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The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt
I had forgotten I had taken this picture of Señora in St. Charles a few years ago. Obviously it was Christmas time. We were with a group of folks in the historic downtown district of this city sitting on the Missouri River, visiting the various quaint shops that are nestled in among restaurants, bars and monuments and references to Lewis and Clark.
Ain’t she purrrr-ttteeee?
Y’all come back now… hear!
I was working online with one of my Spanish teachers, a Venezuelan woman who has fled her country with her husband to Buenos Aires. We were reviewing and discussing an article that listed various Christmas traditions from around the Hispanic world.
There is a tradition from the Catalonia region of Spain that we glossed over as neither of us really wanted to discuss it. The tradition struck both of us as a little gross. The traditional there is to place a defecating – pooping if you will – figurine discreetly?? in one corner of the Christmas Nativity scene that folks commonly put out this time of year. Typically, this figurine has always been of a peasant in the traditional dress of the region. And like most of these things it is supposed to bring good luck.
It has since morphed so frequently the figurines are of famous people from around the globe. This has grown into a big international souvenir business, with the majority of the online sales going to the United States.
Fast Forward
Talking about synchronicity… Looking at the news online this morning there was an article from The Guardian: Christmas caganer figurines of Catalonia Just a warning if your are sensitive to such things, there is a bit of a yuk factor associated with the pictures in the article, but on the whole it was an interesting read, at least for me as I had touched on the subject just a couple days before. It was also amusing to see which public figures they chose to depict.
If you are curious, look up the Spanish verb cagar (the noun caganer is derived from the verb) in an online translator. When I was young it was a word that was not used in polite company.
Oh we humans… I wonder how far we really are from the bonobos.
I am a big fan of myself and others using turn indicators, turn signals if you will. At the minimum it is just common courtesy. It is also, many times, a manner of safety. Using and acknowledging turn signals keeps traffic flowing in a safe and sane manner.
However, I am utterly convinced that this device, usually a lever that controls the signalling lights, is missing or broken in many vehicles. I even wonder sometimes if they are still installing them in new vehicles. Perhaps no one has bothered to educate the drivers of these vehicles on how they function. I remember the salesman taking 20 minutes to explain how the touch screen worked on the last new car we bought. For my money they could be throwing in the turn indicator functionality as a public service.
To give you an idea of how old I am, I actually Continue reading “My Turn Signal Conundrum “
I used to be a bit of a Bill Maher fan, but not so for the last several years. I now find him to be a self-righteous pendejo, and thus hard to watch. However, the video below was embedded in an article that appeared in the online version of the St. Louis Jewish Light: ‘Where do you think Israel is going?’ Bill Maher quips in viral eight-minute clip.
Maher makes a lot a sense to me in his segment. At some point you just have to move on. Of course, it took me a few years to stop lamenting about some of the fallout from my divorce, but you just do it. Sometimes you just need to let go.
Given that this is Bill Maher, the language is reasonably clean.
If you want a good quick review of the current history of Israel and The Occupied Territories, I discussed a recently published book by Daniel Skotach at this link: Can We Talk About Israel?
And is almost always the case, there are two sides to the story, if not more. I discussed a 2005 Arabic language movie about the recruitment of two young West Bankers to be suicide bombers here: Paradise Now | Revisited
While not Jewish myself, my wife is, so much of this strikes close to home. Especially so as our October trip to Israel – a lifetime dream of my spouse – was cancelled abruptly.
And so it goes in this absurdity we call life.
yeah I know you did not ask!
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
Next time you are troubled by one of your fellow travelers in this absurdity we call life, consider this: You share 99.9% (sources vary from 99.6 to 99.9%) of your DNA with every other Homo sapiens on this planet. What a big deal, positive and negative, we make of that 0.1%. That amount of difference is just a little more than a standard size shot glass in a 15.5 gallon keg of beer. It is one McDonald’s cheeseburger among a pile of 1000 similar sandwiches.
And just in case you are feeling smug… While we are not direct descendants of apes, chimpanzee, and bonobos, we do share a common ancestor with them. As such we share 98.8% of our DNA with them. That is a difference of 16 shot glasses in our keg of beer, or 12 cheeseburgers in your pile of 1000 such sandwiches.
So by and by when next you look deeply into my sorrowful, wistful simian eyes… remember that.
And so it goes.
Happy Hanukkah
YouTube uses an algorithm to feed the user videos that they might like. Of course the goal is to keep you on YouTube as long as possible to feed you the most advertisements possible. I started to call this algorithm, curation, but the definition of curated is: “carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented.“ While this may be what YouTube is doing on one level, it is more than a little nefarious on another.
As long time readers will know (ad nauseam) that I am studying Spanish. As part of this journey I subscribe to various YouTube channels for learning Spanish and others in Spanish for their entertainment value. So now the YouTube curation algorithm feeds me videos in English and Spanish.
A while back, for reasons unclear to me – perhaps it figured out that I am old and male, it fed me a video from an urologist. The video captured my attention as the presenter was a very attractive young female who turned out to be a M.D. in the field. Being a man of a certain age, urological topics have a bit of an interest for me. Then you add in the mujer linda, and I just had to click. Bad move on my part. Now YouTube is feeding me tons of videos dealing with urological topics. However, what really floored me was that it was also feeding me urological videos from urologists in Spanish speaking countries… in Spanish.
Everyone is concerned with Big Brother being the government, for my money, Big Brother is here and he is the personification of these huge technology companies coming after your wallet and your mind.
And yes I know it is possible to erase your YouTube history and start fresh. Or for that matter simply turn off their algorithm. But then how would I find videos of a pretty young urologist preaching to me about urological measures I should be following?
And so it goes in La Casa de Viejos.
Song just about says it all, no need for comments from yours truly.
I came across it in an article in the alternative newspaper, Riverfront Times: ‘How Does St. Louis Do It’ Is the Most Accurate STL Anthem Ever
yeah I know you did not ask!
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
I wish I could draw. If I could I would create a cartoon and label it: The Typical American.
It would feature a grossly obese person of whatever sex, one whose gender was indeterminante might even be more to the point. Our typical American would be sporting shorts, regardless of the season, that were much too big, a screen printed t-shirt pushing a political opinion, religion, vacation destination or sports team, the ubiquitous sneakers or flip-flops, and a baseball cap, more than likely worn backwards. They would be in a mega warehouse store, like Sam’s or Costco, pushing the oversized shopping cart mandatory at these venues. The cart would be filled to overflowing with soft drinks and junk food. And, of course, teetering on top of all, there would be a brobdingnagian bail containing a two year supply of toilet paper.
Yup, I was recently in one of these stores. Yup, guess what I saw.
I came across this cartoon this morning.
Which reminded me of a story I had read about Rabbi Hillel…
The Talmud is the second most important book of the Jewish faith. As described at the website Sefaria.org:
“The Talmud is the textual record of generations of rabbinic debate about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation, compiled between the 3rd and 8th centuries and structured as commentary on the Mishnah with stories interwoven. The Talmud exists in two versions: the more commonly studied Babylonian Talmud was compiled in present-day Iraq, while the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled in Israel.”
There is a story attributed to two second century rabbinic scholars of this book , Hillel and Shammai. As recounted at the website Forward:
“[They were]…contemporaries paired together by Jewish tradition as archetypical opposites: Hillel the tolerant and liberal ‘loose constructionist’ of the Law, Shammai the exacting and inflexible ‘strict constructionist.’
In one story about them, a gentile comes to both and asks, with the obvious intention of provoking them, to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one leg. Shammai is indeed provoked and gives the man an angry whack with a measuring rod. Hillel replies, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not unto another: This is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary — [and now] go study.’“
How hard can this be people? Apparently too damn hard.
To see the Golden Rule as expressed by many other religions follow this link: The Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions