Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Bigs



You should all be reading the bigs. If not for anything other than for the occasional amazing post that frames everything inside of a quaint Victorian intellectual conceit.

But read them. You know who they are, even though you never put them in your blogrolls. They are the Urquelle of the blogo-sphere. Come clean. Lose the ego. Wash away the sin of narcissism[1]. We all stand on the shoulders of giants and it is dishonest and unhealthy to act otherwise.

(I guess I am making two points - one meta and one the concretion of reality and metaphor. Take from them what you will.)

[1] If there is one thing I know about, it's sin. And the sin of omission is sin enough for me. Be warned.

Gay Nazis

I have a special place for the Nazi Gay (and it is not a Garden of Earthly Delights):

The successor of the Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider was dismissed yesterday after he revealed a “special” relationship “far beyond” friendship with his former mentor.
...

“I only had him. Now I am all alone. I would spend nights with him and his family and that was important for me because I often was afraid to be alone in the dark,”...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Rock of Ages




Levi Stubbs, Rest in Peace, You left the world a cooler place.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Shut Up


"And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover: for they [are] a rebellious house."

- Eze 3:26

In the service of his lord, the idolator spake, "
Father, you said the truth will set us free. We know the truth is out there, and the truth is that the other side is lying, unbelievably lying. ... God, we ask you to close their mouths."


I think I won another one with the good Reverend Leake. They sell themselves so cheaply sometimes. This one so he could bask for a few minutes in the Alaskan pretender's reflected glory.

Rev. Leake is going to need some pretty high SPF to keep from burning where he's going.

Bonus Proverb:
"He that winketh with the eye causeth sorrow: but a prating fool shall fall"
- Pro 10:10

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Fallen



I'm curious about the large spiders
that have been ferrying leaves
down the house outside my window.
They smile their evil grins
as they go by.



Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Beginning





Way back we wandered the hills of home, just trying to keep our heads down, tending our goats, raising some grain, and every now and then settling down and putting up some houses of clay and fences made of thorns.

We had one or two clever men, cousins, who knew how to speak good, but sometimes they got wild notions that sent them off on a tear. They would cry and shout and say things no one had any idea about. Their eyes would roll back in their heads and they would drool and roll on the ground.

When they came out of it, they said that they had spoken to a great man all shining with light. They said that the man told them that they were the people who were supposed to work the land and that no one else outside of our little troupe were supposed to run goats in these fields or were to take water from our streams. This was our land and we owned it because the old man in shining clothes said so.

So we set up stone markers on all sides of the fields and hills we lived in around two days walk from the houses and barns we built. They were ours and we knew them well after a while.

We had it good for a few years. We had us a few women and they raised some children. Every now and then a traveler or two would cross our land and we would meet them and we would trade some meat, skin, milk, or whatever, for the things they had to trade with. Sometimes we met other families and tribes and would get together for fun and feasts. We married off the extra women and took wives and sometimes even got some men to join up with us. The cousin who spoke with the shining old man when he was rolling on the ground with his eyes turned back in his head told us that we were on the right path and that if we keep following what the shining man says, everything will be good.

Things went well until the dry years hit. Not only was food short, but the neighbors that were so friendly before started to get covetous of the little that we did have. One night a bunch of the men from the next tribe over hit us and took over half of our goats and even burnt down some of our granaries. We were surprised by this. We thought we lived in peace with our neighbors and that our family ties with them would make them think of us as brothers. Yet here they were, taking our food and wrecking our homes just like they didn't know us and we were strangers and enemies.

To top it off, the cousin who spoke with the shining man said that the shining man told him that we brought it on ourselves. He said that we never should have mixed our blood with them nor should we have visited them or showed them any generosity. He said that those folks were trouble from the start and that it was our lust and vanity that brought this trouble down on us. The drought, the hunger, the loss of the flock was punishment for not keeping our land free of the strangers and for opening our homes to the ways of the people from over the hills.

To make up for it, the cousin said, we had to cut off contact with those people from over the hills. If they ever wandered into our land we were to kill them and throw their bodies in the river that flowed back through their pastures. Some of us thought that this was not a good idea, but the memory of the stolen goats and burnt grain, and the sting of being treated like strangers by our own kin made enough of us too angry for mercy.

So we started to watch the borders carefully. Some of the wives and husbands who came from over the hills sneaked away, but most of us kept living our lives. We had to do some extra work to watch the hills, and it was always difficult when one of them was caught and we had to kill him.

It always seemed to be the same three or four men who did the killing.

After a while, those men stopped working, and started to spend more time with the cousin who spoke with the shining man. They started to take charge of things and go against the fathers and mothers who usually split food an labor up. If one of us said anything or complained, it made them angry and they would cuff us or hit us with the sticks they carried. One time, a boy complained that he was always being told to clean the barns and that he wanted to spend time in the field with his brothers, and the next day he was no where to be found. He and a girl from another family were growing friendly and it was said that one of the tough guys was trying to get her to notice him. The barn duty kept the boy away from her and when he complained it looks like they might have cut him from the herd altogether.

Things got better for a while when the rains came, but more of the men were watching the border and fewer were watching the herds and tending the fields. Times got lean again and we had to be careful of how much we ate. The tough guys took over the food supplies and let the rest of us go hungry. Soon there wasn't enough food for any of us and we all were in pretty bad shape.

The cousin who spoke with the shining man had a fit that almost killed him. He was rolling in the dirt, foam came from his mouth, and he was bleeding from cuts and scrapes from the rocks and flint he rolled in. When he came to, he told us that the man was angry with us all. That we had gone against everything he expected us to do and that we were bad and deserved the pain and starvation we were going through. The tough guys seized on this as proof of our weakness and start to beat the rest of us with sticks and then fought among themselves. It was a very bad time for everyone and it was worse because we seemed to hate each other.

After that terrible night, we packed our things and whatever food and animals we had and fled that terrible place. It held only bad memories for us. We knew it was our own doing and we wanted to run to a place where we could find cool water and shade and live in the peace we remembered from our early years.

We saw the birds and goats and wild animals living happy lives untroubled by care. They seemed to be born and live their lives and die without the slightest awareness of the world except what the world provided to them. To them the world was a garden that held all that they needed but was tended by no one. We realized that we were kin to the wild animals, but had lost our place in the garden. The past few years showed us how that had happened, that it was our wickedness and lust and greed that threw us from the world of of bliss and nature. Somewhere along the way, somehow, or someone, had given us a curse of desire and made us wake up to know ourselves and others. Peace would never be ours as long as we wanted more than we needed.

A Man of Constant Sorrow

Give a listen to this. It's always a nice one to ponder.



Wednesday, October 1, 2008