Another-Fine-Mess

"Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into!"

Another Fine Mess aptly describes the contents of this site. There's a little of this and rather more of that . . . much of it satirical and humorous . . . some of it actually thought provoking. The focus of the satire is on two things your mother advised you never to discuss: religion and politics.

IMPORTANT SECURITY ALERT!!!

As you have no doubt read in the national news, the National Security Agency
(NSA) has instituted a number of programs designed to gobble up billions of
emails and other forms of digital communications sent by U.S. citizens daily.
We are not making this up. (Not that part.) We want to assure you that
this site has been so cleverly encrypted that even they will not be able to
ascertain that you have visited us. And that's a good thing, too, because
some of what you will be reading here is rather critical of our current politicians.
You can never be too careful! For more on what the NSA is up to, click on the
agency seal. You're welcome.

As for satire of the church, our free e-book, LAST SUPPER RED, does much of the satirical heavy-lifting. It begins with a wine label created by a free-wheeling Christian pastor named "Snark." The label intimates it is the official wine of the Last Supper. His very much more traditional mentor and fellow stakeholder in Naked Toes Winery, one Advocatus di Aboli, goes apoplectic when he learns of it and their relationship falls apart.

The book explores a number of themes in Christian theology from the point of view of Progressive Christianity; and it does so with a good deal of, well, "snarkiness." It also suggests what is needed for for two "my way or the highway" people to find their way toward reconciliation. Clearly, none of this is at all relevant to the issues of our day. Nonetheless, clicking on the Last Supper Red wine label will take you to it.

In the beginning, this mess was all neatly organized into categories, or as we prefer to think of them, "boxes." You know how it goes: over time the contents of one box exceeds its holding capacity and spills over, or leaks, into another box.

As you can imagine, since its inception in 2011, this site began to
devolve into quite a mess . . . even by our satisfyingly low standards.

We want you to know that we care about you and don't want you to
take a header over some unexpected box . . . or boat . . . carelessly
left in the middle of the floor. Ever do that? That's why we've created
a new navigation system: it's for your safety and convenience.

If you're ready to safely find your way . . . avoiding dangerous hazards
and reckless people . . .just click on the spinning compass.

To learn even more about Another Fine Mess, and especially if you're a new visitor, just read on. Thanks for visiting us!

Another Fine Mess also describes daily life: at its best and at its worst. The stuff of life simply won't stay in our neat little boxes . . . whether those boxes are made of cardboard or ideas. Furthermore, life from the work box follows us to our home box and doesn't get completely wiped off on the "Welcome" mat. The reverse is also true: the laughter or rancor of the home box gets tracked all over the floor at the office. It's the same with the content of other boxes: the evening news, the morning paper, the emails, Tweets, voicemails, novels, comics, and other sources of info-aggravation have a way of coloring the most intimate of dinner table chatter, bedroom conversations, and gossip over the back fence. Some of those conversations wind up being part of how we fabricate the next day that we share with others. And that brings us to our final use of Oliver Hardy's words:

Another Fine Mess is precisely what we are given as the raw material for the fashioning of life. The entire mess that is your life and ours . . . its heartache, its eye-watering laughter, its bloom and its blight . . . all of it is the fine mess presented to us as a gift to be used for the creation of our lives. But lives directed toward what ends? For what purposes? Raw material presented to us by whom or by what? Randomness? God? Life Itself? And is it really a gift? How about a curse? A joke . . . you know, that "sound and fury signifying nothing" bit? Those are all just boxes. The stuff in one spills out into the others. There will be space here to consider all this as well.

So here's to your fine mess! We'd love to get you into ours. If you're a first-time visitor, the very best way to enter this fine mess is to CLICK HERE.

NOTE: We hope you'll want to bookmark this site. When you bookmark it using Firefox, you will note that the site's name, highlighted in blue, is "index." For the sake of clarity, simply change that by highlighting "index" and typing in "Another-Fine-Mess." Thanks!)