Symbolism

One of the great losses to our civilization has been the slow dismantlement since the end of the Middle Ages of our language of symbolism. Beginning with a perhaps laudable desire to hear thing spoken plainly and to see things as they are, it ends with the death of a common poesy and with that the irrecoverable loss of the beauteous sense of the connectedness of all created things.

In an effort to contain just a small portion of the sweet water of our shared metaphor in that leaky bucket of civil society's now rapidly deteriorating conventions, I here insert the stopper of a few of our audible and visible symbols along with their respective meanings.

The quick (quarter second) toot on the horn of my '98 Chervrolet Cavalier automobile just means "Hello!".

The more insistent half-second honk of the horn means, "Notice: I'm here!"

The horn blast longer than one half second means, "You, driver of a '07 Nissan Altima are doing something I find to be quite odious and I think you should come to terms with that fact and cease your repellent behavior at once."

Here with experience you may gauge the level of offensiveness of the driver's act by the sound's duration.

The extended single middle finger of an automobile's pilot displayed prominently against the inside right hand front window of a '07 Nissan Altima means: "cricket, you're number one in my books. Thank you for pointing out my errors and helping me to become a safer and more considerate driver. Godspeed!"

Hey!

You know what they don't pack into cans like sardines anymore?

Sardines.

Today I opened a can and they were swimming laps.

The Last Holy Words

There used to be great swathes of the lexicon that signified holy words. Now, due to the inattentiveness of their caretakers there remain but two. These, jealously guarded by their respective franchises with a vehemence on which we--who once thought the name of our lord and savior to be at least as holy--can only look with envy, show no sign of falling into profane utterance. The two last holy words are, of course--allow me to type them in with all due wonder and awe: Holocaust and Nigger.

The invention of God

I have a chuckle whenever atheists proclaim that we invented God, as though that solved the matter, and then when Christians get their backs up about it. To say that man invents God isn't question-begging so much as it is a truism. That's what man does--invent. He invents the unknowable God just as all the great symphonies, sculptures and paintings, stories and poems were invented. That is to say man discovers--or, literally, in-vents ("comes into")--all of these things. We're good inventors, man. There remains the problem of the identity of a Creator.

Kerfuffilay at York U

People have been saying that the most jaw-dropping statement in the story is this one:

"It would be equivalent to having a debate over whether or not you can beat your wife," Ms. Holloway said.

But, honestly, I have to agree with her. In fact, I've noticed before that nearly all the excellent arguments in favor of freedom of choice in abortion could equally validly be used to support freedom of choice in wife beating:

Stop forcing on me your religious beliefs that tell you women are equally as important as men.

If you're against wife beating, just don't beat your wife, .

The decision to beat his wife is one of the most difficult, private choices that a man must make. It should not be left to some politician or bureaucrat in Washington or Ottawa.

Get your rosaries off my belt.

... and the like

More in the series of little known facts.

67:1 is the ratio of the number people who have used the word kafkaesque to the number of people who have read Kafka. Although not strictly part of the little known fact, I would add editorially that this is about as it ought to be.

Announcing my candidacy for POTUS.

Y'all'll have to write my name, cricket, in on the ballot. And after the election change the Constitution so Canadians can serve, but doggone it, I think I got a shot.

I got some policy ideas in mind but if you have any questions or suggestion post 'em here.

It was -23° C this morning when I awoke.

I had been promised a temperature of -16° C or 257 K.

When this happens I can almost feel the actual physical shift of the tectonic plates in my brain. It drops to one knee and tumbles momentarily until I spread my brain's outstretched arms and fingers to stop it. It lies supine breathing heavily but once more normally, yet ever closer to Hollywood, California and further away from our loving Father.

"Pete" Seeger, what are you all about?

There is a new song out, that seems, lately, to be taking this
country by storm. It was apparently written by one Mr. Peter
"Pete" Seeger. I believe it is cause for some concern.

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
...which is just fine.

I'd hammer in the evening.
Assuming, you'd had a break in the afternoon, this would also
be acceptable.

All over this land.
Fine, but pay your own airfare. There are too many people wanting
to hammer all over this land on my dime.

I'd hammer out danger.
This is laudable. If you encounter danger anywhere it is wise to
hammer it out; here, I presume that to hammer something out means
to destroy it. Certainly a hammer, in esse, maintains a certain
element of destructive power. However and yet, it is all too easy
to assume—incorrectly—that danger is so very rife "all over this
land". Any little problem begins to appear as the proverbial nail.

I'd hammer out a warning.
Now I'm starting to worry a little more. Just who exactly are
you warning?  What is the content of your warning? Is this a
threat?

I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters.
This makes no sense at all. Is "love between [your] brothers and
sisters" something to be destroyed with a hammer just as danger
was? Is this the threat contained in your warning above? Is it
time to look seriously at intensive treatment by mental health
professionals for Mr Seeger?

All over this land.
Overall, I think thanks are in order that Mr. Seeger doesn't
have a hammer. I would advise keeping all bells and songs out
of the hands of this menace as well.

Who's with me?

UPDATE: Jan 23, 2008
I've been informed that Mr. Seeger has been loudly proclaiming
his procurement of not only a hammer but a bell and a song as
well:

Well I've got a hammer
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing.

It clearly is time to reconstitute HUAC...

all over this land

Vignettes of Family Life (No 1 in a series )

Last week, my wife cooked me a beautiful steak, bloody and and cool in the middle, just the way I love it.

"Well done!" I said, and she struck me in the mandible with closèd fist.

Death Penalty

Empirical arguments aside, I don't understand the argument that I should theoretically be against the death penalty because the possibility of an innocent man being executed by the state exists. If there is no death penalty, the same innocent man might be imprisoned which is a terrible thing. You can never give him the lost years of his life back, even if you do later discover his innocence. Why is this not an argument that I should be opposed to imprisonment for criminals?

I think the innocent man argument against the death penalty arises from the entirely secular notion that the worst thing is death. It is not. Christ showed us just how an innocent man can die, conquering death in the process--making it sweet and benign. Who doesn't believe that our Lord heaps abundant blessings on the executed innocent, as on the imprisoned innocent?

Far worse, on a cosmic scale, than an innocent man being executed by the state is an unrepentant guilty man being executed by the state. In fact, that might actually be a valid argument against the death penalty.

On whether Ornette Coleman shall be anathema

A colleague at my last job inflicted Coleman on us from time to time. Now every time I rag on him (Coleman, not the colleague) someone rises up in his defense. One fellow I argued with claimed his work obtained an excellence above all Beethoven's opera save the late quartets which do apparently measure up to Coleman's greatness! His excellence at any given time is a function of his sidemen (he seems have had some good trumpet players associated with him), but even granting a degree of excellence doesn't preclude diabolism. His music is a lie--after the Father of Lies--on multiple levels, beginning with his fake saxophones, including the album title The Shape of Jazz to Come and lying deeply in his notion that there is nothing to choose between cacophony and melody, chaos and rhythm, tension and resolution. But mostly the lie is in his conceit that progressivism is some substitute for talent.

That all said, don't despair. In practice, to enjoy Ornette Coleman is probably less harmful to the soul of a sophisticated listener--who, on the deepest level, almost certainly doesn't believe the lies, but only plays along for while--than it is to that of the poor urban black teenager to hark the paeans to the gods of murder, pimping, cash and large shiny jewelry.

Then, I could be wrong on all of this.

I have no friends on facebook.

Little known Beatitudes

Blessed are they who sneeze.

Some of the guys with no arms and no legs who have had jokes told about them:

Bill, Jack, Matt, Phil, Russell, Bob (Boy), Nick, Doug, Pete, Pat, Lucas.

...

Update: Axel and Rod, natch.

Another update: D'oh! I can't believe I forgot to mention Claude.

Butto under house arrest...

... responds by crushing a beer can on her forehead.

This is extremely worrying.

Apparently, the north-central Manitoba boreal forest is now emitting (yes, emitting) 2 grams of carbon per square meter per year. There is now no hope for us. The planet will be an inferno in six months unless we act now and act decisively.

I appeal to all my faithful readers to gain weight. Our bodies are more than 18 percent carbon. That means for every ten pounds you gain, nearly two pounds of carbon are safely sequestered. If you commit to gaining ten pounds each year, you will effectively counteract the disastrous effect of more than 400 square meters of poisonous boreal forest.

Eat! Porterhouse steaks, fois gras, veal cutlets, ice cream and candy--it matters not. But please, I implore you: Eat!

Today, I am Bick Pentameter. (a little more "poetry" inspired by this)

Lines written on the Feast of Guardian Angels

It seems so long ago that cannon blast,
did win the waterline of th’Eve Marie;
She's scuttl’d now in icy depth of past,
seen but by Wisdom's eye if wisdom be.
But soon, in minutes, hours perhaps, or years,
when, bubbling to the face, her gift, her son,
the solitary splinter’d plank careers,
one half unconscious ragged soul hangs on.
Its tar will fill his throat and eyes, its nails
five times will pierce his passive flesh, its mass
will break his back; his strength his weakness hails
till salty wounds flow freely to this pass:

His low'ring head into the gulf to see
the mermaids rolling, arching, joyful, free.

My dream of a nonjudgmental world.

In my spare time I fantasize about a truly beautiful universe where no man would ever judge a book by its cover.

Just think: you could spend 25 years of your life browsing libraries and bookstores for a single volume on ornithology...

(including eighteen months in the children's sections).

Moral Ambiguity on Hogwarts Grounds, distilled

Tom: (knock knock)

[Dick (Rubeus) opens door]

Tom: I'm here to kill Harry. Is he here unarmed and huddled in that corner under an invisibility cloak?

Dick: Is who here? Harry?

Tom: Yes Harry! Is Harry here unarmed and huddled in that corner? [points]

Dick: No.