Ice Man Rapsodia: 1

I am sure you think this is a posting about Andrea Bocelli singing some aria from an opera based on a play of Eugene O'Neil, or some ditty about the old man of the Alps found in a glacier. You are most definitely wrong.

 I cannot seem to recall the titles of my posts, so I have devised a mnemonic: create an anagram and you won't forget. Hence, the above name on this marquee. Of course, we all know that "Ice Man Rapsodia" is an anagram for CINEMA PARADISO ! (with - of course - Phillipe Noiret!)

I know it seems a bit Gold Rubebergish, but it works for me. So, to set the scene, I shall collapse the temporal line just a wee bit: Thanksgiving...tree...ornaments...yippee!...shopping...blast yer eyes! I'm in this lane!...feet tired...work...clean house...sleep of the just...Xmas...yah!...daughter at airport...world's worst airport...blast!...tired as hell...love,love,love...clean the house...allergy!...doctors...arghhh!...Xmas here!...Church...darn good sermon, padre...rest...read...renew...daughter to airport...worst airport in the whole damn world...flying sardine cans...third world transportation system!

nota bene: (Now, someone has decided to kick the Christmas season up a notch by a video-xecution. We will not go there.)
 nota melius: (The execution was a gift for those who could not get the new Playstation.)
nota optime: (You gotta admire the perseverance of the bloody-minded.)

After an afternoon of watching the first season of the Simpsons, talk turned to lighter things. My daughter and I discussed cinema. This usually consists of a template statement of the form " Didja see ...?" where the blank is filled by a film ( or ' flim' as I usually type it ) name.
We talked about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
I told her how I was watching Fight Club by default one day. ( I was cleaning a room and the TV was on - just like in Calvin and Hobbes- it was bouncing on the top of the dresser, and motion lines and little stars were popping out of it.) Then when the film reached the point wherein we suspicion that Brad Pitt is some sort of alter ego or doppelganger for Edward Norton, I became fascinated in the extreme.
And all because the film began to become a memory of Caligari: the radical story line and how it was transformed by a enveloping story by Fritz Lang...and strange beings like Cesare the Somnambulist (played by Conrad Veidt) who are the weapons of the mad Doctor. (There is a technical term for the enveloping story; I tried to remember, but could not; instead of 'envelope' I tried 'ring', 'doughnut', 'torus', 'bagel', 'kugel', and-in desperation- 'Kegel', but nothing seemed to work.)
[n.b. the term is 'framing device' ]

I hesitate to say, but one of the reasons I live where I do is the hint of the Expressionist in the buildings set on a prominence, windy and wuthering as an English height, with sidewalks winding around hills like an M.C.Escher print. The Expressionist style was all the rage in Caligari. The Expressionist was all the rage during the building boom. You merely could not see it hidden under the brick facade. It's all there in its Minimalist Quality splendor.
Most recently we have viewed Miss Potter. This was totally charming. Even though I became momentarily disengaged at times, I sense it a film one has to see, lest one be seen to be socially inept. It was another good choice by She-who-must-be-obeyed. If it were up to me, we would be viewing action flicks and endless documentaries for the insomniac. This is not to say, however, that I would intentionally go to see a Rocky film. One has to draw the line somewhere, and that particular melange of the "junior high" and the "jejune" is where I draw it. I would go see Judge Dred AGAIN before I'd see the new Rocky.

The Executioner's Cat

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The Death Of Sidi Hussein At-Tikriti

I believe I have witnessed the creation of a Sunni Martyr.

When the cries and lies of our generation have passed into dust, the influence of our distortions and prevarications, our posturings as Pontius Pilate and our cries of 'Barabbas', our magical thoughts and mantic curses, something heavy ( "thaqiil") is coming...
And there is a knife ('mudya') to kill the lambs on the doorstep of the butcher shop. I have a very bad feeling about this blood lust and vendetta.

We never stop the bloodletting. For all the crying about civil war, we never stop the bloodletting. For all our talk of peace, we never stop the killing. There is always one more killing, then all will be well.
Kill Osama and all will be well.
Kill Zarqawii and all will be well.
Kill Saddam and all will be well.
Pope Benedict asked for clemency. He is to be ignored.

And in the Talmud, we read

“The Sanhedrin (supreme court) that puts to death one person in seven years is termed tyrannical. Then Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah says: One person in seventy years. Rabbi Tarffon and Rabbi Akiba say: If we had been in the Sanhedrin, no one would have ever been put to death. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says, they would have thereby increased the shedders of blood in Israel (Mishnah Makkot 1:10)." 

They are to be ignored. If there had been clemency, there would have to be incarceration, punishment, and possibly rehabilitation. This is seen as impossible. Why impossible? Because the spirit of Hussein At-Tikriitii is already sensed to be more powerful than the spirit of the governments opposed to him!
Our government and the new government of Iraq fear Saddam Hussein, even in hiding, even in prison, even in death. The people of godliness have no such fear. The Power of Darkness is the greatest power that is known by the Children of the Dark. And we hear a whispered reminder: Remember one day you will meet Allah and answer your deeds.

--

What's Going On At The Mosque?

My correspondent at the mosque has slipped me some secret information about what the radicals are up to: 1) If you are going to the Hajj this year or know someone who is, then please send an e-mail to our Social Committee providing their fullnames. ...[the Committee is] preparing a small party for those who are going to Hajj this year, and would like to plan ahead as usual. Please do duaa for those who have left already. May Allah accept their Hajj and their duaa. Hmmm. Obviously code. Rep. Goode was right! Dennis Prager was a beacon of truth! 2) Eid Mubarak Eid Aladha will be on Saturday December 30, 2006. There will be two Eid prayers: first one at 8:30 AM the second one at 10:30 AM. Eid Breakfast will be served at 11:00 AM. Tickets are: $10 per person for advance purchase and $15 at the door Children 3 and under are free. This year the breakfast will be served in the banquet hall and the GYM. Children program starts at 11:00 AM 3) entitled High School Halaqa Target age: 11-13 years When: every wednesday from 6-8 P.M Start date: Wednesday January 10th , 2007 Subjects to be addressed: 1) Basic fiqh, 2) Hadith, 3) Seerah, 4) The lives of the Companions, 5) Aqeedah, 6) Other topics may be added at the discretion of the teacher. These subjects will be covered systematically and not simultaneously,utilizing traditional books such as Al-Maqasid, Al-Arba'inAl-Nawawiyyah, Muhammad (M. Lings), and others. Purpose: to convey to young children the basics of Islam and empower them to understand their religion in a deep and profound way. Also,to give the children tools which allow them to study Islam in thefuture. Fees: None, except for field trips which will be covered individually. Very suspicious! No wonder the Rev. Franklin Graham sees Islam as such a threat! And I do not want to hear any of this nonsense of talking with other cultures! If you talk to your enemy, he may bamboozle you! And puhhh-lease, if I hear any twaddle about other-cheek-turning and loving-neighbor-as-oneself, I may vomit! 4) Now the very, very worst: *CROCHET 101**** *LEARN THE BASICS OF CROCHET WHILE MAKING A BABY BLANKET * FRIDAYS ** 7PM-9PM ****$ 45 * *January 12**th** to February 2nd** ***(includes 4-weeks of instruction, crochet needles and yarn) One may as well say, "Learn the basics of Jihad..." Bible Forever! Quran Never! (this also goes for Buddhist clap-trap; I believe there's a couple of Boddhisattvas comin' inter tha Congress !! Mahayana, shmahayana!)

Our Profligacy, Financial and Moral

I was taken to task for my opposition to Mr. Bush. Commander-in-Chief, wartime, all that - give the guy a chance to win the war. Win the war based on a known lie? No, I do not think so. Has everyone forgotten that this is the President who nominated Harriet Miers for Chief Justice? With a few more retirements and deaths, we could have a Supreme Court packed with the rest of his advisors and domestic staff. A chauffeur on the Supreme Court would be a good idea. There is also the business of the incredible national debt and the unprecedented growth of the size of government. Read the article Debt is Cheating Our Children's Future http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/sawhill/20060428-kcstar.htm and wonder at what we have created and will continue for at least 2 more years.

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 2

This one is "The Wolfowitz"

Photo: tEdGuY46

The Washington Neo-Conservative Memorial Design 1

Plans are underway to memorialize the Neo-Conservatives. This design is tentatively called the "William Kristol".

Send in your designs, kids!

photo: tEdGuY46

A Merry Anti-Christmas

In this morning's news:

India Tests Nuclear-Capable Surface Missile

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/India_Tests_Nuclear_Capable_Surface_Missile_999.html

India PM Discusses Nuclear Deal With US President Bush

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/India_PM_Discusses_Nuclear_Deal_With_US_President_Bush_999.html

To facilitate the deal, the US Congress has to create an exception for India from some of the requirements of the US Atomic Energy Act, which currently bans nuclear sales to non-NPT signatories.

Furthermore, India will not agree to ban possible nuclear testing.

Pakistan Test Fires Nuclear-Capable Missile

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Pakistan_Test_Fires_Nuclear_Capable_Missile_999.html

Russia Can Play Topol-M Trump Card

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russia_Can_Play_Topol-M_Trump_Card_999.html

The United States has withdrawn from the 1972 ABM Treaty and resumed tests of tactical nuclear weapons. It also continues to stockpile (instead of destroying) nuclear warheads and Minuteman ICBM's, which it launches as drones for missile interceptors.

...Moscow has no choice but to rely on military force to defend its national interests. Consequently, Russia is attaching priority to maintaining and upgrading its strategic nuclear deterrent forces and aerospace defense system

And Mr. Gates is backing the BMD system and the group in Washington have worked our way back to a Cold War. This government is actively pursuing a course of confrontation with all weaponry, including nuclear. And this is from a government which has demonstrated total ineptitude over and over again.

The Military-Industrial Complex will not give up like people who want peace do.

I do not think we can put up with another 2 years of this.

Greetings

Merry Christmas.

Happy Channukah.

Let's see. I believe the 'Id Al-Adha is coming up soon. Mubarak on you!

And Kwanzaa.

May you enjoy all feasts of Love, Light, Happiness, Holiness, and Joy!

And may your culinary miscalculations be insignificant to the taste-buds, as well as in the great scheme of things!

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Santa's New Shtick: Borgesian Bloopers

I pondered, weak and weary, over many a volume of unsent email in re : "desert island" games previously posted which no one wanted to play. Therefore, I propose a new game: "What's that guy's name?" -"The actor's name or the name of his character?" "The actor...I should remember him" -(silence) "Dunno."



O.K. That title is a bit long. Something like remembering things the way I do. I do not know how best to say it. Therefore, I shall give an example: (part 1 the Set Up ) " I grow old, I grow old..." (part 2 the Sting ) " I shall wear my trousers bottoms like Fezziwig."
I know you will say that a game like this is best played with snobs who think they know everything, and they will automatically correct your faulty-towers manner of quotation. That is part of its charm. And it has something to do with quotes, memory, truth...hmmm.

I have run this by my nephews and they came up with:
(part 1) "There's no such thing as legacies. At least, there is a legacy, but I'll never see it."
(part 2) "I'm just fortunate that now I have an audience of people on the show who don't have to pretend they have smell-o-vision." combining the President and Emeril Lagasse ( which rhymes in a cock-eared way with 'legacy') and creates a new reality of rememebered things. (They wanted to name the game 'bushWHACKERS' tm, but I thought this was (1) disrespectful, and (2) would center the game on a chance Presidential mutation.)
AH-HA! That's it. New Realities. Gardens of forking paths and all things Bright and Bellyful...remember the memorious! I shall call it, here on Earth as well as on Tlon and Uqbar, BORGESIAN BLOOPERS. Of course, 'borgesian' is in memory of Jorge L. Borges and 'bloopers' is in memory of good old Dick Blooper. ( "Is he dead yet?" " Who? Blooper or his character?......" )
--

Crystal Ball...of fire

I do not usually take to visionary experiences. They tend to be so unsettling. I can guarantee you that nothing will upset your day half as much as a prescient glimpse into the near term future. O.K. Surge is the masterstroke. 6 months lull of critical faculties to assess the effect on Baghdad. Meanwhile, countryside builds for a re-play of Afghanistan vs. godless Soviets. Then, everything begins to fall apart. By the end of 2007, Impeachment has become a real issue. ( present probability = 20% or 1 in 5, so it will remain a possibility) By next Christmas at this time, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter will be little more than ornaments on a dry-needled tree. However, the ones that will suffer are us.

Daniel Pipes Takes Aim

You wanna know what's gonna happen before it happens? Check it out: http://jewishworldreview.com/1206/pipes2006_12_20.php3 In his article, he identifies ALL Muslims living in Israel as enemies to Israel. Even the old ladies. He notes incidents of Muslim-Israeli violence, but he apparently believes all Muslims are taking part. And, it goes without saying, that an Israeli never provoked anybody Muslim. Yippee! It's time to get out the parallels to other world-historical scoundrels. The long knives are coming out! Of course, Avigdor Lieberman's posish is too radical...but only in a written article, friends. Only in writing. Once we get in motion, we can do a 180 degree Meir Kahane! The picture below is from the Jewish World Review. The TNT is a symbol for Muslims in Israel. Let's go back to the beginnings and read Benny Morris again. Look out, you Ayyyraabs! It's clobbering time!

God Bless Mr. Bush

The President has appeared to be coming back to the Reality-based approach to the world. It seems that I will win the bet on what will be done. I said that it'll be more troops. To be fair, I think the surge option would have worked 3 years ago. At the present time, we will hold our breath and see. Regardless, I find it difficult to understand how the troops can do what they do, since the objective of the affair seems very unclear. If the objective is to be defined as "Secure Baghdad", then after 4 years ( spring, 2007) we will have attained the securing of the capital. Then what? The President is actually still on course. The President will not go to Reality-based operations in the Oval office. That is tantamount to surrender; to admitting the whole affair was a sham and Hussein did not have WMDs. No. It will go on at terrible expense. Billions and billions and billions... How deftly we have contrived to make the peace benefit from the end of the Cold War disappear. Amazing how everything just fits right into place. And we did not have to lift a finger...or did we? I know that I repeat things ad nauseam, however, we are a society that talks about help and craves destruction, we speak of the homeless and kill thousands, we feed the needy and dispossess millions, we pray publicly and rage on the road, in the house, and on the net. In the title, I did not specify which Mr. Bush I was referring to. In any case, God help us. ( headline: Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml )

That Old Rugged Scratch & Win Cross

Symbols stand in place of something; they are not the thing itself. They are but pointers leading our attention elsewhere.

The cross, in itself, is nothing much. As a symbol, it has a great deal of meaning. Jesus is Jesus and the cross is the cross. The cross points to Jesus, and Jesus does not point to the meaning of the cross, although Jesus would indeed remind us of a cross.

Reminders are Post-its, not Symbols.

If the cross were, say, like an instant lottery ticket, one could scratch it and disclose instant deity. Or, worse yet, if if were like a scratch and sniff board - today familiar as perfume ads, associated in my memory with an unfortunate John Waters film -one could scratch and be rendered olfactorily satisfied.

When you scratch the cross, Jesus is not there ( in case you have not noticed).

It is a symbol.

NOW, we reach the point where I have discovered that Christmas trees have come to be symbols for religion.

Even though I have in my life knelt before a cross and prayed, I have never prayed before a tree, much less to a tree. Nor have I prayed with trees - a rather loose interpretation of "When two or three or fir are gathered in my name..."

When I see a Christmas tree, I see a tree and I see a display of lights. Of course, it is associated with the religious holiday, so it reminds me of Christmas. Frequently there is a manger scene nearby in case I missed the reference.

However, I toss old trees out by the driveway by at least Kaiser Wilhelm's birthday in January. I do not ever remember being so careless with a cross. I have never actually tossed a crucifix into the garbage. What I have done to them seems to have been blocked out of my memory. I mean, I must have done something with them, or else I would have a large stash of crosses that had fallen off broken rosaries and scapulars somewhere; but, I do not.

Similarly, a menorah stands for the miracle of one day's supply of oil lasting 8 days. This miracle itself is a symbol for God's love for Israel.

Now menorot are not usually tossed out after Chanukkah. I have an artificial tree. Similarly this I do not toss out after Christmas.

However, if a menorah should inadvertently be tossed, the Torah will not be affected.

Christmas Scuffles

I have been reading of numerous scuffles in this Christmas season. The have been problems with menorahs, manger scenes, trees, and inflatables. Where I live, no one seems to bother to become incensed by someone else's seasonal display. I wonder why that is? Within a 4 mile radius, there is a Hindu Temple and school, 4 mosques, numerous churches - orthodox- Greek, Rumanian, and Russian, RC, Korean Baptist as well as Southern Baptist, Anglican, Unitarian, Lutheran, Methodist...the list goes on. We have an Albanian RC Church. It is the only church I know of that had a shooting in the parking lot between members of the church. Where I had previously lived, there was an Albanian mosque 3 blocks away. I recall everyone dressed in black. The men had white shirts under their black coats. They wore black fedoras. A couple of days ago there was a Menorah Motorcade held by a group of Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews not too far away. There are many Jewish Temples. We have great food from India and Pakistan. We have no problem finding kosher. Halal markets abound. The greatest olives in the world are plentiful and fresh bread to go with them is made every morning in Jewish and Arabic bakeries. Sweets of every ethnic description abound. Even I, not known for my largesse, dispense Hannukah gelt ( chocolate inside ) to children. There is Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese. We have a at least three Chinese markets. We have a Polish grocery store and a German bakery across the street. There are Chaldeans, Kurds, Lebanese, Yemenites, Palestinians of all kinds. French pastries and Scottish scones, Italian, of course and Greek, Jordanians and Syrians. Say whay you may about Diversity, it tastes extremely good.

Batten Down The Hatches

A good illustration of the necessity of checking to make sure the hatches are tight. The Great Lakes freighter is the Selkirk Settler.

The Apples and Trees

The intention here was something breezy along the lines of apples not falling far from the trees. If you have seen the film Borat, you may have noticed that his newspaper - a front page of which is briefly shown-is in Almaty. The city used to be called Alma Ata.

And in case you don't know ( and you don't), Alma Ata is the Garden of Eden of all Apples.

Almaty is where apples were created by God. It is the ancestral home of all apples. They grow some that are the size of basketballs.

Can you imagine the apple pies? The apple fritters? The apple pan dowdy?

The picture above is not taken anywhere near Kazakhstan's capital, Almaty. It is taken on the Amazon, somewhere west of Manaus.

This is where my goddaughter was travelling with her friend.

Since they are players on an Ultimate Frisbee team, they naturally thought that the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon Basin could not be more pleased by anything than by having frisbees tossed at them.

Thank goodness the boy is not wearing a top hat. That would have given the frisbos something too tempting to hit. There would have been an international incident. I would have been dragged into it. The headlines would have screamed, "Prominent Blogolite in Frisbie Bonking Scandal!"

My nephews- my grandnephews, actually, though they are anything but grand-are of her age. I asked them what they thought. They stared blankly in my direction, as if I were not there. Then they went back to whatever it was they were doing.

I asked again. Again the silent stares.

Finally, they said, "We will respond if you buy us lunch."

--

The Christmas Conspiracy

During my visit to my parents, I discovered that my mother has a new conspiracy theory. In the second week before Christmas, she had seen many inflatable Xmas displays in the front yards in Port Desespoir. Inflated snowmen, inflated Santas, inflated deer, elves with an inflated opinion of their toy-making abilities. (There is a annual contest in Port Desespoir as to who can have the most lavish display of lights and outside decorations. I believe OPEC is this year's sponsor.)

By the end of the second week, these robust air engorged holiday fancies had littered the landscape, deflated, forlorn, strewn about in contortions no inflatable had ever been designed for. So, who was KILLING the inflatables?
Her immediate neighbors were no help, for they themselves had a display of inflatable reindeer and Santa which they inflated manually - or orally - or without the aid of air compressor! As a consequence, they were usually out of it until New Year's. She broached the subject to her husband, my father, but his "Hmmm..." , no matter how sincerely mystified he could mutter it, was no water to her thirst for the truth.
So my mother, who, by the way, is an avid reader of mystery novels, put on her Miss Marple persona and set out to find the culprit. She had already interrogated a number of local worthies. The butcher, the baker, the banker. The banker, a decidedly oleaginous character, actually had the effrontery to tell her that all was right, do not worry, things could not be better in the world of exterior holiday foo-fra. "My dear lady, these inflatable symbols of the season are designed to deflate upon the rising of the sun!"

Given the high price of compressed air, he said, at sunset there is a chip within the inflatables which " IN-spires them" and turns on their higher faculties; that is, to say, the strings of lights...which gladdens our hearts! And when rosy-fingered dawn stretches into the sky, this same MASTER chip bids its faithful servants to deflate...oh, deflate, breathe out, gentle rolly-pollies! ( whisper) lights out. sleep. rest....

Rolly-pollies?! I was not present to register my mother's undoubted disdain for this monstrous nonsense. She has been around. She is on the Beulah Land side of 80 years and does the Sunday Times crossword every week. She knows that when a person reaches the age of about 75 or so, every bank, utility, and drug company initiate a program of mistakes and flubs, backed up with maddeningly evasive automated telephone systems, expressly designed to scam, trick, deceive, and exasperate those old numbers who have been their customers for a half century or more. She immediately smelled a rat. An allegorical rat, that is. Not a real rodent. Why was the banker not telling the truth?

To set things in their proper time frame, I drove into town when the price of gas was $2.19 per gallon. I saw a few inflatables taking a break, recumbent on patchy lawns. I had already caught sight of inflatables in distress by my house. I had merely thought a good citizen had taken it upon himself to do us all a service and go about clobbering the Snow Goons littering the front yards.
This was all before I had learned that the Rev. Franklin Graham was going to have an inflatable of his father made. I began to take inflatables seriously.

My father and I drove about on our errands, keeping our eyes peeled for clues. We went to the Super K for cat food. My Mother had written "Seafood Medley" on a piece of paper. She had written that it was on sale at $8.49 per 18 lb. bag. Of course, this was a test. With the amount of detail she had supplied us with, one would actually have thought that once we reached Super K, there would actually be a cat food department with some 18 lb. bags of "Seafood Medley" for sale. It was a test.

If we were going to be her assistants, she had to test our acumen. Of course, there was no Seafood Medley. There was something called Oceans O' Heaven. Working quickly, I decided that if indeed the apple did not fall far from the tree, and, running the video backwards, the tree did not grow far from where the apple fell, then she probably just made up the name Seafood Medley, wrote it down as if it were gospel, affirmed its existence four or five times, and sent us out. That's what I do; something, something, fish...something, something, various and several...ah! Seafood Medley, and all that it really says is " tuna".
We drove by a scene of a crime. It was a Pere Noel Desouffle. I hastily averted my gaze; too late; I had seen the hideously detumescent face of Claus! We returned home to make plans. The price of gas was $ 2.45 per gallon. We drove slowly on the way to dinner. We drove on roads where but a week ago a happy population of balloon buffoons bobbed and lived their brief existence. All gone. All killed. Yes, my mother had finally mentioned the unmentionable: the inflatables were the victims of conspiracy. (Since we have never looked at inflatables so seriously before, we found it difficult to tell the difference between an inflatable and a rigid, yet transparent, decoration. We devised a nomenclature: inflatables were "blimps" and the other rigid thingeys were "dirigibles".)

We drove through the gore. Well, since the inflatables' life blood, as it were, is actually air, the "gore" was pretty much invisible, and you had to use your imagination a good bit to see it. Had some disgruntled competitor in the annual Christmas Decoration contest taken an ice pick and Trotsky-ized all his neighbors' inflatables? And, mentioning Trotsky, had the order perhaps come down from somewhere higher up? From some malevolent Stalin of the Inflatables? There is much more sleuthing to be done.

If my younger brother had not been in jail, he would have been a prime suspect. He had once hatched the brainy scheme to attach the inflatables to the ground with stronger wire and fill them with HYDROGEN gas! He was in what the family refers to euphemistically as his Lakehurst, New Jersey phase and thought that the Inflatables hovering just above the ground would add an amusing and idolatrous touch to the proceedings. Of course, you know what happened next. An entire city block of Inflatables exploded one night, lighting up the sky for miles and rendering Port Desespoir visible to the Mir space station. The local paper ran a headline the next day " Oh, the humanity...!"
--

image1: die ganze Welt is aus Papier

image2:B.E.L.T.

Praying to Pazuzu

Had I been in a coma? Did someone actually nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Does this sound real to you? And, furthermore, has someone spoken to a Higher Father about whether to launch an Iraqi Attackee? I have discovered the higher father was a god named Pazuzu. He had a cameo in a film with Max von Sydow.

I came across him one day last week. He said there hadn't been many paydays since The Exorcist, and that bit part in the Run Up To Iraq could not have come at a better time. Ugly cuss, that Pazooz.
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The Jesus Funk-a-Delics

This is a Christian Rock group.
I must say that the only footprint they make in the world that I like is their name. I like the name. I mean, I think it would be a great game to create religious music group names:  Jesus and the Temptations, Nirvana ( done already?),  St. Swithin's Day Massacre.

O.K. Not as much fun as I thought. I remember once having a discussion with an insurance agent who was an Evangelical. He had already deliberately misled me a number of times into ways of business which were to his advantage more than mine, but no harm in talking to him about other things. Everybody has their weakness, his was cheating people insurance-wise. He took to it as his vocation from God. He was a mystery of the everyday world.
He thought there could be no such thing as Christian Rock music. A Christian Rock group was a contradiction and should not and could not exist. He actually referred to Plato and his musings on what types of music be allowed in The Republic.
Rock was music that appealed to something essentially centered above the knees and below the waist - a zone which should be bereft of music, according to him. He mixed his Shakespeare and said music ought to knit the ravelled sleeve of care. Well, there should be no knitting of sleeves ( wink!) in the demilitarized zone!
Sleeve! Hah! The talk went on in this desultory yet alarming way for a few more minutes before, mercifully, the remains of the day called to us and we parted.
--

Speechless in Gaza

We were discussing the Holocaust Conference in Teheran.

That is, we were in Jenny's Coney Coffee Clutch ( I know, I know. Jenny says 'clutch' is more correct than 'klatsch'...as in 'in the clutches of caffeine'.)
We were not in Teheran. The Conference was.
We said everything that had already been said and pretty much re-established ourselves as Liberal Conservatives, or Conservative Liberals. It was not clear which. This we ascribed to the difficulty Reason has with the infinite detail of human life, and the myriad of different shades of meaning that results. In such discussion, the only people who are precise are Right Wingers and Left Wingers...or radicals of any ilk. They are quite precise. That is why they are insane.

Life is the infinite detail, not a homogeneity of the witless and mad, staring with vacant eyes. Anyhow, let me see whether I may find the trail of breadcrumbs I was supposed to have left for myself before taking off on that side trip...ah, yes. Teheran. One of the round table members is quiet and rarely says anything. He is the most valuable member of our discussion group, since he smiles at our opinions and usually indicates we have hit the venerable two-penny right smack on the head. Consequently, we all love him. When he is not present, we shake our heads at the nonsense we hear each other spout. This is Levine the silent. (It goes without saying that he is also courteous and polite, even to Hanaan the Hideous who is the scourge of the diner to which we have been exiled.)

 Today, he spoke. He said that it was his understanding that Amadinejad considers the Holocaust to be a 'mole' - as in 'spy'- of the West. It is a subterfuge to continue Western dominance spiritually in an area of the world where they no longer have physical dominance. Silence. Befuddled looks. Run that by us again, would ya? He said that there had been the Age of Imperialism. There had been physical dominion over the lands of the Middle East and Asia. Now there was no physical dominion.

The Holocaust was strictly a Western European genocide. It had nothing to do with the Middle East; the people there did not commit the crimes, nor were they the victims of those crimes. Thus, the Middle Eastern peoples view the Holocaust as strictly a Western and Jewish event; it has nothing to do with them.

However, since the establishment of Israel, they see the Holocaust as an attempt to force them to see "with Western eyes", as if were. Even they themselves do not understand. President Amadinejad do not clearly know why he has to deny. He only knows he must deny. To accept the Holocaust would be to accept a totally Western world view. To accept the Holocaust would be to accept Western dominance in the spiritual realm; to accept the morality of the Western crime and punishment and penance.
So when they speak of Israel as a tool of the West, they mean that this is another attempt at limited physical dominance ( min An-Nili ila al-Furati ; from the Nile to the Euphrates ) and an unlimited spiritual dominance.

We sat speechless. Furthermore, I had previously discussed Elie Wiesel at these meetings. http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/holocaust.html
So now this guy starts talking about the extent in time of theological events, the point being that they do not go on forever. The original covenant was modified greatly by the destruction of the Temple. Things do not go on forever. So, too, with the Holocaust. Five hundred years from now, the Jewish people will have had other events, possibly some even more horrendous than those that had gone before. We will all experience great and terrible things.
He said...a thousand years from now, our age may be but a footnote. Here he smiled, for he knew that a thousand years from now we would indeed be a footnote. We were immobile. We could not think of anything to say. This went on for a time that became uncomfortable. Finally, I decided to end our stupor. " Now that we have heard from Levine, the angel, is there anything else?"
--

Apocalypto and Violence

I saw Mel Gibson's Apocalypto yesterday afternoon. I was astounded. It was just great. My opinion of Mr. Gibson's abilities has changed considerably. I do not intend to go back and watch any of his previous films, but I shall look forward to his coming films with great pleasure.

The film is a simple chase film. However, Mr. Gibson manages to introduce and maintain his allegory : the rot of empires from within, not from without, all the way to the end. I have heard the expression "gratuitous violence".
This expression has become a stereotypical, hackneyed saying that people like me like to spout. The Mayan religion was extremely violent as their own paintings tell us. The Mayan religion was founded on the visions of two kinds, of which we hear a distant murmur in the story of the two brothers who invaded Xibalba. One vision was of love, the other was of blood. In the classic Mayan civilization, the vision of blood held the day, although the other never entireley disappeared, as evidenced by the scene of the woman praying to Ixmel, the great lady.

So, the violence is not gratuitous, just as the violence in a great war film is not gratuitous, for that violence shows the horror of war. War is death, not dancing a jig on the flight deck. What is very meaningful is the portrayal of the fact that the Mayas held their gods with the same sense and emotion of certainty that we do our God. As they slaughtered hundreds, they relished the exact same certitude of god's love. In other words, civilizations become the work of the evil one when they reach a point where they can actually see God. And this vision of God is a mirror image of their own worst selves! Bravo, Mr. Gibson. All is forgiven. Now forgive us for our nasty words.

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The First Horseman of the Apocalypse: Adelman

This marks the start of a new series of explorations into the elite minds of the USA. We have quite a number to deal with. We decided to begin with Mr. Ken Adelman since he has bobbed back into view ( a la une 'bad habit' ) and we sympathize with his obvious struggle to be Prospero, while his soul screams "Caliban!".
I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest

Some talk show funded by the Duke of Hades had a group of experts discussing the Baker-Hamilton report. One of the members of the group was Ken Adelman. In case you have forgotten, Mr. Adelman was the expert who predicted that the War in Iraq would be a “ cakewalk”. Recently he has been trying to rehabilitate himself. I did not pay attention to the details of this effort, but it must be something along the lines that he actually meant that the classical military operations would be a cakewalk, but he also added – although no one seemed to have recalled it – that the aftermath would be a hellish disaster. Maybe he did. I doubt it. Hook me up to some background, you ask?  

“There's always the chicken littles, running around and saying 'oh my God, it's terrible,'” he said on Hardball, six days before the war began, when asked about the possibility that things might not go as smoothly as he and his fellow-hawks had predicted. The following month, he was gloating to the New York Times that his “cakewalk” prediction had been remarkably prescient. Adelman, according to the story, “scorned recent complaints by retired generals and military analysts that the Pentagon had deployed too few troops” to Iraq. “I always thought that was ridiculous,” Adelman told the newspaper. “It turned out they were factually wrong. I never understood what having three times as many troops would have done.”
 http://www.harpers.org/sb-ken-adelman-1164050030.html

Back before the Mess in Iraq, Adelman was professorial and erudite, a true philosopher of death. Now that his thesis on war has been a bust, the call goes out for Mr. Fix-it and there is Ken Adelman, Plumber of Death, come to fix the leaky faucet. Truly a great idea from the people who had hoped to bring you O.J. Simpson. I would think that by now, Mr. Adelman would own up to his horrible responsibility for the war. I would think a little something along the line of “You know, I was wrong. That Jehovah guy had it right when He said, ‘Thou better not kill.’ “. This would be great, even overlooking the fact that he is apparently getting Santa Claus mixed up with the Lord ( “thou shalt not kill” versus “you better not cry” ). We will not see any of the Apocalypse’s Horsemen own up to their evil. What we will see is Mr. Adelman shut up his vile past in a tower of oblivion, as if it were Bertha Mason, and he were Rochester dallying with the new Miss Eyre. Escape from him, Jane, before he destroys you, too!
--

Bible Code, Christmas Culture Wars, and Traffic

Bible Code and Don Camillo

We were at a Christmas party and I met a lady who was much involved in the Bible Code.
"Gematria!?" I wondered aloud, pulling my beard.
My wife recognized signs of danger and began to kick me, once, then twice. Then a whole series of kicks and harrumphs before I could jeremiah "Idolatry! Jezebel!" at the code lady. Of course, the lady of codes began to think she had made a mistake and my wife and I were actually two German Christmas figures, carved cunningly from wood and rigged up with wires and pulleys for movement, that had somehow escaped from the Christmas Carousel that turns from the heat of candles. The candles had been too hot, causing us to come to life like a Golem with a hot-foot. We obviously were becoming a danger.
"Dybbuk..." I thought suddenly. "Ah, the Bi-i-i-ble Code," I said unctuously. "Yes. My,my...  Indeed." and so on.

 I suppose the Bible Code is all right for people who conceive of God as something like Will Shortz of New York Times Crossword fame. Tricky dickens, is His Holiness. His labyrinthine ways. There are already a lot of "Trickster" gods: Kokopelli, Loki...scads of them. Why not just worship them? Bow down before the whole bloody panoply of the pagan pantheon for all I care. Well and good. I suppose that if one were to come across this divine trickster god at the racetrack, he ( or He ) would have a joy-buzzer concealed in his mighty palm when we shook hands. And He'd laugh so hard, all the aces would fall from the folds of his robe.
If God wants to talk to us, why would He be so Rubik's Cube about it? Just come up and say right out: Thou shalt not...! Come to think of it, He has.

This all reminds me of Don Camillo. He was a simple parish priest in a simple, small Italian village that lead a simple existence. The Don Camillo books were written around the 40's and 50's. God did talk to Don Camillo now and then, however. And no tricky stuff. God spoke quite clearly, although He did use a dialect from around Taormina. The mayor of the village was a Communist. Ah, the tension between him and Don Camillo was the plot of many a tale. He was, however, a fairly simple communist and believed in live and let live. Both being paisans, their differences all came out O.K. in the end. God smiled. Nowadays such villages are ethnic cleansing the snot out of each other. Brave New World and all that!  

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Christmas Culture Wars

We are lucky. We live in a community that is pretty much the old dulce far niente when it comes to holiday fisticuffs and Christmas etiquette from the Marquis of Queensbury. Want a menorah? Sure. No Problem. Christmas displays? Have a go at it. I used to combine the two whenever I found a tumbleweed that was symmetrically branched. It already looked like a menorah. I added a 2 penny bow for a Christmas ornament, stuck it to the door and there it was, a Christmas menorah. It would last forever, since the weed was already dried out.

Bill O'Reilly was be apoplectic if he were here. No one yelling about Christmas - oops, Xmas - displays. No one kvetching about Hannukah displays. Just trying to make a living- God bless us every one. Except for one thing. The city council has passed a bylaw prohibiting the throwing of snowballs at people. Balls of snow are strengstens verboten. This is rather great, since its only the small fry whose rights are being impinged upon. I seem to remember when I signed up to start this Blog, the powers that be asked me a question. It was a Random Question. It was not only random, but decidedly odd, too: What would you name your ballet inspired by the sight of children leaping through a garden sprinkler? So I wrote "Arroser les maudits" which loosely translates as "Water them bastards!" Of course, I would never, ever do such a thing. And, if by chance I were to do such a thing, I would chuckle and invite everyone over to the Community Center for some hot, hot cocoa. It is very cold when you spray the hose on kids in winter.
Anyway, snowballs are an extinct species. This means I shall be able to wear the old top hat to the opera without fearing that I would be stepping into a hail of ITKs ( improvised topper knockers; i.e., snowballs). I had forgotten that I had sworn never to return to the local Opery House after the Porgy and Bess fiasco. Well, I shall wear it anyway.  

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Traffic My average interval between pulling out the drive and onto the roadway and my first curse is about 5 minutes. I think this is standard. Any pursuit, such as driving, which is the source of phenomena like Road Rage is definitely not a pursuit of happiness. I was listening to NPR about a Moose on the Loose traffic problem in Minnesota. Good label. Road Rage, Moose on the Loose, Route Gout, Pain in the Lane,... the list may be endless.

In Memoria Sororis sanctae

In memory of a holy Sister.
Sister Anna of the Visitation has passed. The world will not soon see another like her. For one fine memory, the dear Sister was troubled by her name- Anna. She thought the two syllables was perniciously lascivious; the tongue lingered too long and too lovingly on " Annnn-nnna".
I
t should have been plain Anne, Greengables-like: plain old Anne. Or, better yet, Ann. Or An. Or a sonorous nasal humming like the "m" in Om. She frequently counseled the girls of our grade school on how to act around boys.
She must have had some greengrocers in her family tree. Don't let them pinch the fruit, she said. To get a husband, one must keep the produce looking fresh and clean. The best goods are top shelf, out of reach of the clamorous testosterone mob, but readily visible to their burning eyes. Rotate the goods frequently - whatever could that have meant?

In eighth grade, she taught a sex-ed class before such things existed. It was like a Cana Conference - being canny about Cana; i.e., weddings; i.e., sex, but it wasn't really...and now you know where Catholics come from. It was a regular class on religion that turned to matters of the flesh, shall we say. We boys were off somewhere else...possibly cleaning the incorrupt body of St. Francis. On the first day, Sister Anna welcomed the young girls into 8th grade religion and bid them to cross their legs under the desks. They did this, wondering what she wanted. "Now that the gates of hell are closed...", Sister Anna would intone and then continue on.
--

Magical Thinking

I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking in October. Of course, I remember it and refer to it as The Year of Thinking Magically which, if you were an allegorical neuron resting within the old cranium, you would immediately recognize as a collision at the intersection of Memory Lane and Cognitive Boulevard between Ms. Didion's bus and the trolley of The Year of Living Dangerously - a film starring Sigourney Weaver ( sigh...), Mel Gibson, and Linda Hunt. ( I have an entire gallery of memory devoted to Sigourney Weaver. There is an exhibit scheduled for the new year. Check at the virtual TicketMaster...no, send 25 dollars and I shall save you a ticket!)

If you were fortunate enough to have viewed A Very Long Engagement, you will recall that the character Mathilde played by Audrey Tatou was a very magical thinker, "If I reach the bend in the road before the car, Manech will return alive from the war!"
Magic can be an earnest desire for good. Magic can be a fearful obsession to deflect pain. It can also be a desire for evil - or so it seems to me when we wish damnation upon ours enemies. Magical thinking is something we use to create our conscious world. This is not to say that it is somehow an illusory exercise; not necessarily. The thinking of Faith is similar to magical thinking - its images of desire are forged within our passionate hearts. However, it exists in a conscious structure of Faith which prevents the worst excesses of magical thinking - such as believing God will give me a winning lottery ticket.

Arthur C. Clark once said that a sufficiently advanced technology will always appear to be magic to a backward people. We may add that a sufficiently advanced Faith will always appear to be Magic to a backward people.
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Things I Cannot Even Imagine Understanding

There is a conference in Iran questioning the Holocaust. Tony Blair has said it is shocking beyond belief and I agree. A former KKK leader, David Duke, is in attendance.

Some attendees are criminals, but their crime is Holocaust denial which carries jail time in certain countries.

Some attendees are ultra-Orthodox Jews who consider the creation of the state of Israel to be an abomination.

President Amedinejad said that the creation of Israel has created a pretext for aggression against the inhabitants of the region. This would be easier to refute if our present government had not abandoned all efforts to end the Palestinian dispute. To quote the BBC:

 In a number of European countries - including Germany, Austria and France - it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. An Austrian court jailed Briton David Irving for three years on charges of Holocaust denial... Many Iranians must be wondering why they have the right to deny the Holocaust with impunity, but not to question their own leaders without risking jail, our correspondent says.
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6173941.stm

Therefore, Iranians have the right to deny the Holocaust, but not to question their own leaders. Citizens of a number of European countries have the right to question their leaders, but not the right to deny the Holocaust. Does any of this even make a pretense of making sense? Furthermore, is the crime in Holocaust denial the fact that one speaks out loud, or is it a thoughtcrime that deserves punishment by the mere activity of the mind?
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Understanding The Virgin Intro

My nephews saw my first post on the Virgin Mary and said little except how typical it was of people of my particular bent. They observed that if a person on the street were to come up to me and ask the time of day, I would probably attempt to drop Big Ben on their heads. Alas. There is this introduction, a part 1 - a tad lengthy, and part 2, a bit more to the point. However, there have been some things I have been musing over for a long, long time and I felt I had to put them down in part 1. Maybe I did not have to. Don't know. Too late the phalarope.

Understanding the Virgin Mary Part 1 Iconic Participation

I was asked a question about the Virgin, and I shall answer in two parts, this first being a brief explanation of how I view concepts pertaining to the Holy. There are at least two worlds: (1) the material world, being creation which is not conscious, and (2) the conscious world, which is the material world inhabited by Consciousness Generators; i.e., life. I do not imply the two are essentially separate. I have separated them in my thought only. Notice I have not postulated a spiritual world. This is because the spiritual is the mystery, is the entire question, and by setting up a homeland for it, I have answered a great part of the question without doing anything but saying: the Holy has a home. And that would be-say, heaven. And when the Holy comes home from work, It sits down on a holy couch...and so on. If we postulate a world of the spirit, we have answered all our mysteries and are left with the jejune task of delineating what this spiritual realm looks like! So, we do not deny the spiritual, but we do not think in terms of a spiritual world either. People have said that God is everywhere. This is a trivial observation. For example, God is not present in the plannings of the Atheist. So when the dull observe that God is everywhere, it is supposed to mean that the spiritual somehow infuses the material world. However, we have seen that the spiritual does not exist everywhere in the conscious world; not in the mind of the Atheist. I believe it is the conscious world we are actually interested in. Now, if there be Powers beyond our worlds, we know nothing of their homes. We do not postulate a spiritual world. We do not deny it either. It is a mystery - right now. How do such Powers or forces or spirits manifest themselves , then, into the world of mankind? At the present time, we think (1) the spiritual bursts into the conscious world, seemingly on its own power. If this is the case, why is the spiritual not always present in the conscious world? Why is it not present all the time? We have seen above that some people believe the spiritual to be everywhere within the material world. Why is it not omnipresent in the conscious world? Suffice it to say that it is not so present. We also think (2) that the spiritual is a pretty necklace of imagery woven by the human mind - sometimes carried along by the collective unconscious. The dynamics of the appearances of the spiritual in the material world is explained in the works of the unconscious. This is a result of the wonderful Dr. Jung, but it is an untenable theory; at least until it can be explained how imagery is determined by the genetic make-up of humanity. The appearance of the Spirit within the Conscious World uses the entrance created by the grammar of Imagery of Consciousness. Consider the apparitons at Fatima: the image of the Virgin as described to us was essentially totally congruent with the imagery we already possessed. The Spirit accords with the Image and the Image agrees with the Spirit. For example, at Fatima, the apparition did not say that it was St. Paul. That would have been a stumbling block indeed. Furthermore, the hunger of the Spirit to appear is balanced by the hunger of the Conscious World to receive the appearance. For example, Fatima's apparitions occurred in the temporal proximity of World War I. The Conscious World cries out - the Spirit hears the cry from a million light years away and moves beyond the speed of light, a Cumaean Sibyl running on nitro. I do not intend to try to explain every facet of this. I just want to start us thinking. I want to set forth that the Spirit-World thing is two way, not one way. And I call it ICONIC PARTICIPATION The Spirit needs the Image. At Fatima, if there were no existing image of the Virgin, there would have no image of the Virgin. The Image is created by the Conscious World and is maintained for the use of the Spirit. By maintained I mean that it is not a moribund part of the Mind. For example, if I were to go to Fatima, it is very doubtful that I would see Zeus, let's say. Through ICONIC PARTICIPATION the Spirit enters into the Consciousness Structure of the Image and becomes part of the Conscious World. This is important, I think; the manner by which the Spirit enters the World. For the most part, we cannot grasp God. God seems to be hidden from us. We find this frustrating and hard to understand. However, David Foster has written that the " Invisibility of God" is actually the normal state of affairs in any such system of processing data, whether conscious or pre-conscious. Succinctly, the Controller of a process has to operate at a much higher speed and level than the computers at a lower level. Hence, the Controller will be essentially "invisible" to the lower computers who only know of the Controller's existence by the inputs they received from higher up. Therefore, we may think of the process of Iconic Participation as the process by which the Spirit, which moves at least at the speed of light, is slowed down and made comprehensible by the Imagery of Consciousness, which is slow as molasses in January in comparison to the Spirit. This is not too far fetched. Consider the difference between thinking about doing something you greatly love and talking about that same thing. Thinking is fast and furious - quick and ferociously fast. All high spots of difficulty are made low and all low spots of boredom are made high. Talking, however, is much slower and laborious. And all the while you talk, you want to be doing. And in talking you are forced to make the logical connections. And you can't just force the difficulties to disappear - you have to formulate a plan how to do so. The world of Consciousness Structures of Language and Imagery is wonderful, but it is excruciatingly slower than the speed of thought. And that speed is the least speed at which the Spirit operates.

Understanding The Virgin Mary Part 2

MyStudios.com  

The face of the Virgin is that of a young girl, or a young woman. Rarely is she portrayed as a middle-aged woman or an older woman. So do I think of her. I use the grammar of Images and link common images in prayer.
However, when Mary visits her cousin, she sings the Magnificat, wherein we hear: "He casts the mighty from their thrones, and raises the lowly."
From this we get a glimpse of ancient Jewish thought in the society and in the individual, for Mary exclaims that God has turned the social order upside down and chosen Her, not a rich woman, not a trust child, not a queen; just Her.

So, is Mary always demure and a follower? Or may she also be a radical, a leader?
What we think of Mary is solely within this world and our consciousness. The Holy is not constrained by our thinking nor our imaging. The Holy is undefined to our minds, for to be otherwise would to be limited.
The Holy is a mystery which we attempt to understand with language and imaging and emotions - and ritualized behavior - and magical thinking - and the list goes on. However, the Holy is not what any one of these may show, for these activities come from our past, our personal histories. We have learned how to speak and picture God and Mary and Jesus. We learned this in the past. The Holy is the Future. It is where we are going.

The Holy cannot be held within our imaginings. It is the future and what Religion is actually all about. The fact that evil men infest religion makes human religion no different from human politics, or human business. What does differentiate Religion from all other human activities is the fact that Religion has the potential to exceed all that separates humans from each other and join them in a supra-national, supra-parochial group of communality.
And just as this conception probably strikes you as bizarre and outlandish, so also must any experience of the Holy knock you off your high horse, as it did Paul on the road to his fate.  

Life has infinite detail; it is demure and it is brash. All Life is tending to the Holy, regardless whether it be demure or brash. God saved us because he loved us. Period. Not because we thought of the Holy in a certain way and not because we acted out a given role. The Love came because God willed it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Jesus said that those who have not seen and yet believe are blessed. Blessed are they who have not seen, that have not imagined, that have not created an image in their minds of things remembered, that have not a taste of emotion from beholding Jesus. They are more blessed that have not seen and now do not see, for Jesus has left the Earth.
Now we have Faith without having seen, without miracles and signs. What, indeed, is an image or a sign if not something that can be pondered over, talked about, remembered, imagined, possibly even measured and subjected to science?
We could take a scientific poll of those who witnessed the Virgin at Fatima and put Religion on a proper scientific footing! And about time, too. Jesus said blessed are those who have not seen, for their Faith leads them. So if you are Faithful, you will not require images; you will not need to see... a sign, a holy person, a miracle. Our Faith frees us from all material needs eventually.

Now, having said this, when I pray, the Holy is not imaged. When I turn to certain aspects of the Holy, such as the Virgin, I pray to the Virgin, my Mother. She is demure and she is radical in her defense of her children. Until one month ago, my image of the Virgin was that of a meek and demure young woman with possibly a dash of wailing mother thrown in - the result of so many Lenten Fridays and singing the Stabat Mater Gloriosa. I had begun to study Haitian Vodou ( or Voodoo as we foppishly call it ).
My understanding of Haitian religion was nil, consisting of little knowledge of Toussaint L'Ouverture, readings of scary slave ship rebellions, insurrections, tales of Zombies popularized by white men in the early 20th century, Bela Lugosi in White Zombie, and a general disdain and feeling of racial superiority  (I have just described the USA's relationship with Haiti.).

I was looking at religious art of Haiti. This art often is a concentration of objects and a mixture of media. A religious statue can be composed of a bewildering array of found objects, rum bottles, old statue, aged holy cards, beads, sequins, candles, applique... there is no limit. While looking at one, I suddenly became aware that this art differed in no way from the religious art of any other country.

Moreover, the history of Vodou differed in no essential way from the history of any other religion. Whereas the Haitian artist creates an infinity of detail in his art, the European heritage of art has a preference to be rational - having just enough detail to "get it". Certainly not so much detail as too enable the viewer to become lost in a revery.
Art containing the range of detail shown in Haitian art is considered "cranky" or marginal by Western society; like " The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke " versus Mondrian.

The viewing of the Virgin as demure, as in much of Christian tradition; or the viewing of the Virgin Mother as a vigorous proponent of her children, much like the Ezili Dantor of Haiti who is another image of the Virgin - neither view exhausts the infinity of the Holy which we think of as the Virgin Mary.

Now, most people want something definite at a point like this. This is where one is supposed to say: "When you speak about God, you are actually talking about yourself." I do not believe that. It is a trivialization of religious life.

When I speak about anything in the same way that I speak about religion, I'm always speaking about my hopes and fears, my likes and dislikes - my whole history. When we talk about the Holy, we are talking about the past, present , and the future. When we talk about the Holy, we are talking about God, the Virgin, the Saints, the Angels, the Prophets, ourselves, our friends, our enemies, the whole of human history...

There is NO simple conclusion that sums it all up in one small sentence that you feel comfortable wrapping your arms around. It is an infinity wrapped in angelic arms with no end.

When I see the Virgin, I see forever.

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Jesus Didn't Say...

The Ceo of LBG ( Left Behind Games ) addressed the criticism of the violence in the new Left Behind game by saying that Jesus did not say that we had to be victims of murderous assault. That's it. I know you want a bit more there, but that's all he said. It is not legitimate to define Christianity by what Jesus did NOT say. What He did say is within the New Testament. What He did not say is infinite. One could generate a constant stream of what Jesus did not say. Same thing goes for any religion. Jesus did not say, for example, that child pornography is evil. Therefore, it is permissible. This type of Logik is referred to in logic textbooks as " The Artful Dodger " - how to dodge around any troubling moral qualms.

Iraq: No Fault, No Harm

I am not exactly sure who said that...nor whether it was said...but it sounds like the type of thing that HAD to have been said at some time within the confines of the Oval Office. I mean, it sounds like the type of rationale one of those people had to offer at one time or another.
It sort of rings of the locker room or the gridiron, and truly those are the best places for decisions of war to be made.

I seem to remember what I really disliked about the Iraq war was the arrogance of our leaders as they shooed us toward the stormdoor of disaster.

I mean, the President was almost prancing like a giddy schoolboy on the deck of that aircraft carrier.
And Ken Adelmann said it would be a cakewalk.
And Wolfowitz said it would pay for itself...a new and great notion: wars that pay for themselves.
And the Richard Perles of wisdom.

And we actually believed it. No one brought up the point that the problem with War is (1) it's hell, and (2) you don't know what's going to happen.
What exactly blinded us? Did we really think God was - or is - on our side? What did we think would rescue us from our stupidity?

Believe it or not, I have spoken to someone who thinks someone well-known is the Anti-Christ. His proof of this is the ease by which the Anti-Christ duped, dupes, will dupe us with our own beliefs and how we seem to be demonically rendered blind to the truth.
That's hardly a proof, I said. It's all been done before.
Exactly, he said, grinning madly.

Dark Matters

A The very people who find it odd that some others have Faith, that is, believe in things that cannot be proven true or false, themselves believe in Dark Matter which hitherto has not been observed. There will always be a Dark Matter somewhere. B I read James Lileks: http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html Today he wrote We attended a private party in a skyway crossing the Mall: you could look down, Masque-of-the-Red-Death style, on the crowds, and watch the parade pass directly beneath you. I think this a reference to the Lon Chaney film version of The Phantom of the Opera. He seems to be watching some festival from an old softwares, or haberdasher's, or clothing store and he muses on antiquity and whether the ghosts of floorwalkers past may yet inhabit the old pile of bricks; not unlike Eric, the Phantom in the Opera of the same name. Then he writes When it was done we headed for the elevators, and my wife said she hoped we got the car with the old elevator operator. The what? I rode up in a car with an old lady who ran the elevator. You’re kidding, right? That’s the ghost. Sure. No, really. The old elevator operator. They say she died at her post and rides the shaft every night. The elevator doors opened, and of course it was empty. Now I am not sure whether this is some off-color joke or not. There are later references to Deadwood - a viewing pleasure I have been spared. There are also dialectical spellings of street expletives. However, I have an old favorite which I call Nero musing on injustice. http://www.lileks.com/screedblog/05/06/061705.html I can believe that a good-hearted person is truly, deeply, madly worried about Gitmo; I have a liberal friend who’s been worried about Gitmo since the British tabs ran the photos that Shocked the World. You know, the one with the guys in hoods and shackles, portrayed somehow as if they’d been scooped up in Operation Gather Innocent Lambs. From Day One the very existence of the place has been a popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left. There was just something ineffably sinister about a detention camp. Never mind that the people sent there were “Unlawful combatants,” a phrase that would seem to bestow, well, a lack of adherence to the very notions of international law the Gitmo-detainee advocates hold dear. Never mind that they get their Korans, their arrows on the cell floor pointing to Mecca – and does anyone doubt that the arrows actually point the right way? Never mind that the food must be prepared by cooks who have to incorporate the prisoners’ convictions that the infidel is unclean, and must don gloves to prevent kafir infestation. Never mind any of that. Hoods. Shackles. Poor dears.It shouldn’t surprise, relly... I guess "relly" is how the liberal pronounce "really". I'm not sure what's at work here, other than some feeble attempt to establish the bona fides of naked human pyramids. One thing I am sure about: James Lileks drunk and raving ( apparently) writes better than I do sober. Relly! No, relly! C I am compiling a group of blogs written by Iraqi citizens who are now - shall we say - hors de combat in a very final and lasting way. There are a few still online. One day they abruptly end with their last posting. Tragic, relly. D I read that some oddballs are having problems with Battlestar Galactica because the humans on New Caprica have launched an insurgency against their cyber overlords. This is a rather blasphemous parallel between New Caprica and New Iraq. If you want to see a good insurgency, find a copy of Red Dawn. Patrick Swayze evens wears an arab kuffiyah in that movie. AND... However, next week, they're offering to trade Boltar (who is apparently turning himself into Jesus) to Galactica, which sounds promising. Time to get off the frakking emotions already. http://mirandaflynn.livejournal.com/256239.html#cutid1

Why I Started This Blog

I started this Blog in order to express my religion to my daughter. When she was young, I was wandering, searching for God and fleeing the His hand at the same time. Now it is clearer. How do I view the present age? Fox judged rightly the taste of the American society when it took on O.J.Simpson. The interest was vast. That book will be back in 5 years. How do I look at the cult of celebrity, like Paris Hilton and O.J. Simpson and others? How do I view the concentration of wealth into the hands of 2% of the population; a land which takes oathes and condones divorce and drink and gambling? Jeremiah 5:7 How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery and asembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses. Jeremiah 5:26-29 For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore, they are become great, and waxen rich. They are waxen fat, the shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? Faith, as I said before, is tough. We are sowing the wind and have been for the last half century... Yellow Mama ( http://onestepupfromstupid.blogspot.com/ ) sent me a comment on a post of mine called "Deja Vu" and spoke of the morphine of our times that a person may use, not to avoid seeing the horror of life, but rather so that the person might not be seen! What an interesting idea! In our haste and waste and madness, we occupy ourselves with wickedness in order that we ourselves might not be seen. God may have to go back and forth upon the face of the Earth searching for us, calling out our names as He did Cain's. We may become invisible to God...and remain so.

What's New, Noah?

Excerpt from: http://rabbidanielbrenner.blogspot.com/2006/11/judea-pearl.html The Zohar says: "When God said to Noah, 'The end of all flesh is come before Me,' Noah said: 'What will You do with me?' But he did not pray for mercy for the world, as Abraham would pray for the city of Sodom. This is why the Flood is called 'the waters of Noah' (Isaiah 54:9) — he is culpable for them, because he did not appeal for mercy on the world's behalf." How can we understand this mystical teaching? In a world bloodied by terrorists — those who purposely kill the innocent to send a signal of their ruthlessness, we may have a tendency to be like Noah and simply worry about our own hides. Abraham calls us to ask, "What does this mean for humanity?" Abraham is not from Sodom. For him, the Sodomites are foreigners, strangers, other. Yet, he prays that they will be understood.

Foquitos Para Repuesto: ISG and Rumsfeld

The ISG - Iraq Study Group - was to set forth options. These options are foquitos (little light bulbs) to replace the worn out "idea" foquito in the thought balloon over the head of the President - which lights up when there is an idea in the neighborhood. I shall tell you the future. The President will not pay any attention to anything, except an increase in troops. Donald Rumsfeld, an honorable man, was too much identified with maintaining present troop levels. Therefore, he had to go. Gates will present the Pentagon report, one option of which will discuss increased troop levels. We will increase troop levels. This will inflame those sections easily inflammable and our security won't be worth a plug nickel for years to come. We shall not attempt to remedy the Palestinian situation. The worst elements in the USA will continue to back the worst elements in Israel. Iraq is not to be addressed under this President. It was an unjust war based on lies. It has now been transformed into some sort of patriotic equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Iraq did not attack us. Al Qa'ida did. We justify this madness by saying "they" attacked us, just like the Empire of Japan did at Pearl Harbor. Obviously we cannot distinguish between Al Qa'ida and Iraq nor any other Arab person. The President prayed to his dark idol. He says that he did not ask his father; he spoke to a higher Father. This higher Father obviously told him there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This higher Father told him to have a blast and kill half a million. These ideas work for this President. We don't need no damn FOQUITOS !!!

The " N " Word

Much has been said, pro and con, about the use of the ' N ' word ( hereafter referred to as N ) and who should, could, would use it. The only comment I can make is that if you have searched for a CD ( to replace your old, worn out tapes) of the Sugar Hill Gang or Curtis Blow or Kid Scorpio and you finally come across one, buy it, take it home, eagerly play it, only to discover that certain areas have been bleeped out, the only thing you can do is throw it in the trash. I mean, would you accept the defacing - or degenitalizing - of Michelangelo's David? You might not like the brazen display, but it is art, or Art, or even ART, for pity's sake! Furthermore, I do not think that it is so much the 'N' in N that's the problem. It's the '-gger' ending. For example, 'rigger' (oil business, drilling in Alaska, etc.) Then there's 'jigger' ( booze) and 'jogger' (pseudo-exercise). Then 'logger' (anti-ecology clear cutting) and 'lagger' ( obvious) Mugger. Hugger (as in 'tree hugger'). Nagger. Dagger. Fagger ( one who smokes too much in Leicester ). And last but not least: Fugger ( a mediaeval banking family established by Hans Fugger in the Swabian free city of Augburg).

A Conflicting Of Diamonds

I saw an ad for a cheesy jewelry store today. The ad said "conflict free diamonds". What could that be?, I wondered. Does that mean that they are not "hot" - as they say in the underworld; that they are not "filthy lucre" from a "heist" or "jewelry-jacking" somewhere? Does it mean that if I were a potential customer for diamonds - heaven forfend - in my innocence I may end up in a disputatious situation over who has legitimate title to bling-bling? When I was much younger, every now and then the "Hot Man" used to drive into the yard at work and open up his trunk to display his wares. However, there were no diamonds there; only tools. What's the big deal about diamonds, anyway? I mean, am I nothing but a quarrelsome jackdaw who decorates his nest with bits of colored cellophane and shiny aluminium? I remember no hypnotic interest in sparkling baubles. I mean, even back when those trinkets were pulled from the bowels of the earth by slave labor I could hardly work up a show of interest in them. So...long story even longer, I found out what are Diamonds of Conflict, or Diamants du Conflit as the French foppishly call them. Not impressed. Now surely you'd think that diamonds that had a little shady past, like a couple hundred people slaughtered, might be right up my alley. No, thank you. And the "good", conflict-free diamonds are even more uninteresting.

Climate Change

Much talk about Climate Change... one thing I have noticed...no matter what anyone says, it seems to happen FAST! I recall the hot summer in Europe 2 or 3 years ago when 10,000 died from the heat. A committee of scientists was set up to evaluate. When the report came out, a number of the scientists said that they had expected these changes, but more slowly. They were shocked how fast the weather changed. Experiments on grains of sand, falling one by one onto a pile of sand...called "self-organized criticality"... Picture it. One grain at a time. For awhile nothing much happens. The pile gets bigger and bigger. Then, suddenly, an avalanche down one slope! Whoo-o-o-o-osh! There it is! Stuff happens fast. When you hear that climate will change, only it will be fifty years, read 25 years instead...and that's too long. Climate Change is something WE wish WE could manipulate like we do the Budget Deficit: INFLICT it on the Grandkids! It will sweep over us in my lifetime. When things reach a critical point...avalanche. This is not an opinion informed by politics. It is The Obvious.

Las Cucarachas Que No Tienen Nada Que Fumar

I was going to post a little note about Pat Robertson's saying all religions except his are demonic. Then I thought, what's the point of that? Hot Congo, boss! And in this case, the boss is Kurtz in the Heart of Darkness...only here's Pa-a-a-a-t! ...with his crazed, smiling ( seemingly emblamed ) face leering through the TV like Jack Nicholson through a battered door in The Shining.

So I shall talk about something else. I shall talk about the dregs that Conservatives and Liberals have to drag around behind them. Now, I consider my self a Conservative. I supported Goldwater back during the gold rush. I read Pat Buchanan. I read a whole lot of other things, too, but I ENJOY reading Pat Buchanan - although we do not always agree.
Now look. Here comes Bill O'Reilly and says something like he wishes all the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq would kill each other. Then we could have a nice country there. Possibly we could vacation there. We could import labor from the Philipines to wait on us Americans. When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phones,writes Bernd Debusmann of Reuters, lit up with favorable reactions.
Until Klein revealed it was a hoax: "I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed...(to this)."

Then there was a poll at some sort of Blog where the respondents voted that the best remedy in Iraq is to "unleash hell".
Firstly, we do not seem able to make up our minds whether to think the Devil a bad guy, one who should be condemned, or a good joe, one who should be praised.
Secondly, why do these blokes, who - for all the world - appear to be in some sort of Moral ReHab, have to be packed into the Conservative side? Surely the Left has some room for them. I mean, really, why in heavens does the Conservative side have to open the door to a bunch of fellows who are unwashed, unshaven, unkempt ( in an ethical sense ) ... who come in and stand around picking at their spiritual scabs and talking about how their ethical hepatitis is causing a bloom of arthritic pain in their joints!?

I mean, Killer Clowns from Outer Space type stuff going on here! Only the killer clowns are a tad more sympathetic than Bill O'Reilly. And it's only a matter of days before that Dreamer of Death will be simpering piously about the true meaning of Christmas! Really! The Left has its own radicals that drag along after it. However, they are not as obvious as they were back in the 60's and 70's.
 There were Bader-Meinhof ( I think...), Weathermen, Symbionese, etc. Back then, it seems like all the crazies were lefties. The righties - heavily influenced by Eisenhower - had not yet made up their hormones about whether rock 'n roll was devil music or not.
But the righties watched the crazed lefties go on their rampage.

The Righties watched, their mouths agape, their crewcuts bristling, and their thick, black Buddy Holly eyeglasses fogging up. And the righties learned. So today, the crazies have skedaddled from the Left and INFEST the house of the Right! Infest...like so many cucarachas from the circles of hell! And just like the cucaracha of the song, they have no gift of pleasure, legit or otherwise. (Note: a lot of this depends on whether you have learned the original version of La Cucaracha or not.)

--

Dennis Prager, Friend of the President

In my Bible there is Matthew 5:34-37, we see 34 But I say unto you. Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne... ... 37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Now we go to a prominent Christian nation and look through the old key hole: Right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager has raised a firestorm charging that Rep.-elect Kieth Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, must swear in using a Bible. He said that if Ellison swears in with a Quran, it would “undermin[e] American civilization” and be akin to swearing in with a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” http://thinkprogress.org/2006/12/05/prager-holocaust/#comment-1230529 Since oath-taking is expressly forbidden by Jesus, I think this point is not even worthy of being mooted.

Goodbye, John Bolton

Another member of the Bush administration is gone and suddenly we can breathe easier. As much as I did not agree with Mr. Rumsfeld, I never felt that he was a despicable character. I believe John Bolton, in his persona as banshee of the UN, was. When it became clear that he was resigning, the UN told its staff to say nothing other than "No comment." Perhaps they feared there would be embarassing praise for Mr. Bolton. John Bolton should limp along over to the sunny back yard of Dick Cheney where the other Bush disasters sit, yawning in the midday heat, and licking their wounds, planning another comeback and waiting fer somethin' to chase. Ol' Cheney sits in his rocker on the stoop, polishin' his rusty shotgun, mumbling to hissef, spittin' tobacco into a boot. When George come a-callin', they talk about who would be a good slab of poison meat to throw to the Senate as UN ambassador. George smiles to hissef and leans back, wonderin' what his ol' fren Rufus E. Hasp is up to these here days. Ol' Rufus would make a right good UN ambassydor, having an extensive background as a circus roustabout. Why ol' Rufus might just be the real brains in his administration. George turns to Dick. "Put in a call to Rufus Hasp, Dick." Dick looks up and smiles slowly. He lifts his shotgun and aims at the sunny horizon. He pretends to shot. "Bang!", he sez and spits into the boot.

Dying Village

The village of al-Jib. Photo: Kareem Jubran, B'Tselem, 1 March 2006.

In B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, we see the soon to be moribund village of Al-Jib.

http://www.btselem.org/english/Separation_Barrier/20061126_Bir_Nabala.asp

Le Pere d' Ubu Roi

Having recently gone through the miseries of the death of the king of Tonga this year, we see a notice from October of the anniversary of the passing of the father of Ubu the king. And you thought Alfred Jarry made up that name. Or you thought the production company for Frasier did. Salote Tupou, the queen of Tonga preceeding this king, was a figure even more dear. My friends at Niagara-on-the-Lake tell the story of her presence at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. It was raining. Nevertheless Queen Salote stood and waved to the people lining the streets. Queen Salote was an inposing figure. She stood 6 foot 3 inches and was solidly built. During the coronation, she rode in a carriage with some official of the foreign office who looked wet, small, and insignificant. Noel Coward and a friend were watching from an apartment along the coronation parade route. Coward's friend wondered who that was riding with Queen Salote. Noel glanced out the window and laconically replied, "Lunch."