Hat Tip to the Great Aesop or A Fable for Our Times

A Fable for Our Times

Bigotry (subheading racism) is like owning a big dog. Let us call the dog ICK.

I have no problem with ICK as long as you keep the dog at home or on a leash. It is your ICK. Play ball with it in your yard. Feed it pepperoni in the evening. Have a beer and give the mutt a pat. Enjoy. 

If you take ICK out in public, keep ICK on a leash. If ICK bites me or a child or shits on the sidewalk, you make your ICK my  problem. And our community's problem. Nobody likes problems. Nobody. ICK bites hurt.

I am a fan of Roland Martin and Crazy Ass White People. This is my idea of a feel good story. Jesus loves everybody. No exceptions. 

Old ladies can be rabble rousing white trash. I have been known to rouse a rabble from time to time. Tell me why you rouse a rabble and I will tell you who you are. Or Roland Martin will. You go, Roland.

Kudos to this Restaurant Manager. He is an educated man who speaks two languages. He protects his business from rabble rousing trash (ugh!) in a calm effective way. He protects the peace of his patrons. 

I Troll the Internet

I am retired. I have nothing and no one to do. Why do I troll? Because I can.

I hang out on the message boards. Lots of evangelical Christians comment there. They have great screen names like LordJesusYourGod and HeHasRisen752. Some of them are Fruit Loops. And then, there is Marilyn.

Marilyn's message is that oral and anal sex are The Original Sin of Adam. Marilyn quoted the Bible and used the word "fornicate" 6 times. I love the word fornicate. It is so euphonious. Say it loud. Say it proud.

So I fired back with A Little Ditty for Marilyn:

Fornicate! Fornicate!
Who gave us this sex so great?
It's God.
As I do the in and out,

I have oft been known to shout:
Oh God.

A couple of hours later, when they let Marilyn use the computer in the day room again, she left me another message with more Bible quotes and the word fornication in all CAPITALS and boldface. So I broke out in song again:

FORNICATION!
I am still under your spell.
And if I could speak,
What an erotic tale I could tell.
Of a screw that I have not forgotten,
Of a screw that keeps the silent magic in FORNICATION for me.

I went to get a cup of coffee, came back to the computer, and there was another message from Marilyn. More Bible quotes. And this time the word fornication was in all CAPITALS, bold, italic and bright red. So I wrote back:

It was fornication, I know.
That was what was making my HooHoo glow.
It was up and down.
It was front and back,
I felt my legs go slackety slack, Dear.

I thought it was just some mishap,
When his wife found her way to my shack.
Oops, a big fat gun!
Damn, I had to run!
I escaped out the backety back, Dear.

The wage of Trolling is guilt. Marilyn never wrote me again. I am so going to Hell.

Poor Man's Turkey - Repeated as Public Service

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” - Abraham Lincoln

This recipe comes from Karen Rock and Recipes of the Liberty Bell Chapter #266 - Vietnam Veterans of America. Seems apropos given the cuts in food assistance nationwide the Republicans are working on and the turkey shortage.

Yes, I am even political on Thanksgiving. Probably why I am single. I am not running a Chili Parlor. I am a political organization.

This might taste awfully good on those days when you are sick of leftover Turkey and you have some stuffing left. I never have any stuffing left. And I hate Turkey. Might have to improvise. Happy Thanksgiving.

Poor Man's Turkey

1 pound Ground Beef
1/2 cup Bread Crumbs
1 Egg
1 small Onion, chopped (optional)
2 tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 cup cooked Stuffing
1 slice raw Bacon (optional)

Combine first five ingredients and form into one loaf. Cut in half lengthwise and insert Stuffing into the middle of the loaf. Put back into shape and bake one hour at 375 degrees. Place strip of Bacon on top of meatloaf to keep it from drying out. Serves 4.

RESIST NONLINEAR WARFARE

I am becoming accustomed to being frightened. Maybe all of us are suffering in the midst of NONLINEAR WARFARE. How do you resist a war that nobody but Carl Bernstein says outloud we are fighting? 

"Oh Ma, I don't want to die. I don't think I can stand to smell the bodies fry." - Tina Toxic Queen of Trash

War. Is this not our condition? Nationally, we are now doing two mass shootings a week. Authorities in Texas responded to a bomb explosion at Random, a beer garden near Boerne Lake, KENS-TV reports. There were 2 pipe bombs at the Capitol. Gun deaths now exceed car deaths in 21 States. We have had 239 mass shootings in 2021 so far.

If it looks like a War, and it sounds like War...well you know.

"The Kremlin, according to Barack Obama, is stuck in the “old ways,” trapped in Cold War or even 19th century mindsets. But look closer at the Kremlin’s actions during the crisis in Ukraine and you begin to see a very 21st century mentality, manipulating transnational financial interconnections, spinning global media, and reconfiguring geo-political alliances. Could it be that the West is the one caught up in the “old ways,” while the Kremlin is the geopolitical avant-garde, informed by a dark, subversive reading of globalization?

The Kremlin’s approach might be called “non-linear war,” a term used in a short story written by one of Putin’s closest political advisors, Vladislav Surkov, which was published under his pseudonym, Nathan Dubovitsky, just a few days before the annexation of Crimea. Surkov is credited with inventing the system of “managed democracy” that has dominated Russia in the 21st century, and his new portfolio focuses on foreign policy. This time, he sets his new story in a dystopian future, after the “fifth world war.”

Surkov writes: “It was the first non-linear war. In the primitive wars of the 19th and 20th centuries it was common for just two sides to fight. Two countries, two blocks of allies. Now four coalitions collided. Not two against two, or three against one. All against all.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/05/how-putin-is-reinventing-warfare/

"What do I cling to that is useless to understanding our condition?" I ask myself. I have no real answer. Who can focus or think when under constant "shelling?" And gaslighting. Psychopaths can. Psychopaths like Trump and Putin. I am not enjoying government or World by psychopath. 

This is the focus that may work. If my personal integrity is no more, what do I have? Nothing. Some ideas that work for me:

“The wise warrior avoids the battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“All I have on earth is me, myself and my word and I don't break them for no one. So as long as I got those things, I'll be the bomb, you're just a false alarm.”

― Ifeoluwa Egbetade

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."- Malcom X.

#13

Favor and disgrace: same fear.

Honor and distress: same self.

What is meant by

"Favor and disgrace: same fear"?

Favor make the lowly

Fearful when they get it,

Fearful when they lose it.

That's why favor and disgrace are the same fear.

What is meant by

"Honor and distress: same self"?

The self registers our distress:

If we have no self,

We have no distress.

Therefore,

He who values all things as his self

Is fit to manage all things.

He who loves all things as his self

Is fit to be trusted with all things.

- Tao Te Ching translation by Herrymon Maurer