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The Party Poopers I’m Not Indulging

May 26, 2023

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of You Say, Po-tay-to, I say Po-tah-to;
You Say Collection, I Say Exploitation

Museums:

A. repositories of culture

B. an empire’s trophy cases

C. institutions for fencing stolen goods

D. guardians of history

My opinion of museums has gradually changed over the years, beginning way-back-when, while wandering through the Portland Art Museum.  Moiself  and a friend were viewing the museum’s current collections as well as travelling exhibitions of Northwest tribal masks and centuries-old Japanese tapestries.  The only information available regarding the respective collections were small signs posted on the walls and notations in the museum’s brochure, which attributed the artifacts as  “from the collection of _____” (insert wealthy person name).  I wondered aloud, “Is collection a code word for pirate booty?”

I’ve been reminded of this during the past several weeks, listening to the Freakonomics podcast’s three-part series on art and museums: Stealing Art is Easy. Giving It Back Is Hard,  which I can summarize thusly:

If a work of art – from paintings, weavings, masks, pottery, to household artifacts – is in a British museum but was not crafted by contemporary or ancient inhabitants of England, it was likely plundered from its area of origin.   [1]

There seems to be little disagreement – from museum curators to art and cultural historians – on that statistic.  The catch is, should such works be repatriated, and if so, when and how and to whom?

 

 

How do you return an artifact to its country of origin when the origin may be disputed and/or the country no longer exists (e.g., the Benin Bronzes)?  Some museum curators, while acknowledging the sometimes bloody and brutal acquisition of such art, make the argument that to return so-called precious artifacts to countries that do not have the infrastructure to house them safely in museums is somehow a waste to all humanity – which can be interpreted as a dog whistle for the racist and colonialist justification for stealing acquiring the artifacts in the first place (“These people aren’t sophisticated enough to care for their own art”).

The three episodes of this series (The Case of the $4 Million Gold Coffin; Is a Museum Just a Trophy Case?; How To Return Stolen Art) address the complexities of these logistically and ethically thorny dilemmas, whether the art in question was obtained from centuries-old European colonial raids or via the present stolen antiquities markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.  I highly recommend that anyone who has ever visited any museum listen, and consider the issues.

 

“You call that art? My five-year-old could have looted that.”

*    *    *

Department Of Right-Wing RCers Don’t Hear Themselves When They Talk, Do They?

LA Pride   [2] and other organizations invited to the tenth annual LA Dodgers Pride Night are boycotting or reconsidering their participation in the event, after one of their sister organizations was disinvited from the festivities.

“The Los Angeles chapter of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—a charity that raises money for LGBTQ causes and performs in in drag dressed as nuns—were initially set to receive the Community Hero Award in honor of their community service and promotion of human rights.

The Dodgers announced it would remove the Sisters from its honorees on Wednesday, citing the ‘strong feelings of people who have been offended by the Sisters’ inclusion.’
( excerpts from “L.A. Dodgers’ Pride Night Controversy Explained: Why LGBTQ Groups, Politicians And Certain Catholics Are Slamming Team,”
Forbes, 5-19-23 )

 

 

Until this ruckus came to light, I didn’t know there was a Los Angeles chapter of the SPI.

If you are or have been a SF and/or Bay Area resident, a frequent visitor to San Francisco, or just a fan of the city,     [3]   you may be familiar with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.  The Sisters were founded in San Francisco by several gay men over 40 years ago.  What began as street theater –

(Sister members include “Sister Tilda Nextime,” “Sister Viscous Power Hungry Bitch,” “Sister Missionary Position,” “Sister Adora Penthouse View,” “Sister Bambi Dextrous,” and moiself’s  favorite, “Sister Shalita Corndog”) –

soon became a nonprofit charitable organization.

 

 Their mission statement, as per their website:

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence® are a leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns. We believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty.
Since our first appearance in San Francisco on Easter Sunday, 1979, the Sisters have devoted ourselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.
We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.

So: the SPI were invited to this years LA Dodgers Pride Night, and some conservative RC defenders got their papal panties in a knot.

“…outcry over the ‘drag nuns’ began in the Midwest, with a call-in campaign led by the conservative advocacy organization CatholicVote. At the urging of the organization’s president, Brian Burch, followers flooded the ball club with outraged messages over plans to honor the Los Angeles Sisters with the Community Heroes Award at the team’s 10th annual Pride Night on June 16.
‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are an anti-Catholic hate group which exists to desecrate and degrade the Catholic faith,’ Burch wrote in an open letter to the baseball commissioner….”
(excerpts from “The Dodgers booted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence…”
LA Times, 5-19-23)

 

 

The nerve.  The absolute, unmitigated gall.

No one has desecrated – and nothing can desecrate and degrade –
the Catholic Church
more than its own history and behavior.

The church, from its highest representatives to its obtusely loyal parishioners, has no authority to speak on matters of “desecration.” The church itself has been a Brotherhood of Perpetual Indulgence for decades (if not centuries) of indulging rapists, abusers, and pedophiles within their ranks, turning a blind eye to the depredations and reassigning/transferring the criminals within their ranks, while ignoring, and/or shaming and attempting to silence those who sought justice. In the Los Angeles Diocese alone, the Catholic church has paid $660 million to settle 508 sexual abuse cases.

So I say, not only invite everybody to the party, let every night be Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Night ® at Dodger Stadium.

 

Batter up!

 

And, in breaking news, it appears the LA Dodgers agree:

Column:  The Dodgers faltered by disinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence but came to their senses (LA Times 5-23)

*   *   *

Department Of A Recommendation To Do Something
You Probably Haven’t Done In A Long Time

That would be, moiself  recommends y’all rewatch   [4]  the 1970 disaster movie classic, Airport. I’d seen it decades ago, and forgotten most about it except to know that it was the primary inspiration for the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker (ZAZ) parody movie, Airplane, after which it took a long time for anyone – from movie producers to the ticket-buying public – to take any disaster movie seriously.    [5]   

Dateline: Monday circa 7 am;  warming up on my elliptical machine before my yoga class, trying to find something to watch (sans commercial interruption) to pass the time.  There it was, featured in the “For You”    [6]   section of my Netflix feed.  The opening segments of the movie…oh, my.  In the so-bad-it’s-good category, I found the movie’s deadpan solemnity to be sidesplitting, and almost missed my yoga class.

I had totally forgotten how many establishing shots of Airport, scene by scene, are almost indistinguishable from the spoof.  The ZAZ team must’ve had that movie running simultaneously as they were storyboarding their version. 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Podcast Gardening

As regular readers of this blog know, I often write about podcasts I’ve listened to. I have at least thirty in my phone’s podcast feed app, and the process of weeding out some and adding others is a never-ending project.

I don’t listen to every episode of every podcast, but if I find moiself  skipping several episodes of a podcast I reconsider its inclusion in my listening library.  The episodes I tend to skip are most often those hosted by celebrities (read: actors and/or stand-up comics), who offer enough interesting material to tempt me from the first listen or two, but which then and far too often spend too much time with what I call the “gush fest.”     [7]

Host:
“My guest is the renowned, the amazing and unbelievably talented, Emma Stagehamm. Emma, I *love* your work!!!! ”

Guest:
“And I love *your* work!!!! “

Host:
“And I especially loved your work in the revival of the all-French mime production of Chekov’s ‘The Seagull’ !!!! ”

Guest:
“And I thought your work was brilliant in the off-Broadway, Star Wars-inspired
 political thriller, ‘The Mandalorian Candidate’ !!!!!!!!!!!!! “

Ad repeatum nauseum.

Yeah, yeah, you’ve done work; he’s done work; she’s done work; most of Hollywood has had work done;    [8]   they’ve done work – all gawd’s chilluns done work.  Please, spare me the seemingly obligatory, opening-an-interview-with-a-fellow-celebrity-butt-snogging, and say something interesting.

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [9]

  “Convent: a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure
to meditate upon the sin of idleness.”

( Ambrose Bierce, American writer and satirist, The Devil’s Dictionary )

 

 

*   *   *

May you not be disinvited to an event at which you were to be honored;
May you consider museum collections with a fresh eye and an open heart;
May you surely enjoy old classics like Airport;     [10]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] And not necessarily by the usual suspects: European colonialists.  Locals often plundered “their own” artifacts, removing and hiding them, and later selling them to the highest bidders (e.g. the Egyptians who, during the Arab Spring uprising, who broke into museums and looted ).

[2] An LGBTQ+ organization sponsoring or support community events in and around Los Angeles.

[3] Excuse me, The City.

[4] Or watch, as some of you may never have seen it.

[5] A disaster movie is “….a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject and primary plot device. …. these films usually feature some degree of build-up, the disaster itself, and sometimes the aftermath, usually from the point of view of specific individual characters or their families or portraying the survival tactics of different people.  These films often feature large casts of actors and multiple plot lines, focusing on the characters’ attempts to avert, escape or cope with the disaster and its aftermath. The genre came to particular prominence during the 1970s with the release of high-profile films such as Airport (1970), followed in quick succession by The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974).”  (excerpts from Wikipedia’s, disaster film entry )

[6] How did Netflix know?!?!?

[7] I’m talkin’ *you* Gates McFadden  and Tig Notaro.

[8] Did you catch the snarky plastic surgery reference? Didja, didja, didja, huh huh huh?

[9] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[10] “And don’t call me Shirley.”

The Kosher (Electricity) I’m Not Keeping

May 12, 2023

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Kosher (Electricity) I’m Not Keeping

Department Of Apropos Of Nothing…

Last night I dreamed I wrote an ode to “Avocado,” sung to the tune, “Desperado.” In my dream I was singing it, but come wake time I couldn’t remember the new lyrics I wrote.

 

Perhaps Abby, my Emotional Support Avocado, will help me remember.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Random Thoughts From Last Week

Darteline:  Monday afternoon, circa 3pm; caught in a sudden downpour – the proverbial cloudburst –  while driving home from a movie theater.  The rain is coming down so hard and blinding my wipers are on full speed and it’s still very difficult to see the road ahead of me.  Moiself  is able to make out the silhouette of a motorcycle in front of me, and for the first time in my life, I find moiself  wondering how motorcyclists navigate under similar conditions.  Do the visors on their helmets have wipers?  How do they prevent their visors from fogging up?

I googled “motorcycle helmet with rain wiper,” and for some reason this image appeared.  I’m thinking, maybe not the cutting edge in road safety?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Religion’s Gift To The World

Regular readers of this blog (and other persons less emotionally disturbed) know that moiself  has no qualms when it comes to quarreling with the absurdities of the faith traditions and practices I grew up with (read: Christianity).  But, despite a certain religion having given the world centuries of comic-worthy material moiself  had mostly kept away from doing the same with Judaism.  Until a juicy nugget, in the form of a story about Israel’s utility classification and manipulation, fell into my petty hands….

Of course I’m not making up the following – there’s no need to.  Because, religion.

 

 

( Excerpts from  “Israel readies ‘kosher electricity’ for ultra-Orthodox households” (Washington Post, 5-7-23)
“Religious Israelis may soon have access to electric power that rabbis have approved for use during the weekly Sabbath, a techno-spiritual innovation that reflects…the power of ultra-Orthodox parties in Israel’s new government.
The program, unofficially dubbed ‘kosher electricity,’…would direct the national power utility to build…massive battery banks in and around ultra-Orthodox communities. These batteries would top up through the week with electricity from the public utility and dispense it during Shabbat hours, providing a workaround to rabbinical rules against plugging into the national grid from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays….”

Because it’s okay to enjoy the benefits of electrically powered appliances, but their devious little switches, look out!  THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH – it’s WORK.

 

“Not to worry; it’s clap on, clap off.”

 

This antediluvian foolishness aside, it’s one thing to live in a world of primitive superstitions and subjugate yourself to Bronze Age rites and red tape.  It’s another thing to demand that your fellow citizens make allowances for you *and* pay for you to do so:

“Since Israel’s founding, the ultra-Orthodox – also called the Haredim – have been exempted from military service, which is mandatory for all Jewish Israeli school leavers. The various ultra-Orthodox sects see it as a religious commandment to only study Jewish texts and separate themselves from modern society. They consequently receive government subsidies to study rather than work, along with general social services and benefits relating to unemployment, poverty and their large numbers of children.
( How anger over taxes and conscription is widening split among Israel’s Jews,”
The Guardian; my emphases )

 

Yahweh knows we can’t pick up our welfare checks if we’re in boot camp or practicing tank drills.

 

“Thousands marched for a ‘Day of Disruption to Demand Equality’ focused on the unequal burdens of citizenship and status of the ultra-Orthodox….
Ultra-Orthodox citizens are largely shielded from the country’s mandatory draft and educational standards and their families benefit from heavy public subsidies that allow boys and men to devote years to religious study instead of working and paying taxes in the mainstream economy….

One man marching in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak wore a slogan that translated as ‘My son is willing to die on his tank; your son will not die studying Torah’…

‘They are not carrying with us, they are not part of society,” said Dafna Goldenberg, who served in a tank unit in the 1980s…. ‘I’m deeply worried that it will all collapse.’
(excerpts from “Israelis call out perks for ultra-Orthodox in latest protests,”
The Washington Post )

The ultra-Orthodox are the fastest-growing demographic in Israel, and the most insistent in pushing Israel’s government toward an even more hawkish, pro-military action, anti-Palestinian agenda.  Yet the Haredim expect (even insist) that everyone but them do the dirty work.  [1]   IMO it’s going to be a major factor in Israel’s inevitable downfall.   [2]

 

“Will the last person leaving Bnei Brak please ask his Shabbos goy to turn off the synagogue’s kosher lights?”

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Blog I Had To Stop Listening To

That would be the recent episode – Success 2.0: Taking the Leap of one of my favorite blogs, Hidden Brain.  The episode is introduced thusly (my emphases):

“American culture celebrates those who persevere in the face of adversity. So how do we know when to walk away from something that’s not working? Today, we kick off our new “Success 2.0” series with economist John List. He says in every domain of our lives, it’s important to know when to pivot to something new.”

After going through some legislative/corporate/business examples of should-I-stay-or-should-I-go? Should-we-fight-for-this-or-switch-tactics? dilemmas, guest List gave an example from his own life, of when he experienced the same predicament re his dissatisfaction with his marriage to his former high school sweetheart.

John List:
“This really caused me to step back, and think about whether I should end the marriage.  And I started to think, “Well look, I have five kids…and I’ve invested a lot in this relationship and this family, and I don’t want to waste that…so I  decided to give it a go.
And the next few months were difficult, and by the time the summer rolled around I was holed up mentally, I was keeping everything in, I was making occasional snide comments, to my wife – I really wasn’t a great husband or father.  So I said, ‘Well, give it some more time,’ and then six more months went by and I found myself even more miserable and making my wife’s life miserable…and that’s when I asked for a divorce.
This of course was a very difficult decision, as it went against everything I had been taught…and I really felt it was important to keep the family intake, especially for the kids, and I just realized that I was growing tired of making the rest of the family suffer during these dreadful times, and that’s when I decided to ask for a divorce….”

Oooohhhh…ick.  Really?

His whiny self-justification made me wanna….

 

 

“I was growing tired of making the rest of the family suffer.”  Well, then, stop making them suffer – that’ll be one less thing to make you tired. (And his kids were suffering?  Duh. They were starting to realize that they had a self-absorbed asshole for a father).

“I found myself even more miserable.” What passive language.   [3]   You just happened to *find* yourself miserable?

No where in List’s story does he mention seeking counseling,    [4]  or doing any kind of active or introspective work to find out what had led him to the point that he would consider abandoning a long-time marriage and FIVE children.  Rather, he whines to himself about his own discontent.  Why didn’t this educator and author, “noted for his pioneering contributions to field experiments in economics,”    [5]   turn his supposedly keen analytical mind to the most important field “experiment” of all – that of raising and nurturing a family?

When it comes to marriage and relationships, moiself  is in no way one of those *suck it up and be miserable no matter what the cost* people.  Still…we’re not talking about a corporate ad campaign that needs to be retooled or dumped, or a legislative initiative that needs to be tabled.  We’re talking “pivoting to something new” as in leaving your wife and your children?  As in, your family; your people – not corporations or career or educational plans. Human beings. A bit more difficult to just walk away from when “it isn’t working,” and rightly so.

 

 

List whimpers about being unhappy and moping for six months and making everyone else in his family unhappy.  Dude, do the work.  Find out what caused your attitude.  Do whatever you have to do to stop sulking and making others unhappy, instead of using their unhappiness – which you admit you caused – to justify your decision.  Yep, I’m calling List out, without further or in-depth knowledge of his personal story, but he’s the one who told his story in such a shallow, self-serving way.

From what I’ve read over the past couple of decades on this subject – from studies done by the organizations from the National Institute of Health to Psychology Today, to articles written by marriage and family counselors –  the evidence can be summed up in a headline I saw a few years ago.  Moiself  cannot recall the heading verbatim, but can summarize it:  Absent emotional or physical abuse, guess what – Your kids don’t care if *you’re* unfulfilled/bored/unhappy.  Kids want an intact family.

“Should You Stay Together Only for the Kids?

Many parents believe that divorce will cause irreparable damage to their children. Some parents are so worried about this that they remain in unhappy, conflict-ridden, or even abusive marriages. What does the research say? Is it always best to stay together for the kids?

The short-term answer is usually yes. Children thrive in predictable, secure families with two parents who love them and love each other. Separation is unsettling, stressful, and destabilizing unless there is parental abuse or conflict.”

(Psychology Today 5-29-19 )

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

Department Of,  And In A Related Story….

Dateline: Wednesday afternoon.  MH, working from home, walked downstairs from his office to my office, with a perplexed look on his face.  He told me he’d been catching up on some podcast listening while doing some mundane tasks, and he had a lot of Hidden Brain episodes in his podcast feed, and he started listening to a recent one in which the guest, a supposedly intelligent man, relayed a personal story which really put MH off by the man’s self-centered passivity and lack of self-awareness….

“Let me guess,” moiself  interjected.  “I bet it’s the podcast I’m blogging about this Friday.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Best Bumper Stickers I’ve Seen Recently…

Other than my current crop, of course.

 

 

The folllowing two, on the back of a burgundy minivan in front of me yesterday, made me pull over to the side of the road to laugh (and write them down):

My Driving Scares Me, Too

Condoms Prevent Minivans

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week    [6]

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

( Neuroscientist, author and philosopher Sam Harris )

 

Are you there, god?  It’s me, Georgie.

 

*   *   *

May you savor the petty satisfaction of turning off a podcast which annoys you;
May your motorcycle helmet be both stylish and safety-enhancing;
May you relish the freedom to use electric appliances at any time of any day;

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] From serving in the military and harassing and killing Palestinian citizens, to hiring a shabbos goy to push a fucking button on their sabbath.

[2] Inevitable, to moiself.  Do the math: Israel is surrounded/outnumbered by their enemies, and seem determined to keep enemies as enemies instead of working toward peacefully co-existing with their neighbors and finding a humane solution to – or even acknowledging – the mistreatment and displacement of Palestinians.

[3] Along with that passive-aggressive classic, “Mistakes were made.”

[4] possibly starting for himself alone, but also couples counseling.

[5] As per his Wikipedia bio.

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The End-Of-Year Lists I’m Not Compiling

December 30, 2022

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The End-Of-Year Lists I’m Not Compiling

  • Best Movie;
    * Best Non-Sequel/Non-Superhero Movie;
    * Top Twenty-Five Insipid Christmas-Themed Streaming Series;
    * Best Spotify playlist;
    * Best Nonfiction Book;
    * Best Book Beloved By Critics Until Its Author Was Accused Of Cultural Appropriation;
    * Top Ten Food Delivery Services;
    * Best Science Podcast;
    * Least Annoying Comedy Podcast Which In Fact Is Just A Gabfest
    Hosted By A Likeable Celebrity Name-Dropping With His Fellow Celebrity Friends;
    * Best Hostage Exchange;
    * Best Cancel Culture ® Moment;
    * Most Predictable Hate Speech By MAGA-Courting GOP Politicians:
    * Best Surreptitious Recording of Racist City Council Members Eating Their Own
    Smoothest City Officials Kicking-The-Can-Down-The-Road Regarding
    Getting The Mentally Ill/Homeless Off The Streets….

Oh look, it’s a blank list.

 

Arts & Literature, Science and Technology, Politics and Armageddon culture….  So many categories to rank and rate. But, like moiself  titled this post, nope – not gonna do that.  Instead, I’ll offer one of my favorites, from the categorizy I’m not devising, that of  Best Visual Images From The Space We Hopefully Won’t Fuck Up Like We’ve Done To Our Own Planet  (image courtesy of The Planetary Society).

 

Image from Lightsail 2 of Tropical Storm Mirinae, near Japan.

 

“The Planetary Society’s LightSail program demonstrated that solar sailing is a viable means of propulsion for small satellites.

Solar sails use sunlight instead of rocket fuel for propulsion. They are one of the few technologies that could be used for interstellar travel

LightSail® is a crowdfunded project from The Planetary Society to demonstrate that solar sailing is a viable means of propulsion for CubeSats — small, standardized spacecraft that are part of a global effort to lower the cost of space exploration. Our LightSail 2 spacecraft, which launched on June 25, 2019 and reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 17, 2022, used sunlight alone to change its orbit.”

 Excerpts from “LightSail, a Planetary Society solar sail spacecraft,”
( The Planetary Society website )

*   *   *

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

It’s (still!) that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard.   [1]

Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Okay So I Lied

Here is one category moiself  will dare to rank:  Best Nonfiction Book Excerpt.

It’s from one of my favorite reads of the year, zoologist Lucy Cooke’s Bitch: On The Female Of The Species.  Context: from the chapter on social animals, the passage cited comes from a segment focusing on a species of termites that have both a king and queen. These termites practice an extreme brand of cooperative breeding:

“…involving a division of labor between breeders and infertile working castes, known as eusociality, from the Greek eu – meaning ‘good.’ Although this is another highly subjective term, since in truth, it is only really ‘good’ for one individual: Her Royal Reproductiveness. The rest of the several million termites in the colony, other than the king, are rendered sterile and kept in their lowly castes by ingesting pheromones secreted by the royal anus, all of which makes the British monarchy suddenly seem quite reasonable.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Confessions

If moiself  were compiling my own lists, of say, Songs/Albums Which Got The Most Ear-Time For Moiself, The Highwomen would be near the top.  It’s not a new release; the eponymous first (and so far only) album of the “supergroup” composed of American folk/country singers/songwriters/musicians  Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires was released at the end of 2019.  There’s not one throwaway song on the album’s 12 tracks; each time I listen I think, “Oh, that’s my favorite…” until the next track plays.

Here’s the confession: cynical smartass moiself  can be a sloppy sentimentalist.

 

 

Yes; really.

I cannot listen to a certain song from that album without engaging in ugly bitch-baby-bawling.  Which is fitting in a way, as the song is so intimate and…tender.

In My Only Child,  the singer is both wondering about and trying to explain – to her “only child” daughter as well as to herself – the complicated amalgam of joy and regret that comes from having or being the only child.  The Highwomen bandmate Natalie Hemby, My Only Child’s lead vocalist and co-writer, has said that the song was inspired in part by her own experiences, after her “only child” daughter began asking her parents for a baby brother or sister.

 

 

To have a single or “only” child, whether by intention or circumstance, is not my life, although it easily could have been.  I have two children,   [2]  yet when I listen to that song I think of both of them: what if either of them had been the “only” one?  I think of people I know who have or are only children, who’ve pondered what it would have been like to have and be a sibling…who’ve sometimes rued – or just accepted as a benign fact of life – that they will never fully understand the experience of being able to, for example, commiserate with a brother or sister over their aging parents’ care, or have someone who is not your parent but who has known you for your entire life.

The song’s combination of lyrics and the aching, lead vocal whose whisper-light gentleness belies the gravity of the longing…the haunting emotional lyricism of the mother affirming a decision and also allowing for the regrets of what-ifs –  it made me shake, the first time I heard it.  And it still makes me cry – softly now, but still, every damn time I listen to it, as though I am hearing the song for the first time.   [3]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Faux New Year’s Resolutions:
The Words We Need To Stop Misusing…

Or using at all.

As per the Unexplainable podcast, “Basic Instinct.“ (12-7-22).

We all grew up seeing the nature documentaries (or perhaps even took classes from professors) that used the term “instinct“- or its cousin harase, “it’s genetic” – to explain how a spider knows to spin her web, or a cheetah knows what gazelles to hunt, or other multifaceted animal behaviors.  Turns out, it is So. Much. More. Complicated. ®  than “instinct.”  Recent studies in ethology  [4]  show that all animals, even the eusocial ones with so-called “hive minds,” are also individuals who learn and adapt, make errors, etc.

Let moiself  entice you (lure you into my web?)  with these excerpts.

 

 

Noam Hassenfeld, Unexplainable  podcast host:
It turns out the idea of instinct is a lot less simple than those nature documentaries can make it seem. I talked to a scientist who can’t stand this word (“instinct”).

Mark Blumberg (Unexplainable guest, a neuroscientist):
It’s basically a covert expression of ignorance and lack of imagination. That’s it….
I can’t tell you the number of articles, you know, for scientific journals that I review where people just throw the word around. It drives me crazy…. as soon as you say it’s genetic it means you can just skip over all the things that actually get you from that amorphous blob of an embryo or a newborn and get right to the action….
Every animal develops. It doesn’t matter who you are. All of us. We all develop.

NH:
So, Mark, where does this idea of animal instinct and innate animal behavior come from? How far back does it go?

Blumberg:
It goes back a long, long way….one of the interesting aspects of it is that it actually has its roots in a sort of a religious perspective….it starts as a problem with free will and reason and good and evil….
Imagine that…(as per developing Christian theology)…in order to earn your way to heaven and hell, you have to basically make choices. You have to have free will. You can’t take an animal that cannot make choices about good and evil and put them in heaven or hell. That doesn’t make sense. Humans are the only ones, we have a soul, we have free will, we have rationality.
These are all ideas within the religious context, but we’re not letting dogs into heaven or hell. So what you have to do is you have to deny them free will, but you have to explain what they’re doing. And you say, “Well, it’s instinctive.”

 

“No, honey, it’s not that I’m a shoddy dam builder – it’s my own instinct, to build it this way.”

 

The podcast host and his scientist guest go on to discuss many examples which show that behaviors we might normally think of as innate animal instincts are actually developed through experience.  Some scientists use the term instinct, or genetic for phenomena that are too complex to be currently understood or which no one is (currently)  interested in studying.  The wording creationists and other religious folk use to describe phenomena they cannot or will not understand in any other way is, “God did it/God made it.”  Many scientists, including Blumberg, accuse other scientists of essentially using a more sciency-sounding version of this religious “way out,” when it comes to studying and explaining complex animal behaviors (religion’s “God did it.” =  science’s “It’s instinctive.”). 

NH:
So this idea that, you know, animal behavior is hard-coded, is that still an argument that lots of scientists are making?

Blumberg:
Yeah, it’s everywhere. They use the word like, “I’m studying an innate behavior.” And they’re doing it in part because they think that by calling it innate, they’re making their work sound more important…more universal. “ I’m not just studying behavior X, I’m studying *innate* behavior X. Therefore, anything I learn about it must be super important, must have been evolved….”
So it’s partly a strategy and partly it’s ignorance about what the words actually mean.

NH:
That feels like you’re calling it laziness.

Blumberg:
I am absolutely calling it laziness….

NH:
Is that why you would say that this debate is important? I mean, it seems like on the surface someone could see it as a semantic debate.

Blumberg:
Because it…influences the way science is done (and) which scientists get the resources to do their work. It elevates scientists who are not so great, and it makes it harder for scientists doing the hard work to get the notoriety and the attention they deserve.
I see this in conferences all the time, you know, where very prominent people simply throw out the innate word or the instinct word and they get away with it because they aren’t being challenged. And that offends me as a scientist….
You just have to continue to be inquisitive and not search for simple answers to complex problems. You know, this is biology. Nothing is more complex than how animals come to do the things that they do, whatever the cause. And we should be trying to understand the diversity of life and all the different mechanisms that are available.

NH:
And we probably still don’t understand it all that well.

Blumberg:
No, we’re scratching the surface big time.

The full transcript is here.  22.12.07 Basic Instinct . Better still, listen to the interview.

 

Ahem – no, not *that* Basic Instinct

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [5]

“Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal.
He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them.
He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”     [6]

( Mark Twain)

 

 

*   *   *

May you have a Happy year’s end, whether full of lists or list-free;
May you be careful what you attribute to (read: blame on) instinct;
May you find a song which is worth weeping to;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] And, unlike the song, my nursery walls were not painted pink, for either of my babes.

[3] Sometimes I skip that track when I’m listening to the album, if I decide I just can’t handle red puffy cryin’ eyes right now.

[4] Def. The study of animal behavior in its natural context.

[5] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[6] Can’t close out the year without less than six footnotes.

The Stages I’m Not Following

April 22, 2022

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , 3 Comments

 

Department Of Yet Another Content Warning ® …

….which I hope you will (eventually, if not now) ignore.

The following deals with grief.  Specifically, the intense and traumatic grief experienced by the sudden and/or unanticipated death of a loved one.

If you are presently not in a physical or emotional space to handle the subject, moiself hopes you’ll take care of yourself, and read this later.   [1]  The thing is, if you aren’t grieving such a loss right now, you will later on…and someone you know and love is dealing with this or will be, soon.  That is Life’s price of admission…and one particular grief survivor’s insights and observations could be – I’ll go so far as to say *will* be – of use to you.

The following excerpt blew me away (my emphases):

“The five stages of grief are ingrained in our cultural consciousness as the natural progression of emotions one experiences after the death of a loved one. However, it turns out that this model is not science-based, does not well describe most people’s experiences, and was never even meant to apply to the bereaved.

(“It’s Time to Let the Five Stages of Grief Die,”
McGill University, Office for Science and Society )

 

I had read about the questionable science behind The 5 Stages of Grief ® model, and had always had my doubts about its application.  But I had no idea that it was *never* meant to be applied to the bereaved – to people grieving the death of *other* people.

 

 

But wait – there’s more.

 “…many people, even professional psychologists, believe there is a right way and a wrong way to grieve, that there is an orderly and predictable pattern that everyone will go through, and if you don’t progress correctly, you are failing at grief. You must move through these stages completely, or you will never heal.

This is a lie.

Death and its aftermath is such a painful and disorienting time. I understand why people –  both the griever and those witnessing grief –  want some kind of road map, a clearly delineated set of steps or stages that will guarantee a successful end to the pain of grief. The truth is, grief is as individual as love: every life, every path, is unique. There is no predictable pattern, and no linear progression. Despite what many ‘experts’ say, there are no stages of grief.

In her later years, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote that she regretted writing the stages the way that she did, that people mistook them as being both linear and universal.”

( “The 5 Stages of Grief and Other Lies That Don’t Help Anyone”,
Megan Devine, author of “It’s OK That You’re Not OK.” )

 

 

“We’ve all heard about The 5 stages of Grief. But what happens when your experience doesn’t follow that model at all? Resilience researcher Lucy Hone began to question how we think about grief after a devastating loss in her own life. She shares the techniques she learned to help her cope with tragedy.”
( intro to the Hidden Brain Podcast, “Healing Your Heart” )

This is the podcast I want you to listen to, and Lucy Hone is the “one particular survivor” I referred to earlier in this post.

Lucy Hone, Ph. D., is an adjunct senior fellow at the University of Canterbury (NZ) and author of Resilient Grieving: Finding Strength and Embracing Life After a Loss that Changes Everything.  Hone has a master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in well-being science/public health from AUT University.   [2]

 

 

The 5 Stages of Grief ® has become part of our culture’s how-to-grieve manual.  But the thing is, this list which was meant to be descriptive has now turned proscriptive. It’s originator, Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, *surmised* (not proved) these stages, when, as a psychiatry resident, she observed observations of people dealing with terminal illness – people who had advance knowledge of their impending death.

And yet, how many times have you heard about

* the family of a *recently* and *suddenly* deceased person   [3]   “going through the five stages of grief.”

* someone else, perhaps also grieving the same loss, being concerned that these same family members had not gone through the stages, or had skipped a few and were therefore stuck in their grief or somehow not doing it properly?

Something like this happened to the HB podcast guest.  Dr. Hone, ironically enough, a “resilience researcher,” had to rethink her and society’s approaches to grieving after the devastating loss of her beloved 12-year old daughter, Abi, who died after the car she was riding in (along with Abi’s best friend Emma and Emma’s mother) was t-boned by a driver who went through a stop sign at high speed.  [4]

Hone and HB host Shankar Vidantam talked about Hone’s drive to know what she could do to manage her grief.

HB host Shankar Vidantam:
“…the grief counselors and others told you that the next five years of your life were going to be consumed by grief; that you were a prime candidates for divorce, estrangement, and mental illness. You also heard about the 5 Stages of Grief.  What is the conventional wisdom about the 5 Stages of Grief, Lucy?”

Hone:
“…Like most people, I was kind of aware about the stages, and like most people I could probably name about three of them.  But when people started telling me about them – and boy, anyone who’s ever been bereaved will know that people tell you about them! – they expect you to go through them.

Pretty quickly I became frustrated with (the 5 Stages), because I didn’t feel anger and animosity towards the driver. I knew that that was a terrible mistake – that he didn’t do it intentionally.  And I wasn’t in denial – from the very first moment I remember thinking, ‘Okay, this is my job now, my mission is to survive this.’  And so they didn’t fit with my experience.

And the other aspect that quickly frustrated me (with the 5 stages) is that it’s reasonably helpful to be told that you might feel ___ (all of these different things), but actually, I don’t want to be told what I’m going to feel; I am desperate to know what I can do, to help us all adapt to this terrible loss.”

SV:
“I’m struck by the fact that at a certain point in your journey of grief over Abi’s death you were thinking like a researcher, or starting to ask yourself whether you yourself could be a research subject – that you’re’ studying yourself, observing yourself, like a scientist…”

Hone went on to say that yes, she did have a moment of being aware that she was both

 “…experiencing this devastating loss and curious about my experiences simultaneously…
I was doing this internally, observing my loss and my reaction to it, and then I thought, ‘Well, what I’m really curious about, is we have all these tools from resilient psychology, which have been shown to help people cope with potentially traumatic events.  How useful are they when they are brought to the context of bereavement?’ And so that’s been the question I’ve been really exploring, ever since Abi died.”

SV narration:
“Pondering this question gave (Hone) the space to analyze how her own mind was responding to  grief.  When she noticed something about how she was coping, she reserved judgement about what it meant.
When she engaged in ‘what-if’ scenarios – What if she hadn’t allowed Abi to drive with the other family? What if she hadn’t planned a beach vacation? – she noticed how those thoughts made her feel.  She paid attention to how she felt after getting exercise or a good night’s sleep.  In other words, she started behaving like a scientist.
She eventually discovered there were things that made her feel better, and things that made her feel worse. She came up with a series of techniques that gave her a measure of control over her grief.”

Hone:
“I distinctly remember standing in the kitchen thinking, ‘Seriously, Lucy, chose life over death. Don’t lose what you have over what you’ve lost.’ “

 

 

I wanted to print a transcript of the whole episode, it’s so good, but I’ll leave it to you to find that, or listen to the entire episode  (the link again: Healing your Heart.)  

Moiself will, instead, just list a few bullet point-style take aways:

* Hone’s ideas are not a glib substitutions for one series/stages or method over another.

* Models such as “The 5 Stages Of Grief, The Four Stages Of Recovery,” et. al., have been perpetuated because they are tidy.  But grief is not tidy; grief is messy and does not lend itself to finite lists.  According to one researcher, grief is “as individual as your fingerprints.”  What works for you as a strategy for handling your grief might not work for your spouse, your mother, your brother, your siblings – even as you are all grieving the same loss.

* “Taking a break” from grief is not avoidance, or denial.

* Learn the difference between grief reaction, over which we have little control, and grief response, which is loaded with options

* It isn’t *easy* –  to learn such distinctions and apply techniques to give you a measure of control over your grief – but is it possible.

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of Rest In Peace Face-Palming Laughter

Gilbert Gottfried, died last week. YOU FOOL!

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Stand Up For Comedians Edition

I was in Russia listening to a stand-up comedian making fun of Putin.
The jokes weren’t that good, but I liked the execution.

What kind of humor do quarantined comedians use?
Inside jokes.

Why do mountains make good comedians?
Because they’re hill areas…

A new standup comic told jokes about the unemployed.
Unfortunately, none of them worked.

What did the cannibal comedian say when he tried to eat the audience?
“Tough crowd.”

 

 

You got a long way to go, girl.

 

*   *   *

May you appreciate the differences between reactions and responses;
May you rethink your own “However Many Stages of Doing This Thing” lists;
May you treat yourself to some stress relief and watch Paul Lynde’s one-liners outtakes from Hollywood Squares;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Not because moiself  is the preeminent grief expert; rather, the people behind resources I am citing *are.*

[2] as per UC Berkely’s Greater Good Science Center (“Science-based Insights for a Meaningful Life”).

[3] Suddenly as in, via an accident or homicide or suicide – any death that was unexpected or not with foreknowledge of its inevitability, as in, with cancer or other diagnosed terminal illnesses.

[4] The two girls and the adult woman died; the driver who caused the accident survived.

The Comment I’m Not Posting

January 21, 2022

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of Why Am I Am Not Writing “Done” In The Comments

Dateline: Tuesday morning.  Moiself  sees in a friend’s Facebook feed one of these kinds of posts – if you’re on Facebook you’ve likely encountered them:

“This is food for thought.  You’re not the same again after cancer and treatments. With the side effects of chemo and radiation, you will never be 100% again because your immune system is weak. Ruins marriages, families, and relationships with friends. Because Ii the hardest moments you know who your real friends are or who the people are who appreciate you. Unfortunately, like with most friendships, Facebook friends will leave you in the middle of a story. They want a post to ‘like’ for the story, but they don’t really read your message when they see it is long. More than half have stopped reading. Someone may have already gone to the next post in their newsfeed….”

 

(There was a lot more, including a request to comment “done” if you read the post all the way through.)

 

Here was my comment.  [1]

OK, here goes: I have read this all the way through, but I am not writing “done” in the comments, nor am I copying and reposting the post.
Here’s why.

Most of us on FB have seen these posts of awareness (for cancer, other diseases/injuries/afflictions, those facing economic hardship, etc.). And while I’ve no doubt that they are well-meant, I consider them to be the emotional equivalent of chain letters.

The writers of the original posts (whom I know is not you) include implied threats and “digs” (against the reader’s character and empathy) in these pleas for “awareness” –  implications that how one responds to these posts is a litmus test of who is a real/true friend.
Here are some of the ones this post includes:

“… A little test, just to see who reads and shares without reading… I would like to know who I can count on and who takes the time to read this… So I’m going to make a bet, without being pessimistic. I know my friends and family will put it on their wall. You just have to copy….”

If the writers of the post truly “know” your friends and family will “put it on their wall,” why do they have to prod them to do so?

Whether or not you can count on someone in times of need has *nothing* to do with what they will or will not copy or post (or even read) on a Facebook feed.  This is just another form of virtue signaling.

And the implication that people will read and not repost – “Unfortunately, like with most friendships, Facebook friends will leave you in the middle of a story. They want a post to “like” for the story, but they don’t really read your message when they see it is long” – is virtue-shaming.

Actually, the awareness post I refer to was mild, in the shaming factor, as compared with others I’ve read, which practically scream, “Oy vey, I’ll just sit here posting in the dark, knowing that few people will actually read all the way through because nobody cares….”

Now, I’ve nothing against someone advocating for cancer (or any other) awareness.  But, why the emotional extortion?  Why not just post whatever info you want to convey?  Then, as with other social media posts that people like and/or find significant  – from cat videos to political screeds – people can repost it if they deem it repost-worthy.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of What I Did Not Post In The Comments Section

One prays for rain, one prays for sun;
they kneel in church together.
Which of them, do you suppose
will regulate the weather?   [2]

 

 

“I liked/reposted this.”

“I’m praying for you.”

Boys and girls, can you identify which of the above is the least effective action?

 

I knew you could.

 

That’s right; it’s both/either of them.

Pleas for reposts, and their responses (“I reposted this!”) remind me of, “I’ll pray for you!”  Reposting on social media, ala praying for something to happen, may get you to think nice things about yourself (or moiself,  if I say that I’m praying/posting for you), but is ultimately ineffectual.

My learning that you have been diagnosed with cancer and are beginning treatment, and then my responding with, “I’m praying for you,” or “I posted about cancer awareness,” is a way to make us both think that I am doing something when in fact I am doing next to nothing. How’s about actually *doing something* you will need help with –

* organizing a meal delivery service and/or contributing meals for you and your family during your treatment and recovery “downtimes”

* giving your kids rides to school and extracurricular events

* “babysitting” you so that your spouse and/or kids can get out of the house, or hosting a family game/ movie night at their or your house    [3]

* running errands (that you used to be able to do) for your elderly parent(s)

* being a “chemo” buddy (taking you to and from treatment appointments)

* taking you to medical and other appointments, and/or pick up prescriptions

* just sitting and talking with you, and, more importantly, listening…or spending companionate time in supportive silence

* taking you to or meeting you for movies or lunches or park walks or other outings, to get at least a temporary respite from the disease-takes-over-my-life mode

* arranging to mow your lawn/put out your recycling on trash pickup day, walking your dog, performing or helping with other household maintenance tasks

*running interference for you when well-meaning folks are driving you nuts….

 

 

Ah, but all of these things, and the other Life Stuff a (temporary or otherwise) sick or disabled person may need help with – these things take time and effort, and entail emotional (and possibly financial) involvement.

Posting/praying takes a microsecond of hot air.

Let’s say I get sick, and you mow my lawn…and you also pray for me (in private, thank you very much), asking your deity to heal me, etc.    [4]  As for the latter, please understand that you are doing it for yourself; but, that’s fine – whatever floats your boat.

For anyone who believes in the efficacy of petitionary prayer,    [5]   let’s say that you and I are having lunch in a taqueria, and you begin choking on your chalupa – really choking, as in, you’ve aspirated it into your windpipe.  You cannot dislodge it, and you can’t breathe.

Would you rather I pray for you, or perform the Heimlich Maneuver on you?

 

I’ll pray that you learn to take smaller bites when you eat. Oh, and thanks for mowing my lawn!

 

Cheese and crackers; what a different place the world would be, if prayer “worked” ?!?! People pray for peace and healing all the time.

And when you examine the content of those prayers – particularly the ones for healing – it’s interesting to note the accommodations.  For example, re the child with horrific third degree burns over 90% of his body, no one prays for their god to cause new skin to grow overnight for the child (although they may pray that the skin grafts take). 

 

 

While many people of faith seem convinced that prayer can heal a wide variety of illnesses (despite what the best scientific research indicates), it is curious that prayer is only every believed to work for illnesses and injuries that can be self-limiting.  No one, for instance, ever seriously expects that prayer will cause an amputee to regrow a missing limb.
Why not?  Salamanders manage this routinely, presumable without prayers.
If God answers prayers – ever – why wouldn’t he occasionally heal a deserving amputee?  And why wouldn’t people of faith expect prayer to work in such cases?
(Sam Harris, “Letter to a Christian Nation“)

Why, in all of human history, there is no record of (anyone’s) god ever healing an amputee by regenerating a limb, or changing a Down syndrome child to one with a normal chromosomal profile? If a god is said to have intervened, it is only in situations that can be otherwise explained as natural phenomena.

( For more on this illuminating topic – which you should ponder if you haven’t previously, especially if you think you believe, in some way, that prayer “works” – check out https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ . It’s a fun site delineating why petitionary prayer is superstition, and also raises other questions about religious tenets. )

Now, I’m not knocking all kinds of practices which come under the category of prayer.  As freethinkers wiser than moiself  have pointed out, if contemplative prayer focuses your mind and helps you establish objectives, then it can be a beneficial practice.  However, meditation is just as good if not superior for those goals; also, it has the added benefit of non-delusion – you don’t have to pretend that some supernatural being is paying attention.   [6]

“If you talked into your hair dryer and said you were communicating with someone in outer space, they’d put you away.
But take away the hair dryer, and you’re praying.”
( Sam Harris )

 

 

Coming back to the thing about petitionary prayer: moiself  thinks it is actually obstructive, in that is that it provides the illusion of having done something when in fact you’ve done next to nothing, other than mumble select phrases or entertain some thoughts.  And what might be called “secular prayer” – liking or posting on social media – can fall under that same category.

The following is from professor, author, educator and speaker Dale McGowan’s  (erstwhile) blog, The Meming of Life   [7]

When someone asked Humanist Rabbi Adam Chalom to pray for a friend who had breast cancer, Adam said, “I have a better idea — give me her phone number and I’ll call her. Talking to her to lift her spirits and make her feel less alone and more cared for will do much more for her than talking to anything else.“

This was from a piece Adam wrote in the Chicago Tribune’s blog (“The Seeker“) a couple of years ago. And he went on to make an especially good point:

“The Humanist world has recently sponsored a counter-program – the National Day of Reason, which celebrates the power of the human mind to understand and improve the world. But I have an even better idea. While reason is certainly a worthy value to celebrate, the secular counterpart to ‘Prayer’ is not ‘Reason’ – it is Action. “

The counterpart to prayer is doing something.

 There are secular equivalents of prayer. Facebook is full of them. I’m sure there are people who “like” 50 humanitarian causes a day, achieving that same illusion of having done something. And like the prayer, I think that self-satisfied illusion often keeps the liker from actually doing something. It relieves the pressure, gives that little shot of dopamine, makes us feel ever so good about ourselves. Of course, there’s a whole neologism for it — slacktivism.

My take-home is that secular prayers, if they go no further, are no better than sacred ones. Action, real action, is still what matters.

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Really Frustrating Phenomenon

Dateline: Last Friday, driving to the coast.  I press the seek button on my car’s radio, and it lands on an oldies station.  After just a few seconds my brain recognizes the intro to a song moiself  hasn’t heard in *decades*:  Glen Campbell’s “Honey Come Back.”

Now, the late and sometimes great Glen Campbell recorded a lot of fine songs, but that insipid, self-pitying, talk/sing tale of lost love is not one of them.

 

 

See?    [8]

Here’s the thing that drove me bonkers after the song began playing (well, other than the song itself).  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (freshman year, UC Davis) I got an A in my calculus class. Today, if you put a gun to my head – and I really hope you wouldn’t – with the idea of forcing me to solve the most basic calculus equation, I could not do so. But I can recognize the opening strains of Honey Come Back.  How pathetic is that?

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Country Music Edition

Which country music singer’s name do you say
when you’re moving furniture past someone?
Dolly Pardon.

So, why does Keith Urban sing country music?

Why is country music is like a vacuum?
As soon as you turn it off it stops sucking.

Technically, aren’t all national anthems country music?

 

Y’all don’t have to answer that.

 

*   *   *

May your brain store memories of both higher mathematics *and* banal oldies;
May you avoid the temptations of slacktivism;
May you talk into your hairdryer, beseeching it for…whatever…just because you can;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As should be obvious, I have not included all of the post, although I reference certain portions of it which are not included in the beginning excerpt.

[2] Variously attributed to Anonymous.

[3] When one member of a family has cancer or another chronic or debilitating disease, *every* member of the family “has” that disease, to a lesser extent, and they’ll need to get out and have a break from it.

[4] Although, being all-knowing and such, this deity already knows the illness I have and what I need to recover from/deal with it – right? – and shouldn’t need you to beg about it.

[5] “Petitionary prayer is a specific form of prayer aimed at making requests of God….for answers to life’s questions and concerns….also pleas for God to be the sole responsible agent to act on behalf of the one who is praying. Petitionary prayers can be offered on a small and personal scale for oneself or for others, or they may involve requests on a larger scale that concern changing undesirable circumstances within society or, indeed, the world as a whole. ”   (Center for christogenesis)

“Traditional theists believe that there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly loving, and perfectly good God. They also believe that God created the world, sustains it in being from moment to moment, and providentially guides all events, in accordance with a plan, towards a good ending. Historically, most traditional theists have believed that God sometimes answers prayers for particular things…..these prayers are referred to as ‘petitionary prayers’…. (Oxford Handbooks online, “Petitionary prayer” abstract introduction.)

[6] Nor will you have to deal with the cognitive dissonance which will arise when, despite knowing that Jesus is quoted as declaring (in Matthew 18:19), “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven,” and despite you and a friend agreeing that BillyBob should be cured of his Necrotizing Fasciitis and thus y’all consistently and sincerely pray for this to happen, BillyBob continues to suffer horribly, then dies.

[7] As best as I can remember (apologies for any misattributions).

[8] Kudos for those of you who made it past the first verse.

The NDR I’m Not Signing

August 14, 2020

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The NDR I’m Not Signing

Department Of Things That Will – Or Should – Blow Your Mind

Did you know that the post-slavery, Jim Crow Law society of the USA served as a model for the Nazis’ system of establishing “racial/Aryan purity”?

“It turned out that German eugenicists were in continuing dialogue with American eugenicists. Books by American eugenicists were big sellers in Germany in the years leading up to the Third Reich….of course, the Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate. But what they did was they sent researchers to study America’s Jim Crow laws. They actually sent researchers to America to study how Americans had subjugated African Americans, what would be considered the subordinated caste. And they actually debated and consulted American law as they were devising the Nuremberg Laws. ”    [1]

( “It’s More Than Racism: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America’s ‘Caste’ System,”
Fresh Air, 8-4-20 )

 

“Captain, you’re shitting me, I mean, fascinating….”

 

In her recent Fresh Air interview with host Terry Gross, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson spoke about discovering, while researching her latest book, that Nazi Germany modeled their system of codified racism in part on (what Wilkerson calls) America’s racial caste system.  Wilkerson suggests that we look at America as having created a caste system (as opposed to using the overused and often misapplied blanket term of “racism”) to keep down African Americans.

T. GROSS:
In the comparisons that you make between the Nazi regime and the caste system in America, you describe…what qualified in each country as being white…. Would you compare the two countries in defining that?

WILKERSON:
Well, that was a source of tremendous debate, I came to discover. I had no idea how they (the Nazis) had arrived at their delineation of people. And they sent people to study the United States and how it had defined and codified, categorized and subjugated African Americans and delineated who could be what in the United States. They also studied the marriage laws – intermarriage laws. And in doing so, they debated as to who should qualify to be considered Aryan in Germany at that time.
And in studying the United States, they were stunned to have discovered the one-drop rule that was the common distinction in the United States for determining whether a person could be identified as Black…. That idea of the one-drop rule – that was viewed as too extreme to them.

T. GROSS (incredulously):
Too extreme to the Nazis?

WILKERSON:
Stunning to hear that…stunning to see that, stunning to discover that. The Nazis, in trying to create their own caste system…went to great lengths to really think hard about who should qualify as Aryan because they felt that they wanted to include as many people as they possibly could, ironically enough.
In trying to define who could qualify to be Aryan, the Nazis were more concerned about making sure that those who had Aryan blood would be protected…. They actually had greater latitude in defining who could be Aryan and who would qualify as Jewish than the United States had determined with who could be African American or who could be white.

 

 

Too extreme to the Nazis?

Terry Gross’s reaction keeps coming back to moiself . 

Once again, historical scholars and journalists are doing fascinating research, bringing to the forefront information and historical documentation, via sources and materials readily available, that we Americans are just not taught in school – or anywhere else.

Another intriguing quote from the interview is from when Gross and Wilkerson were discussing the fact that “the idea of being white is an American innovation.”

T. GROSS:
You were talking to a Nigerian-born playwright, and that playwright told you there are no Black people in Africa…. Africans aren’t Black.
What did they mean?

To find out what that playwright meant, and how Wilkerson came to believe that “caste” is a more accurate description of Black people’s experience in the USA than racism, listen to the interview (or get the transcript here).

*   *   *

Department Of How’s This For A Life Strategy?

*  Live your life so that you never have a reason to request even one non-disclosure agreement, from anyone, ever. *  

For decades, (He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Space ) has relied on broadly worded nondisclosure agreements as a powerful weapon against anyone who would say something critical of him. Among those who have signed agreements are a porn star, two ex-wives, contestants on “The Apprentice,” campaign workers and business associates….

Now, in one of the most sweeping efforts by a former associate to undo nondisclosure agreements, the _____ campaign’s former Hispanic outreach director last week filed her latest effort in a class-action suit to void all such campaign contracts. She says they are so broad that they deny individuals their First Amendment right to say anything critical of the president — even as he routinely takes to Twitter to mock and deride his critics.

(The Washington Post, 8-7-20, “t**** long has relied on nondisclosure deals to prevent criticism. That strategy may be unraveling.”)

 

*   *   *

Department Of Nostalgia

Sub Department Of Yet Another Reason To Fear For The Youth Of Today

What with virtual schooling perhaps being the norm at least for a while, combined with the gradual replacement of chalkboards with whiteboards in schools, will an entire generation of children grow up unable to appreciate the metaphor of describing a hideous experience as “…like fingernails on a chalkboard?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of It Can’t Be Scarier Than Letting Them Drive

Y’all heard of the campaign to extend voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds? 

 

 

Calm down, Grandpa, and think about it.

The goal of vote16usa.org  is
“…to support efforts to lower the voting age on the local level, help start new local campaigns, and elevate the issue’s prominence on a national level.”

This is something moiself  supports.  I hope that you will as well, after researching and considering the issues – like these ones:

Your child must file a return in any of the following situations for tax year 2019:
Unearned income was more than $1,100.
Earned income was more than $12,200.
( from Kids and Taxes, figures for 2019 filing year )

The 16-year-old with an after-school job and a paper route will have to pay income taxes, just as a part- or full-time employed 18-year-old must, if their incomes exceeds a certain amount.  But unlike the 18-year-old, the 16-year-old cannot vote for her political representative to decide tax policy.

Most of us are familiar the statistics behind auto driving:

* Over 37,000 Americans die in automobile crashes per year.
* An additional 3 million are injured or disabled annually.

Driving is quite the responsibility.  Yet, a 16-year-old can get a driver’s license and also, at the DMV, can sign a legally binding consent to be on an organ donor registry.  But he himself cannot vote on how those life-altering policies (the licensing of drivers and organ donation) are implemented, nor can he elect representatives to do so for him.

 

No taxation without representation.  Remember that rallying cry?  [2]  Our political forebears fought an effin’ revolution over issues like that. It seems only fair that, if you can work a job and pay taxes, you should be able to vote.

Because of our culture’s fucked-up misunderstanding of the 2nd amendment  lively debate on issues surrounding firearms, 16- and 17-year-olds have the “right” to attend high schools where they must participate in active shooter drills, but they cannot vote in or out the adults who set national and state firearms policies (they are old enough to be murdered, but not to vote).

Do you remember how, after the Parkland High School shooting, many of the school’s students organized marches, and addressed their adult political representatives:

“Every kid in this country now goes to school wondering if this day might be their last. We live in fear. It doesn’t have to be this way. Change is coming. And it starts now, inspired by and led by the kids who are our hope for the future. Their young voices will be heard.”
(Parkland students say, ‘We are going to be the last mass shooting’,
Daily Journal Online)

Do you also remember how many adults, from news pundits to politicians, dissed the students for doing so?  Do you think politicians could so easily ignore those young voices if those same voices had the power to organize and vote them out of office?

 

 

One of the more common arguments older people give against lowering the voting age is their claim that 16- and 17-year-olds aren’t rational or informed enough to be involved in political decision making.

Seriously? What qualifies as “rational” or “informed-*enough,* given our populace? Do you know how many Americans over age 18 watch reality TV shows? At the height of its popularity, Here Comes Honey Boo-boo, arguably the worst reality show ever, drew 2.9 million viewers  (the show ran for two years, and was only cancelled when it was revealed that the mother of the show was dating a registered child sex offender) .  

Many 16- and 17-year-olds are more sensible and better informed on politics and social issues than adults thrice their age.  When I was in high school I ruefully noticed that so many of my peers – in particular, those of us in the journalism group, where being interested in and informed about currents events was both an attraction and a requirement – knew much more about politics and current events than most of our adult family members and even some of our teachers – a frustrating fact which was evidenced when we tried to initiate discussions of said events and the adults openly copped to being unfamiliar with the issues.

From my junior high – high school years, I can recall many a baffling dialogue with my parents, in which I tried to engage them on political issues – not just to express moiself’s  own thoughts; I genuinely wanted to hear their opinions.  I was almost always unable to satisfactorily do so, because they knew few (and sometimes no) specifics of the issues I wanted to discuss, from a local school board election to international criticism of USA policy on Vietnam.   And in some (read: too many) cases, they frankly admitted they just didn’t know and didn’t care… And yet, there were no “rational and informed” poll tests nor requirements they had to pass: by virtue of their age alone, they were able to register to vote and then go to the polls and cast their ballots on issues about which they knew or cared nothing, and/or elect other citizens who would make those decisions for them.

I used to advise religions that forbade female clergy, “Either ordain women or stop baptizing them.”  [3]   (For some reason, the various RC popes never took moiself’s  advice on that…or any other matter.).  Fair is fair.  If you’re old enough to pay taxes you’re old enough to vote for those people who make those tax policies.    [4]

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Thoughts That Wake Me Up At 3 AM.

2020: it is the present year, and also the term for normal visual acuity. When we say that someone “…has 2020 vision,” we are complementing that person’s accuracy of perception.

I began the year with optimism: maybe 2020 is the year when the collective WE ® will realize that international problems require international solutions.  How appropriate, moiself  dared to dream, if 2020 turned out to be the year when WE began to get our proverbial shit together!?

Now I despair that 2020 will be the year when we ultimately lost our sight.

The viral pandemic and the resulting medical economic and political upheaval have put other pressing issues on the back burner.  Speaking of burning, the most crucial of those issues is that we are burning the planet up – we are setting our own house on fire. Aside from our nation’s own pathetic excuse of non-leadership on this issue,  I don’t see any other international leader with the standing and influence (or, seemingly, the desire) to take point on this issue.

This is why leadership is so important — why leadership is a thing in the first place.  Because there are 7.7 fucking BILLION of us, and moiself  and my friends trying to “do our part” by never buying another plastic bag (“refuse, reuse, reduce, recycle, and other ways to reduce your carbon footprint”) may help save a sea turtle or two but it’s not gonna hack it in the long run.

It’s just too damn depressing. I need a baby sloth moment.

 

“Oh sure, you wanna talk about burning up? I live in a tropical jungle and y’all put me in flannel pajamas?”

 

*   *   *

Department Of My Phone Knows Me Too Well

Here is how my smart(ass) phone, at 3 am, translated my dictation of “Department Of Thoughts That Wake Me Up At 3 AM.”

“Department of farts that wake me up at 3 AM.”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of You Can Pee In The Yard, But Don’t You Dare Enjoy It

Our across-the-street beach neighbor, JK and his wife CK,  [5]    live next to a house which is almost always rented out. This (edited) email from JK was in response to my giving him a “heads up” that my son K and his friends would be staying at our place last weekend:

You might have noticed the group of 11 staying at the rent house next door (rated for 8 occupancy)… black SUV and black pickup truck… the SUV arrived before the pickup truck guy (who had the key) arrived to open the house. The three (SUV) women tried the front door, to no avail, went around back, which started our dogs barking. I went out to the deck to see why the dogs were barking so viciously and got there just in time to see a woman hook her thumb into the back waistband of her yoga pants, pull them down and squat in the backyard between the fern and the picnic table. After a few seconds, presumably emptying her bladder, she stood up and pulled her yoga pants back up. It was obvious that she neglected to put her panties on that morning… yes, commando yoga pants. The three women got back in the SUV and headed south.

Upon hearing this story,  CK reported the event to the rental agency and the Manzanita Police. The black pickup truck arrived about 15 m after the SUV left;  the guy couldn’t figure out how to work the house key, and made the dogs bark again. He got on his phone and shortly drove off in the same direction as the SUV. When officer M arrived, he and I had a nice discussion about these events, and he agreed with my suspicion that the gals were just early, had to go NOW, and then decided to go to the beach. He also informed me that, according to Oregon law, peeing in the yard is not illegal but trespassing is. If the woman was part of the group renting the house, she’s entitled to do so (pee in the yard). As long as she’s not touching herself for pleasure.

My response to JK:
Thank you – this is hilarious.  As long as it’s not happening next door to us.  😉 Hey, good to know that, in Oregon, I can drop trou to pee, but not “pleasure” myself.  Does this law also extend to men?

JK:
Yes the law applies equally to both/all genders.  If you are on property that you do not own, you must have permission to be on the property.
The Oregon code states that a person has “… a reasonable expectation of privacy …” in a number of places including “… residences, yards of residences, …” and it makes no distinction between front or back yards. Exceptions are included for touching one’s privates for pleasure and “… causing arousal in others …”

You are correct to notice that this picture in no way relates to the above story…but do you really want a picture of a woman peeing in someone else’s yard?  [6]

 

*   *   *

May you never sign nor request others sign a non-disclosure agreement;
May we all continue to learn the parts of our national history which make us uncomfortable;
May you always have other options than having to pee in the yard;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Excerpt from Wikipedia’s entry: :

 The Nuremberg Laws were antisemitic and racist laws in Nazi Germany…. The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens. The remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights.

[2] And by remember I mean, from your American history class…not that you heard it personally.  I mean, moiself knows my readers tend to skew older, but not *that* old.

[3] Or stop cashing their checks.  Now I just want women to stop writing those checks. Imagine what would happen to religious organizations if women stopped giving them time and money? I sometimes do, and I sleep better at night when I do.

[4] If you can’t, then you shouldn’t have to pay income taxes until you’re 18.

[5] Who gave me permission to share this story, in case you were wondering.

[6] And if your answer to that question is “Yes!” then please stop following moiself’s  blog.

The New Word I’m Not Defining

October 4, 2019

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, foodie, general ruminations, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), movies, politics, school, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The New Word I’m Not Defining

Department Of This Is All I’m Gonna Say About That…

…for now.

About that treacherous excuse for a president calling the whistleblower a traitor.

When it comes to running this country into the ground, devising his various schemes which pass for governance which then inevitably lead to him to try and cover his ginormous behind, #45 seems to have been channeling the mindset of an 11-year-old boy. Thus, my advice to him and his equally conspiratorial minions: remember in fifth grade, the kid who was always the first one to raise his nose in the air, make exaggerated sniffing noises and then loudly ask/proclaim, WHO FARTED?

All together now:

He who smelt it, dealt it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Dreamed I Made Up A Word…

…and the Other People ® in my dream seemed very enthusiastic about it, but I woke up before I could dream its meaning. The word was embolitigious.

No way that’s a real word…but…may I have the definition please?

 

*   *   *

Department Of You’re Not Fooling Anybody

You may have seen the posts from actor Chris Pratt which have been creeping around on social media outlets, in which Pratt shares the festering turd of an  inspirational poem he allegedly “found,” titled Indivisible.

DING- DONGS.
Ding to the left.
Dong to the right.
The reverberations swell.

 

 

Yep; that’s how it begins.

Oh…equating left and right as both acting like “ding-dongs” – I get it!  For a moment there I thought Mr. Pratt was leaving us all some cheeky clues as to the ultimate, Inquiring Minds Want To Know ® manhood question, Which way do you hang? (“dong to the right”).   [1]

Yet again, I digress.

 Indivisible presents itself as a plea for unity via criticizing “both”  [2]   political sides (“the media plays them like a fiddle/drowning out the healthy middle…”).  Reality check: a disguise this thin would gag an anorexic.  Indivisible is religious shilling at its most blatant (and poetically cringe-worthy):

Ding-dongs from the far left squad
Fixed on answers outside God.

 I winced in sympathetic embarrassment, just typing that. 

The poetic (retch) preaching is not surprising, given the source.  Pratt has been open about his evangelical Christian beliefs, and has been quick to defend – if not successfully refute – charges of anti-LGBTQ bias re the celebrity-ridden Hillsong Church franchise he belongs to and $upport$.

Pratt – EXCUSE ME, I of course mean, whoever wrote the poem Pratt “found” – recycles some valid if hackneyed, yes-everyone-knows-to-do-this talking points about keeping calm/checking the facts, old trust-and-verify, because, no matter whether we identify left or right, we can be easily manipulated….

Moiself – and other religion-free folks, I’d bet – found those bits o’ advice mildly amusing and butt-frostingly ironic, given the not-quite-under-the-radar proselytizing prose woven throughout the religious tract  poem   (“…burdened by a sinful heart and hiding in some form of shame…We’re His Children….Under God we’re indivisible…”).

The source of penultimate manipulation and suppression of rational thought inspires someone to tell you to check your facts and consider the sources?  Hello, Religion, we did just that!  Which is why we’re now Freethinkers, Brights, Atheists, Humanists, Skeptics….

Yo, Mr. Pratt, did you ever re-read what you wrote, and was it perchance originally intended for The Onion?     

*   *   *

Department Of Make Up Your Minds: Is It Fast, Or Is It Slow…
(  ♫ Should I Stay Or Should I Go ♫ )

Something I wrote about last week sparked a memory re the many reasons I’ve never paid attention/given credence to book reviews, be they of my works or anyone else’s.

(“…a pointless and confusing story.”
Publisher’s Weekly, 1963, re Where The Wild Things Are.)

 

From two reviews of one of moiself’s books, The Mighty Quinn (my emphases):

“Bullying, competition, hot and cold friendships, male and female peer role models, and comic relief are just a few of the issues presented in the fun and fast moving plot pages for this humorous….
(from The Midwest Book Review review of TMQ)

 Although the story suffers from a slow pace and drawn-out conversations, Parnell neatly weaves ideas about social justice and acceptance…
(from the Publisher’s Weekly review of TMQ)

 

   *   *   *

Department Of Some Really Substantial Food For Thought
(But Remember To Chew Slowly If You’re Over 65)

The brilliant psychoanalyst Erik Erikson coined the term “identity crisis” over 60 years ago to describe the profound psychological challenge faced by adolescents and emerging adults who must figure out who they are, what they’re going to do with their lives and who they’re going to do it with.

Thus begins a compelling article by psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and Forbes magazine contributor Prudy Gourguechon,  who “advises leaders in business and finance on the underlying psychology of critical decisions.”  Gourgeuchon makes the case that the thousands of people from the “Baby Boom” generation boomers who turn 65 every day are facing a second identity crisis, one which did not exist for previous generations.  [3]

I’ve little commentary…

…yes, really, except to provide some excerpts which just might tantalize you enough to read the article yourself, and then tell me what *you* think about it.

 These are the questions that come into play, either consciously or unconsciously: Who am I anyway, after all this? What kind of work do I want to do now? Who do I want to spend my time with and where? What is the point of my life now? What kind of stimulation do I need, and what kind do I want to avoid? What have I had enough of and what do I still yearn for?…

 The process of confronting these questions –and finding the answers–has all the disruptive hallmarks of an identity crisis….

 The person in an identity crisis suffers…from a “diffusion of roles.” “I knew what it was to be a doctor (lawyer, teacher, trader, etc.) but if I don’t do that anymore what am I, what shapes my day, what do I want, what should I do.”…

The need to search out new roles and structures –role diffusion—is accompanied by a subjective, psychological feeling of diffusion. Despite its inherent positive potential this feeling state is disorienting and risky. Diffusion feels smoky, undefined, vague and uncomfortable. There’s an amorphous fuzzing out of previously held certainties. “Unmoored” captures the state pretty well. A bit of what psychiatrists call “depersonalization” may be there—you’re not quite inside yourself.
(Excerpts from “The Second Identity Crisis: How To Deal In A Smart Way With A New Phase Of Life,” by Prudy Gourguechon, Forbes )

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [4]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:
Isa Does It, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Recipe:  Ranch Salad with Red Potatoes and Smoky Chickpeas

My rating:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher  [5]

*   *   *

May you admit you dealt it when you smelt it;
May you remember that even if you never start over, one day you’ll start older;
May you be mindful which way your dong dings;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Now *I’m* channeling my inner 11 year old.

[2] There’s a lot more political nuances to be found than just “left” and “right,” but that takes more sophistication than an internet social media poem can handle.

[3] Due to many factors, including the lengthening of the life span after retirement.

[4] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[5]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it
* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it
* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin, a character from The Office who would eat anything, would like this.
* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.
* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.
* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up.
* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.
* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

The Vacation I’m Not Extending

September 20, 2019

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized Comments Off on The Vacation I’m Not Extending

And yet, apparently, I am.

On what is usually my blog writing day I traveled to Someplace (r) , Somewhere (r), to do Something (r), and inadvertently left my laptop at home. I did manage to bring its power cord… Which is a nice, if useless, gesture on the part of my subconscious.

See y’all next week.

The Posts I’m Not Reading

March 2, 2018

Robyn Parnell community, current events, general ruminations, music, politics, sports, Uncategorized, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Posts I’m Not Reading

Although my number of FB contacts is growing at a moderate pace, the number of posts to my home page seems to be growing exponentially. Even so, it is taking moiself less time these days to do my read/nod/skim (of the posts) and say, move along.  The number of political posts re Cadet Bone Spurs and his band of (Global) Village Idiots….  I. Just. Can’t. Do. It. For. Very. Long.

I’m trusting (a hard thing for me to do, trust me  [1]  ) the FBI and investigative journalists (both here and internationally) to do their respective jobs. When I despair, I try to remember Watergate, and how long it took to detect, understand, and expose the Nixon administration’s tangled web of deceit, criminality and paranoia. In one of life’s many nasty paradoxes, it often seems to take only months for greed, incompetence, criminality, racism, misogyny, and treason to slime their way to the top, yet years to bring the purveyors of such to justice.

 

 

Note the date. The Watergate break-in was June 1972. It took more than two years of evidence-gathering, investigation and testimony….

 

 

*   *   *

A Blast From The Olympic Past

Dateline: Friday, February 23, NY Times sports section. My attention was captured by the following headline, for a story about a Public Address system announcer at the Winter Olympics being told to stop using French pronunciations for some of the Canadian hockey players:

Kerfuffle Erupts In Canada Over French Pronunciations

My first thought was, What a great name for a band!  I need a bit of help – not only am I wavering between just what music genre/kind of band would be most suitable, but the name itself…there are so many opportunities:

 

Kerfuffle Erupts

 

 

 

The Erupting Kerfuffles

 

They Might Be Erupting Kefuffles

 

 

The Artist Formerly Known as Kerfuffle Erupts

 

 

Bruce And the E- Street Kerfuffles

 

Stand by Your Erupting Kerfuffles

 

 

The Kerfuffle Family Eruptions

 

 

 

Please, somebody, stop me.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Fuck You, Coca-Cola  [2]

I know it’s nutritional rubbish, moiself would often acknowledge, even as I engaged in my longtime diet cola habit. I justified it because I didn’t have one every day, and when I did it was (usually, only) one a day, at lunch (if I was out for lunch, which I often was during the week and almost always on Saturday and Sunday). Besides, I liked it.  “Sodas” were a rare treat when I was growing up. I loved the taste, and especially the bubbles, the carbonation – and the flavor of mineral water  [3]  is, to moiself, what I imagine licking the sidewalk would taste like.

And the diet products…I justified them with, at least I’m not getting the over NINE TEASPOONS of sugar that’s in an average can of Pepsi or Coke.  Then came the mounting evidence against diet sodas, which indicates that people who drink them are at greater risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome – the latter of which is responsible for the seeming conundrum which is that consumption of diet drinks is linked to increased weight gain.

Yep, Evidence reared its fearsome head.

 

 

 

Knowledge is both power and willpower for me (even if it takes a while to sink in, when it comes to altering longtime habits).  It is difficult for me to not know something once I know it. The clincher for me, in my successful swearing off of the Soda Habit, was the Ick Factor ® realization that came with recent revelations: every time I consume a Diet Coke or its rival equivalent(s), I am supporting the soft drink beverage companies’ morally reprehensible – and disastrous, to public health – campaign of obfuscation and deception.

These revelations include that the Coca-Cola company, as far back as fifty years ago, began a campaign to hire scientists to attempt to shift the blame/public attention for increasing obesity and type 2 diabetes rates away from sugar consumption by blaming dietary fat. Their scheme to divert attention from the mounting evidence linking soda consumption with weight gain and poor health included funding the Global Energy Balance Network, an “astroturfing”  [4] organization purporting to research diabetes but whose employees were actually being paid to promote the idea that insufficient exercise, not bad nutrition, was the primary cause of weight gain. [5]

 

 

 

 

 

The evidence is out and, like diet soda drinkers’ waistlines, it is increasing. Whether due to health concerns, or the encroachment of beverages other than sodas into the market (or some combination of those and other factors), soda pop consumption in the US has been gradually declining…leading the soda beverage industry with a marketing challenge: How, in the face of increasing awareness that their products are a health sinkhole, can they keep pushing the young happy healthy looking people have even more fun drinking our fizzy stuff images?

Of course, beverage corporations are not the first to deal with this issue. Tobacco companies can no longer (directly) market their death-by-stick products as part of a carefree or even healthful lifestyle – they can’t even market them at all, in certain venues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But they can still, through print ads and entertainment placement – and with the unwitting [6]  cooperation of music and movie stars and other celebrities – try to play the Bad Ass Cool Card ®.  The ultra hip Rebel, defiant of convention and evidence, does what he wants to do simply because he wants to do it, his lungs (and your and my) air quality be damned.

Taking a page from the tobacco industry’s vile playbook is what likely spawned the insidious Diet Coke commercial which ran during NBC’s telecast of the Olympic Games. Did you see it? I was slack-jawed at the ad’s blatant yeah, so what?-ism   [7] – and by its tacit acknowledgement that drinking a Diet Coke is not a good thing to do, but c’mon, you know you want it (and the company really wants you to want it). It was a basic, up yours to health: have a Diet Coke because you can.

Here’s the thing about Diet Coke; it’s delicious. It makes me feel good.
Life is short; if you want to live in a yurt, yurt it up…
(from the Diet Coke ad,” ‘Because I Can’ Featuring Gillian Jacobs”)

I like it; it makes me feel good.  Protested every junkie, ever.

Oh, and the equating of “living in a yurt” with not falling for corporate propaganda and acting upon information and actually caring about what you put in your body?  The ad’s cynicism and anti-intellectualism is so transparent…and, sadly, it’s also probably effective.

The attractive, mildly-sarcastic-enough-to-be-cool-young-woman ®  all but blurts out that she knows she’s putting liquid shit in her body, but she wants to do so, so there – an attitude which  appeals to the 13 year old in all of us who wants to give a Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah to whatever authority is telling us to do (or not do) something.  Nice touch, Coke marketing douchebags.  [8]

The ad is titled, “The Diet Coke Ad ‘Because I Can’ Featuring Gillian Jacobs.  This leads me to assume I’m supposed to know who Gillian Jacobs is, other than the latest Pretty Young Thing Prostituting Herself for Her Ten Minutes of Fame Making A Buck Shilling A Product.

 

 

 

Young Lady, do your parents know of your low-class harlotry?

 

 

 

She’s most likely an actor…of some kind…appearing in some thing. I’ll waste neither precious time nor keyboard strokes Googling her.

I will, however, venture to waste keystrokes and do a cringe-worthy thing here: make a plea to y’all to stop buying and consuming the crap Coca-Cola et al are selling.  I’m talking baby steps here (at least, at first). If you are a soda junkie aficionado, please consider, maybe, giving it up when you dine out?  [9]  Water is the beverage our bodies need – order tea and/or coffee,  [10]  if you need to dress it up or just can’t imagine having “just water” with you meal.   [11]

Or, speaking of just, just do the math yourself: look up those reports I cited. After that, ask yourself why would you want to continue rewarding such atrocious behavior?

 

 

Book ’em, Danno: Criminal negligence and complicity in the second degree.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of I Guess Someone Was Running On Autopilot

Dateline: Sunday afternoon, at a grocery store’s express checkout line. It’s a busy day and the line is slow (express line?!  Fail); thus, I have a chance to observe the young checker-man. With every new customer, Young Checker-Man symmetrically and oh-so-briefly raises the corners of his mouth, like some AI approximation of a smile, as he asks them variations on the same questions (what kind of bag do they want, if they didn’t set their own in front of him, and do they play the store’s Monopoly game) before he dismisses them with Have a nice day.  I had only two bottles of sparkling juice, and when it was my turn I quickly and kindly told YC-M that I didn’t need a bag and did not play the store’s monopoly game, thank you. In the three seconds it took me to look down at my purse and extract my wallet I found that YC-M had double-bagged my items and given me three of the store’s Monopoly game tokens.

As the line was long behind me, I decided not to bring YC-M’s ignoring of my instructions to his attention.  Still, I couldn’t resist one more test to his attentiveness. As YC-M cheerlessly instructed me to Have A Nice Day I chirped, “No thanks, I have other plans.”

He didn’t even blink.

 

We give you a bag, whether you want one or not. It’s what we do.

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you always have other plans;
May you develop a (non-life-threatening) allergy – ethical or physical – to soda pop;
May you appreciate a kerfuffle worthy of the Olympic games;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

 

[1] Methinks I need to rephrase that.

[2] and PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper/Snapple and….

[3] Often suggested by friends and acquaintances as an alternative to soft drinks.

[4] Astroturfing is “…the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by a grassroots participant(s). It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial connection.”

[5] And we now know it’s the other way around – you can’t out-exercise a poor diet.

[6] I’m sorry to imply there is any association with any variation of the word wit with the word celebrities.

[7] But really, I shouldn’t have been.

[8] The Los Angeles office of the ad agency Anomaly and Ogilvy & Mather.

[9] Dining out is, according to one doctor I talked to years ago, when most people consume sodas. I’m not sure that this is true anymore (maybe it never was)…but it would be a start, to quit association soda consumption with the “treat” of going out to eat.

[10] Or, of course, a yummy Oregon Pinor Noir.

[11] The beverage and restaurant industries have worked for years to insure we feel somehow inadequate for having “only” water with our meals.

The Connections I’m Not Calling

February 9, 2018

Robyn Parnell community, friends, Holy Shit!, movies, music, politics, theatre, Uncategorized, YEE HAW! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Connections I’m Not Calling

Department Of Random Ideas Which If Implemented By The Right People
Could Turn Out To Be A Groovy Thing

Calling all the Music Industry Connections I have:  [1] please do pass along the following suggestion to Ms. Bonnie Raitt.

Background: I’ve always loved the music of the Lynyrd Skynyrd song Free Bird, even as I’ve found the lyrics to be annoying (as in, whiney).  [2]   In a Flash of Insight ® …

 

 

Yeah, kinda like this.

 

 

 

 

I had this week (while guess what song was playing on the radio?), I realized how the song could be redeemed, for moiself:  if Bonnie Raitt did a cover of it.

Ms. Raitt, are you listening? If so, please give us music-living mere mortals something to talk about  (sorry) and work your magic. Couldya wouldya, please oh please or please?

Or if not, could you please find an excuse to get Dennis Quaid out of his sly sexy devil semi-retirement and the two of you could do another flirty, Thing Called Love-ish video?

 

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Damage To Our Selves, Our International Reputation,
Our Environment And Civil Rights And Women’s Rights
And Basic Human Decency Is Almost Worth It…

…to hear an actual patriot/worthwhile human being, in this case Senator Tammy Duckworth   [3], have the opportunity to respond to The Cheetos Hitler’s treacherous oral spew. Here, in a series of tweets, Sen. Duckworth drops the mic on #45’s latest:  [4]

We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath—in the military and in the Senate—to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap.

Thankfully, there are better quotes from better Republican Presidents. Here’s one from Theodore Roosevelt—a Republican who earned the applause he received—that Trump might want to consider:

 

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of On Second Thought

Hyperbole, schmerbole – I realize that nothing is worth the damage to ourselves, our international reputation, our environment and civil rights and women’s rights and basic human decency and and and and and and…

and I apologize for, in a moment of trying to find the silver lining in the megaton dumpster of shit coming out of the White House, implying that the relentless opportunities for mockery provided by Cadet Bone Spurs is almost worth…anything.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Well That’s Enough About That   [5]

Ever seen something so cute you just wanted to puke a stream of 100% proof  [6]  blood sugar?

Dateline: earlier this week, in a Trader Joe’s . I’m pushing my cart down the aisle when I hear a little girl’s yelp of delight.  The high-pitched voice belonged to a half-pint-sized dynamo who raced around the corner of the aisle to stand in front of, and point at, a shelf with various apple- and fruit sauce mixtures. She looked over her shoulder, toward (what I presumed, and later confirmed) her mother’s shopping cart, the edge of which I could just make out jutting from another (intersecting) aisle. The pitch of the girl’s voice and size of her body made me think like she couldn’t have been more than three years old, but what came out of her mouth was beyond precocious.

“I think we should get this one!” The girl jabbed her finger upward, indicating a jar of apple-carrot sauce mixture, and her tone changed from excited to reassuring. “Now, I’m not saying I don’t like the other one,” she pointed to the regular, apples-only applesauce, “but I think this one would be much healthier, Mom.”

 

 

I don’t have a picture of the girl, but she was about this cute.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Movies I’m Not Critiquing

Except of course, when I am.

I saw a multiplex extra jumbo popcorn-sized jug full of good films this past year. Thus, it’s going to be difficult for me to root for my favorites when it comes to Academy Awards time.

As always, I am trying to see all (or as many as I can) of the films which have been nominated in the “big” categories (Best: Picture, Director, Lead and Supporting Acting, screenplay original and adapted).  Once again, it is likely moiself will fail in that endeavor, but I think this year I’ll come close to seeing most of them.

The favorites I’ve seen in the past ~ 14 months include:

– The Shape of Water
– Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
– Wind River
– Lady Bird
– Get Out
– The Big Sick
– The Post
– I, Tonya
– Wonder Woman
– Battle of the Sexes
– Hidden Figures
– The Disaster Artist
– Star Wars: The Last Jedi

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s how my list compares with the Oscar Best Picture nominees, which are:

Call Me By Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape Of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I have yet to See Call Me By Your Name or Darkest Hour, but plan on seeing both movies. I saw Dunkirk and Phantom Thread, but they did not make my list of favorites. (I wish one of the two war flicks [Dunkirk or Darkest Hour] and Phantom Thread could trade award consideration places with Wind River and/or The Big Sick).

Right now, my choice of best picture is between about five of the films up for the Oscar.  I could force myself to narrow it down to two choices, each of which is representative of the two classifications into which I can sort almost any movie I deem worthy of seeing:

(1) that which portrays an alternative and yet somehow believable or at least captivating reality (as in, The Shape of Water);

(2) that which presents a reflection of reality which, while fictional, is remarkable and poignant in both its narrative and character development/believability (as in, Lady Bird).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Movie buddy and dear friend CC and I have often discussed how our judgment of the movies we like are based on not so much the immediate reactions, but those which stick with us – the movies that have you going over and defining to yourself, for days or even weeks afterward, what you saw and how you felt, as well as what you think the movie’s creators were trying to get you to see and/or feel. (Wind River, Three Billboards… and The Big Sick, for example).

The small moments of character revelation, the big u-turn in plot, all the elements which cause you to turn to the side, locking eyes or exchanging a knowing nod (or an eyebrow raising WTF?!?!?) – yes, even in the dark, with your friend or family member, or a total stranger….

Have more fun this year. See more movies. Get out of your house and off of your couch and mingle with your fellow bipeds, even if just for a couple of hours.

Yep, this is an unabashed promotion for the theater-going experience.  [7] A tragedy is more keenly felt, a documentary is more riveting, a comedy is funnier, when you’re gasping or laughing (or crying) with company. Two thumbs up for sitting with strangers in the dark.

 

 

 

Strangers…or maybe friends you haven’t met yet.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things I Want To Know Before I Die,
But I Don’t Want To Find Out And Then Die, Like, Right Away

Can anyone tell me what exactly is the pompatus of love.

I refer to the song lyric, and not the movie with the same idiotic title.

Every once in a while I think about things like this.  [8]   Not that I want to take all the mystery of life….

 

*   *   *

 

 

 

 

 

May you avoid puking (anything, for any reason) in the aisles of Trader Joes;
May the pompatus of love warm the cockles of your heart;
May you bond, however temporarily, with strangers in the dark, over a good movie;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

 

[1] How many ways can you spell none?

[2] Dude, grow up and change, if your lack of it is causing you problems, or if it’s fine then just stop complaining about how you can’t – what are you, five years old?

[3] She of multiple honorable identities, including military veteran and helicopter pilot (who lost both legs in combat); first Asian American elected to Congress in Illinois and first disabled woman elected to Congress.

[4] This time, calling those who did not applaud during his self-congratulatory deluded ramblings State of the Union speech “treasonous.”

[5] Which was my father’s go to phrase when you were getting into conversational territory in which he didn’t want to tread…even when such territory was entered, honestly and directly, in response to a question he had asked you.

[6] Or however the stuff is measured.

[7] Although I’m talkin’ movies here, this includes live theatre – plays and musicals – of which I am also a big fan.

[8] Usually when moiself is trying to avoid thinking about something more consequential.

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