A Bad Bad Boy

The guv’ment came
And picked me up
“You’re a bad bad boy.

“What are you doing
Building a boat
Big as the city of Troy.

Neighbors complaining
‘Bout your hammering
From dawn to flashlight.”

“It’s going to rain.
I want to be ready
For the forty days and nights.”

The policeman said,
“You’re going to jail.”
“I ain’t got no time for that.

“If you let me go
I’ll give you a ride.
I won’t charge you a cent,

“Just you and your lady.
Can hitch with us
When the rain comes down.”

He gave it a think
When I told him more.
“You sure don’t wanna drown.

“There’s lot to do
And it’s going to be
One big regular zoo.

A tirne at the oars,
Swabbing the deck,
And cleaning up the poo.”

“Oh, my God,” he said.
“Think of the smell.
The place is going to stink.”

“That’s the price,”
I said to him,
“For a boat that won’t sink.”

So the two of them
Joined the eight of us
For a round the world tour.

Forty days passed
And forty days more,
We didn’t see a shore.

When you don’t have
A refrigerator
Some food’s going to rot.

In our final days,
We had no choice.
We ate beans a lot.

We continued on
And never turned back.
It was Ararat or bust.

The dove returned
With a single twig.
We stopped our water bus.

A mountain now
Up out of the sea,
We climbed to its crest.

So thankful we,
We minted our coins,
“In God we ever trust.”

And that’s the tale
Of long, long ago
When I was employed

Building a boat
Night after night
Being a bad bad boy.

The Good Book

I am a Good Book kind of guy. When I was growing up, all the other guys read the articles in Playboy Magazine. I read the Bible. You heard me right. The Bible. I kept wondering how it would turn out. I’ve never been a turn-to-the-end kind of reader. It always surprised me that Hercule Poirot hit the nail on the head and got the right guy. Usually the butler.

In those kind of books the butler did it. In fact, no matter what kind of book it is, the butler does it. So I wasn’t surprised when I got to the end of the Good Book to discover that Satan was the Butler.

Why did I read the Bible when all the other guys were finding out what Hef would wear to the prom? Certainly not for the clothes. I mean I wouldn’t be caught dead at a prom in a toga. The problem with togas is that you have to find matching shoes. Has anyone ever been able to find toga-matching shoes for a prom?

No. I wanted to find out who won the baseball game. After all, the Bible starts out with a baseball game. In the Big Inning. Spoiler alert: God wins. How He wins I am not telling. But He wins. The score isn’t even close.

I wondered if Noah’s Ark was the original Titanic? If so, where was the glacier? I even tried my hand at doing a Moses. I went down to the river close by my house and tried parting the waters. All I got for my trouble was a mouthful of water.

I thought my break out with the mumps was the first plague in Exodus. To get some relief, I told my mother to let my brother go. He was a regular Cain anyway.

I joined the marching band and took up trumpet. I figured it would be a great way to blow down the walls of the neighborhood bully. After all, it worked on Jericho for Joshua and his band of merry men.

Instead of working out, I did a Samson. I grew my hair long and expected strength. My back still hurts from the strain when I tried to pick up that VW Bug.

You’d think I would have learned. But no. I was arrested for carrying a sling shot without a license. What was good enough for David was good enough for me. And I do live in an Open Carry State.

But you want to know the biggest disappointment. I couldn’t figure out how Solomon got seven hundred girlfriends. I tried reading “The Song of Solomon” to a number of girls at the college I went to. Talk about a great way to get slapped. That’s it.

There was one thing I get did right. I didn’t put out the burning bush I saw in my back yard. I don’t care what my wife says. It could have been God. If God wants to burn down my house, what can I do? Besides FEMA and the insurance company paid for a whole new house. And my wife got the kitchen she’d been praying for.

Mrs. Noah

It’s raining. It’s always raining in winter here. It never stops. If only it would stop, I could get on with my life. Wonder how Mrs. Noah felt on that ark, with the fam all stuffed into one little cabin.’Cause the rest of the ark had to be used for the animals. Geez, she must have been going crazy with all those animals. And the relatives. There was that daughter-in-law she couldn’t stand. When she married the big guy, she didn’t ask for this. Over a month on this damned boat and still no land in sight. Then there was the problem with the flu. Nobody ever talks about the two weeks when everybody on the boat came down with the flu. Mrs. Noah was the only one who was able to fight it off. Not only did she have to take care of the animals, she had two weeks without a break with Mr. Noah and the three sons and their wives, puking all over the deck. Poor Mrs. Noah. By the time the ark hit land, she up and asked for a divorce. That’s why you don’t hear no more about Mrs. Noah. She was out of there and off to the Hanging Gardens for some Me time. I know she must have hated the rain. Will it ever stop?

Cost Overruns at the Tower of Babel

OR EVERY RULER HAS A BAD DAY.

“When do you think it will be done?” Nimrod asked. He always asked the hard questions.

“I don’t know, sir. We’re already over budget.” Furg, the Builder, said.

“Over budget?” Nimrod was not happy. “How can we be over budget?”

“We just are. After all, we’re having to ship brick all the way from Egypt. The Egyptians raised their prices.”

“Why can’t we use good Babylonian brick?” Nimrod was no builder. He was a warrior, good at chopping off Sumerian heads in battle. Not at this budgeting kind of thing. Wasn’t it about time he went and started a ruckus with Ur? The Urians had been smart mouthing him lately.

“Babylonian brick just won’t hold in place. Egyptian brick will.”

“I sure hate to go back to Congress and tell them I need more money. They weren’t happy about that chariot cost overrun. How was I to know the Philistines upped their prices?”

“Yes, sir. So do you still want the Glorious and Magnificent Nimrod Wing or not?”

“Darn tooting, I do. And in pure gold trim too. Now I have other business to attend to.” Nimrod was thinking that he was already late for his tete-a-tete with Belatsunat. His wrist sundial said a freckle passed a hair already. She was going to charge him double. It sure was hard being a conqueror.

As Nimrod was turning to leave, Furg threw him another fastball. “There’s just one more thing.”

Nimrod wanted to say, “What now?” But he didn’t. After all, he was a kind ruler. At least, he liked to think of himself that way. He said, “Yes?”

“What do we do about the quicksand?”

To Chuck or Not to Chuck

Video for this post: 10 Things I Hate About Commandments

As y’all know, in the last week or so, we’ve had Holy Week, Passover and Easter. To celebrate I saw “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben Hur” fpr the umpteenth time.

I got to tell you “Ben Hur” is one heck of a sports movie. There’s javelin throwing. There’s rowing competition. There’s archery and catapulting fire from one ship to another. There’s chariot racing. Since it was the Romans that invented the Olympics, it was only right to feature these Olympic sporting events, performed by some Olympic style egos.

On top of all that, there’s Charlton Heston face. It has two emotions. Chuck Serious and Chuck Light. I mean that guy knew how to act. It near puts away Kirk Douglas’s Spartacus face, but not quite. It did give Burt Lancaster’s Elmer Gantry face some competition. It was almost like Chuck had played those roles too. Nobody could out-hero Chuck. Just check out his El Cid.

His was such a face that it just about makes you want to believe Chuck was playing God, not Moses, in “The Ten Commandment”. He sure sounded like God. How Chuck got that face to do that I will never know. Anyway Chuck sure knew a lot about God. He kept meeting him in all those movies.

In “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, he met the Pope. That was like meeting God back in the olden days. And he got to paint God’s hand. So you can pretty well assume Chuck had met God and shook the Big Guy’s Hand. He was so good at the God gig that he got promoted to Cardinal as in Cardinal Richelieu. He even did a series on the Bible as if he wrote the Good Book himself. Of course, we know he didn’t. God did that. But the way Chuck did the series, it was just like God talking to you.

So, when the NRA was looking around for someone who could speak with a voice of authority, they got Chuck. You just knew that God had given us an Eleventh Commandment when Chuck said, “Thou shalt not take away my gun.”

Now, that Chuck ain’t around no more, Hollywood sure don’t know how to make Chuck movies, and I sure miss him. I mean, they have tried with “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” Hollywood went and CGI-ed the heck out of the Moses story. Only that Red Sea parting ain’t even close to the real thing. Old Cecil B. was at the parting of the Red Sea himself. If anybody could put on a parting, it was Cecil B.

It even screwed up the Noah story. How Russell Crowe spoke those lines without laughing I will never know. Guess, if they paid me the big bucks Russ got, I would say any darn thing they wanted me too.

And with “Ben Hur: The Remake,” we got a chariot race that really wasn’t a chariot race. It was s’posed to be the Roman equivalent of the Daytona 500. Only thing, that wasn’t chariot racing. Chuck knew that.