BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Pizza boxes were piled on the island in the kitchen. They were empty, and what little remnants of the various “flavors” of Italian-American dinner pie… Well… Lunch and Breakfast Pie for that matter… But, I slobber as I digress. Fitting I suppose, given the title. But back to the story at hand…

…what little remnants of the various “flavors” of Italian-American dinner pie that were left had been tossed into a Tupperware container and stuffed into the icebox for later. At the moment, there was still work to be done.

You see, before I started blogging to keep folks up to date on my whereabouts and nefarious deeds, I had an e-newsletter. While I don’t regularly send one out any longer, I do use the list for announcements and the like. And, prior to establishing the e-newsletter, I had a good old-fashioned paper newsletter. I even have an 11×17 paper folder in my basement. Anybody know someone interested in buying it?

There I go, digressing again…

Let’s continue… AND, before THAT, my newsletter was on 8.5 x 11 paper, and stuffed into envelopes. So, when you have 2000 plus newsletters to stuff into envelopes in order to send them out to fans and bookstores, and you barely have enough money to print the newsletter to begin with, what do you do? Well, you don’t hire a mailing service, that’s for sure. You hire your friends. You buy pizza and beer, invite them over, and make them fold for their supper…

Or, in my case, I join them in the folding while E K strolls back and forth, occasionally slapping us with her riding crop and screaming, “FASTER LACKEYS!” as she makes us ALL work for our supper – which, of course, is primarily the leftover pizza crust from her plate that she tosses to us as we grovel at her feet.

Think I’m kidding? Two words: Evil Redhead.

But anyway… There we were, “Mentos”, The Chunk Man, E K, me, and even the o-spring, sitting around the dining room table with plastic milk crates of newsletters and boxes of envelopes and rolls of stamps. We had ourselves a regular assembly line going.

The Chunkster and E K were on folding duty, because they are both insanely meticulous about such. Mentos and I were stuffing the pre-printed envelopes, and I was pulling double duty putting the stamps on them as well. I really didn’t have much choice. E K kept kicking me under the table.

Anywho, the o-spring was all of about 4 at the time, which meant she was all about helping. For some reason that changes when they hit the tween/teen years. However, that’s now and this was then… So, back then, she was all about helping, and what she really wanted to do was lick the envelopes and seal them.

Okay, all good. She’s pretty meticulous too, so once she was shown the process, there was no worry about her slobbering on them or anything.

We had been at the project for better than two hours, with only a short break for dinner. Everything was coming together, moving like a well-oiled machine. Then, it happened… The end of the line started slowing down. By that, I mean the o-spring was no longer sealing envelopes. In fact, she was sitting in her chair with a bizarre look on her face as she smacked her lips.

My first thought was that she had given herself a paper-cut. I’ve done the same on envelopes when not paying attention. But there was no apparent blood and she wasn’t crying. Just seemingly perplexed.

E K turned to her and said, “Why did you stop? What’s wrong?”

The o-spring smacked her lips a couple of more times, then said without missing a beat, “I’m all out of tongue water.”

Creative descriptions… I guess that’s what happens when one of your parents is a writer.

More to come…

Murv

Or, Koran Burning For Dummies…

Both work, but I have a fondness for the word idiot.

And, for the record, Koran should actually be Qur’an, however since we here in the United States are so fond of dictating how others should act, believe, and otherwise exist, it stands to reason we would want to dictate how people should spell – even if they created the word and not us. Well, aren’t we special…

Hence, I have used Koran in the title of this post in order to make it easier for the illiterate hate mongers to find via search engines, because they are certainly the folks who will be looking for instructions of the sort.

That said…

Every day, unless I’m on a manuscript deadline, I try to give myself a bit of a break from the “Lackey Do” list E K has for me – not to mention the “Also Gotta Do” list I have for myself. During said break, I eat my lunch. However, instead of consuming it over the sink, I park myself in my rocking chair and watch 15 minutes of The 700 Club / CBN News. Why? Because it amuses me.

Why, just the other day I heard Pat Robertson tell everyone that the Muslims have taken over France, and are coming for us next. Then, they ran a special report on the blight of “gay marriage” and “judicial power grabbing.” You see, it seems that the courts have no business being involved in the laws of the land. Apparently they are just there for traffic tickets and the like, because by doing something as heinous as declaring a clearly unconstitutional law unconstitutional, they have overstepped their authority. In fact, simply by declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional the courts have taken away one of your civil liberties. I’m not entirely sure which one that would be, unless it is now a civil liberty to deny someone else their civil liberties. Thinking about it sort of makes my head hurt, but then “God Logic” has always given me a headache. Doesn’t matter which God(dess) either. Not that I’m an atheist – but I’ve already stated my view on religion vs. spirituality, so I won’t go down that path.

Today, I tuned in Pat, ready for yet another laugh, and wasn’t disappointed. He and his Robertsonites prayed for folks and received divine messages from God – or possibly Jesus… I’m not really sure. You see, sometimes  he uses God/Jesus/Lord interchangeably, and other times he draws clear and distinct lines of delineation between them. Don’t ask me where the ghost comes in. I’m pretty sure he’s over in the corner playing craps with Satan or something. After all, you know they’ve got to talk sometime. But, back to the funny – Pat and his crew basically engaged in psychic divination, something they call the “work of the devil” if a Pagan does it – or anyone else for that matter.

So, see what I mean by amusing?

Anyway, a couple of hours later I jumped in my truck to run and pick up the o-spring from school.  NPR was doing a quick news blurb on a religious zealot. No, it wasn’t Pat Robertson, although, given the things that come out of that man’s mouth, it could just as easily be him. However, in this case it is some preacher out of Florida who has his congregation all fired up, and has announced that they are going to burn copies of the Qur’an (Quran, Koran) on September 11th.

Why?

Because the terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 were Muslim.

Once again, we have a big ol’ nasty case of “God Logic” going on here, and it’s sitting in a big steaming pile of “God Envy.” By that, I mean, we have ourselves a bunch of people screaming “My God is better than your God.” I saw a quote on Facebook the other day that defined “Holy War” as people arguing over whose imaginary friend is better. I think that pretty much sums it up.

But let’s think about this for a minute. Why stop with burning the Qur’an (Quran, Koran)? I mean, if it’s all about associating terrorists and muderers with religion, we should be able to have ourselves a regular old down home book burning…

Timothy McVeigh – Killed 168, injured 450. 19 of those killed were children – He started out Catholic and claimed to maintain “core beliefs” but then also professed that “Science” was his “religion.”

Okay, then let’s put all books dealing with science on the bonfire too.

John Wayne Gacy – 33 victims – He was a Roman Catholic.

Okay, let’s toss the Catholic Bible on the fire. Oh… While you are at it, take all of your NIV’s, KJV’s, ad nauseum and rip out the New Testament, because – and you might be unaware of this but – it belongs to the Catholics too.

Theodore “Ted” Bundy – Confessed to 30 murders, but it is believed that he was responsible for more than 100 – He was a Mormon.

Toss the Book of Mormon on there… Stoke that baby up!

Albert Fish – Killed and ate children. Possibly 100 or more – Christian. Some would even say fanatical Christian. (But, don’t let a little word like fanatical deter you. After all, someone being a fanatic doesn’t matter, does it? Just their religion.)

Good old Uncle Albert was devout in his beliefs that were driven by the Old Testament.

Hmmm… Looks like we need to round up the rest of the Holy Bibles and chuck them onto the bonfire too…

Adolf Hitler – Let’s just say it was in the high millions and leave it at that. I’m not here to argue the exact numbers. – Depending upon who you ask, Catholic, Christian, Occultist.

Okee-Dokee, we’ve already covered Catholics and Christians, but this bolsters that a bit, don’t you think? But, just to be on the safe side, let’s burn any books dealing with the occult too.

Joel Rifkin – Killed 17 women – Jewish (David Berkowitz too, although he converted to Christianity of all things, right before he started killing.) Doesn’t matter that they were adopted. We’re talking religion here, not lineage.

Well, hmmm… We’ve already tossed the Old Testament onto the flames for all of the dyed-in-the-wool Christians out there, even though it was actually written by Jewish folk (fancy that)… So, guess we need to toss the Talmud, Torah… well… how about the whole shooting match… just toss the Tanakh on there too.

Okay, we haven’t quite cleaned out the religion section of the library just yet, but we’ve made a big dent. Obviously we need to burn any books that have anything to do with any of the aforementioned religious texts. Plus, we’ve cleared out all of the science books.

I’m sure it wouldn’t take much for us to connect all of the other world religions, big and small, to something that is worthy of hatred. That goes for Atheism and Agnosticism too. So why keep screwing around? Just throw all of those onto the fire as well.

There! Are we feeling better now? Turns out nobody’s imaginary friend – or even imaginary void – is all that cool after all.

You know, just the other day when folks were in the thick of the argument over the Islamic Cultural Center plans, I posted a Facebook status update that read something like, “I think everyone needs to get in touch with their inner Atticus Finch…”

If you don’t know who that is, or what that means, pick up a book and read it. Specifically, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. If you don’t like reading, then go to the library or video store and check out the movie. It’s about as close to the book as a movie can get and still be only two hours long.

A dear friend and mentor told me that the statement would make a good blog topic. I agreed, but by the same token offered it to her because normally I do funny. And, while I find Pat Robertson and his band of purse snatchers amusing in a sad way, there’s nothing at all funny about hatred.

Okay, so now you really need to pay attention, because here are the promised instructions:

Muslims are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Catholics are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Christians are NOT terrorists/murderers…

*Jews are NOT terrorists/murderers…

Pagans are NOT terrorists/murderers…

It’s simple. Don’t burn their book unless you are willing to burn your own. We are individuals and we define ourselves. We don’t define others.

Unfortunately, the people who need to get my point, won’t. And the people who don’t need to get the point already know it without need of this illustration.

Next time I’ll try to find something funny to write about.

More to come…

Murv

* The original version of this blog stated “Jewish” are not terrorists, an intentional grammatical error in order to avoid offending folks who seem to find the word “Jew” to be offensive in and of itself. Since the error has been pointed out I have elected to change it, and we’ll hope that no offense is taken.