Category Archives: Goofing

Goofing, Religion

Excerpt from the Chronicles

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Photo Credit: Alex Shuper. Unsplash License.

An extract from The Chronicles of the Last Days:

After the second Great War had been won, the victorious Americans went home to an undamaged country. They proceeded to build the freest and most prosperous society the world had ever seen. Vowing that their children would never suffer as they had, they lavished on them high-quality education, material comfort, and indulgent freedom.

This postwar generation was known as the Baby Boom. These “Boomers,” as they came to be called, took advantage of their opportunities, enjoying their freedom to the utmost, giving no thought to future generations – indeed, they made it a point to have few if any children of their own.

Yet this was not enough for them. They desired even more freedom. They identified Christian Puritanism as the one thing that was keeping them from total self-indulgence. “Let us destroy Christian Puritanism,” they said, “that there may be no limit to our license.” And so they did. Their contemporaries in Europe did the same. Together they plumbed the depths of depravity, squandered their nations’ wealth, and left the whole mess to the progressively smaller generations that followed them.

And when the Boomers finally aged and weakened, and realized that they must soon relinquish power and die, they said, “It is not right that the world should go on without us to enjoy it. Let us destroy the world – or let us at least destroy our civilization.”

And so they turned their civilization over to Islam, so that all liberty would be erased.

And this is why the name of Boomer remains a hissing and a byword among all the peoples of the earth, even unto this day.

Goofing

Grandiose Friday

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I think you’ve seen this picture before. It was taken at Norsk Høstfest in Minot several years back, when they did a promotion deal with the History Channel, and brought in some costumed models to sully our camp’s authenticity with base sex appeal.

I didn’t really mind.

Today I checked out the new AI function of Duck Duck Go, my favorite search engine. I found a utility for enhancing photos, and so I plugged that photo in and asked for the style of Frank Frazetta. Here’s the result:

Say what you will about me — that I’m old, and poor, and alone, and obscure, and ugly, and… well, there’s no dearth of material.

But I’ve had some great photos taken over the years, and some of them clean up pretty good.

Have a good weekend.

Goofing, Music

New state anthem

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I suggested a new state anthem for Minnesota (lost to the internet now, alas) some years back. But that was in the quaint, distant, antebellum past. Today, as an embattled sovereign jurisdiction, we face circumstances calling for something a little more bellicose.

I posted about the popular southern song of the Civil War, “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” the other day.

I must have been off my game, because it didn’t occur to me at the time that our new, much-vaunted, progressive state flag (shown at the top) is indeed, a bonnie blue flag, bearing a single star.

It was for me the work of but a few hours to come up with the following new anthem for my beloved state, to which I vow eternal loyalty:

We are a band of siblings, we live on stolen soil, 
And when it starts to freeze outside, our blood begins to boil; 
So when our graft was threatened, we rallied to Omar, 
Hooray for the Bonnie Blue Flag, that bears a single star.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Gopher graft hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
As long as good old Uncle Sam looked off the other way, 
Cheap labor and big money grants made public service pay. 
But now that pesky auditors have rushed in from afar 
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Hurrah! Hurrah! 
For Gopher graft hurrah! 
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!

Goofing, Religion

Lutheran Satire: Reformation rap

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Today, the eve of All Souls’ Day, is Reformation Day, anniversary of the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, sparking the Protestant Reformation.

The Diet of Worms (pronounced Vurms) is not about a radical weight loss plan, as Gene Edward Veith explains in this blog post today.

The video above, produced by Hans Fiene and Lutheran Satire, is an entirely factual and unbiased account of events that followed.

Happy Halloween.

Goofing, Music

‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’

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I have no real excuse for posting something fun and trivial tonight, except…

  • First of all, I don’t have a book finished for review;
  • Secondly, everything’s so sad today, and this clip amused me.

Above, a show-stopping number from the musical, “Kiss Me Kate.” The production, in its various manifestations, is a meta-narrative – a musical about a musical. It deals with a fictional musical production of a version of Shakespeare’s “The Taming Of the Shrew.” The producer and star is Fred Graham, played here by Howard Keel. The female lead is Lilli Vanessi, played by Kathryn Grayson. They are divorced, but still cherish suppressed feelings for one another, though each is now involved with someone else. Lilli’s guy is another actor in the play, who owes a large sum of money to a gangster, and has deviously signed Frank’s name to his IOU. The gangster sends two minions to collect from Frank; here they’re played by two of the great character actors of the 20th Century – Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore. Who knew they could dance like that?

(By the way, I have never seen “Kiss Me Kate” in any of its forms, and I get this information from the Wikipedia article. But I’ve long been familiar with the song.)

The lyrics are by Cole Porter, better than which you do not get.

The movie altered the plot somewhat from the stage version, so I don’t entirely understand what excuse they made for having the two goons encourage Frank with this number in the back alley. In the original play, they find themselves onstage alone before the audience, and improvise it.

Does quoting Shakespeare to women actually make a man interesting to them?

Not in my experience.

Authors, Goofing

‘Wodehouse Playhouse’

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I did a search on YouTube for a BBC comedy program I remember from the 1970s, “Wodehouse Playhouse.” I caught a couple episodes back in the day, on PBS, and I remembered it as somewhat low-budget, but energetic and fun.

I tried this once a couple years ago and only found one episode, which I duly posted on this blog. But now I find that the whole thing is available. The first episode is above.

(There’s another version on YouTube, and it may be better, as it won’t let me post it here. If the quality of this one disappoints, you might search for that other.)

Goofing

Common Phrases for English Learners

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As an experienced English speaker, I thought I’d offer this list to beginners and those wanting useful phrases for conversational English.

  • Yankee Doodle — This is any American, especially a silly one
  • If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. — This is how Americans encourage others to make good decisions and live their best life now.
  • I have two guns, one for each of ya. — A friendly greeting for border patrol agents
  • Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the war room! — A way of asking someone to repeat themselves, typically said forcefully
  • You know how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow. — One of many compliments for American women
  • Yellow-bellied, toffee-hearted, lily-livered — Also compliments
  • Why, Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave. — A friendly greeting for any pastor, parson, or priest
  • We’re going to need a bigger boat — Americans often say this when food is placed before them.

All right. That’s all you get for today. Go have fun and don’t drive on flooded roads.

Goofing, Uncategorized

Blood won’t tell

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Yet another reviewless night. I am currently reading a book that’s turned out to be just plain sclerotic. But it’s sort of a classic, so I’ll finish it and give it a review – though not one the author would care for, were he still alive. So you’ve got that to look forward to. As for tonight… free association blogging, I guess.

Looking to the right of my keyboard, I behold an object that’s been with me since my father died, in 2000. It’s a souvenir shop item, a porcelain coaster emblazoned with the Walker family crest.

Which is a joke.

In looking around the net for an illustration, I found a lot of sources happy to sell me family coat of arms merchandise. But they’re not all in agreement as to what the Walker coat of arms looks like. This doesn’t mean they’re making it up as they go. It’s because there are in fact several Walker families in Britain, not necessarily related to each other, and they have different crests. I found the one pictured above on Amazon, and it looks relatively – though not exactly – like the one on my coaster.

All these diverse Walker crests have one salient feature in common – they’ve got nothing whatever to do with my family.

My family, as I’ve told you more than is probably excusable, is Scandinavian on all sides, and my paternal great-grandfather (whose name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce) joined his brother, who’d emigrated before him, in commandeering the name Walker.

A name they couldn’t even pronounce, as Norwegians have trouble with the letter “W.”

So having any object with a Walker coat of arms on it is only excusable as an act of whimsy. I’d be ashamed to think anyone thought I took it seriously.

My real family heritage is, like all family heritages, mixed. In the genealogical research I’ve done, I’ve found long lines of people who thought they’d had a good year if they made it through the winter without any children dying. Farmers and fishermen, and the occasional sailor, scraping out an existence on the northern fringe of Europe. Lots of cold winters in my heritage.

The most socially prominent ancestor I’ve documented was a lensmann (bailiff), a little like a local sheriff. There’s some mention of descent from some rich guy, but I’ve never followed that line back. And (as I’ve mentioned before) a couple of my ancestors earned a footnote in the history of Haugean Pietism in Norway.

I know people who can trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne. That’s less impressive, though, when we note that historians say pretty much every European alive is descended from that virile monarch. We Scandinavians may not share in that entirely, being on the periphery of the gene pool and somewhat isolated, but I figure I can confidently assume descent from King Harald Fairhair, who is said to have had (at least) a dozen sons.

The historical practical joke that really bids pomp take physic (Shakespeare reference) is that genealogy is a game of converging cones. You’ve got the cone of your ancestors, who double in number with each generation as you go back in time – two parents, four grandparents, etc. Meanwhile you’ve got the demographic population cone, which goes exactly the opposite way – the population of the world (or Europe, in this case) decreases with every generation going back. At some point in the past, you’ve got more ancestors than there are people in the gene pool. How is that possible? Well, many of them do double, or triple or quadruple, duty. You’re descended from them in multiple lines.

It’s at that point that one’s proud genetic heritage gets absorbed, as in some pantheist afterlife, into a great, undifferentiated mass. Any talk of “the best  blood” is nonsense. We’ve all got the same blood. Go far enough back, and that uniformity encompasses all continents and racial groups.

If we seek distinction, blood is a pretty poor path to follow. Character is better. Truth and faith are best of all.

Goofing, Religion

‘Cabrini.’ Also, elves.

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First of all, I want to share the movie trailer above. It’s for “Cabrini,” a film directed by the director of “Sounds of Freedom.” Lukas Behnken, son of my old college roommate Dixey Behnken, was unit production manager and line producer for this film (he was also, if you recall, director of the excellent “Mully” movie, a few years back). Dixey himself appears for a microsecond here, as an extra.

Looks good. (I mean the film, not Dixey, who of course has always been a living gargoyle.)

Do you ever wonder what it’s like inside Lars Walker’s head?

Of course you don’t. But I’m going to tell you anyway.

Yesterday morning, I was thinking about an experience I’ve had occasionally in my life and times – one you may have had too.

On a number of occasions, I’ve found information in a book that I wanted (for one reason or another) to remember, in case I needed it again. But when I did need it again, and looked in the book, it wasn’t there. In one particular case, I remember going through the book page by page, and still not finding it.

Of course, there are reasonable explanations. I might have remembered the right information, but assigned it to the wrong book. Or I could have remembered the information wrong.

But I choose not to believe those facile explanations. I think the truth is much simpler.

I blame the Underground Folk.

If you’ve read my novels, you know about the Underground Folk. They’re the Scandinavian elves, but they don’t like to be called by that name. You call them the U.F. (as above), or the Hidden Folk or the Good Neighbors, or some circumlocution like that.

In the classic novel, Troll Valley, we learned that they continue their activities in modern times. Their great purpose – their calling from God according to Miss Margit, the hero’s fairy godmother – is to change history. Real events include all those wonders and miracles and magic that we read about in the legends, but then the Underground Folk come in and remove most of the evidence. That way, most of the proof of the supernatural is gone, and people are left to believe or not based on reason and the calling of the Holy Spirit, not unanswerable manifestations of the supernatural.

I think what happened to me with those books was that the Underground Folk sneaked in and changed the text (this scenario actually plays a part in my work in progress, The Baldur Game).

And why would supernatural beings change the content of books just to mess with me? What divine purpose would that serve?

I say, sometimes even elves just play practical jokes.

Fiction, Goofing

The Sound of Words Change, Reading Courage, and Jargon Demo

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It doesn’t take much to raise questions about the English language that the casual user can’t answer. Why do we pronounce bury and berry the same way? Fury and jury look like the way they sound, but not bury.

In Old English, the word for bury was byrgan, and that “y” was pronounced like a short “oo” or “ew” as in took and few. Many other words used “y” and were converted to an “i” spelling. Bridge and kiss are two examples, but bury didn’t follow the normal route and retains, I gather, something of its historic sound. I suppose berry from Old English berie always sounded like we pronounce it today with bright and shallow 21st century American accents.

I learned another thing while looking this up. No, two things. First, the Internet isn’t great at teaching you how to pronounce certain types of words. Ask it how you pronounce the Old English gecyþnisse, and you’ll get this link, which is good. Ask it how to pronounce dryhten. Oh, it’s “driç.ten.” But I want to hear it, not read another spelling of it. And what about the “oo” sound for y’s?

Second, the words apple and berry are the original words for fruit. If the fruit in your hand isn’t a berry, it’s an apple, even as late as Middle English. Bananas in Middle English were “apples of paradise.” Dates to “finger-apples.” Cucumbers were “earth-apples,” and, yes, cucumbers are fruit. Melon developed in Greek from a word meaning “goard-apple” and was used generally for fruit.

Anyway, what else we got?

Crime Novel: A new comedic crime novel is “morbidly funny” and “lighthearted literary entertainment at its best.” City of Angles is playwright Johnathan Leaf’s first novel. You’ll be reading more about it in days to come.

Downgrading Education: “What worries today’s administrators about [great books] is not their purported irrelevance, nor the allegedly harmful language or controversial arguments they contain. It is rather the example they provide of characters like Huck Finn, who preferred eternal damnation to snitching on his friend Jim.”

Favorite Novel: “Simply put, Tristram Shandy is a novel I love, one I’ve reread more often than almost any other. It never wears out . . .” I remember one of my English professors loving it too.

And finally, a brief presentation of Rockwell Automation’s retro encabulator in easy to understand, common sense jargon.

Breaking News: A sequel demo was released last year, “living proof that leveraging existing assets is not plagiarism.”

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.