Captain Kangaroo vs. Rorschach

There's a veritible firestorm brewing between psychologists all over the world and Wikipedia. In June, Dr. James Heilman* posted pictures of all 10 original inkblots along with the most common answers given for each. Psychologists are up in arms because they think that one of their beloved tests has been rendered completely useless. Now anyone can just memorize the "right" answers and fake being sane.

This is Rorschach Inkblot #4. To me, this looks like a giant mutant kangaroo jumping into battle with guns ablazing. I think he's adorable. His gruff but wisecracking exterior hides the inner pain he still feels from the loss of fellow mercenary, killed in battle saving Captain Kangaroo's life (the children's show was such a whitewash job.)

And hey! Turns out I am completely sane or at least totally normal because one of the most common responses to this ink blot is "massive animal." Whew. And here I've been worried about my mental health!

While the images are being kept up at Wikipedia, the inclusion of a list of most common answers is being deleted and re-entered in an edit battle. Here are the most common answers for each ink blot:

Plate 1 (bat, butterfly, moth)
Plate 2 (two humans)
Plate 3 (two humans)
Plate 4 (animal skin, massive animal)
Plate 5 (bat, butterfly, moth)
Plate 6 (animal hide, skin, rug)
Plate 7 (human heads, faces)
Plate 8 (pink: animal)
Plate 9 (orange: human)
Plate 10 (blue: crab, lobster, spider)

Now memorize these in case you are ever tested. And don't say I never did anything for you because I just saved you some time in the big house.


*Dr. Heilman is from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. That's just about the greatest thing about the whole situation. Ah, the power of these glorious tubes, that an emergency room doctor from Moose Jaw could single handedly bring down the greatest comic book psycho nutjob hero of all time.

Creative Distance

If you want that a-ha moment, where you suddenly see a completely different way of solving a problem, think first about someplace far, far away. It's more than a metaphor, distance can actually help you be more creative. Just thinking about a distant place will change how you think about whatever problems you are dealing with. Try it next time you're stuck.

For more, read the Scientific American article here.

HOLLAND PREPARES TO YIELD TO ALLIES

I was trying to find an article I recently read in the New York Times describing Holland's tax system. I searched the NYT for "Holland" and got 10,000 hits. On page three I find the following article:

HOLLAND PREPARES TO YIELD TO ALLIES
Holland, on the eve of her shipping being taken over by the United States and Great Britain, has given evidences of a readiness to make a voluntary agreement to that purpose, even agreeing that the ships shall be sent through the war zone.

I'm like, what the hell? Then I read the date:

March 17, 1918

Did you know you can search the ENTIRE New York Times?

The Ungainly Woman

There’s a woman who sometimes waits for the bus at my stop, going home from work. A while back, I watched her be humiliated by two other passengers: an older woman with white hair wearing a pale blue gingham dress, and a woman in her forties who got on a couple of stops after we did.

The bus was crowded and the second woman called out over the heads on the intervening passengers.

“Good afternoon to you grandmother! How are you getting on today,” said the younger woman. And yes, she spoke in this high falutin’ way, just like that, overly conscious of propriety.

“I’m doing fine except this fat ass sat down next to me without even saying excuse me,” said the older woman.

Then the younger one turned to the woman I wait with and scolded her in a loud voice. The woman she was sitting next to had been a nurse in a war, or a marine, or something. She deserved respect.

“Who do you think you are just sitting down next to her without saying excuse me. You tell her excuse me right now!”

And the older one is spewing out a string of “sat her fat ass right down” and “young people rude today”.

My bus-stop woman is quiet. She nods her head and tries to look invisible, but too late. They have put their gps on her and will now hound her for the sport of it. So pretty soon, before they have a chance to escalate this much further, she turns to the old lady muttering “fat ass,” and says, “excuse me” in a surprisingly sincere voice, like she really does believe them and thinks she should have been more polite, like she is already beginning to kick herself inside for not being more polite. She is remembering lectures in third grade about knocking other kids down on the playground and feels she should have known the passenger sitting next to her wouldn’t want her there. She should have said excuse me without being told and so she says it a second time just be sure.

And I fell in love with her then, just to watch her and understand her, with her ungainly ways, her lumbering walk, and the way her large, honey-colored eyes bulge out and make her look belligerent and about to say mother-fucker, the way her whole face has a slapped together look like it's made out of clay that is beginning to slide off, and how when anyone talks to her, she answers in a rough, low-pitched voice that apologizes and laughs at herself all at once.

So today, I left work and saw the bus already coming, and I ran, trying to be careful crossing the two streets at the intersection, all in my new shoes with the tiny heels. And when I got to the stop, there she is. I look back and see a second bus a block further and a distance I wouldn’t have had to run for.

I say, “Oh, I run for the bus and there’s two coming! But at least the first one is empty!” and turn to her smiling.

She laughs and barks out, “Oh yeah, I hate getting the full ones.”

We smile together and find our seats, on either side of the aisle, each with our own little row of space in the otherwise empty bus.

Xena is still awesome

The real difference and prop 8:

Secret Seahorse Wishes

Seahorses are so strange and wonderful. Personally, I think they look more like dragons than horses. They are best known for the fact that the female deposits her eggs in the male to be gestated, but my favorite thing about them is their eyes, which move independently of each other. Seahorses possess two of my secret desires: the ability to breathe underwater and prehensile tails.

Musings of a Hard Polytheist

We are like cats to them.
Sometimes they euthenize us,
sometimes they just pick us up
and move us to the next room.
If you think a god is likely
to do the former,
try to escape the apartment
and find one that will pet you
and feed you the good food.
If you pee on their furniture,
they will get angry.
Don't assume you know
what their furniture looks like.
If you find a god that really tries
to understand things from your
limited point of view and helps
you be generally happy in this life,
love them with all your heart.

101 Roto Monkeys

Marcel Duchamp was a very cool artist. He created these fun "rotoreliefs" [click on the spinning wheel to see all twelve]. As they spin, the eye sees the images in 3-d.

There's something hundred monkey about the whole thing because Duchamp discovered this effect through art at the same time that scientists were discovering it using scientific method.

Penguin Sci-Fi

If you love speculative fiction as much as I do, check out Penguin Books' page on the history of their science fiction publications. The site opens with a wonderful collection of old covers. Click on one for more information about the book. Once inside, you can click on "Contents" to get to the beginning of the narrative.

At The Tea Shell

Kim was there with the old mermaids
sipping from a cup at the tea shell

From the Church of the Old Mermaids.

Landscape

I’ve stumbled across the word “landscape” three times in the last 24 hours. Being a synchronicity expert, I immediately noticed the red flag this trifold occurrence had planted in my awareness.

1) In this review of The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings, Ben Yagoda mentions in passing that the word “landscape” was one of a number of words borrowed in the 17th century from the Dutch by English admirers of artists such as Brueghel and Rembrandt. (One can also reasonably infer that “etch-a-sketch” is ultimately traceable to this very same period.)

2) I ran across an online copy of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese and found that it had not been overplayed. It made me cry again. One of the lines that caught my eye this time was:

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes

The use of the plural made me think that a landscape is really the conjunction of a natural (or not) place and a viewer. Any place (and for some reason when I get to this point in Wild Geese I always imagine the badlands of South Dakota ) can hold within itself an infinity of landscapes. And because a landscape includes a particular vantage point, it necessarily separates us. We each see a slightly different landscape even though we are standing right next to each other. Landscapes exist because we are separate and sharing a world at the same time.

3) And finally, I found the word (landscape) in a John Ashbery poem, The Bungalows, in the provocative line:

the presumed landscape and the dream of home

Since I’ve only just read this Ashbery poem (and his poems require several readings for you to fully realize how much you don’t know what they mean) I’ll only point to the imagery of architecture in the landscape and the repeated juxtaposition of past and future, young and old, and the meaninglessness of staying still. The movement necessary for meaning also makes meaning impossible. To view a landscape, one must remain still, freeze the point of view in a frame. When you move (live) you become part of the landscape viewed by someone else (g*d?).

Edward Heron-Allen

Edward Heron-Allen

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/heronallen/index.htm

Interests include: Violins, Palmistry, Persian Texts, Selsey, Esoteric Fiction, Asparagus, Barnacles

Twits

I'm really interested in Twitter. I don't know how to make it work for me, but I'm not giving up. I just subscribed to Downing Street's (British Prime Minster's residence) and got this:

"At the Embassy Residence, Rabbi Schneier gives PM a silver honey pot in the shape of an apple in thanks for work tackling poverty."

Yes. Praise a leader for helping the hungry by giving the guy a useless piece of shiny silver shaped like food. That's either diplomatic studity or a magical working.

Favorite Present

My favorite Yule present this year is "The Lump of Coal" by Lemony Snicket. From the back cover:

"Miracles can happen, even to those who are small, flammable, and dressed all in black."

Thunder Snow

I just got back from St. Louis. I'm from the Bay Area. What do I know of weather. Weather.com said that there would be "freezing rain" when I landed.

Freezing rain.

Snow sounds soft and fluffy. Sleet sounds kinda neat. Freezing rain just sounds miserable. And it is. You get immediately wet. The stuff comes pre-melted and wastes no time powdering the new down coat you hoped would be enough. Freezing rain slaps you in the face like a wet towel before burrowing in at the wrists and neck and *then* it freezes.

As I parked at the hotel, the radio guy warned that later that night we might get some thunder snow.

Fortunately, I was asleep by then.

A Spell for Electoral Madlibness

First you draw the __[noun]__ then you say
__[expletive]____ ___[proper noun]_____ .

Hold the ___[noun]___ and ____[verb]____
Stand on your ___[body part]__
Say ____[magic words]___

lawsuit
jeezy-creezy
Mr. President
constitution
actually read it
habeus corpus
There's no place like 1/21/09.

Your turn.

Why I'm not an Olympic athlete

If I were to hear the theme from Jaws when I got into the pool, I'd look around for the fin signaling the approach of my death. When Heather Petri, a member of the US water polo team, hears this music, she feels like a shark.

The Chinese Olympic organizers thought it would be a kick to play the theme song at the beginning of each polo match.*  Petri rather likes the touch:

“It kind of fires me up. I feel like a shark.”

And that's why she's an Olympian and I'm not.

*They also have an old lady who goes around the beach volleyball courts to catch the moths that gather at the night games.  She is called Ms. Bug Catcher.

Triple Expedite

There's a theory in some circles that you insure the gods will come through on a request by withholding the offering until after the goods are delivered. This is more true in Christianity and Hoodoo than general modern paganism. Go to Italy and you may see an old woman spitting and cursing a statue of Mary. The local priest will pass this off. "Of course she curses the statue. Her daughter still is not pregnant." A friend of mine once gave a prayer to Saint Expedite, but she made the mistake of giving him the flowers and pound cake before she got the really cool job. When the job went to someone else, the local hoodoo expert asked her, "Why would Expedite work for the job when he already has his cake?" Magical prayer can be a lot like high-school sex.

***

Last week I lost my bank card. I only lost it for an hour, but that was enough time for me to call the bank and cancel the card. I had to write checks and go without online book purchases for a week. And did you know that Whole Foods does not take checks? I only found that out after I'd unloaded my cart onto the checkout conveyor belt. I let the clerks reshelve my organic golden beets and gluten-free pasta.

Life was going to be a bit rougher for the next few days.

But then I had a brilliant idea. On Friday as I said my morning prayer to Hermes, I realized I could ask him to help. Hermes is a god of business transactions. He makes sure things move. In the divine commerce of gods and men, Hermes delivers the smoke of incense and offerings to Olympus along with praises, prayers and the list of victorious athletes and playwrights. Hermes made the jump to Christianity as Saint Expedite, the patron saint of express mail. My request for a timely arrival for my debit card seemed right up his alley.

I'm not very good at asking for help, and indeed this request seemed a little frivolous. I believe that if you have food, shelter and basic health, the gods figure you are doing just fine. Asking for my new debit card to arrive in a timely fashion so that I could return to my heightened American level of consumption seemed, well, let's just say I would understand if Hermes just rolled his eyes when he heard my prayer.

I told the King of the Rustlers that I understood my request was small, but that it was also a simple thing for a god as great as Hermes. This sounds sycophantic written out in a modern context, but in prayer it's just fact. I told the Many Twisting One that if I got my card that day, I'd pour him a libation and sing his praises at the upcoming theoxenia, a public Hellenic ritual. This second offering was given with a fair amount of dread as I'd been hoping to avoid attending this particular ritual based on past experience.

The card did not arrive.

Well, I thought, I dodged that one. I may not have my bank card, but I also don't have to go to that ritual.

By Saturday morning, however, I decided to try the prayer thing again. There were these really tasty gluten-free protein bars I wanted and the only place that carried them was an online site that charged $4.95 for processing check payments.

I made the same offering to sing the Whisperer's praises at the theoxenia and then remembered that the date of the ritual conflicted with something I really wanted to do. I was torn. If the card showed up on Saturday, rather than having dinner with friends I rarely see, I'd be stuck sitting in someone's living room eating bad potluck and trying to block out the screams of the high priest's hyperactive children.

Thinking quickly (praise Wingfooted Hermes) I amended my prayer. Scratch that earlier offer, I told the god. Instead of singing your praises at the theoxenia, I'll write a piece about you on my blog.

The private libation was still in play. That means I'll have to buy some honey and perhaps a nice Cabernet with the bank card that came in the mail later that day.

I also have to write this blog. The bad ritual would have been torture for an evening, but having to write something carries a higher price. You'll note I haven't written a blog entry in quite a while. It's hard for a writer when the act of writing makes the brain switch into depressed mode. I can journal everyday, but when I write something at all creative, especially something I want people to read, I have a tendency to spend the next few days hating on myself. I have to watch myself for health reasons. This high-risk writer's block is also something I want to overcome so that I can write again. Hermes held out for the more significant offer using the small thing--for him such an easy, simple bit of work--to garner the more difficult offering. More difficult, but also exactly what I needed.

So here's to you, Thrice Great Hermes, Glad-hearted and Glorious. Thank you.

Samuel Johnson to Bush and Hastert

Clive Wilmer is celebrating the poet Samuel Johnson over at Carcanet Press. I find it both strangely disturbing and reassuring to know that great minds of the past have struggled with the same trends and issues that we do today. Here's something for the lesser minds in government today from Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes

LET Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crowded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppress'd,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.
Fate wings with ev'ry Wish th'afflictive Dart,
Each Gift of Nature, and each Grace of Art,
With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,
With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow'rful Breath,
And restless Fire precipitates on Death.

Oompa Loompa Pygmy Hippies

When I was a young child I was told three things about hippies by my rather conservavtive grandfather: 1) they had long hair, 2) they said "peace" a lot while waving their fingers in the peace sign formation, 3) they wanted to steal your money and make you one of them.

This was enough to make me fear hippies. In my 4 year old mind, I was convinced for some reason that hippies could seep up through the corner between the floor and the wall. With the iron clad logic of that age, I determined my best course of action was to make my older sister sleep on that side of the bed. Me, I wanted to be able to run right into my mom's rooms to escape the evil hippies.

Roald Dahl didn't seem to have a fixation on hippies. His original oompa loompas were African pygmies. These were changed to hippies by his publisher seeking to avoid controversy:
http://www.mrbalihai.com/goof/literature/