2018 - AVE ATQUE VALE

Hello, Esteemed Readers. I apologize for the infrequency of my posts here of late. Those who are aware of my situation are reading my third blog, The Concentrated Mind. And those who are not will get to see my usual end of year greeting because how could I end the year without a greeting?

This has been an unusual year. Suffice it to say that it has had the most wonderful of blessings and the most difficult of challenges all rolled into one - like the Forrest Gump chocolate that you never would choose to bite into. As I write this, my Elder Daughter sits in front of me holding our six week old grand-daughter, a little package of love that arrived in November and showed up at our veriest doorstep on Thanksgiving Day just as we were about to chow down. Being unable to drive her own-self, she was accompanied by Elder Daughter and Elder Daughter's partner (hereafter known as E-Man). So there's something very new in our lives: Dee and I are actual grandparents, a status we had always hoped to achieve and were gifted with before the year's close.

Another major change: after almost twenty years at Chez Elisson (Marietta) we are now living nine miles up the road in Chez Elisson (Woodstock). After several years of pestering on Dee's part I finally yielded to the inevitable. Early in 2018 we managed to pull off the amazing feat of both selling our old house and replacing it with a much more size-appropriate town home, with the closings being conducted on the same morning. How about that for tap dancing, huh? It was a brilliant maneuver for which I am forever grateful to Dee and her persistence. We now have successfully removed most of our old crap, replacing it with a whole assortment of new crap - but more about that later.

One of the biggest surprises was that my sweet younger brother, The Other Elisson (hereafter to be referred to in these pages as Uncle Dang) has pulled off the remarkable feat of marrying someone who not only seems to be his absolute soul mate but who also may be familiar to those who read these pages - the irrepressive, effervescent Erica Sherman! This perhaps is one of the amazing and unpredictable events of 2018, despite the fact that Uncle Dang has had a whole stadium of people cheering him on to this happy and inevitable conclusion. Think of it! By the time you read this, the happy event will be safely in the past with a broken glass to commemorate the occasion. (If I were the wedding planner, we might have used a plastic Death Star, but let that go.)

But now we have the elephant in the room to discuss. In March of this year I began noticing some ominous physical symptoms, which led to a diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). At least Lou Gehrig managed to squeeze a baseball career out of life before being hit with this shit, but not this boy. As I sit here dictating the contents of this post to you it is almost exactly six months after having received my diagnosis and my case has been moving like a freight train. I wear a breathing machine almost every minute. I am almost completely immobile, my limbs being virtually useless. I cannot stand up, much less walk. I spend all of my days either in a power wheel chair or in my bed. My speech is reduced to a whisper. At this point in my journey, I've been under 24-hour care several of the past weeks, and while it's impossible to know the exact time table in cases like this, it means it's a good bet that I won't be at the fucking Kentucky Derby next year - nor at my 45th college reunion, which is something I actually had hoped to attend. I need assistance for every task I do, including writing and composing this post.

Having ALS is a very unpleasant situation, but it does carry with it a few silver linings. One of the most important is that it has given me a renewed appreciation for my family and friends - and anyone who gives care to others. Without them, I could not survive - nor would there be a reason to.

It's with tears in my still alert eyes and a break in my weakened throat that I acknowledge the relentless, gentle, and constant presence of my first and foremost caretaker - my Mistress of Sarcasm - without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything. This is where it gets difficult to dictate these posts - because she is the one who has to write them. She dropped everything to come down here and spend every day of her life with her deteriorating old man. Of course, the Mistress of Sarcasm is not doing this all by herself: she has been helped by Elder Daughter and Dee, the latter of whom this whole bloggy exercise would have largely been a miserable and pointless adventure. I am in this way perversely blessed, but it is indeed a blessing. The things - the physical detritus - mean nothing to me now, but family, as they surround me with their glowing love, they mean everything. And you, my esteemed readers, who have given me the gift of self-aggrandizement and useless time-wastage for all of these years, you do too. May this next year bring you all the blessings of success and health that you care to have, all without limit to any good thing. Hopefully, I will be around to enjoy some of them with you, but if I am not, know that it was a hell of a trip.

WHAT? YET ANOTHER BLOG?

Yes, yet another blog.

You can find it here.

ON ATLANTA ROAD NOMENCLATURE

Everybody knows about Atlanta roads. All of their names include some variant of Peachtree.

Peachtree Street.
West Peachtree Street.
Peachtree Corners.
Peachtree Parkway.
Peachtree Battle...

... plus at least fifty others. (There are, in fact, seventy-one roads here with some mention of Peachtree in their names, according to Wikipedia.)

The number of roads bearing mention of some sort of bridge, ferry, or mill are also legion. This makes perfect sense given the both the geography and history of the area. You have numerous rivers, which historically were used to power mills for producing flour or cloth. And to get across those rivers, you needed bridges and ferries. (Tunnels, not so much.)

Another thing you learn about roads in these parts is that they’re often named for where they take you. For example, there are two different Roswell Roads: one in Sandy Springs that goes north-south, and one in Marietta that is mostly east-west. They’ll both take you to Roswell. And the same road that’s called Roswell Road in Marietta becomes - wait for it! - Marietta Highway when you get to Roswell. If you don’t know about this, you can get completely farblondjet (lost) when driving here.

But my favorites are the ones with the oddball names... names like Trickum Road, Hardscrabble Road, and (one of my personal favorites) Scufflegrit Road. All three are just a short drive from our new digs in Woodstock.

Trickum. That’s a great name for a road. It’s also a great name for a law firm: “Dewey, Trickum, and Howe.” I would love to know more about the history of that road and how it got that name.

Hardscrabble. Another great name. The word refers to a place that is barren, barely arable, and where one can barely eke out a meager living. Impoverished, piss-poor, miserable. You’d think a road by that name would be paved with gravel and turds. (This one is not, but may have been when it was first constructed.)

Scufflegrit. This word evokes images of the cloud of dirt surrounding Popeye and Bluto as they are engaged in beating the shit out of each other... or perhaps the crusty material on Tyler Durden’s face. It’s practically romantic.

Come to Atlanta! We have all kinds of fascinating roads for you to go get lost on.

TODAY’S EARWORM

Doctor where’s your remedy?
I’ve got enough to pay the fee
Can’t you see I’m awful sick?
I’ll pay you well to do the trick

Doctor, doctor
Doctor, doctor
Doctor, doctor
Doctor, doctor
Doctor, doctor
Doctor, doctor

Doctor where’s your magic box
There’s no one here to count the cost
Name your price and make the sale
There’s no-one here to tell the tale

Doctor, doctor...

Doctor please don’t lock your door
I’ve never troubled you before
Just a pinch to ease the pain
I’ll never trouble you again

Doctor, doctor...

Just a pinch to ease the pain
I’ll never trouble you again
Just a pinch to ease the pain
I’ll never trouble you again

- Procol Harum, “Robert’s Box”

THERE ARE LIMITS... EVEN FOR ME

Despite my being old enough for Medicare, I am like most grown men in that there lurks inside me a prepubescent male with a prepubescent way of finding humor in Gross Things.

I have done my share of shitblogging. I have written sonnets - yes, sonnets - about bodily functions and fluids. I have gone so far as to write a post about my own earwax when said wax fell out of my ear in the form of a chunk the size of an English pea.

All of this is revolting, sure, but even I have my limits.

Dee - my beloved missus - had had occasion to use a public facility the other day. It was a one-holer, and a small queue had formed. Eventually, the lady in front of her went in, and as Dee waited outside, she could hear a veritable Hiroshima of hawking, hacking, and nose-blowing. Then it was Dee’s turn to use the rest room.

After the obligatory Positioning of the Paper Seat Protector, she sat down, whereupon her horrified attention was drawn to a pile of Rope-Snot on the floor, just out of range of her feet.

I dunno ’bout you, but to me, leaving a giant snot-wad on the floor is almost as revolting as dropping a deuce in the shower. As Mister Debonair would say, “It is the sort of thing that one simply does not do.” And Dee was unsure about the appropriate course of action. Should she pick it up in a paper towel and discard it? Photograph it?

As it turns out, she did neither. And that is fine with me. Going anywhere near it would have been nasty, and to photograph it would’ve been equivalent to photographing a turd on a dinner plate.

I have been guilty of many horrible things, but even I have my limits – and apparently Dee does too.

SINFONIA MAGNETICA

Getting an MRI is unlike most people’s daily experiences... unless one’s day consists of lying uncomfortably supine while being shoved into a narrow tube and being subjected to an array of buzzing, clanging, and whanging sounds that would do Edgard Varèse proud.

It’s not much fun, but at least it doesn’t involve having objects inserted into various Bodily Orifices. So there’s that.

And it’s an opportunity to demonstrate one’s ability to take a nap under adverse conditions. If people can snooze on the New York subways, how hard can it be to sleep in what may be likened  to the bastard offspring of a casket and a giant metallic doughnut?

As for results, we’ll just have to wait, won’t we?

Postscriptum: As my friend Mr. Bogner points out in the comments, I may not have had an object inserted in me, but I was, rather, inserted into an object. I suppose one could think of it as the metaphysical inverse of a colonoscopy.

ON PORRIDGE

Everyone has, buried deep in the crevices of his or her brain, a well of childhood Food-Memories... and for many of us, those memories involve some kind of hot cereal.

Whether you called it hot cereal, porridge, or mush - the latter having a decidedly negative connotation - it was (and is) a completely different experience than the typical cold cereal-with-milk breakfast. Cold cereal is quick and easy. Hot cereal is work-intensive - a morning meal more suited to lazy weekend mornings or snow days.

Oh, sure - there are plenty of “instant” hot cereals. Instant oatmeal. Instant grits. Tear open the packet and add hot water: Bingo! But those are beneath contempt. A proper bowl of porridge takes time.

So let’s take a look at some of these cerealic delights, shall we?

Grits. Grits are made from hominy, alkali-treated ground maize. I consider grits to be in their own category, more of a savory dish that can be served with breakfast than a breakfast by themselves. Grits can be doctored up with cheese and other tasty components, but sweetening a bowl of grits is an act that is committed only by Northerners who are inexperienced and ignorant of the Way of the Grit.

Farina. Farina is a form of milled wheat, popularly sold under the brand name Cream of Wheat. It has a mild, innocuous taste. In my Snot-Nose Days, I thought Cream of Wheat was pretty nondescript, but I actually learned to appreciate its mild, wheaty flavor as I grew older. Best augmented with a bit of butter and/or cream and your sweetener of choice.

Cream of Rice. This is a proprietary brand of coarsely ground rice. That’s it - just rice. It’s probably the only cereal I can think of that’s even more bland than Cream of Wheat... perfect for invalids. Add a little butter and milk and you have a hot breakfast even a toddler can appreciate. Throw in some scallions, a piece of fish, and maybe some chili oil, and you have a passable version of congee, AKA chuk, the ubiquitous Asian rice dish.

Oatmeal. Many of us in America grew up on rolled oats, which take all of fifteen minutes to cook. Quicker cooking versions are available, but the tradeoff is the loss of oatmeal’s characteristic texture. And - speaking of texture - steel-cut oats have a delightful nubbly mouthfeel, which comes at the expense of a longer cooking time. The Mistress of Sarcasm introduced me to the pleasure of steel-cut oats with a spoonful of peanut butter stirred in, and they’re also great when cooked with some Earl Grey tea.

Maltex. Now we head into the realm of the obscure, with this semi-superannuated cereal made of a blend of wheat and malted barley syrup. It’s still around, but not a common supermarket item. All I can say is that I liked it when I was a kid.

Maypo. Those of us of a certain age will remember the ads for this maple-flavored oat cereal, in which one Marky Maypo (voiced by an actual four-year-old) would insist, “I want my Maypo!” to the eternal consternation of his Dad. I was never a fan: The stuff was too sweet and mushy for my taste.

Wheatena. This one is also pretty obscure, but your local Superdupermarket might actually carry it. It’s a wheat-based cereal (as is obvious from the name) with an assertive flavor that is a million miles away from the bland Cream of Wheat style. A hot bowl of Wheatena transports me back sixty years in time like few other breakfasts can do.

So: What’s your favorite hot cereal?

Postscriptum: This morning I made myself a pot of Earl Grey steel-cut oats. First I steeped the tea in hot milk, then cooked the oats in the scented milk. A little Irish butter, some Demerara sugar, and Bob’s your uncle! Magnificent. Try it!

INNER SPACE

As I was driving around the back roads of North Cobb County a few days ago, I decided to listen to some music. Old music. Music from my Semi-Degenerate College Years. And I didn’t have to lift a finger: I simply said, “Hey, Siri - play Chick Corea.” And Siri complied, pulling up one of my favorite Chick Corea compositions: “Guijira,” from the Inner Space album.

Inner Space was my first introduction to Corea’s work. I first discovered it in the spring of my sophomore year of college, back in 1972, when it was a newly released vinyl double album. Most of the tracks had actually been recorded six years earlier.

It was fascinating. Real jazz - modern jazz, but nothing like the jazz-rock fusion that was becoming popular among my age cohort. And the personnel! Hubert Laws, Woody Shaw, Joe Farrell - each one hugely talented individually, but together in the ensemble directed by Corea, greater than the sum of their parts.

“Guijira” was a particular favorite of mine, a track that featured Hubert Laws’s flute, Chick Corea’s masterful piano, and a soaring trumpet solo by Woody Shaw, all with a subtle Latin foundation. Forty-six years later, and it still gives me the shivers.

All those years ago, I would gently pull the LP from its sleeve, place it on my turntable, and carefully drop the tonearm onto the spinning vinyl - and music would soar forth from my speakers. But no more. My copy of Inner Space is gone, having been deep-sixed along with all my other vinyl LP’s earlier this year... a casualty of the Great Purge.

And yet I still have my Inner Space. Now it resides on my computer’s hard drive and in my mobile devices in the form of a string of ones and zeroes. And I can call it forth with the touch of a button... or with the simple command, “Hey, Siri.”

IN WHICH ELISSON CONFLATES GOLF AND ATOMIC PHYSICS

Today I took special care to get up early (never an easy task given the best of conditions) so I could be on time for the morning minyan. Now that we’re farther north, I have to allow about twelve more minutes for travel... and of course I had to be there, on account of it being Mom’s Yahrzeit.

After services, following our local custom, those of us observing Yahrzeit bought breakfast for the other attendees: our way of thanking them for showing up. And, also following our local custom, we had our usual Post-Minyan Bullshit Session while enjoying said breakfast.

Sometimes we talk of religious matters, sometimes of the mundane, and even (more often than one might think) of the vulgar and even profane. But today I managed something that surprised even me. I managed to conflate two very different topics: golf and quantum mechanics.

It all started with my talking about my Mom, who was a three-day-a-week golfer.

Mom was not your typical hausfrau. She didn’t stay home and bake pies. (I had a friend whose mother baked a pie a day, and often two. To me, that seemed surreal. Hell, it still seems surreal.)

No, she got out and about. She frequented the library and the golf course. She had, as described by my next-door neighbor fifty years later, outside interests. That made her different from all the other moms on the block.

I inherited my mother’s love of golf, but alas, little of her skill or perserverance. That is a story for another time, but the point is, I still love golf despite my ineptitude.

Not everyone is a golfer, though, and many people despise the game... including several of my friends at the breakfast table. What was it, they asked, that I liked about golf, aside from it being the game my mother tried to teach me?

My answer, strangely enough, involves quantum mechanics and the structure of the atom.

Most of us, when asked to describe an atom, think of those drawings of a nucleus (protons and neutrons) with electrons spinning around it like planets orbiting the Sun. But that’s not how things work in the domain of the teeny-tiny where the rules of quantum physics take over. We can’t know where a given electron is at any moment: all we can do is figure out the probability that it will be in a particular place. If we make a diagram of that probability, it looks like a fuzzy cloud... and different electrons inhabit differently shaped clouds. These clouds are (confusingly) called orbitals.

This is not the place, Esteemed Reader, for a chemistry lesson (if you want that, go to the link above), but suffice it to say that the p orbital, with its Indian club-shaped probability distribution, is a good way to model a golf game.

When I stand at the tee, I see a world of possibilities. There is the extremely unlikely prospect of the ball somehow ending up behind me. There is a much greater probability that it will end up somewhere in front of me, but the chance of it going 300 yards in a straight line is almost nil. And these probabilities can be represented by a map that looks a lot like a lopsided p orbital.

Someone like Phil Mickelson will have a “golfy orbital” that looks more like a pencil than a big fluffy cloud, because he hits the ball pretty close to where he intends for it to go. Mine, of course, is all over the damn place... yet there’s always that small chance that I will hit a shot worthy of the Teevee. Kinda like hitting a flush in Texas Hold ’em: improbable but possible. It’s what keeps gamblers in their seats at the tables in Vegas. Hey, it could happen!

That’s my story, anyway. Golf and quantum mechanics... who knew?

IF BY MAGA

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about MAGA. All right, here is how I feel about MAGA:

If when you say MAGA you mean returning to an America in which systematic racism - both de facto and de jure - is embedded in the nation’s culture; an America in which the oppression of people of color is so prevalent as to be invisible to the oppressors; an America in which anti-Semitic attitudes are normative; an America in which a simple glance suffices as justification for a brutal death sentence administered by hateful mobs; an America that reviles rather than welcomes the stranger; an America in which the air and rivers are dark with industrial poisons; an America in which religious minorities are treated with contempt rather than the respect enshrined in the nation’s Constitution; an America in which tens of thousands of our youth are sacrificed needlessly on the altar of geopolitics in an unwinnable war; an America in which our industries and the world’s economy are hobbled by protectivism; an America in which great medical advances are used to enrich the few rather than cure the many; an America in which the high offices of the nation are occupied by kleptocrats who seek to enrich themselves by virtue of their positions; an America in which politicians exhibit a flagrant disregard for the truth; an America in which self-serving propaganda is lauded while the free press is excoriated; then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say MAGA you mean an America in which members of all political persuasions value the Constitution and the nation’s interests over those of their own party; an America in which the spirit of compromise is alive and healthy; an America that speaks softly but carries a big stick; an America that is a steadfast friend to its allies and an implacable enemy to its foes; an America in which all citizens, regardless of color, national origin, religion, and sexual preference, are protected from discrimination; an America in which women control their own procreative capabilities; an America with clear air and clean water; an America that extends a helping hand to the poorest among us; an America in which all citizens possess equal opportunity to succeed to the best of their abilities; an America that is inclusive rather than exclusive; an America in which the press is valued as a guarantor of freedom; an America with an economy unfettered by trade restrictions and that stands astride the world as a Colossus; an America that inspires the globe by its values; an America that lifts its lamp beside the golden door; then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

[Inspired by the famous 1952 “If By Whiskey” speech by Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., of Mississippi.]

OH! THE HUGE MANATEE!

Manatee. [Photo: Wikipedia.]

I think that I shall never see
A thing as weird’s a Manatee.

In form, much like a giant worm
With skin so like a pachyderm;

A beast that makes God laugh all day,
Created, as it were, in play;

A Manatee whose back is marked
By prop of boat or tooth of shark;

With barnacle-encrusted bum;
Who lives in ponds with algae scum.

Poems are made by fools like me,
For fun, God made the Manatee.

Oh, those crazy manatees. Floridians love those suckers: sluggish, slothful aquatic mammals that are the direct opposites of the playful porpoise. In appearance, a manatee looks like a sort of mashup of a walrus, a seal, and a hippopotamus, but with far more docility than any of those species possesses. Maybe that’s the attraction for Sunshine Staters - hell, Jimmy Buffett is like a Tasmanian Devil compared to your average Sea-Cow.

It is said that mariners of bygone days would espy manatees floating lazily by and fantasize that what they were seeing were mermaids. This tells us a lot about the lack of qualified ophthalmologists amongst a typical ship’s crew, as well as providing us with a testament to what months of sexual deprivation at sea can do to the male imagination. Yeef on a reef.  

This week, thanks to my cousin Diane and her hubby Charles, I had an opportunity to see all the manatees I ever need to see, all assembled in one place: the cooling water discharge canal at Tampa Electric Company’s Big Bend Unit 4 power station. In wintertime, when the temperature of Tampa Bay falls below ~68°F, manatees are attracted to the relatively warm water in the power station’s discharge canal. It’s a rare instance of a process that both adds to the human carbon footprint and yet is a direct benefit to wildlife.

Most human-manatee interaction doesn’t do the manatee much good. Motorboat propellers inflict a characteristic series of slashes on those unfortunate manatees that happen to get in the way, a problem compounded by the sluggishness of the beasts as well as their near invisibility when submerged just below the surface. But at Tampa Electric, it’s just dandy: the manatees obviously like the warm water and the company can put on a good face for the environmentalists. Yes, there are humongous stacks and all kinds of scary looking power plant equipment there, but to be fair, most of the stuff coming out of those stacks is just steam. And yet, there’s a sort of Distraction Vibe going on. (“Pay no attention to those giant smokestacks over there! Look! Another gentle creature of the deep!”)

And let me tell you: There are a lot of manatees in that canal.


Just a small sample... a manateaser, if you will.

The water was absolutely thick with the bastards. You could almost imagine walking clear across that canal by hopping on the backs of them, like aquatic stepping stones: That’s how many of them there were. I had seen maybe one or two in all my previous sixty-five years of existence and never imagined such numbers even existed. It was a veritabobble manatee mosh pit. The place was manateeming with ’em. The photo above doesn’t begin to convey how many there were - it’s just a tiny corner of an edge of a piece of the whole canal - but it gives an idea of the sheer density of their population.

But I learned a lot. Including a bunch of stupid manatee-related jokes. Enjoy.

Q: What does a manatee drink?
A: A Martanateeni. Salt water, gin, and a hint of vermouth. Garnish with a skein of algae and a barnacle shell.

Q: When do manatees go to the movies?
A: In the afternoon, of course.

Q: What do manatees wear in the summer?
A: Manatee shirts.

Q: What do manatees wear in the winter?
A: Cardigans.

Q: What do manatees use to chew their food?
A: Manateeth.

Q: What’s a manatee’s favorite color?
A: Manateal.

Q: Who do manatees root for in the Big Game?
A: The home manateam.

Feel free to contribute your own dopey jokes in the comments!

HAVE YOU BEEN GIFTED?

In my Snot-Nose Days, when someone was gifted, it meant that that person was exceptionally talented or intelligent. Now it means that someone gave you something.

Gift appears, now, to have become a verb... at least during Gifting Season.

As Dee points out, the English language is constantly evolving. We shouldn’t necessarily get our panties in a twist when usages change. As a Grammar Twerp, I recognize this truth and simultaneously accept it and loathe it... at least a little bit.

So please let me gift you, Esteemed Reader, an observation: There are still a few shibboleths out there.

As Jimmy Fallon points out, people who call Atlanta “Hot Lanta” are telling everyone that they are not from Atlanta.

Likewise - and I’m willing to be corrected on this one - nobody from San Francisco refers to their city as “San Fran” or “’Frisco.”

The only people who use the word “golf” as a verb (I‘m gonna go golfing this afternoon with Charlie, e.g.) are people who do not play golf.

And the only people who use the term “Sci-Fi” to refer to science fiction are people who do not actually read science fiction. (People who do read science fiction call the genre SF.)

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves... and your thoughts on the matter, whether you agree or not, are welcome in the comments.

ON PRODUCTIVITY

Le Penseur, the famous sculpture by Auguste Rodin.

Crouched in the posture of The Thinker
I try to squeeze me out a clinker
With little reason to exult:
So much work, so small result.

Thus it is with knowledge, too:
We strive to see the world anew
But our dark lens obscures the view
So much effort, so much poo.

ARSE ELECTRONICA, or THE OUTSMARTUS PHONE

She lies in repose, with her face all aglow -
Aglow, but not with desire.
She is lit by the Super-Smart Handheld Device
With its world-containing screen’s fire.

A political rant? If you wish to indulge,
Just tap a few taps on the screen.
You can read any screed ’til your eyeballs will bulge
And you stand on your sofa to scream.

There’s a recipe there that is tasty, no doubt:
It uses some livers and leeks
That are free range, organic, and GMO-free,
And are grown by some real hippie freaks.

The pictures of cats, they are thick on the ground
(Or more properly, thick on the screen)
This one flushes toilets while riding a Roomba!
This video has to be seen!

O, look - here’s a quiz that’s purporting to tell
Me what famous personas I share;
Or who I most resemble, or how much I dissemble,
Or if I like Yogi the Bear. 

We go out for dinners with fam’ly and friends
And at some point (it’s hard to predict)
The smartphones come out and the talking all stops
And I think to myself, “We’re all licked.” 

“I contain multitudes” - so the glowing screen says.
O, how can we hope to compete?
We are only human - we’re not all that smart -
And constructed of fallible meat.

So she lies in repose, with her face all aglow -
Aglow, but not with desire.
She is lit by the Super-Smart Handheld Device
With its world-containing screen’s fire.

HOME OF THE GRAVE

In America, we know how to have fun
From the ski slopes of Utah to Florida’s sun
You can gamble in Vegas with your girlfriend or wife
And if you lose the bet you can pay with your life

In the U S of A we know how to have fun
We’re all sitting ducks for a nut with a gun
For the sociopath fellow who’s living next door
Who looks at a concert and thinks “killing floor”

REFRAIN:
In the land of the free and the home of the brave
We can help you book space in a premature grave
Oh, you’ll get your repose in a box six feet deep
In the land of the free and the psychopath creep

Las Vegas, Orlando, Sandy Hook, Columbine
They massacre dozens, but we act like all’s fine
There’s a sickness that gnaws at our country’s inside
And no more safe places to go run and hide

In the land of the free and the home of the brave
We can help you book space in a premature grave
Oh, you’ll get your repose in a box six feet deep
In the land of the free and the psychopath creep

[This would make a dandy country song. Anyone wanna put it to music?]

REGARDING ANTHROPOMORPHIC VEHICLES

Ever since the dawn of the Automotive Age, people have found ways to project human characteristics onto their automobiles. Animated cartoons a century old have shown cars as living, breathing, sentient beings. It’s hardly a surprise, when so much of our collective lives is suffused with our personal means of transport.

When visualizing cars as Cartoony Metal People, there are two divergent styles: the Chevron, in which the headlights serve as eyes and the grille as mouth; and the Pixar, where the windshield represents the eyes.


Chevron (top) vs Pixar (bottom).

If one were to rely solely on these examples, one would conclude that cars using headlights for eyes have personalities befitting normal, matter-of-fact suburban humans, whereas windshield-eyed vehicles are far more exaggerated. It's not clear whether this observation is borne out by reality, but how much reality can you ascribe to a sentient vehicle, anyway?

There is something comforting about the Chevron model. Me, I think it’s the eyelids. They seem to convey a certain relaxed - almost sleepy - air. The Chevron car is homey, nonthreatening. This is the kind of car you would take with you to run a few errands in the neighborhood. It’s the car next door. It needs a nap.

The Pixar car, though - is he happy? Is he insane? He looks like he’s up for adventure - an adventure of the sort Thelma and Louise might involve themselves with. He runs on Hi-Test, which he guzzles by the six-pack.

This business of anthropomorphizing our vehicles is nothing new, as I mentioned above, but I suspect it will really get a shot in the arm as we take our first tentative steps into the age of self-driving cars - automobiles in the truest sense of the word. Ascribing a persona to a car that drives itself is really nothing strange: in fact, it seems perfectly natural.

Meanwhile, what say ye? Are you a Chevron or a Pixar kind of person?

Postscriptum: I’ve been reminded of other anthropoid cars by commenters here (thanks, Kevin!) and on Farcebook - specifically, Herbie the Love Bug and My Mother, the Car.

“My Mother, the Car,” was a TV series that aired during the 1965-66 season with a total of thirty episodes. The mid-1960’s were notorious for their horrible sitcoms, and MMTC, which featured a superannuated jalopy ensouled with the protagonist’s dead mother, was one of the worst. Even die-hard TV nostalgia freaks throw up a little in their mouths when they think of this show.

Herbie was the star of six Disney live-action feature films between 1968 and 2005 as well as of a five-episode television series in 1982. You’d think Disney would avoid the concept of an animate vehicle after having seen how badly MMTC bombed, but that didn’t faze them... and Herbie, surprisingly, was a success. Of course, Volkswagen Beetles have a certain cuteness factor, and then there was that dead mother business.

But both Herbie and MMTC’s Gladys, despite being sentient, were cars in their outward appearance. They looked, respectively, like a Volkswagen Beetle and a 1928 Porter. No cartoonishness... but it’s appropriate to give them a passing mention. So there you are.

THE MAN OF MANY LAYERS

I have a friend - a member of our Morning Minyan crowd - who grew up in the sunny little burg of Vidalia, Georgia.

Vidalia, as any food aficionado will tell you, is the home of the eponymous Vidalia onion, the sweetest, mildest allium cepa that you will ever put teeth to. And Richard, well, he knows his onions.

When Richard sits down to breakfast, he will occasionally get a wistful look in his eyes... especially if someone else at the table has ordered a LEO (lox, eggs, and onions, cooked up omelette style). With the slightest prodding, he’ll embark on a reverie, a recounting of the onion-based dishes with which he grew up. It almost puts one in mind of Bubba, Forrest Gump’s shrimp-obsessed Army buddy.

“Anyway, like I was sayin’, onions are the fruit of the earth. You can barbecue ’em, boil ’em, broil ’em, bake ’em, sauté ’em, grill ’em. You can slice ’em and dice ’em. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s your straight-up onions - yellow, red, white, Spanish, pearl. There’s your scallions, your green onions. You got your leeks, shallots, and garlic. There’s onion pie, onion and cabbage pie, onion tarts, onion soup; crispy onions, onion rings, caramelized onions...”

It’s enough to make your eyes glaze over. But one thing they won’t do is water. Vidalias are too mild to make you cry.

You’d think that Richard, coming from a small town as he does, would be a simple man. One-dimensional. But he is actually quite complicated. Got a lot of layers, he does...

ON NEIGHBORS

A couple of Words to Live By from today’s Torah reading:

“...you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” - Leviticus 19:18

“The stranger that sojourns among you shall be to you as the home-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” - Leviticus 19:34

[For those of my Esteemed Readers of the Christian persuasion, I will note that in Mark 12:30-31, Jesus refers to Leviticus 19:18 as the second most important commandment, the first being the words familiar at all Jews as the Sh’ma (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”)]

I conclude from all this that any serious Christian or Jew who gets his or her bowels in a twist about immigrants... or about people different from them in their own communities... maybe needs to go back to religious school. 

Dee and I are especially sensitive to these matters: My grandparents - and most of hers - were immigrants who came to this country in the early years of the twentieth century. Had they stayed in Europe, they would almost certainly have perished at the hands of the Nazis or their co-conspirators.

Moreover, thanks to my employment at the Great Corporate Salt Mine, we were frequent relocators. There were numerous times that we were the strangers that sojourned in strange lands, and it is owing to the communities that welcomed us and treated us as the home-born among them, and who loved us as themselves, that our family was able to thrive throughout the years.

CARS ON THE FENCE: A MEDITATION ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Albert Einstein once famously said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

It could also be said that it is the definition of how a four-year-old plays with toys. Call it discovery rather than insanity, the latter of which is a condition more descriptive of full-grown adults.

Consider the case of a small child playing with toy cars. “If I put these toys on the top of the fence where they often fall on the other side and become unreachable, should I (1) continue putting the toys on top of the fence, or (2) stop putting the toys on top of the fence?”

Ahhh, the tenuous connection between action and consequence: That connection is the great undiscovered country for a four-year-old, and learning how it operates is a Critical Life Skill. Some little ones figure it out pretty quickly, while others take a bit longer.

And some of us adults never quite get it. Being human dooms many of us to living on the slack side of the learning curve.

ECCLESIASTICAL EMPLOYMENT

Every religious institution has a cadre of employees and functionaries without whom it could not function. For example, a Roman Catholic church would be in big trouble without its priest, its altar boys, and whoever gets to swing that incense censer.

The synagogue, of course, is no exception.

Most people, when asked to name the essential personnel at the Jew-Church, will put the rabbi at the top of the list. Not so! It’s nice to have a rabbi, of course - having someone who holds ordination papers lends a certain amount of gravitas to the proceedings and is also handy if you want to conduct a wedding - but he or she is not necessary. Same goes for the chazzan (cantor), whose voice is as superfluous as it is mellifluous. Lay people can perform these roles.

The real essential personnel are the ones who work behind the scenes: the custodial staff. These are the folks that see to all the daily operations of the building without which there would be disorder, filth, and discomfort. These functions overlap to an extent with those of the “Shabbes goy,” a function that really deserves its own category.

“Shabbes goy” is a term that literally means Sabbath Gentile: a non-Jew who performs functions on the Sabbath that are not permitted to the observant Red Sea Pedestrian. It is, of course, not that simple: anything having to do with Jewish law never is. A Jew cannot simply hire a non-Jew to stoke the fireplace on the Sabbath in his stead, for that is equally forbidden. But he might say, “Gee, it’s awfully cold in here (wink wink, nudge nudge),” and the implicit assumption is that the non-Jew, unconstrained by the rules of Sabbath observance, might take it upon himself to throw a log on the fire. The same rationale allows lights to be switched on or off, thermostats to be adjusted, and so on.

Being a Shabbes goy is a respectable profession is its own way, and there are several people who served in that role before achieving fame and fortune in other fields. Perhaps you’ve heard of them: Elvis Presley, Harry Truman, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Thurgood Marshall, and Mario Cuomo.


“I wanna hunka hunka hunka burnin’ chopped liver.”

There are other jobs as well. The shammes (AKA beadle or sexton) may perform minor functions such as ushering and assisting with religious functions. In our congregation, we call these folks the “go-getters,” and their job is to ensure that religious honors are distributed properly and that the service flows smoothly. You would be surprised how much subtle choreography is involved in a religious service.

The gabbaim (singular: gabbai) officiate during the ceremonial reading from the Torah scroll, ensuring that any errors in the reading or cantillation are corrected, and announcing page and verse numbers so that the congregation can follow along in their printed books. Because the scroll contains nothing but consonants - no vowels or musical notes, which must be memorized by the reader - the function of the gabbaim is essential.

And yet perhaps the most unsung (and critical) role in the synagogue is that of the Haisse Dondeh. It’s hard to imagine any Jewish house of worship functioning without at least one Haisse Dondeh, and I suspect that many of our Christian friends may have a person (or persons) with a similar job in their congregations as well. What does he do? When someone is standing at an inappropriate moment, he shouts, “Hey! Siddown there!”

[H/T: Joe Saruk z''l]