Fuchswörterbuch

The Fuchswörterbuch defines "Aerlingus" as:
Oral sex between two airplanes.

Gucci "Hysteria"

Gucci HYSTERIA COLLECTION, hysteria bag in python (actual snake) $4,590

I noticed the price, $4,590 for something to hold money. Personally, I'd spend $90 and stuff the bag with my $4,500 savings. But there's no explaining i) the female brain (buying a product named after "hystera," Greek for uterus) or ii) people with more money than brains.


Based on the following definition of "hysteria," the name makes perfect sense:

1. Behavior exhibiting excessive or
uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic.

2. A mental disorder characterized by
emotional excitability and sometimes by amnesia
or a physical deficit, such as paralysis,
or a sensory deficit, without an organic cause.


I'm introducing my own line of handbags, the "Dementia Collection," a cheap plastic or paper knockoff with prices starting at $10,000. Customers will most likely forget their purchase, thus necessitating additional purchases.

The only question is: paper or plastic?

The Walnuts

A good friend of mine, Ron Zastre, asked me to review his new novel, The Walnuts. Ron is the Rube Goldberg of bizarre situations, creating for his characters a series of non-stop escapades.

The novel begins when an alien spaceship dumps its cargo, a human-appearing "man." He befriends a group of earthlings who behave in a singularly human manner; they are a bunch of screw ups. In a subtle shift in POV, human hijinx is seen through alien eyes. We travel from inside to outside the human "fishbowl," then settle inside the fishbowl's glass where human and alien perception intertwine and become one.

The non-stop hilarity would make the worst misanthrope laugh out loud!

Ron would be disappointed if I didn't add the following:
Available at Amazon.com

The Nutcracker – Mouse Queen’s Revenge

SYNOPSIS

St. Petersburg, Russia, December 18, 1892
(Action takes place on this one day and in real time with the events of that evening).

ACT I
Ivan, age 15, studies violin at conservatory. He seeks camaraderie with his care-free friends, but his overbearing father, concertmaster at the Maryinski Ballet, thinks Ivan should be more disciplined. Ivan spies from afar the lovely ballerina Catherina, also 15. Father, however, drags Ivan to the final dress rehearsal before opening night. Ivan sits in the musicians' pit next to father, turning his pages. Father wants Ivan to become a professional violinist. Tchaikovsky conducts.

We meet the strange Drosselmeier and his balletic pet mice. To the opening night ballet audience he is a cast member, an old man with a black eye patch and mystical powers. In reality, he possesses supernatural powers, but is easily manipulated. His only love is not for Natasha, his evil, wanna-be ballerina grand daughter, but for his pet mice.

Love-smitten Ivan watches Catherine outclass Natasha at the final audition. But Natasha is not finished; she will stop at nothing, including murder, to secure the role of “Clara,” the girl whose dream is the Nutcracker ballet. Ivan inadvertently manages to lock horns with macho-Boris, the arrogant 18 year old bully who plays the Nutcracker.

Natasha plots to kill Catherina on-stage, opening night. As originally choreographed, the mouse king almost "kills" Clara, but she is saved by the Nutcracker who "kills" the mouse king. According to Natasha's plan, and at her behest, Drosselmeier will grow his two favorite mice into 8 foot monsters, the “king” mouse will don the seven-headed mouse king costume and he will actually try to kill Catherina/Clara, but there is one complication. . .

Backstage, Ivan figures it out, but none of the adults believes him, nor does Catherine who thinks he's nuts. So Ivan must save his beloved Catherine against her will. He overpowers Boris, steals his costume, finds a real sword, and goes on stage to battle the rodential beast. The ballet audience is unaware of the drama unfolding on stage. Ivan appears to kill the monster mouse per original choreography, but in saving Catherina, he creates another mortal enemy, the 8-foot Mouse Queen. Catherina still thinks Ivan is crazy, she's unaware that he saved her life.

INTERMISSION AND ACT II
On and off stage during intermission and Act II, the vengeful Mouse Queen pursues Ivan and Catherina. Again, the ballet audience is unaware of the on-stage drama. The pursuit is choreographed to a popular version of the Nutcracker. It’s not until the very end, when the young couple is lifted on a sled above the stage, that Catherine realizes that Ivan was right, but it’s almost too late. The Mouse Queen and a wounded, but still alive Mouse King, are in hot pursuit. The Queen jumps into the sled to kill them both, but the Queen falls to her “death.” Catherina kisses Ivan, they are safe and in love. The ballet audience never knew what happened.

FINALE
Catherine and Ivan take their bows to thunderous applause. Along the footlights, the two "dead" monster mice have been transformed back to cute normal sized mice; they kiss and take their bows. In the musician's pit Ivan's dad gives Ivan a standing ovation.

COMPLETE SCREENPLAY

I’m not Skinny, You’re Fat! The Politically Incorrect Diet Book

................................. Man Pointing by Alberto Giacometti

[This an excerpt from a draft of a book I wrote in 1998]


Introduction

Call me Ectomorph. My Popu used to say that I was “Tin. Tin like a tootpick.” He serenaded me at meals, “Eat totala, eat!” The other three grandparents weren’t much better. Each engaged in the same battle cry of their ancestors, “EAT!” These 19h Century Europeans knew the value of fat. They were intolerant of me, a skinny kid who, transported to the Russia of their youth, might not survive the winter. “If only he were chubbier, he’d be alive today.” Of course the Bronx of the 1950’s was a harbinger of the 1960’s urban strife and poverty, but famine was never a real issue. So I grew up with guilt imposed by ancestral fears. Sounds more like Catholicism than my native Judaism.

Now at age 44 I’m still a mutant, at least by our cultural norms. Traveling through America, I sometimes feel like Gulliver in the land of giants. Last summer my daughter (she’s skinny too) and I visited Augusta, Maine. The local population is, well, how should I say it? Obese. The back of a pick up truck is a perfect fit for the average woman, 4x4. Now unlike us skinny people, these folks aren’t malevolent or misanthropic. So I know they meant no harm when they lifted their faces out of bacon cheeseburgers to think, “Two Jews out of the concentration camps.” But this was genuine concern, not anti-Semitism. I’m sure they honestly believe that a six-foot man weighing 145 pounds needs hospitalization. In fact, it’s a frequently held belief that being overweight is healthy because if you go to the hospital and lose weight, you’ll survive. Of course, being overweight guarantees your trip to the hospital, if you’re lucky.

The self-help industry focuses attention on making fat people feel good about them selves. Where does that leave me? Well, the Surgeon General’s height and weight charts now offer some solace, some justification for my existence. Back in the 1960’s I was off the charts. But since then, the charts have been adjusted several times so I now have the government’s blessing of normalcy. Paradoxically, while everyone grew fatter, the charts grew slender so more of the population is now off the charts. Continued at blogowitz-unabridged

Buying the rope to hang us with

Karl (not Groucho)Marx famously said that the capitalist will "sell the rope that hangs him." I think Karl didn't fully plumb the depths of the capitalist heart.

He didn't really understand American consumer capitalism where the capitalist will BUY the rope that hangs him.

Manifest Destiny

The manifest destiny of the white man is to rape the earth and leave it for dead.

American Airlines Announces Pay Toilets

Dallas/Ft. Worth. American Airlines announced today that it will install pay toilets on all domestic flights in an effort to recapture the costs associated with flying shit. Tokens will be available at $1.50 each, one can be used for number one and two for number two. Asked about the impact on the traveling public, American's spokeman for defecatory initiatives, John Commodious, said "it's perfectly fair as full bladders and intestines of 300 pound Americans often weigh over 30 pounds per person." Adding that "With 160 passengers, that's a lot of shit!"

The Gift of the Goddess (Why Hunters Never Leave Their Mamas)

Summary
Man is both gift and goddess, both life and matter. (“Men” and “man” are used here to denote the male gender and not “mankind” generally). Birth, weaning, ritualizing the hunt, questing for father, and finally dying, men are part of the womb, the genderless Upanishads goddess incarnate. No matter the journey, men can’t stray far from the source, the goddess. “Myth,” according to Campbell, is the “sublimation of mother nature” (205). Does this mean goddess myths are archetypal of all myth? Full text at blogowitz-unabridged

The Hero’s Adventure (Journey into the Soul)

Summary

Just how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? The mythic self explorer must recognize the rabbit hole, leave behind Adriande’s thread, and sojourn deeply. However, the rabbit hole is obscured by a thicket of modernity, theology, and even primitive culture. Worse still, the rabbit hole masquerades as something else. Scythe the thicket, unmask religion’s holy disguise, and mine the holey depths. Full text at blogowitz-unabridged

The Journey Inward

Summary
The “mystery” is the internalization of the exterior – the self actualization of the world and its myths – but Western religion, says Campbell, corrupts the “journey inward” by destroying metaphor with “facts,” and creating an artificial dualism that “un-deifies” humanity and vilifies nature. God looses transcendence; man, his innocence. Full text at blogowitz-unabridged

Sacrifice and Bliss

Summary

Throughout The Power of Myth the stuff of myth is cross-cultural, universal, and archetypical (biologically based), but in “Sacrifice and Bliss” Campbell first introduces “environmental determinism,” the notion that local “landscape” sculpts that “stuff.” Underlying the landscape imagery is a far deeper scientific truth – we are a living fresco inseparable from our plaster landscape. However, biblical dualism wrenches life from its own gut destroying both fresco and wall. Full text at blogowitz-unabridged

Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus)

Fun Facts--Unusual Behavior: The only song bird that is also a bird of prey, “Vlad the impaler” will shish kabob prey on sharp objects or wedge it between tree branches. Unlike the human female wooed by ostentations displays of wealth and waste, the female shrike is more like “Clara” (“where’s the beef!”) in the old Burger King commercial. [Full article at blogowitz-unabridged]

Datura wrightii (Western Jimson-weed)

Datura is a member of the Northern Mexico hallucinogenic triumvirate: mescalito (mescaline/cactus), yerba del Diablo (Datura/Jimson weed), and humito (Psilocybe/mushroom) described in The Teachings of Don Juan. Of the three, Don Juan felt Datura was the most dangerous and “[he] realized she was not for me....” Nevertheless, this first-hand “cookbook” gives detailed instructions for DIY gathering, preparation, ingestion, tripping, and “cool down.” [Full article at blogowitz-unabridged]

Form, Function and Symbolism—Exposing the False Tricodomy and Exploring Universal Progression

[Written for an architectural history class in 2007; click on sections for full text]

Form, function and symbolism are as inextricable as mind and body, Cartesian dualism, notwithstanding. This paper explores the phenomenological aspects of how these superficially disparate elements are experientially identical, and how, throughout history, they inevitably progress from simplicity, to mastery and ultimately to decadence.

PART I: A UNIFIED FIELD OR “TRINITY” THEORY

Exploring form, function, and especially symbolism from the observer’s POV rather than the architect’s, unlocks myriad existential possibilities; the architect just one existence in billions caught in freeze-frame infinite time. Serious criticism requires observer-facing analysis as people “...can never…experience form without deriving meaning from it” (Scully 123).

PART II: PROGRESSION THROUGH UNIVERSAL SYMBOLS

Civilizations’ timelines are captured in the architecture of universal progression: embryonic simplicity, inchoate mastery, “high” mastery, sometimes a Mannerist revolt against cliché, and inevitably “late” Rococo decadence which, given sufficient time, suffers a backlash, e.g., the modernist backlash against Rococo articulated in Adolf Loos’ article, Ornamentation and Crime. Part II of this paper demonstrates cross-cultural examples of universal progression and even proposes a genetic framework for their understanding.

PART III: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, BIBLIOGRAPHY

Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going? (Paul Gauguin)

The unity of form, function and symbolism appears self evident as does the progression theory. But how will modernity’s “progression” appear in hindsight: early, middle, high, or most likely, late? History may record the “New American Century” as our last. However, such characterization is generally unsupported by architectural indicia of earlier progressions. Nevertheless, we can learn from the Romans whose experience most closely parallels our own. With its numerous massive constructions made possible by the invention of concrete and standardization, Roman decadence, like ours, flaunts Greek notions of natural balance and proportion with sheer volume and numbers.

The Bible as Warrior-Herder Mythology: Impact of “Edible Landscape”

[My spin on the origins of the Hebrew Bible, written in June, 2007 for the class "Myths and Legends"]

Summary

Herding was a novel concept that forged its own unique mythology, the Bible. This paper investigates how prehistoric hunting myth co-evolved, first with plant, then with animal domestication resulting in two great mythologies: agrarian goddess and Hebrew God. Biblical dualism is symbolic of the dualism suffered by a nomadic herding people caught between their hunter-gatherer ancestors and their agrarian neighbors. A new mythology, the Bible, served to make sense of their place in the world.

Historical Background

Tens of thousands of years before Abraham, the sub-Saharan ancestors of the Semites were early hunter-gatherers who hunted gazelle and presumably celebrated hunter mythologies. Things changed. Jared Diamond estimates that plants were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent by 8500 B.C. and animals by 8000 B.C. (362). The hunter mythology lost relevance as new agrarian societies (e.g. 4000 B.C. Egypt) slowly developed earth-goddess based mythology. Eventually, the remaining hunters became herders, outside agrarian mythology. There was simply no established mythology for herders, just as there’s no established mythology for modern man; these things take time.

Let’s view the Hebrews through their pre-Egypt herder “landscape.” Imagine a tribe of mythic hunters who overexploited gazelle, (Diamond 142) forced to make a career choice: herding or farming. Farming was already established, widespread and required legal land ownership or lease, concepts foreign to hunter-gatherers. However, hunters knew animals, so they became the domesticators, raising animals for meat, diary, and wool.

Hebrews lorded over, and were mired in, an ever-moving mammalian mass of sheep and goats that were noisy, aggressive, wandering, cud-chewing, regurgitating, ruminating, festering, flatulating, burping, baaing, bleating, copulating, menstruating, gestating, birthing, lactating, dying, defecating, urinating, and perhaps most significantly, insatiably consuming strangers’ grass and farmland. Cont'd at unabridged-blogowitz

Roadrunner

GREATER ROADRUNNER (Geococcyx californianus)

Fun Facts--Mating: Male courts female with cooing and serves her dinner sans wine. He conducts a loud, boisterous mating dance with foot stomping, tail-wagging, and deep bowing. They mate upon completion of his “dervish.” They also mate for life; during their 4-5 year lifespan divorce is not an option. Perhaps instructive for human fidelity: food may be exchanged during copulation.

Cont'd
[Link to unabridged-blogowitz]