Blog

FALSELY shouting 'FIRE'

2009-10-02T17:09:53Z

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks',meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.

Larry Hardiman

I saw my friend Daniel B., who manages the Twilight Terrace, out at Harold's Storage the other day and he wanted to know why I had not written anything on my blog in awhile. I told him I had been in a true dark funk. Black cloud syndrome. And I just didn't want to write because I was so pissed about the whole health care issue. Dan said why not write about it? Duh? Most of the time I just do not want to expose my dark side. My Jungian Shadow. "All the more reason to write about it," Daniel replied, "Deal with IT or IT will deal with you!" So, this is my Shadow creating. This blog is a rant. A scream. An dark indulgence I do not usually allow myself to have since the primary function of my writing was originally intended to talk only about Eureka Springs and the Magic that engulfs this area. So what does the old SNL vid have to do with my rant? It reminds me of how health care companies are behaving regarding Health Care Reform. They will say anything to prevent reform of the status quo. You cannot really blame them, it will certainly hurt their profit margins, even though Congress has bent over backwards to help them, including the administration. It's almost like Congress has to apologize for meddling with, dare I say it, 'Capitalism'. God knows there is no greater sin in this country than politicians messin' with 'bidness'. My question is 'How in the hell did we get here?'

It seems totally insane to me that we have to have health insurers to begin with, I mean why? There was a time in this country when you got sick, you went to the doctor and you either got well or died. So, where did the health insurer come from and how did we allow them to take over our health? There is a lot of history about it out there and reading it you can see how health insurers got their foot in the door. But the BIG LIE is that we need health insurers. There are some in congress that realize that health insurance companies do not provide any added value to our health status, of course these are 'communists' according to the health insurers and their cohorts in congress. These dances of 'hysteron proteron' by both sides of the aisle only serve as a political smokescreen that conceals a greater problem in our country and in no way succeed in answering the question, how the hell did we get here?

Some say it's the lobbyists, you know the old maxim at work in the nation's capitol, 'money talks and bullshit walks'. But would the money talk if those elected to represent the people actually did so. My daughter, the political science major, says there is money available for all forms of belief. So is it really about the money? I'm prone to think it is about the power you can accumulate through the acquisition of wealth, the power to maintain your seat in Congress and the power to effect the business of the the country. We have become what the founders of this country warned us against, Corporate Owned Government aided and abetted by our banking system. How did we get here?

It seems to me that the road we traveled to get to this point in our history has been paved with lies and falsehoods. Politicians and lying go together like Romeo and Juliet, Tom and Jerry, salt and pepper, light and dark (did I mention I was in a dark mood?), Batman and Robin, Yin and Yang, ad infinitum. I know, I know...my naivete is exceeded only by my gullibility. But is it my imagination or has a lie become an acceptable form of opinion? How does a nondescript section of the Health Care Bill dealing with Doctor/Patient end-of-life-counseling become 'Death Panels'? Why is it acceptable to call the President of the US a terrorist, a Nazi, a Communist? When does an 'opinion' violate the First Amendment? Is it only when it causes harm? Are our courts so inept that 'defamation', 'slander', and 'libel' lawsuits can no longer be won, because it's just someone's opinion? What if their opinion makes me feel like whoopin' their ass, is that OK? How did we, as a people, get to a point where we are so divided? Where it's acceptable for you to speak derogatorily about anyone or anyone's ideas and hey, you are protected by the First Amendment?

Of course, I believe there are solutions to all the problems that confront our country, I am the eternal optimist. I'm also pretty much of a realist. And I know that many of these problems will not be solved in my lifetime. I am just concerned that it is now permissible to FALSELY shout fire in a crowded theater.

Until Next Time,

I Remain...

Just another Diogenistic Zoroastrian looking for a little light on a cloudy day...

Geezeracity Manifestations

2009-10-02T16:59:37Z

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made.

Very few people die past that age.

- George Burns

Why is it our children are constantly complaining that we are 'too old' to understand, then with the next breath telling us to grow up? More than likely they are going through that phase where nothing we do is right! Of course, I never complained as a young adult (wink, wink, nod, nod) so it is difficult for me to understand where they are coming from. But for a moment let's focus on people who are growing older, say past sixty at least. (Of course, this won't make much sense to a 15 year-old who thinks a 25 year-old is over-the-hill or a 25 year-old who thinks 35 is ancient!) What is it that gives folks like those in the video such a passion for life at age ninety, while we all know people that act like they may not make through tomorrow and they are only fifty? Is it nature or nurture or some combination of the two? There are older folks I love to be around, because of their positive outlook on life and the zeal they have for adventure. My wife belonged to book club where the she was the youngest member, the rest of the group was in their 70's and 80's. This group of women enjoyed every minute of every day and when they got together they knew how to party. After a book review they loved to share a glass of wine or two or three and could easily go through two cases of Chardonnay. They broke all the familiar stereotypes of old people.

Stereotype 1 - Od people smell badly. Not that I have noticed. Rest Homes smell badly, basketball games smell badly, motorcyclists, babies, homeless people, congressmen, garbage dumps (P.C: Landfills), anyone in an occupation that requires strenuous outdoor physical activity, and young people that think it is healthy to bathe only once a week smell badly. To generalize that all old people smell badly is grossly inaccurate. O-o-o-o-oh, what is that smell? Do you have moth balls in your pocket?

Stereotype 2 - Old people drive slowly. This is a generalization that has more evidential support, however it does not approximate any truth. The ladies in my wife's bookclub (bookclub ladies) all felt like they were in training for NASCAR and that it was a sin to be the first in line at a stoplight. Young people should be aware that they must yield anytime they see someone with grey in their hair driving down the middle of the road at an excessive speed. On the other hand those olde farts weaving down the road and being passed by snails should be reported immediately to the old people police, they are giving the rest of us a bad name.

Stereotype 3 - Old people are always complaining about their physical ailments. True, some old people gritch (a hybrid of gripe and bitch) a lot. But what makes you think hypochondria and complaining are the domains of the elderly? You might even be thinking at this juncture that I did a little gritching of my own in my last blog. Not true, i was just 'splainin' croquet. My daughter has a friend that ALWAYS has the symptoms of whatever designer ailments happen to be in vogue at the time. Trust me on this one, gritching is not the sole province of old people, but I will concede that if you gritched a lot about your physical ailments (or anything else for that matter) when you were young, you will probably be gritching as you grow older. Truth is none of us want to hear it but all of us want to let others know what is bothering us, the problem is some people make a religion out it. Am I gritching too much here?

Stereotype 4 - Old people can't see, hear or remember a damn thing. Actually, this stereotype could have been combined with Stereotype 3, because there are old people who do complain about these things, only they just can't remember any of it. Sure there is some eyeball distortion as you grow older, and you may need reading glasses or surgery to correct visual problems (unless you are still driving), and yes their is definite loss of hearing for some folks and a highly developed sense of tuning out the noise that causes so much distortion in the lives of others. My wife says I'm a tuner inner/outer, but it doesn't bother me all that much because one of my daughters is a fine tuner, also. A humorous note here, why do young people think old people don't like loud music, but then accuse us of being deaf? Truth is, the music that is being played so loudly at every stop light I come to just SUCKS! And Alzheimer's and senility are certainly not conditions that we would wish on anyone, no matter what their ages. As a former high school teacher and coach, I can tell you it was very distressing for me to see so many young people with symptoms that could only be described as the early onset of Alzheimer's. But a friend of mine told me that there is a positive side of Alzheimer's, you get to sleep with a new woman every night!

Stereotype 5 - Old people are wise. Some are, like the folks in the vid, most are just marking time until they die and I wouldn't give two cents for anything they might have to offer. When I was younger, there were old people that I knew that could bore the bark right off a Dogwood tree, and others that I could listen to for hours on end. The wise ones involved you in their tales and remarkably, never repeated themselves. But the stories they told remain with you forever. Guess which one I chose to spend time with? Spend time with?

The problem with stereotypes or forming a hardened view about old people is usually that if you think old people behave a certain way, then the odds are that you will act that way when you are older. If you have a negative view of growing older, then you will have a negative experience as you age. However, if you have a positive view of growing older, your personal experience should be much more positive as you age. The psychology of how we view the world has been exploited successfully by advertising for generations. Even today, I can't tell you how many of my friends think they have to take medication to stop going to the toilet so much! Flomax, was originally developed to lower hypertension, NOT to reduce the number of times you have to go to the toilet. Now they even have a Flomax for women! Hell, if enough people said they had a particular symptom, there would be a pharmaceutical company selling a quick over-the-counter fix for it within the week. I'm not saying 'having to go often' is not a problem for some people, I'm saying that it became a much larger problem when the drug companies started advertising that it was a problem! Same with stereotypes. As long as older people are portrayed as 'smelly', forgetful, hard of hearing, nearly blind, idiots that repeat themselves and need drugs for erections and peeing too much, what will the future be like for younger people who never see anything different? Where are the Golden Girls now that we need them?

Until Next Time,

I Remain,

Just another Old Zoroastrian Cowboy looking for his glasses and his hearing aide so he can mount old whatshisname, and hunt down those young heathens playing their music so damn loud...

Numinous Croquet Lunacy

2009-09-01T02:42:38Z

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.

- The Beatles (A Day in the Life)

Early on Friday morning, before Labor Day, we were up at the crack of dawn, running around trying to make sure that we were packed and ready to go to Tulsa for a Labor Day Croquet Tournament. Then we remembered we weren't leaving until One o'clock! My first indicator that I had done something to annoy the Croquet Gods. So, after we slowed our pace considerably, I decided to make a quick trip to the market, and found that during the night two of the tires on our car had been punctured by an intolerably inconsiderate vandal. Obviously, the Vandal had received his/her inspiration from the Croquet Gods. The second indicator that the Croquet Gods were not only annoyed but downright pissed off. Luckily, we had our daughter's car, the Baborus (-a, -um) Tintinnabulus (-a, -um), or the Babe for our transportation purposes. I don't know if she calls it the Babe because it is so deceptively alluring (like the tinkling of a small bell) or because it smells like it was used to transport pigs to front during the Crimean War. So, the Dans (there were two of them) show up and we get their gear situated and we're off. Almost. The car starts grasping for air, then goes into electric mode. We are out of gas. Thank God for Hybrids. This was the third indicator that things were just not going my way. The Dans, bless their black hearts, spent about two hours trying to help me get over it. They provided me with a dozen tried and true aphorisms. "That which does not destroy us makes us more inebriated". "When life hands you lemons, make yourself a vodka martini with a lemon twist." Ad infinitum.

One of the Dans stalks his shot, thinking,

"What the f...!"

We arrived around four, checked into the hotel and then took off for the croquet courts at La Fortune Park. After a practicing for a bit I met my partner for doubles on Saturday morning. A college student from Oklahoma Wesleyan. He might possibly have been conceived in a blender or one of those Dyson vacuum cleaners. Let's just say he was a wee bit hyper and resembled the much-maligned Roadrunner on the crouquet greens. It struck me that this was some type of Cosmic justice being meted out by the Croquet Gods, pairing the old slow Elmer Fudd kind of guy with gimpy knees and the young athletic Tasmanian Devil. He slowed down after a bit when he noticed he was talking to air, because I couldn't keep up with him. But, I have to admit, he garnered my respect for the game and the gracious people who are involved in it when he told me to either keep up or have my brains smashed in with a New Zealand built crouquet mallet. Being older and quicker of wit I says, "What brains?" "Don't worry," he says. "I'll just keep smashing 'til I find one."

One of the Dans lines up his croquet shot, thinking,

"How can I best destroy this S.O.B."

Friday evening we enjoyed a wonderful Last Supper at the Stonehorse Restaurant in Tulsa. For me, it was the highlight of the trip. Do you like that foreshadowing of how I played in the tournament? It started off well on Saturday morning, my partner and I won our first match and then proceeded to lose our next two. One to a pair of Octogenarians and the other to a pair of college students. The gods have no mercy. And neither does croquet. It doesn't matter how well you know the strategy or how smart you are, the bottom line is you have to first make your shots. Without the skills to put your ball through a wicket that is only a fourth of an inch wider than the ball, or croquet a ball that is only three feet away from your ball, you are pretty much up the creek. After being spanked by the two 80 something females and put to bed crying, I had a decision to make. Would I let the croquet gods defeat me, would I learn from the tournament and try to improve my skills, or would I hide behind a tree and smash the old ladies over the head when they walked by. I decided to smash them over the head but I missed...then I had to endure a lecture from them on how to properly line up a head with a croquet mallet. Humiliating, I tells ya. But like my friend Arnie Palmer used to say, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as you're in there swingin'."

It doesn't take long for the experience of the numinous

to unhinge the mind.

Umberto Eco

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Croquet Player seeking a didactic pretext for being unable to place his balls in the right postion....

Bohemian Melancholia

2009-05-08T17:30:47Z

"Theophilus Crowe's mobile phone played eight

bars of Bohemian Rhapsody in an irritating electronic voice

that sounded like a choir of suffering houseflies,

or Jiminy Cricket huffing helium,

or, you know,

Bob Dylan.

- Christopher Moore

(The Stupidest Angel)

Time is such a hard concept to understand. It's like Groucho Marx said, "Times flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." I thought, well, I think I will write a little today, I look at the computer and May has turned into July. Two months without the solitude of writing, how did this happen? Oh well, I suppose I will have to deal with it or in my case just accept it and move on. There was a Psychological Hospital that had the slogan, "Deal with it, or it will deal with you." I don't know if I ever really understood that slogan. It should have read, 'deal with it, until you run out of insurance, or it will deal with you.' It is interesting to observe how people do deal with different tragedies and joys in their lives. More entertaining, is to witness how other people deal with the tragedies of others.

I have seen emotions range from real heartfelt empathy to absolute cold bloodiness in the way that others deal with the grief of friends and loved ones. Grief is such a private thing. I think it is the reason so many people want to be alone when they deal with it. Being alone with your grief does not mean that you have psychological problems. The problem lies in the fact that our society thinks that you need to have 'others; around you to help you deal with that grief, when in reality having a bunch of folks around you feeling sorry for you or droning on about their own grief experiences doesn't do a damn thing for you. It might do something for them, it might help them to deal with a problem that they might have put off grieving about at an earlier time. I suppose it's cheaper than seeing a psychiatrist but it does seem a little on the rude side.

Maybe we should return the practice of hiring professional mourners to express our grief when we lose a loved one the way the Ancient Romans did. But I suppose Funeral Homes would lobby against that idea, I mean after all, don't they know about grief more than those who experience it? Probably not, but they do have more cash. I have met folks that feel guilty because they didn't feel the need to scream and cry and tear their out when they lost a loved one, because they thought that was the way they should feel. When asked why they thought that, most responded that that was the way they had seen others respond. You cannot judge the depth of a person's grief by outward appearances. Sorry, but the crap you see in the movies and daytime soaps, is just crap. It does not have anything to do with real grief and how real people actually deal with it.

Today's particular rant is derived from a post on I recently read on GeekFest regarding the tragic accident that took Marty Roenigk's life, "To pass away along with your dog must be a perfect dream of many in our community." Was this a statement to assuage grief? Give me a f***ing break! I won't let you be in my dream, if you will keep me out of YOURS. Grief is such a personal thing and how we deal with it is also, very personal. It takes time for each individual. How much? Who knows, we are all unique. (Especially in ES). How do you cope? Again, it varies just like the amount of time it takes. There are no shortcuts. You can't drink your way out of it, you can't shop your way out of it, you can't pray your way out of it, and you can't 'just climb back up on that horse, partner'. You cry, a lot. You scream at God, a little. You pray, just like a small child. But slowly, you start remembering. You remember wonderful stories about the one you lost. Some are so funny you laugh out loud, and some are so sad it makes you cry again. But inevitably you start coming around. Back with the living, only you have changed. Because something beautiful has been taken from you life.

Until next time,

I remain...

Just another Zoroastrian Funeral Director trying to sell you an Absurd Lay-A-Way Plan...

Nirvana

2009-04-22T19:15:37Z

There'll be two dates on your tombstone

and all your friends will read 'em,

but all that really matters

is that little dash

between 'em.

-Kevin Welch

When I listen to Kevin sing, 'Life Down Here on Earth', I think about all the experiences in life that have led me to question my beliefs about certain things. I know, it is really hard to believe that an old person might have some prejudices and biases, but hey, I'm only human. When my wife offered to take me for a pedicure, I had to laugh out loud. Really. It just did not seem like a manly-man kind of thing to do. She asked if it would make me feel more manly if she called it 'Waterboarding'. Here our country is involved in a debate about torture, and my wife is making jokes. But she assured me it would be an unforgettably pleasant experience. She was correct. She took me to a place in Berryville called Pretty Nails. The place is operated by a young Vietnamese couple, Michelle and Steve. When I sat down in the vibrating chair, my feet being massaged in a spa of warm agitating water, I was happier than a puppy with two peckers. If you have had a pedicure you know what I'm talking about, if not, no amount of explaining can help. it's one of those things you just have to do. Steve is one of those people who truly has Wisdom in his Hands. Steve's fingers started probing my toes with moves that reminded me of a lie-detector needle at a congressional hearing. It really was...a little bit of heaven.

It reminded me a little of when I had my first encounter with Escargot. What I learned from that experience was that you could saute a cow patty in butter, olive oil, and garlic and it would probably taste pretty damn good, too. These experiences allow us to communicate with others on a different level, albeit a very shallow one at times. Have you ever had one of those conversations where someone asks, "You ever been to Mexico?" "Yes," you respond, thinking maybe this is an ice breaker to talk about Swine Flu. But no, your conversational partner keeps asking until he/she finds a country you haven't been to, and proceeds to tell you all about it, and you don't have a clue? Well, you have just been sucked in by a Conversational Dictator (a new use for CD). Shared experiences be damned. That is why it is difficult for me to find others who want to share their experiences about Vietnam. I was visiting a friend's website, Rareclick, who has some phenomenal photos of Vietnam, which we both can relate to, although our experiences were so totally different. He was on vacation, I was on a MacNamara Scholarship.

Sometimes I find myself stuck in that limbo that exists between the concrete and the abstract. If I cannot find several 'concrete' examples to express my thoughts or opinions in the abstract, then I find myself revisiting the concrete trying to develop a more complete understanding of an idea. Then sometimes the ideas are just unexplainable. It is as though explanation steals the magic of that which you are trying to explain. It is about the solitude of creating. I think back to a custodian who used to work for me, one of the many who served as inspiration to me, who used to love to tell me, "God didn't send no committee to save the world." There are things we have to do on our own. There are some things we know that defy explanation. These are things that provide our lives with meaning. Right now, i think it's time for another pedicure. Yippe-Ki-Yea.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zorastrian Cowboy wondering why all his dead relatives are laughing at him

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

2009-04-06T19:58:00Z

Here I hang from a 46-D

While the Big G just sits there

Punching holes in Cheerios.

Hi Mom! Say hi to Pete and all the guys!

- Anonymous Viet Nam Poet

Dante Alighieri's famous quote from his Divina Commedia hung in large red letters over the arrival gate at Hue-Phu Bai air base in 1968. To many of the young men and women who fought in Viet Nam, the concept of Hell took on new meaning during their tours of duty. You not only came face-to-face with all your fears, you had to do it in a nightmarish environment totally foreign to Americans. The question that often arises among a group of vets is, "Was it Heaven or was it Hell?" Hell if I know. It was more like an interlude in the theater of the absurd. Since only about 25% of all Americans believe in the concept of hell, while 90% believe in heaven, maybe we should pause and kick around the idea that 'the Kingdom of Heaven is in us and around us' (from the Book of Thomas). In his book, The Things they Carried, Tim O'Brien discusses what a 'true' war story looks like, what it sounds like, how it might make you feel, and the pictures it might form in your mind. If you look carefully at how Tim talks about a true war story, they look ever so similar to the Parables of Jesus or to the tales of Buddha. Many of these early stories told by Jesus and Buddha bordered on the surreal. They have no real moral for the reader and no explanation that is the same or even satisfactory to each reader or listener. It's almost as if each person walks away from the story understanding it differently than anyone else. And that's why we love them. They are just stories. Stories that make us laugh. Stories that make us cry. Stories that challenge us to confront our own fears, biases, prejudices, and views of the world, based on the experiences we bring to them. Before I departed for Viet Nam, my granddaddy provided me with the briefest, (therefore best) and most absurd advice I was to receive. "Son, when you get to Viet Nam make sure you keep some matches wrapped in plastic on you at all times. You never know when you are going to need a light."

The Kingdom of Heaven is like the yeast that a woman

took and mixed in with three measures of flour until

All of it was leavened.

- Matthew 13:33

The following is a true war story. If you don't like it, hang around until I tell it again...I am sure it will improve! The Kingdom of Heaven is like this helicopter crew flying out to a firebase overlooking the valley where Khe Sanh was located. On their way there the pilot called back to the crewchief, Danny Dulude, to tell him they were about to fly through a rainbow. Danny stood in the passageway of the CH-46 D helicopter, between the pilot and co-pilot and witnessed a sight he had never before beheld. Dead ahead was a perfectly circular rainbow, in the valley, between the mountains they were flying through. It was an awesome sight. There was no beginning and no end. For a moment Danny could not recall the last time he had seen any colors quite so bright and quite so beautiful. Danny stepped back into the cargo area of the aircraft and told his gunner to go into the cockpit and take a look. As the helicopter made its descent into the firebase, all hell broke loose. Time froze. While the helicopter crew was admiring Nature's phenomena, the bad guys were training their guns on the helicopter. One of the 30 caliber rounds that came through the fuselage had ripped through Danny's calf. Danny lay there, in the haze of sudden shock, with calf muscles and tendons hanging out of his flight suit. His gunner drew a knife and started toward Danny. Danny screamed at him, "No man, don't cut it off, it's still attached!" The gunner told him to relax, the knife was for cutting his flight suit pant leg off, so he could get a tourniquet on the wound. Danny passed out thinking about the time he caught his foot in his tricycle when he was just a little boy.

True story. Of course, Danny lived and still has all his appendages, even though some of them are a little scarred. He lives in Upstate New York now with his wife and has three sons and believe it or not, he collects knives. When asked about Viet Nam Danny will tell you, "It don't mean nothin'." What meant something to me was Danny's unbelievable enthusiasm for life. It was remarkable to me how he could find meaning and joy in the most mundane aspects of life. Danny not only saved a lot of Marines, he healed a lot of souls. No disrespect to my granddaddy, but Danny provided me with all the light I needed in Viet Nam and still manages to shine a little on me from time to time.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Crewchief wondering if anybody in Eureka has a light...

Credit Default Swaps vis-a-vis Mourning Dove Kootchie

2009-03-27T00:25:00Z

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the moneys gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground

- The Talking Heads

Whoa, Nelly! I was reading some of my favorite blog spots and was suddenly struck by the fact that I have not been inspired lately. Calling all muses, calling all muses, there has been a horrible mistake at the corner of Calliope and Thanatos. Of course, my more adroit friends tell me that you can induce INSPIRATION by sitting and staring at the computer, or simply start writing and the muse will lightly descend and 'plunk your magic twanger, froggy.' So I thought I would take a break from the Oyster Shooters down at Rogue's Manor (who, I might add, supplied the Half-Fast Marching Klub these same famous Shooters on St. Paddy's Day) and try to induce my muse to inspire using a different method. My muse was not amused. Ah, but then today, she visited disguised as a Mourning Dove. After a luncheon supporting the Carnegie Public Library in Eureka Springs and discussing some of the events planned for 2010, my wife and I adjourned to a friend's house for wine and conversation. As sometimes happens, the women and men tend to separate. I don't understand this particular phenomenon and am not totally satisfied that it sometimes occurs but occur it does. Usually, guy talk degenerates rapidly into talk about flatulence because someone in the group can fart the Star Spangled Banner in technicolor rivaling an Hawaiian Sunset. Our group wasn't much different. When the Mourning Dove started coo-WOO-ooing, we couldn't decide if he caught a whiff of our most gaseous member or if he caught a whiff of a female of his species. For my money, I'm going with the probability that he caught a whiff of a female, because if he had caught a whiff of what was coming from our vicinity Elvis would most definitely have left the building.

You might ask at this point, what does LeRoi King dancing as Barbie have to do with anything, much less this blog? Well, the conversation slipped seamlessly from the Ch'i that governs Mourning Dove Kootchie odor into bank leveraging and credit default swaps. Cable fodder for the week. More theater of the absurd. Like life. Like Larry King dancing as Barbie to Good News Week. I think there was a consensus, in the Porch Cabinet, that the folks that came up with these money generating schemes that eventually collapsed the world economy, would be back with new schemes no matter how much government intervention or regulation was applied to the problem. After the money's gone....water flowing underground. Now, does this mean that we think government intervention or regulation is futile? Not really. It just means that none us really expect the government to protect us from everything. You can't ask the government to take care of problems before they become problems, can you? I mean, that would mean that the government could have prepared for Hurricane Katrina or prepared like they did for the great Red River flood that never came to pass. Even though we had to hear about it all damn week. It's Good News Week...

I watched John Stewart of the Comedy Channel go after Jim Cramer of the NBC Business Channel. They had this running battle about who said what when. Basically, I think John Stewart of the Daily Show was right, CNBC had a responsibility to see the collapse of AIG coming, instead of perpetually talking about how great the stock market was doing. Even though now, the folks at CNBS are talking about how they took all their money out of the market before the great collapse. Sure. It would be nice to think that the Fourth Estate was actually doing its job, investigating the powerful and protecting the weak. But it just ain't so.

Which brings us to another reason I love Eureka Springs. Everyone in Eureka is marching to the beat of a different drummer. Hell, you've never heard so many different tunes. After you've been here awhile it seems normal. But in the midst of all this independence is a sense of community that binds people together. Especially during times of crises. The late winter ice storm exemplified this sense of community. No one waited for the government to show up with a one-size-fits-all Sugar tit, everyone was out helping their neighbors. I'm sure there were some who took advantage of the situation, nature makes sure that anomalies will always exist.

Adddendum#1: Almost forgot to mention a new blog I'm following, called Wisdom of the Hands by Doug Stowe. Doug is able to combine his love of wood with a unique philosophy about life which reminds me a lot of Mary over at Jumping Off Cliffs, both of whom are able to make sense out of life's anomalies.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another Zoroastrian Cowboy

Looking for a frequency that will reduce the noise in my life

As Good as Gold

2009-03-02T04:49:00Z

I can't think for you

You'll have to decide.

- Bob Dylan

In 1965 when I was a young sophomore at Austin College in Sherman, TX, I attended a seminar at TCU in Ft Worth, Tx. The seminar was a debate about 'What is Art?' It featured Paul Tillich versus the TCU Art Department. The TCU Art Department was overmatched. The betting in Vegas favored the sno-ball's chance in Hell over the TCU Art Department. It's the story of TCU. Poor bastards. They really should stick to football. So, Paul Tillich said "Art is anything that fills space and has meaning to the one that beholds it." A professor from TCU responded, "How do you know so much about Art if you are not an artist?" (Applause, from his students here.) "Well", said Paul Tillich, " the same way a psychologist knows more about what a chimp is gonna do than the chimp does!" (Applause, laughter, and giggling from those not in an Art class at TCU). I have been told by my friend, Steve Schmidt, that if I have a blog about Eureka Springs, I must include Art, because art is the the lifeblood of Eureka. I told him that I thought there was a lot of hucksterism involved in art. Steve said, "If by 'hucksterism' you mean that someone is trying to convince you to buy something you do not need then yeah, there is some 'hucksterism involved. Just like there is at Dillard's or Wal-Marx. Or", he went on when he should have stopped, "have you been to the Doctor lately?" Couldn't argue with him there, having recently been referred to a sleep clinic.

Well, is art anything that fills space and has meaning to the beholder? Duh? How do you argue with that? The reason I used the Floating Woman Suffocating Under Saran-wrap picture to introduce this blog was simple. When I think about art, it is how I feel. Suffocating. When someone is explaining the artwork to me I often feel like I'm listening to W.C. Fields selling Dr John's Magic Elixir off the back of his medicine wagon. Fortunately, for us, the artist is capable of stripping away the facades that we hide our souls behind and appeal to our imaginations in ways we have not thought about. I was setting here working on this blog and looking around the house and trying to find something that would not be considered art. I can't find anything that would not be considered art by someone. The hucksterism involves the buying and selling of art, putting a price on it. In Joseph Heller's book, Picture This, he points out that in the 1940's there were about 2000 authenticated Rembrandt's floating around but by the 1980's there were only a couple of hundred. Those people with the 1800 Rembrandt's that are technically Rembrandt's because he signed them, were actually duplicates painted by his students. Of course, this was before the age of prints or giclees.

A friend asked me, "Which Van Gogh painting is your favorite?" I replied, "The Sunflower painting." "Which one?" my friend asked, "he painted over two hundred of them." "Uh-h-h. number 97", I responded. I was genuinely surprised to find out I had been admiring different paintings, thinking they were all the same one. My friend asked what would I do if I had an original Van Gogh. I told him I would sell it. He was disappointed and said I really did not appreciate art. It's not that I don't appreciate it, I just happen to think that it is highly over-appreciated. Artists are fond of saying, "Life is like a haunted house and Art is the only stair that doesn't creak." Yeah? Well, that's because they keep it so well-oiled. So why does a Van Gogh fetch such extravagant price at auction? There are a myriad of economic theories out there used to explain why a Van Gogh is worth more than the painting of Elvis I have on black velevet.

One theory is that there are not very many Van Gogh's and there is a very high demand for them that creates their value. For example, everyone has a wrist watch today but if you had owned a wrist watch in 1898, you would have been one of the wealthiest people in the United States. A more recent phenomenon has been watching the price of computers continue to diminish. As an entity becomes more plentiful its value decreases. In the 1930's about 25% of high school students graduated. If you had a high school diploma during that period, it was a valuable commodity. Today, about 75% percent of all high school students receive a diploma and it has lost much of its value because everybody has one. Now, you have to have a college degree to be in that valuable 25%, but the percent of students receiving college degrees is starting to creep up, which will require having a master's degree in the very near future in order for your degree to have the same value as a high school education in 1930. I hear all the time about how many engineers there are in India and China. Like, duh, how valuable is that? I remember when the NASA program downsized back in the early '80s, there were engineers serving up Big Macs at the local MacDonald's all over the country. I think the medical profession in this country has figured this out. The AMA controls how many doctors will graduate every year, they make their profession valuable. Let's hope teachers, police, fire fighters, and other service professions do not figure this out!

So far, I have been focused on extrinsic value, or the value that others place on art. The artist will tell you it has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of their work. They like the appreciation shown by the fact that someone is willing to pay for their art, but would continue to create even if there were no buyers. So, I guess, we've come full circle at this point. If you you like it, if it moves you in some way, if it has some special meaning for you, whether it's a movie, a painting, a song, or a book then it's art and it's okay for us to appreciate it.

Art is anything you can

get away with.

- Andy Warhol

Until next time,
I remain,
Just another Zoroastrian Cowboy
Trying to understand why Gottfried Helnwein made the Baby Jesus look like Adolf Hitler

Opera for the End of the World

2009-02-16T03:19:00Z

A WORK IN PROGRESS!

I was sitting here listening to a CD (remember when that meant Certificate of Deposit?) of my daughter singing 'Lo hear the Gentle Lark' at her junior recital in Indiana. It's a beautiful piece when you can close your eyes and have difficulty distinguishing between flute and voice. Even though she is a Music major in Vocal Performance she has this problem singing for her mother and me. She doesn't mind performing on stage in front of others, but she just has a problem singing for family. Go figure. Hell, I'll sing in the shower or car (usually, not at the same time), even though I can't carry a note in a number 10 washtub with a chorus of Alabama bullfrogs singing 'The Hallelujah Chorus" as backup. But even if I had my daughter's pipes, I seriously doubt that I would be singing for others. I would still keep it to myself. My friend over at Jumping Off Cliffs wrote about some common feelings that most of us share, like when you think others might be watching you, you forget, they think you are watching them. What a paranoid world we inhabit.

I suppose one of the underlying causes of our paranoia might be our innate fear of rejection. Our fear of rejection keeps us from sharing our gifts with others. Of course, this is not a new concept, I mean Cain whacked Able because he just thought God had rejected him. If the first poignant story in the Bible is about the power of the rejection, then I figure the ancient Hebrews were on to a meaningful way for us to live our lives in harmony. Of course, they were not the only culture or religion to understand the power of rejection. The worst recorded punishment in many cultures was ostracism, being separated from those you admire, respect, and love. And it is still a strong part of culture. I remember one of my favorite scenes in Catcher in the Rye was when Holden Caulfield was listening to a piano player in a bar. Holden reflects that if could play a piano like that he would go home and only play only for himself.

What gives people that courage to overcome their fear of rejection? To be able to perform their best, knowing that they will always fall short of perfection? Is that why we create these facades we present to the rest of the world? One of the beautiful things about Opera is the ability of the performers to express any emotion in a musical language that is universally understood. Emotions that human beings rarely express to each other openly, even though we can all relate to them. I took Dr Atomix as my user name for this blog from the Opera Dr Atomic, about the founder of the Atom Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer. The night before the Atom Bomb is tested in Los Alamos, 'Oppy' is singing to Gen Groves about how difficult it is for him to lose weight. Here is a man who will eventually be rejected by his country, worried more about his appearance than he is about the means of destruction he is about to deliver to the world. I mean it sounds like a skit from SNL's 'Ricardo's Hideaway', where Billy Crystal says, "You know, Dahlings, it is better to look good, than to be good."

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."

- Miss Piggy

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another paranoid Zoroastrian Cowboy,

Wondering why that guy over there is staring at me...

Pessioptimistiche

2009-02-13T19:56:00Z

Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

- by Grunthos the Flatulent

Putty. Putty. Putty.

Green Putty - Green Putty

Grarmpitutty - Morning!

Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!

Discovery.....Oh.

Putty? ..... Armpit?

Armpit ..... Putty.

Not even a particularly

Nice shade of green.

First, thanks to my friend over at MB, for the link to the Onion. I have been suffering through a vicious head cold for the past couple of weeks and nothing seems to help! I have tried copious quantities of Single Malt Scotch Whiskey that are said to have medicinal qualities and tried inhalers that would make Grunthos the Flatulent pass out, but nothing seems to help. So, when I ran across this this book on Amazon, I went into this semi-trance. You know, like when you have a cold, and you're feeling sorry for yourself, and you are laying on the sofa with a limp willie, and drool is coming out the side of mouth, and the T.V. is on, but you're not really hearing it kind of a trance. I was trying to think about how it would feel to be healthy and happy again. Then I thought, if I had never felt like I had been ate by a wolf and shit over the side of a cliff, then I really wouldn't be able to distinguish between feeling good and feeling bad. Or as my friend Jerry Jeff Walker liked to say, "If I'd never felt the sunshine then I would not cuss the rain (if my feet would fit a railroad track, I guess I'd a been a train)."

There are times when you just want to sit and think, when you want to get away from the life-is-a-party way of thinking. But is there a middle way? Can you actually be a stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, without experiencing the extremes? Or, are these extreme feelings part of our genetic make-up, without which we wouldn't know whether to fish or cut bait? I have a psychiatrist (fizzy-key-a-tryst, thank you Ricky Ricardo) friend that tells me all of our emotions are legitimate. They are mechanisms that are triggered to enable us to respond appropriately to different situations. My problema, she tells me is that my emotions are FUBAR, that I REALLY don't know shit from shine-ola. I told her she was making me feel paranoid, she said, "Hon, you ain't paranoid enough!" She did say I had one outstanding quality, that I was a good listener. I asked what that meant. She said, "You're not listening!" I think I'm going to find a male psychiatrist, he will probably be much more sympathetic to my childish needs. He will probably have some of his own childish needs and call me wishy-washy. In which case, I will return to her.

I don't mind being a little paranoid. It's being outrageously maniacal when the phone rings while I'm watching the tube, or cursing the idiot that swerves in front of me on the highway, or being domineering and selfish and wanting it MY WAY (Frank Sinatra summed up Brokow's greatest generation with that song), that causes me consternation. You know I've tried everything, Crystal gazing, Zen, Yoga, being kind to dogs, if it is supposed to help you get in touch with your Inner Tube, then I've tried it. Hell, I've even been to the Unitarian Church! Nothing I've tried has helped me to become more considerate. thoughtful, or kind. Until. Until I discovered I had SLEEP APNEA!

That's me! I had wires hooked up everywhere and the nurse kept assuring me, "Don't worry, we only electrocute about 1 out 10." I went to sleep thinking of that Beavis and Butthead song, "When I was young and had no sense, I took a whiz against the electric fence. Hurt so bad, shocked my balls, took a crap in my overalls." The nurse came in and woke me up again, to see if I was sleeping, what else is new? I finally went to sleep again, only to wake up thinking that a miniature spacecraft had come from Tralfamdore seeking a specimen for their Zoo of the Absurd. It was only the red light shining from the tip of my finger, that was hooked to some device that was measuring the Oxygen in my blood. They told me I snored, LOUDLY. They also told me if I would buy a machine that would pump air into my nose all night, that I would wake up healthy, wealthy, and wise. I asked, "Why can't I just buy a Gaze Ball and stare at it before I go to bed at night?" They said that would work only if I had a machine that blew air into my nose. I know, I know, it's time for a cheap joke about "smoke being blown into another orifice" but I am trying to be more considerate. At least they weren't trying to sell me bundled mortage securites or Credit Default Options. Maybe, they just haven't thought about that, yet.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another sleepy Zorastrian Cowboy,

Seeking a way to get Dem Deep REMs that involves Summer Glau