False starts (fragments, really)

I have this file called ".drafts". It gets longer and longer and I can't seem to complete the separate bits fast enough that I have collected there, and thereby reduce the overall size. Today ".drafts" is over 52,000 words. There is another problem. Some of the bits will never hold enough interest for me to complete into something, and I am getting a little bored of seeing some of the same paragraphs lying around. What to do but clear this workspace by throwing some stuff out and slightly polishing what's left, and then put it out somewhere so that I can start fresh, leaving these false starts, because that is what they are, behind me. The following is the product of this clearing process.

BEGINNING

I told my Israeli friend to take off his coat of culture instead of buttoning it up as apparently he was doing to insulate him from worlds he had known--six years of international travel and residence abroad before returning to the Promised Land to settle down. He was silent after my advice, and to this day he becomes more and more enmeshed in "his culture," a mixture of national-ethnicism and religion.

As for me and my own experiences living outside my own nation-culture for more than 20 years now, in four different (Western) countries, I think my realizing my own advice an unreachable objective. In fact, because it is so subjective, this national-cultural thing (I call it culture, a particular constellation of ways of living), analysis and stepping outside to an objective(?) posture is impossible. However, there are those who seem to demonstrate such wide-ranging comfort and competence in different places and situations that the product of uncovering or shedding the protective and parochial layers can be glimpsed if not found. What to call this evolved human?

Labels for those who live outside their own geographic borders or ethnic constraints are less than helpful. Refugee, transnational, expatriate, stateless . . . they are all so specific as to ignore the category I admire and am trying to describe. I am talking about the person who chooses to live abroad, who has a command of two or more languages not including the mother tongue, who is comfortable in homogenous and mixed company, who has moved beyond comparing every place and person and peculiarity to where s/he must anchor all perspectives and therefore perceptions--where s/he grew up, or the country called home.

Having lived and traveled as I have, my own prejudices have developed as to what it should mean to transcend one's own. One's own, I refer not to the psychological, vocational, or socio-historical development or profile. If one is an egoist or social justice advocate, teacher or aid worker, business person or pauper, these are not in themselves definitive of transcending that which may be said about a group or class of people when we use the shorthand terms or descriptions that are stereotypes. The transcending-culture individual does not refer to new acquaintances or situations as having the flavors often associated with these people and not those, or some specified others. S/he ignores it or just observes, letting the people and events be themselves for what they uniquely are. Of course, it might be easy in some cases to make a case for their fit with what one already knows or has experienced, but that is not what the object of interaction or observation entails. It is the discovery of the uniquely who-what and having that inform what is going on now and, if tentatively, future encounters.

This is all quite abstract. A concrete example from both the what is and what it is not camps should suffice to clarify.

X, a US citizen, lived and worked in Germany for most of his adult life. He is now retired in Spain, because of the more favorable climate and cost of living. He is "European" in that he speaks German and English, collects social security from his "adopted" country, Germany, and retirement from work in Germany and long ago in the US. He has health coverage in Germany and the US. He must travel to either country to make good these benefits. He has a home address in the US and legal residence in Germany. His status in Spain is, well, snowbird on a year-round basis, except when he visits his property in the US to check on it, yearly. He watches US TV channels via satellite, follows baseball and American football, reads the US and international (not strictly European) news in English from US publications, and occasionally surveys the German headlines for what might be happening that would affect him and his status and benefits as a German resident and retiree. He reads English books from the local libraries, mostly US history and foreign policy, and socializes with English speakers, most often US or UK expats. His speech, when talking with Europeans of any stripe, is peppered with baseball idioms and those typical of American English--"It ain't rocket science." His references to culture and history and politics are American, in large part stemming from when he was younger and first came to the continent. Thus dated. He does not go to "foreign" films dubbed in English or with English subtitles (somewhat rare in European cinemas), and he takes in the local music scene represented at the bar known to be a foreigner's hangout. His education stopped with his formal studies many years ago, and does not read or study more current views and knowledge in some of his interest areas, which I am afraid I don't know beyond sports and the latest faux pas's of the US government and some of its less attractive and admirable citizens.

I could go on, but this gives enough of a snapshot to imagine the converse of this profile. Do that, that is imagine someone who does not look and feel like X.

Next consider the following partial list of quirks and qualities.

• adaptable
• at home in the world
• civilized
• comfortable
• confident
• conversant
• cosmopolitan
• flexible
• multi-linguistic
• non-judgmental
• polished, a cosmopolite
• sophisticated (not elitist)
• stateless (not displaced)
• tellurian
• uniquely individuated
• world citizen
• worldly
• . . . free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments

Perhaps I misspoke. There are not many quirks here. Qualities, yes. And you can imagine some descriptors yourself for the kind of person I am referring to. Quirks are reserved for those of a more limited view and capacity.

Matthew Arnold in his essay "Culture and Anarchy" said that culture is curiosity and a striving for perfection. The idea of his culture is cultured: the cultured person who knows and aspires to do and be good per God's will. Culture for Arnold is not a way of life as I have represented the term, or Culture per se, that being those artifacts of the arts and humanities that have stood the test of time and that those who know or know a little about them can enrich their speech and awareness by direct reference or allusion. For Arnold, Culture would be those things that gifted members of society contribute to those of us who would be cultured.

Arnold's treatise is less about the cosmopolite I have tried to sketch above than about a slightly out-of-fashion hero or heroine, today's Renaissance person or perhaps broadly educated and talented academic cum sportsperson/celebrity--a kind of renaissance person?

But Arnold's analysis of becoming cultured, or more widely and deeply adept, has insights which I find useful and insightful even today. Here he is on the subject of what might prevent moderns from becoming more than they would be without further development along the lines of the cosmopolite, a term I now utilize, if provisionally, as shorthand for the person worldly competent.

Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of "every man for himself." The idea of perfection as an harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense [16] energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country, and its preachers have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it. . . . ("Culture and Anarchy" by Matthew Arnold in EPUB format available from http://www.gutenberg.org)

I guess, although I am not an example of the cultured man or cosmopolite as I would conceive of him or her, I have a hard time of it. A life in teaching and consulting and mentoring and guiding . . . what was all that for? Whom did I touch? and did I have the curiosity and achieve the perfection needed to become that ideal I now see so little of among the expats and nationals I meet in different countries? Is the cosmopolite the product of a process or just of situation and circumstance mixed with a being who can get along and contribute in any encounter anywhere?

One of the characteristics of the cosmopolite as I have encountered and observed is that s/he is well read. And becoming cultured, if that is what may be required would include reading. But: ". . . The Great American Novel—-always capitalized, like the United States of America itself—-has to be a book that contains and explains the whole country, that makes sense of a place that remains, after 230-odd years, a mystery to itself." (This from a recent article by Adam Kirsch in the //Harvard Review// on the American novel and lit crit.) This is a sentence that confounds me. I am interested in the part about "a mystery to itself."

Is it the novel that is a mystery to itself or the country? I take it syntactically that it is the country. But a novel about a country that is a mystery to itself is a novel that is a mystery to itself? Okay, that doesn't necessarily follow, but still at least this novel is incomplete in some sense. If your subject (individual, group, country) has no complete awareness/understanding, then other than stating that view, the writing, the novel, reflects that partial //selfie// view. It has to point that out or describe it in some limited way to draw  that conclusion. (Oh that word. You know which one. Grates. The first and last time I will use it.) And stating that fact, that the country hasn't completed its homework on knowing itself, would seem to imply that the writer understands more than the country or the great book does; therefore, s/he is more omniscient (is that possible?) than the GAN or its author? Thus we have little use for the cultural icon we have revered?

I am confounded, although I have read novels that I could not get a complete handle on yet still found great, at least better/more challenging--i.e. richer--than the pulp variety. If all this comes down to this, that a novel is a mystery to itself, then perhaps it is not worth bothering with? I don't know.

However, I have addressed this matter elsewhere, and I take the liberty to repeat the salient stuff here. Unpublished paper "'Better' Stereotypes: A Model for Getting Beyond (Useless) Surfaces."

[illustration]

To see and understand a culture one must move below the surface of things from one's own perspective to the inside as seen and understood from the position of the other. Experience of and in a culture can aid this movement to the inside. Cultural informants, broadly defined, can help interpret things observed, and not observed except by the him or her, such that useful insights are confirmed or uncovered for the observer. Penetration into the culture is a function of the depth of information and insights the observer has access to. What may sometimes be tacit and difficult to articulate can be loosened from its embeddedness by more careful observation and persistent inquiry. Some of the most useful but most difficult roots of behavior lie at the core, in strata of bedrock as it were, not readily available even to the most astute observers and insiders. What is needed is more information and knowledge, or perhaps dramatic events, to shake loose the unconscious and inarticulate ground. With these, and perhaps in crisis times, what a person or a people characteristically does can be more easily seen, and why they do it may be more easily understood.

So there may always be stuff that is a mystery to us. Not being able to make all transparent need not be an indictment against the GAN or anything or anyone else. To shed the coat of culture may not be entirely possible. My apologies to my Israeli friend. But unbuttoning it and tying it round one's waist may be indeed possible as evidenced by the cosmopolite I have been trying to characterize and have met from time to time.

The room fills with an elephant. Religion.

---

What was it about this novel, Fowles' //The Magus//, on the BBC's list of the 100 books of the twentieth century to be read, that brought me back and back again to it for a number of years? I am reading it again after a twenty-year hiatus, and I realize now but do not recall ever re-reading it for this reason: that it is a portrait of myself, give or take some details, at the same age as it was written. The Greek references and allusions were familiar. I had a classical education from secondary right through college and graduate school. I taught English. I worked in a private school abroad in a culture I could hardly penetrate. The passages in French I could read, having had many years of school French based on reading and translation. I had a young man's dark night of the soul and began coming out of it after my few short years abroad. I had an affair with a woman I thought I loved but left because I had to. I contracted a sexual disease for which I had to be treated. I deceived myself and others about who I was. I contemplated suicide but backed down because I chose to live a shallow life. I flirted with existentialism as a field of study and way of life. I felt profoundly alone and sought to free myself from obligations. I wrote poetry and aspired to become an artist. And there is more but assured the point has been made. I identify with Urfe unreservedly.

My memory serves me thus: I read and re-read the book because of the mysteries. They were, I thought, masterful and sensual and beyond my experience but would that that could have happened to me, including meeting a man and women so much more interesting and complex and advanced than I. Then the revised edition came out, and I just completed reading that; I am left wondering what it was I read before, what I experienced, what drew me back and back again to the first edition. The revised version will draw me back in to cycles of re-reading?

---

New year's resolutions--this time round. For the last several years I have been able to accomplish what I set out to do beginning on the first of the year. Memorable among these has been not so much the elimination of the F-word from my audible repertoire but the most judicious and appropriate use of it. No longer does it just pop out unawares. I am aware of when and how I choose to use it. Much better, especially for the company I sometimes find myself in. Then last year was to reduce or eliminate reading the daily news. I have weaned myself of this time-wasting habit. Much going on in the world is still the same, I am told. The ills of the world are not solved by knowing about what the media wants me to focus on. So there.

This year there are two resolutions. Write everyday from morn till at least 2 PM, and administer what I must after that.

Let me address the latter. I live in a country not my own, but still this applies to wherever I have ever lived. Demands on your time to just keep things going and legal and taken care of require huge amounts, gobs of Time. And now that I am older and more mature, it takes huge amounts of energy better spent on more important stuff. If I go out shopping and to the post office to pay a bill, I get home and don't want to do much else than have lunch and a nap. Then the day and impeti have gone. Got to light the late afternoon fire, walk the dog, do the dishes, answer an email or two . . . you see, day gone, all because I was administering and not being the person who enjoys some special things I know that I do supremely. Best to put all that first and if and as necessary, take care of the administrivia. Think of it. Administering your life. Endless trivia. Get a blood test. Take it to the doctor to see if you need your medications adjusted. Fill the prescriptions. Go to the tax office to see if I owe taxes on the house. I don't. Not yet. The tax office doesn't know. Come back four days before the deadline in two weeks. We might be able to tell you then. (I live in Italy. Enough said.) Whew. What a waste. And who cares if I have all my official papers in order? Has someone ever come round and asked me to show the various obscure bits before I get tossed out of Europe? No.

---

You don't fool me with that innocent outfit and expression, although you would behold me. You cannot relieve by me the burning desire which consumes you now from inside. Besides, you are too young, too different, too vapid, too . . . too. . . . It has nothing to do with me.

---

Thought experiment: If we allowed everyone from 5 years of age up to own a gun, what would happen?

•  A small, mostly passive proportion of the populace would object vocally and then retreat to mumbling and solitary protests in private and out of sight.
•  A large proportion of the populace would embrace the freedom and call it a right not a privilege.
•  A large proportion of these would acquire guns.
•  The guns and munitions industries would institute a holiday where everyone was encouraged to shoot their guns off to the air above in unison at noon and gather later for a barbeque and gun games. Among these there would be 21-gun salutes, wild random shooting with cries of yippee, and some tears at wounds and casualties perpetrated by the careless and untrained.
•  Annually we would witness more mass shootings but eventually accept them as the cost of freedom. No more tears need be shed. Shit happens.
•  A small proportion of crazies would do crazy things like hold people hostage, snipe at passersby, kill someone because of a verbal disagreement or unjust job termination, etc.
•  A very small proportion of experienced gun owners would see religion and give up their arms and campaign for the repeal of the freedom, without success.
•  Criminals would continue to use guns to get what they wanted, but increase their arsenals to newer technologies to accomplish the same end. To stay competitive, you know.
•  Non-gun owners would be marginalized and deemed impolitically correct or worse. They would become a new discriminated-against group with appropriate epithets to describe them.
•  Foreign visitors to the country would decrease.
•  TV shows and documentaries and infodocu re-enactments would increase showing us more and more violent scenes to savor before bedtime.
•  Since 5 year olds would be entitled to a gun, they would find new products to badger their parents about--pink or blue pint-sized rifles and pistols made of plastic that shoot real bullets, one at a time, just for safety.
• Laws would be enacted to prevent carrying firearms into designated places such as the men's room at the local movie theater, the garage of a friend, the desert . . . places where the likelihood of accident or perpetration would be less or more . . .

---

This writing is not for you, being the flippant that you say you are. Just a moment. A flippant, that's a noun? as in I am a flippant? I think you are coining a new usage, although. . . . There is an alleged use of flippant as a noun on the fan and lyrics interpretation pages for the alternative L. A. metal band, Tool. We have this snippet of their song lyrics for 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2): "Ignorant flippants in the congregation/ Gather around spewing sympathy,/ Spare me." The question is not settled, I allege, for the various sites that transcribe or copy lyrics, the word in question may be siblings or fibbers, or?

So back to the point. You are a flippant, one who makes flip comments. Does that mean you are also a flipper? Perhaps one of these usages will become the word of the year!

Aw, let's not pursue this fluff  further. So, back to the point.

The Bible as fiction. This is an amusing story at least from the point of view of a pastor's recent claim, or should I more politely say limited world (Google news story about this; not worth referencing here.) Turns out that the Bible can be read in different ways--as history, for example--thereby creating all manner of fools and adepts. As "lead pastor at the nondenominational Discovery Church in Simi Valley," I assume he is credentialed somehow and qualified/enlightened enough to be amazed and forgiving, as he admits. He will still shop at Costco. I like that. Spending money as one's good deed. As if shopping or shopping wherever mattered. Now that's amusing.

See, we are such fluff as dreams are made of--from our foundations to our everyday civic, artistic and intellectual assets. Now this is tragedy or comedy, depending upon how your day is going, which I hope is well.

As for the store's apologizing for "misclassifying" the holy book, we are a people ever vigilant to root out honest errors and poor judgement in the use of "our" language, while at the same time committing misdeeds and sins against those not like us who we think threaten us in some as-yet-to-be-proved ways.

---

I have packed the poem (the one from an earlier post about Dave and a chair) with what we both (Dave and I) like. Humor (amusement) and ideas.

The poem pits performance against reclining. The reader is left with a choice, if not amusement. That choice is the great idea. Which is to be preferred? Alternatively, one can wonder the significance of the Dave of the chair fame. Who would this be who prefers not to act or do? A nihilist, lazy person, someone tired of life's demands? And does any of it matter?

Sometimes the question is more important than an answer, for without questions, where would we be? . . . in the recliner smiling or snoozing.

TO BE CONTINUED

Black ether

A young ballet dancer, in white petal-pleated dress, bejeweled about the middle with hair done up and head slightly bowed, on the toes of her left foot she faced the flames and smoke. Her arms were straight outstretched so that she framed from top to bottom the soldier in the fire, left hand pointing to his feet [sic.] and right the top of his head, thereby forming as it were the sides of a not-quite right isosceles triangle and he the hypotenuse. She floated in a black void as if she, illustrating a point, or on the cusp of some magic, would  command release of the solder from his peril.

The soldier stood straight suspended in fire and as if at his guard post before the change at an appointed hour, smartly dressed in red jacket and blue pants and a musket with bayonet at his side all uniformly at attention. He stood without expression. His feet must have been cooking and his head must have been swirling like the flames and smoke that surrounded him bottom to top. Would he awake from dutiful unquestioning with the redeeming life form holding him in her arms?

It seems neither beauty nor art nor some magical intervention can break the spell of those so dutiful and consumed unawares in a moment of, I don't hesitate to say, unconscious catastrophe.

But all this is mere speculation on an imagined image made lifeless and external on a printed page.

What draws one is the two figures in the order presented all consumed by the blackest of black ether and the perfect paisley patterns of smoke that reveal what we are viewing is not real, at least not of this world. The life the picture creates is in our minds, as well as the comparisons and comments we would make about what we see. What we experience may be far different from that which you see.

Thus, lifeless it is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steadfast_Tin_Soldier

Perps hidin' out

I got this email today in response to mine, which I agree was a bit harsh. The reference is to a "joke" circulating on the Internet having to do with who will pay for Mrs. Obama's high school reunion, with supposed picture of her classmates. Mr. Hass was one of those who forwarded the material to others which eventually got to me. My final thoughts below.

[BEGIN MESSAGE]

Fred Hass
Today at 9:12 PM
To K. Mactavish

It isn't a joke.
It is the truth.
Painful isn't it?
Also, I did not send you an email.
And, as usual, with no rational argument, one resorts to name-calling.

ORIGINAL MESSAGE

From: "K. Mactavish"
To: fredhass@comcast.net
Sent: Sunday, December 8, 2013 11:04:03 AM
Subject: bs from lesser beings

I am a recipient of an email "joke" titled THE NEXT THING...

For even considering sending this picture and comment, or creating them, you are among the saddest miscreants and racists I have ever received a message from. Not funny. Seems like you never learned anything in life or school about civil behavior and getting along with people who are different from you. And you are different in a way that says that many of us do not want your crappy thoughts or sense of humor. Try putting the shoes on of the other and walking two baby steps forward instead of back into bigotry and the mists of ignorance.

Sincerely,
an offended party of one, and there may be more

[END MESSAGE]

I guess I should apologize for calling Fred a lesser being, but it appears he is if he believes the joke is not intended to get a laugh, or a grunt like, "Hey, real clever, dude." But I won't. If he believes in this "truth" as he claims, let him. He is beyond saving or talking to.

Eugene Murphy replied this way.

[BEGIN MESSAGE]

Eugene Murphy
Today at 8:36 PM
To K. Mactavish
I didn't send you an Email.

[END MESSAGE]

Sorry, Gene baby, you are not primarily responsible for my getting a copy of the message you forwarded. And that surely exonerates you?

Final thoughts. It does seem to me that spreading the word is spreading the word, and in this case--negative and disrespectful words with illustration--does not help the world become a better one. Thoughtless, I say. Plus, it appears Fred and Eugene can't read very well. My original message from the first words were that you email-forwarders did more than consider "sending this picture and comment" on to others. You actually did. The original message I got attests to your role in the chain.

Some of these enlightened baby boomers--I'm pretty sure this label fits these guys--need to slip silently out of any circle of influence they may be muttering around in. The world has heard enough from them.

Okay, okay. I didn't need to start this battle. But per earlier posts here, I think racism and like-stupid attitudes tiresome. I want to say, "Grow up, get a brain, and a heart."

Have I exposed--oops--some perps hiding in, I think, California? Perhaps I shouldn't have . . . nah. Too much fun smokin' 'em out.

http://www.zdnet.com/mapping-racist-tweets-where-post-election-hate-came-from-7000007202/

Later.

Brutally direct messages in reply to brutish behavior don't work. I admit my defeat--these guys just don't see their part in the mischief of forwarding email messages. Which brings up a practical response.

Getting a message sent or forwarded to you is your private business. Forwarding a message to some people you want to read or see it, you  enter public space, a message now conceivably viewable by anyone with email in the world. Forward a message without editing it, at least deleting other names and addresses of people who already got it, you are doing a disservice.

All this should be obvious, but the unwitting reveal themselves to be who they are.

Mea culpas

1

'We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people's lives,' the document continued. 'Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism . . .'*

Have you ever possessed a document or authored one which had as its purpose promoting a political or ideological cause? This is serious. Think back. Yes you have. No? How about checking the bookshelf. Got a book up there authored directly or indirectly, unfortunately unsigned, by an extraordinary person?

A document that could endanger people's lives? I know I wrote one or two. You too, I suspect, and that is all I need to do these days, suspect.

In the spirit of an early confession will earn some lenience, here are some recent examples--partial mea culpas--of the terrorism that I am, I suppose, guilty of. You don't have to search far. Quotes from this blog. They came from me and I confess I in that sense possess 'em.

I said what? "One thing that seems to work always is to beat anyone's sorry ass who doesn't agree with you or do what you say."

OK, I made an accusation: "Holding companies accountable has in the past seen decision makers in those companies and the regulatory agents they have worked with walk away from the messes they have had a direct hand in causing."

Oops, incriminating evidence: This year I proposed petition for "Obama and the administration to: provide foreign state officials in undeclared war zones real time locations of enemy combatants and warfare preparations."

Name calling, and so what? I called everyone I knew and didn't who were perpetrating the present craziness on this planet a "jihadist of any stripe".

I wonder if there will be an unexpected knock on my door soon. And just this wondering is a sign that an average person exposed to popular media these days and using just a bit of grey matter will legitimately know we have entered a new era of spookiness. Today we don't blame the Nazis but our "protectors of freedom".

2

I broke the resolution made some months ago and renewed just two months ago--not to read mainstream news. Moment of weakness. But now that I have done so and ranted on about something I found, I should take steps to remedy my own contribution to any misunderstandings in the above matters.

It is all about context. My sins and others you may find here on this blog demand that you read the words around them. I believe you will find my peccadilloes not even worthy of the word. Go ahead, read on. Prove me wrong.

Good call. A waste of time. Now the quote I started out with, do we need a context in this case? We do not. I have already addressed the matter of the content of what has been said--at the first level of comprehension. The second level is this.

Miranda. Miranda is a feminine given name of Latin origin, meaning "worthy of admiration" (per Wikipedia). And he is a partner in a same-sex relationship with someone who has been outspoken about matters in the public face such as Wikileaks yea or nay. Oh, the reverberations of associations and ironies. But that is not the best of it.

This guy, because he had in possession some words of a character that most everyone has read or said (see above), could disclose. And it is because he could disclose he was detained and labeled a terrorist.

We are all terrorists, and if anyone finds out what you are thinking or have on your bookshelf, hell has frozen over and we are doomed to a wasteland covered by the thickest ice in human society and relations that we have ever known, but often feared and glimpsed on the horizon.

Like the thought police and re-education camps and political correctness and all the rest of it, we are trying to live in homogeneous and simpler times. Funny thing is, they never were, in spite of Moses and his or his mentor's prohibitions against coveting, er immoral thoughts. Some are singing the same theme song these days we have already heard, but not all of us like that music and won't dance.

And now I do think someone is at the door. . . . Gotta stop reading the news.
---
* See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/02/david-miranda-terrorism-glenn-greenwald-british_n_4199838.html

Weapons grade*

If anyone other than the named recipient reads these words, they are all fictitious and for entertainment only, not meant as threat to or subversive re anyone or any government, especially my own snoopy one.

Revelations about NSA covert operations against U.S. citizens prompted this disclaimer at the bottom of my email messages, a blanket to cover whatever I wrote and sent from wherever from now on, usually from here outside the borders of the U.S. I thought then, why other than my location would anyone be interested in what I wrote to anyone by email. What keywords would they use to bring my name and content up on their screens?

In the Daily Mail in May of 2012, we get a list of keywords "used by government analysts to scour the Internet for evidence of threats to the U.S." The list in part looks like this, with examples from some of my email messages, typos and malaprops included. I thought by putting this out I could save Homeland Security a bit of trouble.

By the by. What are we doing publishing a list of keywords? and these keywords? Do we think that those planning ill will actually use any of these? for real? Where is a Snowden when you really need one?

Afghanistan: There's this great new restaurant down the street run by some guys from Afghanistan. I didn't know it was allowed to serve goat here just steps away from the stock exchange in New York. They are in disguise there. They don't look Afghan. They don't wear a kameez or lungee.

Al Qaeda: The photo on my German driver's license, valid for life, looks like I am a member of Al Qaeda. Check out my beard! It was a late hippie phase I went through. You know, rebellious. I was in Munich when those fellows in arms killed the Israeli athletes. That's when I got it.

Iraq: The first year of teaching in the Soviet bloc as an academic exchange pro of sorts, I had this young talkative student from Iraq. We conspired to elude the guys tailing us and have coffee and a chat, both of us being foreigners.

Agro and Chemical: My wife works these days at an agriturismo, you know, a farm where they don't use chemicals in anything agro. All natural. No worries about poisons in your food. Aren't the use of chemicals in growing things a kind of bio-terrorism? I'm sure the Italians think so.

Assassination: I classify the killing of Martin Luther King as an assassination, don't you, Mohamed?

Attack: I think this whole domestic spying thing is an attack on our privilege of privacy. No one ever had any right to privacy and will not from now on if we continue to support our government's policies in this regard!

Authorities: I have to give it to the Italian authorities. They are a mob protecting their own and eliminating, in all legal, illegal and subversive ways, foreigners of all colors.

Weapon: I doubt any terrorist puts in an email, "Hey Christian, what is your weapon of choice in this crusade to convert? An egg salad sandwich? Careful the eggs don't blow apart in that pot. Lotta heat and pressure will detonate eggs." Exploding eggs, what a concept.

Conventional: I am so conventional that no one would bother to go beyond the subject line of my specially encoded messages. How do they do that html stuff in an email message anyway? It is encryption enough for the ordinary government worker, I would guess.

Cops: Johnny is so cute. I am a little concerned, though. We played cowboys and Indians when we were kids. Now he plays cops and drug dealers. And the plastic guns. They are just like uncle's assault rifle in that cabinet, the one with the glass door I should point out. What is this world coming to? What is my family coming to?

Dirty bomb: She had this fantastic dirty bomb hair, and I thought it was real. Turns out she used some chemicals from the cabinet. I thought she said momonium or something. My hair dresser friend said it was probably peroxide, if she made it at home.

Disaster management: I came home and the kids and babysitter--I could have killed them all. I went into disaster management mode right away Someone should have called 911 or FEMA or someone to clean up the mess before I got home!

Domestic security: The man said it would give us all a feeling of domestic security at home. Little did I know that Uncle Pedro were code words for a pedophile program that infected my home computer network like a virus from Iran. I am glad they installed that ante-virus program on our network. But Ralph needs to put a password on the system still.

Drill: You know the drill. Here at Kindergarten Madrass we line the little bastards up and ask who did it. One of them you can be sure burnt that book and told someone he did it. Training these kids these days is like training a terrorist. They each have their own ideas about how to act in a modern daycare facility. We are so vulnerable to subversive little acts of rebellion. And stealing the lunch snacks like that, too.

Eco terrorism: Eco-terrorism these days takes you to the most exotic places, places where no will know where you are and what you are doing. Best way to get away . . . from it all. I recommend slipping away unnoticed so no one will ask questions before you split. No one here at the office will notice you are gone for a few days. You need time off. Avoid the burn out, I say.

Enriched: You know those corporate guys get enriched while we peons eat peanuts. I am so envious of the one percent. Why, I could become a militant Occupy member.

Terrorist: I ain't no terrorist. But if I was, I'd bomb first and ask questions later, just like Americans. I could be the Great Satan with those little Jihadists. Funny expression, no? Like I would really use a chemical weapon on those Italian flies. Sticky paper will do the job just fine. Just be patient till they get caught in their own curiosity.

Exercise: They say it is good for everyone. So why don't they make a law about that? Exercise yourself to death!

Improvised explosive device: My wife said her IED failed her and now she is expecting. I was so not expecting this.

Law enforcement: Law enforcement? No worry. Not here in Italy. Got a little something baksheeshish to seal the deal?

Mitigation: It's invasion mitigation. I like the sound of that. Olive trees are vulnerable just like any other old tree.

Example of mitigation with deadman.

Momonium: (See entry for Dirty bomb.)

Nitrate: I wonder if the salami has nitrates? Doesn't that mean that one could explode?

National preparedness: The news is full of what to do. I remember when we were told to hide under our desks in the name of national preparedness. Do you think a nuclear device gives a damn about a wooden desk?

Nuclear: My nuclear family includes Mario, Maria, Massimo and Giuseppina. We are our own little Mafia and would go on a rampage if we didn't get our daily dose of pasta.

Prevention: (What terrorism planner would use this word and how?)

Recovery: (What terrorism planner would use this word? a banker?)

Response: (What terrorist teachers ask for every time there is a question. Where is a Snowden . . . )

Target: (Which shopper doesn't know about this place?)

Weapons grade: When we lived in Mexico it was really dangerous, what with the gangs and dead competitors along the road that you read about. We worried a lot about that, always on alert. And the chilli peppers! Now, that was weapons grade stuff. Blast your ass off the day after, not to mention incinerating your mouth and stomach.

Continue. So ridiculous I can't.

---
*Department of Homeland Security's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder'

Is English an easy language?

[An experiment. The intended audience is not clear, as is clear from how it is written. Will rewrite, maybe.]

The Czech says "no interpreting", which should be OK.
The sign has thus two messages!
Don't interpret. Bad advice.
Don't translate. Good advice.

The answer I most often hear to this question is that English is an easy language to learn, at first. You can start speaking in one or two lessons. Advanced learners of English do not fill up courses when they are offered, but if you happen to encounter one who is studying formally, in a school for example, or informally, that is they are seriously studying on their own, these students will say that to speak, read, and write English well is quite difficult (listening and comprehending is another subject to be treated separately).

All too often this question is an implied comparison. Is English easy to learn compared with (usually) one's own language? If this is the meaning, the answer is meaningless. One's native language is learned in an entirely different way from a foreign language. There are only opinions and conjectures to be made of how one learned one's own language in cultural and immersive environments, which give learning from birth or before a most seamless quality. The foreign language requires methods and materials and structured and planned unstructured activities leading to acquisition. So enough about which is easier to learn.

Is learning English easy compared with another in the same language family (e.g., German)? Yes, perhaps. A different language family (e.g., Vietnamese)? No, perhaps not. Compared with another foreign language one has already studied? Well, here it gets even more interesting. Yes and no.

If you have studied another language and know the technical ins and outs of your own, I suspect, and research should bear this out, each additional language provides a broader base with which to associate anything deemed linguistically different or new for you. In other words, the more you know languages and how they are put together and what they share between and among one another, the easier a new one will be.

One thing that makes English a bit more challenging sometimes is that it adds many new words and expressions in general and specialized versions each year. So can anyone know English perfectly? No. Just as you can't know your own unless it is geo-culturally isolated or dead, which might be the same thing.

"But in my language we have one word for what you in your language--you have to use many words."

And so what is the point? Your language is better? Or mine is for the same reason? Is one word better than many or vice versa? This is a fine objection to the value of a language, or reservation about learning one, but it is again without much merit--in my opinion. Linguists and others should weigh in on this one. Here is my take.

Each language is translatable in that you can say with your word or words what I can say in my language, and I can do the same the other way round. The so-called lost nuances in a translation can always be articulated, and so if these are important or critical, an astute speaker-translator will fill in the missing pieces. If, however, I prefer to use a foreign word where an abundance of my own would substitute, plus I like the sound and sense, or the "je ne sais quoi" of the chosen foreign word or expression, so be it. I as a speaker in an increasingly international and multi-lingual world can use what says it best for me. And when I just want to use a word common in my social circles, yet foreign, I will. And people do. "Quatsch!" (So much more melodic than nonsense or bullshit, don't you think?

So where do I weigh in on this question of whether English is "an easy language"? After a number of years of having taught English as a foreign language and listening to countless non-native speakers every day, English is a wonderfully colorful and communicative language but difficult to learn at the higher levels. And not many students of the language get to the most proficient levels.

Dave's day

A recliner is a wonderful thing,

better than Google or Microsoft's Bing.

Let me sit my ass down

before I up and frown

for the work I would do--

should, could, must, or have to.

Today's next day's yester,

and time just a jester.

Yes, I'll get to it soon,

first I'll recline 'nd swoon.

I'll be comfy and warm.

Nawt nuttin I need do

'fore my life becomes goo;

and stuck to the pleather

I'll just watch the weather.

I shun all who perform!