Lost

OK, I broke down and watched Lost on ABC. It really wasn't a bad show, although I'm not bonding with any of the characters yet. Some of it is a little too predictable. The oriental guy catching sea food and making sushi? Come on. And the pregnant woman suddenly feeling her baby kick for the first time? In the midst of tragedy, Life Goes On....

The young boy, who lost his dog in the plane crash, confesses that his mother died 2 weeks ago, and another character says "You're having a bad month". That was pretty tasteless.

Then the spoiled little rich girl turns out to speak French, and that's suddenly important. Something tells me they are each going to have some survival skill that everyone else needs.

And, of course, there are the numerous flashbacks to the plane crash. Every time we learn a little more about a character we have to relive the plane scenario.

But - I watched it through to the end, so it must have something going for it. I just hope it's not going to be Survivor with people getting eaten, instead of voted off the island.

Then there are all the commercials for coming attractions, like Trading Wives (reality show) and Housewives Out of Control (I think it's fiction). I don't think those are the real names, but you know which shows I mean. It's bad when you can't tell the reality shows from the fiction. Maybe those commercials are just there to make the show you're watching look good.

I wonder what kind of survival skill I would bring to an island? I wouldn't be hiking up the mountainside, that's for sure. But I would have my nail clippers and tweezers with me. (Oh wait, maybe not, they were probably confiscated at the metal detector.)

More Food For Thought

After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries
a New Recipe for Hamburger Hot Dish

“How did you like it?” she asked.

“It’s all right,” he said.

“This is the third time I cooked
it this way. Why can’t you
ever say if you like something?”

“Well if I didn’t like it. I
wouldn’t eat it,” he said.

“You never can say anything
I cook tastes good.”

“I don’t know why all the time
you think I have to say it’s good.
I eat it, don’t I?”

“I don’t think you have to say
all the time it’s good, but once
in a while you could say
you like it.”

“It’s all right,” he said.

Leo Dangel

Never Knew Barbie Had Problems

Barbie Joins a Twelve Step Program

Barbie is bottoming out,
she’s sitting on the pity pot. She hasn’t the now-how to express any
of her emotions. Before she even gets
to her first meeting, she takes the first step and admits
her life has become unmanageable.
She’s been kidnapped by boys
and tortured with pins. She’s been left
for months at a time between scratchy couch cushions
with cracker crumbs, pens and loose change.
She can’t help herself from being a fashion doll.
She is the ultimate victim.

She humbly sits on a folding chair
in a damp church basement. The cigarette smoke
clouds the faces around her, the smell of bad coffee
permeates the air. The group booms the serenity prayer:
God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom
to know the difference. Poor Barbie is lost
in a philosophical quandary. Her God must be Mattel.
How can she turn her life and will over to a toy company?
Must she accept her primary form of locomotion
being the fists of your careless humans?

And what can she change? The only reason Barbie
is at the meeting at all is because she wound up in the tote bag
of a busy mother. She toppled out when the woman,
putting on lipstick at the bathroom mirror, spilled the contents
of her bag onto the floor. The mother didn’t see Barbie skid under a stall door
where a confused drunk, at the meeting for warmth,
was peeing. Never thought Barbie had problems,
she said, picking up the doll. She thought it would be funny
to prop Barbie in the last row. No one else noticed the doll
as she fidgeted in her seat. The hungry drunk
went on to spoon a cupful of sugar into her coffee.

Barbie sat through the meeting, wondering:
What is wisdom? What is letting go?
She wished she could clap like the others
when there was a good story about recovery. She accepted
she couldn’t, hoping that if she stopped struggling,
her higher power, Mattel, would finally let her move.
Miracles don’t happen overnight, said a speaker.
Take the action and leave the rest to God, said another.
Barbie’s prayer that she would be at the next meeting was answered.
A member of the clean-up committee squished her between the seat
and back of the folding chair and stacked her, with the others, against the wall.

Denise Duhamel

I Went to a Janis Joplin Concert Once

Hippie Barbie

Barbie couldn't grasp the concept
of free love. After all, she was born
into the world of capitalism
where nothing is free. And all she had
to choose from was a blond or dark-haired Ken
who looked exactly like Midge's boyfriend Alan.
Ken wouldn't even get bell-bottoms
or his first psychedelic pantsuit
until it was way too late, sometime in the mid-seventies.
And then, whenever Barbie tried to kiss him
his peel-off lamb-chop sideburns loosened
and stuck to her cheeks. There were no black male dolls yet
so she guessed a mixed-race love-child
was out of the question. Barbie walked her poodle
past the groovy chicks who showed their bellybuttons
and demonstrated against the war. She couldn't
make a peace sign with her stuck-together fingers.
She felt a little like Sandra Dee at a Janis Joplin concert.

Denise Duhamel

This poem is absolutely unrelated to any past topic, but I loved it, so I am sharing.

Lost

"Lost" premieres on ABC tonight at 8:00. (That's channel 7, Mom.) This year, I am completely underwhelmed by most of the new shows, but I'm really looking forward to this one. I am not, however, taking responsibility if it gives Mom a panic attack.
 
Passengers

At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a bank of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair…
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below…

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.

Billy Collins

Speaking of Cats

I got this poem from a great little book called Poetry for Cats by Henry Beard:




There Is No Cat-toy Like a Mouse

by Emily Dickinson’s Cat

There is no Cat-toy like a Mouse
To please me in my Play
No any Yarn-ball like a Bug
That strains to fly away—

No rubber Bauble can delight
No lifeless String divert—
For where is Fun if none feels Fright
Or Joy if nothing’s hurt?

Anxiety

Slacktivist: EA2: The Transcendent is Scary is a discussion of an NY Times article about teaching Media Studies at an evangelical college. Bjork was dissed because her music didn't bring one closer to Jesus. Now, Bjork isn't exactly a favorite of mine, but that isn't the reason why.

Slackivist also coined the term "evangelical anxiety," which I thought was interesting.

"The nagging sense, lurking just below the surface, that we are not in control after all, no matter how much we insist we are. One result of this anxiety is a reflexive need to reassert that control, to interpret the world and respond to it in a way that reinforces the illusion that such control is possible."

I've often wondered about the drive to convert people. I sincerely doubt that they are working on some sort of points system: "I bring X number of people to Jesus and I'll get a better view in Heaven." The stated reason is that it is all for others, to save them from themselves (or for themselves), but when was that made a requirement?

Recently I started to think that Evangelical Christians are working off the principle that there is safety in numbers. You always hear their spokesmen talking about how they represent "the majority of Americans." (Empty rhetoric, and so what? It still doesn't mean you always get to have your way.) They can't be entirely sure of what's going on in this world or the next, but I guess they figure X number of people can't be wrong. God can't condemn us all, right?

When I was invited to join a local Christian church, there was a sense of desperation about the recruitment. Every conversation came back to the question of whether I would go to Bible Study. I wondered, perhaps unfairly, whether it would be study or indoctrination. The English major in me couldn't stand the thought of cutting off multiple interpretations; that's so much of the joy of reading. I was eventually repulsed by the implication that I couldn't be friends with any of them unless I joined in their particular brand of Christianity.

The last conversation I had with one woman was when I mentioned that one of my closest friends was Jewish and that I am sometimes in awe of people who have so much faith. I've always had a real problem with the idea that God would condemn her to Hell just because she worshiped Him in a different manner than I did. The woman I was talking to insisted that it was a zero-sum game; there's only one way to Heaven and this is it and if we allow that someone else is right, then we must be wrong and then, why bother?

Why bother? Why bother believing in the goodness of others? Or that there is more to life than what's right in front of your face? Hope for a better future? In helping those less fortunate? There has to be something in it for you to treat others with respect? To accept that they hold beliefs because that is what they truly feel and have come to over the course of their life and not just because they haven't managed to bump into a "true" Christian?

Is faith so fragile that it has to be reinforced from the outside? That you have to be surrounded only by those who are the same as you? If my belief system isn't strong enough to be questioned, then I'm not sure I want to depend on it in a crisis.

But here I go judging these relatively nice people who just wanted to bring me to Jesus. I suppose that they'll get along without me. I just imagine they will be awfully surprised when they get to Heaven and see how crowded it is.

Success, or the Lack Thereof

Remember I said previously that I had a "she said" poem for the athletes at the Olympics, but didn't have a "he said"? Well, I found one. I like the Dickinson better.




He said--



To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honors out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laureled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.



A. E. Housman







She said--



Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!


Emily Dickinson

A Family Heirloom

I bought a lovely oak baker's rack at the Amish shop, and the only place it would fit in my kitchen was the spot already occupied by a substantial end table holding a micro-wave oven. This micro-wave is 29 years old, and huge. You could roast a turkey in it, although I never have. It was my father-in-law's, and them his sister's, and finally, for the last 20 years, ours. It has always worked perfectly, never needing repairs, its ancient knobs still turning to set the energy level and cook time. But - it wouldn't fit on the baker's rack. My neighbor Sally looked the situation over and said, "Get a new micro-wave. It's not like it's a family heirloom or anything." Only it is.

So I got a new micro-wave. It's small and sleek and silver, with touch controls and a clock, and a rotating turntable. It just fits on the top of the baker's cabinet, and will free up that area of the kitchen. But it's only here on probation. The old one still sits in the corner of the kitchen until the new one proves itself. The new one cost $59, minus a $15 rebate, plus I had a 10% off coupon, so I practically got it for free. If it doesn't behave itself, I'll stick it in the basement, and put the old one back.

I'll stack some pots on the other shelves of the baker's rack, or get some pretty baskets to fill with tableclothes. I'll be happy with it.

So why do I feel like I just had the family pet put to sleep?

12 Good Citizens

I was actually selected to be on a jury! It was a felony case that lasted 2 days. Two young punks jumped an El Salvadoran busboy coming home from work along a local bike path. One got him in a neck hold while the other patted down his pockets looking for money. When the victim broke free, our defendant pulled out a pistol and shot him. Luckily for all concerned, the victim was not badly hurt, and the two would-be robbers ran away.

Our defendant was 21 years old, but short and skinny, so that he looked about 15. The victim identified him in court, through an interpreter. The other robber identified our guy as the one who did the shooting. The defendant did not testify, nor offer any defense at all, as is his right. A defendant is innocent unless proven guilty. The prosecution attorney also presented a witness who had seen the defendant the night before, displaying a pistol and bragging about it. She sounded and looked honest, and had called the police right away about the gun. One of the four charges against the defendant was possession of a gun by a felon, so that witness really did him in.

Frankly, we all thought the guy was guilty of all four offenses, but a couple of us thought the prosecution case was a little weak. The gun was never found, and there was no physical evidence at all except the bullet pulled out of the victim's abdomen. The victim's identification was a little shaky. He said a short black guy shot him and then pointed at the only short black guy in the courtroom. The detective who interviewed our guy said the defendant admitted to being at the scene, although the defendant blamed the shooting on a third person that we never got to hear from. Unfortunately for the defendant, the victim insisted there were only two attackers - one tall and one short, and the short guy shot him. The other robber (the tall guy) also insisted they were acting alone, and denied that anyone else was with them. The guy who dropped them off at one end of the bike path and picked them up at the other end also denied seeing this third person.

The deliberations took 4 hours. Then we had to decide on a sentence for him. The prosecution entered evidence of 4 previous robberies and an assault and battery.

The defense attorney said our guy had a bad childhood. I felt sorry for the guy. I'm sure he did have a rough childhood, and he was probably as dumb as a post, but we were not inclined to let him roam the streets robbing people and playing with guns. His previous sentences had been suspended to give him a chance to behave himself, but he did not take advantage of that opportunity. So we gave him a sentence that will probably keep him locked up until he's 35. I felt bad about it, but I'd have felt bad about letting him go again, too.

The deliberations were fascinating. We all spoke our minds, and were very civilized about it. One of the jurors watched a lot of CSI, and wanted there to be more crime scene evidence. (Dream on - Fairfax county doesn't have that kind of money.) I watch Rumpole of the Bailey, so I wanted to believe the defense, but in the end I couldn't. Our hope is this kid will live longer in jail than out of it.