Cloistered

I spent the early part of Saturday as I usually do, in a judo dojo instructing a bunch of small (and not so small) children. Last Saturday, I had to work a graveyard shift on the job, and I headed immediately down to the dojo, where classes run from 9:30AM to 1PM. It's a solid block of time spent away from the phone and the computer, ensconced in a padded cocoon that smells of sweat. It's always a great way to spend the day- we throw a bunch of children around, we beat the bejeezus out of each other, we kibbitz. At the end of the day's program, I took a hot shower, and got on the subway to go home, blissfully unaware of the news of the day. When I finally got to my car, and put on the radio, I was devastated by the news of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder of six others, including Christina-Taylor Green, a girl the same age as the children I had been teaching all morning. I was wiped out, the adrenaline rush that accompanies physical activity had worn off, so I was feeling the aches and pains that result in hitting the mats over the course of a few hours, and the ugly reality of the day's events penetrated the bubble in which I had spent the day. The world had seemed so different scant minutes before, an amusing place filled with camaraderie, learning, shared effort...

Worn out, sore, and heartsick, I climbed into bed shortly after getting home. I felt like an old man in a cruel world. It may sound strange to think of a smelly room in which people are throwing each other to the ground as a sanctuary, but I have come to think of it as one. The outside world was literally going to pieces as my friends and I happily roughed each other up, and taught a bunch of grammar school age children different ways to toss each other around. The outside world is a violent place, in which hateful, deranged people do harm to others. Inside our cloister, it looks a little rough, maybe even a little dangerous, but there's a sense of responsibility, nurturing, and trust that informs our actions. We always bow as we enter the room, walk onto the mats, begin the class, start practicing with an individual, end the class, and leave the mats. That insistence on ritual is a means of putting aside the outside world, of acknowledging that we are in a space that is out of the ordinary, engaging in activities that are outside the ordinary routine, activities that could be potentially dangerous if not conducted in a serious manner with an emphasis on shared development. It's a pity that the outside world isn't as safe or as nurturing as our little cloister.

UPDATE: I updated the post to add Christina-Taylor Green's name. This poor child, so senselessly slain at such a young age, should not be forgotten.

A Present Pour Moi?*

I got me a present from the lovely, gracious and talented vacuumslayer (congratulations on finding out that you will be having a boy)- a link to the 700 Hoboes (sic) Project (the song Hobo with an Oboe is now running through my head and, to my knowledge, it doesn't exist):

Hobo with an oboe, I know, I know it's serious!

I am also trying to picture a vacuumslayer illustration of a hobo, but the idea just does not compute... the adjectives "ethereal" and "sylph-like" just don't mesh well with the noun "hobo".

I wish I knew more about hobos, because having a working knowledge of their techniques would come in handy in these harsh economic times. I have some scant familiarity with hobo signs, but I have no experience in stealing a cooling pie from a windowsill, and, at any rate, the Goddess of Pies (sorry about the initials of that nickname!) lives clear across the country.

Perhaps GOP (not Goddess of Pies) hostility to rail projects stems from fears of the potential growth of a hobo underclass, as cash-strapped Americans with "underwater" housing units trade in their soon-to-be-foreclosed-on houses for a life riding the rails. A growing hobo class would undoubtedly push their hobosexual agenda on besieged cultural conservatives... who really knows the salacious uses to which hobos put those purloined pies? What demands would a hobosexual lobby put on the baked-goods industry? Would there be a slippery slope as cake fetishists and other dessert deviants seek societal sanction for their kinks?


*Veiled Plastic Bertrand reference

He Reads This Crap So You Don't Have To

L.A.'s most stalwart curmudgeon has a great capacity for wading into the Daily Caller (I almost wrote, "the bowels of the Daily Caller, but it's all bowels), and finding choice crap to ridicule. He posted a takedown of a screed by America’s Pre-Eminent Evangelical Protestant Female Intellectual (highlighted for the sake of hilarity) on same-sex marriage and the slippery slope that will lead to... oh, hell, let's let the scold's words speak for themselves:


Homosexual practice thus requires individuals to contradict their own biology. It disconnects a person’s sexuality from his or her biological identity as male or female — which exerts a self-alienating and fragmenting effect on the human personality.

And the logic of alienation will not stop there. Already the acceptance of same-sex relationships is metastasizing into a postmodern notion of sexuality as fluid and changing over time.


Yes, biological identity is static and never changes over time. Why the hell do these fundies ever invoke biology in a piss-poor effort to bolster their bigoted claims? Perhaps the best rejoinder to this argument was articulated by obscure band The Anemic Boyfriends:





I just wanted an excuse to post this song, which I hadn't heard in many years (I am actually shocked that I found it). Thanks, M.B., for giving me an "in".

He's America's Boehner Now

I heard Ohio was nice, I've even seen photographic evidence, but I'm just not digging the fact that Ohio is waving its Boehner in my face. It's even worse than a goddamn Bret Favre instant message. At last the U.S., with a GOP house, can look forward to such subtly named bills as (I shit you not) Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. How soon before the Orgasms for Everybody Except for the Dirty Queers Act is proposed to appeal to the knuckle draggers?

Even worse is troglodyte Darrell Issa's notice to the foxes that the henhouse is going to be blown open to allow for easy access. No doubt this handing of oversight to the overseen will be named the Removing Burdensome Overregulation of the Masters of the Universe so Supply-Side Jesus Won't Be Sad and You'll Finally Be Able to Get a Job, Albeit a Crappy One, Act.

Hell, it's going to be a long, stupid couple of years.

UPDATE: Fuckin' Boehner

Don't Strain Your Brain*

Recently, two major news organizations (so called) have covered "End of Days" lunatics in a sympathetic light, and interviewed a fundamentalist nutbag about the deaths of birds and fish in Arkansas. Why the hell are "mainstream" media outlets giving time to these lunatics and their eschatalogical fantasies?

The idea that one is going to be witness to the End of All Things has to be one of the most narcissistic notions that one can entertain. Honestly, people, get over yourselves- you are merely, as Douglas Adams put it, simple, ape-descended life forms inhabiting an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet orbiting at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy. No Rapture, no Ragnarök (though I won't rule out a Gigantomachy). Even if the human species nuked itself into oblivion, life on earth would almost certainly endure. Belief in an imminent end is pernicious because it absolves believers of responsibility for conserving resources or caring for future generations (the "torture porn" aspects of belief in a Rapture, with the majority of humanity suffering lovingly-described tortures, is merely the poisoned cherry on top of the rancid sundae). The only benefit of the Rapture fantasy is that it can provide occasional manifestations of comic brilliance, like this bit from Oregon's big gay emperor, Pupienus Maximus:

I sent the group an email promising a $1000 donation now if they agree that on May 22 the world has not ended they will pay me $100,000.


*Not so veiled Rapture reference

You Know, That Guy...

One of my favorite character actors has died- Pete Postlethwaite, whose prominent cheekbones made him instantly recognizable, though not a household name, succumbed to cancer at the age of sixty-four. My favorite Postlethwaite role was the decidedly un-Japanese looking Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects. His IMDB profile has this great quote about acting:

At the end of the day, acting is all about telling lies. We are professional imposters and the audience accept that. We've made this deal that we tell you a tale and a pack of lies, but there will be a truth in it. You may enjoy it, or it will disturb you.

Would that all lies were as benevolent as those of Mr. Postlethwaite.

A Little Number for Those Who Overdid It

Having spent the transition from 2010-2011 as sober as a Mormon, I have to say that I both envy and pity those who overindulged in intoxicants as they ushered in the new year. In honor of those who ingested "recreational" substances, here is a ditty by The Drongos, a great pop band originally from the not-so-drouthy-antipodes, who descended upon New York City in the late seventies, and made a name for themselves by busking heroically. The song Substance Abuser is a tongue-in-cheek number from the perspective of a man who falls in love with a woman with a problem, but "falls out in time". I first heard the song on the local college radio station as a pup. **WARNING-VIDEO FEATURES 80'S HAIR**:





Watching that video, I have to say that female vocalist/guitarist Jean McAllister had a head of hair that would have made Rapunzel jealous. The song, featured on the album Small Miracles, was recorded on the streets of Manhattan. The band also recorded an eponymous studio album, both records were released on the micro-indie label Proteus Records. The band broke up, with members Tony McMaster and Jean McAllister returning to the antipodes (I wonder if they ever play The Old Entomologist). Drummer Stanley John Mitchell currently lives in Brooklyn (if he ever Googles himself and ends up finding this post, I'd be happy to treat him to a D.U.B. pie). Guitarist Richard Kennedy has relocated to England. Unfortunately, the gloriously catchy songs of The Drongos are extremely difficult to find on the web. I did find the number Metronome in the archives of radio station KSCU. As an added bonus, the linked archive also features the original version of If We Never Meet Again by Reckless Sleepers and a slew of other criminally unknown musical gems.

I'm going to close this post to say that, should you find either Small Miracles or The Drongos, do not hesitate to buy either album, both are masterpieces of fine pop tunesmithing.