Words in Bible but not my book & vice versa

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The word sex doesn’t appear even once among the 783,137 others in the King James version of the Bible.

By contrast, I use the word sex 72 times out of 67,989 words that compose “The Last Baby Boomer.”

Something to think about for your Easter book purchases.

Just because there’s no sex in the Bible doesn’t mean Bible people weren’t getting some in the Biblical sense.

Of course, sex in the Bible was described by the archaic verb “begat.”

I couldn’t find a reliable word count, but one site says begat is used 97 times in the book of Genesis alone. Example from Genesis 11:13: “And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters.”

That’s a mighty skimpy obit for a guy who lived to be 403.

Heck, I remember reading the obit of an old town drunk last week and it mentioned all his social clubs, his moronic kids and where they lived and stated he liked to golf and watch Pirate baseball.

A pity he died during spring training.

I wonder if Arphaxad liked baseball and if during his 403 years he ever saw the Bucs win the World Series.

He may have.

Bob Nutting didn’t own the team back then.

Oddly, the Bible mentions love 210 times, but sin gets 578 nods.

It seems out of proportion for the Bible, but just about right for how things were for me on a really good weekend back in Athens, Ohio.

Those weekends were fun! Really fun!! Really, really fun!!!

My book uses 274 exclamation points, a number substantial enough to embarrass the author. In my defense, the book is populated by enthusiastic characters who say things like, “Buster ran to the hall, his heart pounding in his chest. ‘Dudash! Dudash! Get in here! Now!’”

I’m not proud of all the exclamation points, but I am pleased one of my characters is a woman who’s always summoned to run and has a name pronounced “DOO-Dash.”

Interesting fact: Typewriter keyboards did not include an exclamation point until 1970, which makes perfect sense because it was one year after the Rolling Stones released “Let it Bleed.”

Sources vary on how many exclamation points are in the Bible, but I found this comment from an inveterate bullshitter who said, “I am a speed reader and it only takes me about 10 minutes to read through the Bible, so I read through a Cambridge KJV and found three exclamation marks in the Old Testament, and one in the New.

“It is possible that I missed one, but I read very carefully, so I don’t think so.”

If that guy’s reading this blog, it took him 0.0000002 seconds to get this far.

I don’t think you could flip all 2,274 pages of the Bible in 10 minutes.

He must have skimmed over Revelations 21:8 that says:

“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and ALL LIARS, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.”

I have the same interest in learning speed reading as I do in learning speed sex, but I covet a lie as artful as his so I intend to steal his Bible speed reading lie, thus compounding the odds my afterlife will involve a snazzy cabana on the shores of lake of fire.

None of the following words that appear in my book are mentioned even once in the Bible: boink (7), discombobulate (1), bourbon (12), fart (7), pickle (2), kite (1), rocket (6) and tickle (2).

My book mentions Jesus 63 times; the Bible, 983. But the disparity levels when it’s noted I mention Jeff Probst once and the Bible does not.

So there you go, just a bunch of random numbers from sources that may or may not be credible. 

You can believe it or not.

Same goes for the Bible.

Related …

Let’s make the Bible fun to read!!!

When idiots pray

My Biblical confusions

1,001 words on word counts

Pull tab donations & the ‘Last Baby Boomer’

How to review ‘Last Baby Boomer’

Random thoughts on Letterman, "Survivor" & my weenie ways

• When I heard there was a deadly brawl involving three Texas biker gangs I instinctively knew the man in the picture at least was safe.

• I’m happy David Letterman seems happy to be retiring. Last night’s adios Top Ten list was wonderful. I watched him when he was a morning show sensation way back in 1980. I’d never seen anything like it. And I was in college when he was revolutionary. We’d never miss it. He was as influential to our juvenile humor as “Mad” magazine had once been. The vintage clips he’d been playing the last month recall his brilliance. I think over the years Dave just got professionally fatigued at his inability to beat Jay in the ratings and it was like he stopped trying. I eventually became a solid Leno viewer for reasons that have nothing to do with perceived cool or fealty to the hip coastal critics. Jay made me laugh more.

• If those Letterman thoughts leave you thinking I’m a weenie, well, join the club. I was deemed “weenie” more times last night than the guy who drives the Oscar Meyer-mobile. Why? Last night, I skipped a big cigar smoker at DiSalvo’s Station in favor of staying in to watch the “Survivor” finale. I’ll bet I received 20 texts disparaging my taste, my intellect and my manhood. It was almost as bad as the time I ducked out on a drunken weekend in Athens, Ohio, to slink home to watch “The Muppet’s Most Wanted” movie with my family.

• My friends think I spend too much time with my family. My family thinks I spend too much time with cigar-smoking louts. I’m at a point in my life where every decision I make is bound to make at least half of the people who know and love me think I’m a perfect jackass. 

• I wonder if it bothers virtuoso banjo players that to most Americans the most accomplished banjo players in America are named Steve Martin and Kermit The Frog.

• I don’t know why I feel compelled to be honest with my buddies when I’m doing something I know will earn their disdain. None of them would have known if I’d have said I was skipping the monthly debauch to speak to the International Gay Bowlers Organization. At least I don’t think any of them would have known. Maybe some of them are secretly afraid to come out and publicly admit they bowl. 

• In fact, the IGBO is meeting in Pittsburgh Nov. 10-16 and I have sent them a proposal about addressing their group. I recently shelled out $250 to partner with Visit Pittsburgh, the city’s tourism bureau, to take advantage of the marketing muscle behind all the conventions that come to this popular destination. I attended an introductory gathering Tuesday and was very pleased by the warmth of the informative greeting. The people are great, plus now I have access to calendars and contacts of every convention coming to town. It promises to be very beneficial.

• Still, I’m having trouble believing I’ll ever be successful as a public speaker until my mustache makes up its mind what color it wants to be. Many men my age have what is known as a salt ’n’ pepper mustache. I do, too. But their’s look good because the salt and pepper is all mixed up in one shaker. Mine is salt on one side, pepper on the other — two shakers on opposite ends of the table. I have to think it’s very distracting for anyone trying to suss out what I have to say in a public forum.

• I’m doing a random list today, in part, because I need to get ready for tonight when again I’ll be Word Master for the Greensburg Rotary’s Ninth Annual Spelling Bee at Greensburg Salem Middle School. It’s a role I assumed for last year’s bee, which nearly ended in controversy when a student incorrectly spelled the word “Pennsylvania.” How does a Pennsylvanian misspell Pennsylvania? He forgets to start with “capital P.” Luckily, the judges deemed the word’s inclusion too sneaky and gave the kid another chance. But having a role — even a non-judging one — in a spelling bee is nerve-wracking. If you can’t make it to the school tonight, I advise you to check out the excellent 2006 movie, “Akeelah and the Bee.” It is to spelling bee movies what “Rocky” is to boxing flicks. You’ll love it.

• Other bona fide groups coming to Pittsburgh for conventions in the next few months include: the American Guild of Organists, the Barbershop Harmony Society, the American Massage Therapy Association, the National Association of Black Accountants, and The Amalgamated Association of Blonde Blind Bloggers.

• I made that last one up.

• So how was “Survivor?” It was outstanding. If everybody in America was as good as their jobs as host Jeff Probst is as his, the nation would be a juggernaut. Still, I like to reflect how the show is the exact same age as our oldest daughter, Josie, who will be 15 in September. The physical and cerebral changes in J-Ro are stunning. Yet, Jeff Probst hasn’t changed even a little bit. Neither have any of his lines.

• Wanna know what you’re playing for?

• Frontrunner for @8Days2Amish Tweet of the Month: “Too many people who mistakenly believe they have the world on a string realize too late what they’re actually holding is a lit fuse.”

• If I were less concerned about your time and how busy you are, I would include the following lines at the bottom of each and every post: Thank you. You taking the time to read and, I hope, enjoy my blog means the world me. I hope you’ll continue and refer it to friends whenever it’s worthy.

• I’ve had some people say I should do more of these round-ups because it would make blogging so much easier. But who said it ought to be easy? There’d be no point in blogging for free if you didn’t at least aspire to greatness every single time you sat down to type. Soothing mediocrity is our most addictive painkiller.

• Even if I never accrue a single speaking engagement through my Visit Pittsburgh partnership, I’ll guarantee you this: I’ll make back the $250 in free drinks and hors d’oeuvres in six months flat.

Related . . .

Random thoughts on elections, snow days & favorite trial movies

Random thoughts on baseball, Ebola, race & one really bad movie

Random thoughts from NYC

Space station reality show has astronomic potential

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The news of last week’s $200 million Virginia rocket explosion is a reminder of how little humans know or care about what other humans are doing in outer space.

Think I’m kidding?

I had one friend ask why we’re even bothering to re-supply the International Space Station when there are no longer humans on board.

“The thing’s been empty since the shuttle program ended.”

In fact, he’s both wrong and stupid.

There are six human souls aboard the space station. Maybe he thought the space station had become a colony of monkeys, hamsters and ant farms and that PETA was sending a robotic re-supply of monkey chow and assorted critter vittles.

But right now there are six human beings circling the earth at 17,100 mph every 92 minutes. Today marks the 5,114th consecutive day humans have been aboard the space station. It’s no longer news.

The craft, even at about 260 miles above the tops of our heads, is often visible to anyone who’d bother to look away from their smartphone Facebook friend updates for even a moment.

What these men and women are doing is vital to our future and will be bold face history for the plucky duration of mankind.

And you can’t name even one of them.

Well, let me enlighten you. Their names are Nadiya Anderson, Wes Nale, Jeremy Collins, Julie McGee, Josh Canfield and Baylor Wilson. 

I lied. I have no idea who they are either.

The people I named are among the current contestants on “Survivor,” the 14-year-old CBS reality show that still draws 10 million viewers each week.

Val and I never miss it. We love the notion of 24 strangers being stuck on a remote island and forced to engage and survive amidst some of the most intense deprivations known to man.

What could be more compelling?

Well, duh.

Put ‘em on the space station!

I don’t know which is more confounding: that no one on earth cares about what’s going on in space or that the people charged with getting people to care about what’s going on in space are so feckless.

I’d love to bring some creative flair to that job.

First of all, the instant after the re-supply rocket exploded I’d have held a press conference.

I’d answer all the questions about the cause, the cost, blah, blah, blah, until someone inquired about the lost cargo.

“It was toilet paper. The toilet paper in the space station bathrooms are now down to about the cardboard rolls. There’s a Russian up there and he never puts out a courtesy roll when it gets low so everyone else thought there was plenty left.

“Sadly, they were mistaken. The point of this mission was to resupply the space station with toilet paper. This was a huge setback because tonight they’re eating Mexican. We ask for your prayers . . . and your toilet paper!”

Why, a caring American public would flood the space agencies with Charmin. I don’t know how much NASA spends on TP, but that would be one item the cash-strapped agency could just, er, wipe it right off the budget.

We have reality shows for every niche channel, but we don’t have one for human beings in outer space?

In “Survivor,” departing contestants who’ve been voted out have their ceremonial torches snuffed out by Jeff Probst.

It could be more dramatic in “Survivor: International Space Station!” Any person who is no longer wanted could be escorted to a vacuum sealed hatch and given a chute and shove.

For the record, here are the names of the astronauts currently serving on the space station: Maxim Suraev, Reid Wiseman, Alexander Gerst, Barry Wilmore, Elena Serova and Alexander Samoukutyaev.

I hope they’re doing great and have plenty of toilet paper. But, c'mon, what an unheralded group.

Being an astronaut used to be a ticket to historic fame.

Now it’s a ticket to anonymity.

All that would change if we had a space station reality show featuring, say, fame-hungry celebs like Justin Beiber, Kim Khardashian, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly, Rosie O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

The ratings would be astronomical.

And who’d care if they tanked?

Imagine how much better off we earthlings would be if we never heard from any of them ever again.

You know, just like real astronauts!

Related . . .

The Future of Sex

Sally Ride in OUT-er space

Earth’s plans to occupy Kepler-22b

NASA flagged for excessive celebration

8.8 billion Earth-like planets; worlds of possibilities

Today’s space program needs nudity

Sunday encore! Lottery losers should decide winners

No reason whatsoever for re-running this April '12 entry. No surge of readers drawing it to my attenion. No related topical instigations. I just was going through the roster — blog no. 1,300 will appear in early November! — and recalled thinking this one was a good idea. Hope you like it. Thanks, as always, for taking the time to stop by. Please share with friends anytime you feel the blog is deserving.

For purely comedic reasons, I’m hoping Mitt Romney wins the presidency and announces at his inaugural address, “Oh, by the way, remember that unclaimed $656 million jackpot from back in March? I won! Ann found the ticket in the glove compartment of one of her Caddies. Just thought you might like to know.”

The bi-partisan impeachment proceedings would conclude before C-Span had time to remove the lens caps from all their cameras.

Second to winning it ourselves, the most important aspect of our national lottery mania is complaining when the actual winner turns out to be an undeserving jerk, goon or garden variety moron.

We feel cheated, as if there’s been some colossal cosmic mistake. How could karma have gotten it all so wrong?

That’s what we’re all feeling with this crazy escapade involving Mirlande Wilson, the Maryland nut job who claims to have the winning ticket -- and says it’s not from the stack she agreed to buy for her now-incensed McDonald’s co-workers. If she’s intent on spending the rest of her life being an object of public scorn and hatred, her plan is succeeding brilliantly.

Winning tickets sold in Kansas and Illinois have so far gone unclaimed (Romney’s recently been in both states, by the way).

Experts say the winners are wisely waiting for the attention to die down before making a claim that’s certain to be anonymous.

I think that’s wrong. A desire for anonymity should be a disqualifying factor. You shouldn’t be able to use your fresh millions to insulate yourself against all of us losers who just forked it over to you.

In fact, this being a democracy and that states reap financial benefits from hosting the lotteries, I think lottery rules should be refined so everyone who plays has a say in how the winner spends his or her money.

Say if one $100 million winner is a common hillbilly. We should all get to vote if he gets to blow it all on hookers and fireworks of if he has enough of an intellectual spark that educational improvement is warranted. Either way, we should all get to watch.

In fact, I’d go even further. I think each lottery jackpot of more than $100 million should include a dozen winning tickets.

Anyone with a winner would have to step forward and agree to take part in a “Survivor” -like reality show where the jury is the American people. People who wish to remain anonymous can drop out and be given a parting gift, like maybe a toaster.

The remainders have to persuade America why they deserve the entire jackpot.

Then over the course of three months, once a week, we’d get to know these individuals and decide if they’re deserving of the money. We’d find out who was miserly and who was generous. We’d learn who was caring for a sick loved one and who abandoned his family for the cheap cocktail waitress.

Phoned-in or texted votes could cost $1 with proceeds going to pay down the national debt.

The result would be we’d get a winner who was generous, deserving and jolly enough to be bestowed with instant riches.

He’d be the kind of guy who cares about the environment, is sportsmanlike in victory and defeat and understands the importance of overtipping friendly breakfast waitresses. He’d be handsome, but not in a pretty boy way. He’d really need the money, but would be stable enough that he could be counted on to be neither miserly nor wasteful with a gaudy windfall.

He’d be articulate, witty and offer three to four times a week solutions to vexing global problems on his humble little blog.

Still looking for someone deserving -- besides yourself -- to root for the next big jackpot?

One more hint: I don’t mean Mitt.

The prisons we construct around ourselves

I thought about commemorating the 20 year anniversary of my doing mostly nothing by doing more nothing, but that seemed too obviously redundant.

This weekend marked 20 years since I quit the last salaried job I ever had.

There’s more. It wasn’t just the last day I ever had a steady paycheck. It was also the last day I had what I guess you could call a steady girlfriend. This weekend in 1992, I took the step beyond steady.

While I was becoming less committed to stable employment, I was becoming more committed to the fair Valerie.

If you judge my life on the wisdom of those two life-altering decisions undertaken within 24 hours of one another then I’m an absolute genius.

First, I left daily newspapers, an industry that in the next 20 years would shed profits, payrolls and prestige.

Second, moving in with Val was the best decision of my life. Our 3-year shack-up commenced on July 1, 1992, and led to an escalating progression of love, marriage and eventually our two darling daughters, Josie and little whatzzer name.

So in one 24-hour period I went from being a single guy with a job to being an off-the-market guy with no job. Everyone thought I was crazy, including the woman who today is, in fact, diagnosed with a form crazy herself.

My mother was flabbergasted that I would leave what seemed like a stable newspaper career to work full-time doing oddball features for America’s most notorious publication, The National Enquirer.

Why would I even consider such a thing? What will I tell my friends? Aren’t you worried about your reputation?

“Mom, you just don’t understand,” I said. “This will make me a much more interesting person.”

“But you’re already interesting enough,” she wailed.

She was mistaken.

From 1992-1999, I wrote more than 1,000 swashbuckling features for Enquirer, many of them involving the world’s most fascinating people and places. You can check out a nearly 4-year-old recap here.

It’s impossible to calculate how much prestigious and profitable work I passed up in favor of work that would be fun and interesting.

This has been to my financial detriment, but will I in the long run be better off?

I remain surprised I’m not yet a successful novelist. I have for five years been pitching a novel that gets great reaction from top people throughout the publishing hierarchy. I reprise the premise here in case any of you are powerful literary agents or publishers who’s been reading my blog strictly for the fart jokes.

The book is called “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool.”

It’s about a 117-year-old man who in 2079 is identified as the last baby boomer. By then people are so sick of baby boomers they will put him in a museum suite and charge contestants $25 each to spend 15 minutes with him in the room.

If they’re in the room when he dies, they win the jackpot.

One problem: He won’t die.

It’s a coming of old, old age story.

Because everyone has to die, but only one of us gets to die last.

I know what you’re thinking: I can’t believe that’s never sold. I can’t believe it either.

Maybe I should rewrite it and add parts where the old man has sex with zombies.

But “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness” is showing signs it may flourish, and I’m getting interest from important people on two non-fiction proposals.

“We are born free and spend the rest of our lives constructing prisons around ourselves.”

That, I believe, is the most profound line I’ve ever written. It sounds almost Biblical, or like something that could have been written by ageless sages like Plato, Socrates or Jeff Probst.

But it’s mine and I truly believe it. In fact, I live it.

The prison I’ve constructed for myself has no security. It’s cheerful, nurturing and filled with love.

Ironically, for a place with no security, it has a lot of bars. For the last four years I’ve done most of my writing right above one of them.

As I look back on the last 20 years, I thank God for the decisions I’ve made.

My life has been interesting with interest compounded.

It takes my breath away to think the next 20 years could be even more interesting.

I’ll be content if it’s even half so.

And it’ll be nice if it pays just a little bit better.

Re-run Sunday: How old will you be in heaven?

Some of these re-runs are doing quite well and that bodes poorly for the blog's future. I've since 2008 posted more than 500 original essays. We'll soon reach a point where I could for every day of the year find something topical and timely that I've already written. But I think re-running old favorites helps me highlight to new readers some of the early ones I believe still resonate. This one about how old we'll be in heaven is from November 2009. Enjoy your Sunday!

Do you ever wonder what age you’ll be in heaven? I do.

I hope I live a good long life, but not if it means I get to heaven and am stuck being something like 89 decrepit years old for eternity.

The speculation is presumptuous for me, I admit, but I like to think I’ll make the cut. I’m kind to children and old people, never hog the passing lane for extended periods or send annoying ALL CAP E-MAILS. Sure, that’s setting the heaven bar pretty low, but by today’s standard’s it amounts to near saintly behavior.

I wonder about the demographics of heaven.

Right now, the life expectancy is nearing 80. But that’s only a recent trend. Just 200 or so years ago it was not uncommon for someone to expire at around 40 and for his friends to say, “I’ll misseth Miles, but he didst live a goodly long life. Now, let’s thou and I go burn a witch.”

Today, most of the people crowding the obituary pages are elderly and pissed off about it. I’ve never known a single senior to sit around and gush about the joys of excessive age.

And what about the sad unfortunates who die in infancy? Do they go to heaven as toddlers, forever in need of parental care? That’s seems terribly unfair, especially in light of them having their earthly lives snuffed out so young.

You’d think in heaven they’d at least be allowed to grow up a little, enjoy the liberty of obtaining a driver’s license and then, naturally, enjoy carnal activities in the back seat.

What about the thousands of souls who die daily of reckless or drunken misadventure? The headlines are full of accounts of hillbillies who blow up themselves or their redneck buddies constructing things like backyard rocket ships to deaden the boredom of their lives.

If they’re not given an opportunity to grow older and wiser then heaven might be full to busting with earthly idiots. That doesn’t sound like heaven. It sounds like an endless tape loop of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

Maybe in heaven we can put our ages on in the morning the way we do our clothes. You can wake up and decide that morning you want to be 21, ripped and sure you know everything.

Or maybe occupational considerations prevented you from spending too much time with the kids when they were young. You could say, “Today, I’ll be 38 with nothing to do but play with the kids.”

For many people, me included, that is exactly heaven.

But you’d get tired of that for eternity. And what if the kids don’t feel like being 6 and 4 that day? There could be conflict.

I’m lucky in that I can’t recall a time in my life when I wasn’t really having fun. The indifference of the girls in my awkward years (for me, that lasted from 14 to about 33) was compensated by lively buddies who liked to joke and laugh.

There’d be days I’d love to be young and zooming down Earlswood Avenue on my banana seat bike, bent baseball cards like castanets on the spokes. But there’d be lots of nights I’d like to stay in with Val, a bottle of wine and “Survivor” host Jeff Probst sitting there telling us cool behind the scenes stuff from our favorite show.

I’m finding much to enjoy about what I’m optimistically calling my middle age years. It’s not unreasonable to assume I’ll make it another 46 years to 92. There’s golf, family time and I hope heaven allows for more uninterrupted reading time in the hammock than I have here.

Yes, I believe there’s much to look forward to in the years before the inevitable decline.

Of course, I could have it all wrong. Heaven might not be like that at all. I’ve talked to informed clergy who maintain that heaven is nothing but all the blessed believers praising and worshipping the Lord for all eternity.

Only the heretics would dispute that He is worthy of such enduring adulation, but the description puts to mind Mark Twain who was told heaven’s a place where no one smokes, drinks, eats, reads, or does anything but express joyful contentment.

Twain’s response: “You know my current way of life. Can you suggest any additions, in the way of crime, that will reasonably ensure my going to some other place?”

But I worry about getting to heaven in a me that’s either incomplete or past its expiration date.

My late grandfather lived to be 97. He often said in his sad, last months, “Growing old ain’t for sissies.”

I loved that old man, but he was wrong.

Living ain’t for sissies. This world’s a mess.

We can only hope heaven’s all it’s cracked up to be and that we won’t have to worry about hurt, loneliness or things like male pattern baldness.

I’m going to stop now and go try and do something soulful that’ll help ensure I get to one day find out for myself.

Ark-building floats man's boat

Note: Computers actin' funny. Can't upload pic. Imagine an ark!

It was the middle of the night and Val awoke with a shudder.

What was wrong?

“I just had a terrible nightmare. Really scary. I remember a man standing in the corner of the room.”

Who was the man?

“I don’t remember.”

Well, was it Drew Carey? Jeff Probst?

“I don’t know. I remember trying to scream and being unable to. I was terrified.”

That’s too bad, I said. But if you’re going to continue to disturb me, I’m going to have to ask you to grab your pillow and head out to the couch. I need my sleep.

She wakes up every morning and is smacked in the face with the cold reality that she’s still married to me. What nightmare could be worse than that?

Just one, I guess.

She could wake up and tell me God spoke to her. Of course, that’s not her nightmare.

It’s mine.

It’s happening right now to some beleaguered spouse over in Holland. Her husband, Johan Huibers, a wealthy Dutch shipbuilder, said God told him to build an ark.

Those of you who attended Sunday school will recall this is not without precedent.

It happened with Noah, an ancient Hebrew shipbuilder.

Although Noah must have endured an enormous amount of pre-rain ridicule from the equivalent of snarky bloggers of the day, it all worked out well -- at least for those on board the boat.

Dreaming God tells you to do something would have a way of swamping an otherwise tranquil life like, uh, like, hmmm . . .

Can anyone think of a really good flood analogy?

Because if you believe in God, you really ought to do what the divine dream says you should do because, well, He’s God.

Once that’s established, you can kiss bowling nights goodbye. You work full-time on fulfilling the dream.

Biblical experts have praised Huibers’s Ark -- and that’s going to take some getting used to -- for its accuracy.

He spent months poring over some of the most arcane parts of the often arcane King James Bible to divine the exact measurements of the one detailed in the Book of Genesis; 30 cubits wide, 50 cubits high and 300 cubits long.

I’m unfamiliar with cubits and in my mind confuse the obscure measurement with croutons so right there my construction would be in trouble.

He’s planning on taking the ark up the Thames River in time for the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He didn’t say whether that was part of the dream or not.

But it makes sense. If you were going to start the human race over, you’d naturally want to start with really fit people whose physical attributes have been boosted by difficult-to-detect performance enhancing drugs.

Me, I had a nightmare where I was banging on the doors of Huibers’s ark as the waters rose above my nose.

I consider it a warning.

So now I’m going to do all I can to ingratiate myself with Huibers and see if he’ll grant me a crack at veto power over who or what else is destined for salvation.

Noah letting strains of offensive and obnoxious creatures -- snakes, stink bugs, Cub fans -- seems, in hindsight, like a manifest mistake.

I’d be a bit more picky.

And next time Val has an unsettling nightmare, she’d better keep it to herself.

I need my sleep. I’m going to be busy making lists just in case I have a say with Huibers.

And, fear not, readers of this blog get first dibs on bunks!

At least those of you who do not snore.