flash the cash

sometimes my dad writes poems. he occasionally sends us emails and letters as his alter ego, "the baggist". the baggist is a character he created to entertain himself. the baggist is a storyteller who surrounds himself with an ecclectic group of associates, such as his wife, whose name i can't remember, who wears only deer skin clothing, is a writer, and lives with her husband only part time. sometimes the poems we receive from my dad are actually written by the baggist, such as this little gem that arrived in our inbox the other night. this poem is intended to convey a particular request to me and brad. if you are able to make a guess as to why my dad wrote this poem and what we are supposed to do as a result, please write a comment and i will give you a prize if you are correct - or even close to correct (i know the purpose due to some decoding prose that was added to the original email).

----
Flash the cash,
This ain't no trash.
Speak the label,
And we'll make the dash.

We be the thicket,
You buy the ticket.

With an "ooh bitty bambah"
And a fancy, "My oh my!"
We'll send you the dough.
And a "Thanks" that's styled high.

Oh, yeah.

The baggist
Bent Poem Series: From "B-ball ain't no fun day at the beach". It be work,
man."
----

he had places to go

today i was riding the bus home from work on the newly paved 37th. way up the road i saw some sort of obstruction taking up the majority of the right lane. as we got closer i could tell that it was a moving object. it was an old man in a motorized wheelchair. he was CURMUDGEONLY. he was all hunched down, VERY old, wrinkled, and scowly (late 80s, i would say), wearing an old man trucker cap (like an actual one that he probably once wore as a real live trucker, not one that he picked up after thinking how good it looked on ashton kutcher), finger on the gas, eyes glaring, taking up the whole side of the road. and the topper: there was a small american flag on a plastic stick affixed to the back of the wheelchair, either something he put there himself because he's proud to be an american, or else perhaps something one of his children attached so that oncoming traffic might notice him and not run him down. the bus had to swerve way around him, but he didn't care. he had places to go, and he was making great time.

you can call me insensitive for bringing this up, but don't you think that handicapped people probably get a real thrill when they get their first motorized wheelchair and can travel way faster than able-bodied walkers? i think that might be kind of fun.

doesn't that sound nice?

so apparently when i'm busy blogging is the first thing to go. i should get my priorities straight.

one thing i've been thinking about a lot lately is the idea that God exists outside of time. i used to find this mind-boggling and almost frightening. frightening because of the idea of heaven in conjunction with eternity and eternal existence. i didn't want my soul to be dead and over per se, but the idea of me continuing on FOREVER seemed SCARY.

but i've been reading a lot of cs lewis lately. i've been on a huge cs lewis kick since the spring and just finished another one a couple of days ago, the screwtape letters. cs lewis talks about the desires we have that are not or cannot be fulfilled on earth. like let's say i had a desire for a great, loving friendship, but never experienced one. since i have this desire for a good thing, God has to be the one who gave me that good desire, and if it can't be fulfilled here (although of course i actually do have friends, contrary to what some liar might have told you), then it holds true that that desire will someday be fulfilled for me, specifically, in heaven. i like that! and then i was thinking about it more, and i read a letter that cs lewis wrote that talked about the need for unpressured time being something that will be fulfilled in heaven. the idea is that there won't be/isn't time in heaven at all. so all the time flying by/not enough time to do anything/it seems like yesterday when i was in high school/i don't have time to sit and think/etc. things we think every day, and the desire for MORE time, or NO time, will be met in heaven where time does not exist and God exists outside of time. it's not that minutes and seconds and hours and years will be dragging by unceasingly, it's that time will not be a factor - we'll just BE. and do things. and have relationships. without any time pressure. doesn't that sound nice? it does to me.

so that's my deep thought for the day. call me jack handy.