Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that is wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted."
-- Margaret Atwood –
Have a great Tuesday!

Can They Read?

In my travels, I have tripped over the following quote, and it has been nagging at me. I wonder if it is mere exaggeration. Hyperbole or hype? Or both. Or what? Is it merely a Vidalism with no basis of factuality... or is it true in all of its horrid ramifications? Here it is:

“Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.”
-- Gore Vidal –

That is just scary. The first part is almost a given. But the second part... YIKES. Is it true?
Does Tony Blair read stuff? Can Bush do it? Where has all the erudition gone, if it’s gone?
Wasn’t the term “statesman” at one time synonymous with “brilliant” or “well-read” or “erudite?” Lincoln. Churchill. Stuff like that.
In Canadian politics, the last Prime Minister that could even be considered an intellectual would be Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Do any public figures nowadays even have time to recreationally read? Do they have the desire to do so? And, more importantly, did they ever?
I have found that it is very difficult to find any sort of answers to these questions.
I have researched the Web incessantly. I can’t really find any good information on this question. For instance.... “What are people in the White House reading?” Stuff like that.
Favorite authors of the Premiers and the Senators.
Can’t find it.
I have prowled the mega-bookstore shelves (just did it minutes ago).... and of course, it is easy to stumble across the tons of “Bushism” books that are so popular. My personal favorite Bushism, is this one:
"I want to appreciate those of you who wear our nation's uniform for your sacrifice." —George W. Bush, Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 14, 2005.
Ummmmm....
Whatever else those words may mean, they are not good evidence that the speaker is currently working his way through Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov on his off-hours!
Speaking of Russian authors though (stay with me folks) the only promising note I found today, was some stuff about the current Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice.
Rice, who was a tenure-track Stanford Professor at age twenty-eight, stands out as a thinker. Apparently, she is often seen toting historical works around Washington, and her family has spoken of her childhood requirement to read a book a day. Before the September 11th attacks, she reportedly designated an hour or two each day to purely read. (See, this is the kind of stuff I want to hear). And as a classicly trained pianist, she appreciates [as opposed to her boss, who apparently only wants to appreciate stuff, as noted above] the music of fine literature. “I actually read War and Peace in the Russian,” she told an interviewer. “It’s really quite beautiful.”
I got all misty-eyed.
I got all optimistic.
Until I read on, and found that when The President heard of this interview, he responded with “Uh-huh. Like I always said, that Warren Peace is one heck of a writer.”

Now hold on! HOLD ON!
Before two fighter jets come and shoot me down as I walk home from here, I want to say that the last part there... I made that up!
But the Condoleeza stuff.... that’s true. And it’s encouraging.
In a world where some of our statesmen and stateswomen have to phonetically sound out the signs along the road as their limousine whisks them to their next speaking engagement.... it is encouraging.

“...conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House.” -- former presidential speechwriter, David Frum --

Splash du Jour: Monday

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in shock-proof shit-detector."
-- Ernest Hemingway --
Have a great Monday!

Rick and Mary.

I’m sipping coffee, and reading at the mega-bookstore. This guy walks in and plops down just over there, in the corner. He looks stressed. His hair looks stressed. First, he takes the extra chairs at his table, puts one at mine, distributes two others elsewhere… leaves one across from himself. He sets up for what’s about to take place. A meeting with the ex!
Minutes later, she strolls in… rain droplets all over her hair and jacket, and as she sits down she explains to him how she had to take a few buses to get here, mentions the rain and yadda yadda. He tells her how far away he parked and how much time is on his meter. Small talk that’s about to turn big. “Ding” goes an unheard bell.
I can’t help but overhear them but continue to attempt to read my book. They get right into talking about “the kid”… the daughter who visits the father periodically. Dad makes a few comments, while Mom takes out an actual wirebound notebook and begins to describe the way things are going to be! Things he is allowed to say (to their child). Things he’s not.
At first everything is extremely civil. They’re talking like two business people discussing the best way to approach a new venture, with special emphasis on what’s best for the client.
“I agree.”
“Yes, that’s fair.”
“Oh certainly!”
Then the mud rolls in. Much to the astonishment of my peripheral gaze, the guy begins to shift about and… get loud. The conversation takes several nasty turns. I’m embarassed for them right now. Many of us sitting nearby can’t help but hear. He begins to get specific. Apparently, in recent visits by Little Child, his privacy has been violated, and, case in point, his paycheck was observed. He thinks it was purposely done. She denies this. It all gets louder. No one notices (including myself) that I’ve been reading my book upside down for the last five minutes. He’s squirming really bad now, fuming, like a great storm that’s so close in upon you that there is very little delay between lightning and thunder. She knows he’s about to leave, and she pleads with him… “Rick, I’ve travelled across town to be here today, please we need to talk about these things.” But he’s already up, wrestling his coat on. I felt my heart go out to her in this moment.
He tells the whole room “Look Mary, I agreed to a conversation, and we’ve just had it!” She’s pleading even as he’s saying it… but he’s already gone, muttering and slapping the air behind himself, trying to find the left armhole. Gone. Jacket half-on, half-off.
Mary does not run after him. She sits with her head in her hands, looking down at the table. She turns to the girl in the next table (behind mine) and says “I’m sorry. We have to meet in a public place or else the meeting would not even last this long.”
This particular meeting was perhaps ten minutes.
The girl smiles at her and says “I’m all for you” and Mary says “I’m not even embarassed that you heard all of this, because I think of you as… a witness.”
She looks over at me and I give her my best Witness #2 smile.
She just walked away not even fifteen minutes ago, the time it has taken me to write this. Back on the bus. Soon, somewhere across town a babysitter will get to go home earlier than anticipated.
I feel sad for these people, Rick and Mary. And moreso for all three of them, the child being the third. And I wonder, how (or maybe “why” is a better question) do people get to this kind of a place in their lives? In my own life I seem to be so sheltered from having to deal with these type of issues. I turn my book rightside up and keep reading, the biggest problem presently on my plate being whether or nor I should go get a refill.

A Real Pageturner.

In the time it takes for me to type out the sentence that describes to you what she does, she’s already done it again. She’s flipped the page. And then again. And again.
I call her The Speed-Reading Chick, and she’s in high gear today, sitting just over yonder, here at the mega-bookstore. She is the only person I know of who frequents this place as much as I do, especially on weekends. She is a fixture, as am I.
And there she is, curled up on one of the comfy chairs, while I am here at this desk sort of table-affair. An attractive girl, I’m guessing she is in her latter twenties. She looks very Sheryl Crow-like, and to me, Sheryl Crow (whom I have met in real life) is very attractive. I’ve never spoken to The Speed-Reading Chick, but have observed her ominous powers here for perhaps a year or so now, while I myself have plodded through the books that I read.
Today, it is Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace I am peering over from time to time, to catch a glimpse of Attractive-Speed-Reading-In-Progress!

The Speed-Reading Chick never has less than three or four books in front of her. [From now on I am going to call her Sheryl]. Always novels, and always those kind of novels that could be described as.... hmmm... I want to be in no way negative sounding here, because I do not mean it that way at all... but, the kind of Books That Women Are Supposed To Read. For an even greater reason [to not sound negative] I will not name any authors that fall into this category. (Incidentally, someone could say the same about what I am reading today. Let’s be serious. How many men really read Atwood?)
Anyhoo, I think you know what I mean. Sheryl’s books always have alluring pastel pink and/or blue covers and are written by authors who seem to be giving birth to at least two of these items a month. And no, not Harlequin romances. Good fair-size, relatively substantial books.
But she EATS them, I swear it.
I have watched her read several books in a sitting. Time and time again. For a long time now.
She is not just flipping through the thing either, not scanning or skimming. I can see her move down the page, but at such a steady unrelenting pace that it is quite mesmerizing, if not unnerving. And then (this astounds me)... when she finishes one, without so much as blinking or re-arranging her pretty self in the chair, she reaches for the next book, flips it open, and is off.
To new worlds, new faces, new predicaments.

Far be it from me to be critical of Sheryl. But let’s talk about comprehension.
If she can actually comprehend what she is reading at light speed there, then I say this is quite a gift, it really is. And it is a better gift than its far-too-common opposite, the gift of nodding off to sleep if you read two sentences in succession! At the same time, I do not think the gift of speed-reading is a gift I would wish upon myself, plodder that I am. I like to savor what I read.... mmm.... “mull over it” yes, that is the thing I like to do. Turn it over in the mind. Re-read paragraphs, marvel over the construction. Glory in the authorial uniqueness.
But this reading of three or four books in a sitting BING BANG BOOM....
I don’t care how carnivorous a person is, isn’t there a point when eating six sirloin steaks in a row becomes unappetizing?
Having said this though, I am reminded of the story of the reputed Fastest Reader In The World, Mr. Howard Stephen Berg.
When Berg appeared on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee years ago, the hosts gave him twenty minutes to read a 240-page book. They then brought out a surprise guest: the author, who quizzed Berg on what he’d just read.
Berg scored 100. Answered every single question correctly.
He is Guinness-certified (as am I, however, my Guinness-certification has to do with beer consumption).... Guinness-certified in 1989 as the world’s fastest reader (the category has since dropped from the book). Berg can read eighty pages per minute. He doesn’t read constantly, and he doesn’t always speed read. “But when I want to learn about something,” he says, “I learn it really quickly and really well.”
So, granted, this guy’s obviously got a good connection going.... snappy synapses.
Still, I read of Harriet Klausner of Morrow, Georgia (amazon.com’s #1 book reviewer) who claims that she reads twenty books a week. Or even prolific author Nicholas Sparks, who, while writing six bestselling novels in six years, claims to also READ about 125 books every year.
Among other things, it is simply remarkable.
Beyond the issue of comprehension, such rampant reading seems to me a bit indiscriminate. Or at least it contains an element of the danger of possibly becoming an indiscriminate reader. To me, opening a new book fouteeen seconds after finishing the last one is like boarding an endless succession of buses with no regard for where any of them are going. In the throes of their voraciousness, how do these people arrive anywhere distinct? How do they assimilate what they read?
Well, how much do you read Cipriano?
So far this year I have read sixteen books. A few I have not finished (which is always the case, every year), but sixteen I have meticulously devoured. Last year (2004) I read fourty-four books. In 2003, I read forty. And in 2002, forty. I have kept full bibliographic records of my reading since about 1990.
Steadily, I am averaging about forty books a year.

CROW UPDATE:
Well, by golly, Sheryl has left the building. I know that she will be back later.
But as she passed by my table, (which is really an empty space at a bank of computer terminals) she set down the three books which she has just read in their entirety. By the way, this is what a lot of people, including myself, do here... we read an entire book (or three) without buying them. Instead of re-shelving them, she left these three here, so I leaned over and picked them up after she had gone. All of them have very enticing covers to them! They are The Demon’s Daughter by Emma Holly (322 pages), Whirlwind Affair by Jacquie D’Alessandro (339 pages), and Little White Lies by Gemma Townley (320 pages).
That’s 981 pages.
She’s a real pageturner.

I think it was two weekends ago. I left this same bookstore and set out onto the street, realizing just then that my paper coffee cup was empty. There were three of those plasic recycle bins right up against the store, ready for collection. So I opened the lid of one, to throw my cup in there. To my initial delight, the bin was filled to the top... with books! NEW books, with the covers torn off of them, the store having purged their shelves of overstocked items or non-sellers or whatnot else. With no regard for my appearance as a homeless street-person, I now went from bin to bin. They were all full of books! Sweet Lord, what a bounty!
However, as I picked each of them up, I found none of them to be books that I myself would have read. Not a one!
Yet, they were very much the type of book that Sheryl is into. Bins... full of her very genre! And she was IN the store at the time! I had seen her there, up in her comfy chair, just earlier on. I felt like going back into the store and sharing my discovery with her....
“Hey Sheryl, come out here. In these three bins is enough good reading for like.... an entire... DAY!”
But instead, I just walked away. After all, how would she be able to tell if the books were any good when their covers have so obviously been removed?

The Need To Communicate.

It lives in all of us, this need to communicate, but I am convinced that in some people, the need is so overwhelming as to dominate their every moment of existence.
A poet once said “expression is the need of my soul” but that is not even really the aspect of communication that I am talking about here, today. The poet is most likely describing the need to formulate experience (whether imaginary or actual... or both) and transmit that experience outward in the form of his/her art. To express it. If we were to examine the roots of this word we would find that it is denoting movement above all things. Movement from the inward to the outward. It is this need for expression that is then combined with the ability to do something about it and a measure of inspiration and willingness to do so that makes a poet a poet.
But no, what I am talking about here is much more mundane.
I am not talking about poetry.
I am thinking today of the need to tell someone else of your current whereabouts, to laugh with someone about last night, to inform someone that you will be ten minutes later than expected. The need to remind yourself that someone knows you.
I am talking about connection, really.
I am thinking about the advent of the cell phone.
I believe that this form of personal communcation, and the immediacy of it, has perhaps robbed us of something, were we to only know it. Robbed us of a certain sort of sanctuary, a certain sort of inablity of interruption, if you will.
In other words, I wonder if the current plethora of cell phones in every pocket and purse does not indicate that we have become a people that desires interruption. We welcome a disruption to our reverie. If this is the case, I think this is sad.
It is altogether possible that what was once sanctuary, has now become, with the advent of the cell phone, if not altogether stolen time, at best, borrowed time. At any moment, whether you’ve got yourself set on ring or vibrate, you can be summoned to give someone else that time you are enjoying.
That word enjoying is the key though.
We have stopped enjoying that time.
My premise is that the cell phone has subtly changed our perspective on enjoying our own space and the freedom of solitude it brings, or once brought.
The cell phone industry thrives upon the fact that we do not want to be alone. We do not want to feel disconnected. We want everyone we know to have access to us, at all times. This is why the commercials are based upon the illusion that this is the desirable way to live.
The reason I am writing the above is very simple. I am sitting at a coffee place. A young woman just walked in minutes ago. She is attractive, dressed very nicely... and she just sat down at the next table to the left of me, and upon doing so, she set her little black leather purse in front of her, and began to tap her dainty fingers on the table.
Instantly, instantly, I said to myself.... “I give her ten seconds. Within ten seconds, she will pull a cell phone out of that little purse...... 10....9....8....7.....6......”
And there it was. You will think I am exaggerating, but I assure you dear reader, I am not.
She did not retrieve the phone because it was ringing.... oh no, she was retrieving her cell phone because (God forbid)... what if someone had called and she had not heard the ring? What if someone called while that bus drove by five minutes ago, and I did not hear my phone?
“I will surely DIE!”
And seeing that no-one had called her, what did she do? She called someone.
This is when I opened my laptop and began writing.
Now, it may sound that I am being overly critical of this dear person to my left, and maybe I am. The truth is, we ALL have the need to communicate. It is the very reason why I myself am writing this vignette, rather than simply thinking it.
But all I am saying is this: The next time you wonder why there is not much good poetry being written nowadays, just take a look around you, to the left and the right. And if you yourself are not on a cell phone at the time, just marvel at how many other people are!

Splash du Jour: Friday

Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. -- Gandalf, in Volume 3 of Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings. --
Have a great Friday!

Splash du Jour: Thursday

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.
- from Tender Is The Night by F.Scott Fitzgerald.
Have a great Thursday!

Chickens.

Here is an original poem, from yours truly, Cipriano.

Chickens

I cannot imagine a world without them.
A world where I cannot rob them of their unborn young
and gnaw their adult legs to the bone.

Where sunny side up, over easy, Breakfast Special,
are all meaningless terms.
Where the sun hesitates below the horizon waiting
for a rooster on a fence that is not there.

Think of the jeerless playgrounds, bullies groping
for just the right word to hurl at timid boys.
What will these kids hunt for at Easter time
or throw at houses on Hallowe’en?

People will tell legends involving a soup
that could cure a cold, as the riddle industry stumbles.
Which came first, the… ah, forget it.
Why did the something-or-other cross the road?
See?

No. A world without poultry just leads to
a lot of blank stares in the kitchen.
Honey, don’t forget to pick up a dozen ____?
She’s lost for words, and all he knows
is that he hasn’t eaten a moist cake in years.

We ought to be thankful.
It is good that they are here.
It is good that they cannot fly too fast, or too high.
This makes it easier to knock them out of the air
or just trip them,
lop off their heads,
and stuff them into a pot or an oven.

No, a world without them would not do.
And as far as that goes,
heaven will not be heaven,
if there are no chickens there.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2005

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: “I don’t intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God.”
“Don’t you think God knows the facts?” Bethe asked.
“Yes,” said Szilard. “He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts.”
- Hans Christian von Baeyer, in Taming The Atom –
Have a great Wednesday!

Vacuums & Vertigo!

Recently my vacuum cleaner OD’d on cat hair.
I was almost done the area rug when the thing seized right up, puffing out a thin wisp of smoke as it quickly choked and then screamed itself to death. I shut it off and flipped the burning part of it over for a look-see. The little rotisserie-thing was just clogged with purebreed Ragdoll-hair.
After an aborted attempt at repair, during which time I repeatedly cursed this black rubber band that would not go back on to the rolling-pin dealie it obviously came off of, I just hauled the whole smoldering mess down to the big red garbage bin downstairs and heaved it in there!
I am currently vacuum-less.
Then last night, at about 1:15 a.m., I suddenly awoke from a vivid dream I was having.

Both of these things just described (a vacuum cleaner killing itself, and me waking from a dream) are both very rare and unusual events, and so I began to wonder if there was any sort of cause-and-effect relationship between them. I admit, I nearly blew a gasket thinking about it, but my efforts paid off. At work today, I think I deciphered the subliminal connection.
See, the vaccum-suicide involved the brand name Hoover. This particular upright model I had owned was definitely the lower-end of anything Hoover produces.... I forget the model name but it was probably like Junior Rug-Sucker 100... something like that.
And.... my dream. Ready for this?
My dream was about Hoover Dam.

The dream was so real I was experiencing vertigo in it! And that is probably why I woke up, because heights really scare me. I nearly fell off the bed. Thing is, when I was a kid, our family visited Hoover Dam on our way to Disneyland. And for years afterward, as a kid, Hoover still occupied a greater portion of my mind than Splash Mountain and Mickey Mouse combined.
Part of this is because when we were at the Dam, my Dad sort of dangled me over the edge of it.
There was (and probably still is) a walkway where you can observe the Dam’s 726 feet of vertical concrete massiveness, but the wall and railing is (understandably) fairly formidable for a curious-as-hell 6-year-old. And I wanted to see what all the grown-ups were seeing. So Dad lifted me up and set me sideways on the ledge so that I could look over. I know that he was holding my ankles tightly, but I can still recall the distinct feeling that welled up in me. If he would have suddenly let go, I may have well become famous as That Kid That Slid Down Hoover in 1970.
It was an awesome thing. Awesome to me.

Now I know that my Dad did not intend to kill me and/or cause lifelong psychological trauma, but regardless, he did indeed accomplish the latter thing.
Ever since that vacation, I assure you, I have had a profound fear of falling down dams.
And yes, along with this, a general acrophobia of sorts.... Fear of Death by Falling Way Too Far.
But I am not bitter about it whatsoever. Rather, I think that overall it is sort of a healthy fear, like the Fear of Uncontrolled Flames or... Fear of Loaded Guns Pointed At You. These are good fears, if you think of the possibilities inherent in their non-existence.

My own personal Fear of Death by Falling Way Too Far was brought home to me rather clearly, about 13 years ago, when everyone I worked with, without exception, decided to go skydiving together. Parachuting. Basically take the course, strap some folded-up plastic bag to yourself, and then purposely jump out of an airplane.
At first, I was right in there... “For sure! Count me in!”
We all signed up. We were a road construction crew.... macho as all hell. Some other words come to mind.... we had moxy! We were youthful. Insane! Drunk lots! [And whatever the word is for “having breathed too many asphalt fumes!”] We were all these things.
But as the day approached... well, apprehensive is a bit too light of a word to describe how I was feeling. I was 7 again, and seriously dangling over the edge of Hoover Dam! And macho be damned.... I backed out!
When I told them all, they surrounded me...... “Why? Why are you backing out, you wimp?”
So I explained by saying, “See guys, I’ve been noticing that every time we talk about it, I urinate a bit, and I’m a little afraid of what else might happen if there is ever any actual sort of jump-out-of-airplane descent taking place!”
They all went and they all survived, and they all laughed at me afterwards. But I don’t care. Parachuting is insane. The fact that you wear a helmut proves that it is insane. Because, as Jerry Seinfeld says, as soon as that parachute fails to open, that helmut is wearing YOU for protection! Later on, in some bar with all the other helmuts, yours will be boasting “It’s a good thing I had a human being strapped underneath me, or I would have hit the ground directly!”
See what I mean?

So my vacuum cleaner OD’s. And then I have this dream last night.
I don’t need Sigmund Freud or Carl Gustav Jung to tell me what’s going on here. I figured it all out at work today.
It’s clear to me that I need a Hoover-Healing Weekend. Not to get rid of my fears. But to re-affirm them. To dedicate myself afresh to the lifelong pursuit of Not Falling From Things.
So, Friday, I am getting in Big Blue (my car) and I am going to drive to Las Vegas. Anyone who wants to join me you are more than welcome. We should all meet somewhere first, and then drive the 30 miles southeast together, in a convoy. Since I pretty much live in mega-bookstores (I am in one right now even) I say we meet at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore located at 3860 Maryland Parkway in the City of Lights. Say..... noonish, Saturday, the 21st.
How will you recognize me?
I’ll be wearing a black shirt that says on it, in big white letters: I Drove All The Way To Hoover, And All I Got Was This “Dam” T-Shirt.

***************

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
-- Flannery O’ Connor –
Have a great Tuesday!

The Science of Highlighting.

This is probably the hundredth time I have observed the phenomenon, so I figure it is about time I documented my findings… especially since it is, once again, taking place directly across from me here at the mega-bookstore coffeeshop right now.
There she is, obviously a student of something-or-other… in her early twenties, a photocopied brick of paper balanced on her knee. She leans back against the wall, she is sideways in her chair, with her two feet propped into another chair, to get the right… highlighting angle!
As her eyes skim across the page… so does that highlighter of hers… today it is a fluorescent pink color being used. Yellow is very popular too.
But it intrigues me to no end, as I glance up at her from the pages of my own book, in hopes that she does not see me doing so… this highlighting thing intrigues me, and here is the issue…
I can see how emphasizing one or two points on a page could be helpful… a phrase here… a phrase there... a way of noting what is important to re-read later, when one is back in the dorm-room, the lamplight focused on those danged pages which are now augmented with pizza-grease …. and you realize it is late, late, late, and you have to know this stuff for tomorrow’s exam etc.
I mean, ultimately, when all is said and done… highlighting should simply mean… “more important than the other stuff” right? Later on, you may only have time (and energy) to re-digest those previously highlighted points.
But, for the life of me, I cannot see what the benefit is… of highlighting EVERYTHING ON THE PAGE….. page after page of indiscriminate highlighting! Is this some Hansel-and-Gretelish equivalent of dropping crumbs… something left behind so that later you can say to yourself… “Oh, I must have read that, because look. It’s all highlighted?”
I just don’t get it!
This girl is highlighting every single word on the page…. Page after stapled-together page of it. I want her to stop, I really want her to stop.
And this is, like I’ve said, not unique to today’s coffee-time… this is truly about the hundredth time I’ve observed such behavior.

Now granted, when I was in college, I was known as a bigtime highlighter. Oh yes… I had a SYSTEM. When taking notes in class, I would use a certain color for main headings, another for sub-headings… still another for sub-points within the sub-heading. People used to borrow my notes when they missed a class, and they’d return them saying stuff like… “Dude, you should write a book on highlighting because your notes are like, so easy to follow.”
And once, this one babe’s gorgeous mane of hair fell across my desk, and I even took a few moments to grab little wisps of it and color them pink… yellow… blue.
All of this kind of SERIOUS highlighting I can totally understand.

In my day, we had highlighting down to a science.
But what the kids are doing nowadays. No, I’m sorry… it’s just not right.

Splash du Jour: Monday

I believe it was Robertson Davies’ alter-ego Samuel Marchbanks, who once said:
Next week, I see, will be observed as National Cat Week. It is a good thing to do honour to this noble, dignified and beautiful animal, but I don’t imagine for a moment that the cats will cooperate. Cats don’t mind being worshipped, but they refuse to be organized. They have always insisted that their lives are their own, to be lived as they see fit, and their attitude toward everything which is symbolized by the American passion for “weeks” of one sort and another is contemptuous, contumacious, and insulting. Can anyone imagine cats walking in a parade? Does anyone seriously think that cats are interested in civic betterment? When have cats ever shown a united front on any subject whatever? The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar. In a continent which screams neurotically about co-operation and the Golden Rule, cats are disdainful of everything but their own immediate interests and they contrive to be so suave and delightful about it that they even received the apotheosis of a National Week. Smart work, cats!
Mine pukes in my shoes all the time.
Have a great Monday!

The Spew-Shoe.

I love cats.
But are they really worth it all?
Mine pukes in my shoes all the time.
It’s not funny. At any given time I will have about three or four pairs of shoes at the front door. Jack [my purebreed Ragdoll], he’s filled most of them at one time or the other with nice waaaaaaaaarm cat-vom! Sometimes in them, but always on them. His aim and consistency is what is most remarkable. Feline accuracy. He rarely misses.
Whatever it is that comes out of him looks like a wad of Kleenex soaked in oatmeal. These projectiles I don’t mind so much, they are easier to clean up. But it’s the other stuff, the half-digested soupy collage of watery spewage... well, I’ve thrown away many a shoe, let me tell you. I purposely only throw away the one shoe... leaving the other one there, so that he can hack into it all he wants.
But he’s not into this!
He wants a fresh pair.
Invariably, he blows chunks into the shoe next to the designated Spew-Shoe!
I just don’t get it. And what amazes me is the rationale that is obviously going into this.... from the cat’s perspective I mean. Here is an apartment with all kinds of square footage. Couches. Big bed with loads of under-bed vomit potential. Walk-in closet with an open doorway. Perfect puking conditions, pretty much wall-to-wall. Half the time, the guy who pays the rent isn’t even here. Jack is pretty much free to vomit anywhere he wants, and who’s the wiser? It’s Hairball Heaven!
He looks this scenario over. Walks over to my shoes and says to himself “The next time I feel the old pipes backing up again... oh yeah!... I am going to so totally throw up right into this thing here with the laces and the...” and I can already hear it. The convulsions. Jack’s in the zone. He’s gonna hurl. And it’s usually a morning thing. I’m brushing my teeth and I hear this apocalyptic gagging... so I run, Colgate froth flying. All I can see is the top of Jack’s head, because the rest of his face is rammed into my shoe. All I want to do is pretty much point him anywhere else, the poor guy. I twirl him around. Six demons are scraping his insides out with a muddy fencepost. He is levitating, I swear. And whatever the hell is actually happening to him, you would not be surprised to see his intestines come shooting out of his ears. With a horrendous shplorking sound and a final horrified shudder he is delivered of his burden. It’s out. The mess is out.
Oh dear God it’s out, and I caught him in time. This is ruining the parquet flooring here in this spot.
Both of us are exhausted.
Toothpaste ooze mingles with the exorcised carnage.
I pat him on the head. “Zhatzagudboy” I say with the toothbrush still lodged in my face, and Jack eeks out a plaintive meow. I’ll clean the mess in a minute.
I go back to the sink and as I am rinsing I hear a final sort of.... junior-shplork.... an after-shplork, or as the French would say.... l’apres-shplork.
I peer around the corner of the wall.
And Jack is looking up at me with those blue eyes of his and he is somehow saying with them [in the cutest way possible given the circumstances]... “Ummm, there was a little bit more left and so I thought maybe I’d just throw it up into this thing here with the laces and... is that OK, Dad?”
He’s doing everything but pointing with his paw!
Cat-vom slithers down the tongue of my good shoe. What’s a Dad to do?

The Scale of Doubt Quiz.

A dear friend of mine sent me a wonderful book called Doubt: A History. The sub-title is The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. The author is Jennifer Michael Hecht. Although I have only perused the peripheries of the thing, I have every intention of reading this book. I doubt that I shall be able to neglect it much longer!
Early on in the Introduction, there is such an interesting Quiz laid out that I thought I would reproduce it here for you to take yourself. The author offers it as a “taking of one’s own pulse” on a handful of questions related to doubt. These 13 questions can be answered Yes, No, or Not Sure.
Do it. Even before reading one word further, I encourage you to take a pen and paper and record your answers as you go through the Quiz. At the end there is an assessment done as to the results. It can be quite illuminating. I suggest that you write out the numbers 1 to 13 vertically, and then write your answer beside each number.

1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?
2. Do you believe that some thinking being consciously made the universe?
3. Is there an identifiable force coursing through the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?
4. Could prayer be in any way effective, that is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?
5. Do you believe this being or force can think or speak?
6. Do you believe this being has a memory or can make plans?
7. Does this force sometimes take a human form?
8. Do you believe that the thinking part or animating force of a human being continues to exist after the body has died?
9. Do you believe that any part of a human being survives death, elsewhere or here on earth?
10. Do you believe that feelings about things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?
11. Do you believe that love and inner feelings of morality suggest that there is a world beyond that of biology, social patterns, and accident – i.e., a realm of higher meaning?
12. Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?
13. If someone were to say, “The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme nor reason, and all life on earth is but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in a corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to be judged, noticed, or remembered,” would you say, “Now that’s going a bit far, that’s a bit wrongheaded?”

And so, I hope you have answered these questions for yourself, otherwise, reading on will be fairly useless to you. The author explains:
“If you answered No to all these questions, you’re a hard-core atheist and of a certain variety: a rational materialist. If you said No to the first seven, but then had a few Yes answers, you’re still an atheist, but you may have what I call a pious relationship to the universe. If your answers to the first seven questions contained at least two Not Sure answers, you’re an agnostic. If you answered Yes to some of the questions, you still might be an atheist or agnostic, though not of the materialist variety. If you answered Yes to nine or more, you are a believer. But more than providing titles for various states of mind, the questions above may serve to demonstrate common clusters of opinion."
- Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History. HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. –

I think that the last statement is important. The Quiz is not meant to label or definitively brand anyone. For one thing, there may be discrepancies in how the questions themselves are understood by various readers. However, generally speaking, it can serve to identify “common clusters of opinion.” Perhaps you would like to anonymously submit in the Comments section what you “are” according to Hecht’s criteria.
If you do, I will.
Although my thoughts on these issues have undergone change in the interim, I am a bit surprised to find that I still land up in the same category as I did when I first took the Quiz about a year ago. Wow! Is this how long I have had this book without reading the rest of it? I better get on it.

Splash du Jour: Friday

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
--C.S. Lewis –

Have a great Friday!

Plutonian Factoids.

I have been splashing about today in a very interesting book, Bill Bryson’s international bestseller, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson knows how to take non-fiction and turn it into something fun and hilarious. I split a gut reading his book about Australia, In A Sunburned Country. The guy is truly a nutbar.
In A Short History of Nearly Everything he is doing a similar thing with the world of science. He relates scientific facts about astronomy, biology, mathematics, and well... nearly everything, in a way that is sure to crack you up while at the same time you absorb the compendium of data.
He begins with a section on our solar system, and some of the stuff he was saying about Pluto (not the Disney character) was just so amazing that I wanted to bloggify it here.
So what follows is a direct quote, albeit truncated, from pages 22 to 24:

“It is certainly true that Pluto doesn’t act much like the other planets. Not only is it runty and obscure, but it is so variable in its motions that no one can tell you exactly where Pluto will be a century hence. Whereas the other planets orbit on more or less the same plane, Pluto’s orbital path is tipped (as it were) out of alignment at an angle of seventeen degrees, like the brim of a hat tilted rakishly on someone’s head. Its orbit is so irregular that for substantial periods on each of its lonely circles around the sun it is closer to us than Neptune is. For most of the 1980’s and 1990’s, Neptune was in fact the solar system’s most far-flung planet. Only on February 11, 1999, did Pluto return to the outside lane, there to remain for the next 228 years.
So if Pluto really is a planet, it is certainly an odd one. It is very tiny: just one quarter of 1 percent as massive as Earth. If you set it down on top of the United States, it would cover not quite half the lower forty-eight states. This alone makes it extremely anomalous; it means that our planetary system consists of four rocky inner planets, four gassy outer giants, and a tiny, solitary iceball.

Even at the speed of light, it would take seven hours to get to Pluto. [from Earth].

Such are the distances, in fact, that it isn’t even possible, in any practical terms, to draw the solar system to scale. Even if you added lots of fold-out pages to your textbooks or used a really long sheet of poster paper, you wouldn’t come close. On a diagram of the solar system drawn to scale, with Earth reduced to about the diameter of a pea, Jupiter would be over a thousand feet away and Pluto would be a mile and a half distant (and about the size of a bacterium, so you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway). On the same scale, Proxima Centauri, our nearest star, would be almost ten thousand miles away. Even if you shrank down everything so that Jupiter was as small as the period at the end of this sentence, and Pluto was no bigger than a molecule, Pluto would still be over thirty-five feet away.
So the solar system is really quite enormous. By the time we reach Pluto, we have come so far that the Sun – our dear, warm, skin-tanning, life-giving Sun – has shrunk to the size of a pinhead. It is little more than a bright star.”

Just fascinating stuff.
Outer space is so....... spacious!
Bryson goes on to quote the words of Carl Sagan,“If we were randomly inserted into the universe, the chances that you would be on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion.” Remember Sagan? He just loved those words ending in “illion.”

Splash du Jour: Thursday

"A gentleman is someone who never hurts another person's feelings unintentionally."
-- Oliver Hereford – Unintentionally. Very poignant little twist there.

Have a great Thursday!

Driven-ness.

Quite a while ago now, a friend gave me the book The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren, and it has been sitting in the back seat of my car ever since. I have not yet read even one chapter of it, and today I am sitting here drinking coffee and sort of asking myself “Why?”
Why have I not yet felt like reading this book, even though I have read tons of other books since this one was given to me as a gift?
There are probably only very few of you readers who have not at least heard of this book. The sub-title is “What On Earth Am I Here For?” Since its release in 2002 it has gone on to sell well over 20 million copies and is still going strong. [And everyone over at Zondervan Publishing said a hearty “Amen!”] It has the distinction of being (get this now) the #1 best-selling hardback non-fiction book of all time. In the history of.... books! I find that incredibly fascinating. It has been named one of the 100 Christian Books That Changed The 20th Century.
And I still haven’t read it?
Why?

This may sound lame, but I think that part of the reason is because of that word in the title: Driven.
I am not so sure that I want to be driven. Even if it’s Purpose-Driven. I can’t help but link the term driven-ness with the image of hard-working oxen or horses. Beasts that have had a yoke or burden placed upon them which they would rather not have to pull or carry, had they been given a choice in the matter. Someone could argue “Yes, but soon they come to accept it as their daily duty, their lot in life.” And I might reply, “How much the worse, to become so accustomed to being driven that you begin to imagine it as the desirable state of affairs.”
But this is semantics, really. The deeper reason I believe the book has remained in the back seat of my car is because I am afraid that to really apply its contents to my life would require a deep down “sold out” commitment and devotion to Christianity which I no longer seem to possess. I once did, I once knew this “sold-outness.” But I find that now, (the me of the year 2005) as I flip through the book at random, I am landing time and again at pages that do not resonate within me... do not make me say “Yes... tell me more!” In fact, very often, I downright disagree. A case in point... I have just randomly flipped (honestly now, I had not even pre-chosen this page, I just randomly flipped around and blammo, a perfect example emerged in three seconds)... on page 284, Warren says “One problem long-term Christians have is that they forget how hopeless it felt to be without Christ. We must remember that no matter how contented or successful people appear to be, without Christ they are hopelessly lost and headed for eternal separation from God.”
See, I disagree with both of those statements. Firstly, I have known, and continue to know, Christians who are actually quite dismal. Negative. Hard to even be around. “Hopefulness” is not something that they readily exude out of their very pores, as is being suggested here. In fact, one could ask “If being Christian is such a hope-inducing endeavor, why is it that the ‘long-term’ ones seem to forget it?” Granted, most Christians are great people... hopeful, full of joy, and all. The point is that there are also many people that would not know the first thing about what it means to be “in Christ” and they also are the most hopeful and lovely people you could ever meet! Warren is making it sound as though any one who is not a Christian is morose and semi-suicidal.
Secondly, the next statement he makes is much worse than the first. But it is typical of a very narrow-mindedness that pervades ALL religions (not just Christianity) the closer their adherants move toward a fundamentalist attitude!
Our Path is straight... and yours is all crooked.
I am not even going to talk about this. [For now].

But, moving on, I’ve read a bit about Rick Warren, and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. I have not the slightest desire to criticise him, in fact, I think that everything I have ever heard about him (except several aspects of his theology) is simply outstanding and admirable. Immediately upon graduating from seminary, Rick Warren was offered a pastorate in Texas at a church whose congregation numbered 5,000.
In his mind, this was too small for him... too restrictive, so he did not accept the position, but went to start his own work, from the ground up. And from very humble pre-cathedral-Robert Schuller-like beginnings, he started a sort of house-church (actually, a condo-church), and today, (long-story short) he is senior pastor of a congregation of over 20,000. They have 175 paid pastors on staff.
That is impressive. In fact, I find it utterly amazing... Isaiah-like... or Apostle-Paul-like. He is the Sam Walton or the Ray Croc (if you will) of church-building and church-planting.
[By the way... just an aside here, really digressing now, but even the phrase “Purpose-Driven” is copyrighted. It is a trademark. There is a little wee “R” in a circle beside the words wherever they appear in print when in context of anything Warren-ish. I find this a wee bit overcooked... a bit ridiculous... maybe even a bit, what is the word? Like Donald Trump copyrighting the phrase “You’re fired!” What is the word for that? It is the same with the Christian series of poorly-written apocolyptic novels by Lahaye and Jenkins... the Left Behind series. Same thing. The little “R”. And while we’re at it, Bruce Wilkinson’s smash Christian hit The Prayer of Jabez and all of its related Jabezian things... again, totally copyrighted. This means that if you get your Grandma a set of Prayer of Jabez potholders for Christmas, there will be that little “R” beside the phrase Prayer of Jabez. Something to me just seems out of whack with such vigorous, vehement, Lawyer-Driven commercialism in the Christian marketplace.]

But let’s return to that word “driven” now. There is no way that any of this happened (Saddleback Church) without an incredibly focused and DRIVEN (yes, Purpose-Driven) personality at the helm. A similar thing could be said of the plethora of Wal-Marts and MacDonalds that dot our landscape. These businesses exist because of driven personalities. I am typing on this laptop computer because of a driven personality who made it possible for me to do so.
But this “driven-ness” is not in me! I am just not that ambitious.
If I were the graduate in the story... I would have went to that church in Texas and felt really fulfilled about that. I would have relaxed on my Fridays or Mondays off, not dreamt about how I could plant ten more churches.
I don’t want to be driven. Even to greatness.

Having said all of this, I acknowledge that I may be completely out to lunch about this book.
About the purpose of this Purpose-book.
Perhaps it isn’t about striving..... about learning to welcome the fact that after you’ve plowed that field like an ox, you are to joyfully trot on to the next field and continue plowing!
Never good enough never good enough never good enough, never finished!
That is the attitude that I guess I want to avoid in ALL my reading of anything that has religious / spiritual content.

Please educate me on this book. I know you’ve read the thing.
Comment here and let me know your opinion as to whether I should dig the thing out of the back seat! Tell me what Purpose-Driven [little “R”] living has done for you.