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Reaction to a Couple Obituaries, to Include the First Ever (for this blog) Mildly Approved Sentiment

“(Person) loved his family and he spent his life in service of their welfare and happiness. Most recently, he found great joy in being a grandfather, investing an enormous amount of time and love doting on his dearest (two named grandsons). He also cared deeply for the larger community around him.”

– What is being hidden here? A “lifetime in service of their welfare and happiness”? That kind of lie can only mean bitter, bitter relationships and it also evinces a total misunderstanding of language. Sorry, it was rough being in his family folks, but a few words in the Sunday paper after he’s dead is not going to “manifest” anything pretty, let alone reach back into the past and fix the issues. And why is it wrong to pick out one or two people (from the billions) to love? Ever since whites learned the power of the phrase “black community”, they feel guilty if they don’t use part or all of it during supposedly momentous occasions. Just stop. We don’t live as members of some group which needs fancy and false descriptors any different than T-Rex or George Washington did.

****

Onto the first ever approved, if mildly, obituary assertion.

“He got a black lab puppy last year in April named Oslo. She was the best thing that had happen to him in quite some time. He never went anywhere without her, and they spent hours every day playing fetch with the tennis ball. He loved telling jokes and always had a smile on his face, despite away being described as grumpy ass sometimes.”

– What makes these sentiments worthy is they are fearless. Do you see? This dude lived a kinda shitty life (if a dog is the best thing to happen to you, then you’re having a “sour go”). I love the use of “tennis” to describe the ball—like anyone really cares what kind of ball it was. So quaint. I could do without the “ass”, and I wonder why no “air quotes” around “grumpy ass”, but the beauty is that whoever wrote this had some respect for the dead. I repeat: whoever wrote this respected this man. And the dead man obviously had threatened, or lived in a way which threatened, haunting whoever lied about him after his death.

So good work. This pairing of deceased and writer can teach us all a thing or two.

My Culture, A Review of Zombieland Double Tap, by Ruben Fleischer

Certain parts of life are incapable of being explained within the remaining time, and yet too important to be ignored—those parts are culture. I realized this a short while into my marriage to a woman not of my culture when I kept finding her seemingly unable to understand what I was doing, and for what reasons. Frustrated, I simply said, “Things are this way because it’s my culture.”

“‘My culture’,” she’ll repeat. “What is ‘my culture’?” remains her loving, if unbelieving, response in broken Engileezaynia.

Next time the situation presents itself, I will answer my wife’s surely earnest parry with, “Can you watch a movie? What am I thinking? Of course you can. So watch Zombieland Double Tap. When you understand it, then you will have your answer. Because that is my culture.”

What a great film. What a landmark.

Final Blog Name Change

Just a quick note to didactically state that this is still Captain’s Log, which became Pete’s Blog.

I recently changed it to: “The Impression I Get, I Give” after still feeing unresolved about what the blogs are supposed to convey. They are convey, and have always conveyed, impressions. They might just change your life, too, though. (It was an Emerson essay on Thoreau that recently brought the word “impression” to mind, if you must know.)

Are You Incited?

There’s another element that no one but me will dare to mention. Why won’t they? Because they’re actively pushing an agenda (being: life without consequences is the best life). This, of course, is their prerogative. All I ever ask is that we all tell the truth.

This post is not meant to rally the conservatives or preach to the choir. I am writing directly to literate BLMers. It is my intention to incite all three of them.

It’s not their attempt to deify the uncommonly poor decision maker George Floyd that bothers me. It’s that they also, indirectly and at times directly, idolize cowardly bystanders. The Bible commends the good Samaritan. BLM is the priest. BLM is the Levite.

This didn’t happen in the alleyway down below at 2:30am on Kitty Genovese Avenue. Having occurred during broad daylight doesn’t make the situation worse for the police, and it does make the situation worse for George Floyd. Hint—most folks (even those with vices) know that “night time is the right time” for shameful behaviors.

Wyatt Earp’s actions during the famous OK Corral shootout were captured by a journalist in the phrase that said Earp was “cool as a cucumber” during the gunfight. What law enforcement training program did Earp receive his certificate from, again? Which department would our wild ancestors have gone to to file a complaint against Earp? Dodge City? Anyone able to pull up those records quick? Siri, a little help?

You BLMers are so fed up with white supremacy and cops killing blacks that every time it happens you stop to watch the black man or woman die? And not just stop, but record the killing (and your cowardly inaction) for posterity sake? How do you sleep at night? All week we have read about how all those known as Gen Y, Millenials, Gen Z, iGen, and younger, those who see racism imprinted in the very institutions of America—in their own parents—so clearly and darkly, aren’t really even hopeful that Chauvin will be convicted. And all these self-same youngsters with the most penetrating eye, when they see a man being murdered, instead of help him, they capture it on film? Give me a break. You just didn’t want George and friends to head towards you when he got up. Tell the truth.

George Floyd would still be alive if just one observer—just one—would’ve taken action against the officers. The ensuing chaos would’ve, at the least, bought time for the man’s enlarged heart (why do I know the size of this man’s heart?) to slow down, and at the most, the ensuing chaos—lifesaving as it would’ve been—would’ve made the news for its model of a proper way to intervene the next time Ol’ Whitey gets the idea to kill a black man. (And we all know there will be a next time, wink wink.)

Would that observer have suffered some kind of negative consequence for his or her action? Probably. But the newest god, George Floyd, would have missed his chance at immortality and be alive and well today, right? And that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Isn’t drawing breath the most important value in America? Breathing clean air is why we’re doing any of this, isn’t it? Going green, rewriting history, colonizing Mars, and filming black people as they die. It’s all about guaranteeing clean air to breathe into uncompressed lungs.

That’s as far as BLM has gotten. We could be naked, cold, and hungry, but if we’re all naked, cold, and hungry, maybe they’ll write a book about us.

Are you incited?

Two Things I Learned Today By Watching a Ten Year Old and a Seven Month Old Eat

If you want to get a ten year old to eat his cold cereal to the point the bowl is dry, then have his day begin with him having to rewrite his previous three days’ mistake-ridden writing assignments.

If you’re still unclear the meaning or origin of the popular, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” then you haven’t watched a seven month old eat with her hands. She grabs the wafer just fine. Her mouth opens. Her hand goes into her mouth. Her tongue touches the wafer. Then her hand and the wafer come back out. Boom. Unlikely as it seems, we now know that a baby’s hunger gave birth to the adult’s sad truth.

One Handle On the Pandemic

When thinking Biblically, it is difficult to avoid developing theories for why the pandemic is happening. As in, “What have we done, O LORD, to bring upon ourselves this time of uncertainty? Gambling? Entertainment? Wine? Women? Empty pews? Unrepentant hearts? Not saying your name often and loud enough? What?”

As you may have expected, I have one answer. This answer nourishes my soul and it may prove to nourish yours. So I’m sharing it today.

The reason that this is the day for sharing is that last night, H- reported to me that her elementary school fifth grade class’s week of “different form of government each day” had drawn to a close.

At the close of last week, the eternally incapable of critical thought, and therefore stupid, young teacher had sent a warning/announcement email to mothers and fathers (addressed politically correctly as “parents/guardians”), asking us to not spoil the fun. The email mentioned that the immersive experience would include one day within Monarchy/Dictator (hardly a “slash-able” form of government to anyone who knows how to read), one day within Communism, one day within Socialism (does a ten year old ((or 30 year old for that matter)) really possess the faculties to understand the nuances between these two?? Read on to find out…), and one day within Democracy.

The following are my daughter’s reports.

Monday – (To be clear, this day was a surprise to her. She had not been informed that the day was going to be different than any other before arriving at school.) Besides telling me she cried and subsequently putting her video on pause because I laughed when she told me as much, she said, “I didn’t like how mean and strict she [her teacher] was.” (She couldn’t really remember the name of the form of government.)

Tuesday – “Communism was okay. Had to do the same thing as everyone in the class. At least we got to talk with our friends.”

Wednesday – (Socialism, I think. Again, H- couldn’t recall the name.) “The teacher chose seven students. Then those seven ruled over two each. I didn’t like it. But it wasn’t that bad really. But it wasn’t my favorite. I didn’t hate it that much.”

Thursday – “Today, the last day, was Democracy. It was pretty fun, but there were more boys than girls. So it was unfair. Because we had to do what the boys wanted.”

Can you, dear reader, imagine a greater success to a more important undertaking?!

What have Americans done to bring about the uncertainty? Answer: Squandered perhaps the greatest opportunity to educate the whole of our nation’s children that the world (thus, the LORD) has ever given mankind.

Put bluntly, I sleep better and live better with the thought that the deaths of this here pandemic, the uncertainty and fear caused by it, and the Public School’s decision to move to remote learning—with its result that parents can no longer ignore the failure of the falsely lauded public school teachers (“Oh, whatever would we do without these noble education-major-because-I-lack-creative-impulse-at-eighteen pedants?”)—might combine to mean that the facade is over.

The LORD has spoken! Public Schools must be abolished. Since we’re not smart enough to see their harm, the LORD will do it in his own way.

Maybe you can see the wave of abolishment building, too. Know that it is real. And know that it is good. Bring on the ‘rona! Four more years!! Four more years!!

Being Right Everyday Is Boring. Today, I’ll Lie. For Fun.

In our Post-Christendom/Pre-Muslim country, one of the grievances that has come to my ears, and at times come from my mouth, incessantly throughout my life has been that of false prophets’ unceasing role in the Faith. Christian belief seems to contain no stopping power when it comes to men and women seeking the available influence that accompanies predicting the future. This election cycle has proved no different.

Earnest Christians have loved talking about how some prominent-over-there (I’m sure) Africa-continent-based Prophet predicted Trump would win in 2016 even before Trump announced his entry into the contest. These believers do this, of course, with the hope of keeping the Bible alive. (“If prophecy still happens, then it surely happened in the past,” being their real claim.)

And only if you have stopped your ears and avoided all churches for the past two years could you have avoided hearing that some similarly stationed Prophet (that was right about something else recently) had pegged Trump as victorious this go-around.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, writer of the infamous-to-some-in-the-West Essays, wrote of one ancient tribes’ prophets, “…but let him to’t; for if he fail in his divination, and anything happen otherwise than he has foretold, he is cut into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false prophet: for that reason, if any of them has been mistaken, he is no more heard of.”

Who among us really recoils at that treatment of false prophets?

And yet the punishment, however fitting, does nothing to allay the problem. The problem being: being right everyday is boring.

I’ll sign off today with this lie. For fun.

I feel the same today as I did yesterday.

Resist Every Urge

I love writing at this moment. Love it! Why? Because all you ground-based beings are stuck in uncertainty. My wings release me from such trouble. And while at other times your permanent connection to the earth gives you advantages, at this moment, “advantage pilot”. At this moment writing feels like flying.

So Trump lost. Whoopdie doo. It was all hype anyhow, like I said. The important thing, right now, is to resist every urge to keep the hype going. There was no coup. There was no inordinate amount of voter fraud. There wasn’t. In place of those things there was a presidential election in the United States of America in November of 2020. And lifetime politician Joe Biden won.

Resist every urge, I say. Do not feed the hype. The sky is not falling. There is no silver lining, no matter how many minorities voted their conscience instead of their skin color. Resist every urge. I say again, there is no silver lining anywhere. But it’s not because there is no hope. It’s because there is no dark cloud. That’s the truth. You’re just depressed. Admit it. Then cheer up.

How? Escape. I’m talking exercise your capacity for fantasy. Read romance novels. Watch romance movies. I’m still working through Kushiel’s Dart and every one of the 594 pages so far has improved my mood. Try not to smile challenge: The heroine/temple-prostitute/servant-extraordinaire explains, “While I learned how to kneel uncomplaining for hours at a time and the proper angle of approach for serving sweets after a meal, Ysandre was learning how greed and jealousy corrupt the human soul.” Saucy.

And last night we watched Romancing the Stone. “I’ve never been anybody’s best time,” Douglas replies, crushing it. “This is Joan Wilder, who writes the books I read to you on Saturdays!” the drug-lord clarifies.

Do not feed the hype. Resist every urge.