4/25/05

The joyous cry rings out over St Peter's Square, its novel alteration ignored by the multitudes awaiting confirmation that the 1.1 billion Catholics of the world have a new figurehead. Yet strangely, through what has been interpreted most commonly as a clerical (but not Clerical) error, the Enclave of Cardinals has chosen to elevate to the station of God's Vicar On Earth not one of their own, not a clergy member, not even a Catholic, but that lovable guy with a rubber nose and a soul to match, Uncle Pappy.

A popular children's show host ("Uncle Pappy's Funtime!") and recording artist ("Hey Kids, it's Uncle Pappy!", "Uncle Pappy's Bedtime Stories", "It's Fun to Learn Quantum Chromo Dynamics with Uncle Pappy"), the new Pope may seem at first blush a less than ideal candidate for the world's foremost religious leader. But the Doctrine of Infallibility states that the leaders of the church can never act other than rightly, which pretty much settles the issue.

In an initial interview, conducted in the pontiff's native language (nominally English, though some might disagree), His Grace waxed eloquent on his philosophy and plans for the future:

(Okay, where's that ermine robe I wanted? Whadya mean it isn't part of the outfit? What good is it being pope if you can't... oh --)

To all the gathered Faithful of the world:

He-e-ey kids! I greet you and bring you joyous blessings in the name of the fellowship of Christ Let all of you be ever more fulfilled in your devotion to God and to the holy purposes of the Church. All right? All riiiight!

We're facing uncertain times. Difficult times. Weird times. I mean really weird. Weird with a beard. Weiiiiiiird! And you know that old saying: when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Well, it's time for the church to get with that program. Yeaaah!

First off, kids, if you want to survive in a changing world, you've got to be willing to change too. This whole Divine Army thing is just old-fashioned. God may be the great general but that doesn't make every priest a drill sargent, y'know? Sure ya do! We need a new way of doing stuff, something simple and sharing. It's more fun when you play nice. You know how to play nice, doncha? Well?

And y'know what? We gotta stop keeping people out of the church. Jesus was always going out to have fun with anybody he met, and it wasn't just the folks with a lotta money or fancy ways, nosiree! Everybody got to come to His party! We shouldn't be trying to send people home if they don't do exactly what we do, not if they want to have fun too. Isn't that a good idea? Huh? Sure it is!

And cake. What good's a party without cake? Lotsa cake. Enough cake so everyone gets some. That's what a party should be about! Lots and lots of cake! And punch! Cake and punch! Yeaaaah!

Initial reactions to the momentous occasion from within the church have been mixed, as is only to be expected. Most have joyously and whole-heartedly embraced the choice of their ecclesiastical leadership, with cries of "Long Live Pappy!" ringing out across the world. Many laypersons have already taken to wearing symbolic rubber noses in support of the new pope. Floppy shoes and hats are also making great fashion inroads, and are expected to appear on the runways of Milan and Paris next season. Certainly Pappy's popularity among the poor and dispossessed within the church is indisputable.

Some, however, mostly of high position and privilege, have questioned the chain of events leading to Uncle Pappy's elevation and openly call for an investigation of the Vatican's computers and office procedures, hoping to find the flaw which lead to what they view as a terrible mistake. "Who died and made this clown pope?" one asked. Such dissenters have decreased drastically in number due to the recent formation of Uncle Pappy's Fun Police, a discrete enforcement arm of the Church charged with "Encouraging loyalty and adherence to the True Fun."

Having taken the name George Ringo I* ("Two John Pauls is enough," he explained -- "it's only fair to give the other guys a turn."), the new pontiff has begun his reign by issuing a variety of edicts on matters great and small. He has elevated to scriptural canon the Three Laws of Fun: Have Fun Now, Have More Fun, and Have Fun Anyway. They are included in a proposed new book of the Bible, the Book of Pappy, which also includes his letters to viewers of his program, a collection of wit and wisdom from the show and instructions on how to talk down to children without putting them wise.

He also elected a number of performing associates to high positions in the Church, including the Holy Fathers Hobbit, Hokum, Gramps, Spoonman, Willie and Filucie, as well as Mother Supreme Zosima, and has initiated the unprecedented procedure of elevating to sainthood a still-living person, henceforth to be known as Saint Chumleigh of the Strait Jacket.

Other encyclicals (or "Papal Bull," as he and his detractors both term them) detail his condemnation of jugglers and mimes as perpetrators of mortal sin, the inclusion of balloon animals as holy sacraments, the vestal necessity of greasepaint and fright wigs and the redesign of priestly vestments to include "neater colors than just black." His Holiness has also detailed his intentions to sell off a large portion of the church's real estate holdings, with the intention of starting "A fund or something" for the purpose of "doing good stuff. Y'know, good."

In short, the new Vicar of Heaven on Earth has initiated the most sweeping reform of the church since at least the high middle ages, and perhaps ever. The prayers of his followers are with him, as well they should.

Amen. Yeaaaaaaaaah!

* Credit: This joke courtesy my esteemed associate Howlin' Hobbit. (Or should I say "His Excellency, Howlin' Hobbit"?)

4/18/05

Let us pause to take in the significance, the implications of this text. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Very logical. And what else can we derive? Class? Speak right up.

Exactly! This statement produces one and only one equivalent: the contrapositive. And how would you phrase that? Good! Let's write that on the board, shall we? "When you [scritchy scritch] lose something, then [scratch scritchity squeak] you have something." Gold star!

One of the major irritations of modern civilization is the amount of crap you end up having to keep track of. Be your genetic background an agricultural hive-drone or a longshanked hunter-gatherer, everyone is given a second, unpaid position as a widget-herd, minding the keys, the ID, the lighter, the three-months-overdue bill in the plain white envelope and all. Major delusional structures are born of attempts (and attempts only, mind you) to keep such fluff from running away to join the circus.

I myself am apparently descended from a long line of penniless wandering sages. Without iron discipline, I'd inevitably revert to loinclothed savagery, my numerous accouterments of social superiority gone forever under the sofa. To prevent that sad deterioration, I practice Stuff Fu: keys always stuffed in the left front pocket, driver's license is always either in hand or stuffed in belly pouch (I'm also descended from a long line of marsupials), a place for everything and everything in its place.

It's a devil's bargain: you swap security in your person for a certain peevish obsession with spectacles, testicles, watch and wallet, the kind of waste of attention that no penniless wandering sage would ever endure. And like any devil's bargain, there's a catch: it only works as long as your modes of behavior don't get distorted. My system depends on certain cues and conditions, like, say, a left front pocket to stuff my keys in.

So there I was, out buying a new (well, for me) van, a slightly longer-stronger version of what I've already got, and I needed some cash. Off to the ATM, jam in my debit card, poke the necessary ritual buttons, grab the loot and scram! Half an hour later, I'm looking in my wallet and -- dude, where's my card? I never use ATM's, so I have no always grab the card after the money reflex to fall back on when my poor fluttery forebrain gets busy watching the airplane. Fortunately for me, the bank machine had its own version of my methodology and, upon application at the inside window, an only-slightly-amused teller dug out a ring of keys, unlocked seemingly more doors than the entrance to Maxwell Smart's office and extracted my precious my precious gollum gollum from an interior compartment.

Wouldn't you know it, there is one area I actually would like to be a loser in, one I can't just be forgetful with, and that's my weight. My current attempt at codifying a response to middle-age spread is to take a half-hour walk every day, usually up and down a series of outdoor walkways I sometimes call the Stairmaster. I slap a CD in the player, put on the phones and happily (or at least dutifully) trudge up and down and up and down and up and up and up and up, and back. Yesterday's jaunt took me all the way to the top of the Delridge stair, my own personal Zirak-Zigil, puffing like the Little Engine That Could, but when I got within a few treads of home and checked for my cell phone clipped to my belt, it was gone.

So it was back down and up and up and up, doubling my usual walk in search of my elusive detachable penis. This is exactly why I use prepaid. Coming up bupkis, I hobbled home with many a merry quip and jest and tried calling my number. A stranger answered.

'Great! You found my cell phone."

"Yes. What's the reward?"

Uh oh. A calculating stranger. I pondered my response. On the one hand, this clown had my cell phone and was trying to hold it for ransom. Da noive! I could have his butt detained if I tried really hard. On the other hand, this clown had my cell phone and I wanted it back, not tossed in the nearest dumpster or draining its battery in an evidence cage. Oh, sure, I could stand on my principles and let him keep the steenking phone, much good might it do him, but it would be a spendy nuisance to replace, a relatively high price to pay for the luxury of being a snoid. Nor was I really the sort to hunt him down and lovingly gun-staple him to the nearest wall, refreshing though that might be. Clearly, I'd put myself over a barrel here. Lo-o-o-ser!

But when further interview revealed that the clown was in fact a homeless clown and disabled (yeah, right) to boot, I applied mental ju-jitsu. Clearly, the Cosmic Wha? was presenting me the opportunity to give something back in gratitude for all this debris I've accumulated, starting with the moss-riddled roof over my debris-distracted head. And it seemed abundantly clear to my abundantly accessorized self that here was someone who could use a ten dollar bill a whole lot more than me.

Stay where you are, I advised him, I'll come to you. Ten minutes later my erstwhile benefactor was a sawski richer and I had my phone back. Losers both, we each got something we needed, and I can only hope that he benefited as much from that dead president as I do from my disposable com link.

4/11/05

Sigh. Houston, we have a problem. Specifically, an animal problem. More specifically, a varmint problem.

We live in a house perched on the edge of what is variously described as a creek bed, a gulch, a ravine, a glen, a dell, a green belt or a riparian corridor, but which is more or less a sliver of trashed wildness left over from when the loggers came through and stripped out the good timber to build shanties in Seattle proper long about a hundred years back. Left to its own devices, the local ecology has since stabilized at the deciduous level, a variety of marsh-tolerant trees and shrubs combined with the invasive blackberry thickets that are the Northwest's legacy of Scandahoovians and their unwholesome lust for pie.

An aerial view of our property (courtesy Google Maps and their new satellite photo feature) (I am not kidding!) shows the row of houses on our side of the street, each with a distinct, clear back yard butted onto the swath of greenery, except where the vegetation veers out to swallow one yard, then swerves back to avoid the neighbor's. That's our house.

Along with the flora comes a certain amount of fauna as well, including the aforementioned twitty birds as well as a modicum of mice, rats, moles, squirrels, possums and the occasional raccoons crossing the back porch cursing each other horribly at two in the ayem. Gentlemen, please! Take your discussion elsewhere!

Bellicose procyonidae aside, these neighbors on the wild side are generally an amiable bunch. They tend to their knitting and leave us to ours. And in fact, we here in Chickadee Glen have a well-formed Unified Fauna Policy. We divide the bounty of Goddess's creativity into two heaving categories: Critter and Varmint.

The distinction is simple. As long as an animal, a rat, say, remains in its own environment, outside, and doesn't try to invade ours, it is designated as Critter and given all the rights and respect due to said taxonomy. But if said animal foolishly decides to invade the area we have designated as our personal living space then we will have no option but to label said creature Varmint and pursue its removal by all the means at our disposal.

Lest this seem uncharitable, let it be known that we are far from harsh, vengeful people. Our first principle is live and let live. For years, we practiced humane insect removal, capturing resentful, agitated bugs under jelly jars and releasing them back into the cruel world. My sweetie's forbearance toward spiders that would drop directly onto whatever jewelry piece she happened to be addressing, wink all eight eyes at her and scurry away was nothing short of saintly.

But even saints have limits. One evening I was watching her at work when an exceptionally athletic specimen rappeled from the vaulted ceiling above, pausing to appraise her judiciously at eye level then descend to the table. My good spouse grabbed the nearest book and flattened the intruder, announcing "NEW RULES, SPIDERS!"

I myself found it necessary to take matters to extremes when confronted with a vast, heavily fortified underground installation of terrorist wasps behind my storage shed. Two cans of bug bomb later, all that was left was an enormous hole, the caved-in remains of their subterranean catacombs. The next day was 9/11. I'd rather not speculate on the significance of this juxtaposition.

More recently, there was the incident of the Rats In The Rafters, a sordid episode involving loose ventilation screen, a nearby locust tree bearing edible seed pods, and a young family's determination to move up in life no matter what. Let us draw a curtain of charity over the matter. Suffice it to say that it all concluded satisfactorily -- for the survivors, at least.

I'd had long and entirely unhappy acquaintance with the little black ants of our introduction. In our previous home, a 30' doublewide we optimistically named Blossom, it had taken months of remorseless combat involving hundreds of dollars, a professional exterminator, the complete resection of our living room ceiling and a vacuum cleaner named Bucksnort to rid ourselves of Unca Thaddie's Ant Farm, an infestation of moisture ants so vast and elaborate as to resemble some grotesque alien empire. Rest easy, earthlings, the menace was turned back -- until now.

Tthis time I ... chilled. I went online to gain intelligence about my enemy. My research indicated that a successful strategy had to look beyond momentary gains, small respites from intruders in my breakfast nook, and secure a final solution to the bug problem. This was no time for honorable combat or nobly confronting the enemy with valor and honor. This was an occasion for dirty tricks, knives in the dark, drygulching and backalley thuggery.

So instead of attempting to spray out or suck up the little creepy crawlies, I set up a chain of bait stations, little black pagodas, Unca Thaddie's Ant 7-11 -- fast food, slow death. Take some home to Mom, little soldiers. Dropped them in desirable locations right on the main insect thoroughfare and waited.

The results were dramatic: within a day, attendance at ant prayer breakfasts dropped to nearly nothing. Two days, three days -- not a varmint was stirring. But then, Ant: TNG. The last gasp of the elders to the young hatchlings must have been Beware the Black Pagoda. But youth, hey, when did they ever listen? Ant: TNG appears to be suffering the same fate as their forebears.

We will yet negotiate a lasting peace with the race of ant, involving their relocation to a homeland other than my kitchen walls Until then, my convenience store empire remains. But enough of this idle chitchat -- I go to pull the wings off timid, fragile flies.

4/4/05