Once I Was an Aardvark

Not buying that are ya?

Well, if  you would, I could justify this rather haphazard blog post as being from a funny little creature with a piggy nose. Kinda cute actually.

Anyway, I’m musing on a Saturday morning, having worked my finger, errr, claws to the knuckle-bone washing the clothes and folding the clothes and getting into some really rank crap in the closet which is where I am now in my packing adventure.

Crap in the sense that what does one do with a hundred or so cassette tapes and VCR tapes that are, how shall we say, ancient by today’s technology?

Why do I continue to save pairs of shoes that are old, broken down, and not wearable even if fashion regresses three decades?

And socks. What is the point of saving the “other” of the one you throw away? What is the point of saving the one hole in the toe sock? Do I look like a person who sits down and darns socks?

Do I look like a person at all?

Do I?

Okay, a bit like uncle Oscar, but just a bit.

Do you know we watch Christmas Vacation every year with Chevy Chase? Do you know we laugh at the same stuff every year?

Aardvarks love Chevy Chase.

I mean don’t you just want to squeeze him and love him? Or her. It’s a her. After all, I’m a her. So it must be a her. Never mind.

I think that Socrates and Marcus Aurelius would have had an exceptional conversation.

Once long ago, Steve Allen and his wife used to host a show on PBS where they played various historical characters. They would then have a couple of other actors. They would pair Plato with Cleopatra and Attila and Winston Churchill, and then have a round table.

I wish someone would resurrect that show.

Anyway, I loved what Aurelius had to say about God.

I think I would have liked to sit and listen to him. I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to think I could actually converse with him. But I could sure listen.

Do you have historical favorites you wish you could meet?

Words are rather strange things aren’t they? As I spoke of the other day, they take on visceral emotion. Sometimes words are used to mask truth.

Tennessee, decided that people should read the 10 Commandments more often, so it voted to put them in public places for your edification. It did not use the word edification however, since I doubt any Tennessee legislator knows what the word means, and if any of them do, they certainly don’t believe you would.

They chose to describe their actions this way: the Ten Commandments are referred to as “historically significant documents.”

I find that amusing.

I also figure they were thinking that it wouldn’t sound really good to some of the folks in Tennessee if they were to use the real words.

I am giving them a little pass here though. I have it on good authority that the Tennessee legislature, sure that the world is scheduled to end this year (according to those Mayans of course),  decided to actively try to go back in time in the hopes of forestalling that event. It was hotly debated of course, since there were those who thought it unseemly to mess with the Lord’s Armageddon plans.

Which brings me to this.

Oh please, you knew, from the beginning, that this was all leading inexorably to the etch-a-sketch. Please.

I had one as a kid.

Biggest waste of money I never spent.

Never drew a damn thing with, except some lines. B O R I N G.

And all those so-called pictures you’ve seen on TV or on the Internet of these glorious art works?

Fakes.

Every one of ’em. I know, cuz I tried a gazillion times to draw with that thing, and I never could. Ipso facto: can’t be done.

Oh, was this the one you were expecting?

Well, I know, it’s being made more of than perhaps it deserves.

But you just gotta KNOW. You just gotta know that the Willard brigade is having lots of late-night chats about how in the heck they are gonna soften all those hard right positions when it comes to trying to appeal to normal folks in the general election. You just KNOW they’ve talked about how they can U-turn it.

So when the Etch-a-Sketch analogy was announced by his own COMMUNICATIONS mouthpiece, well, it just rang so freakin’ true.

I mean the cartoonists are not hungry for subject matter this GOP nominating season are they?

You thought I couldn’t do it didn’t ya?

Tie all these threads together in a nice package of unity.

What part of “leading inexorably” didn’t you get?

I will accept your accolades and cash.

I mean you think I do this for free?

Good God, we get to do this all again next week.

Hell, you know, is your worst nightmare relived forever. Remember that when you snicker that God ain’t real.

And just because I have pity, I leave you with this:

Bring Out Your Dead. . . .A Good Guess is Close Enough

Oh yes, I surely bet the GOP wishes it could spring clean and rid itself of festering nabobs of negativity. Echoes of Spiro the Agnew.

Here are just a couple of the funnier things I ran across yesterday after posting that I didn’t want you to miss.

 First off, according to Political Wire, a new Rasmussen poll shows that 43% of those polled believe that you could randomly pull names out of the phone book and have them serve in Congress and get more done. Nineteen percent “were not sure.”

And then there is our favorite whipping boy best friend, Louis Gohmert. Louis, is of the opinion, and one uses that term quite loosely where Lou is concerned, that the Alaska Pipeline has been a boon to the caribou herd. It seems that the deer males, invite the girls to warm their hooves near the line, and along with a bit of paté and a good Bordeaux, the love sours and the herd increases. So thinks our Loopey Louie. LL had no ‘splanation for why the herd just doesn’t meander down to Texas and enjoy the warmth there all over.

¶

We also get the following from Political Wire. You guys are all aware of the attempts of some GOPer’s to introduce legislation in various states to make a fertilized embryo a “life”, which created all sorts of scary scenarios, and even the folks of Old Mississippi decided that it was probably not such a good idea, and voted it down.

Well, another of those silly bills has been thrown in the hopper in Oklahoma. Trying desperately to show the dull state Republicans of their folly, Democratic State Senator Constance Johnson, offered this amendment:

“… any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.”

Beware the wet dream gentlemen, beware. And about those Penthouses? I’d burn ‘em boys.

¶

You might have heard. People thing Congress is a big pile of poo. They have an approval rating of only 10%. I think rocks have a better approval rating. I’m sure having your hip replaced scores higher. Having a root canal too. Running into Satan on the way to the grocery store scores 8% by the way. And no, I have no idea who those 8% are or where they live.

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Newt who?

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Nerd alert! A hypothesis is out there, that some of our greatest genetic weaknesses are also the basis of some of our greatest strengths. You can read more at Wired, and the author, who is writing a book on the subject, promises to make available his full article now appearing in the Atlantic, when it has passed out of its exclusivity clause. Worth a look at and a note to self to look it him up in a few weeks to read the entire article. What’s available now is worth the read.

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I’m getting pissier by the moment. OrangeAde Boehner is spouting that the HHS ruling that hospitals and universities must provide women with contraceptive care as part of their health care, is “unconstitutional” and an “assault on religious freedom”. Well bozo, such laws, implemented in at least 28 states of the Union, have been upheld as constitutional you idiot. Furthermore, such laws have been in place for a DECADE and nobody said boo during the Bush Administration. And furthermore, the Civil Rights Commission has ruled that failing to provide such coverage when the company provides other prescription drug coverage, is a CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATION.

So save me all the wringing of hands and the moaning that we are religion is being assaulted and we are on the way to becoming a Satanist haven. And you Joe Manchin, (D-WVA) take my foot up your fat ass. You have more poor women in your state than most and they desperately need all the help they can get. Said idiot has joined Rubio with a bill to block the HHS rule.

¶

It’s something in the water I suspect. New Hampshire ReGigglicans are at it again with the stupid. Remember when they wanted all new legislation to cite to the portion of the Magna Carta they were addressed to? Well, another one of the brain-deficient GOPer’s has spent his time and taxpayer money on introducing a bill that will end the requirement that employers give their employees time for a lunch break. Ya know, because the kind CORPTOCRACY is so benevolent they will do it anyway. Isn’t that sweet? I guess he hadn’t heard of Wal-Mart and the 172 MILLION they were forced to pay for refusing to give employees a lunch break. There are others, but poor JR Hoell can’t read so what would be the point?

¶

And what rogues gallery of too dumb to live would be complete without the ever stupid, ever jaw-droppingly/finger-waggy/insufferably arrogant/so awful his hair wants a new owner, Sean of Hannity, who has become so irrelevant as of late that he has taken to suggesting that the President never really wanted to kill Bin Laden at all. Go view the video at Angry Black Lady Chronicles.

It’s almost the weekend, and it’s Fajitas for dinner!

Related articles

• Things Congress Talks About: Caribou Sex (newser.com)
• Rep. Gohmert: Ninth Circuit ‘Not Smart Enough’ To Bring Egg And Sperm Together (thinkprogress.org)

There Are No Rules of the Road

If I had found myself abandoned in the wilds of the US, oh say, four hundred years ago, I would surely have perished. I was not “the fittest”. Nor even close.

To what do I refer? Well, please keep the secret, but I am one of those people genetically challenged when it comes to sight. I couldn’t hit the side of the proverbial barn as they say. Without technological assistance that is.

So with bow and arrow, I would have missed the target, and no doubt starved to death.

I started wearing glasses in the fourth grade. Year by year my eyes deteriorated until I was close to the “coke bottle” syndrome. I switched to contacts, but a badly shaped eyeball made them difficult at best.

Finally, I trucked off to Canada and got the Lasix treatment where they rearrange your focal point by some voodoo magic light, and voilá, I could see, sans glasses.

That has pretty much been it for nearly seventeen years. But alas age catches up with all of us.

Which is nothing more to say than that the Contrarian and I (as part of our departure stuff) went off to get our eyes tested and glasses ordered. We have gotten to the point that watching anything written on the TV screen, requires both of us to read it. We figured we might miss New Mexico all together and end up in the Grand Canyon by mistake. I do mean IN it.

So that was yesterday.

And I’m telling you all this, simple because there are no rules of the road here, and I can tell you whatever I choose, and you can read or not as the mood or time strikes you.

♦

As we were driving and I was trying hard to ignore the fact that one is never quite sure where one will end up when driving with the Contrarian at the wheel, we got to talking about Brandy. The sorrow is still there, but we can talk with laughter now.

Anyway, we were talking about how she went so easy and we were not forced to make that decision to “put her down”, a thoroughly strange way of avoiding “ordering her killed.”

It came to me, that we as humans are adjudged “humane” for putting down an animal that is in pain and with no real way to correct the condition. If we were to do the same thing for a human being, we would be adjudged more often than not, a murderer. A human is required to die in misery if that be the medical situation, no matter how long it takes. ‘Course, they often don’t. I understand doctors often “over dose” with pain killers, knowing that death will ensue.

Still, we wouldn’t judge it humane to put a human being out of their misery. Except if you were Doctor Kevorkian. He judged it merciful.

♦

I wonder how it will play?

Democrats: lets build roads, repair schools, fix bridges. (translate: hire construction companies which then hire more workers, and all the supply companies (concrete and so forth). Job creation: immediate. Results: workers make some money, start buying crap at Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart starts hiring more workers. Two tiered job creation.)

Republicans: cut taxes, eliminate regulations. (translate: corporations have more cash. HOPEFULLY they will expand worker pools. Hard to see why they would when nobody has any money to buy their shit.)

Does the American public at large have the brains to see this? I wonder.

♦

Did ya hear? Sarah Palin is heading off to Korea in a month or so to speak at a “World Knowledge conference.” I mean, oxymoron or what? What on earth could she possibly be speaking about? Is she gonna ask for help? A book list maybe? Or just pooh-pooh the notion that In_tEYE-lec-tuls are necessary in a world where everything can be decided using just good old common sense.

♦

Did anybody catch that Rudy Giuliani did it again? He said he will make a decision about running for the GOP nomination but not until after the 9/11 events. He does always get that 9/11 reference into everything he says doesn’t he?

♦

I’m just about done with Atlas Shrugged. She really is a pretty awful writer. She actually had some interesting characters but she’s buried them in so much political rhetoric that you have to wade through pages and pages of it, to get back to the story line.

I just finished “John Galt’s” radio broadcast. It went on for about forty pages of non-stop explanation of why enterpreneurs were good and everybody else was bad. This quote sums up her thinking about all of “us”.

“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom, who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.”

The rich man is the victim you see, and the worker is the exploiter of the rich man’s intellect. Why, Rand claims, all the things the worms at the bottom have, are the product of the genius of the top. The worms could never create a car if their life depended upon it.

This is ADMITTED mindset of the Cantors and Ryans, the DeMints and the Pauls. This is their concept of “survival of the fittest.”

Have a nice day!

Your Intolerance of My Intolerance is Intolerable!

So says perennial douche Allen West (R-Fl). It seems Mr. West was disinvited from a business association speaking engagement when LGBT members threatened to boycott.

West is well known for being on the wrong side of almost every issue, and gay rights is one of them. He, the Coronel drummed out of the service for torture, is opposed to the ending of DADT, and of course echoes the extremist view that being gay is matter of choice.

So in his midget mind, gays are now being intolerant of his right to be intolerant, and depriving the fine business folk of the Wilton Manors Business Association of his fine wisdom. I suspect they aren’t gonna miss much.

♦

For a good many years now there has been much speculation and much research on the question of how life arose on this planet (abiogenesis) and the likelihood that live abounds in the universe at large. A very thoughtful examination of that question is in The Australian’s “Hello, is there anybody out there?”

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You may have heard that the FAA was partially shut down due to a failure of Congress to fund it. You may not know that the reason is  GOP intransigence again. The GOP, who ran in 2010 on “Jobs”, has put over 70,000 construction workers out of work by their filibuster. In addition 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed. Nearly 1.2 billion in revenue is not being collected. This is all over some minor tweaking about rural airports and more importantly the GOP demand that unionization not be made easier.

Oh and the kicker here, is that the GOP is playing the same game of hostage. Either cave to their demands by tomorrow, or the layoffs will continue for another month while the Congress goes on vacation.

Hope all those that voted to give the GOP more power are now happy.

♦

As we mentioned, the GOPers ran in 2010 on a mantra of  jobs, jobs, jobs. They were going to create them. Except they didn’t of course, and a very good argument can be made that they have not even tried. No, instead they have been led around by the nose by the TeaPeople, much as they were during the debt crisis. So it’s been all about repealing the Affordable Health Care Act, screwing women’s health care, defunding PPH, and destroying Medicare.

Where are the jobs Mr. Boehner? I think he said, “Let them eat cake.”

♦

Hey time for some levity! Found this cute little site via Infidel753. The question is what exactly was the ethnicity of Jesus? You might be rather surprised when all the evidence is in.

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Now if I were a smart Democrat. Okay, no oxymoron jokes please! Pay attention.

1. John Boehner said last night that he got 98% of what he wanted in the debt ceiling deal. He said he was “pretty happy.”
2. An independent think tank, (Economic Policy Institute) says that the bill will cost America 1.8 million jobs by 2012.

So…………

DEMOCRATS: MARRY BOEHNER TO THE BILL! IT’S HIS ECONOMY NOW.

♦

MoJo brings us timely information on how not to be eaten by a lion. I thought you might be contemplating being in the wild, so. . . Hey, I’m always lookin’ out for my peeps!

1. Stay in the car. “Lions don’t see a car as prey, so you’re safer inside,” our director Giles insists. If you’re in a vehicle, stay in it.  (The above does not apply if you vehicle is named “cougar” or “mustang” or other animally names. Lions are quite literal beasts.)

2. If you go tracking on foot be extra vigilant. (Swing you head from side to side, with eyes open. Turn around every five steps. Put on glasses if you use them. Don’t smear body with gazelle guts before beginning trek.)

3. Always travel with a local guide. (Our team had two local guides with them at all times.) (Guides are there to guide you to the lions. If this is what you want, heck get half a dozen. Note: they may also have information on where the nearest tree is.)

4. Carry a big stick and a firearm. (But use them as a deterrent, never intending to inflict harm on the animal. A hurt lion is a very angry lion.) (Drop the stick and carry two guns. Load it BEFORE you enter lion territory. By all means DO intend to inflict harm on the animal. You want to stop it don’t you?)

5. Keep your eyes open: You’d be amazed how close a 500lb lion can get without you noticing. (Besides walking around with your eyes closed encourages falling off cliffs and falling into rivers. Always look down and not up. Lions are not very skilled at flying quite yet. Look for something tan.)

6. Always have a “spotter.” Just because you’re filming one lion, doesn’t mean there isn’t another behind you.(make sure your spotter is not a mute or suffering from laryngitis. If you see a lion who is whistling, you can be sure his bud is behind you. Whirl and shoot, preferably with a gun. Drop the camera.)

7. Travel in a group: Lions are less likely to attack a group. Our team always stuck together and no one ever went out alone.(Have a few practice “runs” before the trek. Make sure there is at least one person who is slower than you are in the group. You don’t have to be the fastest, just faster than somebody.)

8. Know the signs: a lion spoor (footprint) has one pointed and three oval parts. (Spoor? I thought that was poop? Anyways, think dog print. Only bigger. Also if you are following, don’t keep your nose to the grindstone so to speak. Look up and forward from time to time. Otherwise you may come nose to nose with your new BFF)

9. Don’t interrupt their lunch: If you get between them and a carcass, you could be next on the menu. (After all, you are not photographing a swimsuit model. Wait your turn, there is usually lots of leftovers to scavenge after the lion is finished. Be a good guest!)

10. Know their behavior: Lions are more likely to be aggressive if there are cubs around or when they are mating. But a sleeping lion can spring up and attack in the blink of an eye, so never get complacent. (Before you waste all your time learning all the ins and outs of lions, just remember this: is there a set of bars between you and the lion. If so, enjoy, if not, well, you asked for it.)

So there you have it. My additions are make this list hugely more useful.

Have a good day. 

Related articles

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Driving Off the Cliff

As we speak, the Senate is voting on two tax bills. Both are failing of course, since the GOP is holding tough with its demand that the rich get even richer. They take care of their own.

Sadly, this might have turned out differently had the White House not waved the white flag almost immediately after the midterm elections. Emboldened, the GOP knows that it cannot really fail since the President apparently doesn’t have the stomach to do as the American people ask: actually fulfill a campaign promise to end the tax cuts for the rich.

As we have said before, Obama can win this if he holds the line and lets the GOP argue that it is better to increase the deficit by 4 trillion in order to protect the buying power of the likes of Paris Hilton and as Think Progress suggested LeBron James. Where are the jobs after 10 years of tax cuts for the rich? I ask ya?

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One of the things we expected from this Administration, was scientific integrity returned as the standard of doing business. Obama promised that scientists would be free to do their work and report their findings without being edited. A policy statement was authorized. To date, no such policy has been forthcoming, and a significant number of scientists in the FDA and AG, report being urged to exclude or alter information. Read about it at New Scientist.

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For a different prospective on DADT: The Reaction asks: What do Bulgaria, Jordan, Poland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the US have in common? Go read the article and see. Oh oh, yes, we do have friends in low places.

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Ethics Daily reports that a slew of right-wing Christians leaders met a couple of months ago at a Dallas airport to work out how to get rid of Obama and install a right-wing friendly president in the Oval office. Scary rundown of names.  (H/T to Ahab at Republic of Gilead.

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Don’t know if you caught the big news from NASA. Life as we know it, has well, you know, C H A N G E D. It’s a subtle point, but once “gotten” its like huge. It’s like Star Trek! Okay, thoroughly confused? Let me ‘splain. (Remember I told you a couple of years ago, that most anything can be explained or understood via an episode from Star Trek?)

The Enterprise went to investigate a mining colony on a dead planet. Miners were turning up dead. What they discovered was that the planet was not dead, but a silicon-based life form was doing fine there, except that miners were killing the “eggs” of the mother Horta.

Once they made contact, they patched up the wounded Horta with some cement which worked just fine, and everybody got along famously.

The point is, that we have so far only identified life as being carbon based. And that requires a number of other elements to be viable. One of those elements is phosphorus. Trust me on this, I just read it in a book I’ll be reviewing for you next week.

Anyway, in a lake in California Mono, to be specific, a microbe has been found that doesn’t have any phosphorus in its DNA. Rather it has arsenic, yes you heard that right. It’s a bacterium that is different from any life form on this planet. No idea how it got here either.

What this means is that when we turn on the telescopes and scan for the stuff we think means life, we can’t just stop at the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen and phosphorus, but must also scan for arsenic. What is life just got a whole lot broader. The possibilities are well, huge.

I feel all warm and cozy now, sure that surely we are not alone. A little alien may be among us, or perhaps even in our carbon based environment, other types of life can arise. Who knows? Science is wetting its pants and agog with excitement. But they get excited about a new species of newt too. :/  (Note the link is to the post of Dec. 2–I have loads of trouble with this reader feed)

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See, there are theologians and biblical scholars. And then there are wannabes. I’m one of those. But in this category, theology,  there are Wannabes and wannabees. I’m the latter. John is the former. If you are feeling all theology-y, then drop over and read what John has to say about how Paul acquired his theology on the road to Damascus. (pssst. it probably didn’t happen there, since Luke is probably not giving a historically accurate account of Paul’s travels here, but it assuredly happened to Paul somewhere!)

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If’n you want to see a psychoanalysis of Mr.’s McCain and Obama, then Crooks and Liars is your choice. Lots of interesting commentary from varied sources, make these two almost equally delusional.

***

We got about two solid inches of snow. We can get out. We tidied up the bird feeder and put the “open” sign up. The dogs are sleeping. The cats are sleeping. I’m being a good wife and cooking liver ‘n onions for my husband. Don’t mind eating it, just hate fixin’ it. Going to church tomorrow. Lookin’ for some college football to watch. Havin’ ham for Christmas. Reading a lot these days, publishers have been kind. That is a tour of my synapses, known as roamin’ round the noggin.

Laters.

Related Articles

• Keith Olbermann Reports On Alien Life Discovery, Totally Pwns NASA in Star Trek Knowledge (mediaite.com)
• NASA’s Press Conference On Alien Life (geekologie.com)

Tripping the Light Fantastic

I’ve been thinking about poetry. In the end that got me to thinking about music and art in general. I’m sure you have found yourself thinking about them too. In case you haven’t, I’ll share.

I have always had a arm’s length kinda thing in regards poetry. I liked some (that which I could easily understand) and didn’t like some (that which I could not understand).  Pretty basic analysis.

I have no idea what poem the phrase “tripping the light fantastic” comes from, but I remember a high school teacher frustrated as all heck because we were bemused by her attempts to get us to “respect” poetry. We thought it all silly, and memorizing any portion of it, a sheer waste of time.

I was troubled by the poetry I didn’t understand, often written by supposed giants of literary ability. Well, no supposed about it, they were such giants, and I was terribly worried at times what I was missing and why. I thought to read it line by line and for all my efforts I still had no idea what was being said half the time.

As I said, some I did get. “By the shores of gitchee gumee, by the shining deep sea waters. . . .” That I get.

I learned that poetry was meant to evoke emotions, yet I still felt there must be actual meaning in the words themselves? Some code I was unable to penetrate. And so mostly I left it alone.

I’m thick headed about some things. Poetry must be one. I mentioned a few days ago, that a poem I read on a site which I linked to had spoken to me powerfully. It felt like someone had dug into my skull and spoke my deepest agonies, fears, sorrows, melancholia. I’m not sure what the poem was meaning, but I finally got it, I think.

It meant what it meant to me. It evoked feelings about my state in the this world. And to him/her it might have evoked feelings about something entirely different. It might have related to an event, a time, an experience quite different from mine, but the emotions were the same.

I’m not sure I’m making much sense, but I hope you are seeing what I mean in some way.

Music is the same. Musical compositions often have names, they define the subject matter of the composer, “The Messiah,” or the “Rodeo.” Now, common sense tells you that if you were unaware of the name and you were hearing it for the first time, you wouldn’t say, oh my he’s composing a piece about Jesus Christ. Yet, we are carried by the sounds with the title, and we reflect on Jesus, knowing that it is about Him, and we FEEL a kinship to the scriptures that talk of him.

Painting and sculpture are no different. Especially the more abstract kinds, but even those dubbed Romanticism and Expressionism also do this. They may depict more identifiable objects, yet they are distorted in some way that allows us to dig deeper, feel deeper, and connect with our spirit-soul.

At least that is what I think. That is why the arts are essential to our humanity. That is why we started to represent things in our own imaginings almost from the start. From the fertility goddesses we fashioned in the stone age to the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, to Monet and Picasso. We seek to speak the unspeakable and we seek to ask the world to understand what we cannot say.

Poetry is that. It speaks of what is not speakable.

And yet, I would not negate the poetry that tells the story. For it has it’s place. It is the journeyman’s way. It is what I write, and so many of us write, some better, some not so. But it is our ungifted attempt to speak of more than what we can utter in declarative sentence.

It is what caused Dorothy Parker to correct anyone who wanted to talk of her “poetry.” “No,” she would say, “not poetry, but my verses. I am no poet.”

Poetry is the Psalmist who cries for Jerusalem, yet, two thousand years later, manages to still speak to our condition as we cry for whatever is holy and seemingly withheld from our hands and hearts.

Camus suggests that true genius is accompanied by a requisite amount of banality. I have said more than once that every decent thought has been thought, we merely come up with them again and again, until such time as the other pieces are available and we can make something of them.

So poetry reminds us, in the end, of that timelessness. That the same hopes, dreams, fears, jealousies, hatreds are ever with us, no matter whether we awaken upon a mammoth robe or on 1200-thread count linen sheets.  It is all the same.

Nothing new here folks. Just an aging woman finally getting something through a puzzling mind. And I have yet to speak of war and scripture and things more marvelous still. But tomorrow is another day, God willing.

Oh Thanks Ecclesiastes!

We’ve been reading Ecclesiastes in the daily lectionary for a few days. I guess it’s good to read it at the end of spring and the beginning of the lovely summer, cuz the readings are purely a bummer. Talk about depressing!

“In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing.” (7:15)

Yep, and well shit happens as they say.

I was minding my own business yesterday, pulling out of a driveway onto the highway when I tapped the bumper of the car in front of me which had inexplicably delayed it start out onto the same highway.

You’d have thought I had deliberately rained down ruin upon the woman’s car. No dent, no lost paint, no gouge. Nothing, but a slight brush against the lowest bumper that may have been more dirt than anything.

She was beside herself at my incompetence. She railed against the powers which had given me license to drive. She was insufferably nasty to put it nicely. I went away shaking my head, which she also commented on (my being disrespectful to her clear right cause).

When I got to the church which was my ultimate destination, I figured to call the police. Something about this whole thing struck me as a bit too over the top. Who would guess that nearly the entire department closes at 3:30. A lone woman in “records” told me to simply call my agent and forgetaboutit.

This morning the woman called. Her insurance company would be contacting mine. Uhuh. I should be pleased to understand that although she was not at fault this would go on her driving record. I should be more careful in the future, if I was not to blessedly die by eventide. I sighed and called my agent and gave him the information.

Part of me was saddened by such behavior. Part of me was angry. Having had to process the horror of our deacon losing two grandchildren while his daughter remained in coma for more than a month and is facing a very long recovery due to an auto accident,  I was hardly impressed by the tizzy this woman engaged in over a bump. But I refrained from informing her of this.

The Contrarian logically remarked that “that is why we have insurance,” and to forget it. There are lots of things in the world to be upset about, and he is right, this is not one of them. People more concerned about things than people, we will always have with us.

We all seem plagued by that to some degree. Politicians are more concerned about their power and being re-elected than they are in legislating for the benefit of the people. Most people are more concerning with making money and using that as a means of defining and evaluating winning and losing than in their relationships with family and friends.

We care more about results than in the doing of things, yet results are fleeting and the doing often takes all our time. We dream of vacations and toys and then have no time to enjoy them anyway. They sit as testimony only that we have achieved a certain level of distinction.

We don’t stop to smell the roses much, but usually we notice that it’s time to weed again. We find the downside of most things faster than the upside. We revel on short term quick fixes because we don’t have the patience (remember that post?) to devote our time to long term better outcomes.

We shortcut, and multi-task, we cut corners, and are satisfied in superficiality, as a means of getting by. Yet, most of the time saved is eaten up in just as meaningless drivel. We do more to do more of the same, and seldom experience really NOW moments. In fact, when we do experience one, we are awed beyond belief at the mystery of it all, because it’s such a new experience.

I made some rolls from scratch today, loving the warm scent of yeast, yet I was bustling around, making a marinade for the chicken, and washing the lettuce and preparing the dressing, while stopping to read the morning prayer selections, and finishing off another book.

I had minutes from last night’s Adult formation meeting to prepare and then the new Yahoo mail thingie had to run some special installation for an attachment (all of which took another 10 minutes) all so I could do it fast and seamlessly in the future. BUT I NEED TO GET GOING NOW!

Finally I get to blogging, and I can relax. Finally, relax. Before the next onslaught of busy work in the kitchen. Have the rolls risen enough to start the oven? Once dinner is over, my day is “officially” done. I’ve no more “shoulds” to attend to.

And in the fine planned out world I inhabit, sooner or later, another “shit happens” will interrupt my day or evening, and I’ll be forced to contend with issues I have no desire to fix but will be compelled to anyway. And some miserable person will eat bon bons and sip margaritas seaside on some unoiled beach. It ain’t fair I tell ya!

But it’s just the way it is. Forgetaboutit!