My Dog Killed a Snake

Well, the big news today is that Anne Rice has cancelled her membership in the Christian Church. Many people find this to be something of a surprise since she apparently has had a reputation for often being a sanctimonious bitch, but she did say that she “remain[s] committed to Christ as always.” Anne Rice, in case you don’t recall, is the rather well known and financially successful author of “Interview with the Vampire” and other Gothic bloodsucker novels. I have nothing against Gothic bloodsuckers, or even French Third Empire bloodsuckers; I am just amused that it is necessary for someone who writes books about vampires to publically disassociate themselves from the Christian Church. I’m pretty sure that Dracula wasn’t a regular church-goer, although he did sometimes dig up old friends at the church-yard. Anyway, I don’t begrudge anyone their religion, or renouncement thereof, and Ms. Rice did say she had had it with the Church because of its tired, old promotion of 16th century values, but I imagine the Christian religion is considerably more complex than just that, and only crazy women in Texas throw the babies into the bathwater.

Speaking of Dracula, I’m still behind the curve on all this sexy teenage vampire stuff going around. I know there is a very popular show on HBO called True Blood which is sort of the vampire version of Gossip Girl, but I’m too old to stay up that late. Those Twilight Saga movies also seem to be pretty popular, but I haven’t seen them either. I thought Thirty Days of Night was a pretty good vampire movie, and Daybreakers was entertaining, and even Jennifer’s Body had a few interesting scenes, but those movies didn’t have morally conflicted, teenage pretty-boy vampire anti-heroes at the heart(!) of the stories. This is all probably Hollywood’s attempt to find an appropriate metaphor for how the teenage female mind reconciles the conflict between the confusing mix of sniveling cowardice and irrational aggression which comprises the teenage male psyche; or perhaps it is just another financial exploitation of barely legal T&A and high school beefcake. I really prefer stuff like The Lost Boys, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn and Blade, because we know that anybody who has to drink blood to survive is not going to be really nice deep down. Just ask any local cow.

No politics today, unless religion is politics, which many believe, but there is just no topic concerning the governance of this nation, or its interaction with other nations, that won’t piss me off, so I am going to avoid it. My dog did kill a snake the other day. She is a West Highlands Terrier and she weighs all of 17 pounds, and has consistently proven her cowardice in the face of armadillos, but she shows considerably less caution with small lizards. She was a puppy-mill puppy, and I believe that her never having known her father or having had a positive male influence in her developmental weeks has left her emotionally unbalanced. When the black, four-foot long serpent slithered into the yard she observed it cautiously for a few moments and then began stepping on its tail. Rather than attempting any sort of threat display, the snake simply accelerated its progress. My dog apparently took this as a sign of inhospitable haste and grabbed the snake behind the head and shook it repeatedly. This dog could make martinis for James Bond. We thought to attempt to liberate the snake, but we were both happy for the dog and uncertain as to the toxicity of the snake involved, so in the end, we let nature take its course. Apparently there weren’t terriers in the Garden of Eden.

Mosque, Moscow; What’s the Difference?

But first, thirsty El Chupacabra, fact or fiction? When I initially heard of the Chupacabra (literal translation from Spanish; "goat-sucker") I thought perhaps the Puerto Ricans had carried their penchant for romance an unnatural step too far, but it turns out the Chupacabra is something of cross between a wolf and Pete Lorre which performs vampiric exsanguinations on innocent livestock in the dead of the lonely, black tropical night. First identified in the mid 1990's, the Chupacabra is allegedly found in many locations throughout Latin America and even as far afield as Russia and the State of Maine. It has been linked by some "knowledgeable" sources to UFO's sightings and by others to secret government experiments, such as invisibility cloaks and health care reform. Many supposed Chupacabra corpses have been trotted out over the years, but the ones that have been scientifically analyzed have all, every one, turned out to be mangy coyotes, really. Seems like the Republicans would notice some of their Congressional leadership missing, doesn't it?

 Speaking of Republicans, Sarah Palin's world is sort of similar to the Chupacabra in that it is a fabrication from superstition and ignorance that invokes evil to explain the mundane. Invoking evil is important, because then you get to oppose evil, which makes you good. Let's take these evil Muslims who want to invest $100 million in a 13 story building in lower Manhattan a couple of blocks from the site of the World Trade Center to house an Islamic and Interfaith Religious Center, including a Mosque. How dare they bring their vile anti-papism within some unspecified distance of whatever the former site of the World Trade Center is supposed to represent?! Sarah wants to know. In fact, she is morally outraged by the prospect of such an indignity. Well, they dare probably because they can afford to buy the land and pay for the construction of the building and the law says they can. Sounds reasonable to me.

Last time I checked, America was a capitalist nation, and there is no greater monument to capitalism than Lower Manhattan itself. To suggest that someone's right of property use is contingent upon the popularity of their religion is beyond absurd; it is Unconstitutional. After 20 something years in local government Planning and Zoning, I can testify as an expert that hate and fear are not zoning districts; but simply dark corners of the human soul. Feisal Abdul Rauf, the front man on this project, has been accused of everything from anti-Semitism to drinking the blood of babies, but not a single exsanguinated (there's that word again) baby has been produced thus far, and even if he is anti-Semitic, which I do not know, at least he doesn't have to get drunk to hate on Jews like Whoopi Goldberg's friend Mel Gibson. I can say with some confidence that if having popular ideas or just being generally decent were a prerequisite for developing property in New York, the island of Manhattan would look like Manhattan, Kansas. Does anybody really believe that Donald Trump and the late George Steinbrenner don't worship Gog and Magog? Really?

According to always reliable Internet sources, there were 28 Muslims killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, excluding those ten holier-than-thou Muslim douche-bags on the two planes. I can only imagine that there are still 28 grieving Muslim families and hundreds or even thousands of law abiding Muslim citizens who felt the loss of those 28 people, but Sarah Palin and her Tea Party fellow travelers seem to think that only white, Christian working class people died in the tragedy. The great irony here is that if the World Trade Center were still standing, Sarah and her moose herd would probably be down there protesting against the Jewish/Bolshevik conspiracy and the Zionist control of world capital markets. Aside from the janitorial and clerical staffs, most of the people working in the World Trade Center were those very stockbrokers and commodities traders that everyone now wants to string up for collapsing the economy. Maybe Mohammed Atta really wasn't an angry Islamic fundamentalist; maybe he just lost a lot of money day trading and decided to launch a retaliatory strike.

Islam says to acknowledge God and his prophets, pray, fast, do works of charity and visit Mecca every once in a while if you can afford it. There is not much more of that "pluck out thy enemy's eyeballs" junk in Islam than there is in the Old Testament or the average Sunday morning service down at the Church of the Rock. In the opinion of this humble wormhole repairman, there is nothing wrong with Islam that isn't wrong with every other religion on Earth. I seem to recall that Jesus said something to the effect that "all men fall short of the glory of the Kingdom of God". Muslims are just flawed humans like everybody else who sometimes make stupid choices or do very bad things. In 2008, there were over 16,000 murders in the United States, and I am willing to bet that about 90 percent of them were committed by people who were raised as Christians. Does that mean Christianity is a murderous religion? Answer it for yourself. The Islamic world is in turmoil, and much of it is the fault of their political leadership, but the vestiges of European colonialism and the Western politics of oil are also partly to blame. I don't see Sarah Palin and the Tea Moose Party pushing for hydrogen fuel cells or higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles so that that Persian Napoleon Ahmadinejad doesn't get three cents from every gallon of gas sold in America to fund his nuclear arsenal. All I see is fear and ignorance, and in the calculus of civilization, FEAR X IGNORANCE = the magnitude of the horror we will all have to endure when public outrage supplants the rule of law.

There are names for nations where conjecture, rumor, speculation, prejudice, paranoia and political convenience control government policy; right now one of those names is North Korea and I don't want to live there. Powerful, the Dark Side is; it clouds everything. We need to get our heads out of our collective asses and focus on something important rather than the symbolism of foolishness and prejudice masquerading as patriotism. Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone, because what goes around comes around. And Mrs. Palin, we know you can see Russia from your back porch in Alaska, but have you also looked for Pyongyang? Wherever you are dear, it can't be far.

It's Good to Know

I spend a lot of time these days watching television and surfing the World Wide Web. Despite my wife’s insinuations, it is not because I am an antisocial loser who is unable to connect emotionally; it is because I am broke and my back hurts. I am fascinated by the world and all its glorious irony and would love nothing better than daily traveling the globe attending political rallies, swamp buggy races, vegetable festivals, ritual circumcisions, two-day sales, Beat poetry readings, executions and Guinness record attempts, but I am stuck in a dead-end job, supporting two ungrateful teenage children and a dog with a rash, so I have to make careful use of my available free time.

In the course of my recent review of the world’s electronic media offerings, I have learned many new and exciting things. I now know, for example, that Mel Gibson is not a racist. This is because Whoopi Goldberg says he is not. I am inclined to believe her, as she was in many episodes of Star Trek. I am almost certain, however, that her true given name is not Whoopi. If it is, her parents should probably be prosecuted, as should her hair-dresser. Mel is an interesting fellow, and we know that he doesn’t like Jews when he has been drinking, and that he has a rather bizarre interpretation of Catholicism, but perhaps that is a redundant observation. He is also apparently very concerned that the mother of his most recent child will be gang-raped by “n*gg**s” if she does not dress more conservatively. Oksana Grigorieva is a very lovely young lady, and I’m sure that Mel is just trying to look out for her, which is why he never really hit her very hard. If I were Mel, I would avoid South Central for a while. For the record, Mel hasn’t said anything about anybody raping Whoopi Goldberg, but even violent misogynists have their limits.

How about those lazy unemployed people? I hear that there is something of an epidemic of worthless Americans taking their $250 a week checks and acquiring cocaine and hookers. I can certainly understand why many American Conservatives are concerned about this; principally because it could drive up the price of cocaine and hookers. It is truly shameful that we have so many people in America who would rather stay home all day and watch re-runs of Mayberry RFD than get a high-paying job with health insurance and paid vacation; go figure. I for one certainly do not want my hard earned tax dollars to go to any unemployed persons; I prefer to invest in tax breaks for the wealthy and more cluster bombs for Afghanistan. We need to get our priorities straight.

A Federal court in New York has determined that the FCC’s current regulation of profane speech on television is unconstitutional. This came as some surprise to me, as I was unaware that there were still any restrictions being enforced. Has the FCC not heard of Eric Cartman? Anyway, I personally am not in favor of any limitations on the freedom of speech of any kind, because that’s how I roll, but I feel the court’s conclusion that restrictions on cursing will have “the effect of promoting wide self-censorship of valuable material which should be completely protected under the First Amendment” may not be completely on target. After all, which requires more creativity; ‘fuck you bitch”, or “powder my anus you slimy, bow-legged chunk of syphilitic baboon excrement”? I’m just sayin’. Of course, I have two teenage sons and a wife who is not easily amused, so I put on Katt Williams DVD’s just to minimize the quantity of F-bombs.

Anybody remember that oil spill thing in the Gulf of Mexico? I understand BP is going to make some sort of an effort to resolve it very soon. This comes as something of a relief to me, since I was concerned that hundreds of millions of gallons of poisonous crude oil might spew into the waters of the Gulf unabated for months on end, causing irreparable damage to the marine eco-system. I am big enough to admit when I am wrong and I would like to thank BP Oil especially for all their prompt efforts and diligent preparation. This has restored my faith in the value of good corporate citizenship.

I see the lower house of the French Parliament has approved legislation banning the wearing of burqas and niqabs which cover the face. The bill will now go on to the upper house of the French Parliament, which is apparently located somewhere above the lower house. The French legislators are concerned that these manifestations of religious devotion “don't square with the French ideal of women's equality or its secular tradition”. Apparently women’s equality in France does not equal the right for a woman to choose her own mode of dress. If they wanted to pass a law against a husband beating his wife if she didn’t wear what he wanted her to, that might make a little more sense, but who am I to argue with the wisdom of the representatives of the French people. I, myself, am fundamentally opposed to burqas, primarily because I find the female form and face to often be most compelling, and I feel that the beauty of God’s creation should not be unreasonably concealed, but religion is and must remain a personal journey and you need to dress appropriately.

George Steinbrenner dropped dead at the age of 80 this week. I didn’t know Mr. Steinbrenner and I suppose he could have been a fine fellow, but I am somewhat less than comfortable with much of the post mortem adulation and semi-deification occurring, especially down here around Tampa where he lived in retirement. George was, you may recall, convicted in 1974 of a felony conspiracy charge involving illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, and he offered to the FBI to rat out some of his alleged co-conspirators in exchange for greater leniency than the rich man’s leniency he was already going to get. Of course, one mistake does not invalidate a person’s entire life, but I have always felt the New York Yankees under Steinbrenner’s ownership represented all that was wrong with America; greed, arrogance and mistaking acquisition for accomplishment.

The Vatican says, as recently as today, that ordination of women as priests constitutes a “grave crime”. Apparently the Vatican has a hierarchy of crimes and women priests rank right up there with rape and murder as moral offenses. I am very often quite torn between advocating religious tolerance and blowing the whistle on ridiculous, medieval crap, so this is a tough one for me. Suffice it to say, I will not be sending the Pope any money anytime soon. People are entitled to their religious beliefs, even when I may find them laughably silly, but I do not accept that any organization ostensibly dedicated to truth, justice, love and forgiveness can exclude people from important functions based solely upon their gender and still pretend to be anything but an archaic, irrelevant vestige of the Roman Empire.

Finally, a dog in Macungie, Pennsylvania was recently accidently left in a closed car after getting in the car unnoticed by its owner while she was unloading some packages. The dog, a chocolate Lab, may have been planning to go for a drive and had forgotten its license in the house, or perhaps was just looking for some Skittles under the seats, but it was quite a warm day and the dog’s owner had subsequently gone inside to enjoy the lovely conditioned air when she heard a car horn blaring. After a few moments the noise became annoying and she peeked outside to see where the thoughtless driver was parked. That was when she observed the dog standing in the front seat of the car with its paws on the horn. I like dogs; dogs are very practical creatures, but this one was a show-off. After all, why not just open the door?

Progress?

It is something of an irony to me that the progress of human knowledge and the progress of human society seem to be headed in, if not opposite, then at least different, directions these days. Casual perusal of the World Wide Web reveals an astounding array of new and exciting discoveries in history and medicine and astronomy and zoology and basic sciences and all sorts of other stuff, including information about the personal lives of celebrities and the sexual habits of the elderly, or the personal sexual habits of elderly celebrities. Of course, not all information is equally as useful or interesting, but you would think that being as knowledgeable as we are about so many things, that everything would be going just fine, which it isn't, in case you hadn't noticed.

Up until about 15,000 years ago, almost every member of a society was on an equal footing from an educational perspective. The school of hard knocks was the only accredited institution back then and everybody had a Major in hunting with a Minor in gathering, or perhaps visa versa, depending on age and gender, but everyone had the same skill set and access to all the common knowledge of the society. Of course, some members were more proficient at specific skills than others; if you were particularly gifted at throwing rocks accurately, you could control resources and attain status; whereas, if you threw like a little girl, you could carry heavy shit around and eat the berries with the bad spots. This lack of specialization in knowledge allowed technological culture to be easily transmitted and helped societies to survive the random loss of individuals without loss of scientific progress. If Oog, a master flint-shaper, was eaten by a Saber Toothed Cat while unwisely relieving himself near some tall grasses, the community might temporarily suffer from aesthetically unappealing spear tips and a slight increase in aerodynamic drag, but chances were somebody would know enough to make at least marginal weapons and the tribe would still be able to bring down enough game to feed everybody, even if it might be older and weaker animals which tended to be a bit chewy.

We all know the story about how the development of agriculture and domestication of livestock resulted in surpluses of food which allowed increased specialization of the functional roles of individuals in society, as well as how these surpluses facilitated the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie and the establishment of a parasitic theocratic elite, but most of us don't truly appreciate the extent to which specialization in the discovery and preservation of knowledge has made us all idiots. If you doubt this, open the hood of your 2000 model year or later vehicle and identify by name just ten of the several hundred individual components of the engine. Hint, none of them is the carburetor. Some of you may do better than others at this, but, chances are, a very small percentage of the general public knows the engine is under the hood rather than in the glove box. The same holds true for diagnosing a skin rash, installing a ceiling fan or conducting a DNA test; we have to rely on total strangers to address a wide range of critical issues in our lives and we have no idea if these strangers are decent, honorable people, or if they are serial murderers or Republicans.

This complex web of societal interdependence may not necessarily completely be a bad thing; by being forced to enter into relationships of mutual benefit with a wide range of other society members, we are pushed to tolerance and compromise, if sometimes only begrudgingly, and ultimately these relationships can become the foundation of true understanding and respect on a personal level. The downside of this is that, knowing very little about anything of substance, most of us are required to rely on the representations of people who are either acknowledged or self-proclaimed experts in a subject, and since we don't know squat about most stuff, we often can't tell the difference between the two. This allows us to be manipulated and exploited by those who may be inclined to do so, and these evil individuals are most often the ones who make the most persistent and vocal efforts to influence us, whether bogus car repairman, useless gadget salesman or candidate for political office, because it most directly benefits them financially or ideologically. The true experts are generally not nearly so enthusiastic about spending their time trying to educate our dumb asses. 

It would be fair to say that modern life is pretty complex and a person of reasonable intelligence cannot be an expert in everything, but we could all be considerably more knowledgeable about the general nature of most things and how the world actually works socially and scientifically. We could all learn to discern fact from fiction and apply the techniques of critical thinking if we took the time to do so. With the tremendous wealth of information available at our fingertips, we could actually look at all sides of an issue and consider different opinions on matters of substance. We could accept our civic responsibility as citizens of a democratic republic and make sure we actually know something about the public issues whose fate will be decided by our votes. We could stop watching TV and texting for a few minutes and make sure we understand a few things well enough to pass something on to our children besides our own ignorance. We could, but what are the odds?