14 Nov 10 The Final Inspection
Which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining,
Just as brightly as his brass.‘Step forward now, you soldier,
How shall I deal with you ?
Have you always turned the other cheek ?
To My Church have you been true?’The soldier squared his shoulders and said,
‘No, Lord, I guess I ain’t.
Because those of us who carry guns,
Can’t always be a saint.I’ve had to work most Sundays,
And at times my talk was tough.
And sometimes I’ve been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.But, I never took a penny,
That wasn’t mine to keep…
Though I worked a lot of overtime,
When the bills got just too steep.And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God, forgive me,
I’ve wept unmanly tears.I know I don’t deserve a place,
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around,
Except to calm their fears.If you’ve a place for me here, Lord,
It needn’t be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don’t, I’ll understand.There was a silence all around the throne,
Where the saints had often trod.
As the soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.‘Step forward now, you soldier,
You’ve borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven’s streets,
You’ve done your time in Hell.’
Tags: burdens, fear, fears, god step, guns, heaven, judgment, other cheek, overtime, shoes, silence, soldier, time in hell
14 Nov 09 Under 30′s – The Spoilt Crowd
If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning… uphill… barefoot… both ways… yadda, yadda, yadda. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in I was going to lay a bunch of stuff like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!
But. now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.
You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a darn Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the darn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!
There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen! Then, you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!
Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our a-s! Nowhere was safe!
There were no MP3′s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or, you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!
There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished, and the tape would come undone… cause – that’s how we rolled, dig?
We didn’t have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that’s it!
There weren’t any freakin’ cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn’t make or receive a call. You actually had to be out of touch with your “friends”. OH MY GOD!!! Think of the horror…
And then there’s TEXTING. yeah, right. You kids have no idea how annoying you are.
And, we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, or a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600, with games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen… forever! And, you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were s—–d when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your rear and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I’m saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-brats!
And, we didn’t have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!
Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd
Tags: child protection services, email, mp3, napster, phone, texting, under 30's
23 Sep 09 The Ticking Clock
A couple of mornings ago, I was sitting in the kitchen with my wife, eating breakfast.
The extractor above the stove top was still running, and I got up to switch it off.
“Is that annoying you?” said my wife.
“A little”, I said adding that we seem to live in a world of constant noise these days.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I like conversation, I like music, and I wouldn’t want to live in a world of silence.
However, I recalled when I was a small child, and we used to visit my great-grandmother, and also a great aunt. In the pauses between conversation all you could hear was the ticking of the clock. A ‘real’ clock too. This was long before the age of digital anything!
Now as we sat there in the kitchen I could hear, that extractor, the refrigerator, the air conditioning and the washing machine. Outside someone was running some power tools. Many times on top of this cacaphony is the babble from a television that no-one is watching.
The only thing I couldn’t hear was the relaxing rythmic ticking of a clock.
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