Interesting article on satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer:
Tom Lehrer quote: “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile.”
Poison another moron in the park, Tom.
* * * *
Read that the Dalai Lama, a few years back, commented to a reporter or video guy, “You’re fat. You should go on a diet.” So now people are pissed at the Dalai Lama. One thing you need to know is, the DL has a hell of a sense of humor (shown to charming advantage in an interview with John Oliver). Seems to me we should celebrate anyone who isn’t terminally angry at this point. And also cut some slack for the head of one of the few non-destructive religions in the world.
Which leads me to… How is it that the Western world, in the form of Europe, has been so hellishly vile to everyone else over the last several hundred yeas?
I think it has much to do with monotheism, the most obnoxious development in religion, arising from and expanding horribly in the Mideast.
Elsewhere in the world, multi-deitied religions let their various gods fight with each other so they don’t have so much time to do damage to the rest of the world. Or, like in much of East Asia, dispense with gods altogether in favorite of harmless philosophies with pleasant phrases and easy exercises.
In the monotheistic triad (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), our one true god is continually pissed off about everybody and everything and insists that everyone else act the same way. Oh yeah, there are occasional bits of love and acceptance thrown in here and there, but when it comes down to the wire, it’s annihilate-the-bastards, front and center.
I think the wealth of Greek culture sprang from letting their gods be slightly dotty goofballs acting like feuding middle-class families, leaving humanity alone to invent geometry.
* * * *
Coaster embroidered with the face of Sherlock Holmes:
The Arthur Conan Doily
* * * *
Our good friend and nearest neighbor some years back, Joe Colonna, had to have a gall bladder operation. These days, it’s no big deal (or so I hear): Somebody sticks minute holes in your sides, retrieves and removes your gallbladder. (No idea what they do with it.) Sort of like hauling the pharaoh’s brains out through his nose for mummification, I guess.
We learned out it one day when Joe’s son, Joey, who has cerebral palsy, stumbled up our long, steep driveway in a panic, yelling that we needed to be with him while his dad was in the hospital. Joey was then in his late 40s, but with the mentality of… I don’t know where you can place it, age-wise. He can’t read or write but has one hell of a sense of humor.
Of course we said we could come down there or he could stay up here, but we needed to check first with his mom (Mimi) and dad. So we packed up some dessert port wine and slumped down the hill. Yes, we found out, Joe would need that operation, but he didn’t know when. We told them we could be there for Joey, no problem.
Joe (who, poor soul, couldn’t himself have alcohol or solid food until the operation) poured me out a stupefying glass of a whiskey I’d never heard of and we all started talking.
He had worked, he told us, first for his father, and then on his own, as a stone-mason making kitchen counters and cemetery monuments in South Philadelphia.
He told us about making counters for the grandchildren of the Gambino mob family in New Jersey. He told us of having been stiffed for $300 by a stupid, worthless non-mob heir who otherwise paid over $10 million to build a stupid, worthless mansion-cum-mausoleum in Atlanta. He told us about supplying unique Pennsylvania blue marble to State Department offices in Washington DC.
He told us about how he’d gone the extra mile to do it right for all these assholes and for oh so many others, how it was possible to make a decent living doing extraordinary work for people who might or (more likely) might not appreciate it, those who had the money to benefit humanity but instead chose to screw humanity in favor of their own interest.
Most of all, he told us what it is like to be a working, concerned, exquisite human being , no matter what.
Joe died about a decade back during a different hospital stay, this one for what seemed a lingering flu. We took his wife, Mimi, shopping after his death, until she moved down to live near her brother.
Joe was the neighbor anyone would wish to have. I’ve missed him almost every day. I’ve written off an on about him and Mimi and Joey. I can’t write too much about them.
* * * *
[Tune: “My Wild Irish Rose”]
My wild Irish nose
Drips the greenest snot that flows
It gets in my hair
Which just isn’t fair:
That snot from my wild Irish nose.
[from my non-existent essay, “How to Stop the Troubles in Ireland Through Humor”]
lickhaven 