Department Of If Vegetables Could Talk
This one might say, “I’m Not A Crook!… but I am the Third [1] Memorial Richard Milhouse Nixon Eggplant.”
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Department of Succinct Advice On How To
Handle Today’s Cutthroat, Back-stabbing Social and/or Business Culture
If someone talks about you behind your back, just fart.
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Department of H.E.L.L. [2]
Remember to involve your children in age-appropriate party prep and hosting tasks.
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Department of Ugly Pretty Things
Two days ago my morning walk listen-to was the Fresh Air podcast of a recent interview with American singer/songwriter Iris DeMent. Dement was raised by a Pentecostal parents and had a very conservative religious background – beliefs that for the most part, she has since left behind. Still, her music, which critics have variously labeled in the folk/country/gospel/bluegrass genres, reflects her roots.
Early on in the interview FA host Terry Gross asked Dement to play a song that has “stayed with” her and influenced her. Dement chose a gospel tune, Pass Me Not:
DEMENT: (Playing piano, singing)
Pass me not, O gentle Savior. Hear my humble cry.
While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by.
Savior, oh, Savior, hear my humble cry.
While on others thou art calling, do not pass me by.
GROSS: That was beautiful. You know, I…
DEMENT: That’s a pretty song….
(from the Fresh Air Transcript)
And I’m thinking, seriously? You call that beautiful?
I had to turn off the rest of the interview to keep my stomach from turning over. I’m just not as good as I used to be when it comes to pretending I don’t hear things.
Yes, the song’s piano melody had a lyrical, almost haunting simplicity, as did Dement’s high lonesome vocal styling…but, in classifying the song as “beautiful,” did either the host or guest actually pay attention to the lyrics?
I enjoy many bluegrass-influenced songs and musical groups, but that Pass Me By song crystallized my objections to much of religious/gospel-influenced bluegrass and country music. Such “beautiful” melodies and instrumentation are ruined – for moiself, anyway – by lyrics depicting a world of obsequiousness and fear-mongering – a world extolling the “beauty” of people kept on their knees with their eyes blinkered; a world where humans must continually assuage the ego of an insecure, capricious and petulant deity; a world where people question their own worth and “salvation” and plaintively beseech a so-called loving savior not to pass them by….
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Department of H.E.L.L., The Continuing Saga
Don’t waste valuable menu planning time fretting over your home’s appearance.
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Department of Bad Halloween jokes
Consider yourself warned.
What is a ghost’s favorite Halloween party drink?
Ghoul-aid
What is a Mummy’s favorite music genre?
Wrap.
Why do female ghosts diet?
So they can keep their ghoulish figures.
What kind of makeup do ghosts wear?
Mas-scare-a.
Why couldn’t the skeleton cross the road?
He had no guts.
Why Count Dracula use a mouthwash?
Because he had bat breath.
Why do ghosts patronize bars and pubs?
They go for the boos.
What happens when ghosts have too many drinks at those pubs?
They get sheet-faced.
Told ya.
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Who’s in Charge of Feasibility Studies for Aphorisms?
I hear on the radio that old cliché about someone preparing to run for political office, and so when I got home I tried to toss my hat into the ring. It doesn’t work.
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Department of Almost Random Thoughts Almost Apropos of Nothing
Or perhaps simply another scary thought that I can blame on Halloween time.
A while back I was cleaning up my home library and found a book a friend had lent me over 10 years ago (ahem). [3] I had fond memories of reading it way back when, and flipped through the book’s forward, which noted that the author had died at a relatively young age. This led to me googling said author and finding out he’d died of AIDS.
Whenever I read something about the historical aspects of the AIDS outbreak, I come across recitations of one of the few positive aspects of the epidemic – stories about how the gay community came together and took care of “their own.” During the early years of the outbreak the medical and scientific establishments were confused about the disease’s etiology and transmission, and medical personnel often acted indifferent, even hostile, toward the afflicted.
I’ve read touching stories of dying gay men, many if not most of whom had been abandoned or shunned by their biological families, being tenderly and courageously cared for by gay friends, neighbors, and even strangers – lesbians in particular. Although the AIDS epidemic in this country was initially almost exclusively confined to gay men, a high percentage of the caretakers were women (sure enough, the afore-mentioned author was, at the end of his life, nursed by his ex wife).
Any cynical – or would that be realistic? – moiself couldn’t help but wonder then (and still wonders now): if the AIDS epidemic in America had, for whatever epidemiological reasons, struck lesbians instead of gay men before spreading into the general population, would there have been the same stories of care-giving? Would gay men have organized to care for their dying gay women friends?
Methinks not.
There is no way for me to “prove” this. Except for extrapolating from that pesky thing called history.
Gaymen, schmay men – they are still men. And no matter their interest or lack of interest in women for sexual or other reasons, men grow up with the culturally induced expectation that women will serve and care for them.
I remember reading [4] a history of the “lavender menace” as recalled by a lesbian activist, who wrote of her disappointment in the early 1970’s with both the feminist movement and the gay rights movement. Straight feminists didn’t want to take up what they saw as the “distraction” of lesbian rights. Gay rights organizations were dominated by gay men, who discounted or ignored the lesbians’ opinions when the women tried to organize and speak out, showed little interest in getting to know the women personally but still “…expected us (women) to bring them coffee.” To paraphrase the author, “The (straight) women broke our spirits, but the gay men broke our hearts.”
“If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle.”
― Rita Mae Brown
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Department of H.E.L.L., Die Hard with a Vengeance
Welcome your guests with a hot beverage and a smile that says, I’m so glad you’re here.
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Happy Halloween!
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May your Halloween Night be truly fit for a Bright, [5]
and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] Yes, more than once in my years of vegetable procurement I’ve returned home from the market/farm to discover that my produce basket contains an eggplant with a profile resembling that of our nation’s 37th President. I have led a charmed life.
[2] Holiday & Entertaining Labor-saving Lists.
[3] Yes, I returned it.
[4] In Ms. Magazine? Rolling Stone? ‘Twas way back in the 80s, I think. I remember the article, but not the source.
[5] SCM will be upset if there aren’t at least five footnotes.