Caveat

FIRST, read the very succinct article below....a few observations follow.

LIBERTY, Mo. - A man was lucky to be alive Monday morning after his truck took an unexpected detour and crashed into the side of a building.

He was loading his pickup at the Skyline Apartments when the truck slipped out of gear, jumped a curb and flipped backwards into an apartment building.

The man tried to stop the truck, but he ended up falling beneath it, police told KCTV5 News.

He broke his leg but was expected to be okay.

No one was inside the apartment that the truck damaged as the time of the crash.

One neighbor did hear the crash.

"I was sitting in my bedroom, and all of a sudden, I hear metal and glass crunching. I've been worried about something like this happening, so I kind of knew what it was," said Ryan Glunt. "I looked out my window, (and) saw the truck and the guy laying there. I came outside and told someone to call an ambulance."

1. Hammer and I used to live in this complex.

2. This is the second place, formerly rented by us, to be the location of a freakish set of circumstances (e.g. our former apartment while at WJC was destroyed by a tornado after we moved out)

3. Frau Vogler and Herr Vogler currently reside in the duplex vacated by us 6/06. I hope they've paid up their renter's insurance premiums.

4. My spouse and I have tremendous unrealized supernatural powers that are only hampered by our occupation or ownership.

5. We promise to utilize our powers for good, and not for evil. But don't piss us off.....we won't hesitate to do what we deem necessary.

My own blather notwithstanding!

Ok, I feel like I'm jumping off the high dive on this one....

I like to talk informally as much as anyone, but there are a few things that chatty banter will ruin every time. I mean it really screws up the flow and effect of some moments.

1. Sex. There, I said it. There's nothing wrong with sweet nothings whispered in your love's ear, but coitus isn't the time to talk about the changing foliage, changing your Primary Care Physician, or North Korea's attitude toward nuclear proliferation.

2. During a concert. I used to sing with a professional ensemble that was incredibly good. They were really only limited by the inability of the conductor to find new repertoire, beat a steady pattern , or interact with human beings. In spite of all his shortcomings, the choir was damn fine. However nearly every musical selection was prefaced with his innane ramblings between pieces. So my advice to conductors, keep the chatter to a minimum unless you're an educationally based ensemble. If it must be said it had better be damned witty or exceptionally pertinent to the moment.

I did sing for many years under the esteemed baton of an incredibly gifted conductor that could actually pull the podium talk off, but it was always in an educational venue. He could do it, but he was absolutely the exception, not the rule!

3. During a dignified liturgical service. Now this is the catalyst for this entire rant. I really enjoy singing with a choir at a local parish on Sunday night. The other musicians are very fine, and the conductor does a terrific job. However the clergy engages in persistent unnecessary chatter which interrupts the flow of the service much the way this blather mucks up items 1 and 2. In spite of the fact that this congregation is probably more educated than the average Episcopal congregation (very smart indeed!) and all capable of reading the detailed service leaflet, the ministers feel the need to let us know that "Our processional hymn, #454, can be found in the music section of the service leaflet on page 12".

Please realize that this is only a single excerpt from the weekly liturgy, and an abridged one at that. Only a few weeks ago we wasted 30 seconds in the service waiting for the minister to find his service leaflet to tell us that the offertory hymn was #345, and that we would be singing all the verses. I would have much prefered to have that half minute shaved off the end of the service.

There's certainly nothing wrong with a moment or two of reflection, or informality. But c'mon! If you're going to have this wildly detailed service leaflet then let it speak for itself or be done with the damn thing.

Ok....rant ended.....I feel better.

Measuring Penis Envy in Kilotons

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6040494.stm is an article exploring the debate over whether NK detonated a real nuclear weapon. Doesn't it seem like we're just bating them to detonate another one? Unzip your pants and let us see how big it is!

Seems pretty damn foolish to me, and seems to downplay a very serious situation....

BOOM!

So Kim-Jong Il has the bomb....so what now?

I hate to engage in a battle of "I told you so..." but here goes.

I've been reading former president Carter's text Our Endangered Values, and I've enjoyed it a lot. So Sunday morning in the tub I'm reading a chapter on how we (that is the Bush administration) has engaged in a series of political actions that have undone the good work done on behalf of peace on the Korean Penninsula. This culminated in 2000 with the announcement of a formal cessation of hostilities by both the North and South Koreans. In fact Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel prize in 2000 as a result of this. Talk about prophetic, and for me to read this only hours before Kim pushed the rosy red button.

As our part of the deal with North Korea, we pledged to provide aid as well as technology to build CIVILIAN nuclear plants in order to help provide power for the striken nation. However the Bush administration almost immediately began dismantling the agreement and alienating the already paranoid nation of North Korea.

In Carter's conclusion to this chapter he states that he expects for North Korea to continue pursuit of nuclear technology motivated by fear, paranoia, and a sense of threatened sovreignty from the USA. Carter's book was written and published 18 months ago, and has accurately predicted the assembly and testing of a nuke by the North.

Lot's of people bitch about what a lousy president Carter was. I think it's time that we exonerate that administration and recognize that Carter was fighting an no-win scenario, and actually did a damn fine job. Furthermore, I think that cousin Jimmy would make a fine addition to the '08 ticket. Hell, he's a better predictor than both the Horoscopes and Nostrodamus.

Anyhoo, I just felt compelled to say this outloud.

I hate the fact that Korea has a nuke, and I think that it's primarily our fault. If one looks at US involvement following any major conflict, it seems that we do OK for a while and then screw it up in the end. WWII wouldn't have happened had we (and Europe) felt the need to isolate Germany and rub their noses in the mess that they made. One could use the previous sentence as a rubric and insert the nations of Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq as well as a host of others and come out with a pretty accurate model.

So in closing,

1. Nukes suck.
2. Carter doesn't suck
3. The current US foreign policy sucks
4. North Korea sucks, but mainly because we suck (and have for the past 50 years!)
5. Scarlatti sucks (see posting from last week)
6. An axis is "...the center around which something rotates" All this talk of Axes of evil, and the only common center seems to be the US. That sucks.

There we go, I feel better now.

Worth getting out of bed for!

So it was a complete surprise to me when this evening's service began at ECY (episcopal church at yale) when our clergy processed and a distinguished looking gent in Anglican Dress processed with our clergy. I wondered who he could possibly be.

During the Gloria I thought, Holy Sh*t, that's Peter Gomes. I wonder if he's going to give the sermon.

Sure enough, Peter Gomes was indeed the speaker this evening. It wasn't planned but it worked out!

Just in case you need a refresher, Peter Gomes is the current chaplain at Harvard who wrote a text a few years back entitled "The Good Book". It was for me, a work that allowed me to renounce the bibliolatry of my upbringing and appreciate scripture for the first time.

So it's time to go to the bookstore and buy a copy if you've not already. As for me, I'm going to be rereading it this evening!

Jaques' theorem of pungescence

I'm taking a book from the Lady Shepherdess' book here by making up new words in the style of e.e. cummings. Following through with that spirit, I shall continue this posting without additional capitolization or punctuation

the theory states that given a particular bathroom fragrance (be it citrus/baby powder/spring freshness/crisp cotton or other flowery scent) said fragrance will by default become associated with the smell of faex (plural: faeces- english spelling) consequently said fragrance will cause the beholder to smell fex (plural: feces - north american spelling) even when shit (plural: shit - colloquial north american spelling) is not present in the atmosphere a further result is that anytime the beholder smells said fragrance though it be many weeks months years down the road the olfactory experience will be haunted by the smell of poo poo (plural: poo-poos New Haven toddler dialect spelling)

im currently exploring the options to obtain a government grant to allow me to further study this theory although the author believes that in time this will be proven as a law of nature rather than a speculative postulate rendering such research unnecessary.

Absinthe may cause short-term memory loss...

So I walk into the kitchen this evening and there's a bottle of Absinthe on the fridge.

Then I realize that I've forgotten why I'm in the kitchen.

That and the fact that I made two consecutive postings about it lead me to believe that I need to seek treatment for absinthism ( this is actually a real term....per Wikipedia)

Why does Scarlatti suck so bad?

Ok, to clarify, Alessandro Scarlatti.

1. He really liked opera. Not that opera is inherently evil, but it did eventually start to suck (thanks, in part, to Scarlatti and his innovations)

2. " His style was the culmination of the Baroque leading to the inevitable characteristics of Classicism"......to which I reply, so he's the sperm donor that allowed Haydn to come around. Blech! Couldn't we have stayed in the Baroque a little longer had it not been for Scarlatti?

3. He's not Purcell

4. He's not Handel

5. He's not Bach

6. He's not Monteverdi

Ok, I feel as thought I've been enough of an asshole today