My Native Tongue

Anyone who has ever traveled to a foreign country where theirs is not the prevalent language, has probably noticed that they can hear their mother tongue spoken even across a crowded and noisy room. My ears are keener still, for I can hear my native tongue spoken from 4 blocks away! My native tongue is Bullshit. When, in the same foreign country, a native of that land tries to converse with you in your own language, you appreciate the effort, regardless of how clumsy their attempt may be. After a while, however, even the most polite traveler, may note that prolonged exposure to the butchering of their mother tongue tends to grate on one's ear. In this, I am no different. While I appreciate those of you who try to speak proper Bullshit to me, after successive clumsy attempts, it does offend my ear. For this reason, I shall try to confine my musings to English, but, should I occasionally lapse into my Native Tongue, please, bear with me and do not feel obliged to join me on a similar linguistic tangent. If this note offends you, you should probably leave now, before my thoughts on Religion and Politics cause you serious distress.

Tears and Rage

When I was a child I was taught of America. It was a Fabled Land where the milk and honey of Freedom ran in the streets, conceived by an idealistic people who, having felt themselves oppressed for so long, rose up and threw out their oppressors. It was born of a miracle of courage and determination that led landed gentry and peasant farmers, merchants and tradesmen, Protestants and Catholics to see beyond their personal differences, band together, and rise up as one, declaring to the world, "We will bear the yoke of tyranny no more!" And I believed. From the spacious skies to the amber waves of grain, I believed. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel this land from sea to shining sea, and I believed. Then I saw poverty and hunger. I saw ignorance and bigotry. I saw hatred. I asked how these could exist in such a glorious and just land, and, much like the boy who could not see the Emperor's New Clothes, I was shushed. So I did as I was told, and I was quiet. I did as I has been taught, and I believed. I still do. The words that will follow in this place do not evince any change in that belief. Rather, it is as a result of that belief that I feel compelled to write them now. If you have known something precious when it was bright and new, and then you see it tarnished and worn, even cast down in the mud and trampled upon, do you not weep to see its abuse and do everything in your power to lift it up and repair it as best you can? If you know that abuse to be deliberate, do you not feel rage? I see this Fabled Land, once a shining beacon in the night to the oppressed throughout the world, now tarnished and soiled. Her noble flag, woven of hope in the face of despair, and defended with the blood of her Heroes, that blessed Star Spangled Banner, I see now tattered and worn. I weep to see these abuses, and I would repair them. I see the sacred parchments of "We the People" and the precious ideals they espouse cast down in the mud and wantonly trampled. I see the very precepts upon which this nation was founded twisted and betrayed for personal gain, and I rage! This does not mean that my belief has been lessened. My Faith in this nation and that for which it once stood is stronger than ever. It is those things for which it has been made to stand that give me pause. It is the flagrant usurpation of individual freedoms, once held so dear, that move me to tears. It is the brazen betrayal of the public trust for political and financial gain which leads me to rage! I am not moved to such strong emotions by any weakening of my belief, but rather by its strength. I still believe. But I also still see, and, unlike that child who questioned so long ago, I will no longer be shushed. The Emperor has NO new clothes! In fact, he's stealing yours! These are my tears. This is my rage. Where, in the name of all that is right, and just, and decent, are yours?

Friday, January 18, 2008

Eating the American Way


I was going to write last month about the true meaning of Samhain, better known to you as Halloween, but I thought the events in Jena, LA to be more pressing. Now I find myself sitting at a keyboard ON Samhain, which is actually pronounced “SAU – win” despite what Donald Pleasence may have told you, writing about one of the few holidays on the American calendar which is EXACTLY what it claims to be, a Thanksgiving.


It is a day when we celebrate the fact that after we gave them Chicken Pox, Syphilis, and bullet wounds, the native peoples of the early American northeast were kind enough to give us corn, squash, pumpkins and TURKEY! We introduced them to our drug, alcohol, and they gave us theirs, tobacco, some other herb whose name I oddly cannot remember, and TRYPTOPHAN! Ah, tryptophan, that glorious, post-gluttonous coma inducing solution that has glazed the front of more televisions than spit beer! Do you really believe an entire nation would be content to watch the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions EVERY SINGLE YEAR without being drugged to a point near STUPOR? I think not!


First, everyone knows the Dallas Cowboys are Minions of Darkness, and have been such ever since Roger Staubach had the temerity to beat the hell out of the Great and Holy Dolphins of Miami. Their fans are to be pitied, NOT embraced! Actual Texans are, of course, excused from this, as they know no better and are acting out of loyalty to their homeland, which I suppose is a good thing even if that homeland is Texas. We accept ethnic eccentricities from other nations with no problem, and since Texas actually was an independent nation for a short time, I believe we should extend Texans that same courtesy. The fact that the time involved was so short as to be best measured by stopwatch is irrelevant. This would also explain why they still consider cowboy hats fashion rather than part of a costume.


Second, the Detroit Lions? Really? Save for the single bright point of Barry Sanders in action, watching the Detroit Lions is almost as exciting as watching flies grow or grass breed. I may have gotten that last part backwards, but as a Miami Dolphins fan, I'm viewing ALL FOOTBALL this year as a dyslexic. That way my team is 7 and 0! YEA TEAM! The only exceptions to this, much as with the previous team, are people from Michigan. Let's face it, since the decline of Motown, and with the exception of a few fleeting moments of glory watching bar brawlers beat the hell out of each other with sticks on a frozen indoor pond in a quest for Mr. Stanley's cup, our friends from the hand-shaped land of frozen tundra have little to cheer these days. They MUST believe that the Lion will someday roar! Their only other option is to get excited about all the new, cutting-edge, energy efficient technology that Detroit is offering the American car buyer, and we all know that ain't happening.


So, football stigma aside, I anxiously await my annual Trypo-Blitz, the wondrous euphoria of a near catatonic state brought on by the consumption of MASSIVE amounts of one of nature's most stupid creatures, a bird so fat and stupid that it can't even fly. You would think that this would make me happy, that this would be enough for even such a jaded man as me. You would think that there would be joy in Mudville, but, alas, it is not so.


It is not so because my life is threatened by a dark presence, a prevailing black cloud of dire discontent. Yes, the same spectre of self-privation that has long haunted the rest of humanity has at now reached out its knobbly, gnarled fingers to choke the joy out of my Turkey Day. A DIET! ( Pardon my language! )


Yes the dreaded “D-word” has reared its ugly head in my world, but, “Which?” you say, “Atkins, South Beach?”


“Nay,” says I, “It is far worse than that! This insidious new concept is based on blood type!” That's right, BLOOD TYPE! According to what I am terming the “Diet Dracul,” every blood type has certain foods which it can more readily assimilate and others which must be avoided like the plague. I had hoped to be Type O, for this blood type is apparently that of the Carnisaur, and while I envisioned my arms growing short and my head growing large, I could eat ALL MEAT. Beef, bacon, baboon in bourbon butter, bring it on! But, alas, it was not so.


I 'm Type AB Negative, and this is not so good. Oh, I can still have turkey. Oddly EVERYONE can have turkey! I am NOT, however supposed to have potatoes. What? Turkey with no mashed? BLASPHEMY! I am also to avoid duck and chicken, so much for the “Turducken” which has been haunting my dreams of late. Meat stuffed in meat stuffed in meat, what hedonistic bliss!


The further bad news is that I'm also to avoid bacon, ham, pork, jalapeños, bell peppers ( red, yellow, and green ), and BLACK PEPPER, all of which are primary food groups in and of themselves in my current diet! On the bright side, however, I am allowed snails, feta cheese, lentils, cabbage and tofu. All of which make me what to HURL! TOFU, really? Just kill me now. Beyond those gems of dietary insight, I also learn that while I am allowed such essentials as garlic, olive oil, and jams and jellies from acceptable fruits ( DON'T ASK! ), I am to forswear such culinary must-haves as ketchup, butter, and ice cream! I am also to say, “Goodbye forever,” to filberts, corn muffins, and distilled spirits. Now I'm not really sure what filberts are, but I'm sure I would miss them. Corn muffins, on the other hand are old and dear friends. They are also for me an integral part of any Thanksgiving Feast, and to forbid them is nothing short of an overt act of TREASON, and an obvious indication of an insidious plot to rend the very fabric of the American soul! As for the distilled spirits... Are you INSANE! I live in COCOA BEACH!


Here at last, I must rebel. I must draw a line in the filberts with my albeit pudgy toe, and say, “Here, and no more!” Here I must stand, however ovoid, against the Demons of Dietary Duress and defy with my last tequila shot their diabolical designs. Here I must declare to the universe that I will not go gentle in to that thin night. Rather shall I gorge myself, like my father and my father's father before me on all the food I can possibly ingest ( Dripping with butter, black pepper and filberts! ) and then collapse into a traditional tryptophan haze to watch teams I abhor play a game that has lost most of its joy for me until next year, and when I come to I'll go down to the art show and have a Margarita, all because it's the right thing to do, because it's the Cocoa Beach thing to do, because it's the AMERICAN thing to do, and because diets on Thanksgiving are for COMMUNISTS!


So to you all, a happy and rotund Thanksgiving! If you never hear from me again, it's because Tom Ridge has come for me in the dark of night because I dared speak facetious ill of Texas and I've gone off to Guantanamo. Gee, I hope they have filberts!


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