going from the frying pan into the choir. I thought I was going to get a break from the Walker Brigade - but all I really got was having to put up with them driving. When the sign says "65" it doesn't mean the speed limit is "6 or 5" miles per hour. Lord, have mercy! I figured there would at least be some college kids to embarrass by beating them at arm wrestling, instead we were subjected to hundreds of fat frenchmen in Speedos.

And they wonder why we drink.

Don't get me wrong, I'm near my century, and at any given time I have a swollen prostate, 'roids, kidney stones, and the ever-present Jap shrapnel digging into my "Left Behind" - it's not like I'm insensitive to the aches and pains of our "seasoned citizens" (hell, nobody could ever accuse me, fluff-ball that I am, of insensitivity), but listen granny, if you can't maneuver the brand new Cadillac Escalade into three contingent empty cripple spots after 13 tries in front of the Walgreen's, I say get the hell off the road and join a bridge club.

Another thing, if you're at the ass-end of your life, why drive slow? I know my time's limited, so I want to get where I'm going. I typically add about 30 to the limit, drive in the left lane, and lay on the horn. It's not like I got another 20 years to fart around. But the Ancient Floridians generally poot along at about 14.2 mph on a good day - assuming they can reach the damned pedals - like they got nothing but time. I say once your ears are longer than five inches, your license gets revoked, no exceptions! But the DMV listens to me about as much as the LCMS does.

And then there's the crowd that dink along in golf carts and motorized wheel chairs - some with IV and colostomy bags swaying on a hanger. I am convinced that the richest guy in Miami is the Depends salesman at the Miccosukee Casino. Either that or the fella that sells Viagra and Red Bull out of the back of his electric scooter just after the mall walkers finish the last lap.

Anyway, I get back home in time to say a Christmas Mass, check phone messages, open mail, and look at my computer messages - and I find a bunch of bitching and moaning that I haven't been writing. Like I said, I need my time off. It's not my job to give you all worthless crap to read. That's Matt Harrison's job.

Blanche and I decided to extend our stay in Florida having discovered the mojito - which is spelled "Moe-JITE-oh" but pronounced like "Mo-HEE-tow." The Mexicans have never been good at reading English. Anyway, this is a helluva drink, and we decided to hit the beach and throw 'em back. And believe me, when you start listening to the old farts chant the Litany of the Aches and Pains, you'd be drinking them with both hands too. Why does anyone think I have the slightest interest in their liver spots and latest endoscopy results? Couldn't we engage in something more interesting, like watching paint dry?

I had not seen my brother in quite a few years. I can't keep up with him. He's always starting up one business or another. Most of the time, they don't pan out - like the time he published a special Promise Keepers edition of the Apocrypha. I think he has more unsold copies than Herman the German has of the Beck Bible and his new Bible of the Walter Meyer Cult. The reason the show was called "The Lutheran Hour" is because that's how long every five minutes of WAM's preaching felt like.

But anyway, back to my brother, his latest scheme, one he's convinced is going to finally get him enough scratch to retire on, is a "Gentleman's Club." For once, I think he's on to something. I have not been to a Gentleman's Club since after Dubya Dubya Eye Eye, when I had some extended R&R in London. The limesuckers may not know how to play football or figure out how to mix hot and cold water from a single spigot, but they damned sure know how to run a Gentleman's Club.

I remember bending the elbow back in the day with this fella named Bert Wooster at one of these clubs - I think it was called the Drones. We just don't have clubs like this in the States. Dark cavernous rooms with mahogany and cherry paneling, billiard and snooker tables, tuxedoed valets bringing drinks, more smoke in the air than St. Mary Magdalene's Episcopal in New York City, overstuffed leather chairs, leather-bound books, brandy snifters, cigars fatter than LCMS mission executives, and best of all, no broads. The Gentleman's Club was a place for men to enjoy a classy environment and get away from the riffraff.

My brother has purchased one of these clubs somewhere in Alabama - which isn't a place you'd expect to find a classy Gentleman's Club. I might have to adjust my view of the Bear Bryant State - which I always associated with missing teeth, ignorance, and chewing tobacco (much like the typical LCMS pastor's conference). He named the place Scuttlebutt (I have put a picture at the end of this post - though it just doesn't look to gentlemanly or classy from the signage). Anyway, I told him I thought it was a great idea, and that I was looking forward to paying his establishment a visit. Hell, with my name, I should be able to get a free game of snooker or single malt any time I want. In fact, I told him I'd like to have a pastor's retreat at Scuttlebutt - and he very quickly changed the subject and refused to give me directions. He got kind of embarrassed about the whole thing. Maybe he's just concerned that his Gentleman's Club is a little too classy to have a bunch of drooling Missouri Synod clergypersons dragging down the ambiance.

Anyway, it's good to get back to my digs at the Blessed Reformer Retirement Center, where the old people at least aren't driving around in massive gas guzzlers and draining an entire state's health care coffers. It ain't Florida, but it's home. We may not have any Gentleman's Clubs within walking distance, but we got a Legion Hall, a VFW, and a Denny's.

Life's pretty damn good. Now if people would get off my ass every time I take a vacation, I might be able to finish my mojito and scan the yellow pages for Gentleman's Clubs in my vicinity.