I know that many of you have been eagerly counting the minutes until the launch of the second installment of the Literati Irritati Frittati reviews.
Well, dear bookworms, it is now time to reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the Sheltering Sky, and repose.
Yes, this second review is about that monumental and monstrous achievement by Mr. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky, first published in the year of our Lord 1949.
I finished reading the book some 4 hours ago, and even though the preparation and consumption of a copious meal now separates me from the closing, chilling paragraph, I am still a bit shaken by the experience of reading this novel. It is that good and that disturbing.
If you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to abandon this post this very second, close your laptop and stow it behind that stack of well-worn Victorian erotica you keep in your bedroom closet, rush to your local purveyor of Literati, purchase a copy of the book and return to your hovel with great haste to immerse yourself in the absolutely terrifying tale of three Americans and their descent into the hell of the Sahara.
I find it impossible to review this story without a plethora of spoilers, so please go read the book and then return shaken, bleary-eyed and perhaps an inch wiser to this thread.
I can tell you in advance that this brilliant work of art is the dubious recipient of 9 out of a possible 10 Winonas on the internationally accepted Literati Frittati scale.
First, I have to say that unlike the previous entry I read this book right. Its 318 pages were devoured in 5 days, which, for me, is somewhat of an achievement, since I not only have to suffer the indignity of working for a living, my AADDHDTV also kicked in like a motherfucker.
Yet, this story is so engrossing that even those like me with a perpetual wondering mind can’t help but return their horrified eyes to the printed page.
The story follows Port,Kit and Tunner, three affluent Americans, on a helter skelter journey through French North Africa, some years after World War Deux.
You realize after the first few pages that nothing good awaits these people, and yet you can’t help but cringe for these characters when they make one very bad decision after the other.
This is no small achievement from the author as none of these people are very sympathetic. But the enormously menacing and alien world through which they travel makes the reader huddle close to these characters and hope that they come to their senses and turn on their heels and head back towards the comfort and sanity of civilization.
Instead, the trio delves ever deeper into a hostile and desolate world.
We never get to learn much about the background of the three young Americans, other than some hints at the sources of their discontent, yet we feel intensely for their plight.
Bowles is an extraordinarily effective writer, and his ability to evoke dread and gloom with just a few sentences is remarkable.
The Sheltering Sky is one of those few books that isn’t a page too long, which is what I consider the mark of a great writer.
His description of Morocco, its barren, unforgiving landscape and its inhabitants is excellent.
Like all great literature, The Sheltering Sky tells a story which illuminates something about the human condition which less alert souls would normally not see.
It is a story about privileged people stumbling into the harsh reality of the African desert, but it is also a story about the terror of cosmic loneliness.
Read this book. It will change you.
Night night.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Second Coming
Yesterday, I finished The Second coming by Mr. Walker Percy, first published in 1980.
Before I launch into my critique, I have to admit that I didn’t read the book right.
By that I mean that I took far too long to read it, almost three weeks.
Being a very slow reader, I found that novels are much better when you finish them within a week.
I tend to accuse authors of being too wordy and making their stories unnecessarily long, when it is partly my own fault, because leaving a story unread for a few days creates the illusion of a slowed-down pace of plot development.
So, at the risk of not being entirely fair to Mr. Percy, I will proceed. Besides, I don’t think he’d care very much one way or the other on account of him being quite dead.
The Second coming follows two characters: Allison and Will. Allie is a girl who has escaped from a mental institution and Will is a middle-aged, retired millionaire who spends his days golfing and thinking about the suicide of his father. Will suffers from mysterious spells which cause him to fall down and black out.
The narrative alternates between the two characters until they meet somewhere in the second half of the story.
I found Allie’s character by far the more interesting, as we first meet her sitting on a bench in a South Carolina town ( the whole story unfolds there, not counting a few flashbacks that take place elsewhere) without any memory of herself or anything else. As it turns out, Allie has received electroshock treatments which cause temporary amnesia. Allie is like the first person on earth and she needs to learn pretty much everything anew, including the difference between denotation and the sometimes contradictory connotations in human communication. Her own cryptic, alliterative speech pattern is the only bit of humor that I could discern in this story.
I got to like Allie and was rooting for her to succeed in her attempts to function in the world.
Will is Walker Percy. This becomes very clear when I saw the picture of the author on the back of the dust jacket and when I read his bio on Wiki. Percy’s father committed suicide by shotgun blast to the head, as did his grandfather. Having also lost his mother at a young age, it isn’t surprising that death and suicide become a major theme in his work, but I found the many instances where Will wonders about his father’s suicide and (SPOILER ALERT: the discovery that during a hunting incident in his youth, his father had tried to kill Will) too repetitive. Although the end of the story is satisfactory, there isn’t enough plot development to keep one interested in Will’s plight.
I am starting to notice that some writers are too interested in their own persona which they inject in a story.
There is no doubt, though, that Percy is a good writer, with a good eye for the Carolina landscape, true-to-life dialogue and more than a little insight in the world and people surrounding his characters.
The religious theme in the story didn’t work that well and the characters beside the two protagonists are sketched quickly and never really come to life. For example, we never get to learn much about his wife and daughter, other than that the former was fat and is now dead and the latter is a sour-faced, discontented Jesus Freak.
The title may hint at Will’s existential angst and fascination with Christianity, but the real meaning of it is revealed at the end of the book when (SPOILER ALERT) we learn that sexual ecstasy is seen as the first coming (yes, literally) and that the longing for death is seen as the second.
Overall I enjoyed The Second Coming. I liked it much better than the previous two books I read (All the King’s men, by Pen Warren and The human Stain by Philip Roth [boy, that one was disappointing]) but I thought the book I read prior to these two, The good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck was much better.
On the Literati Frittati scale, Mr. Percy receives 6.5 out of a possible 10 Winonas.
PS. I have been told that his novel The Moviegoer is quite good, so I will read that one later this year.
Before I launch into my critique, I have to admit that I didn’t read the book right.
By that I mean that I took far too long to read it, almost three weeks.
Being a very slow reader, I found that novels are much better when you finish them within a week.
I tend to accuse authors of being too wordy and making their stories unnecessarily long, when it is partly my own fault, because leaving a story unread for a few days creates the illusion of a slowed-down pace of plot development.
So, at the risk of not being entirely fair to Mr. Percy, I will proceed. Besides, I don’t think he’d care very much one way or the other on account of him being quite dead.
The Second coming follows two characters: Allison and Will. Allie is a girl who has escaped from a mental institution and Will is a middle-aged, retired millionaire who spends his days golfing and thinking about the suicide of his father. Will suffers from mysterious spells which cause him to fall down and black out.
The narrative alternates between the two characters until they meet somewhere in the second half of the story.
I found Allie’s character by far the more interesting, as we first meet her sitting on a bench in a South Carolina town ( the whole story unfolds there, not counting a few flashbacks that take place elsewhere) without any memory of herself or anything else. As it turns out, Allie has received electroshock treatments which cause temporary amnesia. Allie is like the first person on earth and she needs to learn pretty much everything anew, including the difference between denotation and the sometimes contradictory connotations in human communication. Her own cryptic, alliterative speech pattern is the only bit of humor that I could discern in this story.
I got to like Allie and was rooting for her to succeed in her attempts to function in the world.
Will is Walker Percy. This becomes very clear when I saw the picture of the author on the back of the dust jacket and when I read his bio on Wiki. Percy’s father committed suicide by shotgun blast to the head, as did his grandfather. Having also lost his mother at a young age, it isn’t surprising that death and suicide become a major theme in his work, but I found the many instances where Will wonders about his father’s suicide and (SPOILER ALERT: the discovery that during a hunting incident in his youth, his father had tried to kill Will) too repetitive. Although the end of the story is satisfactory, there isn’t enough plot development to keep one interested in Will’s plight.
I am starting to notice that some writers are too interested in their own persona which they inject in a story.
There is no doubt, though, that Percy is a good writer, with a good eye for the Carolina landscape, true-to-life dialogue and more than a little insight in the world and people surrounding his characters.
The religious theme in the story didn’t work that well and the characters beside the two protagonists are sketched quickly and never really come to life. For example, we never get to learn much about his wife and daughter, other than that the former was fat and is now dead and the latter is a sour-faced, discontented Jesus Freak.
The title may hint at Will’s existential angst and fascination with Christianity, but the real meaning of it is revealed at the end of the book when (SPOILER ALERT) we learn that sexual ecstasy is seen as the first coming (yes, literally) and that the longing for death is seen as the second.
Overall I enjoyed The Second Coming. I liked it much better than the previous two books I read (All the King’s men, by Pen Warren and The human Stain by Philip Roth [boy, that one was disappointing]) but I thought the book I read prior to these two, The good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck was much better.
On the Literati Frittati scale, Mr. Percy receives 6.5 out of a possible 10 Winonas.
PS. I have been told that his novel The Moviegoer is quite good, so I will read that one later this year.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
My favorite Christian
I found the below on Wiki and it is absolutely hilarious.
A bit of a read but well worth it.
I declare my favorite all-time Christian to be Alois Haynes.
Wilberforce Bartholomew Haynes was born in Missing Mile, Pennsylvania in 1834 as the only child of Leland and Martha Haynes, nee Gladstone.
Leland Haynes was a Calvinist minister who also worked as a blacksmith to supplement the family income.
Wilberforce was plagued by ill health for most of his life and had his first epileptic seizure at the age of 11.
Shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Hearst in 1853 he suffered the first of several bouts of severe depression and made an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Elizabeth and Wilberforce had five children, four of whom died before their second birthday.
Alois, the fifth child, and the only one to reach adulthood, was born in 1860.
Two years after the birth of Alois, Wilberforce published the pamphlet that would become the basis for the Calvinist sect he was later to found; The followers of Haynes.
The followers were referred to by almost everyone as either The Banshees, but more commonly as The Wailers.
In the pamphlet, Wilberforce, who was an avid amateur Bible scholar, proclaimed that he had proof that the events described in the last book of the Bible - The book of Revelations – (which most Christians believe have yet to unfold) had already occurred in the year 534 AD.
It is not clear what methodology Haynes applied to reach this conclusion, but he became convinced of the veracity of his discovery, only altering the year to 539 AD after many more months of strenuous lucubration.
As a result of his idea about the judgment of mankind, which takes place in the book of Revelation where Jesus returns to Earth to lift the righteous believers to heaven and condemn the unrepentant sinners to hell, Wilberforce concluded that since this event had already taken place he (and everyone else) must either be in heaven or in hell. He observed much suffering (there were several outbreaks of polio and yellow fever in Southern Pennsylvania in the 1850s) and concluded that since suffering in heaven would be impossible all people on Earth were living in hell.
At first he had great difficulty finding converts to his new religion as his message was perceived to be rather bleak, even by the standards of the Calvinist citizens of Missing Mile who believed in Calvin’s doctrine of predestination.
However, Wilberforce proved himself to be a gifted and persuasive preacher and over the next fifteen years his congregation grew steadily, reaching its highest membership of around 150 people by 1882.
The Wailers believed, even though they found themselves born in hell, that there still existed a possibility (albeit a very small one) to escape hell and enter heaven if they showed enough repentance for their sinful life and that a sufficient display of contrition could bring about The Lifting.
The Lifting is the central tenet of the Wailers’ soteriology. Wilberforce taught that Jesus occasionally visited hell and that a sufficient loud collective moaning and wailing could persuade Christ to have mercy on the damned and lift them bodily to heaven. For this reason all of their services were held outdoors to ensure that the Lifting could proceed without being hindered by a roof.
Wilberforce had created his own version of the Bible by making a heavily abridged, hand-written copy of the King James Bible and omitting all the parts that he deemed to suggest the possibility of salvation through good works. Especially the four Gospels were greatly reduced and, for unknown reasons, he discarded the Gospel of Luke altogether. Finally, the book of Revelations received an entire new ending which was more in line with Wilberforce’s discovery about its occurrence in the year 539 AD.
The first religious services of the Wailers were held in a small park in the center of Missing Mile at 5 AM each Sunday morning. A typical service would commence with Wilberforce reading a passage from his own Bible, followed by a short sermon on a subject of contemporary interest while the most important part would be an hour long ( or sometimes much longer ) of sorrowful crying and sobbing in the hope of bringing about The Lifting.
Not all the citizens of Missing Mile were pleased by the considerable amount of decibels produced by the new denomination at that hour of the day and the Wailers were asked to hold their services elsewhere. Wilberforce refused and only after a special town ordinance was presented to him did his group move their place of worship to a hilltop outside of town.
One of the more peculiar features of the Wailers was a practice known as ‘shuddering before the Christ’.
Wilberforce’s epileptic seizures, which he had quite often, were interpreted by his followers as a sign that The Lifting was at hand. They assumed that if they imitated the spasms and contortions, and the high pitched shrieking sounds that were brought about in their leader by his seizures, they, too, would be included in The Lifting. This collective action was referred to as ‘shuddering’.
Shuddering made for some curious scenes and the inhabitants of Missing Mile were often treated to the spectacle of 50 or more Wailers, together with Wilberforce, flailing about in the mud of the unpaved streets, if Wilberforce happened to get a seizure there.
In 1880 a schism divided the Wailers after Alois became active in the church.
Alois, who shared his father’s morose and lugubrious temperament, initially agreed with him on all the articles of faith and they often held services together. Sometimes Alois led a service by himself, usually when Wilberforce was too ill to attend.
Then, Alois voiced a conviction which would create a permanent and widening rift in the sect.
He argued that since no member of the congregation had ever successfully been Lifted, despite many years of increasingly vociferous wailing and shuddering, the doctrine of the Lifting must be false and that no escape from hell was possible. He began to preach that people should just resign themselves to their fate. Wilberforce was furious and condemned his son as a heretic and expelled him from the church. Alois, however, determined to remain a leader in the church, began holding his own services in an abandoned barn less than 200 yards from the hilltop where the Wailers met.
He named his own sect ‘The followers of Alois’ but they would become known as ‘The Howlers’. The original congregation consisted of Alois, his fiancé Mathilda Bensworth and her two sisters. For two years Alois’ followers remained numbered in the single digits since his teachings proved even less appealing to the people than his father’s since he offered them no chance for salvation at all.
However, in 1883 Alois had a revelation that would radically change his church and would greatly enhance the popularity of the Howlers.
His followers, like the Wailers, were strict teetotalers who preached temperance in every aspect of a person’s life and especially in sexual matters. But Alois became convinced that since all the people on Earth were doomed for all eternity anyway that there were no good theological imperatives left for a life of sobriety and chastity.
He began by introducing the ceremonial drinking of wine during their gatherings, and within a few months his flock had grown to 30 people. All of these converts were former Wailers and Wilberforce’s disappointment in his son became an unconcealed hatred. The ceremonial wine drinking was soon supplemented with the far less ceremonial drinking of large quantities of gin and Alois’ services grew in obstreperousness and popularity. Since the Wailers held their services in earshot of Alois’ barn (and at exactly the same time) the merriment of the Howlers was a continuous source of irritation and distraction for Wilberforce and his followers who reacted to the competing noise by increasing the volume of their wailing. This combined cacophony reached far into Missing Mile proper where some complaining citizens suggested to force the feuding sects to relocate even farther away from the town.
Alois’ sect transformed itself into what few people in Pennsylvania considered to be a proper church.
The gatherings in the barn became more and more rowdy and rambunctious and Alois himself was arrested four times for drunkenness. Several of his adherents were convicted and jailed for public nudity and various charges of indecency. By 1885 the Wailers had lost so many members to the Howlers that Wilberforce, whose depression was getting worse, found himself preaching to a group of less than two dozen faithful, the majority of them septuagenarians, while almost all of his past flock could be heard carousing and laughing with Alois.
On December 2nd, 1885, Wilberforce stormed into Alois’ barn, interrupted his son’s service and hit him with an empty wine bottle on the side of the head. A shard of glass cut Alois' carotid artery and he bled to death in minutes.
Wilberforce was arrested, convicted of murder and sentenced to life-long imprisonment in Easter State Penitentiary where he died of pneumonia in 1889.
The leaderless Howlers and what was left of the Wailers ceased to exist as a coherent congregation almost immediately. The last known Howler was Catherine Higgins who died in upstate New York in 1912 of chronic sclerosis.
There is some debate among historians whether the Howlers can even be recognized as a religion, let alone a Calvinist sect, since they lacked most of the elements that constitute a Christian denomination.
Theodore Haldane, Prof. of American religious studies at Brown University said of the Howlers: “They didn’t have a well-defined liturgy, no foundational texts, or a central deity to whom prayers could be addressed. To an outsider living in Missing Mile at that time, they would have appeared like a bunch of drunks fornicating in an old barn.”
The Wilberforce Bible can still be seen and is currently on display in the Bible museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
A bit of a read but well worth it.
I declare my favorite all-time Christian to be Alois Haynes.
Wilberforce Bartholomew Haynes was born in Missing Mile, Pennsylvania in 1834 as the only child of Leland and Martha Haynes, nee Gladstone.
Leland Haynes was a Calvinist minister who also worked as a blacksmith to supplement the family income.
Wilberforce was plagued by ill health for most of his life and had his first epileptic seizure at the age of 11.
Shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Hearst in 1853 he suffered the first of several bouts of severe depression and made an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Elizabeth and Wilberforce had five children, four of whom died before their second birthday.
Alois, the fifth child, and the only one to reach adulthood, was born in 1860.
Two years after the birth of Alois, Wilberforce published the pamphlet that would become the basis for the Calvinist sect he was later to found; The followers of Haynes.
The followers were referred to by almost everyone as either The Banshees, but more commonly as The Wailers.
In the pamphlet, Wilberforce, who was an avid amateur Bible scholar, proclaimed that he had proof that the events described in the last book of the Bible - The book of Revelations – (which most Christians believe have yet to unfold) had already occurred in the year 534 AD.
It is not clear what methodology Haynes applied to reach this conclusion, but he became convinced of the veracity of his discovery, only altering the year to 539 AD after many more months of strenuous lucubration.
As a result of his idea about the judgment of mankind, which takes place in the book of Revelation where Jesus returns to Earth to lift the righteous believers to heaven and condemn the unrepentant sinners to hell, Wilberforce concluded that since this event had already taken place he (and everyone else) must either be in heaven or in hell. He observed much suffering (there were several outbreaks of polio and yellow fever in Southern Pennsylvania in the 1850s) and concluded that since suffering in heaven would be impossible all people on Earth were living in hell.
At first he had great difficulty finding converts to his new religion as his message was perceived to be rather bleak, even by the standards of the Calvinist citizens of Missing Mile who believed in Calvin’s doctrine of predestination.
However, Wilberforce proved himself to be a gifted and persuasive preacher and over the next fifteen years his congregation grew steadily, reaching its highest membership of around 150 people by 1882.
The Wailers believed, even though they found themselves born in hell, that there still existed a possibility (albeit a very small one) to escape hell and enter heaven if they showed enough repentance for their sinful life and that a sufficient display of contrition could bring about The Lifting.
The Lifting is the central tenet of the Wailers’ soteriology. Wilberforce taught that Jesus occasionally visited hell and that a sufficient loud collective moaning and wailing could persuade Christ to have mercy on the damned and lift them bodily to heaven. For this reason all of their services were held outdoors to ensure that the Lifting could proceed without being hindered by a roof.
Wilberforce had created his own version of the Bible by making a heavily abridged, hand-written copy of the King James Bible and omitting all the parts that he deemed to suggest the possibility of salvation through good works. Especially the four Gospels were greatly reduced and, for unknown reasons, he discarded the Gospel of Luke altogether. Finally, the book of Revelations received an entire new ending which was more in line with Wilberforce’s discovery about its occurrence in the year 539 AD.
The first religious services of the Wailers were held in a small park in the center of Missing Mile at 5 AM each Sunday morning. A typical service would commence with Wilberforce reading a passage from his own Bible, followed by a short sermon on a subject of contemporary interest while the most important part would be an hour long ( or sometimes much longer ) of sorrowful crying and sobbing in the hope of bringing about The Lifting.
Not all the citizens of Missing Mile were pleased by the considerable amount of decibels produced by the new denomination at that hour of the day and the Wailers were asked to hold their services elsewhere. Wilberforce refused and only after a special town ordinance was presented to him did his group move their place of worship to a hilltop outside of town.
One of the more peculiar features of the Wailers was a practice known as ‘shuddering before the Christ’.
Wilberforce’s epileptic seizures, which he had quite often, were interpreted by his followers as a sign that The Lifting was at hand. They assumed that if they imitated the spasms and contortions, and the high pitched shrieking sounds that were brought about in their leader by his seizures, they, too, would be included in The Lifting. This collective action was referred to as ‘shuddering’.
Shuddering made for some curious scenes and the inhabitants of Missing Mile were often treated to the spectacle of 50 or more Wailers, together with Wilberforce, flailing about in the mud of the unpaved streets, if Wilberforce happened to get a seizure there.
In 1880 a schism divided the Wailers after Alois became active in the church.
Alois, who shared his father’s morose and lugubrious temperament, initially agreed with him on all the articles of faith and they often held services together. Sometimes Alois led a service by himself, usually when Wilberforce was too ill to attend.
Then, Alois voiced a conviction which would create a permanent and widening rift in the sect.
He argued that since no member of the congregation had ever successfully been Lifted, despite many years of increasingly vociferous wailing and shuddering, the doctrine of the Lifting must be false and that no escape from hell was possible. He began to preach that people should just resign themselves to their fate. Wilberforce was furious and condemned his son as a heretic and expelled him from the church. Alois, however, determined to remain a leader in the church, began holding his own services in an abandoned barn less than 200 yards from the hilltop where the Wailers met.
He named his own sect ‘The followers of Alois’ but they would become known as ‘The Howlers’. The original congregation consisted of Alois, his fiancé Mathilda Bensworth and her two sisters. For two years Alois’ followers remained numbered in the single digits since his teachings proved even less appealing to the people than his father’s since he offered them no chance for salvation at all.
However, in 1883 Alois had a revelation that would radically change his church and would greatly enhance the popularity of the Howlers.
His followers, like the Wailers, were strict teetotalers who preached temperance in every aspect of a person’s life and especially in sexual matters. But Alois became convinced that since all the people on Earth were doomed for all eternity anyway that there were no good theological imperatives left for a life of sobriety and chastity.
He began by introducing the ceremonial drinking of wine during their gatherings, and within a few months his flock had grown to 30 people. All of these converts were former Wailers and Wilberforce’s disappointment in his son became an unconcealed hatred. The ceremonial wine drinking was soon supplemented with the far less ceremonial drinking of large quantities of gin and Alois’ services grew in obstreperousness and popularity. Since the Wailers held their services in earshot of Alois’ barn (and at exactly the same time) the merriment of the Howlers was a continuous source of irritation and distraction for Wilberforce and his followers who reacted to the competing noise by increasing the volume of their wailing. This combined cacophony reached far into Missing Mile proper where some complaining citizens suggested to force the feuding sects to relocate even farther away from the town.
Alois’ sect transformed itself into what few people in Pennsylvania considered to be a proper church.
The gatherings in the barn became more and more rowdy and rambunctious and Alois himself was arrested four times for drunkenness. Several of his adherents were convicted and jailed for public nudity and various charges of indecency. By 1885 the Wailers had lost so many members to the Howlers that Wilberforce, whose depression was getting worse, found himself preaching to a group of less than two dozen faithful, the majority of them septuagenarians, while almost all of his past flock could be heard carousing and laughing with Alois.
On December 2nd, 1885, Wilberforce stormed into Alois’ barn, interrupted his son’s service and hit him with an empty wine bottle on the side of the head. A shard of glass cut Alois' carotid artery and he bled to death in minutes.
Wilberforce was arrested, convicted of murder and sentenced to life-long imprisonment in Easter State Penitentiary where he died of pneumonia in 1889.
The leaderless Howlers and what was left of the Wailers ceased to exist as a coherent congregation almost immediately. The last known Howler was Catherine Higgins who died in upstate New York in 1912 of chronic sclerosis.
There is some debate among historians whether the Howlers can even be recognized as a religion, let alone a Calvinist sect, since they lacked most of the elements that constitute a Christian denomination.
Theodore Haldane, Prof. of American religious studies at Brown University said of the Howlers: “They didn’t have a well-defined liturgy, no foundational texts, or a central deity to whom prayers could be addressed. To an outsider living in Missing Mile at that time, they would have appeared like a bunch of drunks fornicating in an old barn.”
The Wilberforce Bible can still be seen and is currently on display in the Bible museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Leftist rant no. 2673: The True Believers
It doesn’t happen all that often, but sometimes I long to once again live in Western Europe.
I emigrated to the USA 10 years ago and consider myself half-American by now.
I talk, or rather Skype, with my parents in Amsterdam every week.
Usually this is done on Sunday morning, with a cup of tea next to me and my hair still in disarray from last night’s sleep.
We chat about current events and what is going on with the family and friends, and every few weeks I inquire about the well-being of ‘aunt’ Katie.
She’s not really an aunt of ours, but she was my dad’s late sister’s best friend.
Katie is 93 and as demented as a doorknob.
She lives in an institution for the mentally ill and has no more living family or friends.
The only visitors she gets are my parents.
If the truth be told, Katie wasn’t particularly likeable before dementia turned off the lights one by one.
She was rather egocentric and shallow.
One minute after my parents leave her she has already forgotten they were ever there, and she barely recognizes them anymore.
Such is life. The end often isn't pretty.
I asked my mom why she keeps visiting her, even though Katie never was a friend of hers and Katie doesn’t remember the visits anyway.
She said that she felt duty-bound to visit her because Katie has no one else left in the world.
I feel homesick today because in this shiny nation I am regularly confronted with human toilet brushes -all of whom dwell on the far-right of our political spectrum, where they blabber on about Adam Fucking Smith and this deranged nonsense about invisible hands - who proudly state that they feel no responsibility towards anyone but their own kin.
One would think that a recrudescence of this kind of malefic psilosophy would be unlikely considering the financial malaise that the greedy and selfish have inflicted on the world’s economy, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The True Believers still obstreperously defend their turgid Objectivist piffle.
I miss Holland.
No one there ever speaks such abysmal nonsense about the benefits that selfishness is supposed to bring to the common good.
But then again, what do these Dutch socialist peasants know?
They live in that Hellhole where all sick people actually get medical care without going bankrupt.
They bought into that ridiculous and un-American idea that it is not OK for a CEO to make 300 times more money than the employees on the work-floor.
They waste their money on affordable education for all who want it and they have an absurd economic model in which not many people are extravagantly rich or poor.
They even have the gall to waste precious tax Euros on the full-time care for the mentally ill, like Katie, who didn’t have the good sense to prepare for such an event by saving up a million Euros.
On second thought, I am no longer homesick.
What a wretched place Holland is.
I will Skype my parents this Sunday and inquire why they are wasting their time on a senile old bag who isn’t even family.
I emigrated to the USA 10 years ago and consider myself half-American by now.
I talk, or rather Skype, with my parents in Amsterdam every week.
Usually this is done on Sunday morning, with a cup of tea next to me and my hair still in disarray from last night’s sleep.
We chat about current events and what is going on with the family and friends, and every few weeks I inquire about the well-being of ‘aunt’ Katie.
She’s not really an aunt of ours, but she was my dad’s late sister’s best friend.
Katie is 93 and as demented as a doorknob.
She lives in an institution for the mentally ill and has no more living family or friends.
The only visitors she gets are my parents.
If the truth be told, Katie wasn’t particularly likeable before dementia turned off the lights one by one.
She was rather egocentric and shallow.
One minute after my parents leave her she has already forgotten they were ever there, and she barely recognizes them anymore.
Such is life. The end often isn't pretty.
I asked my mom why she keeps visiting her, even though Katie never was a friend of hers and Katie doesn’t remember the visits anyway.
She said that she felt duty-bound to visit her because Katie has no one else left in the world.
I feel homesick today because in this shiny nation I am regularly confronted with human toilet brushes -all of whom dwell on the far-right of our political spectrum, where they blabber on about Adam Fucking Smith and this deranged nonsense about invisible hands - who proudly state that they feel no responsibility towards anyone but their own kin.
One would think that a recrudescence of this kind of malefic psilosophy would be unlikely considering the financial malaise that the greedy and selfish have inflicted on the world’s economy, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The True Believers still obstreperously defend their turgid Objectivist piffle.
I miss Holland.
No one there ever speaks such abysmal nonsense about the benefits that selfishness is supposed to bring to the common good.
But then again, what do these Dutch socialist peasants know?
They live in that Hellhole where all sick people actually get medical care without going bankrupt.
They bought into that ridiculous and un-American idea that it is not OK for a CEO to make 300 times more money than the employees on the work-floor.
They waste their money on affordable education for all who want it and they have an absurd economic model in which not many people are extravagantly rich or poor.
They even have the gall to waste precious tax Euros on the full-time care for the mentally ill, like Katie, who didn’t have the good sense to prepare for such an event by saving up a million Euros.
On second thought, I am no longer homesick.
What a wretched place Holland is.
I will Skype my parents this Sunday and inquire why they are wasting their time on a senile old bag who isn’t even family.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Protecting marriage
It seems to me that we should pay close attention when people say they are about to rise to the defense of an abstract noun, as do our friendly right-wing Christian brothers and sisters.
There exists in certain religious societies a special police force whose entire raison d'etre is the 'protection from vice and the promotion of virtue'.
On the face of it this sounds like a wonderful organization, working towards a lofty goal.
However, when one examines the acts of these police men (for reasons inscrutable these are almost always men) one can not help but wonder if there isn't another motive behind their actions, something very different from the noble enterprise of protecting the citizenry from vice.
For those of you who do not know of what I speak, I shall be happy to provide you with video evidence of how these men protect, with merciless rod and cast stone, all that is good and just in the eyes of their God, via private email, as I fear that posting a video link on this public blog may disturb the emotional equilibrium of some.
To the point of the marriage of homosexual couples; I live on a quiet, tree-lined street, and our neighborhood is one of harmony and respect, and it is wholly unblemished,thank Heaven, by the scourge of violent crime which plagues so many of our cities.
At the very end of our street cohabit two wonderful and somewhat epicene ladies, who bake astonishingly tasty apple pies.
If our religious brethren are correct then our little haven of tranquility and peace shall suffer a blow from which it may never recover when in the night-stand drawer of the aforementioned ladies shall be placed a piece of paper with some signatures on it.
No doubt it is due to my intellectual deficiencies and the rampant truancy of my misspend youth that I fail to see just how exactly all this prophesized mayhem and murder will come about.
In my country of birth, The Netherlands, gay people have acquired the right to marry years ago and, strange to say, by some divine miracle, the country has so far been spared chaos, famine and general unpleasantness.
If I didn't know any better I would almost conclude that the self-appointed (and always God-invoking) legislators of public morality, while claiming to protect virtue, are primarily motivated by an altogether different, base and very unchristian desire to kick someone in the balls with great force, for no other reason then that they seem to get pleasure out of the act.
There exists in certain religious societies a special police force whose entire raison d'etre is the 'protection from vice and the promotion of virtue'.
On the face of it this sounds like a wonderful organization, working towards a lofty goal.
However, when one examines the acts of these police men (for reasons inscrutable these are almost always men) one can not help but wonder if there isn't another motive behind their actions, something very different from the noble enterprise of protecting the citizenry from vice.
For those of you who do not know of what I speak, I shall be happy to provide you with video evidence of how these men protect, with merciless rod and cast stone, all that is good and just in the eyes of their God, via private email, as I fear that posting a video link on this public blog may disturb the emotional equilibrium of some.
To the point of the marriage of homosexual couples; I live on a quiet, tree-lined street, and our neighborhood is one of harmony and respect, and it is wholly unblemished,thank Heaven, by the scourge of violent crime which plagues so many of our cities.
At the very end of our street cohabit two wonderful and somewhat epicene ladies, who bake astonishingly tasty apple pies.
If our religious brethren are correct then our little haven of tranquility and peace shall suffer a blow from which it may never recover when in the night-stand drawer of the aforementioned ladies shall be placed a piece of paper with some signatures on it.
No doubt it is due to my intellectual deficiencies and the rampant truancy of my misspend youth that I fail to see just how exactly all this prophesized mayhem and murder will come about.
In my country of birth, The Netherlands, gay people have acquired the right to marry years ago and, strange to say, by some divine miracle, the country has so far been spared chaos, famine and general unpleasantness.
If I didn't know any better I would almost conclude that the self-appointed (and always God-invoking) legislators of public morality, while claiming to protect virtue, are primarily motivated by an altogether different, base and very unchristian desire to kick someone in the balls with great force, for no other reason then that they seem to get pleasure out of the act.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Vincent's wish list
It is that time of year again when I send a supplication Northward to St. Nicholas containing my dearest wishes for the coming year of our Lord 2010.
As is tradition, this list will take the form of a summary of ghastly individuals whom I most dearly wish to see publicly humiliated, whipped and beaten in the town's square and dipped in tar and feathers,followed by a hasty sterilization and prompt banishment to the Hebrides.
Note: since Janet Jackson and Adam Sandler have already been listed for 3 years in a row,they have been omitted from this year’s list,even though they most certainly belong there for various heinous offenses against common decency and everything that is just and beautiful in this land of ours.
So here they are.
Have your bucket and a strong doze of smelling salt at the ready.
1 Katie Couric
2 That psycho bitch from Alaska
3 Everyone involved in marketing
4 James Dobson
5 People over the age of 12 who read Harry Potter books
6 Mormons and all other Nazis who supported Prop 8 in California
7 Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket
8 That little mindless trollop who is infected with Billy Ray Sirus’ obscene and ridiculous DNA
9 Dinesh D’Souza and similar nauseating petulant right-wing cocksuckers
10 Alan Greenspan
11 Everyone who is worth more than 10 million dollars
12 Oprah Winfrey
13 The audience of Oprah Winfrey
14 Hedge fund managers
15 And, of course, Kenny G.
As is tradition, this list will take the form of a summary of ghastly individuals whom I most dearly wish to see publicly humiliated, whipped and beaten in the town's square and dipped in tar and feathers,followed by a hasty sterilization and prompt banishment to the Hebrides.
Note: since Janet Jackson and Adam Sandler have already been listed for 3 years in a row,they have been omitted from this year’s list,even though they most certainly belong there for various heinous offenses against common decency and everything that is just and beautiful in this land of ours.
So here they are.
Have your bucket and a strong doze of smelling salt at the ready.
1 Katie Couric
2 That psycho bitch from Alaska
3 Everyone involved in marketing
4 James Dobson
5 People over the age of 12 who read Harry Potter books
6 Mormons and all other Nazis who supported Prop 8 in California
7 Mahmoud Ahmadinnerjacket
8 That little mindless trollop who is infected with Billy Ray Sirus’ obscene and ridiculous DNA
9 Dinesh D’Souza and similar nauseating petulant right-wing cocksuckers
10 Alan Greenspan
11 Everyone who is worth more than 10 million dollars
12 Oprah Winfrey
13 The audience of Oprah Winfrey
14 Hedge fund managers
15 And, of course, Kenny G.
'Tis the season to be cantacerous
I’ll make an exception for the kids and perhaps even for that curious winter solstice ritual of decorating a pine tree, but besides that Christmas blows and it blows thus.
I’ve worked in the shipping industry for most of my adult life,but even most lay people who are only occasionally alert will have noticed that all this holiday hullabaloo is first and foremost about using a crass mixture of religious inanity and pagan myths to rake in some good-old cash.
So much so that all the importers start filling the container ships, coming from you-know-where, as early as July, to have the shelves of the big-box stores stocked for the mindless cattle that will come crowding through the automatic doors as soon as the Halloween starter pistol has gone off.
The herd will obediently -and precisely on cue- run, shop and drool all the way through Thanksgiving,and their Pavlovian, spastic purchasing delirium will rise to a feverish crescendo when Christmas, that grand-daddy of all excess consumerism, looms into their blinkered view.
In January the sales start to milk the exhausted wallets just a little bit more.
If people actually enjoyed spending that elephantine pile of money on all that useless crap, like giant plastic inflatable Santas, I wouldn’t mind so much.
Take a look around in your local mall in the weeks before Christmas and try to detect even a hint of bliss on the faces of these well-trained bovine creatures as they wrestle their way through the crowded parking lots and food courts and stores.
Oh boy, are they having fun!
And if you are hell-bent on being of good cheer, I have no idea why you are waiting for permission from the GAP's marketing division to adopt this attitude, and why restrict all this loving of your fellow humans to a few days in December?
Mandatory fun is seldom fun at all and that is my biggest beef with frigging Christmas.
Giving someone a present is great, as is getting together with friends and family for a good dinner.
But to do so because it is a certain date takes all the fun out of it and makes the present-giving ceremony empty and even slightly suspect.
My hunch is that most people go along with all this proscribed and costly ‘fun’ because they are afraid to actually give shape to their own lives and live on their own terms.
And don't get me started on the scrotum-crushing Christmas ‘music’ that I will have to endure in every elevator and every grocery store from Thanksgiving to December 25; those same 23 god awful shitty songs, every fucking year!
I swear, I will dig up Bing Crosby and shoot him in the head if I hear that crappy, sentimental garbage [also the best-selling song of all times] one more jingling time.
There is something disturbingly vacuous and even indecent about people who go all misty-eyed over the simulacrum of a time and place, full of carolers and rosie-cheeked uncles with arms full of gift-wrapped toys, that never existed; fake memories, false sentiment.
God damn you,Thomas Kinkade!
Christmas ?
Humbug !
I’ve worked in the shipping industry for most of my adult life,but even most lay people who are only occasionally alert will have noticed that all this holiday hullabaloo is first and foremost about using a crass mixture of religious inanity and pagan myths to rake in some good-old cash.
So much so that all the importers start filling the container ships, coming from you-know-where, as early as July, to have the shelves of the big-box stores stocked for the mindless cattle that will come crowding through the automatic doors as soon as the Halloween starter pistol has gone off.
The herd will obediently -and precisely on cue- run, shop and drool all the way through Thanksgiving,and their Pavlovian, spastic purchasing delirium will rise to a feverish crescendo when Christmas, that grand-daddy of all excess consumerism, looms into their blinkered view.
In January the sales start to milk the exhausted wallets just a little bit more.
If people actually enjoyed spending that elephantine pile of money on all that useless crap, like giant plastic inflatable Santas, I wouldn’t mind so much.
Take a look around in your local mall in the weeks before Christmas and try to detect even a hint of bliss on the faces of these well-trained bovine creatures as they wrestle their way through the crowded parking lots and food courts and stores.
Oh boy, are they having fun!
And if you are hell-bent on being of good cheer, I have no idea why you are waiting for permission from the GAP's marketing division to adopt this attitude, and why restrict all this loving of your fellow humans to a few days in December?
Mandatory fun is seldom fun at all and that is my biggest beef with frigging Christmas.
Giving someone a present is great, as is getting together with friends and family for a good dinner.
But to do so because it is a certain date takes all the fun out of it and makes the present-giving ceremony empty and even slightly suspect.
My hunch is that most people go along with all this proscribed and costly ‘fun’ because they are afraid to actually give shape to their own lives and live on their own terms.
And don't get me started on the scrotum-crushing Christmas ‘music’ that I will have to endure in every elevator and every grocery store from Thanksgiving to December 25; those same 23 god awful shitty songs, every fucking year!
I swear, I will dig up Bing Crosby and shoot him in the head if I hear that crappy, sentimental garbage [also the best-selling song of all times] one more jingling time.
There is something disturbingly vacuous and even indecent about people who go all misty-eyed over the simulacrum of a time and place, full of carolers and rosie-cheeked uncles with arms full of gift-wrapped toys, that never existed; fake memories, false sentiment.
God damn you,Thomas Kinkade!
Christmas ?
Humbug !
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