Huntsville police and SWAT teams are currently at the scene of a hostage situation in the Medical District.

An optometrist (OD) employed at an ObamaCare-affiliated medical clinic (the one with the new Death Panel drive-thru window) is apparently fed-up to his eyeballs with all the incessant yik-yak from his patients, the constant sniping and backstabbing from co-workers and the drowning deluge of mind-numbing emails, bureaucratic buzzwords and meaningless acronyms (MNEMBBMA) raining down from his overlords on Mt. Olympus.

The OD–OMe! OMy!–has apparently quit his job and gone optical.

Police will identify him only as “Mike the Eyeguy.” According to a department spokesperson, Dr. Eyeguy has apparently been showing several signs of cracking recently. Area opticians have told police that over the past few weeks he has been transposing “minus” signs for “plus” signs, and vice versa, resulting in blurry eyeglasses and a spike in Huntsville metro area traffic accidents. In addition, other local eye doctors and health department officials have noted a recent epidemic of permanently-crossed “googly eyes” resulting from Coke-bottle lenses allegedly prescribed by Dr. Eyeguy.

One patient even said that when he complained about the blinding brightness of the light on the examining scope, the rogue OD, who was frothing at the mouth and quietly humming nursery rhymes to himself, turned the illumination dial all the way up to “11″ and suddenly erupted into peals of “BWAHAHAHA” evil scientist laughter.

Early reports indicate that when this morning’s first patient, who already had crystal clear, better-than-perfect 20/10 X-ray vision in both eyes to begin with, complained to the OD in a small, grating voice which sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard that his vision “still just wasn’t quiiite good enough” and commanded him to fix it “NOW!”, something snapped.  The OD has now taken several hostages and is reportedly threatening to use industrial-strength dilating drops and send them out into the bright sunlight without those little cheap, flimsy paper sunglasses.

In a rambling manifesto posted on Youtube, “Mike the Eyeguy” aired his grievances. The following is a portion of the transcript from that broadcast: [...]

They say our stretch of beach was named for the Satsuma oranges that used to grow meekly there until the two consecutive winters of 1927-28 when massive frosts killed them off for good. Now long stretches of the formerly-white sands, which could reflect the sun so brightly they would burn your corneas if you weren’t careful, are marinated in oil. The orange-tinged granules spread like spilled Tang from the entrance of Perdido Bay, ringed off with long lines of floating boom, through Gulf State Park, past Gulf Shores and the stacked rows of new condos and beach homes rebuilt defiantly in the aftermath of Ivan and Katrina’s twin ravagings, and on to Fort Morgan.

And so, to this day, Orange Beach, Alabama remains appropriately named.

Many have hesitated to make their annual pilgrimages to the Gulf Coast in the wake of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That much is evident on the first day as we cruise down a practically deserted Perdido Beach Boulevard around 4:00PM and gaze slack-jawed at the nearly-empty condominium and restaurant parking lots, normally overflowing in the middle of July. The missing masses are like the reluctant captains of Admiral David Farragut’s Union fleet as they encountered Confederate mines near Fort Morgan during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” Farragut purportedly yelled, urging his frightened flotilla on to victory.

The quote is most likely apocryphal, but we decide to co-opt it anyway. “Darn the oil, full speed ahead!” is our motto, toned down and euphemized a bit to conform to our more clean-cut Church of Christ proclivities. We could have called and threatened to cancel, and they would have immediately offered us a 30% discount. But that didn’t seem fair to mess with those decent, hard-working, put-upon people like that, given the troubles they already had. It would have felt a little like the kind of price gouging that often occurs after a natural disaster, only in reverse.

No, an annual beach trip is like a marriage; it’s on, for better or for worse, through patches of thick, metallic sheen and thin, non-metallic slicks, in both streaming, “rainbow” ribbons and frothy, sunset-red mousse.

Those are the types of descriptors coined by the pilots and crews of the helicopters and blimps that fly in grid-like patterns a few hundred yards off the coast and used in the “Oil Spill Updates” posted daily on the Orange Beach city website. But as I walk out onto my balcony on the first morning, coffee in hand, and scan up and down the coast while squinting against the rising sun, I don’t make those kind of distinctions right away. Oil blends covertly with blue-green surf, and the only thing I know for sure is that “something ain’t right.”

But as my eyes adjust to the light (a good pair of polarized sunglasses helps considerably) and start to observe the morning ritual of “skimming,” I quickly become an expert “spotter” myself.  [...]

So much for another “stouuury book endin’.” Instead, another World Cup, another loss to a more organized, powerful and faster Ghanan team. The “Great Equalizer” strikes again.

I can’t say I’m shocked given the fine players Ghana has (and two of their best weren’t even on the pitch), but I am disappointed that the US National Team squandered a fine chance to equal and perhaps surpass their best finish ever in World Cup play. Poor possession and defensive organization led to the first goal (even US keeper Tim Howard, one of the world’s best, was about a step off in cutting down the angle and protecting that near post), but the overtime game winner by Asamoah “Baby Jet” Gyan was pure soccer artistry.

First touch is everything. A world-class soccer player must be able to “catch” the ball with his foot or some other legal part of the body, even in tight space and under tremendous defensive pressure, and bring it under control the first time he touches it. Then he must be able to do something intelligent and productive with it, like finding the back of the net or a teammate who can.

For many, including young and inexperienced US strikers such as Jozy Altidore, the ball often rolls away into the possession of a defender after the first touch. Or perhaps he is so discombobulated from the tight space and the defensive pressure and the pressing need of the moment that he hangs a cleat in the turf and trips over his own feet.

Others take their first touch and proceed to write their own history.

“Baby Jet” took a high, looping ball on a dead run with his chest and set it in motion just a couple of feet in front of him, maintaining that relative distance even at full speed. He then struck the ball, still bouncing, with such authority that even Howard, with his catlike reflexes, couldn’t collar it. I cannot even begin to describe how hard that is, even though it looks commonplace on TV. Of course, great players always make it look easy.

If I had scored a goal like that, I would have danced too. But having grown up Church of Christ, I would have probably been issued a straight red card for illegal motion and woeful lack of soul.

So, how does US soccer get from here to there? Soccer in the United States is for the most part an affluent and suburban sport–unlike the rest of the world. Most serious players and their parents have payed mounds of money to play in a club system with the hopes of merely making varsity in high school or maybe snagging some hard-to-come-by college scholarship money.

Even those who make it and play in college often don’t play all four years. They become distracted and lose interest or the injuries mount and they finally hang up their boots. The best player that Huntsville has ever produced played briefly on the US Under-20 team a few years ago and went to UNC-Chapel Hill where he led the team in scoring for a couple of seasons. But he was injured during his junior year and sat out, and by the time he came back as a senior, he suddenly found that he had been replaced by the latest and greatest 18-year-old sensation. Fortunately, he’s a smart guy and has medical school to fall back on.

Somewhere in the barrios and ghettos of America, there are young kids who possess the gift of the “first touch.” Yet even here in my part of Huntsville, players like that wouldn’t be able to afford the fees to play high school varsity soccer.

US Soccer must find a way to change all that. Otherwise, our “first touch” will continue to be our last.

People look at you kind of strange when you tell them that you shelled out good money to attend something called a “Christian Scholars’ Conference” and that you actually enjoyed it. Reactions can range from “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like that?” to “Well, la-de-da!” But believe me, after a long season of Tim James political TV ads and rootin’ tootin’ “Ag Commish” wannabe viral videos, I was ready for a little more “la-de-da” in my life.

You know Eyegal and me–liberal arts geeks to the core. An itch like that doesn’t always get scratched sufficiently in a high tech town like Huntsville, Alabama. To get to those places that rocket science and computer chips can’t touch, we make an annual pilgrimage to The Christian Scholars’ Conference (CSC) at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

The CSC is a place where scholars (and poseurs like Eyegal and me) from Church of Christ-affiliated colleges and universities, as well as many other schools and denominations, meet and greet and explore new ways to integrate their faith with their various academic disciplines. Nashville is traditionally referred to as “The Athens of the South,” and Lipscomb’s commitment to academic freedom and to hosting a world-class event like CSC is rapidly raising her stock and placing her in the same league as her neighbors and longstanding paragons of academic excellence, Vanderbilt and Belmont.

This year’s theme was “Beauty in the Academy: Faith, Scholarship & The Arts.” What’s so special about a bunch of professors, writers, artists, musicians, poets and playwrights convening for some sort of “Campbellite Woodstock,” you ask? After all, didn’t we switch to a Fortune 500 model faith and chase weird-looking and funny-talking people like that out of the Church of Christ a long time ago and replace them with lawyers, engineers, doctors and “bizness men?”

Glad you asked. Well, when was the last time you heard a world-renowned poet and critic like Dana Gioia, devout Roman Catholic and former Chair of the Endowment for the Arts, issue a stirring and urgent plea for Christian writers to rise up and produce another Flannery O’Connor or Walker Percy who will inject a much-needed pulse of the transcendent into modern art and culture to satisfy man’s unconscious spiritual longings, followed by a public reading of his own work? Hmmm?

I thought so. Or how about sitting in on an intimate creative session with musicians like Sarah Masen and songwriters/performers Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of the alternative/folk duo Over the Rhine?

Never heard of them? Neither had I. But now my iPhone is full of their soulful, sacramental songs, including Over the Rhine’s haunting, eschatological jazz piece, “The Trumpet Child,” a true fusion of faith and art that left the flood-weary crowd at the Friday evening “Tokens Show” leaning into the instrumental riff at the end and looking toward the sky for some soul-saving satisfaction and deliverance. [...]

I don’t always speak Spanish, but when I do, I prefer having Jose Rafael Rodriguez (aka, my translator “Danny”) somewhere in the immediate vicinity. I am neither the most interesting man in the world, nor the most bilingual.

I tried to memorize enough Spanish eye care phrases to get by on my recent trip to Guatemala, but despite my best efforts and intentions, I found myself leaning hard on Danny. I would usually start out the day doing a passable job-abre sus ojos (“open your eyes”), mira arriba (“look up”) –but as things got hot and busier and I became increasingly fatigued, I started to mangle my rote phrases more and more. I would then simply shrug and look at Danny and motion toward the patient with my head, body language for “Yeah, yeah, I know, go ahead.”

He knew I couldn’t get along without him and he relished it and wouldn’t let me forget. One of my favorite things to ask the patient at the end of the consult was Tiene preguntas? (Do you have any questions?). I pride myself on being the kind of doctor who doesn’t rush from the room to put out another fire until the patient has had their say. I would say the phrase perfectly (Prrrray-GOON-toos!) and wait for the patient to reply.

Nueve times out of diez, this came in the form of a quizzical stare and a cocked head. I would shrug and look at Danny and he would repeat the phrase word for word to the patients–the same way I had–and suddenly the proverbial light bulb would appear in one of those little fluffy, cumulus thought clouds above their heads. While the patients would launch into a litany of preguntas, more than I could count, really, Danny would simply look at me and grin. [...]

I had a Close Encounter of the Creepy Kind with my iPhone this week. This has caused me to pause and reflect on our relationship with all our bright and shiny electronic doodads.

It happened last Sunday as Eyegal and I attended early service at a local Episcopal parish, as is our habit from time to time. It was the First Sunday in Lent (Note to my Baptist and Church of Christ friends: Lent is a 40-day period of repentance preceding Easter. It is part of the church calendar, which is actually pretty official and has been around a long, long time–like, several centuries before the founding of the United States–and has more on it besides the date of the Ladies Retreat and the next church-wide potluck. It is NOT the little white stuff that you pick off your navy blazer/skirt prior to church, and it’s NOT what you did with your “Come Hither Baby Blue” cosmetic-tinted contact lens to your BFF back in 10th grade, although we didn’t call them BFsF back then).

Lent means repentance which equals solemnity. In Episcopal-speak, that means get there early and hit your knees prior to the Processional starting on the First Sunday in Lent. Of course, we didn’t know that because we’re clueless life-long Church of Christers. Still, the usher smiled, not scowled, at us and handed us our Order of Worship. We made our way to our usual pew, right hand side, two thirds of the way back, flipped down the kneelers carefully so as not to make a racket and joined in just as the priest started to make her way (that’s right, her way–not a typo) around the sanctuary leading the Processional.

It was the Great Litany (the Book of Common Prayer, p. 148) and it lasted a long, long time. So long, in fact, that my knees started to throb a little (Good Lord, deliver us!). But that’s okay, because it’s Lent and a little self-mortification never hurt anybody. Not permanently, anyway.

Now most churches these days remind you to turn off your cell phones and pagers (Pagers? Really? Does anybody still have one of those?) prior to the start of service, usually with a prominent bullet and catchy cartoon on the ginormous PowerPoint JumboTron (or two) hung over the baptistery. Which is, you know, sort of ironic.

I usually don’t have to be reminded of this. I am very sensitive about cell phones going off at inopportune times, probably because I have so many patients pull away from me in the middle of ophthalmoscopy to take that “important call” about Bobby Joe picking up a six-pack of Natural Light for lunch, so could Rufus (my patient in the chair) get some Pabst Blue Ribbon instead? “No problem, good buddy, but I gotta go, Doc’s getting a little steamed over here.”

I then crank up the light on my scope to all the way past 10 to 11. I have vays of making them squeal.

You won’t find a JumboTron anyway near an Episcopal church. Apparently, they don’t believe in them. Instead they put the request in tiny print in the Order of Worship: “Pretty please, if you don’t mind too much, turn off your cell phones and pagers. And even if yours goes off and ruins the moment for everyone, we forgive you and love you anyway and you’re still welcome to join us in the Fellowship Hall after services for coffee and scones.”

I turned my new-fangled techno-jewel off, I swear I did. But as the Great Litany went on and on, and my knees starting to throb more and more, I must have started to fidget and squirm a little. And when I did that, I must have put the tiniest amount of pressure on the “Home” button on my iPhone which was in my front left pocket. [...]

I would never tell my good friend Dr. Mark Elrod of Harding University (Hail!) to go to hell. He’s too nice a guy for that, plus he has this “condition”–an enlarged heart. Not the type that would cause you to keel over in the middle of a pick-up basketball game, but the kind that bleeds heavily when people are suffering. It’s a malady we could all use a little more of these days.

As for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, those purveyors of post-quake logorrhera, and the political dude from South Carolina who when speaking about people on public assistance used the analogy of denying animals food so they couldn’t “breed” but now “regrets” saying that even though it brought him much attention and fired up his “evangelical” base–I would wish them all straight to hell in a handbasket.

Or maybe a parachute.

Now before someone gets on here, as sometimes happens on this blog, and yells “ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN TO CRAZYTOWN!, allow me to explain. Mark, you see, has already been to hell and back. In fact, he returned from there to Searcy, Arkansas this past Monday, changed for life but still in one piece.  He surprised all of us last week by suddenly announcing that he was going to Haiti (which I think we could all agree is as close to hell on earth as one could possibly get at the moment) as a representative of Harding to scope out possible ways that the University community to assist that tragedy-torn country and her people as quickly as possible.

Philip Holsinger, Harding alum, photojournalist and missionary who has spent considerable time in Haiti prevailed upon Mark to go, and with that “condition” of his, of course Mark said “Send me!” Andrew Baker, head of the Church and Family Institute at Harding, was a key figure in arranging the trip,  and other “higher ups” approved it. Now it’s no secret that a few of those Harding “higher ups” don’t care a great deal for Mark’s personal politics. I know this may come as surprise to those of you who may have been off mining lunar rocks, but that kind of thing happens in many circles these days.

But the powers that be nonetheless figured correctly that Mark was the perfect person to represent the University on the trip. They were willing to put past differences behind them and sign off on this anyway because it was the right thing to do. We need a little more of that kind of “bipartisan” spirit these days.

Kudos, Harding. That’s the kind of pure, unadulterated religion that might shake a little contribution money out of me this year. [...]

Gentle Fusioneers, allow me to tell you the story of how I just missed becoming an Ole Miss Rebel.

It was February, 1991 and I was nearing completion of my residency in Nashville. Number One Son had just turned two years old, and Eyegal was very pregnant with Number Two. We barely subsisted on my meager resident’s salary, but we were young and dumb and didn’t know what it was like to have money, so we were happy. Number One has early memories of us pushing him in the stroller through Green Hills Mall, looking in the windows and not buying a single thing. It left an impression on the little guy; to this day he’ll pinch a penny till Lincoln screams.

Still, with another mouth to feed on the way, it was high time to get serious about leaving my poor student days behind and getting a “real job.” I caught wind of an ophthalmologist, a cutter (that’s what we optometrists called our surgical colleagues) with a fine reputation down Mississippi way who was a “Member of The Church.” He was looking for a young, hungry buck of an OD like me who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty with a little eye disease and could “speak the language” to referring optometrists.

Since I fit that bill to a tee, off Eyegal and I drove down to The Delta, where the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha Rivers meet to form the Yazoo, to a town we’ll call “Graywood,” to meet with Dr. C., a dead ringer for Archie Manning, and his lovely wife who had no doubt held her own in some Miss Magnolia pageant in the past, and truth be told, probably still could. [...]

Dear Tim,

I don’t usually talk to dead people, but the special circumstances of your untimely death call for unusual tactics. You see, it’s very important for people to know the story I’m going to tell because I think it gives a capsule insight into who you were.

Or are. My apologies; I really don’t know what to say, because I really don’t really know what lies beyond that murky river. I guess that’s why they call it faith. I hope it’s all true, but I can’t prove it. For all I know, you could be sleeping soundly. If so, you can read this when you wake up.

First let me say this: I’m so sorry that this happened. I know you would have never chosen this and would have done anything within your power to prevent it. Runners aren’t supposed to die, at least not at 31. They’re supposed to keep on well into their 80s and become shirtless, wrinkled, leathery geezers who shuffle up and down Bailey Cove on a soupy, crock pot summer morning. But they say your heart was too large for its own good. Mine is bigger than normal, too. Supposedly my arteries are clear and my echo normal, but I still think about it anytime I feel the slightest twinge or ache in my left arm.

We all know they’re coming: Death and all his friends, bastards every one of them. But I’m resolved after watching the way that you lived–and what you did for my sons–that they will not get the last word. [...]

Shon Smith, preaching minister at the University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, stood this past Sunday and delivered the goods on how a Christian, especially the white-bread, Southern evangelical Republican-voting version, can pray for President Obama and find common cause with him. In short, it’s a recipe for spitting out those “sour grapes” and just getting on with it.

The 1/25 sermon (h/t to Number One Son for passing it on) was entitled “A New Era” and can be found here. The whole 30+ minute sermon is worth listening to, but the meat (and it is that, not milk) on the why and how of praying for President Obama begins about 6 minutes in.

How refreshing to hear a preacher (with a group of elders presumably supporting him) man up and do the right thing. I lost count of the number of times our President was mentioned–out loud, by name.

You see, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

There’s an old saying, “Be careful what you pray for.” Perhaps we should change that to “Be careful what you want someone else to pray for.”

Allow me to explain.

Last Saturday, the thought began to cross my mind: I wonder if anyone will pray for President-elect Barack Obama at church tomorrow? It began to burr into my consciousness; no, it actually got stuck in my craw. I figured I knew the answer to the question, but then I thought: Wait Mike, you ornery old so-and-so, break some new ground–think positively and charitably for once.

And I tried. I really did.

I mean, what could possibly be that controversial about praying for an incoming President–out loud, by name–in a church assembly? Wouldn’t that be in keeping with the biblical command to pray for our leaders, presumably without regard to whether or not that particular leader was a member of the preferred political party of the majority of members in attendance?

One would think. But anyone who has been awake and breathing during the past year, who has read the malicious email forwards passed on by fellow Christians and tasted of their off-the-charts fear and suspicion or heard the guarded foyer talk and the “The Sky Is Falling” rhetoric that would occasionally creep into the proceedings of the assembly itself might think otherwise. [...]

Dedicated to Dad.

God rest ye merry, gentleman.

…34, 35, 36…and one to grow on!

Kinda creepy, huh?

You know I’m just kidding, right?

You know, I know, heck, we all know that Tommy Tuberville’s sudden “resignation” this week had absolutely nothing to do with the “Beatdown in T-town” Saturday, right? Right?

If not Nick Satan, then maybe it was Karma…

I know I’ve gone on and on about the whole “finger thing,” but the fact is, after 6 straight wins you have to expect that. This is the SEC, not the ACC, for Pete’s sake. When it comes to football, one expects the knife to be twisted in the small of the back under such circumstances.

But what about holding up another finger before the big game?

Now when I first read on some of the Bama blogs that CTT and the Auburn players were holding up 7 fingers when they disembarked from their buses and made their way into Bryant Denny Stadium last Saturday, I frankly didn’t believe it. Had it not been for an eyewitness account from the presumably more neutral New York Times, I might have continued to blow that one off as so much apocrypha.

I mean, what were they possibly thinking? Given the way the season had gone up to that moment, doesn’t that represent some kind of pathological disconnect with reality? Did anyone get a whiff of what that was they were smoking on that bus? Was this mere “fire up the troops, into the Valley of Death rode the 600″ bravado, or did they really think they were a shoo-in to win? I mean, come on, surely Tubbs was thinking “we just gotta keep this one close and then maybe they’ll hand it to us on a silver platter,” right? Right?

I’m thinking that the football gods, one of whom was wearing a Houndstooth fedora, were looking down on that. And they were not at all pleased.