They don't call me a great man
for nothing.
In fact, they charge me quite a bit!
I tease her about being a Main Line girl. I tease her about being a Lutheran American Princess. This afternoon, though, I've been teasing her about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed women who calls herself "Jihad Jane". Blondie isn't from the Main Line; she's from Montgomery County, and she doesn't know Jihad Jane is from Pennboro. I've been teasing her Jihad Jane comes from the same small town that she comes from, even though Pennboro is way on the other end of Montgomery county. There are a lot of wacky blondes from Montgomery County, I've been telling her. Dangerous women, and I'm being deliberately vague about the phrase "dangerous women", as it normally means something different than political terrorism, more of a sexual terrorism.
Boy, Am I Sorry!Boy, am I sorry I ever started this teasing. There are seventeen women in North America who think they look good enough. Size 22 women wish they were size 14, size 12 women wish they were size 7, size 5 women wish they were size 1, and size 0 women figure they would look better if they lost that last 10 pounds. Women wish their hooters were two cup sizes bigger, except for those who are cursed with triple D or bigger, and those with the too-large racks are divided into those who wish they had smaller teats, and those that would like to cut the damn things off. I never really understood why women with big breasts wanted small ones until one day when I was about 25, when my sister-in-law broke into tears in front of me. She spent half the day with white-out, because for every ten letters her fingers would type, her chest would insert one or two keystrokes. She eventually had plastic surgery, which is worse than it sounds, because they cut off the aereoles and reattach them higher on the chest, and because all the nerves are severed, they are no longer sensitive to touch. Men don't have the same psychological problems as women. That's not to say they're saner, just that they are different. Men see shrinks less often, but it's not clear whether that means they need less care, or whether they get less care. The scientologists argue that mental health care is fraudulent, that psychologists and psychiatrists do no good, and I alternate between noticing that, by and large, they're right, and noticing that the scientologists as a group are unbalanced, and they can't make valid observations in that area. Today's one of those days when I think they're right, but only because a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. Tomorrow, I'll probably be less disrespectful of the Church of Scientology. Who knows?
Assassinating A CartoonistColleen R. LaRose supposedly was trying to assassinate a cartoonist, Lars Vilks, who depicted Mohammad's head atop the body of a dog. That seems like such a waste. For some reason, Muslims view hogs and dogs as being unclean. Having grown up on a farm that raised swine - we raised everything in those days - I can swear to the cleanliness of hogs. Hogs are the most intelligent and the cleanest of all common livestock. Cows and horses are stupider and dirtier, although cows do very much enjoy being washed down with warm soapy water, and poultry are acutely filthy and cannibalistic. Hogs, though, live and eat at one end of their pens, and walk to the far distant corner to eliminate waste. There are few animals who have the sense not to contaminate their living quarters and their food and water supply. And dogs are intelligent enough to understand human speech. Lassie will tell you that someone has fallen down the well. Rin Tin Tin will guard the gold shipment against Frank and Jesse James. If someone wants to draw a cartoon with my head on a dog's body, I won't be insulted. And dogs generally are pretty cool about anything not involving food, sex, sleep, and property boundaries.
Reading Minds - And BodiesIt's hard to tell what's happening in someone else's head, in the best of circumstances, but when it gets so extreme, it seems hard to avoid drawing some conclusions. Old farts like myself tend to look down on people who have so little self-respect that they have tattoos, and the more tattoos they have, it seems like the less self-respect they have. Increasingly, it's become obvious that's not the case, but sheesh, if you don't think you look good enough already, and you're willing to undergo considerable pain and expense to look like a freak instead of a factory-stock human being, what does that say about what's happening between your ears. I used to share an apartment with a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, a jewish guy who'd done his undergraduate studies at Bowdoin college. One summer evening with more heat and humidity than was comfortable, and too many Little Kings than was healthy, while watching a comic on television, we started talking about the nature of humor. Most standup comics, he asserted, were jewish men. That's because life as a jewish man starts out with a jewish mother demanding that a mohel lop off the pound of flesh dearest to a man's heart. A pound, I asked? Jewish men, he asserted, have even bigger penises than black men were storied to. Yes, I asked? Your girlfriend says you have a penis like a little baby. Yep, he replied: six pounds, seven ounces, nineteen inches long. Does Jihad Jane have a pierced tongue, nose, nipples, labia, and a tattoo of a serpent climbing up her back? Is that blonde hair poorly done, all dry and brittle? Are the eyes buried in pools of garish blue eye shadow, frigid and hostile? What does someone who fears a cartoonist look like? Or are all the signs of self-hatred internal?
The New SixtiesIf this were a rare incident, it'd be different - but we seem to be inundated by crazies like we haven't seen since the sixties. I'm surprised that I haven't seen corrugated tin crosses on the roadside - "Get Right With God" - intermingled with 3'x6' hand-painted billboards that demand "Get US Out Of UN!" When someone mentions the 1960s, most people think of the late 1960s, the civil rights marches, the anti-war demonstrations, the riots in Detroit and Watts. The earlier 1960s had a different vibe. Kids - meaning anyone under 50 - don't remember, but JFK was not a beloved president. On November 22, 1963, people were shocked, even terrified, remembering that WWI started with an assassination. Was this the first short of WWIII? When news came out that Oswald was involved with the "Fair Play For Cuba" committee, that he had lived in the USSR, and had brought back a Russian bride, people were scared even more. Somebody Ought To...But I also remember that on November 21, I heard Randy and Phil talking. One was the owner of the store I was in, and the other was the manager, and they were talking about politics. Somebody ought to shoot that sumbitch, Randy said, and Phil agreed. I don't know if that was serious talk, or merely hyperbole, but it was pretty obvious that they thought Kennedy to be high-falutin Eastern elite, the graduate of a high-priced college, the son of a multimillionaire, who didn't understand the needs of the common man, the importance of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, or even the basics of competent management of an organization. All that talk evaporated for a while after LBJ went into office. People cut LBJ slack until he took office, and soon afterwards, LBJ showed himself to be capable of fighting the Red Menace by sending tens of thousands of kids to their death in Southeast Asia, a sacrifice to the gods of Capitalism. History Repeats ItselfOn the National Archives Building in Washington D.C., there's a carved quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "What's Past Is Prologue." Actually, what Antonio says is "Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge," which seems a little more ominous. Robert Welch was a wealthy confectioner, having invented the Sugar Daddy pop. He founded the John Birch Society in 1958 in Indianapolis. Indiana is a curious state, having had the strongest of any KKK groups. The last lynching in the north occurred just north of Indianapolis, in 1930. The KKK was largely a group of white protestant Welch died in 1985, but the John Birch Society lives on, and funded this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, where the Tea Baggers got so much attention by the political press. Fluoridation of water ain't nothing when you compare it to universal health care. And one can only wonder? Are we in for another series of political assassinations? Hang on to your teeth; things do not look promising. "Down To You" is from Joni Mitchell's 1974 album, "Court And Spark". Deeply romantic, constantly questioning, classic tracks like the title song, "Help Me," "Free Man in Paris," "Same Situation," and "Raised on Robbery" display a more liberated Mitchell, ready to rumble with unbridled electric guitars (guest Robbie Robertson on "...Robbery"), even willing to poke fun at her own oh-so-sensitive rep with a hip cover of Annie Ross's hilarious "Twisted." --Sam Sutherland Highly recommended. Other Bloggers On Related Topics: |
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