Not Tonight, Honey....I'm having convulsions.

The best excuse to leave a movie or not go at all:

Breaking Dawn Causes Seizures in Guys

****

The 2011 Award for Refusing to Face the Music goes to Michelle Bachmann:

What do you expect of a comedy show?

****

This Will Show We Aren't Stupidly Profiling Award goes to Alabama:

German Mercedes-Benz executive arrested under AL Immigration Law


And the best commentary on that story goes to:

alabama-cops-arrest-stupid-mercedes-benz-executive-it-was-his-own-stupid-mistake/

I just couldn't bear to change the tag on that link in any way.

*****

It is a true fact that most people become zombies after Thanksgiving Dinner. Are you prepared for a zombie attack? Take this quiz and find out:

Zombie Preparedness Quiz

A-Macing Grace--the Pepper Spray Addiction

Going to Walmart? Make sure you pack your pepper spray. After all, it is your Constitutional right to bear arms. That way if someone else gets that Xbox you've got your eye on, you can just whip out your handy-dandy canister and spray them down.

CBSnews Black Friday Shoppers Pepper Sprayed

Twenty people were injured but nobody died or had a serious allergic reaction. My first thought, based on my own experience of retail, was that this would be a perfect cover for a pair of shoplifters. One douses the crowd with pepper spray creating a massive distraction, while the other moves in on the merchandise. I don't buy that "competitive shopping" hogwash.

That story got the widest coverage and there was coverage of robberies, shootings and attempted hijackings of Christmas presents in other Walmarts across the country. Coverage of all these incidents was widely circulated in the foreign press. Belief in American Exceptionalism may be waning here at home, but foreigners still think we're pretty special.

Here's another good one you may have missed. Some folks, relatives of a player, traveled to a high school football game and tried to cheer the players up after they lost by performing the Haka, a traditional Maori dance that is now a male bonding football ritual the world over. You know the thing: chest-beating, stomping around, sticking out the tongue, making ugly faces?

Well, the police had never heard of such a thing, so he maced them: Washington Post:: Too Much Team Spirit

A clip of the pepper spraying of the Occupy UC Davis protesters went viral on Facebook on November 18th. It was chilling but only 37 seconds long. Here's another video of the same incident, shot from a different angle that shows more detail. In addition to the guy walking along the front of the line of students spraying them in the face, there was another cop behind them spraying the back of their necks and grabbing unresisting people to spray them at pointblank range. Also batons...

Occupy Protesters Pepper Sprayed at UCDavis 1:05minute

What's kind of scary is that after the UC Davis incident, a bunch of folks went over to Amazon and posted a bunch of satirical reviews on the pepper spray products. Since then the product has been flying off the shelves! Get yours before they are all gone:

Buy Pepper Spray on Amazon--but enjoy the reviews first.

Some of the reviews posted earlier even suggested the use of the product to clear out the lines at Walmart. Oh, bad karma on that one....

If they could figure out how to tax crazy, this nation would be on a sound financial footing again.

The DMV for Artistic/Poetic/Literary Licenses

Generally speaking, we creative types are not satisfied with the world as it is. Whether the venue is poetry or prose, paint, chalk, bronze or film, sometimes reality has to be tweaked to make the story or the image "better". Artistic license has been something the author/artist TAKES but the reader/viewer GRANTS.

Lately, I've gotten very tired of politicians/political spin doctors/advertising mavens appropriating such license. I'm announcing that I personally will be issuing artistic, poetic and literary licenses. No longer is this market unregulated. Here are examples of licenses I will and will not grant.

First: POETIC LICENSE


Poetic license is is where the poet alters the usual grammatical order of words, or the pronunciation of a word to fit a meter:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.  (lines 1-5)

  

or 

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!  (lines 29-30)

 

Poets are still free to do this at their pleasure at no charge. There's no money in poetry. Likewise, song writers....you folks go on doing what you got to do to make the words fit the music. People like George W. Bush or the writers of the panels on Farmville...apply now and I won't levy a fine for past transgressions. But you will be required to take a course in grammar from a certified teacher of English before I will issue you your license.

Secondly: ARTISTIC LICENSE

Examples of artistic license can be found all over, not just in the realms of fiction. Events in history are often depicted according to the way the "truth" ought to have been. For example, when Lincoln died, newspapers and engravers rushed to bring images of the stricken President and the important visitors to the small room in a lodging house across the street from Ford's Theater.These images vary widely and don't necessarily depict the people in the room when Lincoln died. Often they show who should have been there or people who visited the death chamber at some point or even Cabinet Members who wanted to be there. Some depict Lincoln's children who weren't there. A couple show Mrs. Lincoln even though she broke down completely and had to be taken to another room in the house.

Prints as Historical Evidence-Lincoln's deathbed by Chris Lane

I will temporarily grant artistic license to folks creating actual art including pictures, films, video clips, posters, cartoons and other areas of the visual arts. If you PhotoShop a recent picture of me to make me look young and skinny, I'll allow that. If you are the bonehead making Vladamir Putin look ripped, however, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Manipulating historical images has never been so easy or so wrong. Intelligent people can make allowances for oil paintings but photos fool the brain into thinking it must be real. Since one picture is worth a thousand words the fine for messing with a photo of historical importance needs to be a thousand times as much.

Thirdly: LITERARY LICENSE

This is like artistic license for writers. Some permissions are granted by the genre; for example, science fiction writers can have FASTER THAN LIGHT speed on their space ships. Some stories could not take place without this or other assumptions of technological breakthrough.

If you are writing an historical novel and are altering points of historical fact, this needs to be noted in an afterword in your book. Writers of history and historical novels have a similar responsibility not to knowingly misrepresent the past to the present. Both sometimes speculate from the known facts. I get really, really annoyed by people who think their story is so great they can tailor history to suit.

In particular, folks who take historical figures and make them fictional characters in novels have a steep road. To cast Jane Austen as a detective makes me more than a little queasy. I did grant the author of this series some license for the space of a couple of books but than began to feel that Jane's time was being wasted in detection. Stephanie Barron was writing too many books and Jane Austen only got to write six...not fair.

Biographical novels are a different story. A novelist's imagination can sometimes see under the skin of a famous person to make them live again for the reader. As long as the novelist is using what facts can be known and making a good faith effort to speculate to the facts, this kind of work can be very valuable. Robert Graves wrote some exceptional novels, including I, CLAUDIUS. In some ways, the modern reader can approach more easily famous figures from classical or medieval times via a good historical novel than from strict history.

So once again rushing in to fill a great cultural void, apply here for artistic/poetic or literary licenses. Lawyers and politicians must submit a filing fee of $100 and submit a through proposal. The actual cost of the license will be determined on a case by case basis. Some may wish to complain about this. I can't help it. Please note that I do not issue Dramatic Licenses. That's another department. Go down the hall, third door and throw a hissy fit. Judges will award points for style and volume and grant licenses based on how convincing your performance is.

High Wires and Low Rollers - Your Questions Once Again Answered

A correspondent, disputing the earlier ruling on which way the toilet paper should hang submits the following cartoon in evidence:

To visit shoeboxblog.com and see this and other funny stuff:

The correspondent in question is co-owned by a number of cats and gives this as an excuse for putting the toilet paper facing the wall, as if it is a misbehaving child forced to sit in the corner. Tsk, Tsk, and Tsk again.

A simple adjustment can be made to the toilet paper roll which allows the paper to be freely dispensed for human beings but not for life forms without hands (however superior they may be in intelligence to the average Congressperson).


Observe the ordinary roll of toilet paper:

Should your house be inhabited by small animals who enjoy using this object as a toy, here is how you can adjust the roll:

Step One: With Roll Lying on Side, Squish.

There is no Step Two:













One now can mount the roll on the roller, with the free sheet facing toward the room. If no sheets are left to dangle, there will be a tendency for the torn sheet to be at the top of the roll. The human can then grasp the sheet, lift and tear off the desired quantity. Because the roll does not spin quite so easily, it loses its attraction to the felines in the vicinity...unless your cat is a shredder in which case you should hire it out to those candidates and corporations with the most to hide. The next image may be too graphic for some viewers:

Ahem. Well...

---------%-------%---------%-%---Birds on Power Lines--------%-----%--%--------%----------------

Another correspondent asks about birds on power lines...don't their feet tingle and why don't they get electrocuted.


Actually, power lines are a hazard to birds. If you touch a power line and then touch something else, it does not matter whether you are feathered or not, you will be zapped. Little birds are small enough to sit on the wire and touch nothing else; since they don't complete a circuit they are safe. The larger the bird, the greater the chance of its being electrocuted. For more details, go to this excellent government website (unless you are a Republican who wants to shrink government, in which case you can remain uninformed and may experiment by touching all the power lines you like...see how that works for you.)  www.fws.gov/birds/documents/powerlines

The same correspondent asks why psychics don't win the lottery.  First of all, the odds of winning the lottery are about 1 in 16 million. Even if you know via your psychic powers 2 of the 6 numbers that are going to be drawn, you only drop the odds to something like 1 in 39,000. Secondly, psychic powers are only granted to enable the psychic to help other people; God or a falling power line would strike them dead if they tried to profit in this way. Thirdly, there are no such thing as psychics.

Pilgrimage - Part III - Return to The World

No pilgrimage is complete without a return. Unless the pilgrim is immediately translated into the space of Bliss, he or she must go back to ordinary life.

What use is grand revelation if we can't take it home with us and let it make us a better person? Thinking about all the things I had seen, I reclaimed my dog, climbed back into my pickup truck and got back on the interstate. My hometown of Lexington and my hometown friends waited for me with tickets to the National Horse Show at the Kentucky Horse Park. I could not be so close and not go home...

I used to live only twenty minutes from the KY Horse Park, which is the horse person's version of Mecca and the Promised Land. I used to spend most of my weekends from April to October at the park, sometimes as a spectator, sometimes as a volunteer and sometimes as a competitor. The park has only gotten larger and the facilities more impressive since the 2010 World Equestrian Games were held there. Where it was once the finest facility for horse sports in the nation, it is now an international venue capable of staging 7 or 8 international events at once.

Here's a brief clip of the Grand Prix showing a horse completing a clear round over a demanding course. This was only the second clear round of the evening and one of only five to reach the jump off:

The video also shows the large indoor arena. The crowd seems rather sparse, but the Breeder's Cup races including the Classic were happening in Louisville that same evening.

That night I slept well but I dreamed about the Buddha Relic display. My dreams lingered over the bead-like objects identified as the historical Buddha's as if to say "Look again." I believe these sights were so unusual that my dreams were taking great care to fix this episode in my memory.

I would love to undertake a longer pilgrimage: to go to India and Nepal and see the places were the Buddha was born, achieved Enlightenment and died. I feel a kinship with all pilgrims, no matter their religion. I send good wishes to those devout Muslims who began the traditional journey to Mecca at about the same time I was setting out for Louisville.

A pilgrimage takes us outside of our comfort zone (in my case, driving at night). We will meet new people. They may impress upon us the sad state of the world like the people living in the cheap motel or they may expand our horizons like the volunteers at Unity. Unity of Louisville is a remarkable church; only in America could a synagogue modeled on a mosque be a Christian church hosting a display of Buddhist artifacts. Despite my skepticism, I was moved to spiritual insight. My own practice of meditation has gained a new dimension. I am still processing what I have seen and learned. My own inclination is to be a rational Buddhist...however I have been working on a series of novels about a heroine who can't help but be a mystic. Certainly this is something she would have gone to see and in some dimension the two of us are arguing over exactly what we have seen.



A pilgrimage is distinguished from an ordinary journey by the reverent mindset of the traveler. I'm going to try to keep that mindset wrapped around me as I journey through life.I think by doing so it is possible to travel an infinite distance without moving.

Pilgrimage - Part II - Into the Light

ENLIGHTENMENT is the goal of the spiritual seeker: to emerge from the primal night of our animal nature into the sunlight of the presence of God. So it was with me, driving through the darkness of Friday night and the mists of early Saturday: when the sun came, I found myself in Western Kentucky surrounded by trees that staggered skyward like narrow steeples. The leaves looked hammered from precious metals: bronze and gold, rust and copper. When the wind moved amid the birch and sycamore, the undersides of the leaves showed silver.

Following directions, I took the St. Catherine exit into downtown Louisville and found Unity of Louisville about three blocks down Brook St. The description of a brick building with a dome did not prepare me for the reality. I regretted not bringing my camera, but that was one of the decisions I had made: to travel light, to leave the electronics at home (except for the cell phone, necessary for communication and for safety). The building that houses Unity began life as a Jewish synagogue built on Islamic principles after a Byzantine model; Unity is a non-denominational Christian church seeking to respect all religions.

Handwritten yellow signs advertised the Buddha Relic Tour and also directed pet owners to the grassy space beneath the tree on the left side of the staircase where pets were being blessed. A kind volunteer at the booth offered to walk my dog around while I went inside to view the relics. The tour began with a video in the lovely sanctuary under the dome and then descended into a labyrinth that wound through the old building to the shrine area set up in the fellowship hall. At each step of the way, eager volunteers explained what was being shown, the proper actions of the ritual and the spiritual purpose behind each action.

I found it unexpectedly moving. The incense and the chanting evoked the fellowship of the ashram in Lexington where I took my first courses in meditation and Buddhist philosophy. The kindness of the volunteers, who were sharing their time and their unexpected place of worship with me affirmed the principle that Buddha and Christ may have departed the material earth but they are still to be encountered in human hearts.

The relics themselves? I don't think The Buddha himself would blame me for the feelings of skepticism I felt as I looked upon these objects in their beautiful little stupas of gold and glass. He taught that all earthly things are impermanent and ultimately unreal; that seekers of Enlightenment should not blindly accept what they were told but should think and reason and compare it to what he taught.

Reason tells me that the Buddha died approximately 2400 years ago. No clear line of provenance comes with any of these objects. The legend states that bead and crystal-like stones were found in the iron coffin that encased the Buddha's body after it was cremated. Eight kings contended for the relics; a great war was averted when a leading disciple of the Buddha divided the relics into shares. Each contender erected a memorial stupa to house the remains and honor the Buddha and incidentally profit from the pilgrims who came to visit. King Ashoka who came to rule a Buddhist empire is said to have found and opened the original memorials and to have redistributed the relics in 84,000 stupas throughout his realm.

Traditional Account of the Division of Buddha's Relics

That seems to require a heck of a lot of relics.* Reasonable reflection tells me this is no problem.  Give me a handful of gravel and a rock polisher and I could create a reasonable facsimile of the supposedly miraculous objects in front of me. Faced with a need for relics to unite his empire, what would King Ashoka do?


But here's the rub of all religion. If your practice of your religion hinges upon some material object or some specific holy verse or any ONE THING, than that one thing is actually your crutch and you don't have a religion. If you need a piece of the True Cross to feel closeness to Christ, then you haven't absorbed the meaning of Christ. But human imagination is powerful. Just as a sliver of wood might provoke a Christian into contemplating the meaning of Christ's death, so these shiny irregular beads, housed in gold and velvet, surrounded by incense and chanting and hungry belief, spoke to me of a man who had left a palace to walk the world dependent on the kindness of strangers. His words and his philosophy still serve as a lamp in dark places.

And amid all these reverent stones, isn't it possible that one really is a survivor of the historical Buddha's funeral pyre? I walk softly.

The first stop in the ritual is a basin of water in which a charming statue of the Buddha as a child stands. One selects a wooden dipper and slowly and reverently pours out water. I poured the water to wash out doubt with the first dipper, the second to wash away stress and the third to open mind and heart.

The second action is the striking of a Tibetan bowl bell. The sweet tone pierces one's flesh, delighting the heart and shimmering in the mind long after the metal has ceased to vibrate.

One then views relics of other notable Buddhist masters. Ananda, the Buddha's loyal companion and servant, was there. He's a favorite of mine, always getting into trouble, wanting to look at women, an ordinary man stumbling after a spiritual genius. He's not highly regarded amid the intellectual monks around the Buddha. The guys who immediately grasp what the Buddha is teaching are sent out to become missionaries; poor unEnlightened Ananda stays by the Buddha's side. After the Buddha is dead, his followers are dismayed. Who can remember the Master's teachings? Humble Ananda stands up and begins to speak, word for word, all the Buddha's sermons. The fellowship gasps; it sounds as if the Buddha is still there, speaking to them from beyond the grave. Ananda gives us all hope; if he can become Enlightened, than all of us can, with due diligence.

One then reads a sacred text and kneels on a cushion while a container of relics is placed on ones head. This is the heart of the ceremony. With my bad knees and physical issues, I could not kneel and expect to get up again. The very short lady doing the ritual held the relics as I bowed and recited the chant. Skeptic or not, I felt an energy radiating through me; I felt it coming from the other people in the room.

After the blessing, one can sit and contemplate or use a gold pen to trace a prayer in a special book. I have always loved to write so I traced the Buddha's name in an empty line that someone else had skipped. By staying at the cheap hotel described in Part I, I could make donation. I put money in the prayer box upstairs to thank Unity for hosting the relics; donated again in the basement to aid the charities supported by the tour and purchased a medallion with the image of Green Tara from the gift shop. All the objects there are made by the Tibetan refugee community in India.

I could not linger. I needed to reclaim my little dog and return to the world. No pilgrimage is complete without this part. To be continued....

For more information on the Buddha Relics Tour, visit this link: Maitreya Project. - Buddha Relic Tour

*For a rather gross and scientific discussion concerning the creation of Buddhist relics from more modern Buddhist masters and a comparison of the crystal like beads with other bodily objects go to:

Mummified Masters and Sarira-like objects from other bodies

Pilgrimage - Part I - In Darkness

Traveling from one place to another is only a journey. In a pilgrimage, motion in the outer world has the goal of promoting spiritual progress. Inconveniences, delays, even hardships can attend an ordinary journey. A good pilgrim should view these sufferings as an opportunity to grow in spirit.

On the weekend of Nov. 5-6, 2011 I made my own small pilgrimage to Louisville Kentucky to view the Buddha relics tour which was stopping that weekend at Unity of Louisville. Unity lies near the heart of downtown Louisville on the corner of Brook and College streets, an usual building that echoes in modest brick the famed Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

The route seemed simple: five to six hours traveling east on I-64 to Louisville with reasonable pit stops and walking breaks. But construction and repair have closed not only the I-64 bridge from Indiana to Kentucky but the I-65 crossing as well. The only bridge open is on the bypass far north of downtown. A local friend had advised me that it was a huge mess with up to three hour waits to cross the bridge. My plan for driving in on Saturday hinged on easy access off the interstate and wouldn’t work. In addition, I learned that the Breeder’s Cup Races were being held at Churchill Downs that weekend. I wouldn’t be able to stay downtown and traffic would be heavier than normal with all the world in from out of town.

So I left after work on Friday, driving through purpling dusk to meet the darkness head-on. I used to be fearless about night driving but age, caution and awareness of my body’s fading capacity make me reluctant to undertake a long drive after a long day at work. As night closed in around my pickup truck, the outer darkness reflected my condition as an ordinary human being trying to make sense of life and death.

The road outruns the reach of our headlights. We can see so far but what is really ahead of us is a mystery. Sometimes others pass us and we can see the gleam of their lights for some distance, taking that as assurance that there is something out there and that the road continues. As long as the road is familiar, we feel a degree of comfort but night hides all landmarks and changes everything. Familiar signposts bob up without context in a formless, alien landscape. 

If we travel long enough, inevitably we will be forced to take detours and unknown roads and will suffer anxiety.

My goal for Friday night was Evansville, Indiana. I’d often stopped there for gas on my trips to and from Kentucky as it lies about halfway between my current home and my old hometown. This time I would turn south, searching for the cheap hotel I’d booked, to snatch a few hours of rest. The main attractions of the hotel were that it accepted pets and was within my means.

The motel had always been cheap, but now it was battered by time and the rough economy. In some freak counterpoint to the rundown building and people, the place offered free copies of The Wall Street Journal. The desk clerk was gruff but took pains to describe where the ice machine was. The room had the stagnant smell of a room that never got aired. For a “nonsmoking” room there seemed to be too many cigarette burn marks around the sink. However, the sheets on the king bed were clean, the blanket warm, the mattress firm and running the fan freshened the air.

I read the Wall Street Journal, including the article about what kinds of art to acquire as an investment; the cheapest piece mentioned was $25,000. The Wall Street Journal has changed since I used to read it in graduate school. Less information, less overseas and business analysis and more feature pieces designed to make the well-heeled reader think that all would be well despite the protesters camping in city parks across the nation. In 1979, my business administration professor had praised the Wall Street Journal as a national chronicle of the American Dream. Now, under the aegis of Rupert Murdoch, the Journal is an advocate for riches without responsibility.

I had pushed myself out of my usual routine in search of spiritual insight. But the contrast between the sad motel and the smug Journal roused up the political beast and thinker within me. Feeling despair from the material world, I folded away the newspaper and took solace from my woolly little dog. We were tired—my dog settled down on the bedspread, I settled down under the blanket and both of us enjoyed a nice curl up and snooze.

I awoke at 5AM with the sensation that the sour air was corroding my lungs and the stale odor was sticking to my skin. The free breakfast, available at 7AM, was no inducement to stay. The dog and I decamped. Only the dog got breakfast.

I drove south, still in darkness with the additional complication of mist that grew thicker and thicker as I followed Route 41 south through town. Most people in that part of the world still slept. The houses were dark; none of the restaurants I passed were open. The tourist maps that I had were not clear exactly how the river crossing here was accomplished. Evansville maps showed only that town and a slice of Indiana; Henderson maps showed that community and a swathe of Kentucky. The depicted curves of the river were artistic and did not match. By crossing here I would avoid the construction zone in Louisville but I worried about finding the junction to the Pennyrile Parkway.

The dark, the patches of fog, sometimes so thick that where lights tried to illuminate the exits the world turned to impenetrable haze…this material reality reminded me of the difficulties the spirit faces as it struggles toward the light. But by following the road, I discovered that the way had been made easy for me. I came to an unheralded bridge and suddenly I was in Kentucky. Where the fog thinned, clumps of skinny tree trunks stood like streaks of ink laid down by a master calligrapher. The road was the same, but it turned out to be the road I needed. I was already on the Pennyrile, heading in the right direction. 

Premonitions of dawn gave me hope, but darkness and fog and hunger eventually drove me off the road for breakfast at a fast food joint. When I got back on the road, I suffered another check. The SERVICE ENGINE SOON light came on. I pulled off at a truck stop where there was a service depot for big rigs. One of the mechanics looked it over. He asked questions but my answers caused him to shrug.

"Did you buy gas?" He asked.

"Yes," I said.

 "Sometimes the light just goes on, just for that. You may have a bit of carbon on the sensor," he said.

With that slender assurance, I got back on the road. Perhaps he just wanted me out of his parking lot, but perhaps he was right. The truck ran fine throughout the trip.

Dawn came while I was eating. With the sun, the fog began to thin. Like a metaphor that Enlightenment can happen suddenly, the veil lifted and the trees, rust and red and bright, bright yellow, burst out of the gray netherworld into glorious light. The rest of the drive to Louisville was an excursion into lyric poetry. Western Kentucky boasts a landscape more beautiful than any description of Heaven. Under an autumn sun, with the varied trees cloaked in dying glory it is a feast for the eyes.

(to be continued)