Sigh!

He has let the other shoe drop.  BOOM!  It hit the floor and knocked loose a few chunks of plaster on me down here just sitting quietly watching nothing on one of the 500 available channels from All Silliness All the Time Satellite Direct to Me Anywhere.  (I swear that it’ll only be a few years before some brilliant soul will be able to come up with a hard wire TV feed right into the brain..and only a few years after that the Supremes will rule that TV brain feeds are a a Constitutional Right protected under the First Amendment, and the surgery necessary to get one is allowable for free under our Universal Cradle to Grave…if you can get to the first and avoid the second long enough…Medical Care.)

And, while we are on the subject of Constitutional Rights, the dropped shoe above?  That was all about The Great and Hopeful Ozbama saying he’s OK with guys marrying guys and girls marrying girls.  I guess I’m OK with it, too, if that’s all there is to it.

I mean, I remember when we were little kids my sister sometimes used to marry her dolls to each other, and they were only dolls.  And don’t comic book characters get married?  They don’t even exist except in cartoons.  I think Bugs Bunny even got married once.  Micky and Minnie, Donald and Daisy, Dagwood and Blondie.  Those aren’t real folks having real marriages.  It’s all make believe.

I remember when I married Gloria Smith.  I think I was four.  We kissed, made a mud pie wedding cake and then my mother called me in for supper.  I never even got to say, “I’m home, Honey.  What’s for supper.”

That time.  The next time we got married, we did it a little earlier so I could go to work.  “What do I do now?”  “You go to work silly.  Go outside and wait until it’s time to come home.”  I went outside and me and Eddie Haviland went looking for salamanders down by the railroad tracks in the drainage ditch.  I never came home, never did get to say my line.  For all I know we may still be married.

Don’t get me wrong,  I’m not saying that Fred and Bob, Donna and Lobelia, aren’t real.  I’m not even hinting that what they want to do is merely imitate folks like Michelle and Obama, and play grown up.  No, they love each other with great devotion and tenderness, and would like such things as joint ownership, joint tax returns and medical insurance.  But most of all they want to be known as Mr. and, umm, well, as a couple.  Which, I think is just fine.  That horse has left the barn, anyway.

Let them have the word. After all!  It’s only a word, for heaven’s sake. Well, it’s several words, at least; a noun, a verb, an adjective; several parts of grammar: subject, object, predicate, modifier. Nothing more. Right? So, why not give them the use of the word and come up with something else, some nice other word or term? Something that describes the Life Long Covenantal Spousal Relationship Between Persons of the Opposite Sex Which Is the Only Human Relationship Open to Bearing Children Naturally and Raising Them Within the Safety and Security of a Traditional Human Family Where Both Spouses Willingly Accept Traditional and Natural Roles of Nurturing and Support,  Cooperate in the Education of Their Children and Vow to Love, Honor and Obey Each Other, Forsaking All Others Until Death Parts Them Tens of Years Hence, God Willing. I know it’s a big word, but if someone can come up with a shorter one, maybe after a sufficiently brief evolution we can get a Presidential endorsement of it and get over this silliness.

I did say silliness, didn’t I.  Not that I really meant it, because I know that the people who would like to see a re-definition of marriage are not at all of the same mind about it as I might be.  They are dead serious about it; seize the moment, take no prisoners serious.  Which is why I am all in favor of letting them have that word for their very own, and any others they want to go along with it.

If , as I said before, if that is all there is to it.  About that, though, I wonder.

I’ll let others argue about what marriage should be, or point out that it can’t be whatever we want it to be because.  I ain’t smart enough.  But this scares me:

About five years ago I went to ameeting in my home town.  New Hampshire was considering a law to allow same ses marriages, and a committee was formed to travel the state and gather public input.  One of the people on the film, David Parker came and offered his testimony about what was happening in Massachusetts, and how he had been jailed for not wanting it to happen to his children.

That’s the part that scares me.  If it’s only about words, who cares.  If it’s about more than that, I begin to worry, and I think you should,

 

 

Speaking With a Forked Tongue

In the old Westerns the Injuns would, with expressions of anger, disgust and sadness at the obvious stupidity of the whites and their continuous double dealing, say, “He speaks with a forked tongue.” Now, while making no comparisons between sitting presidents and squatting demons the term “a forked tongue”, and its close cousin “speaking from both sides of his mouth, does conjure  unwelcome notions and sad memories, paint an ugly pictures of avoidable tragedies. What must one do to be rid of such unwholesome thoughts?

You are probably wondering why the little musing above.  From among the very many stories which one may choose I offer this one.

This latest example speaks of  one who sneaks away in the middle of the night to fly across the globe and creep before the sun rises into the besieged city, sign something that pledges to leave and to stay at the same time, promises…like someone we once one heard promise?…this war is over and then fly home to fanfares and trumpets, proclaiming…like someone we have heard before?…the equivalent of peace in our time.

Oh, the cynic will say, “All of them do that.”  Let them say it.  They are probably right.  The squatting demon says it, too.  And, he knows, that as long as enough fools listen and “Hope” where hope is vain, and trust where trust is poison, he will have so much fun.

The One Percenters

(or)  The Recent Bold Deeds of The Most Busy and Industrious Band of True Believers and Followers of the Religion Of Peace

Not too long ago someone sought to prove a point, that being that most followers of Islam are nice folks who just want to get along, that not every Muslim was an Islamist … a PC word used now in lieu of the word Terrorist, which is fast becoming a word not to be used in polite society…..  After all one cannot call a billion people terrorists.  I mean some of them are crazy, some of them dribbling idiots, some kings, some murderous dictators, some rabid preachers and even more rabid politicians, some oil billionaires, and someone needs to stay home and cook.

They mentioned the results of a years long poll, worldwide in scope, by the Gallup folks and sponsored by a bunch of pro-Muslim organizations here in the Untied States…if fast fading memory serves.  The poll concluded that only 1% of Muslims were interested in converting the world by any means, fair or foul, into a seamless garment of burka clad women and bearded men with four wives apiece and 70 virgins waiting them in paradise.

This conclusion was reached, one may speculate, from analysis of data gathered from the usual statistically accurate survey of 1,00o some odd folks…perhaps in every country where there are one thousand Muslims, but who knows.

Only 1#?

It is  only too easy to adopt the term One Percenters from the Occupy Everything crowd of anarchists and use it to denote this extremely busy band of murderers, bombers, arsonists, rapists, enslavers, “occupiers”, whiners, thugs and criminals who do not worship any god I can recognize…and the governments and vast numbers of angry maniacs who support them anywhere one or two of them are gathered, it seems, in their prophet’s name, peace be upon him.

You doubt??

Read on then, here.

This thing comes out every month.  One would think, from the way our Main Stream media is addicted to feeding its slobbering audience with stories of gore and guts, that they would jump at the chance to cover things like these assorted acts of horror, mayhem, intimidation and crime all committed by a mere, but extremely busy, one percent of the worshipers of something or other.  But, no.  The fact is they hate Christianity more.  And they hate anyone who is a believing Christian.  Did you ever wonder why?

The battle is not between Islam and the rest of the world.

The battle is the same one it has always been; the one between Good and Evil.

Thinking About The Fourth Commandment

I read something this morning which had the term “filial piety” in it.  I liked the rhythm of the phrase, the balance of sound and syllable.  It was almost dance like.  Silly old guy that I am I got up and did a little waltz around the room muttering “filial Piety” in 3-4 time over and over.  You want to know something?  It worked.

I found that you can dance to Filial Piety.  On Dick Clark’s American Bandstand that would have made it a hit.  On the other hand, it does not seem the kind of song that could be made a hit of these days.  I mean could you think of “Filial Piety” being danced to in the modern version of a ballroom…a mosh pit?  Would it ever be a song sung by Lady Gaga, or her spiritual grandmother Madonna of blasphemic fame?

Now that I think of it, the very last time that a song named Filial Piety could have been written in 3-4 time and become a hit would have been back in the 1950′s.  The very last person to play it would have been Dick Clark.  Perhaps someone like Bobby Vinton or Bobby Darin would have been the very last recording artist to perform it.

Oh, something with that name might be put out now and be listened to by a zillion plugged in hoodie wearing zombies, but it would definitely not have anything to do with what I can think of as Filial Piety, and what it really means.  I picture a modern Filial Piety being performed by a group possibly named Total Destruction playing in a style called  Kroolmetal Annihilation…all the rage don’t you know..and the song beginning something like this:

Refuse, refuse, refuse to bend
break the back of fatherhood. end
and begin the death of you and him
pity pity piety weak and whining deity

Something way cool like that, you know, with a lot of screaming and slobbering and cannon loud pounding percussion going on all the time. A nice hate filled piece for the mosh pit life’s become.

Here’s what filial piety really is and really does, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
” Observing the fourth commandment brings its reward: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.”8 Respecting this commandment provides, along with spiritual fruits, temporal fruits of peace and prosperity. Conversely, failure to observe it brings great harm to communities and to individuals. “

It really is like a dance, you know.

And the sad, sad thing about it is that the music is still playing and the ballroom has slowly emptied. Now mothers don’t want to have babies. And fathers don’t want to be fathers. And children? They are not allowed to be born, to grow and learn to dance to that sweet song.

Great harm has been brought to communities and to individuals.

Just sayin’.

Who Will See Your Tears?

We just finished reading a book, an epistolary novel, and a very good one at that, too.  At the end “R”, the character to whom all the letters are addressed over a forty year period, appears briefly only to leap from a quarry wall and dashe his brains out on the rocks below.  A Polish priest rushes over to him as he lies bloody and not quite yet dead, and blesses him.

Since this all happens in a concentration camp somewhere in Germany, the guards, cheated of their prey, and enraged at the priest club that poor man to death, while “R” sees and sheds a tear.  The tear, “seen by Another” in the words of the author saves him.  It is a happy ending.  Of course the book is by a Catholic author, so what else would one expect.  Catholicism…Christianity…is all about happy endings.

“R” had spent his life in a prodigality of sin, coming to realize in the darkness of the concentration camp that there was no reason to continue living.  Choosing death in this life was his final gesture of waste and uselessness.  Of course, what better place to do so than in a concentration camp, a place whose sole purpose is to use up and discard as useless the lives we have been given, the State not only allowing it, but positively encouraging it, assisting it and participating in it?

But once State organized and controlled death appears, no one is safe from it.  That is the lesson which should have been learned.  Alas,  look at Holland.

But, you need not go that far away.  Look at Oregon.  There Death has come to live, taken up residence, cast his dark shadow over the state.  And no one cares that Death is growing fat on Oregonians who like “R” have grown tired with life; even in what I am reliably informed is a beautiful place to live.  No concentration camp, Oregon.  There the state has many able surrogates and quieter more subtle ways to assist Death’s dark purpose.  He has learned to smile, to walk softly, to creep ever more secretly.  But, it will not be long before State and Death dance openly in Oregon.  For now, quiet, Death works.

I was interested to read this from the report:  ” The most commonly expressed concerns of those dying from physician-assisted suicide were unchanged from previous reports: less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable, losing autonomy, and loss of dignity.”

The term used often to describe those whose conditions, whatever they were, made them “less able, autonomous and dignified’ was “Lebens Unwertes Leben”;  lives unworthy of life.  The decision is theirs, now, in Oregon.  And the lovers of death do nothing, it seems to try to persuade them otherwise.  That will change, too..  If you look at the numbers, it has already begun to do so.  There are no brutish guards with rifle butts to club those who would help, yet.  That may be simply because there are none who will come to the side of the despairing dying ones and bless them on their way.

Death can be so lonely.

Who will see your tears?

Just Say No!

OK, ABC and Disney, Hollywood, Pepsi,the  Democratic Party, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, the other two nets, every newspaper in the country, and anyone who advertises in them or on TV, medical insurance, auto insurance, insurance insurance. It all stinks like fish gurry.  That’s what we’re being fed, and we think it’s filet mignon.

Are we really that stupid?  Have we really been such lousy pushovers?  Is it really the truth; that these guys have figured out that all we are is a bunch of stomachs, sexual organs and fat butts?  Seems like it.

No you say?  Prove it.

Don’t give them any of your time, and don’t spend any of your money on them.

Did I leave out anything?  Oh, yeah, the cable and satellite companies that carry alla that garbage into your home. Stop it all.  Cut it all out, the noise, the flash, the bling, the fly, the whatever the hell they come with next to make us forget that this is all a big swindle.

That’s gonna leave many of us with a lot of loose change and an awful lot of time on our hands. Try reading a book.  Try reading a good book.  Take a walk.  Actually have a conversation about something other than baseball or your nails and hair.  Put the money in a shoe box or a bank and forget about it.

Hey!  Here’s an idea.  Why not spend the time saying a prayer for the state of the world, these Untied States and our own poor selves.  And, another idea just occurred to my mind.  Why not use some of that new found money to help some folks; like folks with time on their hands because they have no work to do.  Or, folks with time on their hands because they never had any work to do, or because they can’t work…or hungry folks…or sick folks.  You know?

And, if or when the suits in the big buildings wake up and find everyone’s left the room,  and they come outside and say, “Hey!  OK, we screwed up.  Sorry.  Come on back.”  And their hands are out in supplication, and they’re smiling pleadingly, why not everyone say, “Nah, find another sucker.”  And, try finding an honest job while you’re at it.

‘Cause you know what all of this is, don’t you?  It’s “Bread and Circuses”, where the Big Deals figure out how to keep the lid on, keep the schmucks (that’s you Mr. and Mrs. America) happy so they never figure out how lousy life is; they never figure out that they are owned, bought and paid for in the greatest swindle since the original Bread and Circus deal back there in Rome.  Did you see the movie Matrix?  You’re in it.  I’m in it.

We’re all in it.

Wake up.

Walk away.

Just sayin’.

Bring Out Your Dead!

“Good Lord, Agonia, will you take a look at this!”  One wonders if anything will shock over in Blighty any more.  Or, have they finally exhausted decency.

The blog...and the comments…show, to me anyway, the insidious nature of the creepy materialism that has gotten into our minds and souls, like the cold and damp of a British winter infects the very bones. It is an ache.

Wars and crises over the years (broadcast in real time and live on TV) have hardened us to those horrors we were once blissfully unaware of, and in that ignorance thought ourselves incapable of descending to.  Too late we learned, shuddered and were sickened.  Now?  Time has removed all sense of horror at the millions lost last century; the hundreds of millions shot, bombed, burned, starved and neglected to death.  Some, many, even doubt it happened.

And so this begins to occur, slowly first, and spread, a plague of materialism, a coarsening of intellect, a hardening of heart, a selfish willingness to think anything, to consider any option for comfort and ease in the name of self.  In the names of one extreme sort of materialism or other they participate willingly in worse horrors and propose little domestic horrors-a- day to cure a headache, improve a soft drink or cookie, to warm a swimming pool.

The “wonderful” promises of advances in medicine and science if we just ignore our common humanity allow us to forget that in many ways those advances come at the expense of life, and what was thought, once, our special place in the order of the world, and the dignity that place gave us…creatures of matter and spirit joined.    This latest is thought so little of other than a means of recycling something which would be left to rot.  Imagine how many profitable acres could be reclaimed for malls and sub-divisions from cemeteries?  Imagine Arlington as a Hyatt resort, a Four Seasons, a Ritz-Carlton?  Why not?  What is the corpse of s soldier but dead flesh and good fuel.  Did he not serve his country in life?  Why not serve as well dead?

Now as this article accompanying the blog post tells us we can and should entertain thoughts about good and practical things to do with our leftovers and if we can think of doing it, why, then we should do it. I do hope, at least, that they will make sure to save the hair, the fillings, the eyeglasses and the dentures before they fire up the furnace.

Oh, yes, and the fat, too, wonderful as an engine lube, don’t you know.

“Darling, since you put Grandpa’s Own in the car, we’ve lost that nasty ping and knocking and gotten another 10mpg. out if it.” “Yes we have, Agonia.  Best move I ever made, my pet.”

As you’ll see from the comments to the good priest’s blog post, at least one of his interlocutors finds little if anything wrong with the idea.  Good St. Johnathan Swift, Pray for us!