Oy!

The previous post was a result of BWI. Clearly BWI. What nonsense! It was fun though. Especially the part with winning at pool and eating cold pizza at 2:20.

Happy Friday everyone. It's all about David Bowie today. Not David Hasselhoff!

They just keep swimming over the foamy tide

Ok it's not often you get me like this. Drunk and easy, but here goes.

I had a nervous feeling somewhere between the troff and home. Was it the notion that the finest dining in Ribe, the town where I live has a troff for a urinal not unlike the basins of the local cow field where the bovine replenish?

Was it the fact that the piece that covered the chain of my bicycle snapped into two?

Was it the realization that no matter what I do, Ann Coulter will still try and trick people into believing that she genuinely supports Hillary Clinton?

Is it the feeling that I am not alone in the universe beyond Greg Brady's UFo with his covered up white head - the Carl Sagan universe robust with life forms beyond my perception, only characterized in science fiction tales of the absurd to the seriously considered in... The Twilight Zone???

What I'm getting at might not go farther than a mocrowavable burger in a local kiosk. But what it might mean for us is that - this burger, which may or may not consist of beef could be the product of an experimental movement some might consider to resemble one's idea of depopulation.

Years ago I had this thought. the least conspiratorial thought I might have imagined as being anything about the stuff of conspiracy. The thought was this:

I leave a Wendy's Frosty out in a hot climate all day and it remains frozen. This...is depopulation at it's most subtle blatancy. There is something clearly dangerous added to this sweet and wholesome drink, but it's just not right. What part of frozen substance in heat can you not understand as being a subtle form of societal assassination. Social Eugenics.

OK, I'm quitting before I am heading straight to the abysmal state of half assed truisms.

I digress. I make a mess. I shall go to bed. I'm done for now, but you ain't heard the sidste (last) of me yet!!!

Land of the free, home of the insane hypocrites

Yes. That's right. Think about this:

Barack Obama is being attacked for statements regarding gun toting Christ mongers. Why? Because despite the questionable values of rednecks and their (in some instances) all too ready to pull the trigger mentality - these rednecks are Americans after all. So when you think about running for president, god strike you down with a fiery cross if you dare speak your mind.

Now lets look at homosexuals - Gay Americans have not only been psychologically bashed (and in many cases physically bashed) by the Christian right and other homophobes, But they have also been denied equal rights as straight Americans. Our political leaders have not only had harsh words against gay Americans, but they have set legal limits to an institution that all Americans and everyone else in the world should have a right to - MARRIAGE! Our president, George W. Bush attempted to amend the constitution limiting the rights to straight couples only. Banning same sex couples from the legal union of love (and entitlement). But do "real" Americans care?

Ask yourself why a man is being attacked for speaking his mind, but a man who persecutes millions of Americans got elected twice. Sorry make that once.

I'll throw in my 2 cents. America needs a good taking to. Don't be so delicate.

Ziesen Pesach

Another day arrives and I forget the Paschal lamb. I'm not referring to Jesus or the day that Christians turned the events surrounding a seder into what we today call Easter. I'm talking about Passover. For those of you who might take for granted that your friends and neighbors might have a few Jews thrown into the mix then think about this - My neighbors have no idea what Passover is. Even though the holiday of Easter is called Paaske in Danish, which I believe is linked to the Paschal lamb, they have no connection to anything Jewish.

"Why is this night different from all other nights"? My neighbors might say, "Because on this night the sun falls below the horizon two minutes later than it did the night before". Or the fact that yesterday was a holiday called Store Bededag (Great Prayer Day), which was invented in the 1600s in order to consolidate some minor Christian holidays. I'm also wondering if it wasn't designed as another way to disassociate Christianity with it's Jewish roots. Yesterday was the big prayer day and today was not a big prayer day. Except for those funny beanie wearing folks who live hundreds of miles away eating flat, bland bread and clear soup with that off white, over sized frikadeller looking things floating in it.

When I was a kid, being the youngest, I was always stuck with singing the four questions. My dad, the cantor doled out the Hagaddahs and some song sheets along with assorted yarmalkes of white faux satin or burgendy or blue velour with events stamped on the insides like "Bar mitzvah of Adam Cohen, Temple Israel of South Merrick, 1982..." or "Dunowitz and Lesser Catering". My stomach knoted as I anticipated my solo rendition in Hebrew. After getting over that hump I could relax just enough before the endless wind down of prayer, spoken word, song sheet hymns and the obsessive compulsive washing of the hands every other minute. There was my mother always antagonizing the all too serious cantor who would eventually break down and crack a smile. The group against the clergy, urging him to speed things up as stomachs became audible and began chanting their own versions of Dayanu and Go Down Moses.

The books changed every year. One year they had a Soviet Jewry theme. The next would be world hunger. I think one year we had a feminist hagaddah with genderless references to god.

It feels like years since I've been at a seder table. Living out here in Ribe, Denmark, holidays like this creep up before I can even get a chance to try and organize something of my own and get an opportunity to inform curious folks or even share this type of experience with my own children who have little idea of what this week is about. Or these two evenings. Family and holiday banter, recurring jokes, cross discussions and more.

My kids got to paint some easter eggs at a quiet table with my in laws about a month ago. Whoopdeedoo. Someday they'll experience how the other side of the family does things and they just might go into shock before they have a blast. It's definitely something to work toward.

Self Awareness Epiphany

Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a product of mass media. Just yesterday I was a regular guy with a creative side and a quick wit with all my left field references based on stuff very few people remember or thought they'd forgotten. I pull things from episodes of series' I might have seen once back in the 70s. This does not make me some kind of savant. If there's such a thing as having a mind too open, I believe I have it.

I used to think it was a strength to be able to consider and agree with aspects of both sides of any given argument or cause. I consider myself liberal and super aware of the sadistic wrong doings of my own government that many people just see as a way of life. The way corporations manipulate products, the economy, medicine and even our idea of politicians. Aside from branding of products and the scary impact and cross pollination of "health" and "happiness" based on said product, our very waking thoughts are 9 times out of 10 predetermined by corporate sponsorship.

This morning I was teaching my daughter the days of the week in English. I used a classic method of easy memory adherence. I sang the theme from Happy Days.

Sunday, Monday...Happy Days! Tuesday Wednesday....

And so on. It was then that I realized how much of pop-culture I have used to influence my daughters. How much brain washing I've undergone and am now passing it on to the next generation. This is the straw, which breaks the camel's back. I need to re-train my mind to be free.

An example of the flexibility of my brain might be the vast contrast in political views I have. On one hand I believe in extreme rights of human beings to live and breathe in a world that minds it's own business. On the other hand I have relished the idea of capital punishment. I've been in the closet about that with my liberal friends because it just doesn't fit with other parts of the agenda that makes me ME. I can intellectualize the barbarism of the death penalty and theoretically disagree...but when I think of someone harming a loved one, I get the eye for an eye instinct. I guess this might be a similar phenomenon to the Eliot Spitzer strangeness of cracking down on prostitution all the while getting a huge hard on about it. I wonder if I were raised in a wealthy family, might I have become such an example of conflicting actions on a power scale?

Today I know that when I leave the house, just about everyone I meet has been taught something about what I might represent. I am an American Jew, which to some might mean that I am a vicious murdering, Zionist consumer of trans fat nitrite bacon, eggs and burgers and freedom fries. The way I see myself is part of a package that I've constructed for myself since I began art school in 1988. I'm a ripped jeans wearing, creative and sensitive liberal who goes against the establishment and hasn't a single racist thought because I am of the "human race".

In reality I am a scared and lazy victim of mass media who can spew out a line from an episode of Good Times and make a room of people laugh...or not. I have a horrible time keeping organized and focusing on one thing at a time. I rarely finish anything unless I have a real project to work on. I have racist thoughts and have developed a short temper, little patience and a seething level of anger that has accumulated over the last few years as I have been out of my habitat, cut short of breath in a small town that I really have no business being in. I know it and the good citizens of Ribe know it too. I do not belong. I am not better or worse. I am different. I'm in the wrong cage. I am self absorbed, but a very good listener. I love people. I hate people. I do horribly on Internet IQ tests because I can't answer fast enough. I drink too much when I drink. I'm a notorious flirt. I've been eating too much. I waste too much time. I have a hard time finishing articles.

Wow. That felt really, REALLY good.

This "little" light O mine.

A significant event, which has finally prompted me to make mention in this journal of mine, is the head bump into the giant lamp that hovers over the dining table. This is a recurring event and usually takes place when I'm serving a meal. It's diameter spans about your average car tire. It's some kind of metal and it's a Danish designer piece.

Like some other forms of Danish design, this lamp pisses me off. Unlike many of the designer lamps I've seen - this one casts light. It has 5 bulb fixtures and casts a potential of 340 watts. The light brilliantly casts onto the table without blinding people around it because of the distance between the lamp and the table. See..that's just the thing. This lovely masterpiece of lighting is too damn close to the board. You lean over and you hit your head if you're standing and placing things onto the table.

If it's not one thing...

Other designer lamps here might be giant cake like figures or overgrown origami or intricately cut in order to cast some poetic light patterns around the room. They're just cozy and give off virtually no light. I remember staying at my wife's cousin's place once and turning on every lamp in her apartment. The overall lighting was dull. I switched on the giant ball and it was like a child's night light housed in a hollow moon. Turned on the wall track and tiny little needles were produced that barely cast pen light beams. I Should be thankful with such a dramatically sized lamp with all the designer features of any decent Danish lamp right?

If my forehead gets one more dent in it I'm going to tear the fucker from the ceiling. I don't dare raise it up. If I do that then we WILL go blind. It's at the optimum distance from the table. Any higher and we'll need to wear sunglasses at the table.

Thought on global warming

OK I'm not up on my scientific knowledge about global warming and melting ice caps, but I've been reading about glaciers melting at a rapid pace. It makes me think of the times when I defrosted my freezer. The ice would seem impossibly far from melting. I'd allow it to sit and attend to other things. After several hours I'd hear some dripping. Always as the ice patches got smaller the dripping would be more rapid and eventually sound like a hail storm. It made sense to me that as a mass of ice gets smaller, the faster it melts. Less cold mass. Expose it to heat and it'll melt faster, but as it shrinks it becomes a speed race.

I have no idea what I'm getting at. Just a thought. Nothing to defend or negate melting glaciers and global warming. Just wonder how they're going to close the freezer again.

God help us.