Psalm 19:14 (parentheses mine)

May the words of my mouth (even the words that I only consider saying)
and the meditation of my heart (whatever source I choose to abide in and eat from)
be pleasing in your sight, (and let me see just how pleasing I am to you, Lord, and how your heart stirs with an unending desire to have all of mine)
O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer (You, who have led me to a strong, secure place where I am free to rest in and be saved by you all throughout today).

Sign Here...

I began a new job yesterday. I am now employed by the nation's most successful Suzuki dealership (No, it's better than being the world's tallest midget).
Wow, there is a lot of information to get down. I wouldn't want to tell someone their Xl7 Sport only had standard ABS brakes with EBD if they were actually getting ACC, ESP with TCS and EBD for the same price.

I can't wait until I'm comfortable enough at selling cars to do the "Sign Here" sketch that I heard a long time ago:

Car Salesman: Good afternoon, sir! How may I help you?
Customer: Well, I would like to buy a car.
Car Salesman: Alright, sign here.
Customer: But I haven't even told you what kind of car I want yet!
Car Salesman: You want a great deal, low mileage, affordable price, and classy style. Sign here...

Classic, his tone of voice makes the whole thing even better.
Matzeltopf

91st PGA Championship

I'm at my in-laws watching Y. E. Yang and Tiger duke it out at Hazletine. Wow, what a battle. If you don't think this is exciting, you are probably a gamer

i.e...


Gamer 1: Hey, Todd, guess what? I was playing Tiger Woods 09 on my XBox 360 yesterday, and shot 36 under par on the front nine at TPC Sawgrass. I probably couldn't have done that normally, but I recalibrated my system with a performance enhanced turbo-charged V-twin Hemi micro power converter, which allows me to get approximately 5GigatetraHertz more RAMS per millisecond, so...

Gamer 2: That's nothing, I got online and hacked some codes, so I posted a 37 under yesterday. By the way, how lame is Tiger Woods? Only 8 under so far at Hazletine. What a jerk, he just needs to hold L2 down a little longer and then tap A+X+Y to consolidate those eagle putts...


I rest my case.

I can't believe what Yang is doing, though. Leading by 1 stroke with only one very difficult hole left to play. I'm calling it early; Tiger wins, but I don't know how he will do it. I wish he had a better attitude and would shake off Buddhism, but I love the idea of a superhero. Go get 'em, Tiger.

The amazing human body

Don't worry, there are no pictures of me in a speedo at the end of this post (or anywhere). My wife's grandma (no, none of her either) just had heart surgery yesterday. She was scheduled for a bypass and a valve replacement, but ended up only getting the bypass. The surgeon opened up alot more than he thought he would, though, so now grandma has blood flowing out everywhere (it's a good thing).

The human body is incredible. God is amazing. All the membranes, arteries, veins, systems, and structures that comprise it are their own proof of how they were made. There is no other explanation for the human body than a brilliant Creator. Something equally incredible are surgeons.

Surgeons have to think on their feet, and must be very smart and amazing. At least that's what ours told us about himself. I don't know if you have ever known a surgeon, but they feel like we should know about how much work they went to to get where they are. Understandable. A typical paragraph from our guy would go like this,

"Well I had just finished closing the primary fibrugatolatory artery, when all the sudden I noticed lymphatic acid, hydrochloric acid, AND battery acid leaking from the upper bicuspidal root of the lower atrium. Well, we surgeons have to think on our feet, because we're very clever. So that's exactly what I did. I thought on my feet. Thought right on 'em. I just stood there and thought, thought, thought. I thought about my college experience and all the work I have done to elevate myself to this ultra-human position. I thought about my garage full of imported cars. I thought about the fact that my marriage and bank account seems to be indirectly proportional, and how I'm really okay with that. And finally I thought to ask another surgeon to come in and tell me what I should do with your grandma. Yes, sirree, not many people could think on their feet like that."

Five hundred years in school and they get a sense of entitlement, but I think it could be taken too far.

What happens when people in other fields start feeling the same sense of entitlement?

Billy the bus driver: "Hey, kids we'll be a little late for school today, the bus is broken. But let me tell you about how we bus drivers have to think on our feet."

Bob the trash man: "Yeah, I noticed a banana peel had fallen out of your bag, so I had to think on my feet..."

Clark the janitor: "Well sir, I just wasn't quite tall enough to change the bulb sitting down, so I had to think on my feet..."

Billy Bob Clark the redneck: "Yep. I aint been known te do mech thinkin', and the wife says my feets stink better'n a hawg bein fed a mess a beans, heh heh heh. Yall know what I mean? Man, dem hawgs make the wurst stanks, heh heh..."




Happy Successful Heart Surgery Day, Grandma, love you.

My Apologies to...

So today I read what I posted yesterday, and it really read different than I wanted it to. It really just came across as me making fun of/complaining about my wife.


As I said; not what I intended

Let me issue a public apology:




To whom it may concern,

Roses are red, violets are blue, vomit is green, and now you're sick too.
(that wasn't part of the apology, just a poetic interlude)

Okay, here we go:



To whom it may concern,

Six smart sharp sharks stood still surely saying sorry so say something similarly serendipitous.

hmm...I'm having a little trouble with this apology thing



One more try:





To whom it may concern,

I am truly sorry that my wife dances like a three-legged giraffe and eats like a pig.

Sincerely,

Says Ray



There, now my conscience is cleared.

Dancing Queen

I'm sitting at my cousin's house, trying to keep my wife from shaking her groove thing too much, which has turned into my full time job since the advent of my marriage career.

My wife loves to dance.

For most husbands, this is a problem for one primary reason:

1. They have to dance with their wife, which is boring, because if they don't, their wife will dance by herself; thereby garnering the attention of other, ahemm, men.

Fortunately for me, Molly isn't coordinated. So I can let her dance all she wants, and none of the other men notice.

Don't get me wrong, she is attractive when she does some things. Chipotle, for instance. Watching her complain and gripe at the workers so they will give her three more grains of rice just before she shovels that 1.45 lb meal into her face with no regard for making such a mess of herself she might be mistaken for a car wreck victim really makes my heart implode with love.

It's ironic, though, that I was first attracted to her dancing...

Monetization

So Says Ray has gone commercial.

I have sold my artistry to the highest bidder.

There are ads on my blog now, and I receive money by people reading my blog. Welcome to literary whoredom. So I have crunched the numbers, and considering there are at least seven, and probably more (like eight) people that read Says Ray, I should make about $1.75/year JUST FROM POSTING!!

Incredible, I know.

Molly and I have been praying for God to deliver us financially, but we never expected anything this big. Praise the Lord, I am now a professional blogger.

Typical Typings

Hey folks, we're in this thing together

I'm interested in what makes you, the reader, tick

Do you...appreciate...ellipsis?   ...?

D0 you have any desire for me to talk about anything a little more close to your heart, such as cholesterol?

Do you rumba?   (then pick a rumba from one to ten)

Do you respond to questions?

Let me know what you're thinking...

PlEaSe CoMmENt

Vacation

My family found itself in Arkansas again this summer. Not that we were lost, of course, but it seems like this is our second home. My grandparents started coming to Bull Shoals lake forty nine years ago, and we are still here, breeding like rabbits and fitting in all too well with the locals ("Hey cousin so-and-so, zip up your pants").

One of my favorite things about vacation is the freedom one can experience from devices. Cell phones are the main device of which I type. My cell phone never leaves my side at home, and since the advent of the bluetooth, it literally is with me so much it's growing out of my ear. 

Here there is a no shoes no shirt no teeth no direct ancestry no cell phone no problem policy, and I love it. Catch fish, shoot fish, trap fish, stew fish; those are your only jobs.

Unless you're a woman, obviously, then you have a lot of jobs. I'm convinced that even though my mother has driven down every year with us and stayed in the same cabins and rode on the same boats; she hasn't had an actual vacation since before she was married (and since she was married at 17, her last vacation was an eighth grade summer camp).

I taught my younger sister's boyfriend how to scuba dive today. He did great. He's a good guy; they'll probably get married. I'm good with it.

It's after 1 AnteMeridian, and my wife is sleeping. I think I'm going to leave you guys and go join her...goodnight.

B A N A N A S

Apparently my mother-in-law is into etymology, ha, what a word. Allow me to digress...

Etymology or Entomology? That is the question. An insect by any other nominal origin would smell just as sweet, so what's the big deal?
Whenever people ask me which means which, I say that they both mean the same thing:

The length of time you study either is directly inproportional to your chance of finding a mate.


Okay, now I will regress (gross)...

My Mother-in-law recently created a new phrase. Now, this is something she does all the time, but this time she was sober (Ha, just kidding [not really]). Anyway, a coworker and she were shooting the breeze (that one is already taken). You know, chewing the fat, conversin', chatting, blowing some air, at the old water cooler in the sky (eh, getting worse). TALKING, basically.
Her coworker mentions something that my MIL--which means Mother In Law (to some people)--has done all her life, to which MIL replied,

"Yeah, well I've chased that banana around the block a few times."


Huh...now,

Etymologically speaking (aren't we all?), she might have had several common phrases in her mind at the same time:

I've chased that all my life (which would have been a little vague)
I've been around the block a few times (which would have been self-proclaimed prostitution)
I go 'round and 'round about that (which is better than prostitution, but it still seems infantile)
I really enjoy bananas (which had nothing to do with their conversation, but could have been useful information if her coworker found out she had a potassium deficiency)

So, my theory is that in an effort to save time and to relay vital emergency health information, MIL said, "Yeah, well I've chased that banana around the block a few times."

Makes sense...that is one smart lady. Good luck, MIL, I think now it's clear as mud to all of us that when pigs fly, we won't burn our bridges behind us or count our chickens before the apples fall far from the tree, and you will still be chasing your banana around the block.

In a Trance...

I got a new cell phone. It's a Samsung (he did, indeed) Trance. I had the same Motorola for about two.five years before that, so for the last couple days I have been as excited as a Ferrell child finding out they get a birthday party.
When I was doing research, which is by no means an activity that I have been stereotyped with doing to excess, I came across this shiny phone. I read the first line of the phone description:

"The Samsung Trance is designed for the person with an ear for music and an eye for style. It-"

Research over, I found my perfect phone.

It comes equipped with all sorts of gizmos and do-hickeys (on second thought, kids, let's call them "don't-hickeys"). My favorite is the text-readout feature. When someone texts me now, I hear a beep in my bluetooth, followed by a female computer voice reading me the text. This is all well and good, but as soon as my wife and friends found out that it did this, they started sending me inappropriate text messages. Eh, what are you gonna do?
I told a friend that I have purchased a perverted bluetooth since it keeps saying such awful things in my ear, but she reminded me I actually purchased a perverted social circle.
I would like a refund, but you can't return circles if they're square (hmm...)

Speaking of Bad Blueteeth, that reminds me to talk about Oxymoralliterations.

Oxymoralliterations are alliterations that are also oxymoron's. I.E.: Hysterical Hysterectomy, Enjoyable Enima, Loveable Layoff, Beautiful Breakup, and Spectacular Sternum Snappage.

Please, text me any others you can think of, along with any other inappropriate comments. They will be read to me whether I want to hear them or not.

Well, I just found out God wants my life to go in a direction that I hadn't expected...the same direction.

I applied for a job, had an interview, but God doesn't want me to leave the ministry I'm in right now. Praise God for putting me where He wants me.

Molly cried for me, so I didn't have to do that. That was very nice of her, I wasn't looking forward to it, and ONE of us had to. Unfortunately, that left me with no way to vent my disappointment. So I did what any red-blooded American man would do when he needs to unwind: I went to my cousin's house and watched Maggie the Ferocious Beast with my five year old cousins. If I might quote the beast, as said to Hamilton,

"Great Googely-Moogely," God is good.

Poem

One evening I cooked for my wife

but it turned into far too much strife

You see, to be a good cook

you must read cooking books

and no sooner would I read one than die



I bought some potatoes for $2.50 each

Microwaveable, and just within reach

I thought to myself,

"Why are these on the shelf?

They clearly are the far better buy."



I took my discovery home to begin

cooking and lighting candles for when

She would walk through the door

See no table for four

but only one for her and I

My dreams didn't come to fruition

Because I didn't pay the tuition

To the school of "Yes, you can

be a cook and a straight man"

which is a joke that is meant to be dry

Well the story ends sadly my friends

Like you really expected a different end

They took longer to make than the kind that you bake

and 245% more expensive won't fly

But what is the point of this story?

Should it have been told by Corrie?

No, it does have a purpose:

Women should serve us

because men suck at cooking; no lie

I lose

Today I played 18 holes of frisbee golf and 18 holes of regular golf, all in the Rocky Mountains. You have never thrown a disc until you have thrown it across a mountain stream. You have never hit a golf ball until you have hit it off a mountain tee box (I realize that both those statements are debateable, but this is my blog).
I played the best golf today that I have for months (+5 in disc, +6 in regular), but guess what? My brother and father-in-law also played the best they have for months, so I lost the bets.

I hate losing

I win

Molly and I leave for Colorado tomorrow night; hiking vacation with her family. On the day we get back from that, we head out for Arkansas.
Molly and I have good fun together. She beat me again at our garage-sale board game (Careers R by Parker Brothers) that we got for a dollar--that's a lot of money to pay for the consistent disappointment that it's brought me. I say the jokes on her, because I keep losing at the game that symbolizes life success, and she's my wife. Put that into real life, and WHO LOSES NOW?!?

I love winning.