Saturday, December 18, 2004

brushback pitch

the cardinals finally found a top of the rotation starter. cue the hallelujah chorus!

fortunately unlike the red sox (clement) and the mets (who single-handedly inflated the pitching market with those ridiculous benson and martinez deals) they didn't have to break the bank to do so. i admit that mulder ain't hudson and he definitely isn't rj, but he's nothing to sneeze at either. kudos walt. kudos.

Friday, December 17, 2004

the lynnfield blotter

when my co-worker and copywriter Christine Kimball read the beverly blotter post, she told me that lynnfield blotter was even better. so she took it upon herself to send me a few of the best entries from the last two weeks.

is the lynnfield blotter a cut above the beverly blotter? you be the judge!

November 29

12:52 p.m. A Lynnfield resident called police to report being a victim of a scam. The scam occurred in Nigeria.


December 4

5:24 a.m. Assisted resident with squirrel in house, Orchard Lane.

7:03 p.m. Report of a past assault on Salem Street. Police investigated and found that male and female parties are accusing each other of assault and batter after a dispute over property lines, “black magic,” and the placement and use of mirrors intended to deflect that magic.


December 11

6:28 p.m. A North Hill Drive resident reported leaving for New Hampshire with two candles burning inside the house. Police extinguished the candles.


December 12

2:59 p.m. A Salem Street resident complained that his ex-wife was performing witchcraft. Police found the complaint was unfounded.
happy haiku friday: christmas edition!

frosty the snowman

rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

may they burn in hell

Thursday, December 16, 2004

on ragamuffins and sacraments

i believe that the grace of God holds us togheter. and i believe that the sacraments are the conduits of grace. as a young catholic schoolie, i was taught that there were seven sacraments, the names of which i learned by rote. during my lincoln years the number was trimmed down to two, one soaked your shorts and the other was merely a symbol.

as the years have passed, i've begun to see and receive sacraments everywhere. a consoling embrace, a pa pa's love and the eyes of a child are just a few of the sacraments that have held me together. i am thankful for the diversity of God's sacraments and pray for the eyes to see and receive more.

all of that to say, that the music of rich mullins is a sacrament that helps hold me together. i never met rich, never heard him play live and never listened to him until he died just up the road from lincoln christian. but i can honestly say that without his songs, i would be a holy mess. here are a few of the lyrics that have sustained me throughout the years. if you've been sustained by his work, i'd love to hear from you as well.

"here in your room where nobody can see, the voices are loud but seldom clear. underneath the confusion that's running so deep, there is a promise you must hear. the love that seems so far away is standing so very near." ~the verge of a miracle

"jacob she loved rachel and rachel she loved him, and leah was just there for dramatic effect. well it's right there in the Bible, so it must not be a sin, but is sure does seem like an awful dirty trick." ~jacob and 2 women

"surrender don't come natural to me. i'd rather fight you for something i don't really want, than take what you give and i need. and i've beat my head against so many walls, now i'm falling down, falling down on my knees. and the salvation army band is playing this hymn. and your grace rings out so deep, it makes my resistance seem so thin." ~hold me jesus

"if you make me laugh, i know i could make you like me. 'cause when i laugh i can be a lot of fun. but when we can't do that i know that it is frightening. what i don't know is why we can't hold on. can't hold on..." ~we are not as strong as we think we are

"if i could make it work in life, like it works on paper. if the love that i describe, could be anything but words. if i could Then I would wipe my eyes, I'd dry this ink, I'd trade my pen in on a pair of wings. And I would, I would fly If I could only make it work in life" ~if i could make it work

"when my body lies in the ruins of the lies that nearly ruined me. will you pick up the pieces that were pure and true and breathe your life into them, and set them free? when you blast this cosmos to kingdom come. when those jagged edge mountains we love are gone. when the skies are filled with the tears of a thousand falling suns as they crash into the sea. can i be with you? can i be with you?" ~be with you

"Somewhere
Beyond these reasons and feelings
Somewhere
Beyond the passion and fatigue
I know You're there
And that Your Spirit is leading me
Somewhere
Beyond all this ~somewhere



Wednesday, December 15, 2004

unsolicited opinions, spiritual reflections and your daily serving of sarcasm: my last running diary of the season

2:07 p.m.--after arriving, admittedly a little late, for my last shift in customer service, my first call started like this:

"thank you for calling CBD this is Jeff. how can i help you?"

customer: "HELLO? hello. hello-o..."

"this is CBD, how can we help?"

customer: "beeeep." i think her cheek crunched the #4 on her receiver.

"this is jeff, how can i help you?"

customer: "HELLO."

"this is CBD."

customer: "oh...hi...i was...uh...wondering.

"if...you...could...uh...check one of my...uh...orders."

"sure. what is your order number?"

customer: "let...me...see. it is...uh....."

at that moment, i was reminded of the wisdom of sir randal. "i could do without the customers in the video store," he said. "which ones?" dante queried. "all of them."

2:27 p.m.--on friday night i found myself huddled under the doorway of city hall, furtively smoking a bummed cigarette. as a cold mist began to blot out the street light and seep into my government-subsidized shelter i felt a wave of melancholy coming on. hold fast, i exhorted myself, but i felt certain that a night of moping, and a page littered with bad, anguished poetry was inevitable.

it was at that point, just then, that i realized what a moody, internal, narcissistic little bastard i can be. fifty feet away was a coffeehouse in which sat my beautiful pixie of a wife, a master of unintentional comedy who is also a member of our church and a dozen other people that i desire to more fully know and love. yet, there i was, smoking a cut-rate cigarette and licking my wounds. i couldn't help but laugh.

2:31 p.m.--i pick up the phone only to hear a lady who is way too focused on her family. because of her love for her "beautiful boys" she decided to let them flip the pages of the catalog to the items she was interested in and pick out a few of their own while we were speaking. this led to some priceless statements like: "oh, jeff, you should see their eyes. it's like they are opening christmas presents already!" when i asked her about which shipping method she wanted to use, she replied, "hold on. i need to ask my beautiful boys."

go ahead, lady. shoot me in the head.

3:27 p.m.--the lady who played mike myers' mom in so i married an axe murderer just called. her accent was even deeper than it was in the movie. guess she wasn't focused on simplifying her speech for the movie-going audience.

in all seriousness, it took me five minutes and twenty-nine seconds to correctly record this lady's address. talk about painstaking. if she wasn't so sweet, she probably would have left me with a throbbing melon.

3:41 p.m.--a customer just called to let us know that we shipped incorrect items to him on an order he placed in june. he said he did not call sooner because he was in a coma. no kidding.

the funny thing is, i believed him. i replaced the incorrect items and even stepped up the shipping so that he could enjoy his Bible studies before Christmas.

of course, five minutes after i got off the phone with him, another rep walked over. coma man was on the line again. now he wanted to order another book from us, but he wanted us to comp the shipping. in short, he was looking for a coma-induced discount. no dice, my friend. no dice.

4:01 p.m.--just received third straight call from a customer who is trying to add an item onto a previous order. dear friend, if you ever order from l.l. bean, cbd, ikea or any other catalog company, save the customer service slaves some sanity by GIVING YOUR COMPLETE ORDER THE FIRST TIME YOU CALL.

4:05 p.m.--while listening to anne lamott's traveling mercies on cassette, stumbled across this gem:

"Families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness. At some point you pardon you family for being stuck together in all this weirdness. And when you do that you can learn to pardon anyone. Even yourself, eventually."

i think that's a good word from all of us, as we head home to visit those whom we love the most deeply and with whom we tend to fight the most fiercely.

4:15 p.m.--i am currently sitting in someone else's cubicle in the customer service department. i've always found cubicles to be interesting little habitats. sometimes, the clutter in the cube can tell you a little bit about the person it enslaves.

assuming the latter assumption is true, here is what this cube tells me about its occupant. the glut of personal pictures suggests that she might be as obsessed as i am with self. she seems particularly predisposed towards pictures of herself in brightly colored, strapless prom dresses. that would lead one to guess that she fancies herself a princess. sure enough, taped to the back of her cubes are pictures of the idealized, annoying, platonic ideas that preceded lady di: sleeping beauty and snow white (which reminds me...is there any way to truly distinguish those two stories? they are prime examples of one of my most deeply held assumptions: that all disney movies are basically the same. but that's another post, if not a doctoral thesis). the only remarkable difference between the ideas and the form in this instance is that the cube occupant doesn't wear shoulder pads that measure three feet in diameter. in fact, since her dresses are strapless, she has no such pads at all. finally, the books in her cube suggest the struggle between virtue and vanity that struggle within us all, for right below a book entitled how to be a lady is a prodigious stack of us weekly and star magazines. should this young lady be shaped by fundamentalist ideas about femininity or us weekly articles about j lo? that, my friends, is the question.

the cube...can one conceive of a more intriguing habitat for humanity?

4:40 p.m.--20 minutes until emancipation.

4:41 p.m.--repeat sermon about completing your order here...

4:51 p.m.--"Now here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again....My secret is that I talk loud. I talk loud and then the other customer service reps leave me alone. I need God to help me control my volume, because I no longer seem to be capable of speaking softly; to help me with intonation, as my voice is often off pitch; to help me listen, as I seem beyond being able to listen to those I loathe."

5:04 p.m.--i'm out like elton.

Monday, December 13, 2004

memorandum from captain random

this weekend we attending the wedding of angela ebersole and joe mcmanus. i have worked beside angela at beverly bootstraps for the past two years and joe was a member of sinners and saints 1.0, so it was one of the few weddings that i was eager to attend (for the record: in order for me to attend a wedding, the couple must meet at least two of the following three standards: (a) the bride and/or groom is a close friend at the time of their wedding (b) the wedding is going to be held in new england (c) there will be an open bar at the reception. if at least two of these standards are not met, best of luck to ya, but i won't be attending). anyway, as expected, the wedding was a delight. the service was personal, the home-cooked reception dinner was savory and the other guests at our table were either close friends or intriguing unknowns (including dr. robert coleman of the master plan of evangelism).

that being said, every wedding has its peculiarities. the most peculiar element of this wedding was the presiding pastor's verbal tic. the pastor is a passionate, charismatic man whose ministry i deeply respect, praise Jesus, who has planted a thriving church in salem, amen. much to everyone's surprise, and to God's glory, his services, which have the look, sound and feel of a pentecostal revival, have really connected with the people of salem, you follow? from the moment he began to speak i was tempted to tally his verbal tics, do you hear me?, but kellie stayed my hand, praise Jesus. don't get me wrong, i am really thankful for this man and the ministry he leads, praise Jesus, but can't help chuckling about and reproducing his tics myself, amen. i hope that he realizes that imitation is the supreme form of flattery, you follow?, and hope that my humor does not offend, amen.
fear not...

little children, for the dark hours have passed. the moon hath faded and the day is here.