All Bouncers Welcomed!

“As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” — Proverbs 25:25.

Server problems have blocked me from receiving e-mail from my website for close to a month now.

I’m not ignoring you; I just haven’t read your message yet.

But, my youngest son, Donald, returned from Europe last week.

He’s been attending an international conference on computer stuff related to his job and he has returned honed and ready to do whatever it is he does. He told me about it but I understand little beyond cut and paste.

He and Helen took us out to lunch yesterday. They came back to our house where they resumed their roles as computer gurus to fix the server problem — found 105 unread messages in my inbox! — and did other stuff to my computer.

Don’t know what I’d do without them.

Donald also brought intriguing gifts from his sojourn in the Alps.

Here’s a photo of a crystal hedgehog he brought Ginny:

His souvenir gift for me is a new pipe. The mouthpiece is vulcanite; the stem, cherry wood; and the bowl, briar with silver appointments. A majestic stag decorates the pipe and a silver lid keeps ashes from falling out and burning more holes in my shirt

Ever touch a hot stove?

Well, that beautiful silver lid gets just that hot.

Guess how I found that out?

Here’s a photo of my new pipe:

Looks positively Teutonic, doesn’t it?

Now, if I got a pointy red cap, I could qualify as a garden gnome.

While Donald was overseas, my e-friend Seth (whose blog is down at the moment) suggested that I signup with Google Analytics, a counter program, for my website. I didn’t know how to do that but Donald and Helen did it for me yesterday.

I’ve been using Webalizer as a visit counter for my site.

I’m not sure how to read the information on either Webalizer or Analytics — but I’m afraid I disappoint a lot of Google searchers out there in the world. Apparently I use a lot of words which potential readers associate with porno sites so they click on my listing, see what I offer, then bounce away as quick as they can.

And the visitor counter lists these folks as “Bouncers”.

For instance, if you need a spare tire for your car and enter “Spare Tire” in a search engine, you might just end up with a photo of me overlapping my swim trunks!

You’d bounce away from that in a hurry.

I’ll spare you the photo.

But it seems that my use of the term “dirty old man” in describing myself confuses some readers.

It shouldn’t because that’s exactly what I am.

You see, I believe in sin. That is not a word I use very often but I live in it all the time. I know deep in my own black heart that there is no sin so despicable or sleazy that I am not capable of doing.

Yes, even that one.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it.

I believe that there has never been any awful thing committed by anybody anywhere that I am not capable of committing myself. I have either done it. Or wanted to do it. Or may do it yet.

I find within myself two reasons for being the degenerate that I am: natural inclination and individual choice.

Natural inclination because I am a descendent of Adam. He is the root of the human family tree; I am a leaf way out here on a branch far away from him.

But if you poison the root, then you’ve poisoned the leaf also, it withers and dies.

Sin poisoned the root. And although I had no say in the matter, I’m infected too.

Deal with it.

Our first father was sort of the President of the human race. And just like I’ve never met the U.S. President and didn’t even vote for the current one, and although he never consults me about any policy — yet when he says our nation is at war with some other country, then I’m at war with that country too.

That’s what the President decided.

I enjoy the benefits, or suffer the consequences, for things the President did.

Then there are the things I choose to do all by myself. Can’t blame Adam or even George Bush. I choose certain things all by myself.

I will think of some thing I want to do.

I’ll know good and well that this thing is wrong.

I’ll chose to do it anyhow.

The only difference between me and the traditional picture of a dirty old man is that I have a different taste in temptations from his. And just as different people have different tastes in music, different ones of us have different tastes in temptations. Therefore I can’t condemn anybody else for what he does. It’s just a shade different from the things I do. We all have our favorites. We are all under sin.

And that’s not Adam; that’s me.

And the truly awful thing about this can of worms is that we live in it all the time and become acclimatized so much to sin at work in the world and in ourselves that we think it normal. Background noise. Just the way things are.

Who needs a Savior?

Jesus died for nothing. Didn’t He?

His coming to earth, being crucified, rising from death — all that was just a bit of unnecessary heroics on God’s part, wasn’t it?

Why should I be grateful?

I’m doing fine.

Just as I am.

I gotta be me.

That’s why readers will reach my site when they search for “dirty old man”.

I’m the Poster Boy

But I’ve got this really neat full-bent pipe with a silver stag on the bowl. That puts me a cut above your run-of-the-mill dirty old man.

Doesn’t it?

Maybe not.

Lord, please be merciful to John Cowart, a sinner.