My Comment (A preparation)

(While waiting for reading matter to be sent to me from NY, material from my Catholic chum Dick, I responded, made a Comment on the Journal of another. Maybe I can sidestep all the work required to make an entry of my own. I'm Catholic, but errant lots of the time; sloth, isn't that a sin? Try confessing that these days; you'd be asked if you've robbed any banks lately, ha ha ha ha....)

 

Your subject is definitely rivetting. You give
a comprehensive overview of the elements
present in the Pope's disparagement of Islam,
Muslims, whatever is the correct word(s).
I'm warming up to 'Journal' my own take on the
brouhaha which given that only words are
involved and not bombs, is pretty entertaining
except for the riots in response, violence from
the very people the Pope was indirectly correcting.
Muslims, IMO, are violently jealous of the glamor
of Christianity. A Parish newsletter from the
Church reported some years ago that there are
more words devoted to Mary, The Mother of God,
in the Koran, than there are devoted to Her in
The New Testament. Odd that the same people who
have been so worshipful of The Virgin Mary, Mother
of Jesus, in the Koran, shoot women, mothers
included, in the head in broad daylight in a football
stadium in Afghanistan. (The highest percentage of
infant deaths per number of births occur in Afghanistan.) As to terrorist suicide bombers, it's pretty hard for any Christain to swallow how murder, plus suiicide, two heavy-duty sins, could possibly benefit, or please Allah.

And, your points are well taken.

Barry
http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

Rambling Thoughts

Can you imagine? a bank robbery is in progress (what progress? scooping up the money?) in Chicago. Oh, oh the lore of the Prairee.

Perhaps because I'm in an inter-racial marriage I've blogged on the subject of race quite a few times. Waiting for the birth of a baby, as I hope you can grant, is a mite more suspenseful than ordinarily. Mother and father have played the game - which ancester's physiognomy do you pray does not show up in the 'Expected' (March 7th? '07)?  What facial features, color hair etc.? Healthy is my sole prayer. The mother wants all kinds of things I consider irrelevant. I do love black hair on a woman, so if the baby is a girl I'll have it made 'cause, I think, black hair is a dominant gene. Hybrid vigor is on our side, too.

Here's what's happening in Los Angeles. Racial pride is on the March. At the laundromat the other day I watched a tall, oh so tall maybe 6'3" Black woman with a perfect figure. So far so ordinary; but what really wowed me was that she had perfect posture, and lyrical movement, so might have been a dancer. An old guy can get away with murder so on the strength of a 'Hi there' or two, when I was leaving, I said to her, "have a great life." "Thankyou," she said looking down on my 6'0" shortness, with a smile. I've confessed this 'infidelity,' ha ha ha, to my wife who is supremely self-confident. (Sweet tempered Filipina.)

More news as it happens: A shooting at a Montreal College.

The world is nuts, so by comparison my life is perfect. Hope yours is too.

I have a photo before me, a snapshot I took of son Vincent riding a horse in Griffith Park, in LA. The lighting was lucky so I'd like to post it here; I'll give it a whirl, if, it can be added later. I have to wait for Vincent, age, 11, to help me. Well! I had him for a reason: assistance. What other reason have people had babies, huh? Gar 'head, tell me. Next month we'll take the boat to Catalina Island, about 20miles offshore. It's been swum; I'd like to try it. Be the oldest, maybe. Might be too expensive, what with boat following etc. So, the ferry might have to suffice. Not sure, but I think Vincent and I could take our bikes. I know biking on the Island is popular. A whole day of clean, non-city air!

My "ramble" is at an end. Hope nothing rubbed you the wrong way. That was not my intent.

Barry  http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

 

 

9/11 & 911

TIME magazine, remember that rag? It now costs $3.95. I suggest you don't bother. The current issue is dated Sept. 11, 2006. Conspiracies, second guessing, quasi-philosophic Editorial gushing are presented with the sole motive of making money, the very thing the Twin Towers represented under the title World Trade Center, and now celebrated as such in a Hollywood movie.

John asks us to give our thoughts and experiences related to the calamity. Okay, "I'll bite" (an American expression from the 1930s I believe - it was a favorite of my English father) my first inkling of the event came from a laughing Mexican gas station attendant in a Mexican State North of the  State of Oaxaca. In Spanish, and then broken English he told us - my family and I were driving back to California - that Boston had been bombed. He had the news a bit garbled: a plane leaving Boston had changed course, as we now know from being hijacked, did a left turn and headed for the Island of Manhattan, specifically the North Tower. It's the laughter of the man in the gas station I want to dwell on. Not just millions in Mexico, millions all over the world got a huge lift from seeing America on fire and falling down. Since the subway bombings, and the more recent arrest of 24 English Muslim alleged terrorists, England might now be an even more ardent friend, and never did laugh anyway.

Suicide murder, such a popular hobby/tactic in the Middle East, a most grievous damning sin for Christians, was totally unknown to me for most of my life. The young Arab who dressed as a Rabbi to board a bus in Israel then blew up himself and everyone else on the crowded bus into black scrap lying in a black skeleton of what  had been the bus, is now a reverred hero honored at feasts given in his honor, feasts paid for with the $25,000 given his family for their sacrifice. 'Son for sale?' daughter for sale? husband for sale? must constantly be whispered all over the Eastern end of the Mediteranean.

As far as I know the 9/11 terrorists' families may have gone unrewarded. If so, that might, could possibly, put a brake of building bombing, but don't hold your breath. The more modest bus bombing seems slightly more warlike, than the grotesquerie of Twin Towers bombing which works as a declaration, but, lets be honest, spells doom for the participants and their cultures. It was over-kill. By that action Osama Bin Ladin committed slow motion  suicide; it could turn out that the angry spoiled brat was all along simply mad at Daddy, and not really mad at America at all?!  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha................... who do you figure will get the last laugh?

 

You got it!

Barry          

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/ 

 

 

 

 

 

Kinsey

Kinsey the movie was on TV last night. Better by far than I expected. As a retired actor - shoot I can prove I was an actor: I could post the $0.28 residual check I received a couple of days ago; it came via a $0.39 US postage stamp.  Somewhere or another, on television I assume, an episode of a TV series in which I played a Principal role, or more accurately, had a 'Principal' SAG contract, was replayed. All I can remember about the job is that the lead actor kept giving me angry glances as if getting ready to pull rank should the director slip up and put the camera too close to me. On most sets, so help me, humans return to infancy.

That's why Kinsey is stunning. Most of it is thoroughly adult. The role of Kinsey's wife, Linnley (?) in the acting was perfect and very surprising from an American actress (so kill me; calling a woman an 'Actor' strikes me as stupid) who usually play kitten not woman.

The trouble with the storytelling is that Kinsey is depicted as 'naughty' rather than as a scientist. The actual words say he is a "scientist" but the acting is too weak to convey that truth. The lead actor sabotages the story, just as he ruined Schindler's List, playing Schindler.

Kinsey's work still deserves wider distribution. His first book, on men, which I read at Lowell High School in San Francisco half a century ago, is now out of print. And the second volume, on women, I've never read. Didn't know there was such a book.  After three marriages (tenth child on the way; please say a prayer for safe delivery) I smugly insist I know what's to be known about female human sexuality. If I didn't I sure would be a slow study. I'm more than willing to grant there is also a strong thread of mystery running through the subject, for women and men.

The front page of THE NEW YORK POST a couple of days ago featured a shot of murder suspect John Karr seated on the plane which brought him to Los Angeles from Thailand. The 'screaming' headline read, "Snake On A Plane." Since the story broke the paper has referred to him a "the perv." I doubt anything of Kinsey is on the shelves at the offices of that NY rag. The automatic condemnation cries out, 'we're pure, we're pure' when all the time they are flat out evil condemning before the man is even charged!   I subscribed the other day for two reasons: to get free Dodger tickets, and to kid my New York friend by sending him clips from that paper, just as he sends me clips from that paper.  We go way back.

In history the collection of Kinsey's data must have been done lovingly and without judgment. When a teen, reading the first volume, I thought it was funny. For example, a very tall black man had a string tied to his member and when, lying down, he had an erection it rang a bell. I thought, and still think, that is fuuuuuuuny. One fine day when the sun comes up unobscured, and birds sing in the trees, we'll all be much more relaxed about, and appreciative of,  sex, wonderful sex.

Barry 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Female Brain

For years now, decades, the impact of the zenith of the feminist movement which in America I think was around 1989 (when, against my will my marriage number two collapsed, just as against my will as my first marriage ten years earlier) I've been guilty feeling and acting in the certitude that men and women were different. Now, finally I've stumbled upon recent wisdom, this time from Science.

It's Sunday. I'm reading the Sunday paper Book Section. This will be a Red Letter day in my life. 

From THE FEMALE BRAIN , by Louann Brizendine, M. D. Morgan Road Books: 280pp:

"There are still those who believe that for women to become equal, unisex must be the norm. The biological reality however, is that there is no unisex brain. The fear of discrimination based on difference runs deep, and for many years assumptions about sex differences went scientifically unexamined for fear that women wouldn't be able to claim equality with men."

Break out the champaign! Uncork the wine! Musicians, give us your sweetest music made in the name of Mother!

Oh what a relief it is!

I'm too giddy with happiness to continue this, for now. The ramifications will be enormous.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Readers Message Board Palaver

<< "Kind of marvelllous that the world's first novel can be on your just list. Strictly personal, I'd substitute Great Expectations for your pick, but I don't quarrel with yours, not one bit." >        - BB3 < "I absolutely, positively HATED Great Expectations.  Pip had to be the most whiny character I have ever encountered.  Two of my three kids have also read it and feel the same way.  I loved David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, etc.  But I would leave Great Expectations OFF any *must read* list of mine.  I would also scratch Lord Jim off any list.  IMO, it was slim pickings the year the powers that be added Lord Jim to a classics list.  I did like Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness though." > From: MarySkl   A classmate, David Kenneth Israel, apparently talked our Literature professor - whose name escapes me this second - into allowing me, an undergraduate, to take a graduate course, a single author course, actually called a 'Graduate Seminar' in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard in the 1950s. I think I got a B-. Hey, I passed!  Here's the poop. Dickens' reputation was given a boost by the publication of a new biography by one, Johnson, not long before I took that inspiring course. Great Expectations can be read as a rewrite of David Copperfield written 35 years later. David had to learn caution and discretion, while the trajectory of Pip's life taught him to stop being such a snob. You're absolutely right/correct/on-target David is infinitely more likeable than Pip. One might say that the later novel was almost a confession by the narrator. I believe it is now generally believed that the later novel is the stronger work of art written by a very great artist at the peak of his powers. Barry

Buddy Lists

My Buddy List has drastically shrunk. There's good ol' Ally and good ol' Zoe, and my daughter who won't speak to me, ha ha ha ha, but today's shrinkage suggests my 'buddies' get Online via airplane. AOL, TIME WARNER was the kiss of death.

So now it's free, this AOL. If I'm offered the very latest AOL software I decline on the grounds that it's probably not to benefit me, but to benefit AOL getting even more advertising machinery on board this sinking ship.

Oh well. A new 'Buddy' of mine will show up around March 20 2007. I'm 73, the woman (mother/wife) is 35, and the buddy-to-be is about two months old. Crazy, right? Hey, this is America, "Home of the Brave." And no, it was not caused by invitro fertilization, but by the old-fashioned way. Clue: Two hours or so after swimming 1500 meters the other day, swim training for Masters swim Meets, my blood pressure taken at home read 114/64 - resting pulse. the third number I record, might have been a bit high but that was not typical. If the first figure is 170 or over a doctor will not write a Viagra prescription. So the motive to swim-train puts on some muscle.

To make room for our new Buddy we will need a vehicle with six seats. So for the price of most late model used ("previously owned" in typically evasive American lingo) cars we got a new Mazda MPV3 gorgeous thingum with front wheel drive and a hot four cylinder (good MPGs) transverse engine and transmission with overdrive. Years ago I owned a rotary engine Mazda that I totalled, replaced with another identical, and both were made sloppily. Mazda suffered a class action suit at about that time. Mazda, I figure, is still trying to climb back from their manufacturing nightmares for which I admire them tremendously. All that has to happen now is for 'Buddy's' mother to transform her driving permit into a license. In the meantime she back-seat drives ME. Ha ha ha ha ha.....

Hey, we aren't all going to abandon ship are we?

H   e   l   p    !   !   !   gulp   gulp   gulp    gulp...........

 

Barry xxx