Engineers Tend to Think

It's always interesting when I party with a group of engineers, as I did recently. They see the world in their own complex way. That old 1950s stereotype of the "nerd" is out of date. The engineers I know are not in the least socially challenged and have long since discarded their thick black-framed glasses, pocket protectors, and plaid slacks. None of them has a calculator hanging from a belt. Instead, they talk of the Next Big Thing in the world of inventions. Iranian engineer Fares (pronounced Farris) is sure that there will soon be software called Intuitive-Buy (IB). This IB software is one step up from the One Click ordering that Amazon has for fast online purchases. It is already hard not to buy from Amazon with the one-click order system. "Hey! I didn't mean to buy that! I have epilepsy of the hand, and I had an index-finger spasm!"

But IB will make buying even faster and easier than that, which will be a great boon to companies in these economic times. When a consumer merely considers making a purchase, IB registers that and five minutes later the UPS truck is outside delivering it.

Fares is off the wall in other ways. In his young days, he shared a house with another new engineer, Chris, who was not at home much. Chris was a good guy but just could not get around to buying living room furniture because he was rarely there. So the living room remained an empty cavern. But Fares was there often, and he had a girlfriend. Finally Fares talked to Chris about this. "Chris," he entreated in his charming, deep-voiced accent. "I would very much like it if you would get some furniture. It is a little awkward when I bring my girlfriend over and all I can say to her is, 'You want to go to bed?'"

The World Famous Stethoscope Video

Judging by how many times I have received this, it has been memorable to many. It starts out funny, and then, wham! A friend of mine asked what our United Methodist churches could come up with to attract this kind of attention. If you're one of the few people who have not seen it yet, it's here.

Intervals

I was going to write something but instead I'll pause.

I will break the silence with a song about nothing, thus continuing the interval in a diffferent way. Here is a piece of doggerel learned many years ago.

Nothing nothing nothing nothing
I sing nothing all day long
I sing absolutely nothing
How d'ya like my nothing song?

After a hectic two days in Spanish City it's good to get home, ahead of a winter storm no less, and have some "nothing time" or downtime. For me, downtime is up time. It restores, renews, and refreshes. Sometimes we pay a lot of attention to what's in front of us and less to what is in between what's in front of us. We all need intervals to process, absorb, and think. After God created the world in six days, God rested on the seventh. That period of nothing is called Sabbath to us Jesus-loving folks. As the old saying goes, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. One company had a guy sitting and thinking and staring out the window. A recently hired efficiency expert saw this and insisted, "Get rid of him! He's doing nothing!" His companion answered, "The last time he did nothing, he figured out how to save our company a million dollars."

Great ideas, like plants, take time to germinate. Speech would be meaningless without taking a breath in between sentences. Those who fail to do so risk being diagnosed with verbal diarrhea. I have seen a few cases of that. Music needs its rests in between notes or it is just noise. Even my caterer friend tells me that the secret to great food is taking a few initial steps with it, such as spreading the first layer on a sandwich, then leaving it for a few hours before doing anything else.

I take a rest
A rest is blessed
And I suggest it's often best.
You may have guessed
What I've confessed
So put my statement to the test.

One wag even saw fit to commemorate such a downtime interval with a historical marker. "On January 27, 1869, right here, nothing happened."

I'll end here so you can go take a break.

How to Throw People Off

I've always been a fan of Groucho Marx. I never knew what he would say next. It might be a clever pun, or a remark that was not exactly risque but could be taken that way, or just something that was a total reversal of what was expected. He once told a date, "I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." He has had scores of imitators, including Jonas, my friend from HiTekk whom I've discussed before. I once went up to Jonas to greet him at work early one Monday morning. "Hi Jonas," I waved. "No, but I wish I was," he answered.

Pastors have their own version of causing people to do a double take. Tonight the Smalltown United Church Women met at Jonelle Hatfield's house. It's always a treat to meet there as Jonelle is an artist, interior designer, and flower arranger extraordinaire. It's better than a Home and Garden show. Not only that, but we all got to eat her spaghetti and meat sauce which made the whole evening, week, and year worthwhile. Now that I've had Jonelle's spaghetti, 2009 is just all right with me. Of course as it was a meeting of church ladies we all observed the highest rules of Emily Post etiquette while stuffing our faces to the max. After the mega-munching we planned the Smalltown United Church Women program and hostessing calendar for the year. Someone asked me if I would be able to be at the program next year on January 16, 2010. I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head.

"I can't. I have a funeral that day."

International Epiphany

I met a friend of a friend in Corpus yesterday. Her name is Vanessa, but she loves to dance and is so exuberant people call her Cha-Cha. Cha-Cha has long dark hair and big dark eyes and her eyeballs dance when she laughs. Last night she wore a Mexican embroidered dress and red sandals.

She is Puerto Rican and has traveled to Italy, Britain, South America, and elsewhere. She had plenty to say about how they do things in other countries. She says she has another nickname besides Cha-Cha and it is CPR. "No, I'm not a medic," she told me. "That stands for 'Crazy Puerto Rican'." Cha-Cha used to smoke and when she was in Italy she asked someone to light her cigarette. "I said it wrong though," she giggled. "It came out really bad in Italian; I ended up saying Light My Fire."

Cha-Cha just got back from Cuba. "They don't celebrate Christmas in Cuba. They celebrate Three Kings Day. On that day, children put a shoebox under the bed with grass in it for the kings' camels. When the kids wake up the next day, the box is gone and there are gifts under the bed in its place." The father of the household in which Cha-Cha was staying told his children that year, "Don't put grass in the box. The camels will be okay. But those three kings will be thirsty when they arrive. Leave the shoebox under the bed with three shots of rum."

Missionaries at the Door

When I was brand new at my first parish in Microtown, I was unpacking and loading dishes into the cabinets when I heard a knock on the door. I was delighted. I thought it was church members coming to meet me. Turned out it was two Jehovah Witnesses come to save my soul and pass on a copy of the Watchtower to make sure I got to heaven. Not long afterward, I learned a good way of coping with such events from my clergy friend Doug and his wife. Before entering ordained ministry Doug had been a corporate employee in Salt Lake City, one of the tiny minority of non-Mormons living there. He was on the regular circuit for Mormon missionaries to come visit. Two of them visited him at least once every other month.

One night he heard a rap on the door. He did not know it then, but what he was about to do would ensure that no Mormon missionaries, Jehovah Witnesses, or Fuller Brush salesmen ever showed up uninvited again.

At the time he was carving up a giant joint of meat for grilling. He was holding his red-streaked carving knife and had some blood on his apron. He opened the door to see two conservatively dark-suited young missionaries on his doorstep. He grinned at their look of surprise at his blood-stained garb and knife. "Hi, nice to see you," he greeted them. "Can you come back later? We're Druids. We're in the middle of a sacrifice."

Moos, Baas, Snorts, and Squeaks

All of the above are sounds from the Smalltown Regional Junior Livestock Show now on proud display at the local fairgrounds next to the carnival rides and bric-a-brac booths. I stopped by tonight to admire the clipped and coiffed animals and their proud owners in jeans, cowboy boots, button-down shirts and silver-studded leather belts. The Livestock Queen posed with all the winners with her dark hair, sparkling tiara, and Pepsodent dazzling smile. After the clean-scrubbed beauty of the queen and her court it was a contrast to go into the pig pens and see giant pink porkers rooting and snorting. It made me want to put up a hot dog stand right beside them that said Dine With Swine.

I watched the judging going on in the ring as the proud young 4H and FFA exhibitors marched their animals around for the audience in the stands on three sides to all get a good look. If I were judging, I'd make my decisions based on how much or how little the animals looked like puppies. The more puppylike the better. Those floppy-eared sheep and lop rabbits that looked huggable would all get ribbons from me. Of course that's not how it works really.

It was mighty hard for this citified gal to fully process how the judges made their decisions about the "muscular" "balanced" lambs chosen for the coveted fair ribbons and prize money for college funds. They all looked muscular enough to wrestle each other and win. In fact I saw a couple of lambs with heads intertwined testing each other's muscularity, if that's a word. They had more than enough muscles to butt each other's heads now and then and balk at their owners pulling them into the ring. Those were some of the most balanced lambs I've ever seen too, not that I've run into any unbalanced ones. "Help! I'm being chased by an unbalanced lamb!" All the lambs stood evenly on all four of their legs and not a one of them fell down.