Holster

° Cornelia reminisces about her grandfather, back in West Arkansas.
° "He was considered very genteel. Not only was he an Episcopalian, he actually went so far as to remove his gun-holster before going up for Communion."--Giac to Piers

Let 'er RIP

Falwell was a remarkably gifted demagogue who never let Jesus stand in the way of the pursuit of fame and power.--Giac to Piers

Less of It

° "Whatever happens, I know I'm exactly where God wants me to be." So said the fixingtobe second runnerup in the Regional Metropolitan Opera Competition, just before her kindly judge made mincemeat of her. On international HD big screen broadcast.
° Peace be upon her. But every scalawag scoundrel running for president, congress, or ghetto pimp will be quoted as saying the exact same thing repeatedly till election day.
° Humanists are too polite to label this speechifying the hubris it is.
° Deists are too gutless to label this speechifying the blasphemy it is.
° Only Bertie Wooster had sense enought to retort, "Less of it!"
° So why should the Fool hesitate to reply to the hopeful, "Ah but dear, when you come to think about it, how else could it be?"--Giac to Piers

All Akbar, All the Time

(For one reason or another I never posted these echoes of the progress of my friendship with Akbar--Giac.)

24 settembre mmvi--"Outpoped"

Dear Akbar,
° You may've forgotten, but I haven't.
° "You have done been outPoped," said I as you approached with an offering of bubbledancing chai. You didn't believe me then, and that's how come you didn't spill it and scald us both.
° It was the occasion of the Holy Father's casually and IAmSoVerySure unpremeditated characterisation, during a scholarly lecture on SomebodyNobodyEverHeardOf, of Islam as--well, let's leave the exact quote to Don Imus.
° In one corner, a 79yearold professional religionist who grew up under the tough Roman Imperialism of the preSweetPopeJohnXXIII Council, singleminded, “God’s rottweiler,” in possession of the best and most ancient pr staff money can buy.
° In the opposite corner, a bazillion individual Muslims (and two or three turkeygobbler Congresses, no savvier than our own), each reacting without premeditation or coordination or central leader.
° And who scored the tko?

§§§§§

The reaction to disturbance is the disturbance.

° Itoldyouhowitwouldbe, Giac.

26 settembre mmvi--"Rubbing It In"

Dear Akbar,
° I am gratified that you acknowledge that I was right, but it distresses me that you were surprised that I was.
° Here are your questions for the day.

1. Did the Bishop of Rome Reaganly misspeak himself? (Or was it intentional?)
2. What did he hope to achieve?
3. What did he achieve?
4. Do you have any further questions?

§

1. No. (Yes.)
2. “Evangelical parity” in Muslim majority nations. Cioè, the right to send missionaries to Saudi Arabia, ecc., build churches, extend his own empire.
3. So many things:
a. Turkey can just give up all hope of entering the European Union.
b. The European Union is now united (the Left has joined the Right) in considering itself fundamentally and historically Christian, cioè, nonJewish, nonMuslim.
c. “Muslim leaders” are expected in Rome any day now to “renew dialogue.”
d. Every nonMuslim throughout the world has been invited, almost instructed, to increase his or her fear of Islam.
4. No, you don’t.

° Butifyoudojustaskme, Giac.


12 ottobre mmvi--"Wave of Christian Terrorism Sweeps Nation"

Dear Akbar,
° Have you ever noticed that if a Tasmanian astonomer who has published a learned article on the star Aldebaran should happen to squash an insect on the windscreen of his miniCooper, his face will be plastered across the evening news as “Islamic Terrorist”?
° On the other hand, if half a dozen baptised Christians take assault rifles into the nearest schoolhouses and rape and murder schoolgirls, their faces are plastered across the evening news as “Man” or “Teenage Boy”?
° Why is this?
° Because your generation has not yet risen through the American news organisations, so that you can ask your own colleagues, "Why?"
° And because your parents' generation has never perfected the art of writing charmingly funny yet hardasnails letters to the editor, to suggest “Why not . . . .?”
° For “Islamofascist,” why not “fascist”? ((You know why not.))
° For “Jihadist,” why not “self-styled ((or)) so-called Jihadist”? ((You know why not.))
° For “decorated veteran,” why not “mass random murderer of civilians”? ((Even I know why not.))
° The hardasnails is easy. It’s the charmingly funny that takes the effort.

° Effortlessly, Giac.

12 ottobre mmvi--"Curds and Whey"

Dear Akbar,
° You missed the Festival of Cultures last weekend. There were Masai dancers, Chinese Lion Dancers, Cajun zydeco dancers, Caribbean steel drums accompanying Island dancers, Mexican pole flyers, Celtic reelers, Burundi drummers with spearwielding dance troupe, Tahitian hula dancers, Hindu kuchipudi dancers, Latin tango, Greek pastries and boys frolicking in kilts, European ballet dancers in tutus, native American tribal dancers, even Apalachian folksingers a'cloggin'.
° The entire white black yellow tan Christian Buddhist Hindu Confucian Pagan Witchdoctor--everybody was there.
° And lonesome as could be, Kurdistan represented the entire Islamic universe.

§

° Do you love to rate folks on the Internet? I do. But I feel bad when I give them low numbers, so I puff them a little.
° Can you rate by somebody else‘s standards? I mean, can you rate these folks from the standpoint of The Average American? Favourable, Neutral, Unfavourable.

Saudi Arabian
Arab

Kuwait

India
Pakistan
Bangladesh

Iran

Persia

Kashmir
Sri Lanka
Ceylon
Indonesia
Algeria
Morocco

Nigeria
Sudan
Ethiopia

Libya

Sunni
Shiite
Wahabi

KURD

° Yes, Grasshopper, you have achieved perfection.
° The very word “Arab” makes Americans see red. This is because Saudi Arabia has singlehandedly made possible our economic expansion and prosperity ever since we used up our own oil.
° Kuwait is a happymaking term. It represents the only War (outside Grenada) the U. S. Army has won since WWII.
° Akbar in Pakistan is a harbourer of the Taliban. Akbar a mile across the border in India is a fellow former British colonist. Akbar in Bangladesh is a posterchild for Tsunami Relief Efforts.
° Iran bad. Persia magnificent.
° You mean they don’t call it Ceylon anymore? You mean there’re Muslims in Kashmir, fancy that.
° AIDS FAMINE MALARIA MACHETES AFRICA.
° Libya--I’ve heard of it, but can’t quite remember why.
° What? Who?
° Kurds? We ought to make them our 51st state. Kurds are brave, efficient, nonterrorist, handsome, good--and it’s just mean of Turkey and Iran not to cede them giant hunks of territory. Maybe the Pope can make Turkey do it.
° It’s all pr.
° All.

° Sitting on a tuffet, Giac.

15 ottobre mmvi--"Dioses"

Dear Akbar,
° We have agreed that the rise of China to world dominance means one thing above all others: you and I both will starve, for there is no hope of learning such a squiggly language (even if you have already mastered Arabic, Urdu, a smattering of Hindi, and Spanish).
° Imagine then my surprise to behold the following headline in La Voz::

Cancelan opera por miedo
a Islamistas
Se decapita a Mahoma
y otros dioses

° It seems that Mozart’s Idomeneo has been cancelled at the Berlin Opera. Why?
° Not because the operahouse has received threats of violence, but because the director suddenly noticed that the staging (debuted 2003, Hans Neuenfels) has Idomeneo offer to sacrifice his son, to obtain safe passage home from the Trojan War, to Buddha, to Jesus, and to Mahomet. And it occurred to her that this might could offend Muslims.
° Well Idomeneo must’ve had right smart foresight ca. 1000 B.C.E. to’ve thought of these “dioses” instead of his own Poseidon.
° Germans are outraged.
° But not at the director, not at the designer, not at Mozart, not at Idomeneo, not at Buddhists, not at Christians--but only at the target of the headline. Figurati.

° In any language, Giac.

15 aprile mmvii--"301"

Dear Akbar,
° It was bad enough your being outpoped last autumn, but it's really too much that now you've done been outXerxesed.
° On one side, a bazillion of Sunni Muslims and Tony Blair, on the left one tenth of a bazillion of Shia Muslims under the baton of Iranian President Aminm-Bign-Bad.
° How did he do it? President Aminm-Bign-Bad?

° a) He consulted the playbook. He saw that the Seize the Hostages gag back in 1981 had made the U. S. tremble like an ill gelled shape served as pudding in unairconditioned Punjab.
° b) He weighed his enemy. Why shame the U. S. when he could make the same point by shaming little Britannia?
° c) He counted the costs. Bush and Blair already were idly threatening to invade Iran, "idly" because the two of 'em together hadn't a spare platoon to their names. The worst B & B could manage would be a few missiles, and even if they accidentally hit their targets, all Persia would be suddenly united as it hasn't been since--since Xerxes.
° d) He improvised in front of the cameras. As soon as all the news media were convinced that there would be no resolution of the crisis before Blair stepped down--as in the previous outing with Carter-Khomeini-Reagan--President Aminm-Bign-Bad announced that he was ready for his closeup, Mr. DeMille, and said to a stupefied Christendom: "I freely restore these captive soldiers to their native land, as an Easter gift to the people of Great Britain."
° Whereupon the collective bazillion Sunni jaws joined the collective bazillion Christian jaws around the world in dropping, while eyes goggled in a display of unusual ecumenical amity.

§

° And he got what he wanted, President Aminm-Bign-Bad.
° "Britain acknowledged that numerous diplomatic lines of communication have been opened with the government in Teheran." From pariah to undisputed leader of the Islamic world, in a single play. Wow!
° Just let me see can I find a link to Handel's most famous aria from Xerxes.

° Unstupefied, Giac.

15 aprile mmvii--"Burr under the Saddle"

Dear Akbar,
° Yes, you're right. That's what alerted me to President Aminm-Bign-Bad's pr genius. A throwaway line on NPR: "The U. S. State Department is at a loss to account for Saudi Arabia's recent behaviour, which it characterises as that of a horse with a burr under the saddle."
° For it must've been mighty hard on the Saudi Sunnis to see Bush's strategy come out right after so many reverses.
° For we must suppose that from the beginning Bush intended to partition Iraq, with both oil regions coming under the suzerainty of Persia. Which will then be in a position to detach all the Shia oilfields of the Persian Gulf from Saudi control. And together with Shia Syria (thank you, Nancy Pelosi), to emerge as the ageold Persian Empire, ancient boundaries restored.
° And then the U. S. and Persia--o wait, isn't Persia still part of Bush's Axis of Naughtiness?
° So no oil for us?

° Restupefied, Giac

Ripe (Piers)

Dear Piers,
° The other day was one of those ripe ones that will sometimes fall off the tree into one's lap.
° 1. I didn't get lost. I mean, while searching for a new local foods store in West Overton.
° 2. Not only that, I found a full dozen heirloom varieties of tomato plants, I'll feast this summer till I break out in hives.
° 3. Moreover, there was a stand of the juiciest primrose yellow oleanders, that I hadn't even been looking for.
° 4. Steamed with Steel and another very newsy guy. After Steel left, it turned out that the newsy guy speaks, but does not understand, plain English, to wit, "No, grazie."
° 5. Pizza with Steel and daughter. Candied ginger for the sourmilk gingerbread. Hari, in tiedyed t, spitcleaning the tables.
° 6. Il Trittico, live from the Met. So, the flashlight they used to use at the end of Suor Angelica (in the days before religion was stylish) finally ran out of batteries. Poor Rinuccio, poor contestants, reality tv comes to Lincoln Center.
° 7. A quick espresso and lo, there it was, rosemary flatbread. (A food critic had recently praised Pink Pony's antipasto starring fig jam, arugula, and goat cheese on rosemary flatbread.) It proved to be such foul tasting glop I'm afraid to throw it on the compost heap, might drive away the field mice, and then the kits would have nothing but moles to torment.
° 8. La Tourneuse de Pages. Loved every moment of it. Nothing wrong with it that Jeanne Moreau, a just balance between the crime and the punishment thereof, and a sort of loony irreality about the savagery couldn't've cured.
° 9. And then, just on the way to the Sri Lankan Mexican Bakery, whom dost thou think I beheld? Xak, that's who whom whose I beheld. So a ripe night was had by all.

° Sucked dry yet still somehow ripely juicy, Giac.

Belt Buckled

Dear Piers,
Ever since you moved to godless Virginia, you have, no doubt, longed for your youth in this, the very buckle of the Bible Belt.
Here are this year's Easter stats (the percentage of the County's population that actually darkened various churches' doors on Easter Sunday 2007):

Muslim--nary a one
Jewish--.01% (if she drove her pekingese up to Overton for the art glass exhibition at the Temple)
Anglican--.66%
Catholic--1.16%
Presbyterian--1.33%
Church of Christ (not affiliated in any remote way with the United Church of Christ)--4.87%
Methodist--8.17%
Southern Baptist--10.03%
Loony and, in the main, Heretical Sects--Lord only knows

Simple addition gives us a grand total of 26.23% of nonheretic locals who actually bestirred themselves to enter a church, synagogue, or mosque on Easter Sunday.
Let us round it off to a ripe 25%, here in the very buckle of the Bible Belt.

§

Conclusion?
The conclusion is that there's right smart lying going on when Americans brag to religion pollsters.
Unless it's the pollsters who're lying.

With my belt unbuckled and my pants barely covering my butt, Giac.