Concession

It would appear that my ten days awaiting a court decision announcing a recounting of votes in the U.S. Presidential Election have been in vain, and that I must finally concede the election to a young fellow named--of all things!--Barack (or Barrack, perhaps) O'Bama; an Irishman, I gather.

I wish him the best, but I cannot help be a little downhearted. My hope for a cricket administration had been to raise the median age of death on the North American continent; and I've been told that Mr. O'Bama has informed the public that he intends to lower same.

The problem of evil.

Primeval man is a spiritual sea creature, who inhabits a vast ocean of light which suffuses him and every thing about him, and through which, weightless, he may effortlessly propel himself in any direction. Impatient with the promise of an ever intensifying light, he demands to see the source. A helpful friend pointing him to the surface, swimming up and clambering to shore he encounters the mountain and discovers far above the burning ball in the sky, the source. Here, although gravity crushes his bones and grinds his joints, and each step cuts his feet, feeling himself more exalted the closer he comes to the source, he climbs the mountain and struggles with his fellow man to reach it. But it is not the source; it is only a sign to remind him of the true light in the sea toward which every crushing blow and humiliating defeat seems to drag him back. The water now appears black, but deep inside he comes to recognize the way back to the light, if there is any way, is to consent to drown in darkness. Deep inside is the notion; as deep and as sure as the notion of home.

My new mission.

I've decided to dedicate my life and pour all my resources into ridding the world of screwed up priorities.

PZ Myers carries out threat to desecrate the Eucharistic victim.

Even if Catholics are both wrong and stupid, P.Z. Myers is mean, just like a person who would come into my house and rip my three year-old son's "art" off the fridge and burn it in front of me... And that's sadder, much sadder, than being wrong and stupid.

Another in a series of curious facts about transcendental numbers.

π wrongs make a right.

* * UPDATE * *
Readers have pointed out to me that -π wrongs also make a right.
-

June (Oops, I mean July) is music month at "Call me Mara"

Challenged with the failure of the popular song By the Rivers of Babylon to confront the more picaresque portions of the Psalm, I have endeavored to search out the lost verses. I have found the following

This verse:

Blessed be he

that shall take and dash thy little ones
against, against the rock,
he who shall repay thee payment which thou hast paid us.

will scan about like this one:

When the wicked

Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the lords song in a strange land

And periodic chants of

Raze it, raze it, to the foundation.

also fit right in, where the "to the foun" fall on three eighth notes after an eighth rest on the downbeat.

sing along to try it out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XVEKKJOLRww

Though I, for one, am glad the Catholic Church finally entirely stopped dashing children against rocks back in the 1970's.

Kumbayà of Canned Pastà

I promised to post this. Use it wisely.

Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee,
Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee;
Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee,
O Chef Boyardee.

Beefaroni: Chef Boyardee,
Beefaroni: Chef Boyardee;
Beefaroni: Chef Boyardee,
O Chef Boyardee.

Ravioli: Chef Boyardee,
Ravioli: Chef Boyardee;
Ravioli: Chef Boyardee,
O Chef Boyardee.

Alphaghetti: Chef Boyardee,
Alphaghetti: Chef Boyardee;
Alphaghetti: Chef Boyardee,
O Chef Boyardee.

Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee,
Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee;
Boyardee, my Chef, Boyardee,
O Chef Boyardee.

Ny neighbor Vlad

Recently while I was working in my front garden my neighbor passed by on the pavement. Attracting my attention, he called out, "aixscuse me, vair ees see Vole-Mart?"
I smiled inwardly at his thick eastern European accent, but I politely gave him the best instructions I could to find the Wal-Mart outlet on the the edge of our modest suburban development.
However, mere hours later I saw him storming up our street complaining bitterly he'd been misdirected, carrying a large vole under each arm.

I've always found the Great Circle of Life

... to be unspeakably depressing.

Amazon site lacking valuable information.

Dear Amazon dot com:

I had hoped to publish on your website my remarks concerning the comments about a customer review of a book available on your site, but I could not find the "Remarks" button in the comments section of the particular customer review of the book in question. I feel that the comments section itself should be reserved for comments about the review of the book. Needless to say, I am unwilling to clutter up that space with remarks on the comments about the review of the book.

It would be an interesting and valuable source of information if I could read the remarks of other book review comments viewers as well. Would you please consider providing this service in future? Thank you.

yours,
cricket.

Toward a Gender Neutral Language

I've been thinking a lot about sexist language. I appreciate that its odious effects have been ameliorated (paradoxically at the urgings of a small group of female men who, we might argue, seem to exhibit a hatred of their own sex) by the retirement of such vile words as chairwoman and aviatrix from the English language. These words and other like them vivify and perpetuate feminine hegemony by means of a secondary lexicon explicitly designed to exalt the female sex. In the former regime, for example, it was fine to be an “actor” as anyone male or female could. Only those of the female sex were privileged to be “actresses”. The male performer could in no analogous way distinguish himself and was relegated perforce to inferior status.

However many words survive the old order, and the subjugation of the bearer of the XY chromosome persists in the use of separate pronouns for the female sex. Grammatically, the personal pronouns “he”, “him” and “his” have always referred to a person of either sex. However the continued use of “she” and “her” applied only to a man of the female sex grants him an unwarranted elevation. While we must assiduously avoid the awkward use of plural pronouns with singular verbs as unduly offensive to the sensitive grammarian, the slightly less cumbersome “he/she”, “him/her” constructions only exacerbate the entrenched sexism in the language.

While the elimination of separate female pronouns would be salutary, the final goal in our pursuit of sexual equality must be the prohibition of the word “woman”. I propose, beginning among society’s more enlightened set, the immediate establishment of social taboos on the word. “Woman” must be as the new “Negro”—its sister word “Womyn” the new “Nigger”—its each use inflicting mortal wounding to the dignity of that half the human race to whom it was never granted to be applied. Gradually, men of both sexes and all levels of society will begin to see the word for what it is—the last vestige of the ball-and-chain of the past’s oppressor-sex.

Long gone, thankfully, are the days when those of the female sex could ensconce themselves spider-like in their homes surrounded by loving children, while forcing their hapless male partners to labor tirelessly in thankless pursuits to provide them with bon-bons and luxury items. Need we be reminded of those loathsome days everyday in our language?

UFOs

I once saw something flying that I could not identify as an object. What do you call that anyway?

* * UPDATE * *
Thanks to ed the roman who suggested it might be an Unidentified Flying Subject or Verb, I have my final answer. What we had was an Unidentified Flying Part of Speech. or UFPOS.

New form of "Reincarnation Therapy" in Holland.

From the story:

THE HAGUE, 12/04/08 - The municipality of Maastricht has pressurised unemployed people to follow reincarnation therapy. Uncooperative welfare recipients were told that their attitude could have consequences for their allowance, local newspaper De Limburger reported Friday.

The Social Services, which grants allowances and attempts to get recipients back to work, urged at least one unemployed resident of Maastricht to accept the guidance of a reincarnation therapist. Returning' to a previous life, would supposedly help them regain their balance and enhance their chances of finding work.

I must say I applaud this measure of allowing clients to return to previous lives: to supplement the form of reincarnation therapy already in force in Holland--speeding them on to the next one.

"i" before "e"

Weird is not so weird; we're surfeited with exceptions.


* * UPDATE * *
I'm an idiot.

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.