The cows were busy grazing in a large field several miles outside of the city. The sky was clear and the sun shined very brightly. The cows munched away on grass and the wind gently blew over the countryside. Off in the distance was the sputter of a car.

The sputtering noises got louder and louder while the cows continued to chew the cud. A beat up Honda two-door car drove down the road and stopped near the field.

The driver of the Honda was 22 year old Cy Walker. Cy was a high school drop out and a full time employee at a local McDonald’s in the city. Cy had worked at the McDonald’s since he was sixteen years old and gave up on High School. He’d worked there long enough to make a better than average wage and long enough to cultivate a bit of a drug habit.

Cy was loaded on methamphetamine that particular afternoon when his car sputtered to a halt in front of a field of grazing cows. In the back seat of his Honda he had several boxes full of wasted hamburgers from a day spent at work. He’d been saving them for the better part of a week. Everyday there was wasted food that had to be thrown out. Instead of taking it to the dumpster, Cy had been putting it in the backseat of his car. The car smelled like rotten meat and flies were hovering in the backseat.

Cy didn’t really notice. He thought they were a side effect from the methamphetamine.

The last few years had been pretty rough on him. Without a high school education he was not able to find work beyond his career in fast food. He wasn’t very smart. No one took him seriously. And every single day he spent constructing hamburgers that people would eat without much thought. There were, as they say, ‘no compliments for the chef’.

Cy was mostly looking for someone to blame for his troubles which were largely caused by himself.

That was when he got an idea. So he started wasted hamburgers. He had an entire backseat full of them. It was all apart of his master plan.

Cy walked up to the fence on the side of the road and looked over at the cows. They stood there grazing and paying no mind to him. He could hear them mooing and chewing away.

‘You dirty bastards,’ he muttered and shook his head. ‘You dirty bastards!’

The cows continued to chew. One of them mooed.

‘Every single day I make hamburgers out of you and nobody appreciates it.’

The cows weren’t listening. Cy was shaking and screaming though.

‘NO ONE APPRECIATES THIS!! YOU HAVE DONE THIS TO YOURSELVES!!!!’

Cy, laughing maniacally, walked over to the backseat of his car and pulled out a box of spoiled hamburgers. Laughing even louder he began to hurl them at the grazing cows.

‘YOU BASTARDS!’ he screamed and tossed burgers hysterically. ‘TAKE IT ALL BACK!!!’

The cows continued to graze even though hamburgers were flying at their bodies and scattering everywhere. Cy continued to rant and scream and kept flinging meat in every direction. The cows looked bored, even though there were explosions of beef, lettuce, onion & condiment everywhere around them. Cy unloaded five boxes of spoiled hamburgers and began to slow down.

He needed to catch his breath.

He moved away from the fence and the cows continued to graze, even though their field now smelled of spoiled fast food. Cy lit up a cigarette and basked in the aftermath of his revenge.

Suddenly there was a flash of white light and Cy found himself standing in front of an Elephant with the body of a man and four arms, A man with blue skin, and a four armed woman with two large swords.

The Elephant spoke: ‘Why do you wish to harm that which gives much while asking nothing in return?’

The man with blue skin spoke: ‘I have been called the child that protects the cows. Why do you attack them?’

The woman did not speak. Instead she picked Cy up by his shirt collar with two of her hands and crossed her swords across his neck with the other two.

Cy was sweating. The cows continued to graze.

‘I…I…I don’t know….’ he stammered, trying to find the right words.

The man with blue skin spoke: ‘Whenever righteousness declines and unrighteousness increases, I make myself a body; In every age I come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to establish righteousness.’

The swords crossed. The cows continued to graze. It would be several hours until the farmer that owned the fields happened across the mess and no one would ever be able to explain why a headless man was found on the side of the road and why rotting hamburger was strewn across a field.

XJx402X: bill i think you and i should start doing stand up

XJx402X: i’ll attack the hecklers

XJx402X: we’ll mostly appeal to violent sociopaths

iambilllatham: haha. I’ll let you beat up hecklers and I’ll just drink until I can’t stand up.

iambilllatham: then I’ll hit the first guy I see with a folding chair.

iambilllatham: and piss on him.

XJx402X: the crowd will love it

iambilllatham: and then for an encore we’ll shoot anybody who tries to leave

While waiting fifteen minutes for my bus transfer, two Mormon missionaries rolled up to the bus stop on their bicycles. I had just put away my book and was getting ready to smoke a cigarette.

‘Could we talk to you about Jesus for a few minutes?’ one of them asked after inspecting the bus schedule.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Well, what do you know about him?’ the other asked me.

I cleared my throat and straight-faced quoted:

‘Jesus Christ was an only child. He went down to the river and he drank and smiled. His dad was oh-so-mad, should have killed that little fucker

before he even had ‘em.’

Needless to say, they stopped talking to me. I smoked another Pall Mall and the bus showed up a few minutes later.

It’s Easter again and I am in a similar place to where I’ve spent the last five or so Easters: work.

It’s usually a pretty good day to work in tech support on Christian holidays- there’s just not too many incoming phone calls. Having been reared in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, I find it especially satisfying to not have to participate in this strangest of holiday celebrations that began with a dinner party, moved to an execution, and then ends on a fantastic story about a guy rising from the dead, with the promise of more zombies to come.

It seems only fitting to explore some of that rearing today, removed in many ways, and a thousand miles away from my introduction to it.

That said, today we’re going to revisit the Nicene creed, with all the Lutheran revisions in place- Catholics this may look a little different to you.

This is supposed to be a statement of faith. Most of the followers of the Churches I grew up around could probably recite it from memory. My favorite thing about it is that for a creed that is supposed to be acknowledging a message of hope- it ends onsuch a downer.

That said, presenting The Nicene Creed (hypertext edition, 2007):

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy Christian and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

I got off the bus at South Congress and Frederick this morning to transfer over to a different bus. It’s part of my new commute to work. I ride one bus through the downtown and then south, hop off, and then switch to another.

It’s kind of relaxing, really.

Anyway, I walked up to my stop at Congress and Woodward and a very drunk man was leaning against a trashcan.

‘Are you ok?’ he slurred, nearly falling over.

I wasn’t sure the context of what he was asking, but, I was ‘ok’, so I said ‘yes.’

He continued to drunkily drape over the trash can and breathe heavily.

‘Are you one of them ‘Austin Weirdos’?’ he asked.

I didn’t really know how to answer that question. I tend to think the whole world’s crazy. But I also have been called a weirdo since I could talk. Anyway, considering that ‘KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD’ is a trademarked phrase, I figured I wouldn’t infringe on it.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said coyly.

‘You look like a weirdo,’ he said. Such are the criticisms of a drunken man draped over a trashcan at nine o’clock in the morning. Maybe it’s that I’ve been growing out my beard again. Maybe it was the cut off shorts. I don’t know. It’s all relatively normal for me.

I shrugged and lit up a cigarette.

‘You wouldn’t happen to be going to the parole office, would you?’ he asked.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I’m going to work.’

He nodded. I’m sure that work seemed like a foreign concept to him. He hiccupped a little bit.

‘You gonna get yourself a car?’ he asked. This seemed like a strange question to follow up with, but people at the bus stop always seem to want to know. I wonder if they think I’d give them rides if I had a car.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I don’t really like driving that much. And I’m buying a bike from a guy I work with today.’

This didn’t seem to satisfy him.

‘If you’re working and you don’t want a car… what do you want money for?’

I shrugged.

‘I don’t know yet.’ I figured explaining bills, rent, etc. was a waste of time with this guy. Not to mention uninteresting.

‘You should get a car.’

‘I don’t want a car, though.’

‘You should get a car.’

Finally, the 328 Bus showed up and I hopped on. My new friend stumbled on as well, and hunkered down in the first seat he could find. I walked to the back of the bus.

But not before he could say ‘You should get a car’ again.

So it goes.

The company I work for, Telenetwork, used to have an office in the Dobie Mall, which as a building is part residence hall, part food court, part shopping mall, and part office space. I used to work in that office. As of yesterday, that office closed and I moved into an office in South East Austin. Which is no big deal, aside from the long bus ride, but that just gives me time to read Mickey Spillane novels from Half Price Books.

Anyway, they’re still assembling cubicles left and right around here and there’s parts of this 25,000 square foot room that are tight and condensed like a maze and other parts that are just single rows of desks sort of like shepherds sitting out in sticks. Right now I’m in the sticks, so to speak. I had to switch seats so they could finish building the cubicle I was sitting at.

That’s right. ‘Finish building the cubicle I was sitting at.’