The Weepies "Can't Go Back Now"

Since I can't get them to show up here to play at the Z&T, here's their most excellent video

Overread at Table 3: MR Psalms (. . . MR not!)

MR Psalms

 

Psalm 1

Please, Lord help me . . .

I am broken, Lord.  I am scared, my enemies surround me.
There is no one I can turn to,
So I will trust in You, Lord.
Please give me the courage to continue.

If I am to be broken,

Let me be broken before You,
and if I am to be broken before them,
then let them say, “He’s broken, but it was
God who broke him, and not us.”

Lord, my enemies huddle around me,

stabbing me with swords of
“arrogance” “pitiful” “prideful” “malicious”
These are the words that they place on me,
these are the garments they have draped on me.

And Lord, if it be Your will that my enemies crush me,

Then let them say, “We crushed him,
but he went to dust
Proclaiming a Holy Name.”

 

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Verble: So what made you want to try to rip off God?

 

MR: or David.   But really, there this guy I know, real devout guy, and at the company we works for they are ripping him from all sides - his staff, his management, heads of other departments, they're just tearing him to all kinds of shreds, and it just put me in the mind of some of the Davidian Psalms, so I thought I'd do my own little take on it.

 

Verble:  Nice.   But you're still trying to rip off God.

 

MR: Whatever dude.

 

 

 

Overread at Table 1: Some Father's Day Humour

This is what our compliance officer sent out this morning, here, read this:


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Here are a few humorous stories about fathers…

 

 

Shopping Dad Gone Mad

My father was completely lost in the kitchen and never ate unless someone prepared a meal for him. When Mother was ill, however, he volunteered to go to the supermarket for her. She sent him off with a carefully numbered list of seven items.

 

Dad returned shortly, very proud of himself, and proceeded to unpack the grocery bags. He had 1 bag of sugar, 2 dozen eggs, 3 hams, 4 boxes of detergent, 5 boxes of crackers, 6 eggplants, and 7 green peppers.

 

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Call of Doodie

My husband was a new dad and our son was 3 months old. We took the baby with us to watch a movie and half way through noticed a strong smell. The baby needed changed. My husband offered to take him and change him in the men’s room. But after about 20 minutes, I began to get worried. Just as I was going to look for him he came back in the theater wide-eyed and frazzled, pushing the stroller.

 

“What happened,” I asked.

 

“He had a blow out.”

 

“Oh, ok.” (It was at this moment I looked down and saw that our tiny son was wrapped in brown paper towels from the bathroom machine. No pants or shirt on, just a diaper. MacGyver had come out in full effect and our child was now wearing paper towel baby wear).

 

“No, you don’t understand. I went to change him and put his new outfit out on the table. He started to pee again with his diaper off, on his clean clothes, and then he pooped on the wall.”

 

“He what? How could he do that?”

 

“I have no idea but it happened, all over the wall. It shot out like mustard,” he said with exhaustion as if he just fought a battle.

 

As I was looking at the horrified look on my husband’s face, laughter started to bubble up. Then it overcame me and in the middle of the movie, I completely lost it and could not get a grip.

 

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Every Day is Father’s Day

One morning my four-year-old son asked my husband, “Why are you making Mommy breakfast? Is she sick?”

“No, buddy,” replied his dad, “it’s Mother’s Day.”

“Oh,” he said, “then is every other day Father’s Day?”

 

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Difference between Mother's Day and Father's Day – Bill Cosby

Mother's Day is a much bigger deal because Mothers are more organized. Mothers say to their children, “Now here is a list of what I want. Go get the money from your father and you surprise me on Mother's Day. You do that for me.”

For Father’s Day I give each of my five kids $20 so that they can go out and by me a present… a total of $100. They go to the store and buy two packages of underwear, each of which costs $5 and contains three shorts. They tear them open and each kid wraps up one pair, the sixth going to the Salvation Army. Therefore, on Father’s Day I am walking around with new underwear and my kids are walking around with $90 worth of my change in their pockets.

 

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Father’s Day Jokes, One Liners, and Short Quotes

 

You can tell it’s almost father’s Day… the kids suddenly want to stop at all the garage sales.

 

 

“Dad, are bugs good to eat?” asked the boy.

“Let’s not talk about such things at the dinner table son,” his father replied.

After dinner the father inquired, “Now son, what did you want to ask me?”

“Oh, nothing,” the boy said. “There was a bug in your soup, but it’s gone now.”

 

 

My son wants 50% of my Father’s Day gifts… he says, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t even be a father.

 

 

“Son, if you keep pulling my hair you will have to get off my shoulders.”

“But dad, I’m just trying to get my gum back!”

 

 

 

Overseen at Booth Four: Dumb Ways to Die

Check this out, my kids just showed me this today:

Those kids!  What will they find next!

Overread at Table 4: Proximity by Randall Mann

Proximity   by Randall Mann     Out of the fog comes a little white bus. It ferries us south to the technical mouth of the bay. This is biopharma, Double Helix Way. In the gleaming canteen, mugs have been dutifully stacked for our dismantling, a form of punishment. Executives take the same elevator as I. This one's chatty, that one's gravely engrossed in his cloud. Proximity measures shame. I manage in an office, but an office that faces a hallway, not the bay. One day I hope to see the bay that way. It all began in the open, a cubicle--there's movement. My door is always open, even when I shut it. I sit seven boxes below the CEO on the org chart. It's an art, the value-add, the compound noun. Calendar is a verb. To your point, the kindest prepositional phrase. Leafy trees grow a short walk from Building 5. Take a walk. It might be nice to lie and watch the smoky marrow rise and fall, and rise. Don't shut your eyes.         Copyright © 2013 by Randall Mann. Used with permission of the author. (ACTUALLY, poets.org used it with permission . . . Niall Carter is just showing it to Isabel Bickerstaff on his iPad while they have a quick breakfast over two mocha lattés)

 

About This Poem "I have been thinking a lot about the machinery of work--commute, hierarchy, vernacular, etc.--and wanted to integrate my often conflicting ideas about it into a poem. This poem is about several of my jobs, and, in a sense, none of them."    --Randall Mann

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Niall Carter looks at Isabel Bickerstaff and says, "I read this poem and said, 'My God!  What have we all become?!"

And she, perusing the lines a second time, says (slightly tremulously), "You're right.   I so wanna quit my frikkin job now."

Overheard at Booth One: Life's Soundbites

She leaned across the table, the spoon clinking against the inside of her coffee cup, and she said, "Doesn't it seem to you that Life is really just an endless string of soundbites?   There's no real story here."

I put the last small chunk my chocolate cheesecake brownie in my mouth, and nodded.    I looked out the window as several cars passed by, oblivious to this revelation.

Overheard at Table Two: Problem Orders

My boss says I have a problem taking orders.   I told him I don't have a problem taking orders, he just has a problem GIVING orders.