Vats full of vino

 Stories from the TRV 

  

Yet another story of (good old) Jesus from the Ted Riich Version: “Vats Full of Vino” or “Let the Party Continue.” From John 2:1-11 . . . sort of.

For more TRV fun, click here.

 01.15.16 

 

Truth and hope - three from Uncle Albert

 Three from Uncle Albert 

 

Whatever you have heard, this is why we lie: it’s easier than telling the truth, which is more difficult to keep up with.

What we wish to be true is far dearer to us than what we know to be true.

All hope is vain, because the future is not only not yet, it is never yet.

 01.12.16 

 

Cousin, Cousin

 Cousin, Cousin 

If Calvin can write a commentary on a Synopsis of the Gospels, or whatever he calls it, surely I can follow one story through one gospel. We all skip around anyway, looking for what we want to find. Here’s what I found looking through the story of Jesus and his cousin John in Luke’s gospel: a mess – because John doesn’t have a clue, though like most of us he thinks he does: he thinks he has more than a clue; he’s pretty damn sure he has the truth.

I’ve called this Cousin, Cousin. It jumps through Luke 1, 3, 6, and 7. 

To find more stories from the TRV, Ted Riich Version of the Bible, click here.

 01.11.16

 

1st month, 8th day; 7-league boots

   1st month, 8th day; 7-league boots, limping   

Friday limps over the Blue Ridge into the Valley, one of its seven-league boots filling with blood. Jaw set, face blank with pain. Dull with cold. Limping.

She wouldn’t leave it alone, the woman with the wide mouth, the big blinking eyes, the big sinking breasts. She wanted what was hers, whatever it took.

Friday came limping into the Valley. She took it.

They go down into the water, Jesus and John. John pushes Jesus under. He bobs up, springs up out of the water, running shivering, half-naked into the sunlight. A dove flutters over, stuttering in the voice of God: “My son. Don’t doubt it.”

     Why should we? – we never doubted the prophets.

“Yeah, Dick – the words are silly; but it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it. Eight. I give it an eight.”

 01.08.16 

featuring Chris Christie as the Incredible Hulk

Fore, you stupid #@$^*!!

featuring Chris Christie as the Incredible Hulk

It’s really too cold to play golf where I live. That doesn’t prevent my sometime friend and golf partner Hamlin Moody from badgering me to play with him – because he doesn’t like to play alone. And he sometimes succeeds, on the warmer of the too cold days, because for both of us, the raw weather provides several good excuses for playing poorly: you lose “touch” as your hands lose feeling; it’s hard to take a free swing when you’re wearing so many layers; the ball doesn’t travel as far in the cold air, and it doesn’t roll any more than it does in the lush of summer, probably less as muddy as it seems to get even in the fairways; the greens, the color of mucus are harder to read, and just harder – they won’t hold anything.

     Not that either of us plays that much worse than we normally do; we just have more excuses for not playing as well as we think we should. I could play better incidentally, Moody says, if I were more “aggressive.” “You’re not half-bad,” he says, “but you could be better, if you were more aggressive.”

     I put “aggressive” in quotes, because here it’s golf jargon. I put it in sneer quotes, because it’s jargon I happen to dislike. Indeed, I dislike “aggressive” so much I wonder if I can play aggressively. According to my dictionary (Google-Smith’s Collegiate), the first meaning of aggression (from the early 1600s) is “unprovoked attack.” Why do I want to attack a piece of real estate that has done nothing to me? I don’t want to make war against the course, I want to play it.  I want to play it like a fish I plan to throw back; I want to play with it like a childhood friend.

     This is golf. It’s not football or lacrosse, UFC or GOP.

To me “aggression” is always angry. Maybe that’s why it’s entered the golf vocabulary; we’re all almost always angry these days, even golfers, who of all athletes have the least reason to be . . . and therefore the least reason to vote Republican.

     I’m not even pretending to make sense here, but here are some thoughts on anger that make sense to me. (They’re all by dead white males – don’t think I’m not aware of that. But most golfers I know are dead white males, so they apply to us at least. Actually, most of the Republicans that I know are dead white males, so they could also take note.)

They could note that anger impairs judgment, according to Aristotle. The emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments . . . . Such are anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites. – Rhetoric 1378^a20. That the best way to deal with it is not full speed ahead, take action immediately – carpet-bomb the entire Middle East with Chris Christie; according to Seneca, the best way to deal with anger is “hesitation.” Seek this concession from anger right away, not to gain its pardon, but that it may evidence some discrimination. The fist blows of anger are heavy, but if it waits [if you make it wait] it will think again. - On Anger II, 27.

          And it may concede, as Aquinas did, that revenge did no one any real good. Better to sorrow than to take revenge. And better, I say, to laugh than to sorrow. If Montaigne is right, we may not take revenge in any case; rather revenge may well take us. Anger does for sure. Aristotle says that anger sometimes serves as a weapon for virtue and valor. That may be, but it is a weapon whose use is novel. For we move other weapons, this one moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it. - Essays II, 31 “Of Anger.”

But if we do not hold it, we’ll grab it too, too quickly; and we won’t let it let us go, especially if we’re running for office. For anger is especially for the mighty. But, Proverbs 16:32: He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. A city or a county or a state or the Electoral College, especially when he could be playing golf. Though it's not bombing . . . anybody.

 01.07.16  

One smart fella he felt smart.

 One smart fella he felt smart. 

   i

I don’t know Susan Page. I have heard her on The Diane Rehm Show, but I don’t read her columns. However, I doubt the claim made for her that she can separate “the facts” from “the farce,” as if they were held in colloidal suspension. They are not; they are the two protons and two neutrons of helium, the most stable element.

   ii

Inspired by Hans Weigel (See here.) I have been writing analogies. For example,

• John the Baptist is to Jesus as screaming is to laughter.
• Diogenes is to Aristippos as biting one’s lip is to sticking out one’s tongue.
• Paul is to Jesus as sunburn is to sun.
• Voltaire is to Rousseau as reason is to reality TV
• Plato is to Diogenes as fork is to fingers.
• Trump is to Clinton (either Clinton) as Pinocchio is to Machiavelli.

   iii

If the purpose of analogy is to give a true sense of how the world works, these fail, because like Weigel’s analogies, the reasoning can be followed. The world – to the antick at least – is more skewed; its “reasoning” looks more like this.

• Pepper is to cinnamon as sponge is to pea gravel.
• A cross-cut saw is to concrete as constipation is to Salem, Oregon.
•  Randall Cunningham is to Little Miss Muffet as ocher is to okra.
•  The written word is to mountain air as Richard Nixon is to carry-on luggage.

In short, farce is to facts as facts are to farce. Suck in a bit of helium and say that four times really fast. Or this: One smart fella he felt smart. Two smart fellas they felt smart. Three smart fellas they felt smart. Four smart fellas . . . .

 01.04. 16 

Is God love?

  Is God love? 

Two of these analogies are by Hans Weigel, the Austrian absurdist, and two by me. Identify and discuss.

         Literature is to literary history as love is to gynecology.

        Faith is to theology as meal is to cookbook.

        Love is to faith as meal is to theology.

        Faith is to love as raincoat is to Greenland.

Invent your own. (Leave as comment.)

 12.28.15