Ace In the Hole

Some days, all I have is Jesus.

Seriously. Sometimes, that’s all I have to get me through a day. The only thing that keeps me from blowing a gasket. My faith in a risen Lord and Messiah, my savior Jesus Christ, along with the knowledge that through becoming born again my soul is secure and that God is backing me—that is sometimes that only thing that make me able to keep going.

A lot of people like to pick on people for using Christianity as a crutch. OK. So what’s wrong with a crutch? If your leg is seriously sprained or broken, how the hell else are you going to get around?

So Christianity, or more specifically God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, are sometimes my crutch. Or the safety net under that high-wire I’m trying to walk. Or the flotation device that my seat becomes should my plane have to make a landing on water.

I won’t make any damn apologies for that. It’s a fool who doesn’t use his or her support system when things get rough. Right now, I don’t have much of a support system, and things are pretty crappy. So I’m calling on my spiritual lifelines.

That doesn’t make me weak. It means I have some common sense. Because truth be told, we all are weak at times. Hurt. Helpless. Struggling.

And I’m telling you that it’s God that grants me the strength sometimes—that little extra boost I don’t have in my anymore and I know I don’t have—to have gotten through some stuff, and to continue to get through, that other people have done things like put bullets in their head to solve. People in my extended circle who, by the way, didn’t lean on God. Ever.

Crutch? Sometimes.

I prefer to think of God as my ace in the hole.

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Guilty Pleasures

I’m going to let you in on some dirty little secrets of mine. A handful of women that I am, for varying reasons, kind of ashamed (and in at least one case, mortified) to say I would like to have known in bed already or, if my wife should pass away suddenly, have a crack at in bed in the future.

This is to be distinguished from the “Women I’d Break the 7th Commandment With” post, as I simply cannot see any of the women I’m about to list here actually wooing me away from my wife for even a quickie. It’s just that, well, were I on the market again, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist a damn one of them.

Helen Mirren

Sure, this woman is 23 years my senior (and a senior citizen), but damn. She somehow manages to both look her age and look good. Really good. I mean, most college-aged women probably couldn’t maintain a body this nice. Bonus points for having a British accent. Additional bonus points for being a tremendous actor.

Here are a few notable quotes that make me like her even more:

“Flesh sells. People don’t want to see pictures of churches. They want to see naked bodies.” (she has often appeared nude in roles)

“I’m a would-be rebel. The good girl who’d like to be a bad one.”

“It’s the creme-de-la-creme of bullshit.” (speaking about the Academy Awards)

“When you do Shakespeare they think you must be intelligent because they think you understand what you’re saying.”

Madonna

To be honest, Madonna was in her peak in the 1980s and early 1990s. I’m not saying she hasn’t done some good tunes since then; but she needs to sit her ass down. I’m not against women being sexual into their mature years (I mean, she’s only 10 years older than me and I don’t consider myself old, really). I don’t think that women (or men) have to exit the pop music business at a certain age.

It’s just that she’s ceased to be relevant. Long ago. She strikes me as someone who is desperately clinging to her place in the spotlight and trying to force her career on us far above any normal kind of promotion or marketing. She’s reinvented herself so often that I don’t think she knows who she is. I mean, the woman got into the Kaballah, which is something you really should be a really intellectual and/or mystically oriented Jew to be tackling. She’s been around the block so much that even if she has used a condom with ever one of her lovers I have to wonder what disease might be lurking.

But still. I can’t shake the notion that she could teach me and show me things that would make me forget my own name. This woman lured 33-year-old baseball star Alex Rodriguez from his soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s a pretty damn sexy woman.

Sarah Palin

I know, I know. The woman is evil. She panders to the worst in people, particularly in rural America, playing on the basest fears and fanning the flames. But I’ve just got to know if there’s a steaming vixen underneath her conservative exterior. Could she really be a “naughty librarian” type? Maybe it’s just the fact that Tina Fey gets sexier the more she riffs on Palin in “Saturday Night Live” skits and I’m just projected a growing Tina Fey lust onto Sarah Palin.

Maybe it’s just the “bad boy” thing with a gender twist. I know she’s wrong for me, I know she’d hurt me, I know we have nothing in common, I know I’d hate myself for waking up next to her. I’m mortified even now to admit all this, and I’ve never even shared the same airspace with her, much less knocked boots.

But I’m curious. Like every ignorant guy out there who thinks Barack Obama is a terrorist and lusts after Palin, I just want to know if those winks she keeps throwing out in her speeches are just for me.

(C’mon, gentlemen. And ladies. Don’t let me hang out here alone, now. Let me know who your guilty pleasures are. Confession is good for the soul.)