All posts tagged featured

Capes, Faith, and Divine Imagination

kids-wearing-capes
Just a few days ago, my two youngest children decided to be superheroes.

They saw no reason why they should be limited by gravity and human physical limitations.  All they needed to overcome physics were beach towels.  They came running up to me, towels in hand, and asked me to secure the towels around their necks.  They had already tried stuffing the towels in their collars, but the towels-turned-capes kept falling out.  And we all know that a superhero cannot have his cape falling out in mid flight.

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tambourine

Circumcision and Christmas Carols

I grew up in the middle of charismania. If you know anything about charismatics, you know that they don’t like to do anything the way it has always been done before. In fact, they don’t like to do things even the way they themselves did it last time. We didn’t believe in tradition, unless we “felt led” to believe in it. And then it wasn’t tradition, it was sovereignty.

Now, don’t get me wrong. My spiritual heritage is deep. I speak in tongues, prophesy, and believe that the gifts mentioned in I Corinthians 12:7-10 and elsewhere have not ceased. But I think it’s been long enough now for all of us to admit that there were some pretty cooky things we did as charismaniacs. We should laugh. I sure do.

One of the ways this manifested itself was in how we did Christmas caroling. I was about 12 at the time. Not sure of the age, but it feels like 12 when I remember it. A group of us gathered at the church to pray before going out. We huddled together like Gideon and his ragtag band of soldiers preparing to assault the gates of hell. Only they were armed with swords. We had Christmas carols and tambourines.

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house-for-sale

How to Sell a House in Over 6 Months

Anybody can sell a house in 30 days. Put out a sign, hire an agent, clean the toilets and you’re set. But it takes real skill to make the sale of your house drag on an on for months on end. If you too would like to drag out the adventure of selling your home, then this is the post for you!

I’m going to reveal my secret tips to you, my loyal readers, free of charge (for a limited time, restrictions apply. Success varies depending on location, market fluctuations, intelligence and the direction of the wind. Ben Cotten cannot be held liable if these tips fail and a client sells a home quickly).

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spider_monkey-wide

My Apologies to Golden China for the Spider Monkeys

If you were one of the diners that had the misfortune of eating at Golden China in Fuquay-Varina, NC Saturday night you have my sincerest apologies. If a ball of fried rice hit you in the back of the head, that was my middle child Eliana. She gets carried away sometimes. That sound of banging and growling? That would be Owen. He likes to pull over cups of ice tea and splash in the wreckage.

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bomb

How I Almost Became the Unibomber

Ever look back over your life and realize that had things been only slightly different, your life would have been drastically altered? For instance, had you arrived a mere 5 minutes earlier to that job interview you would have gotten your dream job at the cat food processing plant. Or had you not told your boss, “If you don’t give me a raise, I’m leaving and taking all my vast knowledge and talent elswhere. Now we don’t want a company crisis on our hands do we? Huh? Do we, Mr. Bossman?” then you would not be speeding down the highway to be on time for an interview for a job as “Cat Food Taste Quality Technician”.

I’ve had several pivotal moments in my life. For instance, once when I was a young boy about to get my tail kicked by the bully down the street, I decided that I would call his Momma a “big fatso”. My insult did not make him run away in tears as expected. Rather, it fueled his desire to pretzel me. Since then, I have never insulted a man’s momma. Even if she actually is a “big fatso”. It was a moment such as this that helped me see that a career as a redneck bomber was not for me.

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elderly crossing sign

Mom, Grandma is Looking for Her Clothes

Remember adolescence? That magical time when the dark forces of the human sex drive are fighting to escape the confines of everything your Momma taught you about being a good, polite boy? When your brain loses it’s ability to concentrate on what you tell it to? When the mere presence of a girl (whom you still consider gross and cootie-infected) makes you stammer and choke almost to the point of passing out?

I remember being oily and sweaty all the time. By the end of every day, I looked like I had spent several hours rubbing Bojangles chicken all over my face. Then my head suddenly began to grow like it was in a race competing against the rest of my body. My feet were determined to catch up with my head, but never quite made it.

But, the most profound change an adolescent boy goes through is that he becomes obsessed with one solitary thing: the female form. Now, understand that this is completely against his will. He still wants to spend his imaginative energies on wondering who would prevail in a battle between Spiderman and Batman. Yet, somehow his thoughts are constantly being hijacked by this oily, sweaty monster growing within him. For most men, the story of how the “mystery” was solved for them is either very tragic, or very funny. I’m still not exactly sure which category mine belongs in…

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chemical barrel

Part I: The Glue Factory Chronicles

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

A co-worker and I were swapping stories this past week about crazy jobs we have held in the past. Both of us had experienced the joy of being laid off by a fortune 500 company, so we had a surprising amount of similarities in our employment adventures. However, I trumped him with one of mine. Thought you might enjoy it too.

After being laid off from a great IT job at Nortel Networks (along with seemingly everyone else in North Carolina), I found the pickings pretty slim for employment options. I did the unemployment thing until The Man kicked me to the curb and told me to pay my own way. So, I trudged down to the Manpower temp agency office. I completed the miles of paperwork detailing all of my qualifications. I even took a computer skills test. My agent seemed very impressed and promised quick placement. I left there excited.

Within 48 hrs my agent had called me with a job placement paying $10 an hour in Sanford, NC. I asked her what the job involved and she told me, “All I know right now is that it’s Industrial. I need you to come in and take a math skills test.” I figured anything that required a math skills test couldn’t be too bad so I took the test (I should have clued in to what was coming when they gave us a cheat sheet with the answers on it for a test that a 7th grader could have easily passed). I was given directions to the new job site and an interview time.

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