Dear Lord Baby Jesus

 A new NASCAR (stock car racing) season began about a month ago.  This is something I generally don't care about, along with IndyCar or Formula 1 or any other auto racing.  Just not my thing.

However, it did remind me of one of my all-time favorite movies, Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby.  It includes one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, with Ricky Bobby's family and best friend Cal gathered around a table to eat.  It goes on for a long time, ranging from saying grace to children verbally ridiculing adults.

That doesn't sound funny, but it is. Here's just the script for the saying grace part.....

Carley: Supper's ready! Come on, y'all!  I've been slaving over this for hours!

Ricky Bobby (RB): Dear Lord baby Jesus...or as our brothers to the south call you, Jesus...we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino's, KFC...and the always delicious Taco Bell.  I just want to take time to say thank you for my family...my two beautiful, beautiful, handsome, striking sons...Walker and Texas Ranger...or T.R., as we call him...and of course, my red-hot smoking wife, Carley...who is a stone-cold fox.  Also wanna thank you for my best friend, Cal Naughton Jr...who's got my back no matter what.

RB and Cal: Shake and Bake.

RB: Dear Lord baby Jesus, we also thank you for my wife's father, Chip. We hope that you can use your baby Jesus powers...to heal him and his horrible leg. And it smells terrible and the dogs are always bothering with it. Dear tiny infant Jesus, we...

Carley: Hey, you know, sweetie...Jesus did grow up. You don't always have to call him "baby." It's odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.

RB: Well, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I'm saying grace. When you say grace, say it to grownup Jesus, teenage Jesus...bearded Jesus, whoever you want.

Carley: You know what I want? I want you to do this grace good, so that God will let us win tomorrow.

RB: Dear tiny Jesus...in your golden-fleece diapers, with your tiny, little, fat, balled-up fists...pawing at the air...

Chip: He was a man. He had a beard.

RB: Look, I like the baby version the best, do you hear me? I win the races and I get the money.

Carley: Ricky, finish the damn grace.

Cal: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt...because it says, like, "I wanna be formal...but I'm here to party too." Because I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party. I like to picture Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil samurai. I like to think of Jesus, like, with giant eagle's wings. And singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd...with, like, a angel band. And I'm in the front row, and I'm hammered drunk.

Carley: Hey, Cal? Why don't you just shut up?

Cal: Yes, ma'am.

RB: Dear 8-pound, 6-ounce, newborn infant Jesus...don't even know a word yet...just a little infant and so cuddly, but still omnipotent...we just thank you for all the races I've won and the 21.2 million dollars...

Carley: Love that money!

RB: …that I have accrued over this past season. Also, due to a binding endorsement contract...that stipulates I mention Powerade at each grace...I just wanna say that Powerade is delicious...and it cools you off on a hot summer day. And we look forward to Powerade's release of Mystic Mountain Blueberry.  Thank you for all your power and your grace, dear baby God. Amen.

All: Amen.

Cal: That was a hell of a grace, man.

Walker: You nailed that like a split hog!

RB: I'm not gonna lie to you, it felt good.

Texas Ranger: Dad, you made that grace your bitch.

Predicting Predictions

People like to make predictions, and thanks to our social media obsessed culture, there's no lack of trolls individuals willing to publicly express their predictions about matters both silly and important.

Most of these predictions deserve to be ignored of course.  They're just opinions, probably ones that no one asked for.  A better reason to ignore them, however, is the predictor probably isn't educated on the topic, much less an expert on it.

The COVID-19 pandemic made things even worse, as millions of people became epidemiology experts overnight, and consequently made a lot of (wrong) predictions about what would happen.  Lately, millions more have become experts on Ukraine, Russia, and war atrocities, and they will almost certainly be wrong on their predictions about that conflict.

Meanwhile, the unsolicited, ignorant predictions keep coming, thanks to the shamelessness of the individuals and companies who profit from the clicks they generate on the internet.  They don't care about the accuracy of their predictions, even though they know a lot of them will be provably wrong thanks to the forever nature of social media and videotape.

So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?  Here are a few general predictions I want to make about the future that I believe will become fact:

• There will be unexpected news. Some of it will be good.  Some of it will be bad.

• Some countries / companies will strengthen in the next year. Others will weaken. These will change from year to year.

• A new book will say the rules no longer work and everything has changed.  Another new book will say nothing has really changed and the old rules still apply.
  

• Media 'pundits' and 'influencers' who are not subject matter experts will ignore that and still tell us what they think about those subjects.