A Review of All Things Shining or "Why is there air?"

'Every Time I go to town

Someone kicks my dog around...'

In their book, All Things Shining (ATS), by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, the authors portray the post modern era as a period where metaphysics engenders an existential nihilism.  The book (ATS) is their effort to provide a window or a small crack through which we might escape the nihilistic metaphysics that dominates our age.  For literature of this post modern phenomena they use David Foster Wallace's, Infinite Jest.  When I first read, Infinite Jest, I thought it was about a guy like Woody Allen i.e., full of angst about the world and almost totally unable to make a decision and I must admit I have known people like that.  In the true Nietschean view of nihilism, there is no one reason to prefer one answer to any other which frees us to live any life we choose.  The problem, as ATS presents it, is that we no longer even want to choose.  They think everyone is going around searching for the meaning of life, like Captain Kirk and Mr Spock on some cosmic apocryphal quest.  The freedom to choose hinders our relationship with the sacred.  Did you get all that? Me neither.  I tend to embrace the logic of Thomas Farrell in his review of ATS on Amazon, "Dreyfus and Kelly are secular humanists writing for secular humanists."

Now, does this mean the book is not a worthwhile read?  Of course not.  ATS simply ignores the fact that a rather large portion of the world ALREADY has the sacred in their lives.  However, its is their contention that many of us have difficulty getting in touch with what they refer to as 'the sacred.'  The sacred being able to live one's 'life guided by something experienced as beyond oneself.'  They credit the explosion of many different religions as a result of religious believers having different answers to the existential questions about how to live our lives.  Having questions is not a bad thing, they contend, as long as you have the resources to answer them.

Their narrative uses literature, interpreted expertly, as the mechanism to open the door to the sacred.  Sounds like the Dali Lama lighting your way to enlightenment, huh?  Or maybe Jesus?  Buddha?  Mohammed?  Most philosophers I have known would not know sic 'em from come here (like most English Professors), however, Dreyfus and Kelly express a love of literature and the ability to draw from it powerful examples of an approach to life that allows us to live more fully by recognizing the sacred in our lives.

"The purpose of life is to be the eyes and ears

and conscience of Creator of the Universe,

you fool."

Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

The book does not attempt to answer what our purpose is, but it provides another avenue for getting in touch with the sacred, for those who do not have one.  On a scale of 1 to 5, the book is a 5 on content and logic and a 3 on relevancy.  Overall, 4 stars is my gift to Dreyfus and Kelly.

Until next time,
I remain,
Just another Semi-secular humanistic Zororastafarian conscious that he is just fartin' around, grasshopper....

MATTERHORN: A Review

I am washed in the blood of my men;
Their lifeless bodies I have lifted from the ground
And carried in my arms...
I am dead with them.
I am washed with their lives.
- Josh Hoskins, KIA Republic of Vietnam 1968 (Long Grey Line by Rick Atkinson)

Karl Marlantes' 2010 best seller, Matterhorn, is one of the better books to have been written about the nightmare, that those of us who fought there, knew as Vietnam. It is not in the same league as Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home or his Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Things They Carried. Marlantes' could have benefitted from reading the chapter in The Things They They Carried entitled "How to Tell a True War Story". A 'true war story' is one that moves you, "if truly told, makes the stomach believe." Matterhorn did not make me 'feel' it. Oh, it was realistic and Marlantes was able to conjure up many of the sounds, sights and smells of Vietnam and the moments of sheer terror but it just did not move me. No amount of 'realism' will ever be able to render a 'true' picture of what Vietnam was like for the American soldier, much less the Vietnamese soldier. While Marlantes' writing may have been therapeutic for him, it only serves the general public as another example of the axiom, 'war is hell.' But war is much more than hell. Books that glorify war, while decrying it, by surreptitiously glorifying the soldier, only serve to prolong the American love affair with war.

Only the Dead have seen an end to War.
- George Santayana

There have been more realistic war novels written: Harry Brown's A Walk in the Sun, James Jones' TheThin Red Line, and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. All of which make the stomach believe but none of which glorify war. And there are a host of novels that deal with surreal aspects of war including: Joseph Heller's Catch 22, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter Five, where a conscientious objector is the protagonist, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, where the protagonist's erection can predict a missile launch. Admittedly, when a country loses a war they tend to be more self-reflective than when they win a war, but like someone once said, "Nobody wins a war." And trust me, there is a plethora of books out there explicating the Vietnam War, looking for Jimmy Buffett's 'lost shaker of salt.' But like Tim O'Brien says:

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, "Is it true?" and if the answer matters, you've got your answer. For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen - and maybe it did, anything's possible even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it's a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, "The fuck you dothat for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man," and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead. That's a true story that never happened."
-The Things They Carried

Where Matterhorn does excel is in Marlantes' descriptions of men in war and the relationships they develop in combat. Marlantes is also able to depict what it was like being a black Marine in 1968 in Vietnam and makes clear the turmoil that existed between black and white Marines and the life-long friendships that overcame this distrust and bigotry that existed at the time. One such relationship was between a white Marine from Idaho, Williams, and a black Marine from the Mississippi delta, Cortell. Williams is troubled by Cortell 'hangin' out' with other black Marines and wants to know why. It is one of he more poignant moments in Matterhorn as the two Marines carry on a conversation about why black people want to 'be congregatin.' The conversation hinges on the story of the Ugly Duckling.

"Well, let me tell you what I think that story be about. It be about this little duck that can't grow up. Can't grow up to be a big duck 'cause he ain't a duck. But he don't know what he's 'sposed to grow up to." Cortell looked carefully to be sure he wasn't losing Williams. "I mean, you don't know what you supposed to grow up to, that make it pretty hard to grow up." He waited a moment. "So, we ain't congregating, we just hangin' out with people best we can to figure out where to is. You with me here? To ain't with the white folk 'cause we be black folk and tryin' to find to hangin' out with you chucks just a dead end for us. When I hang out with you chucks, I'm a black man first and who I really am come next. When I hang out with the splibs, I'm me first and there ain't no black man at all. It got nothin' to do with white folk. It's just the way it is. Ain't no voodoo conspiracy. We just hangin' out and movin' on best we can."
William who had been holding his breath, let it out. "Yeah. There it is."
"There it is," repeated Cortell.
- Matterhorn, p. 115

But trust me on this one, there was definitely tension between white and black Marines in Vietnam, and, as Rick Atkinson so aptly details in the The Long Grey Line, it spilled over at many different military posts. It was one of the primary reasons for the move to an all-volunteer military, which is a whole other blog! But contrary to Marlantes' proposition that it was just black Marines involved in fraggings (attempts to blow up superior officers by using fragmentation grenades) and it was just black Marines smuggling weapons back to 'the World,' there were a greater number of white Marines involved. I would imagine there are any number of Kalashnikovs (AK-47s) hidden in white supremacist enclaves all over the Northwest Washington, if Mr. Marlantes cared to check with the FBI office in Seattle. My own squadron, on its return to the United States in 1970, had various and sundry weapons confiscated by Customs officials and even the FBI was called in to investigate. But things haven't really changed much, show a white person with a gun strapped to his hip at a Presidential event and it doesn't conjure much fear, because, hey, that's his right! But show a black man with a beret on his head and the media is up in arms, I mean, hey, it's a Black Panther trying to scare the Bejeezus out of you at a polling place! I ask you, which is more dangerous, Beret or 3.57 Magnum? But it does make it easier to understand why Karl portrayed the black Marines primarily as trouble-makers.

Worst of all is Marlantes portrayal of helicopter support, a topic he should have researched a little better. As a former helicopter crew chief, I can tell you, we flew in ALL conditions. Our pilots were Naval trained and knew how to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). We flew in monsoons, at night, with one engine, in the mountains, just to extract some sad bastard that had overdosed on barbituates. In Matterhorn, Marlantes' has his Marines humping up a mountain for eight days without food or water and blames it on being unable to be resupplied. I know the book is a fictional work, or as the New York Times likes to call it, "creative nonfiction," but it does contain a certain amount of outrageous bullshit. Marines not taking care of Marines qualifies as outrageous bullshit. And if Mr. Marlantes has 10 Air Medals (over 200 missions), he should know his portrayal of Marine Helicopters is absurd. I cannot count the times Marines have flown into 'hot' zones and taken fire after being assured that they were secure zones. We held the grunts, the ground Marines, in the highest esteem. They were out there everyday under the worst conditions and if there was anything we could do for them, we did it. But even though the book contains what I consider to be 'falsehoods', it is a realistic portrayal of the war in Vietnam and I would recommend, with reservations, Matterhorn. Semper Fi, Karl.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
-John F. Kennedy

Until Next Time,
I Remain,
Just another Zororastafarian crew-chief looking for a place to hang his sidearm 'fore Marshall Dillon puts a hurtin' on me...

Aqueduct Reminiscence

The Roman Aqueduct in Segovia Spain

with a view toward the

Meson de Candido

What a busy month! Most of the time I've been busier than the proverbial 'one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.' But, the good news is that it's beginning to feel normal, whatever that might be. What got to me thinking about Spain was a workshop of the Planning Commission I recently attended in Eureka Springs. It was a a rather surreal experience by any stretch. I will not divulge who invited me to the meeting or for what purpose because he threatened to rezone the property across the street from us to allow for the construction of Sarah Palin's new restaurant, the You Betcha Cafe. Only a friend, right? Well, he kind of piqued my interest at a meeting of the Krewe of Blarney in which we are both involved. He told me that it was all kinds of fun telling the community of Eureka that you were planning to cut down some old-growth forests in order to put up a metal building housing antiques. He told me that meetings like that were "uproariously funny because they brought out all the environmental nutjobs in town that liked to hug trees and feed the animals." I thought, 'Doesn't he have that backwards?'

Well, like the curious environmental nutjob I am, I moseyed on down to the courthouse and sat in on the workshop. It was a real treat, these fellows talked about a chicken ordinance for the City of Eureka Springs for a little over an hour. It was all I could do to stay awake as the Krewe of Planning and Zoning droned on about the size of the coop and exactly how many feet the coop should be set back from a neighbor's property line and exactly what constitutes a chicken and can you walk your chicken in a parade and how do you choke your chicken. Well, this was all a little to complicated for me, it takes a more organized mind to fathom the depths of chickeness than I possess. Or, as the old Zen Chicken Master once asked, "if a chicken clucks in the henhouse and your not there, does it still make a sound?"

Well, I'm sure your asking, just what the heck does this have to do with the Aqueduct in Segovia? Well, it seems as though there a several different camps of philosophy on how Eureka Springs should maintain its 'Eurekyness.' There are those who wish to preserve Eureka as it was, those that think Eureka will lose its Chi if things change, those that want the town to grow and keep its quaintness, those that think 'quaint' stifles growth, those that want motorcycles to come to town, those that want them to go somewhere else, just a lot of factions. Sitting in the Meson de Candido, run by the same family since before Columbus set sail for America, and looking out on an aqueduct that was built 1500 years ago, you get this awesome sense of history. When I listen to people in Eureka talk about preserving homes and buildings because they are part of Eureka's history, I start to realize that our country has no real concept of history and until we do, we should not be allowed to use the word 'History' in a conversation. I can just imagine Juan on the Planning and Zoning Board in Segovia saying to the developer, Junius Brutus, "I don't know Junius, if you put that damned aqueduct through the center of town you are going to ruin the damn plaza and think of the effect it will have on Pedro the water-bearer, you are going to put him out of business."

It seems to me like it's not necessary to preserve some things, I mean if you build something to last 1500 years, you might have to remodel it once or twice, but preserve? I don't know, seems like it will preserve itself, barring some kind of natural disaster. But I think it wise to remember the lessons of Ozymandias, also. What folks need to figure out first is what is worth preserving. I mean I like a good pickle every now then, but there are folks that could care less about ever preserving a cucumber. All the different organizations and commissions in Eureka have the best of intentions, they just need to remember that the road to Hell is paved with Chicken Lips.

Until Nest Time,

I Remain,

Just Another Zoroastrian Chicken Plucker trying to figure out how to get across the road when I'm already there....

Insouciant Crucifixion

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

- Thomas Paine

Vice President Cheney proved he was the consumate 'summer soldier' during the Viet Nam era, when he avoided the draft with several deferments. I can't really blame him about that too much, many of my friends did everything they could to prevent being drafted during that war. I even tried it myself up until the time I could no longer avoid service. My deferments came from being in school, not unlike the former Vice President. However his behavior as Vice President and his behavior since leaving office perplexes me. My granddaddy always told me that it was a sin to question another man's patriotism and for the life of me I can not figure out why anyone else would want to do that, especially a former Vice President of the United States who did everything possible to avoid service in the military. When did he earn the right to tell Americans what being a patriot entails? When he gave the name of a CIA operative to the press? When he let his chief of staff, Scooter libby, take the fall for him? When he continued to lie about WMD even after GWB said publicly, we could not find any? When he continued to lie about the Al-queda/Saddam Hussein connection? When he criticized the 'patriotism' of a Viet Vet who not only was wounded in combat three times but was awarded medals for gallantry in combat? When he lied about how much 'actionable intelligence' we gleaned from torture? When he continues to politicize fear? Dennis Kucinich was wrong, Dick Cheney should not have been impeached. However, like many people in this country, I think he should be held accountable for his words and his actions. I do not think History will remember Mr Cheney fondly or be as forgiving of his abuses of power as the current administration.

From time to time I forget about the power of forgiveness. Of course, before you can be forgiven, reason dictates that you must first ask for forgiveness and before you ask for it, you have to believe that you have done something wrong. At the present time, I can not imagine Dick(less) Cheney ever asking for forgiveness for anything he has ever said or done. I asked a former pastor, Reverend Cathy, if she thought you could forgive someone when they did not ask for forgiveness. Cathy said I could wait quite awhile before some folks would apologize or ask for forgiveness, so you might as well forgive them, "...ultimately, it's the greatest gift you can give yourself!" So then, I'm trying to figure out how it's 'the greatest gift', when I see this trailer on the Tube (not to be confused with the underground rail system in Paris) for Invictus, a new movie about the reconciliation efforts of the Mandela government in South Africa. "Aha!", I sez, "If you get too deep, you can not see what's on the surface."

Forgiveness should not be that complicated, it's the individuals involved that make it complicated. We are all at different places on life's journey and we all have differing views about forgiving. I remember as a young Marine in Viet Nam our motto was 'Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.' Sounds rather foolish to me now, I must admit. But many hold that same philosophy today, let God do the forgiving, it's not my place. I also hear people say, "I'll forgive somebody but I won't forget what they did." Is that really forgiveness? Does forgiveness require any 'buts' or 'if onlys'? Does forgiveness mean that you forget about justice or punishment for criminal acts, no. It doesn't really matter what religion you are or if you have none, forgiveness is powerful because it relives you of your burden and resentment.

Not forgiving someone is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.

- OPRAH (I think)

So, by now, I suppose that you might have been able to surmise that I have been harboring some really ill feelings towards the former Vice President. Feelings that were really making me bitter and filling me with hate. But after much soul searching, I have decided to let them go, to forgive. Do I expect an act of contrition on his part? No. Do I expect him to continue to live in fear and to spread his venomous attacks on the Obama Administration? Yes. Will anything Dick Cheney says ever affect me negatively again? Hopefully and prayerfully, No.

Until Next Time,

I Remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Sudoku Warrior that finally knows Dick about Forgiveness...

FALSELY Shouting "Fire"

Land Shark

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks',meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

I saw my friend Daniel B., who manages the Twilight Terrace, out at Harold's Storage the other day and he wanted to know why I had not written anything on my blog in awhile. I told him I had been in a true dark funk. Black cloud syndrome. And I just didn't want to write because I was so pissed about the whole health care issue. Dan said why not write about it? Duh? Most of the time I just do not want to expose my dark side. My Jungian Shadow. "All the more reason to write about it," Daniel replied, "Deal with IT or IT will deal with you!" So, this is my Shadow creating. This blog is a rant. A scream. An dark indulgence I do not usually allow myself to have since the primary function of my writing was originally intended to talk only about Eureka Springs and the Magic that engulfs this area. So what does the old SNL vid have to do with my rant? It reminds me of how health care companies are behaving regarding Health Care Reform. They will say anything to prevent reform of the status quo. You can not really blame them, it will certainly hurt their profit margins, even though Congress has bent over backwards to help them, including the administration. It's almost like Congress has to apologize for meddling with, dare I say it, 'Capitalism'. God knows there is no greater sin in this country than politicians messin' with 'bidness'. My question is 'How in the hell did we get here?'

It seems totally insane to me that we have to have health insurers to begin with, I mean why? There was a time in this country when you got sick, you went to the doctor and you either got well or died. So, where did the health insurer come from and how did we allow them to take over our health? There is a lot of history about it out there and reading it you can see how health insurers got their foot in the door. But the BIG LIE is that we need health insurers. There are some in congress that realize that health insurance companies do not provide any added value to our health status, of course these are 'communists' according to the health insurers and their cohorts in congress. These dances of 'hysteron proteron' by both sides of the aisle only serve as a political smokescreen that conceals a greater problem in our country and in no way succeed in answering the question, how the hell did we get here?

Some say it's the lobbyists, you know the old maxim at work in the nation's capitol, 'money talks and bullshit walks'. But would the money talk if those elected to represent the people actually did so. My daughter, the political science major, says there is money available for all forms of belief. So is it really about the money? I'm prone to think it is about the power you can accumulate through the acquisition of wealth, the power to maintain your seat in Congress and the power to effect the business of the the country. We have become what the founders of this country warned us against, Corporate Owned Government aided and abetted by our banking system. How did we get here?

It seems to me that the road we traveled to get to this point in our history has been paved with lies and falsehoods. Politicians and lying go together like Romeo and Juliet, Tom and Jerry, salt and pepper, light and dark (did I mention I was in a dark mood?), Batman and Robin, Yin and Yang, ad infinitum. I know, I know...my naivete is exceeded only by my gullibility. But is it my imagination or has a lie become an acceptable form of opinion? How does a nondescript section of the Health Care Bill dealing with Doctor/Patient end-of-life-counseling become 'Death Panels'? Why is it acceptable to call the President of the US a terrorist, a Nazi, a Communist? When does an 'opinion' violate the First Amendment? Is it only when it causes harm? Are our courts so inept that 'defamation', 'slander', and 'libel' lawsuits can no longer be won, because it's just someone's opinion? What if their opinion makes me feel like whoopin' their ass, is that OK? How did we, as a people, get to a point where we are so divided? Where it's acceptable for you speak derogatorily about anyone or anyone's ideas and hey, you are protected by the First Amendment?

Of course, I believe there are solutions to all the problems that confront our country, I am the eternal optimist. I'm also pretty much of a realist. And I know that many of these problems will not be solved in my lifetime. I am just concerned that it is now permissible to FALSELY shout fire in a crowded theater.

Until Next Time,

I Remain...

Just another Diogenistic Zoroastrian looking for a little light on a cloudy day...

Geezeracity Manifestations

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made.

Very few people die past that age.

- George Burns

Why is it our children are constantly complaining that we are 'too old' to understand, then with the next breath telling us to grow up? More than likely they are going through that phase where nothing we do is right! Of course, I never complained as a young adult (wink, wink, nod, nod) so it is difficult for me to understand where they are coming from. But for a moment let's focus on people who are growing older, say past sixty at least. (Of course, this won't make much sense to a 15 year-old who thinks a 25 year-old is over-the-hill or a 25 year-old who thinks 35 is ancient!) What is it that gives folks like those in the video such a passion for life at age ninety, while we all know people that act like they may not make through tomorrow and they are only fifty? Is it nature or nurture or some combination of the two? There are older folks I love to be around, because of their positive outlook on life and the zeal they have for adventure. My wife belonged to book club where the she was the youngest member, the rest of the group was in their 70's and 80's. This group of women enjoyed every minute of every day and when they got together they knew how to party. After a book review they loved to share a glass of wine or two or three and could easily go through two cases of Chardonnay. They broke all the familiar stereotypes of old people.

Stereotype 1 - Od people smell badly. Not that I have noticed. Rest Homes smell badly, basketball games smell badly, motorcyclists, babies, homeless people, congressmen, garbage dumps (P.C: Landfills), anyone in an occupation that requires strenuous outdoor physical activity, and young people that think it is healthy to bathe only once a week smell badly. To generalize that all old people smell badly is grossly inaccurate. O-o-o-o-oh, what is that smell? Do you have moth balls in your pocket?

Stereotype 2 - Old people drive slowly. This is a generalization that has more evidential support, however it does not approximate any truth. The ladies in my wife's bookclub (bookclub ladies) all felt like they were in training for NASCAR and that it was a sin to be the first in line at a stoplight. Young people should be aware that they must yield anytime they see someone with grey in their hair driving down the middle of the road at an excessive speed. On the other hand those olde farts weaving down the road and being passed by snails should be reported immediately to the old people police, they are giving the rest of us a bad name.

Stereotype 3 - Old people are always complaining about their physical ailments. True, some old people gritch (a hybrid of gripe and bitch) a lot. But what makes you think hypochondria and complaining are the domains of the elderly? You might even be thinking at this juncture that I did a little gritching of my own in my last blog. Not true, i was just 'splainin' croquet. My daughter has a friend that ALWAYS has the symptoms of whatever designer ailments happen to be in vogue at the time. Trust me on this one, gritching is not the sole province of old people, but I will concede that if you gritched a lot about your physical ailments (or anything else for that matter) when you were young, you will probably be gritching as you grow older. Truth is none of us want to hear it but all of us want to let others know what is bothering us, the problem is some people make a religion out it. Am I gritching too much here?

Stereotype 4 - Old people can't see, hear or remember a damn thing. Actually, this stereotype could have been combined with Stereotype 3, because there are old people who do complain about these things, only they just can't remember any of it. Sure there is some eyeball distortion as you grow older, and you may need reading glasses or surgery to correct visual problems (unless you are still driving), and yes their is definite loss of hearing for some folks and a highly developed sense of tuning out the noise that causes so much distortion in the lives of others. My wife says I'm a tuner inner/outer, but it doesn't bother me all that much because one of my daughters is a fine tuner, also. A humorous note here, why do young people think old people don't like loud music, but then accuse us of being deaf? Truth is, the music that is being played so loudly at every stop light I come to just SUCKS! And Alzheimer's and senility are certainly not conditions that we would wish on anyone, no matter what their ages. As a former high school teacher and coach, I can tell you it was very distressing for me to see so many young people with symptoms that could only be described as the early onset of Alzheimer's. But a friend of mine told me that there is a positive side of Alzheimer's, you get to sleep with a new woman every night!

Stereotype 5 - Old people are wise. Some are, like the folks in the vid, most are just marking time until they die and I wouldn't give two cents for anything they might have to offer. When I was younger, there were old people that I knew that could bore the bark right off a Dogwood tree, and others that I could listen to for hours on end. The wise ones involved you in their tales and remarkably, never repeated themselves. But the stories they told remain with you forever. Guess which one I chose to spend time with? Spend time with?

The problem with stereotypes or forming a hardened view about old people is usually that if you think old people behave a certain way, then the odds are that you will act that way when you are older. If you have a negative view of growing older, then you will have a negative experience as you age. However, if you have a positive view of growing older, your personal experience should be much more positive as you age. The psychology of how we view the world has been exploited successfully by advertising for generations. Even today, I can't tell you how many of my friends think they have to take medication to stop going to the toilet so much! Flomax, was originally developed to lower hypertension, NOT to reduce the number of times you have to go to the toilet. Now they even have a Flomax for women! Hell, if enough people said they had a particular symptom, there would be a pharmaceutical company selling a quick over-the-counter fix for it within the week. I'm not saying 'having to go often' is not a problem for some people, I'm saying that it became a much larger problem when the drug companies started advertising that it was a problem! Same with stereotypes. As long as older people are portrayed as 'smelly', forgetful, hard of hearing, nearly blind, idiots that repeat themselves and need drugs for erections and peeing too much, what will the future be like for younger people who never see anything different? Where are the Golden Girls now that we need them?

Until Next Time,

I Remain,

Just another Old Zoroastrian Cowboy looking for his glasses and his hearing aide so he can mount old whatshisname, and hunt down those young heathens playing their music so damn loud...

Numinous Croquet Lunacy

Woke up, fell out of bed,

Dragged a comb across my head

Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.

- The Beatles (A Day in the Life)

Early on Friday morning, before Labor Day, we were up at the crack of dawn, running around trying to make sure that we were packed and ready to go to Tulsa for a Labor Day Croquet Tournament. Then we remembered we weren't leaving until One o'clock! My first indicator that I had done something to annoy the Croquet Gods. So, after we slowed our pace considerably, I decided to make a quick trip to the market, and found that during the night two of the tires on our car had been punctured by an intolerably inconsiderate vandal. Obviously, the Vandal had received his/her inspiration from the Croquet Gods. The second indicator that the Croquet Gods were not only annoyed but downright pissed off. Luckily, we had our daughter's car, the Baborus (-a, -um) Tintinnabulus (-a, -um), or the Babe for our transportation purposes. I don't know if she calls it the Babe because it is so deceptively alluring (like the tinkling of a small bell) or because it smells like it was used to transport pigs to front during the Crimean War. So, the Dans (there were two of them) show up and we get their gear situated and we're off. Almost. The car starts grasping for air, then goes into electric mode. We are out of gas. Thank God for Hybrids. This was the third indicator that things were just not going my way. The Dans, bless their black hearts, spent about two hours trying to help me get over it. They provided me with a dozen tried and true aphorisms. "That which does not destroy us makes us more inebriated". "When life hands you lemons, make yourself a vodka martini with a lemon twist." Ad infinitum.

One of the Dans stalks his shot, thinking,

"What the f...!"

We arrived around four, checked into the hotel and then took off for the croquet courts at La Fortune Park. After a practicing for a bit I met my partner for doubles on Saturday morning. A college student from Oklahoma Wesleyan. He might possibly have been conceived in a blender or one of those Dyson vacuum cleaners. Let's just say he was a wee bit hyper and resembled the much-maligned Roadrunner on the crouquet greens. It struck me that this was some type of Cosmic justice being meted out by the Croquet Gods, pairing the old slow Elmer Fudd kind of guy with gimpy knees and the young athletic Tasmanian Devil. He slowed down after a bit when he noticed he was talking to air, because I couldn't keep up with him. But, I have to admit, he garnered my respect for the game and the gracious people who are involved in it when he told me to either keep up or have my brains smashed in with a New Zealand built crouquet mallet. Being older and quicker of wit I says, "What brains?" "Don't worry," he says. "I'll just keep smashing 'til I find one."

One of the Dans lines up his croquet shot, thinking,

"How can I best destroy this S.O.B."

Friday evening we enjoyed a wonderful Last Supper at the Stonehorse Restaurant in Tulsa. For me, it was the highlight of the trip. Do you like that foreshadowing of how I played in the tournament? It started off well on Saturday morning, my partner and I won our first match and then proceeded to lose our next two. One to a pair of Octogenarians and the other to a pair of college students. The gods have no mercy. And neither does croquet. It doesn't matter how well you know the strategy or how smart you are, the bottom line is you have to first make your shots. Without the skills to put your ball through a wicket that is only a fourth of an inch wider than the ball, or croquet a ball that is only three feet away from your ball, you are pretty much up the creek. After being spanked by the two 80 something females and put to bed crying, I had a decision to make. Would I let the croquet gods defeat me, would I learn from the tournament and try to improve my skills, or would I hide behind a tree and smash the old ladies over the head when they walked by. I decided to smash them over the head but I missed...then I had to endure a lecture from them on how to properly line up a head with a croquet mallet. Humiliating, I tells ya. But like my friend Arnie Palmer used to say, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as you're in there swingin'."

It doesn't take long for the experience of the numinous

to unhinge the mind.

Umberto Eco

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Croquet Player seeking a didactic pretext for being unable to place his balls in the right postion....

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Here I hang from a 46-D

While the Big G just sits there

Punching holes in Cheerios.

Hi Mom! Say hi to Pete and all the guys!

- Anonymous Viet Nam Poet

Dante Alighieri's famous quote from his Divina Commedia hung in large red letters over the arrival gate at Hue-Phu Bai air base in 1968. To many of the young men and women who fought in Viet Nam, the concept of Hell took on new meaning during their tours of duty. You not only came face-to-face with all your fears, you had to do it in a nightmarish environment totally foreign to Americans. The question that often arises among a group of vets is, "Was it Heaven or was it Hell?" Hell if I know. It was more like an interlude in the theater of the absurd. Since only about 25% of all Americans believe in the concept of hell, while 90% believe in heaven, maybe we should pause and kick around the idea that 'the Kingdom of Heaven is in us and around us' (from the Book of Thomas). In his book,The Things they Carried, Tim O'Brien discusses what a 'true' war story looks like, what it sounds like, how it might make you feel, and the pictures it might form in your mind. If you look carefully at how Tim talks about a true war story, they look ever so similar to the Parables of Jesus or to the tales of Buddha. Many of these early stories told by Jesus and Buddha bordered on the surreal. They have no real moral for the reader and no explanation that is the same or even satisfactory to each reader or listener. It's almost as if each person walks away from the story understanding it differently than anyone else. And that's why we love them. They are just stories. Stories that make us laugh. Stories that make us cry. Stories that challenge us to confront our own fears, biases, prejudices, and views of the world, based on the experiences we bring to them. Before I departed for Viet Nam, my granddaddy provided me with the briefest, (therefore best) and most absurd advice I was to receive. "Son, when you get to Viet Nam make sure you keep some matches wrapped in plastic on you at all times. You never know when you are going to need a light."

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast that a woman

took and mixed in with three measures of flour until

All of it was leavened.

- Matthew 13:33

The following is a true war story. If you don't like it, hang around until I tell it again...I am sure it will improve! The Kingdom of Heaven is like this helicopter crew flying out to a firebase overlooking the valley where Khe Sanh was located. On their way there the pilot called back to the crewchief, Danny Dulude, to tell him they were about to fly through a rainbow. Danny stood in the passageway of the CH-46 D helicopter, between the pilot and co-pilot and witnessed a sight he had never before beheld. Dead ahead was a perfectly circular rainbow, in the valley, between the mountains they were flying through. It was an awesome sight. There was no beginning and no end. For a moment Danny could not recall the last time he had seen any colors quite so bright and quite so beautiful. Danny stepped back into the cargo area of the aircraft and told his gunner to go into the cockpit and take a look. As the helicopter made its descent into the firebase, all hell broke loose. Time froze. While the helicopter crew was admiring Nature's phenomena, the bad guys were training their guns on the helicopter. One of the 30 caliber rounds that came through the fuselage had ripped through Danny's calf. Danny lay there, in the haze of sudden shock, with calf muscles and tendons hanging out of his flight suit. His gunner drew a knife and started toward Danny. Danny screamed at him, "No man, don't cut it off, it's still attached!" The gunner told him to relax, the knife was for cutting his flight suit pant leg off, so he could get a tourniquet on the wound. Danny passed out thinking about the time he caught his foot in his tricycle when he was just a little boy.

True story. Of course, Danny lived and still has all his appendages, even though some of them are a little scarred. He lives in Upstate New York now with his wife and has three sons and believe it or not, he collects knives. When asked about Viet Nam Danny will tell you, "It don't mean nothin'." What meant something to me was Danny's unbelievable enthusiasm for life. It was remarkable to me how he could find meaning and joy in the most mundane aspects of life. Danny not only saved a lot of Marines, he healed a lot of souls. No disrespect to my granddaddy, but Danny provided me with all the light I needed in Viet Nam and still manages to shine a little on me from time to time.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Crewchief wondering if anybody in Eureka has a light...

Credit Default Swaps vis-a-vis Mourning Dove Kootchie

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the moneys gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground

- The Talking Heads

Whoa, Nelly!  I was reading some of my favorite blog spots and was suddenly struck by the fact that I have not been inspired lately.  Calling all muses, calling all muses, there has been a horrible mistake at the corner of Calliope and Thanatos.  Of course, my more adroit friends tell me that you can induce INSPIRATION by sitting and staring at the computer, or simply start writing and the muse will lightly descend and 'plunk your magic twanger, froggy.'  So I thought I would take a break from the Oyster Shooters down at Rogue's Manor (who, I might add, supplied the Half-Fast Marching Klub these same famous Shooters on St. Paddy's Day) and try to induce my muse to inspire using a different method.  My muse was not amused.  Ah, but then today, she visited disguised as a Mourning Dove.  After a luncheon supporting the Carnegie Public Library in Eureka Springs and discussing some of the events planned for 2010, my wife and I adjourned to a friend's house for wine and conversation.  As sometimes happens, the women and men tend to separate.  I don't understand this particular phenomenon and am not totally satisfied that it sometimes occurs but occur it does.  Usually, guy talk degenerates rapidly into talk about flatulence because someone in the group can fart the Star Spangled Banner in technicolor rivaling an Hawaiian Sunset.  Our group wasn't much different.  When the Mourning Dove started coo-WOO-ooing, we couldn't decide if he caught a whiff of our most gaseous member or if he caught a whiff of a female of his species.  For my money, I'm going with the probability that he caught a whiff of a female, because if he had caught a whiff of what was coming from our vicinity Elvis would most definitely have left the building.

You might ask at this point, what does LeRoi King dancing as Barbie have to do with anything, much less this blog?  Well, the conversation slipped seamlessly from the Ch'i that governs Mourning Dove Kootchie odor into bank leveraging and credit default swaps.  Cable fodder for the week.  More theater of the absurd.  Like life.  Like Larry King dancing as Barbie to Good News Week.  I think there was a consensus, in the Porch Cabinet, that the folks that came up with these money generating schemes that eventually collapsed the world economy, would be back with new schemes no matter how much government intervention or regulation was applied to the problem.  After the money's gone....water flowing underground.  Now, does this mean that we think government intervention or regulation is futile?  Not really.  It just means that none us really expect the government to protect us from everything.  You can't ask the government to take care of problems before they become problems, can you?  I mean, that would mean that the government could have prepared for Hurricane Katrina or prepared like they did for the great Red River flood that never came to pass.  Even though we had to hear about it all damn week.  It's Good News Week...   

I watched John Stewart of the Comedy Channel go after Jim Cramer of the NBC Business Channel. They had this running battle about who said what when.  Basically,  I think John Stewart of the Daily Show was right, CNBC had a responsibility to see the collapse of AIG coming, instead of perpetually talking about how great the stock market was doing.  Even though now, the folks at CNBS are talking about how they took all their money out of the market before the great collapse.  Sure.  It would be nice to think that the Fourth Estate was actually doing its job, investigating the powerful and protecting the weak.  But it just ain't so.

Which brings us to another reason I love Eureka Springs.  Everyone in Eureka is marching to the beat of a different drummer.  Hell, you've never heard so many different tunes.  After you've been here awhile it seems normal.  But in the midst of all this independence is a sense of community that binds people together.  Especially during times of crises.  The late winter ice storm exemplified this sense of community.  No one waited for the government to show up with a one-size-fits-all Sugar tit, everyone was out helping their neighbors.  I'm sure there were some who took advantage of the situation, nature makes sure that anomalies will always exist.

Adddendum#1:  Almost forgot to mention a new blog I'm following, called Wisdom of the Hands by Doug Stowe.  Doug is able to combine his love of wood with a unique philosophy about life which reminds me a lot of Mary over at Jumping Off Cliffs, both of whom are able to make sense out of life's anomalies.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Cowboy

Looking for a frequency that will reduce the noise in my life 

As Good as Gold

I can't think for you

You'll have to decide.

- Bob Dylan

In 1965 when I was a young sophomore at Austin College in Sherman, TX, I attended a seminar at TCU in Ft Worth, Tx.  The seminar was a debate about 'What is Art?'  It featured Paul Tillich versus the TCU Art Department.  The TCU Art Department was overmatched.  The betting in Vegas favored the sno-ball's chance in Hell over the TCU Art Department.  It's the story of TCU.  Poor bastards.  They really should stick to football.  So, Paul Tillich said "Art is anything that fills space and has meaning to the one that beholds it."  A professor from TCU responded, "How do you know so much about Art if you are not an artist?"  (Applause, from his students here.)  "Well", said Paul Tillich, " the same way a psychologist knows more about what a chimp is gonna do than the chimp does!"  (Applause, laughter, and giggling from those not in an Art class at TCU).   I have been told by my friend, Steve Schmidt, that if I have a blog about Eureka Springs, I must include Art, because art is the the lifeblood of Eureka.  I told him that I thought there was a lot of hucksterism involved in art.  Steve said, "If by 'hucksterism' you mean that someone is trying to convince you to buy something you do not need then yeah, there is some 'hucksterism involved.  Just like there is at Dillard's or Wal-Marx.  Or", he went on when he should have stopped, "have you been to the Doctor lately?"  Couldn't argue with him there, having recently been referred to a sleep clinic.

Well, is art anything that fills space and has meaning to the beholder?  Duh?  How do you argue with that?  The reason I used the Floating Woman Suffocating Under Saran-wrap picture to introduce this blog was simple.  When I think about art, it is how I feel.  Suffocating.  When someone is explaining the artwork to me I often feel like I'm listening to W.C. Fields selling Dr John's Magic Elixir off the back of his medicine wagon.  Fortunately, for us, the artist is capable of stripping away the facades that we hide our souls behind and appeal to our imaginations in ways we have not thought about.  I was setting here working on this blog and looking around the house and trying to find something that would not be considered art.  I can't find anything that would not be considered art by someone.  The hucksterism involves the buying and selling of art, putting a price on it.  In Joseph Heller's book, Picture This, he points out that in the 1940's there were about 2000 authenticated Rembrandt's floating around but by the 1980's there were only a couple of hundred.  Those people with the 1800 Rembrandt's that are technically Rembrandt's because he signed them, were actually duplicates painted by his students.  Of course, this was before the age of prints or giclees.  

A friend asked me, "Which Van Gogh painting is your favorite?"  I replied, "The Sunflower painting."  "Which one?" my friend asked, "he painted over two hundred of them."  "Uh-h-h. number 97", I responded.  I was genuinely surprised to find out I had been admiring different paintings, thinking they were all the same one.   My friend asked what would I do if I had an original Van Gogh.  I told him I would sell it.  He was disappointed and said I really did not appreciate art.  It's not that I don't appreciate it, I just happen to think that it is highly over-appreciated.  Artists are fond of saying, "Life is like a haunted house and Art is the only stair that doesn't creak."  Yeah?  Well, that's because they keep it so well-oiled.  So why does a Van Gogh fetch such extravagant price at auction?  There are a myriad of economic theories out there used to explain why a Van Gogh is worth more than the painting of Elvis I have on black velevet.  

One theory is that there are not very many Van Gogh's and there is a very high demand for them that creates their value.  For example, everyone has a wrist watch today but if you had owned a wrist watch in 1898, you would have been one of the wealthiest people in the United States.  A more recent phenomenon has been watching the price of computers continue to diminish.  As an entity becomes more plentiful its value decreases.  In the 1930's about 25% of high school students graduated.  If you had a high school diploma during that period, it was a valuable commodity.  Today, about 75% percent of all high school students receive a diploma and it has lost much of its value because everybody has one.  Now, you have to have a college degree to be in that valuable 25%, but the percent of students receiving college degrees is starting to creep up, which will require having a master's degree in the very near future in order for your degree to have the same value as a high school education in  1930.  I hear all the time about how many engineers there are in India and China.  Like, duh, how valuable is that?  I remember when the NASA program downsized back in the early '80s, there were engineers serving up Big Macs at the local MacDonald's all over the country.  I think the medical profession in this country has figured this out.  The AMA controls how many doctors will graduate every year, they make their profession valuable.  Let's hope teachers, police, fire fighters, and other service professions do not figure this out!

So far, I have been focused on extrinsic value, or the value that others place on art.  The artist will tell you it has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of their work.  They like the appreciation shown by the fact that someone is willing to pay for their art, but would continue to create even if there were no buyers.  So, I guess, we've come full circle at this point.  If you you like it, if it moves you in some way, if it has some special meaning for you, whether it's a movie, a painting, a song, or a book then it's art and it's okay for us to appreciate it.  

Art is anything you can

get away with.

- Andy Warhol

Until next time, 
I remain,
Just another Zoroastrian Cowboy
Trying to understand why Gottfried Helnwein made the Baby Jesus look like Adolf Hitler

Opera for the End of the World

A WORK IN PROGRESS!

I was sitting here listening to a CD (remember when that meant Certificate of Deposit?) of my daughter singing 'Lo hear the Gentle Lark' at her junior recital in Indiana.  It's a beautiful piece when you can close your eyes and have difficulty distinguishing between flute and voice.  Even though she is a Music major in Vocal Performance she has this problem singing for her mother and me.  She doesn't mind performing on stage in front of others, but she just has a problem singing for family.  Go figure.  Hell, I'll sing in the shower or car (usually, not at the same time), even though I can't carry a note in a number 10 washtub with a chorus of Alabama bullfrogs singing 'The Hallelujah Chorus" as backup.  But even if I had my daughter's pipes, I seriously doubt that I would be singing for others.  I would still keep it to myself.  My friend over at Jumping Off Cliffs wrote about some common feelings that most of us share, like when you think others might be watching you, you forget, they think you are watching them.  What a paranoid world we inhabit.  

I suppose one of the underlying causes of our paranoia might be our innate fear of rejection. Our fear of rejection keeps us from sharing our gifts with others.  Of course, this is not a new concept, I mean Cain whacked Able because he just thought God had rejected him.  If the first poignant story in the Bible is about the power of the rejection, then I figure the ancient Hebrews were on to a meaningful way for us to live our lives in harmony.  Of course, they were not the only culture or religion to understand the power of rejection.  The worst recorded punishment in many cultures was ostracism, being separated from those you admire, respect, and love.  And it is still a strong part of culture.  I remember one of my favorite scenes in Catcher in the Rye was when Holden Caulfield was listening to a piano player in a bar.  Holden reflects that if could play a piano like that he would go home and only play only for himself.   

What gives people that courage to overcome their fear of rejection?  To be able to perform their best, knowing that they will always fall short of perfection?  Is that why we create these facades we present to the rest of the world?  One of the beautiful things about Opera is the ability of the performers to express any emotion in a musical language that is universally understood.  Emotions that human beings rarely express to each other openly, even though we can all relate to them.  I took Dr Atomix as my user name for this blog from the Opera Dr Atomic, about the founder of the Atom Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.  The night before the Atom Bomb is tested in Los Alamos, 'Oppy' is singing to Gen Groves about how difficult it is for him to lose weight.  Here is a man who will eventually be rejected by his country, worried more about his appearance than he is about the means of destruction  he is about to deliver to the world.  I mean it sounds like a skit from SNL's 'Ricardo's Hideaway', where Billy Crystal says, "You know, Dahlings, it is better to look good, than to be good."  

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."

- Miss Piggy

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another paranoid Zoroastrian Cowboy,

Wondering why that guy over there is staring at me...

Pessioptimistiche

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

- by Grunthos the Flatulent

Putty. Putty. Putty.

Green Putty - Green Putty

Grarmpitutty - Morning!

Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!

Discovery.....Oh.

Putty? ..... Armpit?

Armpit ..... Putty.

Not even a particularly

Nice shade of green.

First, thanks to my friend over at MB, for the link to the Onion. I have been suffering through a vicious head cold for the past couple of weeks and nothing seems to help! I have tried copious quantities of Single Malt Scotch Whiskey that are said to have medicinal qualities and tried inhalers that would make Grunthos the Flatulent pass out, but nothing seems to help. So, when I ran across this this book on Amazon, I went into this semi-trance. You know, like when you have a cold, and you're feeling sorry for yourself, and you are laying on the sofa with a limp willie, and drool is coming out the side of mouth, and the T.V. is on, but you're not really hearing it kind of a trance. I was trying to think about how it would feel to be healthy and happy again. Then I thought, if I had never felt like I had been ate by a wolf and shit over the side of a cliff, then I really wouldn't be able to distinguish between feeling good and feeling bad. Or as my friend Jerry Jeff Walker liked to say, "If I'd never felt the sunshine then I would not cuss the rain (if my feet would fit a railroad track, I guess I'd a been a train)."

There are times when you just want to sit and think, when you want to get away from the life-is-a-party way of thinking. But is there a middle way? Can you actually be a stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, without experiencing the extremes? Or, are these extreme feelings part of our genetic make-up, without which we wouldn't know whether to fish or cut bait? I have a psychiatrist (fizzy-key-a-tryst, thank you Ricky Ricardo) friend that tells me all of our emotions are legitimate. They are mechanisms that are triggered to enable us to respond appropriately to different situations. My problema, she tells me is that my emotions are FUBAR, that I REALLY don't know shit from shine-ola. I told her she was making me feel paranoid, she said, "Hon, you ain't paranoid enough!" She did say I had one outstanding quality, that I was a good listener. I asked what that meant. She said, "You're not listening!" I think I'm going to find a male psychiatrist, he will probably be much more sympathetic to my childish needs. He will probably have some of his own childish needs and call me wishy-washy. In which case, I will return to her.

I don't mind being a little paranoid. It's being outrageously maniacal when the phone rings while I'm watching the tube, or cursing the idiot that swerves in front of me on the highway, or being domineering and selfish and wanting it MY WAY (Frank Sinatra summed up Brokow's greatest generation with that song), that causes me consternation. You know I've tried everything, Crystal gazing, Zen, Yoga, being kind to dogs, if it is supposed to help you get in touch with your Inner Tube, then I've tried it. Hell, I've even been to the Unitarian Church! Nothing I've tried has helped me to become more considerate. thoughtful, or kind. Until. Until I discovered I had SLEEP APNEA!

That's me! I had wires hooked up everywhere and the nurse kept assuring me, "Don't worry, we only electrocute about 1 out 10." I went to sleep thinking of that Beavis and Butthead song, "When I was young and had no sense, I took a whiz against the electric fence. Hurt so bad, shocked my balls, took a crap in my overalls." The nurse came in and woke me up again, to see if I was sleeping, what else is new? I finally went to sleep again, only to wake up thinking that a miniature spacecraft had come from Tralfamdore seeking a specimen for their Zoo of the Absurd. It was only the red light shining from the tip of my finger, that was hooked to some device that was measuring the Oxygen in my blood. They told me I snored, LOUDLY. They also told me if I would buy a machine that would pump air into my nose all night, that I would wake up healthy, wealthy, and wise. I asked, "Why can't I just buy a Gaze Ball and stare at it before I go to bed at night?" They said that would work only if I had a machine that blew air into my nose. I know, I know, it's time for a cheap joke about "smoke being blown into another orifice" but I am trying to be more considerate. At least they weren't trying to sell me bundled mortage securites or Credit Default Options. Maybe, they just haven't thought about that, yet.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another sleepy Zorastrian Cowboy,

Seeking a way to get Dem Deep REMs that involves Summer Glau

Fata Morgana in Texarkana

An invitation to go on a strange trip

Is like a Dance Lesson from God.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Recently, one of my daughters was traveling back to Texas to leave her children before she deploys to Afghanistan for her second tour of duty.  As the careful observer might deduce from the photograph, the kids have racially mixed parents.  Of course, I think they are much more beautiful in person than any photograph could possibly capture, but hey, I am the very proud granddad!  You might think that with a racially mixed President, that we might have seen an end to the racism associated with children of mixed blood, that this bigoted  boogeyman might have been spanked and put to bed.   Not so, in Far East Texas.  It appears as though at least one of them has not gotten the word yet and where's there's one, God knows, there might be TWO. But as the story was related to me there was only one.  This one particular bigot refused to allow my daughter to buy gas, after she saw that my daughter's children were mixed.  It upset my daughter considerably, she tells me it was nothing new, it just surprised her.  It was one of those totally unexpected moments.  Thank God, she does not have her dad's playground sense of justice, she just put the kids back in the car and drove to New Boston and filled her tank.  I would have waited outside the gas station in Texarkana and when the offending attendant walked out, I would have turned up some music real loud, maybe Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', because it would go with the Bruce Willis words from Die Hard I would scream at her, "Yippee Ki Yo Motherfucker", right before I brought the two-by-four down between her running lights.  

Of course, that's just a granddad's instinctive response, my daughter's course of action seems to have been the better choice.  When we were discussing it she said, "Dad, calm down.  What goes around comes around."  I don't know if I believe in Karma all that much, I just think she made a better decision than I would have at that moment.  I'm not sure it's okay to ignore bigotry any time, there comes a time when we do not want bigotry 'coming around'.  I keep asking myself, "How long, Martin?"  How long do we have to put up with this kind of ignorance?  Can change come through education, over time or do you have to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four?  In California recently, the good folks there voted against a Proposition that would have allowed Gay couples to marry.  The amount of energy spent on trying to limit the rights of different people, could have been better spent on acts of love and kindness expressed by so many of those 'religious folk' that supported banning gay marriage. Why do some folks think that some people are inferior to them?  Where do they get these crazy notions?  What is it that prevents folks from recognizing that we are all on the same trip together?  Does that sound like Karma? Sorry.

Hell, I'm no great fan of any particular religion, but I have noticed that most of them espouse some pretty basic beliefs, i.e., not stealing, not killing, not lying, and respecting your fellow human beings.  Even though most college freshmen can point out the innumerable times that the great religions have lied, cheated, killed, stolen, and reeked havoc on their fellow human beings in the name of God, but they can not give you a very definitive answer about why so many are drawn to organized religion.  My guess is that they need to be told what to do.  They can't read a Bible or Koran or Torah for themselves, so it's easier to be told how to live your life.  People who belong to a particular religious sect act and think that they are a little bit better than those who don't.  So there is a religious elitism involved.  Don't believe me, just look around.  There are 'Christian' bookstores and 'Christian' radio and TV stations, and 'Christian' plumbers!  A Friend of mine said he saw a pickup truck in Deep East Texas with a magnetized sign on the side that read, "His Hands - Plumbing and Septic Tank Services".  It is as though the name itself carries some type of magic, that it makes you better than somebody else.  From this elitism there evolves a type of spiritually rationalized entitlement.  If you don't do it this way you are going to hell Syndrome (or worse yet miss out on the virgins!). It is a form of religious  terrorism that is abhorrent to most rational thinking religious folks.  

So what does all this have to do with the rude ass gas station a-teen-dant? I'm getting there, just give me a minute.  I tried to put myself in Jesus' (Mohammed, Buddha, Moses, etc. take your pick) sandals for a minute and ask myself what would he do to change the situation.  ASIDE:  My wife just walked through the room and wanted to know why I was wearing sandals because it 33 degrees outside.  Then she wanted to know where I got them and how much did I pay etc. for about thirty minutes.  Then I had this AHA moment.  Jesus would have looked at the Gas Station Attendant and said, "Where'd you get dem shoes?'  They would have talked about shoes for awhile and sure enough Jesus would have got his gas and left the attendant feeling loved and special.  Damn, I wish I could be more like that, NAH!  I guess I'm just too damn cynical, but maybe my daughters and granddaughters will have a better luck being the kind of people we all strive to be, walking humbly, seeking justice, and sharing kindness.  Like my youngest daughter the Voice Major likes to say, "It ain't over until the petite lady sings!" 

Until next time, I remain,

Just another Zorastrian Cowboy

seeking to become a costumer for Anna Netrebko  

(I still am having a problem picturing Jesus' with His Hands in the septic tank, but hell, he would probably be the first one in!) 

Tom Brokaw - America's Greatest Twit

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay

Sleeps all night and I works all day."

- Monty Python

I love words.  There is magic in them for me.  There are some words and phrases that just roll from the tongue, like Boolean Logic.  In Neal Stephenson's new book, Anatheum, he has created the phrase, "Hylean Theoric Flow".  Sometimes the symphonies that good wordsmiths are able to compose, can impact us as much as the meanings of the words.  Of course, I could be "hoist by my own petard" if I did not mention an old friend, Bill Shakespeare, and his uncanny ability to create phrases that are still in use (or should I say overuse?).  Why do I want to talk about words?  Because they have meaning and because they can do great things by those who read them, listen to them, and act upon them.  Why talk about words now?  I just finished listening to President Obama's Inaugural Address for the third time, and I believe words have meaning for him and that they are important to him.  And when he speaks them, he moves people emotionally.

Why is Monty Phython's Terry Jones pictured as the Naked Piano Player?  Because I was thinking about America's 'Greatest' Twit, Tom Brokaw.  Obviously, because Mr. Brokaw has been reading the  news over many years in his best melodic voice he has come to believe that his opinions are fact.  A situation that is innocent enough, but extremely dangerous.  I certainly do not mind Mr. Brokaw having an opinion as to the WW II generation being one of America's 'great' generations, but when he calls them the 'greatest' generation, he is leaving out many generations he has not a clue about, generations as yet unborn.  You may think this is a petty complaint.  Maybe so.  But I think it may be a small reflection of a much larger problem.  People who are hired to read the news of TV are hired to do so because they have melodic voices, good delivery (occasionally), and are not too repulsive for the viewer to look at on the Tube.  Hell, in the 21st Century, pronunciation is not even an issue.  They are not hired because of their intellectual brilliance.  When a journalist states his opinion as fact, especially one who is well respected within his profession, s/he moves into a new category, that of Twit.

Twits outnumber journalists on TV by an alarming number.  Print journalism is becoming increasingly similar.  That leaves the Internet to actually discover the facts about a story.  Ah, but at one time it was so easy, today it is a bit more difficult.  Tom may not be the 'greatest' twit, but he is one of the 'great' twits of his time, spewing his little redundant homespun homilies as though they were facts about a story and not his opinions.  Hell, they do not really qualify as opinions, but that's another story.

Until next time Kimosabe, I remain just another Rodeo Clown watchin' the evenin' news, you betcha'!

 In the beginning was the Word...

John 1:1