Z News January 18 2007

"Z News" is end of time news, like Z, or Zed, at the end of an alphabetic sequence. It is not a funny rendition of Parisian news, "Leesten to zee News at 11:00!", instead of Les Nouvelles or Les Informations. My humor is not necessarily above a little Pepe LePew, but not this time. And , come to think of it, it really isn't "new" at all. I mean, all these things are going to be tedious repetitions of things we've seen before; nihil novi sub sole ( nothing new under the sun) and semper ubi sub-ubi (always wear under-wear). (1) An administration official, Charles Stimson, displays arrogance, even though they know by now that arrogance should not be worn after a catastrophe. "A Pentagon official who criticised US law firms for representing detainees at the Guantanamo Bay US base in Cuba has apologised for his remarks. " He also tacitly threatened them, but read it all at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6270783.stm (2) Israel vs Palestine, Round 4,567: Although Israel withdrew from Gaza more than a year ago, its control over the lives of Palestinians there is in some ways even tighter than before, a new report by an Israeli human rights organisation says http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6270331.stm and the Israeli HR organization: Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement is an Israeli not-for-profit organization that seeks to protect the fundamental rights of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories by imposing human rights law as a limitation on the behavior of Israel’s military. http://www.gisha.org/english/index_eng.htm (3) Doomsday Clock The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has "added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6270871.stm Therefore, they have pushed the minute hand on the good old Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight. Now, there is considerable controversy about climate change and whether it may be remedied. My own approach- which I frequently tell people and which has given me a well-deserved staus as a crank-is to advise people: "Ask those who have died from it!" ( whether 'it' is climate change, or the Iraq war, or homelessness, fill in the blanks.) (4) Nouri Al-Maliki, the present PM of Iraq, wants more weaponry. Hitherto, the US has feared the extra weaponry would just fall into the hands of the insurgents. The previous ruler of Iraq also requested and received numerous weapons from the USA. Maliki wants the same. Maliki probably is the same. The only thing I know about Al-Maliki is that the President thinks he's the boy. Excellent. Nouri Al-Maliki will go the same way as Saddam Hussein within 8 years.

Piranesi Meditations

Piranesi did a series of drawings entitled I Carceri, The Prisons.

"Our assumptions always become a prison to our possibilities..."

Our assumptions and our belief systems, as we foppishly call them. Belief systems, indeed! The quote continues,

"...,and the mid-nineteenth century's assumptions about the role of women in society turned the world of intelligent, thoughtful women everywhere into a grim, dank dungeon from which they yearned most desperately to escape."

Bram Djikstra, Idols of Perversity, Oxford University Press, 1986, New York. 

How many people today are in prison? How many whose lives are lived in a grim, dank dungeon? How many desperately yearn to escape? We are imprisoned just as the soul of Jacob Marley was, doomed to drag the chains of our assumptions, belief systems, and world views to our graves. Contrary to the opinion of many people, we are not best served by striving to create coherent "belief systems", for any coherence we achieve is on the surface; we do not go deeply into the realms of the soul. Faith is better. Faith is tougher.

Film Review: Notes On A Scandal

Great acting, directing, camera; loved the Foley( as usual). Never bored. Either repelled, fascinated, or enchanted.

Story disturbs on many levels.
Judi Dench plays a Hannibal Lechter of the soul. Bride of Dracula, really. Cate Blanchett's character, Sheba, is portrayed as if David Lynch had been a guest doing a bit of cameo directing. The character is profound, yet presented as shallow. Judi Dench's Sappho from Hell character, who is the obsessive note writer, describes her as shallow, but a cursory survey of the elements in Sheba's life compells us to denounce this as a lie.
The entire film is based on our complicity with the Denchian Sappho and we are forced to focus on Sheba's sin with a 15 year-old boy and not see anything else. Sin and sensuality is the only thing that is not shallow. All is ennuie, all is accidie except the pleasant stroking of naked skin.

The story is in its essence a frantic romp of sensuality and sin. I got the frenetic feeling of an anti-burlesque A Nasty Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, everything occurring at a fevered pitch and a serio-comedy where Plautus bared his fangs. It was either Sylvester Stallone on Shakespearean English, or it was Two Gentlemen of Verona as interpreted by Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs).

You know, I just may go see it again. (Now that I forced myself to write about it, I feel as if I have a glimmer of understanding. Note this important point: Understanding comes from a variety of conscious behaviors. We need not merely view, we must write; we need not solely write, we need to act, to feel, to do all those things which renders us human and our understanding divine.)

--

Report From The Committee: Ground Hog Day

The new army of the new Iraq does not have enough experience nor tradition nor understanding of our agenda to effectively perform what is expected of it.
It is mainly Shi'a. It will not be effective against the Shi'a forces.

The army reflects the population at large; it is 80% Shi'a. There are Sunnis who do not wish to leave their home provinces where they feel they are needed to protect their Sunni people. Under fire, it will unfortunately break asunder and all will run to their tribes. They do not believe the fiction of the national state. We do. It is something we learn as children. They do not. They would need a number of years of indoctrination in order to view the world through our eyes.

Therefore, I propose we institute a Ground Hog Day scenario for the new Iraq. This should be firmly based on the film with Bill Murray. Not Surge; Ground Hog Day. Not Cut and Run; Ground Hog Day. You have gotten the idea. Every day that the forces of good fail, give it a try again on the morrow. Try different ways to assassinate Moqtada As-Sadr. Try to execute some people and get it right even in the eyes of the corrupt. I reckon that 10 years, real time, would be enough under the Ground Hog Day scenario to turn things around in Iraq. We cannot lose, for failure would mean the end of our illusions. And those are more dear than any lives. Give it a try in Iran. If the ground hog sees his shadow, there will be only six more weeks of nuclear winter.

--

My Readers Weigh In

I went into Jenny's Coffee Clutch yesterday. I was alone. It was not a day for a meeting of the Greybeards Club. Boaz and Boulos, two of the workers, found time to talk to me about the old Blogstead. Jenny herself, whose real name is Hanaan, or the sympathetic one, but she is not the antitype of her name, I assure you!-watched us with cats' eyes; to us, to the clock, us, clock,..tick...tock. I asked B & B whether they'd better be working. They laughed and said let the 'ajuuz stare all she wanted! (They did not say this loudly enough that the 'old crone' referred to actually could hear them, however.) They picked some paper up from the floor. There were three crumpled daily local newsy blurbs that infest this type of eatery, stating what shows on which A.M. radio station, some F.M., country music, news of the Whirled, and so on. Mixed in with them was a print-out of my Blog! This is not as nice as it sounds; remember that these papers were on the floor in an advanced state of crumplitude. "How nice." I said, meaning anything but. "We got a question...", Boulos said, and placed the print-out flat on the table and ironed it flat with his hands. He had some oily substance on a finger, and it smeared the ink, but it remained legible. "What is this...," he pointed with the offending digit. "What is this...peace dividend spring? " Silence for a beat or two. Boaz added, "We know 'hurrah' . Just what is this peace dividend spring? Spring of a car?" I sensed this would take a bit. There were 45 minutes until closing. I ordered two of the best BLTs imaginable: one fer me, one fer the missus. This quick transaction allowed us the time to speak, for Hanaan knows that if I were not talking about myself, I would merely have had a finjaan of her wretched tea. We traded talk-time for 2 BLTs, and this order would probably be her last today, a rain day, maybe an ice storm day; only mad dogs and Americans go out in the midday ice storm. Hanaan busied herself at the grill. She jerked her head around and growled. "Hulwaiyaat?" This was her way of letting me know that the sweets for desert she had from the Pain d'Or ( Khubz Dhahabi) delivered by the young Indian (South Asia) delivery service from Shatila Bakery in the early morning still graced her boudoir...I mean her dessert kiosk wherein sweets twirled in a decadent glow of crystal. There were more crumbs than sweets by this time of a Sunday.

Crumbs caught in a Kiosk, I though to myself. Like butterflies caught in a web? Possible headline for a post here, about what I do not know. I had to acquiesce. I told her to put them in a tiffin box. ( Way too many lingos here!) Now as the bacon sizzled and snapped and Hanaan pecked her fingers into the revolving kiosk of sweets, grabbing far too much baklava for me, I spoke to B & B. I explained the origin of the phrase "Peace Dividend". This was something that we were supposed to experience when the Cold War abruptly ended. Since arms budgets would be vastly reduced, we would have more money in our pockets. Of course, the dividend was only declared for a few years; then the company ceased issuing dividends. Boulos smiled. "We doin' O.K." Boaz smiled, too. "Yeah," I said, "...but we coulda been...rich! We coulda been...contenders!" They stared at me, goggle-eyed. I had gone too far. "O.K. We could have kept more of our money. And we could have used it for good purposes. You guys could have had medical insurance...like, now..." This seemed to strike a chord. Their smiles faded. They nodded their heads. They began to understand. So much for Peace Dividend. Now the word 'Spring'. It was the season of Spring and it was an echo of a short story by Ray Bradbury 'Rocket Spring'. The story was written in a time so long ago and so innocent that people could believe that the burning of the rocket's engines as they lifted off into space could melt the snow and moderate the cold, causing the flowers to bud early, causing the sap to rise- a time when technology had not yet put on the right-hand glove of Rotwang...(O.K. The glove of Dr. Strangelove, then.) It was a type for a long gone golden age of innocence, never to come again. At this point, their long faces indicated I had gone too far. They may have been about to cry. Or weep. Or ululate. Hanaan brought over two tiffin boxes and plopped them unceremoniuously on the table. She handed me a brown bag of sweets. Already a oily stain was beginning to stretch across the paper of the bag. "Cash or charge?" She said as she waddled back to the counter.

She spoke from habit.

I said "Charge."

She shook her head. "Not enough. Cash only." She glanced at the clock. Twenty more minutes and she would be rid of us.

I pulled my pockets inside out and explained in Arabic that I had gambled all my coins on sporting events. B & B giggled. Hanaan snorted and turned to clean the griddle. One more thing: the title for Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo was based upon an erroneous identification between me and the brilliance of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil.

photo: falseprophet.typepad.com

Peace Dividend Spring, Hurrah!!

Tomorrow is MLK Day, and I think I shall take it easy, especially if the ice storm breaks over us here near Port Desespoir. We need another Holiday to memorialize another great moral victory of the 20th century. We are possibly too close to the period of time to appreciate the importance of all that happened in the 20th century. Why do we need another National Holiday, indeed, a World Holiday? We remember the 20th century for its horrors and wars. The history of mankind is so filled with horror and war that the future may not find the 20th century's violence too far ahead of the field of competitors for most destructive era. The great things are the hard things, the good things, the good acts, acts of comity. The USA and the USSR worked together and achieved a reduction in nuclear arms. The USA and the USSR, after facing each other down in the Cold War, decided that nuclear war was too horrible a thing for rational men to contemplate. By the time of Reagan and Gorbachev, both sides were competing to achieve more reductions. There was a brief time when, after the fall of the USSR, it seemed that nuclear arms might actually be eliminated. It was one of the greatest moral achievements of all history. It was Peace Dividend Spring! Those days seem to be long gone as we take little steps into a new worldwide arms race. We need a Holiday to commemorate what the good men and women of the USA and the USSR and the UN in the 20th century achieved. We need to remember. We may not get another chance.

photo: BBC News

Proof Goof

I have been accused of being the "Proof Goof".

In the movie Proof, Anthony Hopkins plays a man whose form of dementia is obsessive writing. He fills notebook after notebook with writing. Of course, the writing is obscure and abstruse and demented. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his daughter.

Three imps drawn by Hieronymous Bosch play my nephews. Now you know the source of this unflattering parallelism. The name Proof Goof is a bit more elevated than " The old Foolosopher". I'm trying to remember if Larry was called that in The Iceman Cometh. How about Jimmy Tomorrow?

Many of my postings have an obscure and tenuous relationship to God, or even my daughter, for that matter, at best. Certainly, the Desert Isle is an event that takes place outside the temple. Mundane and Profane. However, my approach to the Holy is somewhat different. I do not go into the inner sanctum and don vestments. The Holy should be always present.
A long time ago I came to a parting of the ways with the Logical Positivist philosophers because they could not make sense of metaphysics and religion, so I tossed them out the cognitive window into the gutter of odd notions along with the night soil, so to speak.

I do not believe there can be any philosophy which does not seriously come to grips with all facets of our existence. You cannot ignore what you don't understand and call it nonsense. The Holy is something present all the time, not merely on the High Holy Days. Therefore, our experience of it must make sense like our other consciousness makes sense.
--

photo: www.moonstick.com
--

First Arab Minister In Israel

A momentous occasion: Israel's Labour party leader has appointed Raleb Majadele as science and technology minister - making him the first Arab Muslim in Israel's cabinet. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6254691.stm also http://prorev.com/2007/01/appointment-of-arab-minister-in-israel.html The spokesperson for Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu said that the appointment is "a lethal blow to Zionism", adding that Raleb Majadele's appointment as minister of science and technology damages "Israel's character as a Jewish state.". . In case this is not clear, this spokesperson means that the appointment is a bad thing.

There is a segment of Israel which believes that the Arab population within its borders should be marginalized, should be disenfranchised, should be 'removed'.

Meir Kahane was a vocal supporter of transporting Arabs to 'somewhere else'. There is a segment which views Zionism as a means to...shall we say, cleaning up Israel - and this segment is not the President of Iran alone, it is Israeli. If you have expressed a recent opinion on the state of Israel-Palestine recently and did not know this, then you are a dunce. We are all dunces for a time. St. Paul said that we see for a while through a darkling glass. Later...sometimes much later, we shall see clearly. picture at http://www.supportsanity.org/

Stopping By The Blooming Woods On A Winter's Eve

This is the time of year when we used to have a period of weather the older members of the clan called 'the January thaw'.

This was a period of relative warmth coming after the cold in December. It would have been cold right up to a frigid New Year's Day, then back to work and everyone in the doldrums so no one noticed anything-unless there would be a blizzard-but everyone just plodded along, not looking up...until one day when the sun was out and the tears did not freeze to your face when you gazed up into the blue sky.

The January Thaw had arrived.

It would be followed by more cold, but in the meantime, life was good.

This year I decided to take the Christmas tree down well before the Kaiser's birthday on January 27th.

All the decorations of light came down as we plunge back into the dismal grey clime of the area. Words cannot express how the light of Christmas fills my soul with gladness. Contrariwise, when cleaning up after Christmas, a somber mood prevails.

I do not play Christmas music while taking down the tree. That would be too sad. So I played (1) Cat Stevens (both as Cat Stevens and as Yusuf Islam), (2) The Cure, and (3) Leonard Cohen. By Mr. Cohen I was indeed as cold as a new razor's blade.

Everything came down. Everything went. Except for one wreath.

This wreath was a superfluity. A friend, who had purchased his own wreaths, had received two more wreaths from an open-handed neighbor who did not wish to be bothered by the excess. This friend, in a similar spirit of giving, saw my wife a week or so before Xmas and bestowed the two wreaths upon her...and she heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, thanks for taking them wreaths off my hands, my load is now light!

However, we are used to such largesse. For Christmas itself my mother presented us with some little gifts such as old candles, half of which had been previously lit. We have resigned ourselves to being the last link in the chain between certain consumers in our lives, their purchases, and the inevitable dust bin and land fill.

We are the trash facilitators.

Back to the wreaths. One of the wreaths was hung on a door. The other was laid upon a large potting urn which contained pansies from summer.

The flowers had not died. Pansies seem to be rather hardy. They had come through a couple cold snaps without any visible discomfort. And in the balmy days before Xmas, they were doing fine.

So the wreath was flung upon them, collaring the top of the urn, letting a few pansies show through the opening in the middle and peeking out from underneath. They were going to go soon anyway, right?

Wrong. They still flourish now in January. This morning, as I write this, I hear the rain falling.

The wreath still hugs the pansies, providing protection in case of cold, and the pansies still bloom.

There is nothing inconvenient about that truth.

picture: Gusta van Dobbenburgh

The New Plan For Iraq

I no longer have an opinion. However, I do not ever want to hear "Dienbienphu" in the next two years.

Claire Grace Schutt

Claire Grace Schutt passed away the morning of New Year's Day.

She was 95 years old.

She had not been well for a long time, suffering from leukemia and Alzheimer's disease. We were just sitting down New Year's Eve morning, that Sunday, getting ready to do the New York Times crossword, when we received the call. So we packed the funeral clothes that had not been unpacked from the previous alert a year earlier, and drove 240 miles through the rain to Toronto.

In 1911, Claire Grace was born into a large family in the Ottawa Valley, in Vinton, in the Pontiac, in Quebec, Canada-and island of Irish culture in the middle of a river of English and French, telling their own Irish stories and viewing the world with their own unique wit.
Claire was one such charming Irish story. She married Henry Schutt and raised a family with him in Manhasset, New York. For us, her story is infinite. It exists forever in our hearts.

We see her face, we hear her voice, we remember her cooking Sunday dinner, we smile at her cheerfulness, her singing, and how she made everything fun. And when we here have gone, the immediacy of these memories is gone, but the underlying patterns of her story still reverberate: piety and hard work, sweetness and love, family and friends, charity and a light spirit. These things echo on to Eternity; continuing in Heaven, continuing on Earth.
--

photo: Voillemont on cycloparcppj.org A road in Vinton, Quebec

Gerald Ford

God's Rest.
 I liked Gerry Ford. Still do.
His life showed an amiable axis that exists in the USA which most people are unaware of: Grand Rapids and the western shore of Michigan over to Ann Arbor. He had an interview. I shall tell you what I think of the interview. I think it was a shame that all the former Presidents - Ford, Carter, Clinton, Reagan, and George H.W.Bush- with all their years of experience were never once consulted in the run up to war. Not once. All their words will come out post mortem.

--

Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo 1

These postings will be exclusively devoted to the poetry of the George W. Bush Administration. What the Hey, IAEA! radionuclides spread around, pit bull guard dog we split th'atom and tamed it down, dead fish pig eye. alls i know, the law of Oil, iraqee attackee radionuclides in the soil! fallooja baquba situation fraught with danger ( i'm o.k.) kick menora, splinter manger! (aren't you? ) Richard Cheney

Frank Barone Cleans Up Congress

Things were quiet at Jenny's Coffee Clutch yesterday.
Too quiet.

So, it was time to stir things up. Frank McQuestion ( pronounced " mac-Ah-shin", emphasis on the upper-case syllable ) made a crack about John Murtha having seriously considered taking a bribe during the ABSCAM affair.
Now I do not have a penny invested in Mr. Murtha. I have been for much of my life a John Conyers man - meaning Mr. Conyers represented the district in which I lived. My daughter interned for Mr. Conyers one summer. Look cross-wise at Mr. Conyers and you will have a fight.
However, as I mentioned, things were too slow. Idle hands and minds may indeed be the devil's workshop, but even Old Nick himself had been laid off and was sleeping in the corner, dead to the world. So, to take up the slack, I rose to the bait. I said that I had seen the film of Mr. Murtha and I did not consider his response an indication that he was or would seriously consider taking a bribe. I said that it sounded to me as if Mr. Murtha were flabbergasted and did not know for the life of him what to say.

McQuestion disagreed and his lips moved, but I was preparing my riposte and heard nothing.
I said Mr. Murtha was obviously shocked. I said that it was as if a beautiful 20-something young lady had come up to Frank McQuestion and said how admirably masculine a figure he cut! Now every spirit at the table rose! We were about to do some serious joke making. Everyone had an opinion at last. So I said that Frank would probably stutter and mutter, then say something about the weather, then say good-bye (not "thank you" for he could not acknowledge the immensity of what he'd just heard) and trip over the curb.

He came back with a brilliant assumption that I could do better in a pig's eye. His face began to erubesce. Then I said "What would you have done? Drawn your enormous dignity about yourself, stand up on your high horse of Justice, put on your baseball cap of Rectitude, and denounce the briber?"
"Yes." he said. "I would so have done!"

Notice that we had reached a point where Master Rhetoric began to take over from Dame Conversation. We spoke in lofty terms and measured periods worthy of Milton and Cicero.
"No," I said. "You would have acted like a young lady in Donegal Town accosted by a drunken sailor. You would have closed tight your legs like a thunderclap, you would have drawn your skirts tight about ye..."

Language was becoming omnitemporal; the usual limits were disappearing.
"...and ye would ha' been off! Run off like a scared coney (rabbit), you big Nancy!"
And so on. You will notice that at this point I assumed a persona much like Frank Barone. This is my homage to Peter Boyle, whom I first saw in the theaters in "Joe", and that was almost 40 years ago. I know that Mr. Boyle passed on a month or so ago. I know I appear tardy in my homage.
However, I told you that news travels slowly around here; the speed of light itself is 55 mph.

--

Fear And Bennett in Las Vegas

I shall immediately disassociate myself from the low blow in the title: mentioning Bill Bennett and his gambling addiction. I subscribe to a title writing service and use what they give me. So, good old Bill Bennett has a blog. What could be in it? Let's have a look see. Proposed 2008 Platform 1. Global War Against Islamic Terror--call the war right and fight it right. This I like. I particularly like calling the Terror Islamic, thereby ensuring a certain amount of what we shall refer to as the Haditha Effect. In the heat of war, it will be hard to discern who is friend and who is foe. If the terror is Muslim, then all Muslims are fair game. This is what Mr. Bennett would call "leveling the playing field." 2. Publicly commit to regime change in Iran. I would like to see something further, like "using diplomatic means short of nuclear strikes", but what the heck. 3. Fund and deploy a fully operational missile defense system. I would like to expand this by adding a coda: using a technology which cannot be gotten around or short-circuited or evaded by the enemy (whose names are Legion!) I seem to remember that the Rooskies are already working on a way around a missile defense system. http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2006/12/merry-anti-christmas.html Bill is correct: fund a system that incorporates technology that prohibits end runs! What we need is (1) A Manhattan Project for missile defense, and (2) a missile defense Czar to run it. If I not mistaken, Mr. Bennett himself was once a Czar of some program! O.K. I'm bored. We're outta here.

Spring Back, Fall Forward

During the exhilirating Xmas festivities, we renewed acquaintances and had many warm conversations. I was at my brother's for a wonderful spread of food. I was deep into a conversation with Big Bob, the hunter, about global warming when someone nearby suddenly began to talk about hunting up North. He sprang to his feet and ran across the room with a smile as wide as a Christmas tree. Well, I don't like chit-chat, anyway. I write better than I chit. So I took another stab at the enormous Brie in pastry. It was indeed a delight, but the party had been going on for over an hour, and the huge Brie kugel began to resemble Chtulhu wounded and wizened, bleeding his life essence (such as it was) all over the place. I really ate like a swine. I gained exactly 1 pound over the holidays. Blast! My next foray into the oral arts had to do with John who had run in the Chicago Marathon. He had run with his whole bloody family: father, sister, brothers (2), and grandmother. My story was of the year when, as the autumnal equinox had been gone 30 days or so, I set my clock one Saturday night to correct for the passing of daylight savings time. My wife had once taught me a mnemonic ditty: Spring forward, Fall back to remember how to correct. Unfortunately, this year I recalled it as: Spring back, Fall forward. Since this seemed decidedly odd, I had to think about it: Spring back...as if in fear. Suppose a snake were to crawl into the room; I should spring back with alacrity, knocking over the lamp and falling prone upon the bed, where I lay exposed to the venomous fangs... Enough of that. The Intro makes good sense. Now, Fall forward...as in exhausted. I was standing at attention in ranks after a 15 mile run with full backpack under the blazing sun. No, it was with full KIT...and we were clothed in rags under a blazing sun. A mean-spirited Colonel Saito sat on his verandah in the shade as Lieutenant Miura kept watch. Those who were in a weakened condition fell forward, their eyes turning upwards in... Enough of that, too. O.K. It makes good sense. I wondered where everyone was that morning. I usually ran at 5:00 A.M. Thus, it was 4:00 A.M. and the streets were pretty deserted. Now that you've read the story, you will have the same problem.

George W. Bush 2007: A Life in Art

"I am the great Isis..." Odilon Redon 

 

I sense a change coming in the work of the artist, George Bush. After a lifetime spent in the shadow of his father, during which his contemporaries demeaned him with the nickname "Little Boots" or "Caligula", we sense that he is finally coming into his own. The years 2002 through 2006 saw the influence of Goya. Indeed, we term this period "El Sueno de la Razon" which indeed produced many masterpieces, as well as the seemingly obligatory Goyaesque "monstruos".

However, as Harry Truman once said, "If you can't stand the nightmares, get outta the bedroom!" In 2007 we shall see the inception of a period of works inspired by Odilon Redon. This may be the "Great Isis" period, influenced also by a series of poems of Richard Cheney's on Lyndie Englund entitled "Abu Ghraib Wa Umm Gitmo" ( Father Ghraib and Mother Gitmo).

The debt that Bush owes to the Symbolists becomes manifest. The Imagery of Death, especially Death untimely-that of innocents-plays a central role. It is a link which ties together Bush and Redon, as well as Flaubert and Huysmans. Redon's "Grand Isis" hints at disturbance and confusion. Nothing is clear, whether Isis and Harpocrates are stepping into a flower of evil or a portal to divinity. It brings to mind Cleopatra and Caesarion, similarly poised on the brink; ultimately they fell into untimely death. Yet, it is this very lack of clarity which defines and delimits the works of Bush.
This confusion takes us from the mundane and opens a new world of perception, a higher world, as evidenced in the accompanying illustration of "Eye Balloon", a rising to new heights and new glories.

"Eye Balloon" Odilon Redon

--

Firstest with the Mostest

QUICK DECISION: Stung by charges of being tightfisted and slow to respond, Bush makes tenfold increase in pledged amount. headline from SFGate.com

What is the event behind the headline?
It was the Tsunami which hit Banda Aceh and elsewhere in Asia. The date for the article is January 1, 2005, which is 8 months before Katrina, so back off.

What brought this up is not the usual sophomoric Bush-Bashing that I engage in, but rather a conversation I had with a lady who was under the impression that the USA is always kind and loving to all and sundry in the world, and when disaster happens, we respond first and foremost, and so on and so on. This is the usual litany we learned as children. The facts are: There are many good people in the USA. There are many bad people in the USA. Sometimes the good people get their way, sometimes not.

--

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

--

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!

--

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.
--

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.

--

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!  

-------------------------------------
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.  

----------------------------
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.
--