Jor Jazzar's Prophylactic Discourses

Elmo's Love

2007-10-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

From clamor to stupor
in no time flat.
Why?
Because Elmo loves you.

Two year-olds transfixed
By soothing sanguine cooing
Because Elmo loves you.

Elmo loves you redly,
As redly as the scarlet light
Of translucent womb
Tethered to the gurgly-high pitch
Of mother tongue in amnion.

Before you were born,
Elmo loved you.

Lip-synch, precious wide eyes,
To your rock-a-bye babe
To your own sweet mother,
But, hush--did you hear?
Elmo loves you.

Gestate further,
Premature joey.
Go back in.
Return for a while
To your bean chair home.

So long as Elmo loves you,
Suckle with consanguinity the boob-tube.

Mr. Rogers abides likewise, near your mom,
In a red cardigan.

Breast-feed in the land of make-believe
and imagine, child,
The red flame
From within your mother's belly.

And when grown,
Or imagined grown,
For want of burning bush
Do not despair.

A cardinal in the thicket,
A tanager on the bough,

And back to your mother, repair.

Memetically Speaking

2007-10-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've been summoned by my friend, Mike, to complete a "meme", which is, to be honest, an internet thing-a-ma-bob I'm fairly unfamiliar with, though the general idea of memes and memetics I'm at least acquainted with. But I'm going to do my best not to let him or my other compatriots down. So here it goes...

The best movie sequel in SF/Fantasy is: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
The best “bad” movie in SF/Fantasy is: Planet of the Apes (1968).

The best flavor filling in PopTarts is: brown sugar cinnamon

The best remake in SF/Fantasy is: Planet of the Apes (2001).

The best character in Sesame Street is: Super Grover.

So, that's it. I hope I didn't screw it up or cheat in any way. I guess I'm supposed to pass this on by 'tagging' someone so that my 'idears' might propagate. And I suppose the more people I tag, the more likely that one of my idears might succeed in propagating.

So, I tag the entire internets--WARNING: If you have a slow connection this link may take a long time to load!!

Brownian Motion

2007-10-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

The jittery existence of
Stimulated particulates
On jagged paths of random-walk

Would tell the world
Of happenstance
And of the Branch that Adam (Atom) stalked;

Would hold the days accountable
By the hours,
The hours by the minutes,
The diminution nested
Solemnly in itself.

The invagination of existence,
So pregnant with chance,

The invaginated, jittery-being
Would hum the white-noise in my ear;

Would counteract its own fact
So that patterns might appear--

As if to serenade itself
With movements of cricket, wood thrush, and bullfrog--

But not being filled on that scale--
Comes the inevitable Mozart.

The crazy twitch in my eye is a homecoming
of sorts--atomic self-awareness

The motion pops on the celestial frying pan.
Here we discern a world,
There, a super nova.
And yet there, the outlines of a black hole,
A singularity,
A nick in the glass of the ethereal continuum
Where the accretion folds in on itself
And the particulates do a new type of jitter-dance.
But the jazz is the same.
It finds itself again in the improvised scaffold.

And the bubbles babble (Babel) up that tower.
They effervesce and then coalesce;
They ascend, they aspire to meaning, to totality.

Then that dragon, too, will swallow its own tail.

2007-09-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

Nebuchadnezzar has always been one of my favorite words. I really like the way it hinges around the middle syllable 'kud'. It's almost palindromic in its sound. And it's the smallest distance--a mere iota--away from "Nebudchadnebba", which reminds me of my probably misheard and mispronounced eighties song lyric which sound to me like it goes "sarah-kah-sarah" at the end of one of its lines. Also, for me, it sounds like "s-erica-sarah" and "sarah-kuh-sarah" at the same time, bringing a strange and special delight, but also some confusion.

It is the sensitivity to this (and other language tricks) which facilitates its synthesis in writing.

Super-Cool Tool Library in Berkeley

2007-03-24T21:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted something here.

Well, I've finally got something worth posting. It's a tool library. That's right. A tool library--in Berkeley. Residents and owners of property in Berkeley are eligible to borrow up to 10 tools at a time from this library: http://berkeleypubliclibrary.org/tool/

I think this is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time. I mean, this could be a great community resource almost anywhere. If I were a rich man, that's what I'd do--endow a library with a collection of books...AND TOOLS!!! Talk about building community! I'm excited about this.

Crankshaft Serenity

2007-02-01T10:52:00.000-08:00

Motion itself contains the stillness we seek. Where but through motion do we once again gain our selves? If ever we are brought to absolute stillness, still, we are brought to it. The blues legend, Robert Johnson, in a plaintive wail which still haunts the unquiet soul today, makes it plain with, "I got to keep movin'/I got to keep movin'/Blues fallin' down like hail/Blues fallin' down like hail."

'Anywhere but here' is the refrain of agitation that creeps in and takes hold of a neglected spirit. And so medicine is sought. Drugs, alcohol, sex, violence--all play their role accordingly. These things are desirable to the despairing mind, and are motions of a sort. But it is motion itself which fulfills the prescription, not the medicament. It is the reaching for the pill bottle or the pouring of the drink or the procuring of the substance which brings momentary relief from the here-ness of a tormented self. For the moment, the mind is occupied with something other than its own dreadful existence.

Fortunately, at this stage I know enough about myself to recognize the signs and symptoms and I take to my bicycle with the sort of sureness and steadiness that a man might take to his axe when he apprehends the coming winter--splitting wood as insurance and with assurance. Likewise, I seize the bike in my hands. The cold is all around me and closing in. But I go. And I keep going until I get where I need to be.

It is no wonder that a couple of bicycle makers were the first to perfect flight; for it is as close to flying as a soul can get without actually flying. I imagine it was the freest thing a man or woman of the time could do, to ride a bicycle. Today it is still the simplest means to visceral freedom. To go.

Automotive charlatans give the illusion of motion. Planes, trains, automobiles. But witness the disquietude and ill temper of the commuter stuck in traffic. The difference is--and this is paramount--the difference is that with a bicycle you are the engine and the conscious operator. You are driving it, as opposed to it driving you.

Taking control of one's life through a tangible, simple act of the will is perhaps the most liberating thing a despairing soul can do. Deliberate motion. There is, I am convinced, no therapy which can be matched in its efficacy and which has withstood so many trials.

My favorite time to ride is late at night on my way home from work when I have the road all to myself. The town is silent but for the whir and hum of me on my bike. I have my thoughts. But they are tempered by the task at hand (or rather, the task afoot). Lately, I've been taking a little FM radio with an ear piece along and listening to public radio. Soft classical music at a cool 15 mph on the darkened streets of the hometown with the wind in one's face under the power of self-propulsion. Crankshaft serenity, the mechanics of bliss.

--George Czar, © 2007

My Conscience Compels Me To Share This...

2006-08-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys and Gals,

What was that old saying? 'That character is who you are when no one is watching', or something to that affect...?
...In the "Information Age" it is truly "not so much what you say, but how you say it"...
...As you can see, the powerful elite on all sides of any national "debate" care little about actual, honest debate, only about the appearances of a debate. Democrat and Republican parties alike have been undermining democratic institutions for some time now--both in front of the camera and offscreen:

http://www.brasscheck.com/videos/spin/spin.html

If you want a news source that does not hold its viewers and listeners in the same sort of contempt that corporate media does, try this viewer-supported daily show, "The War & Peace Report":

http://www.democracynow.org

Most of us want basic healthcare for our families, and basic education and nutrition for our children. We don't want our tax dollars spent bombing innocent civilians and ruining whole societies in order to enforce the economic policies of powerful elites in Western countries and their ruthless accomplices across the globe.

Get informed. Decide for yourself:

http://www.chomsky.info

Get involved. Or, if it suits you, refuse participation when necessary. Don't be manipulated by the periodic conjuring of boogymen, witches, and evil-doers (or immigrants, Communists, Drug Warlords, and terrorists) by men and women who strike heroic poses in front of the camera but who live behind gated communities and whose children do not have to suffer the consequences of their narrow-minded, short-sighted policies.

There is no authority beyond what you grant. Get involved by getting out of line. It is a matter of class when you've raised your hand patiently and have not been called upon that you raise your voice. Find common ground with those around you and work toward common goals. Your daily actions are defiant elections that are tallied--without fail and without fraud--by time itself.

Take Care,
George

Come Travel with Me

2006-07-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I, your host, Jor "San Pedro de la Velazquez y Toro Rojo" Jazzar, will be taking you on a curious little tour to some curious little places....

But first, to fully enjoy this pleasure cruise, you must download Google Earth from Google at http://earth.google.com

Now then, if you would all open your Google Earth program and enter the following location: Charcani Grande, Peru

In one of my many meanderings I discovered this little gem of a spot tucked snuggly between two huge volcanoes, El Misti and Nevado Chachani. It seems to be a resort of sorts. I would be inclined (especially if I were there...yuk-yuk!) to call it the "last resort", given it's precarious location.

As if it weren't enough to find this little hole in the world, I was delighted and intrigued to find various messages written into the sides of these mountains, large enough to be from these satelite images.

What could they be, I wondered. One of them reads "DIOS PATRIA LEY". Another reads "ESCUELA TECNICO SUPERIOR AREQUIPA". And there are others, too, some legible and some not. My best guess, as a naive cyber-world traveler and budding anthropologist was that these must be some kind of prayers or pleas to the volcano gods begging not to be destroyed.

I had good evidence to support these conclusions. For instance, I knew that "DIOS" is spanish for "God". And when I looked on the other side of the volcano, I could see that much of the neighboring city, Arequipa, had been destroyed by a relatively recent eruption. So these must be messages stemming from that basic cultural impulse of a people who have had to contend with these supernatural forces for millenia--messages of a religious people, powerless over nature.

Then came the research to confirm my rather hasty conclusion.

To my humbling bemusement, these were not the primitive sort of archeo-religious relics that I thought they were. Instead, I found that they are no more than nationalistic slogans and advertisements!! "DIOS PATRIA LEY" means "God, Mother-Country, Law". And "ESCUELA TECNICO SUPERIOR AREQUIPA" seems to be no more than a rough-hewn billboard saying "The superior technical school: Arequipa".

And I'd also found more in the neighboring city. One says "LA NESTLE LECHERA [large space] CAFE VALENZUELA", which I take to mean "Nestle milk [at] Cafe Valenzuela". Another one, in a rather action-packed font reads "TOL[-not clear, maybe 'EO'] ZAMA". This one is a mystery to me. It may be interesting though. Bonus points for anyone who can come up with its meaning.

Next time, come with me to Fallujah, Iraq, and see from above what a city under siege looks like. Or maybe we'll visit Caracas, Venezuela, in recent history a city with perhaps the starkest contrast between rich and poor, a trend slowly being reversed by the vast social reform undertaken by the villified Hugo Chavez who has nationalized most of the oil resources in this country to provide social services like health care and education to the poor.

Breaking a Promise To Myself...

2006-04-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

I promised myself that this little blog wouldn't become another glorified gripe session on the net. Fortunately, I don't think it has become this...yet. However, in the course of my using the Firefox ultra-cool extension called StumbleUpon!, I've come across--been recommended, actually--a large number of atheist websites. I'm not sure why they've been recommended to me through this extension except that I had selected "science" as an interest of mine. So, perhaps whatever the algorithm used to determine recommendations is, it must presume an interest in science precludes the belief that a god or gods may exist.

Of course, I don't think the algorithm is flawed. It's an algorithm, and as such, likely performs its functions beautifully. On the other hand, the feedback/input it gets from its users is probably what I have difficulty with. It does seem to reflect my personal experience with "educated" people rather well. So, indeed, the algorithms are not the problem.

In the above paragraph I use "educated" with quotes to draw attention to the difference between learning as a lifelong pursuit and the sort of training one gets at an institution, the former implying a love of learning that is a good in-and-of-itself, the latter implying a bare minimum of learning as a means to something else, say, a career, or yet further training.

My problem is this--and I run into it a lot at the bookstore (and now, on the internet)--that many "educated" people have mistaken their rather narrow training for the Whole Truth, and call upon science and logic, both tools of approximation, to denigrate or otherwise invalidate the subjective experience of their fellow humans. Many of these people consider themselves atheists.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful if one considers oneself an atheist. When someone can state their beliefs with conviction and coherence and back them up with supporting statements, it's a beautiful thing, a true exercise of the intellect. Likewise, for theists, those who do believe in a god or gods. It becomes a problem, however, when one's beliefs are thrust upon someone else with physical or "intellectual" force. It is here where the merits of the argument become overshadowed by brute power, whether physical or mental.

Historically, as the atheist websites are meticulous in pointing out, many of the Christian Churches have erred along these ideal argumentative lines, and erred greatly. I will not detail the record here. By now, for most readers, it is common knowledge that The Inquisition, the Crusades, the integration of church and state, and many more unjust things have been carried out by those aspousing the Christian View.

When violence is done, it is always the individual who suffers, as it is only an individual consciousness that we can (with the most certainty) ascribe pain to. So I will only consider the question on an individual basis, as that is where the question is most relevant. And in considering the application of the question we must consider the broadest interpretations so as to more scrupulously test the truth value of the argument. For if it can be proven exceptional in at least one case, then, its truth value can be called into question.

Of what does a Christian consist? Broadly speaking and most vaguely, it consists of a person who professes a belief in Christ. Christ is an idea contained in a book, just as "George" is an idea contained in my body, which is to say each is a dynamic psychological entity capable of change and refinement according to the beholder of the idea. Such being the case, the idea of Christ is not a fixed value. Indeed, aside from the psychological analysis, the innumerable denominations and doctrines of Christianity itself suffice to illustrate the point. A Quaker's approach to the idea of Christ in all likelihood differs substantially from that of a Catholic's, and so on with many other denominations.

Now, let us say that I am a Christian and my belief in Christ consists mainly in the meaning I take away from the Sermon on the Mount. I belong to no church, I have no affiliations whatsoever to any particular denomination and, therefore, cannot be condemned for the Church's acts. Can the atheist now in good conscious paint all Christians with the same broad brush? Would he not do better to paint those individuals who are guilty as guilty and not lump the whole lot of them together, innocent and guilty alike? Ought not the atheist qualify his statements about Christians (and theists, generally) more carefully so as not to indict all of them, as they may share the same name but not the same acts?

It would be one thing if the atheists I have in mind considered themselves Machiavellians, but they don't. Oftentimes, their websites are adorned with affiliations to groups or ideas such as "freethinkers", "humanists", "rationalists", or some other term which commonly denotes open-mindedness. But when it comes to the metaphysical question of whether or not a god, gods, or other Absolute exists, I believe neither they nor the theists have gained the upperhand on one another. So long as the notion of infinity, illogical existence, and mystery supersede logical analysis, the question of the existence of an Absolute will not be comprehended by it, either. In short, science and logic cannot yet answer that question, and perhaps never will.

I do understand and concur with very good arguments such as the idea of separation of church and state, the teaching of the theories of science (for instance, the theory of evolution) in public schools, and the social idea of religious tolerance. But these are ideas dealing with the way a society ought to be set up and run and don't necessarily have much to do with any particular individual's religious beliefs, for which, ultimately, there can be neither proof nor disproof.

In a purely deconstructionalist mode, not even the internal coherence of an argument can be truly called into question, since we do not have access to any mind but our own, but only to the flawed and garbled output of that other mind. For instance, in one mind, the first thing to come to mind when the word "boogie" is apprehended may be: "boogie" = to dance enthusiastically; whereas, for another mind: "boogie" = crusty and gooey object picked from one's nose. And so, the phrase, "Can you dig that boogie?" can have two completely different meanings for two different minds (with comical results). There are many other examples one can think of, usually much more pervasive and subtle than the one just mentioned. An easy one is the notion of a term indicating color such as "red". The notion of "red" is almost certainly different in two different minds, though the two notions may overlap to form a common notion of "red". But it's easy to see that what one person calls "red" another person might call "pinkish purple", or better yet, what a color-blind person might call "medium grey". Ordinary language can be quite ambiguous.

This is where humans have become quite ingenius. We seem to have created a language tool that is much less ambiguous than ordinary language. We call this language "mathematics". Mathematics is a tool without which the various sciences would not be possible. Or if they were possible, they would not have the same refinement. Essentially, mathematics is a means of expression. The only difference between mathematics and ordinary language is precision and efficiency. Mathematics attempts to express or represent the world. It is not the world, but a rough symbolic approximation of it.

A science is a collection of theories about a particular topic. Take biology. It is a collection of theories about life. These theories are just that, theories. They are not written in stone, and may one day prove to be inadequate descriptions of life. It is at that point that a theory may be thrown out or, more likely, refined. And so, science is an inexact, though refined, study of the various fields of existence. Science is a tool we use to help understand and further manipulate the physical world. It does not treat of things which cannot be observed. So far, there are physical barriers to science, large and small.

Religion, spirituality, and philosophy are the only fields of study which are appropriate for metaphysical considerations, to the best of my knowledge. Science and mathematics cannot answer metaphysical questions. Maybe one day they will, who knows. I have my reservations.

In conclusion, I fear that many atheists have taken up science and logic/math as a religion of sorts, believing them to be Absolutes which can answer everything or subsume all of existence. If this be the case, they are in peril of becoming what they condemn the Christians for becoming, a hypocritical, self-serving priesthood, who have, despite (or perhaps, because of) their training become close-minded to the possibilities of other physical and spiritual realities.

In the same way that Christians of old (and new) have misused or misunderstood the idea of Christ, some atheists of today (and tomorrow may) misuse and misunderstand science and reason. For a prime example of real-world scenarios, one need look no further than the daily examples which serve to illustrate how our technologies far outpace our ethics. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

I believe it is up to the individual to gently instruct or suggest other possibilities to others, and in no case to bludgeon them with it. I've only too often seen arguments through force, whether physical or mental, increase the resolve of the other to remain stubborn in their belief. The changing of one's mind is a voluntary act. It is the sole (and tenuous, at that) freedom afforded us. It is the first that is given, and the last to be taken away.

Some of the language I've seen used and the attitudes assumed on these "freethinker" websites has been anything but that which they claim to be. Through antagonistic, belittling language, I can see no other motive than humiliation and thinly veiled self-aggrandisement, not unlike the type one finds out at recess when one child pokes fun at another who happens to believe in the existence of Santa Claus. I ask: Just because we have exchanged our old beliefs for new ones, must we begrudge or deny others theirs?

© 2006 George Czar

The Bleakness

2006-04-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

I was busy working at the bookstore the other day when I overheard some customers chatting, as one often does--innocent of intent, absent of any malicious motive. They were two women of my approximate age, which is to say in their late twenties. Since they seemed remarkable in no particular way, I had no occassion to take notice of them except that I am a bachelor of long-standing and self-effacing repute, and, unfortunately of late, taking to opportunism as a dating strategy out of sheer desparation, which means just about any female within proximity of eye- and earshot is bound to gain my attention no matter how remarkably unremarkable she may be.

One says to the other as they browse the "Da Vinci Code" display: "So, who was Da Vinci exactly?"

At this, my ears perk up. In my desparate state to find a mate, any mate, I take what any rational person would hear as an average or somewhat uneducated question and impart it with all sorts of unqualified meaning. As was the case here, I figured, 'Oh boy, a curious one! How I love those curious ones--willing to learn, and here in my bookstore to boot! Golly-gee, it must be my lucky day!' Somehow, in one fine sweep of the mind, I likened myself to Da Vinci--a polymath, a renaissance man, an artist, a man of great imagination. And I imagined, in this way, that here she was asking about me. Who was I, exactly?

"Wasn't he an artist?" said the same girl.

"Oh," replied her friend, "I don't know. He did some other stuff, too, I think...." Then, for a second, she did some deliberating in her head before finishing, "He's a weirdo."

Snap. Just like that. Leonardo Da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, inventor, civil engineer, sculptor, visionary, etc. = weirdo.

Well, if you can believe, it wasn't the worst commentary I'd overheard in the bookstore. But it was one of the more disappointing--initially, at least. Then, my disappointment soon gave way to hilarity as I chuckled aloud to myself and thought, 'Yeah, she's probably right. Da Vinci is a weirdo.'

© 2006 George Czar

Disarmingly Sacrificial

2006-03-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

My friend, Josette, and her daughter went to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC recently. But I ask: Did they see THIS?

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...I Got a Scanner...

2006-03-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

Here is my first attempt at posting a comic of mine...

You can click on the image to make it bigger (and clearer, though some quality is irredeemably lost in the upload)...

The Canon of Cannonballs: A Story of Unwaivering Waves

2006-03-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

"You've got to check the filters everyday. Sometimes you'll find frogs down there. Newts. Squirrels even. Plenty of horseflies. Never any horses though. Gotta check the pH every couple a days. Add some chlorine every so often--looks like a urinal cake. You know what that is don't ya, kid? A toilet mint. Pink deodorant." And here Uncle Chuck broke into his officious commercial voice with "Pink enough for her, pH balanced for him" while neatly holding the chlorine tablet and pointing to it like a statuesque Dr. Seuss character. Only it wasn't pink. It was white.

But the kid didn't wanna hear anymore about the vageries of swimming pool maintenance. No, Ernie just wanted to do cannonballs all week long. The thought of having free reign over an entire in-ground swimming pool for a whole week just bounced around the inside of his little head like when a cartoon character looses the button to his britches and it goes a-ricocheting this way and that. No corner, no recess of his brain was spared the blitz. Little Ernie's mind was lit up like a pinball machine during the multiball bonus round.

Uncle Chuck was oblivious to the building ebullience of the boy, enraptured himself with his own crescendo of animation, going on about the water pump, the timer, the nets, the cover, the gate, the lock--all with grandiose gestures and theatrical ado.

"And then," he said, "you may carefully take a few laps if you choo--"

A nearly hyperventilated voice broke through, came unbound: "Mr. Uncle Chuck, can I do cannonballs when I'm watching the pool for you?!"

A feigned grimace. Then a response--"No."

The boys dejected eyes found the ground.

"Haven't I taught you anything, Ernie? C'mon. Cannonballs? Cannonballs are for sissies! You're in the fifth grade now. You oughta be doin' preachers or tidal waves!"

Ernie's circuitry was now ratcheted up three-fold. "What's a 'preacher'?"

"Well, ever been baptized?"

"Once. When I was little. That's when they sprinkle some water on a baby's head and save him from the devil, ain't it?"

"Hmm. It might be. But the type of baptizing I had in mind was of another degree altogether. Some folks go down to the river to get baptized. And it's more than the little spritzin' you're talkin' about. The preacher, he takes 'em and dunks 'em backwards fully in the waist-high water while they pinch their noses so that the water shan't go up it, ya see. And that's how the 'preacher' gets its name. Oh, it's a holy splash alright!"

Now Ernie listened intently for every drop of minutiae, every angle of momentum and trajectory. This was the schooling he so longed for.

"Here's how it's done: First, you find yourself a suitable target. Maybe it's a dry spot on the ceement. Or maybe...it's your little sister and her gaggle of friends. Then, you do some rough mental figurin'. Next, you make like the preacher has got you by the back of the collar and trunks and is runnin' ya headlong towards that great ablution. When you make the ledge, it's a leap of faith. Cause if you ain't on the level, you're a-coming back up with the likes of a lobster back for smackin' that water in the most unholy of ways. But the leap's got a twist, literally, so that your back is facing the target. As you near the surface, you should cup your body, bending at the waist slightly. Then, still makin' like the preacher's got you, put your hands up to cover your nose in a praying-like fashion. Cause this is the baptism to end all baptisms and you oughtta be praying, truly, son. As your body enters the pool, it displaces the water momentarily. Then, almost instantly, it rushes back towards the center point of the impact to fill it back in, crashing against itself, and kerplunking the entire proximity with torrents of chlorinated pool water. Properly executed, the preacher can easily yield splashes of fifteen feet or more! And average-sized kids like you can create waves on the magnitude of 200 lb. cannonballers. But. If you wanna do cannonballs...."

"No way, Mr. Uncle Chuck, cannonballs are for sissies!"

© 2006, George Czar

On the Subjective Nature of Reality (as an update on things to come [wow i even hate how this sounds])

2006-01-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

No one has said anything new.

They have only said it differently.

And what they have actually "said" can never be known.

©2006 George Czar

Erstwhile

2005-09-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Don't you remember the feel of your little feet on the wet cement around the pool? Don't you remember those warm, wet puddles near the pavement joints?

I can still feel the burning pang of water up my nose, and the hot, tacky feel of the brown paint from the concession stand's counter on my arms.

We looked like candy when we emerged from the water, and jumped back in before a single drop could differentiate itself from the rest, seeing if our waves could combine to spill over the wall.

Our bikes got stolen. And we threw rocks at the car windows in the junk yard. The dust in our lives was palpable. And so was the glory.

© 2005 George Czar

The Wind at My Back

2005-09-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

"Full stride" some call it. Others call it "the top of one's game". I prefer "being in one's element". At the ripening age of 27, I can now feel the sweet nectar coursing through my veins. Gone are the bitter memories of yore and the sour notes that befell an amateur voice. The chords--now attuned--will not waver for yet another score perhaps. Bellowing harminous, waxing ebullient, until gleaming like a bright shiny tuba in a triumphant marching band--heretofore, a life, in slavish abidance to a bedeviled, woe-stricken mind, steps out from the inferno of black flames into the irridescent, shimmering music of novel gaiety. Come one, come all. It's a three-ringed affair. What's about to happen next will likely blow your mind.

Deep in the impenetrable forest of "George's Would's" there was--and is--indeed, a 'did'. Before you know it there will be an action figure replete with bendable limbs, nifty little nerd tools, and cardboard packaging. The voyage of discovery has resumed (after a brief 9-year interlude by my sponsor [the hairy, little, decrepid, snaggle-toothed, neurotic monster hiding in the corner]). No, really, everything's okay. I'm not going to be flipping pancakes on the turnpike tomorrow.

But I might be fabricating monstrous circuitry, depraved cyborgs of disreputable reknown, tomorrow, as I've been steadily learning and tinkering (once again) with eee-lectronics. Or you might find me down by the river, soaking up the natural wonders of our watery backyard as I once was wont to do in my more tender years, meditating on the likes of Thoreau and Emerson. Or you may pass me on my cyclopod, chiseling myself to a bygone form, traveling to and fro. And if you're lucky, I just may serve you up one of my many wonderful culinary artworks I've been simmering all the while just on the periphery of life.

Alas, brave new things are on the horizon. The stirring wind beckons at my back. And the bags under my eyes are filled with faerie dust.

© 2005 George Czar

Got, Again

2005-08-20T00:17:00.000-07:00

So there I am, at a less-than-fulfilling job, doing my job, peddling paper, offering up the gimmick of the day, as ordered. That's when it hit me, the urge to use the restroom--that saving grace, that hail mary pass, that mother of all battles (wait a second). Yes, sir, she did not have to come calling twice, for it was my every desire that I should be true in the first place. But, yea, and I went. But lo! and behold what I beheld: a small man--who, as it happened--appeared to be mentally-retarded and physically-handicapped, or, if you prefer, mentally-handicapped and physically-retarded. His sandal had come off in the restroom--a most undesirous circumstance. As his foot lay prone in the pee-mud, and with his sandal in his mouth, I used the bathroom.

I recognized him from a year ago in the store. He once rubbed his tongue on my hand as I had tucked his bib back into his collar. He had been left at the store by his uncle that time and his bib, which keeps his drool off his shirt, had fallen to the ground and he couldn't put it back on himself. He asked for my help. It wasn't easy to understand him, but Jesus helped me. And once I knew what he wanted, it was easy to deliver: Until he rubbed his tongue on my hand as I tucked in his bib. I was a little put off by that. And this was quite distinct from the homophobic reaction you might expect--no, this was a new revulsion altogether. I was unsure as to the exact nature of his "mental-retardedness".

So there I was, with Jesus, Buddha, and the rest of humanity looking right over me, taking a leak in the urinal, wondering what on earth I should do to help this seemingly helpless man out with his pee-muddy bare foot. His sandal was all the while being generally sucked on and gnawed at as he grabbed disposed of paper towels to add to the mix. It was a test, I was sure. I knew I had to wash his foot and hands and put his sandal back on. So I got him to sit down in a clean area of the floor and I washed his foot off. He was very pleased by this (all the while, mind you, I'm ignoring--for the sake of my own peace of mind--the sound of magazine pages turning in the occupied stall just a few feet away). He kind of laughed and moaned with contentment. Hell, who wouldn't have done the same? And besides, I figure I'm doing the Lord's work at this point, washing the sandaled foot of the least among us and all.

I leave the restroom with a feeling of accomplishment. After several months of feeling worthless, here we are, a real moment of worthwhile action. I had cleaned the piss and mud off the under side of a stranger's foot for nothing. I could have left it to whomever or to no one at all. But it had been done for once and forever. And for once, life felt meaningful. Doing things for other people, while always containing some self-interest, is nevertheless thoroughly invigorating, to the degree that it helps the other person.

As nice as that may sound, that is only the prelude to this tale.

He finds me again, this time minutes later on the bookfloor as I'm going about straightening up at the end of the night.

"Hi, Adam." I says, "I'm George."

"George!" He garbles, clearly excited at the mere sound of my name. I'm touched. Genuinely.

And as I continue on my path of recovery (here, we're talking about my "path of recovery" at work, which involves walking up and down aisles at work looking for stray books--not my "path of recovery" personally, which involves electro-shock therapy, horse tranquilizers, and ultrasonic immersions in "heavy water")--so, as I continue on my path of recovery, in the store, with Adam following behind, I pause every so often to answer his questions, insofar as I can understand them. Come to think of it, they were mostly his comments as opposed to questions.

Apparently, as I came to hear it from him, his dad was with his younger brother and they had left him there. Well, he came there with his dad and brother, he said. I just assumed that they'd always left him there, as he'd been there lots of times before with no one else around. At any rate, he continued to paint, in a mentally-retarded kind of way, a picture of abuse. He said that his brother and father didn't always put a diaper on him even though he wets his pants. He also said that his grandfather didn't change his diaper for a week and hit him when he went in his diaper. I, feeling every ounce of Jesus' Love and every non-straining fiber of the Buddha's Serenity, could not help but ask if his father knew this; and upon hearing that he did not, offering up to tell him myself. Looking back it was a bit curious how he'd said he didn't want his father to be told even though he'd volunteered the information in a beckoning manner. But his drool and frothiness was real enough, and his look was kind of haggard like it be, too.

As I walked away from our talk-exchange in the back corner of the store, he called me back for something. He wanted a hug, or what sounded like a hug. So, in the Presence of our Lord, in the Know-not-knowing of the Buddha, I surrendered a friendly hug in the Self Improvement section (frighteningly close to the Sexuality sub-section).

*At this point I would like to refer the reader to "The Over-Soul: Let Us Hearken Unto It", a piece I wrote earlier. I don't remember what it was about. But I think it might explain a few questions that might be popping into your minds at this point.

Getting back to the hug. It was a very unattached hug from my end, if you catch my drift. I mean, I tried to convey as much human kindness and brotherhood as a brother could. But I didn't want to bump into no other wood, ya dig? He, on the other hand, was clinging with a paulsy-like tenacity. And also, I knew his tongue was going to come out. Sure enough, right on my collar, and just a little on my neck, the white frothy tongue of a stranger, embraced in a platonic hug of brotherhood and soulmanship.

Now, as a side note, it occurred to me on a few occassions with this young man before (he's in his early twenties, apparently, and I'd spoken with him at least once before {the time he rubbed his tongue on my hand [in a mentally-retarded fashion]}) and on this occassion, that, when I was looking around and caught him in some side aisle, he would have the stance and posture of a decidedly non-physically-handicapped person who was sneaking around subtley, looking for a sucker like me. But I withdrew those thoughts by-and-by in the Presence of Our Lord and sunken in the Sublimity of the Buddha, and put my faith once again in human goodness.

It was at this point, that we were closing the store for the night and I'd caught a glimpse of him leaving the store. I had been anxious to confront his guardian about the purported verbal and physical abuse, not to mention the leaving him there unattended to wallow in the piss-mud of our restroom. But alas! he was leaving alone, and with a sure-strided step, the likes of which I hadn't seen since the freshman were late for class. I squinted my eyes like Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry" to get a better look. Only now, for me, it's more like "Dirty, Hairy". And it was more like wincing. For what my eyes beheld was no less damning than whatever it was Clint was pretending to look at. I saw this guy walking out of the store, taking his bib off, letting his hair down, and getting into the driver's side of an early 90s model Toyota.

That's right, this guy, whom up to this point I believed was mentally-retarded and physically-handicapped, was getting in a car and driving away. What the fuck?

The only thing I can figure is that he gets off on being babied--some type of infantilization fetish. Or maybe he wants to be "taken advantage of" in some way. Or maybe he actual is mentally-retarded and physically-handicapped and this is just some twisted mind-fuck I've played on myself and revealed to the world.

Welcome to the absurdity of today's Christian life with its excess of unanimity. To remain earnest in such endeavors and to not lose one's shirt, so to speak, or if not one's shirt, one's entire garb, or one's mind--that's the trick for a Humanist or a Christian in our time, for all time (if he seeks to remain such a thing).

But damn me if I wasn't "taken advantage of" by a pseudo-mentally-retarded, physically-handicapped sociopath. But isn't that just life? I mean, c'mon.

© 2005 George Czar

One Hundred Years Ago, Here

2005-08-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

Sitting on our side balcony--drunk and things--I couldn't help but wonder, what did this look like one hundred years ago. I tossed it around in my drunken state, until I was fairly fixed upon it--'nough to come in here and write about it.

So, based on what little I know about the time period--and the even less I know about this time period--I shall construct a musing or two.

Out the side door, on the second floor, onto our balcony (me and my roommate being "business" partners--if 'n' ya catch my drift {that's southern melodrama tossed into some northern exposure, hopin' you don't mind [wait a second, don't be misinterpretatin' what I just said 'bout bein' 'business' partners an' all (how else could two fellas co-habitate back then?)]}) we spied in the southwestern direction a portion o' the Susquehanna Valley in its low and bent sweep. It was easy to see with the small town between us and it--the greater expanse of the town being tilled on all sides with farms and neighboring towns.

I don't know, Man. I just see these things. **Raspberry**

© 2005 George Czar

I Will Be Back After a Message from My Sponsor...but Sooner Than That

2005-08-17T01:06:00.000-07:00

I promise.

jor jazzar

I Say To Myself: My self...

2005-08-03T01:14:00.000-07:00

-Slaying the dragon? More like bottling the genie.

-On behalf of the whole, we, the sixteenths, would like you to consider the other two-thirds.

-Finding positive attributes to more and more mental disorders for 27 years: Vote George Czar.

-Finding the fun side to every facet of this desecrated jewel for over 27 years: Vote George Czar.

-For 27 years I've been your man with a plan--just waitin' to hatch it: Vote George Czar, 9th Volt D.C. Circuit Judge.

-I just remembered these fingernail clippings I found behind someone's couch in New Jersey when I was a kid like twenty years ago with Bon Jovi wafting through the air. The couch was a velvety blue. I was trying hard not to look at the nail clippings, not wanting to embarrass the owner. But I couldn't help but to keep checking on them. Yep, they're definitely real, I thought---and nail clippings. Checking again--yep--there they are; plain as day, a small pile of nail clippings behind a velvety blue couch with Bon Jovi wafting through the air in New Jersey. My life starts here, I thought.

-Yeah, but are those legal tender loins?

-I hate those models. They're all a bunch of f***in' posers.

-Extra!Extra! Read All About It:
Models Strike Posing, Striking Poses

Models walked up and down the catwalk on one of New York's busiest runways today, carrying picket signs, apparently on strike. Katherine Lichen, her sashay in synch with a heart-throbbing 'NSync bassline, brandished a sign which read "Fur NOT Fer Her!" Further mixing the signals was the faux fox draped luxuriantly around her very real duck-billed platypus. An unidentified judge yelled out, "What's this all about?!"

Katherine Lichen replied, "We're striking!"

"Well, what are you striking fer? Fur?" The judge asked.

"No. NOT fer her. Fur."

"That's what I said, Fur."

"NO. NOT FER HER."

"Oh, fur get it."

Whipping her hair around, as she stopped with legs ascissored, hands hiply, turning at the waist, looking back at the judge, she hollers, "Well, we're also striking the poses, too."

"Yeah, I can see that." Says the judge. "Hey, nice beaver."

"It's a duck-billed platypus." She said like a saxophone.

"Whatever."

Hermit Thee Toad reporting for The Dissociated Press

-"A Little Ant Goes a Long Way" by George Czar, © 2005, Jazzar's Bazzar Press
Synopsis: Illustrated Children's Book. Ages 4 - 83 1/3. This is a charming little tale about an ant, Aunt Tenna. Aunt Tenna is a little ant that goes for a walk in the forest but gets lost along the way. Aunt Tenna goes far and wide trying to find her way home. Then, she pauses to ponder a riddle. Was it 'homing' or 'honing' that she was trying to do, she thinks. She's not sure. She wavers. She doubts. Then! She spots her house. Horay! "I'm a little ant, but I can go a long way." Aunt Tenna said. But just then, a praying mantis and its child swoop down. The child grabs little Aunt Tenna in his mandibular clutches. "Ah-Ah-AHHH!" says the mother mantis (or--alternatively--screams Aunt Tenna). "Not until you say grace, young man. A little ant goes a long way." Billy, the preying praying praying mantis, then goes on his own big adventure with a lot of help from a little Aunt Tenna.

© 2005 George Czar

They Egg My Car, I Turn the Other Quarter-panel

2005-07-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

For some people a car is an extension of the self. It's an iconic symbol of their inner desires and fears. Some want to go fast. Some want to feel safe. Some may even want to seem as though they are more well-endowed than they actually are (still cannot get over the Hummer [It's almost as though we're on cultural steroids]). But for many of us, a car is still primarily and most importantly a tool used for transportation. Sure, it can help get you laid, save your life in the event of an emergency, double as a house, or whatever. But there was definitely a vote somewhere around 1906: horse-and-buggy or automobile. Had it been a vote on style, I'm afraid Henry Ford might not have become the household name he became. Nor would I have gotten laid on the night of November 12, 1995 at approximately 10:18. Just kidding. It was November 13. Just kidding.

Not that I ever owned a car that could have gotten me laid. Which is not to say that I can't be gotten laid. I can be gotten laid by lots of things. Once, my microscope got me laid. Seriously. No, seriously. And now that I'm getting into electronics, they're practically throwing themselves at me--to which I reply, "Ladies, ladies, please. Don't make me get out my Tesla coil." But anyway, I never owned that kind of car. I wish I had a story to tell about my 1981 Datsun 310GX and Susie-so-and-so. Or about my 1982 Toyota Tercel and Ms. what's-her-name. Or better yet, about the threesome in the back of my 1987 Ford Festiva with purple and pink frilly pinstripes (As if you could even sit three people back there!). Thanks a lot, Henry! How's the soy treatin' ya?

I won't, however, deny that a car may be, in some instances or regards, a true extension of the self that owns it. I have some friends who really feel that a car's sleek design, performance, and maneuverability show the rest of the world that those qualities are a natural extension of the owner's personal refinement. Whatever, dude. All I know is I got a 1995 Mazda Protege with some bad teeth, if you know what I mean. I'm sure the innards are in disarray. Gonna break down anyday now. Better call a doctor. But yeah, an extension of the self. Since I took ownership of mine, it's got a dented hood, a busted window, then, plastic wrapped around that window's door for about eight months, paint damage from vandal key-markings, and now, the final insult--egg--on the front left quarter-panel. Perhaps needless to say when sporting a week's worth of untrimmed beard growth: I still haven't washed the egg off my car and it's been a few months (I think [I mean, it could have been there a lot longer for all I know {What day is this?}]).

Now, some of you may be thinking, tsk-tsk (others of you may be thinking, that's a lot of parenthetical notation). More likely, you're asking me, where's my self-pride. Well, we'll get to more on that some other time. But for now, allow me to submit another calculation altogether. Suppose the vandals believe that other people think just like them, that belongings (and cars, particularly) are somehow intimately tied to the owner's sense of self, so that by defacing them, they, the vandals, are directly wounding the pride of the owner. And the vandals' belief would be vindicated by the owner's reaction if the owner's pride were so superficial as to be wounded by such an act. Now, suppose the owner had this calculation in mind, all the while not washing his car of the egg, but instead, actively denying the vandals their satisfaction of seeing the symbol of his wounded pride, a cleaned quarter-panel.

Now, you might say, a cleaned quarter-panel would show defiance to a vandal; that it would show him he cannot win. I'm sorry about your misfortune. The vandal sees a dare. And they're usually as up to the challenge as any Hummer-driving, middle-aged, suburbanite mom. You cannot defeat vandals. It's only a question of how sweet you are going to make their victory. A "loss" by your terms is a victory in theirs. It's like terrorists. You cannot defeat them once they've made up their mind. At best, you can proactively promote conditions that tend not to breed terrorists, and not respond as they'd hope, with undue attention to one's pride or semi- or equally-as-blind violent retribution on masses of innocent people.

With that at least partially in mind, I decided not to wash it off in my own display of defiance; my pride resides somewhere deeper, where their random acts of violence cannot penetrate. No, the egg is not on my face, my friends. It is on my car. But, you know what? I'm gonna turn the other quarter-panel.

Of course, on the other hand, it may just be that I'm a lazy bum full of self-delusions...

© 2005 George Czar

Vinnie: The Vignette

2005-07-22T00:58:00.000-07:00

It was either the shrimp or the clams. And seeing as Vinnie was feeling every bit of his 5' 0" stature, he chose the clams. No ma’am, no shrimp for Vinnie. No pint-sized beverages. No small fries. No finger sandwiches. And certainly no cocktail wieners, either. He was a grown man. Couldn’t she see that? He would have shown her too.

"I’ll have the clams."

He pulled his chin back a bit while he talked and dropped his Adam’s apple as far down his throat as he could manage without swallowing it. In the past he’d tried huffing different solvents to deepen his voice. He found one that worked, but only temporarily. And since he couldn’t keep from passing out afterwards, it didn’t do him any good. So he turned to smoking, which, aside from deepening his voice a little over time, also had the advantage of making him look more grown-up. Or so he thought. Vinnie still had to take out his driver’s license each time he wanted a pack of squares. And it was never the quick once-over of the compulsory sort a clerk gives to simply remain in compliance. He and his license were almost always given thorough scrutiny. The clerk, if he was older, would hold the license out at arms length and look down at it with his eyebrows raised high. Then, he’d eyeball Vinnie with his head down so he could see over the rectangular rims of his reading glasses. Boy, did that just eat Vinnie up. He was 23 and had two cars and a house to his name. There were 17 hairs on his chest. He was a grown man. Couldn’t they see that? He would have shown them too.

And that was just it. Vinnie never had the opportunity to show them, any of them. It always worked that way, where, just as he’d figured that he was being done some egregious injustice on account of his small stature and he’d resolved to make a stand, why, then, the other person would seem just as disinterested as a doorknob. Vinnie was sure that the whole world laughed at him behind his back. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some people noticed he was a bit short, certainly. But it was never cause for fits of the giggle bugs. No matter, though, everything mocked Vinnie’s size. Take a simple handshake. Nothing could be more civil and agreeable than a handshake between two fellows. It was a joke to Vinnie, a god-awful joke. His hand was almost invariably swallowed every time by his counterpart. A handshake makes fellows of otherwise natural adversaries, puts one on an equal level with the other. Vinnie felt all the keen brotherhood of the handshake right up until the handshake itself. Then he made his hand as stiff as he could to assert himself and to prevent its being crushed, and cursed the god-awful humiliating experience with all his mite. He knew he was just as good as any other man, but somehow he felt inferior.

Nothing pissed off Vinnie as much as midgets and dwarves. They were special and he was just short. And he hated the pygmy tribes of Africa, too, as they could at least enjoy acceptance within their own culture since it was composed of people like themselves. It was no matter to Vinnie that they were exploited by the larger people of the towns and villages.....

The waitress finished taking Vinnie's order. She went back to the kitchen. And Vinnie's worst nightmare came true....

© 2005 George Czar

Alarm Clock Radio

2005-07-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

Alarm clock radio,
You shake me from my silent slumber
With sleepy-time sonic thunder.

Your doleful shrieks
And your digital display
Count not the weeks,
But each monotonous day.

Twenty-four hours from a.m. to p.m.
You ought to be screaming carpe diem.
At an hour of my choosing, you steal my rest
Like some sick, self-mutilating jest.

I’m a glutton for stress.
For your snooze button I press.
I can’t contest your punctuality,
But for nine minutes, I can delay reality

And recapture the cornucopia of images
Lost in my head
While I revisit a utopia of visages
In the land of the dead.

© 1997 George Czar

A Not Entirely Non-Palindromic TidbiT: An Informal Linguistic Analysis of Such-and-Such

2005-07-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

As you may have already noticed, I take an unusually strong interest in words and the things that can be done with them. Strong as my inclination may be, however, I am only a dabbler in the babbler arts. I take as monopoly money what others might make their bread by. For them, the lingua franca will suffice by itself, lending all that is needed to gain currency, to transact, to get whatever is to be gotten in this world. I'll call them "paid writers", generally. But for some, and this includes me in large measure, lingua franca is not enough, it needs to be folded back in on itself, or brought to bear on itself, like smashing matter together in particle accelerators to better find out the nature of the matter. Now, you might be asking, what's the matter with me. To which I would reply, that's a complicated question that begs a separate article altogether. But what makes language tick? How do its nuts and bolts fit together? And, perhaps most importantly, how can we better employ it to enjoy life more? These are the things folks like me want to know and, perhaps, vainly seek answers to.

For now, I will be happy to titillate your yearnings with the invagination of a "tidbit". You heard me right. Sounds dirty doesn't it? And you thought this linguistics stuff would be boring!

As the title to this piece suggests, "tidbit" is almost a palindrome, but it's not. Read backwards, it spells "tibdit", which--while pretty neat-looking--is not a palindrome. On the other hand, it is certainly something. I don't know if there is a name for it, yet. But if there's not a name for it, I'm calling it "invagination", when a word or combination of words is symmetrical when "folded" around a center line. In this case, "tidbit" could be folded as "tid bit" if you can imagine a more symmetrical font being used so that, for instance, the tails on the t's would not cause asymmetry. I suppose I could just call it "symmetry". But that wouldn't do me any good in trying to illustrate the fun of bringing a language to bear on itself--figuratively and literally.

Moving right along then...

Interestingly, I, like our fearless leader of the same first name, have struggled with dyslexic moments from time to time. Only, I like to fancy that my struggles are of a higher order and of a more subtle fashion. Anyway, I once mistakenly wrote "logarithm" for "algorithm" in a piece about the origin of human language (which, if you behave yourselves, I just might share with you later). Two, seemingly similar, or too seemingly similar? They each are composed of the same letters. Only the first four are arranged differently, "-rithm" remaining the same. Such specialty words with such similar spellings and identical endings must have similar roots right? Well, take a look for yourselves....

algorithm

1699, from Fr. algorithme refashioned (under mistaken connection with Gk. arithmos "number") from O.Fr. algorisme "the Arabic numeral system, " from M.L. algorismus, a mangled transliteration of Ar. al-Khwarizmi "native of Khwarazm, " surname of the mathematician whose works introduced sophisticated mathematics to the West (see algebra). The earlier form in M.E. was algorism (c.1230), from O.Fr. Modern use of algorithmic to describe symbolic rules or language is from 1881.

logarithm

1614, Mod.L. logarithmus, coined by Scot. mathematician John Napier (1550-1617), lit. "ratio-number, " from Gk. logos "proportion, ratio, word" (see logos) + arithmos "number" (see arithmetic). arithmetic c.1250, from O.Fr. arsmetique, from L. arithmetica, from Gk. arithmetike (tekhne) "(the) counting (art), " from arithmos "number, " from PIE base *ri- "number" (cf. O.E., O.H.G. rim "number;" O.Ir. rim "number, " dorimu "I count;" L. ritus "religious custom"). Originally in Eng. arsmetrik, on folk etymology from L. ars metrica; spelling corrected early 16c. Replaced native tFlcrFft "tell-craft."

...As you can see, there's plenty to dissect. They do have a similar root in "arithmos". But it's more complicated than it first seems.

Another curiosity of language--and this may be more reflective of the idiosynchratic nature of my own idiolect than anything else--is that every time I see the word "awry" I cannot help but think of "haywire" and vice versa. Everytime I see "haywire" I think "awry". Why is that, I ask. I answer (if only to amuse myself): It must be because their meanings are similar enough and that their constituent letters are similar enough and that their pronunciations are even similar enough that they both occupy neighboring neurons in my brain. Is it only my idiosynchratic, idiotic idiolect, or does anyone else suffer this boner as well?

And last but not least, is one of my own little gems of garbled english. It bears being stated that I have a bit of a flare for the dramatic, that I tend to act out in mimicry what I've heard in the past, much like a child--jokingly, at first, because, for instance, it's somehow funny to talk like mom and dad. But sometimes, that mimicry becomes its own beast, is internalized completely and becomes part of me. Thus spawned, my idiolect, my own language, my own beast comes into its own again and again in a compounding fashion, adding on accents and what-have-you somewhat haphazardly. And so I find my speech can take on myriad shades of separate dialects all at once. Here, in this phrase, it seems to convey a certain blackness--that is, African-American vernacular--melded with ordinary, common white-folksy talk. And I am probably going to be comfortable with that. In fact, the phrase is the previous sentence. Only, when spoken, it sounds like, "Omina prolly be comfterble with at".

And so ends the informal analysis of such-and-such.

© 2005 George Czar

The Wee Hours

2005-07-10T01:30:00.000-07:00

Ron awoke. He worked hard at the saliva, pushing and pulling it, spreading it thin to each corner of his sleep-dried mouth. Soon, the unrelenting parchédness forced an earlier-than-usual refrigerator raid. Through the latched bedroom door, into the thick wall of hot, humid air, down the interminable hallway of the all-but-vaulted ceiling, drunkenly lumbering along. The gooey mouth of morning stench of unbrushed cheese and crackers. At long last, the pearly white gate, the long-handled white door of airlocked cool, wherein lies the thirst-quenching elixir. Ron's bare back, bristling with temperature changing goose pimples and pelt fur. Only, he called them "goose bumps" and "man fur". Chugging. Chugging. Chugging the elixir; one part hydrogen, two parts oxygen, nine hundred seventy-three parts sugar. Kool-aid, indeed. Somnambulant. In the buff, exchanging pleasantries with the house plant hanging from the corner. Ron's mind began to stir with its first thoughts of the day.

Meanwhile...

The business of the bank at 2:00 p.m. was a steady, white affair. Keys were being pecked at in every direction. Phones rang and were being answered quickly and politely. There were suits, ties, skirts and blouses--all dancing around as if in a fixed little bubble of whirring, preordained maneuvers. Except, every now and again, a stapler needed refilled or the floor rewaxed. But, by-and-by, intelligent design was not without the foresight of such circumstances. And extra cogs, gears, and pulleys were duly put in place long before any stapler was ever out of staples. And so the tellers, with their pert little curls, manicured nails, and cherubic faces could call with confidence from their machicolated workspaces, the next customer. There were turnstiles, counters, compartments, right angles--everywhere, the axiomatic certainty of a geometer's proof.

But this was a new bank, a new machine, not yet tried and tested. It was but a few days and five hours old, when, at 2:01 p.m., the yonder stirrings of Ron's mind became the murmurs of a little chubby lady teller taken with the view of a naked man-beast outstretched toward the ceiling, talking to what seemed to be a house plant. A man waiting for his first car loan almost heard her as she turned to her co-workers, all in a line at the drive-thru window, and in a hushed tone, with a red face, delivered them a taboo.

"Don't look in the window up there." Whispering even more quietly--but emphatically, "He's naked again."

© 2005 George Czar

2005-07-05T19:09:00.000-07:00

I was certain that a gnat had landed on the bridge of my nose.

The Idea Monger and His Alphabet Soup

2005-07-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

I was sitting around wondering what to write. Then, I had an idea. Why not have a bowl of alphabet soup? What better way to conjure up the elusive muse from within my own noodle than to have a hearty helping of those alpha-numeric noodles, steeped in a steamy broth of salty herbs? Ah-ha. The random combinatorial action of the swirling spoon making whirling words from eddies. Eddy-fied spaghettis. Yeah, that's the ticket. I'm going to buy some alphabet noodles and create The Soup That Wrote a Million Verses.

On a separate, but related note, I wonder if the Chinese have pictograph soup. Wouldn't that be something?

© 2005 George Czar

The Over-Soul: Let Us Hearken Unto It

2005-07-03T05:10:00.000-07:00

The Germans, I believe, had a word for it: Über-Pflumpfelmetzerkeit. It literally meant, "over the river and through the woods". In their own cacophonous way, they were attempting to describe the Over-Soul, that most sublime of profundities first described by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher and Transcendentalist. Today, there is a college named for him, as well as a whole line of mid-range furniture, specifically, mattresses, I think. That's what you get for being a radical.

Where have you gone Ralph Waldo Emerson? Our nation turns its lonely "I" to you. Here in America, something's gone awry. We've substituted the Over-Soul, a thing of subtlety and nuance, for overkill, over-size, and overdone. I won't even tell you what the Germans call those things. It ain't pretty. But up, up, and away we've gone with Superman and the supreme celebration of the individual, treading the Over-Soul underfoot. We've gone from Transcendentalism to Condescendentalism.

While we're at it, let's all buy a Hummer and give ourselves blowjobs. For such as it is, we've only transcended the masturbatory. We creep ever-closer to the purely hedonistic "Orgy-Porgy" of Huxley's Brave New World.

Individual liberty and autonomy are absolutely crucial, to be sure. But wheresoever has there ever truly been an island in the universe? Whosoever has confined his act to isolation so that he may dispense with--with certainty--all utilitarian aims?

And though it may be granted that all things, being deconstructed, are nonsense; that all arguments are rendered moot by-and-by and consigned to oblivion; I here lay claim to the resonant wisdom of the ages, to the soundest foundation mankind has known: that a proper relation of the individual to his society is a harmonious striving, though forever imperfect it must be. As to his psychological self, wherein all things lie--bizarre and befuddled the one moment, clear and orderly the next--I leave him to his own inner-light, his own luminant ruminant, saying only: now chew on this; the Over-Soul comes in three mouth-watering flavors. Let us hearken unto it.

© 2005 George Czar

We, Who Don't Do Body Counts

2005-07-03T01:07:00.000-07:00

No one ever told anyone to
"shoot that man".

We concentrate our firepower
here
or there.

We lay down cover fire in a
general direction.

We take out artillery units,
infrastructure,
soft targets.

We don’t kill
people.

Let them count ‘em.
But don’t trust ‘em.
Arabs have a funny way
with numbers.

Fanciful Speculations on the Communistic Nature of Evolution's Natural Selection Based on Division of Labor within Neolithic Culture

2005-07-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

Like many manly men, I find myself with a superfluity of hair where there once was none--namely, on the body--and a dearth where once there was plenty--namely, on the scalp. And then, the thought occurred to me: maybe this genetic predisposition was nature's way of equalizing the division of labor amongst groomers in early man. If a man came about genetically that grew both a lot of scalp hair and a lot of body hair, then, maybe his social group refused to groom him on the grounds that it would result in an unfair division of labor. Once ostracized from the group, he--and his genes--stood little chance of perpetuating themselves; and, outside of the occassional mutation, died out. So then, we are left with abundant/adequate scalp hair and little/no body hair types or little/no scalp hair and abundant/adequate body hair types. And this keeps the division of labor amongst groomers in early man harmonious. Just kidding. Sort of.

© 2005 George Czar

Croutons: The Missing Pieces To My Particle Thesis

2005-06-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

My elementary particle thesis, reknowned for its unassuming, idiosynchratic, out-on-a-whim nature, has finally coalesced, congealed, conglomerated--coagulated even--into a cohesive, coherent hole.....er......whole. Up to this point (though, due to the very variegated nature of the elementary particles in question, I hesitate to say "point", making the mistake of assuming that any one of them can be said to occupy some "point" in space and some "point" in time simultaneously [which is to say "here and now" or "there and then"] with any degree of certainty. With that in mind, physically, and bearing in mind also the supposed "unassuming" nature of my thesis, grammatically, it behooves me not to ramble on about the impossibilities of a grammar ever accurately representing reality, which is what I was about to do.....did.)--But nonetheless, up to this 'point' of statistical probability within the time-space/psychical continuum, I had been happy, as had others, to populate my world with the little goblins, gremlins, and ghosts we call "electrons, protons, and neutrons".

Then, I was playing billiards one day, when, I watched my perfectly Englished cue ball (how's that for spaking thusly Zarathustra?)--my perfectly Englished cue ball--skip off the rail at an exaggeratedly obtuse angle in order to avoid one ball, bounce off a second rail, just nicking the eight ball for what would be a glorious, game winning shot in the corner pocket. Well, that's how it was supposed to work. Instead, and much to my eternal annoyance, as the eight ball slowly and steadily crept toward the pocket, it was pulled--as if by some magical magnetic force--toward the rail and just askew of its expected trajectory.

After cussing up one side and down the other, while my opponent summarily finished off what was left of his balls and the conveniently placed eight ball, I gave a thorough inspection to the soundness of the table. It was perfectly fit. And so I concluded that it must have been some sort of an abberration in the heretofore incompletely understood physical (and psychical)universe.

Nothing short of a eureka! moment for me, I jogged my memory of the exact scenario, trying to figure out what had transpired. I went through all the variables and constants. Then, I conducted some crude observational experiments. And the one thing that stuck out more than anything else was the waitress's hindquarters. But(t) the actions and influences of heavenly bodies had already been explained satisfactorily by the likes of Galileo, Keplar, Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein--among others. So it couldn't have been her backside that caused the abberration. Ample, but(t) not enough mass.

Then, I had another eureka! moment. I saw the very same waitress vaccuuming with a Eureka brand vaccuum. And I thought of how nature abhors a vaccuum. Since events do not happen in a vaccuum, there must be a reason why she would walk by me. There must be some causality. After some serious deliberation, I figured the waitress was not merely walking by just to give me a look at her transcendental behind. No. She was, in fact, delivering salads all night to the dining area which lay beyond the game room. And that was precisely the direction in which the ball's path was skewed. Each time one of us took a shot while she was delivering a salad, the ball would gravitate, without fail, toward the salad.

I ordered the salad.

All the while, I dared not let on to the others what I was up to. Placing the salad near the corner of my choice, I hoped to turn that pocket into a veritable black hole. So long as I got the ball in its proximity, the game was mine. Funny, I thought, how a light and refreshing appetizer could be the long sought-after "dark matter" that would eventually cause the universe to collapse back onto itself causing another "Big Bang" and creating new worlds again and again, ad infinitum; or rather, if you don't prefer existence or salads, ad nauseam.

The game was progressing nicely in my favor as my hypothesis teetered on the brink of full-fledged theory. I beamed at the prospect of every pencil-necked geek memorizing the name of Jor Jazzar next to the likes of Einstein and Newton. And I also took a fancy to the night's potential take-home purse in hustled winnings. But, much to my astonishment, at some critical point the fledgling failed to fly. And it was my opponent that was sinking shot after shot--not in my corner--but in the opposite corner.

Something was terribly wrong. Did I overlook a dual-natured beast in favor of an over-simplified theory? Did the salad have a "push" as well as a "pull" factor? Did I eat too much of it, diminishing and diluting its concentrated energy and proximal force? Was the real power in the vinagrette?

It was then that I noticed a sinister smirk on my opponent's face as he sunk the eight ball in that dark, foreboding, heavy pocket. And I looked beyond that wretched mark with a plumb line to the shadowy table that held his leaden Guiness brew and the little black bag of lightly seasoned croutons which I had gladly relinquished to him halfway through the game upon his oleaginous request thinking him none the wiser to my saladified plans. My grimace was complete.

In his black garb, he explained to me in condescending terms how I'd underestimated the "dark side of the Force"; how I'd put too much faith in "light and refreshing things"; how the prequel Star Wars movies were no comparison to the originals. He claimed, in rather uber-trekkie fashion, that he derived special powers from the color black and all things dark, that the synergy of dark elements--Guiness beer, his gothic makeup and outfit, the shadowy table, the eight ball, the dark pockets, and the little black bag of croutons--had combined to give him an "edgy-edge" over my "lame, white ass".

We settled our bets; he made some perfunctory remarks, turned to walk away, and to make a point of his so-called black magical powers, threw the little black bag to me as if to rub it in how he'd used my own croutons against me. Reflexively, I caught the little bag. And reflectively, I thought of my miscalculations.

How could I have been so wrong, I wondered. It could not have been a coincidence what I had seen. And the last thing I'd believe was that guy's "black magic" bullcrap. What a crock! What nonsense! I hadn't heard superstitious, speculative mumbo-jumbo like that since reading that book by the Warren Commission.

I was thinking about the scienctific truths that could account for the anomalous shots (my billiard shots, not Oswald's bookish suppository or whatever) as I was sort of absent-mindedly turning the little bag over in my hands again and again. You have objects. Objects are composed of molecules. Molecules are made up of atoms. Then, you have atoms that are made up of sub-atomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons.

Aside from the more rarified particles like neutrinos, quarks, bosons, and the like, protons, neutrons, and electrons account for more than 99.9 per cent of the universe's mass. The more massive an object, the stronger its gravitational force if you're assuming two objects at a fixed distance. There were other forces though: the electormagnetic force, the weak force (holds electrons to atoms), and the strong force (holds protons and neutrons together). I was turning them over again and again in my head.

I'll grant George Lucas his right and proper due credit and call all of these forces collectively "The Force", though it's something a little different from what the movies depict. Instead, let it be the collective forces that we know act on physical objects. Then, how come the aberration of billiard balls? Their skewed paths cannot be accounted for by the known forces. Is there another, mysterious force out there acting upon them, I asked myself.

Still turning the bag over in my hands, and still turning the elementary particles over in my head, and still meditating on the transcendental nature of the waitress's buttocks, I chanted in mantric tones their names:

...electrons...protons...neutrons...

...electrons...protons...neutrons...

...electrons...protons...neutrons...voluptuous buttocks

...electrons...protons...neutrons...voluptuous buttocks

...electrons...protons...neutrons...voluptuous buttocks...little black bag of...of...of...little black bag of...CROUTONS!!!

Of course!! That's it! How did I not see it before?! Electrons, protons, neutrons, little black bag of croutons! It was the croutons that had exerted the additional force on the billiard balls, not the waitress's transcendental behind, not the salad, and not any of the other known universal forces.

This was the fabled "dark matter" of physics lore, the missing particles. And their force (dare I say the "dark side of The Force?") is most likely the force that has been behind so many of our unsolved mysteries: the Bermuda Triangle (those planes must have had too many croutons on board), the man who bends spoons with his "mind" (try: with his croutons!), the "magic bullet" in the Warren Commission report (can somebody say, "strategically placed croutons"?).

It's all coming together now, coalescing, congealing, conglomerating--coagulating even--into a cohesive, coherent hole...er...whole. That's right, both. It'll be the black hole to end all black holes. "The Big Crunch" I've heard it called. But now we know why: the mighty (mitey?)crouton. The whole song, the universe, the entirety of everything scrunched down into a nut, a germinal ideal, all an nth the size of the smallest particle known to man.

The point you ask? Well, like I said before, I hesitate to use that term, given the uncertain nature of reality and the bounds of our knowledge. But insofar as there ever was such a thing--physically, psychically, or grammatically--it's this: The crouton and its exerted force form the missing pieces to my particle thesis; they complete the song, a song mightier and more majestic than can be sung by all the angels you could fit on the head of a pin. And that is about as fine a point as any one could make.

© 2005 George Czar

1886: An Ode To Monsieur Pasteur

2005-02-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

The holy cow,
in the pastor's eyes,
on the pasture,
seemed bastardized,
a disaster,

pasteurized
ever after.

© 2005 George Czar