Big Rice

 Rice Paper Envelopes

Law enforcement has had its highs and lows over the last fortnight - "feathers in one's cap" and "black eyes".

(1) It has run down the Boston Marathon bombers, one being killed in a gun fight, the other in hospital (feather in one's cap!), and

(2) it has had to release an Elvis Presley impersonator that had been charged with sending letters laced with the poison Ricin to the President and a Mississippi Senator (definite "black eye"!).
The charges were apparently based on the fact that the man misunderstood the FBI questions, and when asked whether he was fond of Ricin, thought they were talking about "Rice", possibly Pork Fried Rice. I mean, I would have said "yes" to a little pork fried rice after a lengthy session at the police station.
(It probably struck him as odd that the FBI referred to it as "rice-in-envelopes", but pseudo-Elvis probably thought envelopes would be no worse than chop sticks.)

(Let us ignore the fact that Elvis impersonators are, by and large, an unruly bunch, and should properly be one of the first group of cutthroats law enforcement suspect of a crime!)

These things happen.

(As an aside, there is a beautiful young child named "Little Rice" who is the affine niece of the brother of my god-daughter. I do not know if there are kinship terms for relations of god-offspring-type-things.
Anyway, my god-daughter's brother went to Shanghai, he took a fancy to a local girl, she had a niece named "Little Rice", and... wedding bells.)
Whew.

So, in the interests of shorthand references, I shall use the moniker "Marathon Man" , or "Marathon Woman" to refer to men and women performing at the absolute top of their game under intense pressure, and doing so consummately that they become immediate role models for the rest of us...

... and I shall use the moniker "Big Rice" to refer men and women who sort of fall far short of the above level of competence, people approximately at the level of arresting someone for saying "Mmmm! Yummy!" and rubbing their stomachs when someone said "Rice..."

Now that the ordeal is over and the Media is back to their favorite ideological drones of death - such as bashing testosterone-carrying Muslims until they have a 50 year blemish-free record - we are back where a proper ship of fools should be.

The experience of Big Media As Usual (and a New York Times piece over the weekend about the Today show) make it immediately clear that Big Media and Big Politics are collectively Big Rice.

Question: how does a country where there are so many individual Marathon People get together and form a Big Rice?
It is almost as if the good and smart people of an area come together and hit each other over the heads with baseball bats, then decide to interview each other, or to run for public office.

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