Ever wonder why hockey is so violent?

For those still laboring under the impression that Canada is somehow more civilized than elsewhere – particularly its southern neighbor:

http://thegallopingbeaver.blogspot.com/2010/11/bubbles-buddies-strike-again.html

The most amazing thing about this video, aside from the victim having her brassiere cut off and her clothing removed, is the behavior of the female police officer. She completely fakes out her male colleagues by pretending to be hit. She then waddles about in counterfeit pain, egging them on.

For those still laboring under the impression that women are somehow more civilized than others – particularly men.

For more police funnies from the north, go to cathiefromcanada.blogspot.com and look at the antics during the G20 summit in Toronto.

This. American. Life.

Mother. Father. Toy. Sibling. Insult. Hormone. Embarrassment. Professor. Exam. Dating. Job. Dating. Backpack. Rent. Marriage. Job. Diaper Disposal. Mortgage. Car Pool. Job. Gym. Adultery. Tuition. Divorce. Rehab. Dating. Illness. Grandchildren. Origami. What?

Theodicy With Bubbles

The Cathars taught us that nature is the creation of an evil god. Francis of Assisi preached to the birds, claiming that the goodness of god manifested itself in nature. Science has now settled that nature is neither good nor evil, but, generally, it’s not that pretty. Kind of nasty, actually.

Augustine said, more or less, that humans have free will, but generally only to exercise it in the service of evil. Thanks a lot, Augustine. Some of the more radical gnostic sects said that once you were an initiate, once you possessed the gnosis, you could do whatever the hell you pleased. You had transcended morality and that in doing evil you were, in fact, doing good. Or neither.

My friend George sells tropical fish. This year, at the annual fish convention in Ohio, Thor, his favorite cichlid, won Best in Show, First Prize in his category, and People’s Choice. Thor has won these awards two years in a row. How does a fish win People’s Choice? “Look him in the eye, Steve, he’s got such fucking attitude!”

But I digress.

George has another fish, whose name I didn’t catch. But we were introduced. He’s big, from Madagascar, and his natural habitat has almost disappeard. He won First Prize in his category, too. George has found a girfriend for him. He takes her from her tank, puts her in a water-filled plastic bag and shows her to the big fellah. “He’s definitely interested, but he can’t have her till next year,” George says. “No girls for you, buddy! You’re gonna win another show. You can’t lose your focus!”

George is clearly god here. Is he evil? Or good?

And what about Ms. Madagascar? Does no one ever ask her opinion?

I confess to being spiritually confused here.

All Quiet

About fifteen years ago, I published a book on the First World War entitled Back to the Front. As today is the momentous anniversary of its conclusion in 1918, let’s recall what went on in during its last days. At the time, after four years of hell, everyone referred to the conflict as The War To End All Wars.

Right.

Anyway, here is what I wrote:

“The Allied attacks then came in quick succession, forcing the German warlords to scramble to send their ever-depleting number of reinforcements to help manage an orderly retreat. On August 20, the French attacked again on the Aisne; the following day the British hit north of Albert. By the time the Americans went into action at St. Mihiel the Germans had retreated in Picardy once again to the Hindenburg Line. Even that could not be held. The Belgians and the British finally broke through at Ypres, as the Americans pressed up in the Argonne in late September. Soon every Allied army was attacking as the German army slowly backed its way through Belgium and northern France.

“At home, imperial Germany began to fall apart. The autocratic government and the privations of wartime could be endured no longer. Riots broke out, sailors mutinied, and a new liberal chancellor was appointed to work real reforms with the Reichstag. Ludendorff resigned his post on October 27 – and would remain in obscurity until 1923, when he participated in Hitler’s failed beer-hall putsch in Munich. In early November, 1918, the Second Reich finally collapsed under the pressure of mounting chaos, and the Kaiser, forced to abdicate, fled to the Netherlands. The newly constituted republic consented to the Allied terms for surrender and the armistice was signed in Field-Marshal Foch’s railway carriage in a clearing of the Compiègne forest. The papers were initialed in the early hours of November 11, 1918. A few seconds before eleven o’clock that same morning, one observer with the South African troops in Flanders saw a German machine-gunner fire off a scorching hail of bullets toward their trenches. At the stroke of eleven, the gunner stood up, made a deep bow, turned around, and walked away.

“The war was over. Princip’s bullet had caused some 67 million men to don uniforms and go to fight. One in every six of these men was killed. Of the remainder, approximately half were wounded. On the Western Front alone, more than 4 million had died in their ditches.”

Shame. Period.

Today’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”, shows how debased journalism and public discussion of world affairs have become. The authors claim that the New Start treaty with Moscow will undermine natural security. Shaving off a few nuclear warheads from the American stockpile will somehow lessen this country’s ability to destroy the entire planet multiple times over. The recent election, they claim in a delusional crescendo, hinged on this issue.

But what stands out are the op-ed’s authors. One is John Bolton, the discredited American unilateralist. Suckled for years by far-right think tanks, Bolton is considered as a strangelovian clown abroad, the type of screaming, bellicose, inhumane hawk that all empires belch out from time to time. Naturally, he was Bush’s guy at the UN for a couple of years. If your family dies in a war soon, look no further than Bolton for the reason.

It gets better. The other author is John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney-general. Yoo is famous for penning the “torture memo,” effectively tearing up US principles and international engagements for the sake of unfettered, brutal presidential power. Now this paragon of human decency, this technocrat of torture, this profoundly impaired apparatchik, is somehow an expert on arms control. Nuclear weaponry! Were it not so terrifying, it would be laughable. Torquemada meets Clausewitz, minus the intellect.

UC Berkeley, to its everlasting shame, has kept this immoral homunculus on its faculty, and now the Times publishes him.

There may very well be something to discuss on the the New Start treaty. But I would trust my local school crossing guard’s opinion on the subject before I would listen to either of these two guys. There is absolutely no reason to publish thoroughly illegitimate voices on matters of importance. There are places for these voices – it’s called Fox News.

Perhaps the Times is hoping to bump up circulation. What’s next? An etiquette column for Rush Limbaugh, a legislator’s diary by Jim DeMint, an ethics rubric for Tom DeLay?

John Yoo and John Bolton on nuclear armaments – somewhere in a forest, there are trees weeping over this waste of newsprint.

The editors of the New York Times, apparently, do not take their paper seriously. Do they really expect us to keep reading it?

His Place in History

Now that the Aristotle of Crawford, Texas, is once again in the spotlight, arguing with his usual moral clarity on decisions made during his tenure as Philosopher-King, let us remind ourselves just how he escorted us back to the fourteenth century. From the opus minor currently crimping my blogging style:

"This torture section, given Bernard’s persuasive proclivities, must have been riveting. Doubtless, his enumeration of medieval inquisitorial techniques was colorful and exhaustive. The “queen of torments” was the strappado, in which the victims’ hands would be tied behind his back, and then, the loose end of the rope coil having been played across a ceiling beam, he would be raised into the air, his outstretched, distended arms bearing his full weight. Heavy objects might be tied to his feet, to make the contortion even more unbearable. This torment might initially last only a few minutes – the time, it was suggested canonically, for the holy inquisitor to intone a prayer – before being renewed if the results proved unsatisfactory. Further inducements to contrition included the leg-screw, whereby the calves of the person being questioned would be placed in a vise-like contraption, the two concave metal plates on either side of the leg slowly tightened to induce excruciating pain.

"The inquisitor had other refinements, which Bernard would have taken care to relate in detail. For women and children, binding of the wrists tightly by coarse wet cord, then unbinding them and starting up the process once again, with even more force, was considered humane. Other extremities could be useful as well. Savagely beating the soles of the feet was fairly common. This sent pain rioting up through the body. For obdurate people, an inflammable liquid could be splashed on the feet and then set alight. This attention to the body’s extremities arose from the duty of the pious Christian, then as now, to avoid causing major organ failure. Another common technique entailed sleep deprivation. Forty hours of enforced sleeplessness came to be considered the happy mean. Further treatments common in Carcassonne included the rack, and other means of stretching and dislocating (which sometimes came accompanied by the judicious application of hot brands), and the shock of freezing cold water. Simulated drowning, known today as waterboarding, would not have been beyond the ken of the Dominican technicians seeking the truth."

Wilde Weighs In

On the wisdom of putting back into power the people who got you into the mess in the first place:

“The most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being the queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendée voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.”

Replace starved peasant with grinning unemployed white guy with his remote set to Fox, and you’ll see Oscar’s point.

The Pentateuch for Muggles

Since everyone in the US is thinking about either the election today or the result of the North American men’s hardball championship last night (during which the celebrities in the Texas Rangers’ War Criminal Loge looked so disappointed), it might be an opportune time to change the topic to another burning issue of the moment. How about reconciling religion and sorcery? Readers in Delaware, take note.

Courtesy of the O’Shea Bible Braintrust™, which consists of a has-been, a teen and a tween, a useful guide to the fab five:

Ginny’s sis by marriage is Hermione Granger.

“Voldermort’s evil hex awed us,” said Dumbledore and Snape.

Leave it to cousin Dudley to ruin Harry’s childhood!

“The books sold in such great numbers,” giggled Joanne all the way to the bank, “that I’m thinking of auctioning off my laundry lists!”

“Due to Ron and me,” Harry boasted, “Hogwarts has been saved.”

You are now free to retch in this mess of pottage.

The Fright Stuff

On moving here about a decade ago, I immediately noticed that Providence, Rhode Island, is best suited not for Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Fourth of July or St. Patrick’s Day, but for Halloween. The city looks the part. Creepy neighborhoods of eighteenth-century houses give way to large murky swaths of nineteenth-century mansion mania. Ill-lit streets, dead leaves swirling through the air, memories of native son H.P. Lovecraft and frequent visitor, Edgar Allan Poe, a large population of former art students with a love of the elaborately macabre and just a general crow-in-the-graveyard feel to its black autumn nights… the place is ideal for good, dark fun.

Take last night. After the kiddie stuff – though even that was punctuated with cemeteries on lawns and “statues” coming to life and screaming through their gore at the terrified trick-or-treaters – I decided to take a stroll with my younger daughter down a commercial street near our place (The elder, Pippi Longstocking, was at a friend’s watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

We passed someone with an axe buried in her head.

At a tea-shop we saw a sign: “Alice in Wonderland.” Fortunately, we had not changed out of our costumes. My daughter was still an orange and I remained Amelia Earhardt. As she loves Alice, we decided to go in.

At the counter, on barstools, no fewer than five shapely rumps clad in clinging vintage. A head turned… full scarlet lips. The women of Mad Men.

“What’s this got to do with Alice?” the orange asked.

“Look,” I said quickly, “There are playing cards on the wall.”

A Playboy bunny appeared before us.

“I’m the rabbit,” she said.

The orange looked at her dubiously.

“Want a cupcake?”

As the bunny jiggled off, a black guy came in wearing a suit of armor. His sword looked bloodstained.

“Here you are.” The bunny handed us two cupcakes, dark, dark haemoglobin-red.

“Maybe we should go?”

The orange nodded.

We walked back home, eating the cupcakes. From the doorway of a sushi restaurant, we heard a woman’s voice.

“Mmmm, those look soooo good!”

It was Morticia Addams.