Insectuous relationship

Hundreds of thousands hit by vomiting bug
— Headline, The Telegraph, Jan. 3

Pity the poor British. Their country is a crime scene, immigration a disaster, the trains don't work, etc., etc. But this is really too much.

Have you ever seen a bug vomit? It's just disgusting. And to add injury to insult, it's going around hitting people by the hundreds of thousands.

The Home Office said in a statement, "We have no record of the whereabouts of this bug, but in any case it will be permitted to remain in the country until its plea for asylum is adjudicated, which we expect will be completed by 2015, unless the bug chooses to appeal an unfavourable ruling."

Tommy Cooper

Mention English comedy to Americans and they're likely to think of Monty Python. Old-movie buffs might recall the "Ealing comedies" like The Lavender Hill Mob and Passport to Pimlico.

But there was another sub-genre that rarely made it to these shores. It didn't travel well, partly because it was very much to the English working class taste of the time: unsubtle, flagrantly acted, full of outrageous (often double entendre) puns. It's derived from the English music hall tradition, which Yanks couldn't relate to. Kenneth Williams and his madcap sidekicks Sid James and Charles Hawtrey raised the style to at least a low art form in the long-running Carry On series (Carry On Doctor, Carry On Nurse, Carry on Up the Khyber, etc.).

The Carry On films I've managed to see have been a guilty pleasure, although they're hard to come by in the United States. And I have another name for you: Tommy Cooper.

If you're (a) American or (b) under the age of 40 anywhere, that may mean nothing to you at all. It's understandable. He died in 1984, before many British TV shows (by which he was best known) were shown in the U.S. His brand of comedy came out of a gentler, less "edgy" (how I've come to loathe that word), less "ironic" time, and I suppose many young people would think he's corny. At least until they find themselves laughing till tears gather in their eyes.

How come I know about Tommy Cooper, being a Yank? Because I saw him on British TV: on my first visit, buckets of years ago now, and much more recently in a tribute program (er, "programme") on the BBC. (Once in a while, the Beeb does something to its credit.) It was narrated by Anthony Hopkins, no less, and he did a pretty fair imitation of Cooper's way with a joke.

That way is very hard to describe, because it was so (seemingly) effortless, Zen-like. There are people who know how to "do" comedy or tell jokes; Tommy Cooper simply was funny, the way some people are serious or curious. It was his nature.

Explaining his visual humor is nigh impossible. The fez he habitually wore, the duck-foot shoes … no, sorry, can't be conveyed in words. So I'll just give you the following selection of his lines. They may not crack you up the way they do me, either because you're more sophisticated than I am, or because they're not that great without his inimitable delivery. But I'll take a chance if you will:

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one but let the other one go off.

A man walked into the doctor's, he said, 'I've hurt my arm in several places.' The doctor said, 'Well, don't go there any more.'

Went down to the corner shop. Bought four corners.

I went to the doctor the other day, and he said, 'Go to Bournemouth, it's great for flu.' So I went, and I got it.

I went to the doctor with a jelly stuck in one ear and custard in the other. The doctor asked, 'What seems to be the problem?' I said, 'You have to speak up, I'm a trifle deaf.'

Now, most dentist's chairs go up and down, don't they? The one I was in went back and forwards. I thought, ' This is unusual.' And the dentist said to me, 'Mr Cooper, get out of the filing cabinet.'

I went into a butcher's and I said, 'I'll have a pound of sausages.' He said, 'I'm very sorry, sir, we only sell kilos in here.' I said, 'Okay then, I'll have a pound of kilos.'

So I knocked on the door at this bed & breakfast and a lady stuck her head out of the window and asked: 'What do you want?' I said, 'I want to stay here.' She said, 'Well stay there' and shut the window.

I had a meal last night. I ordered everything in French, surprised everybody. It was a Chinese restaurant. I said to this Chinese waiter, 'Look, this chicken I got here is cold.' He said, 'It should be, it's been dead two weeks.'

I said, 'Not only that.' I said, I said ... I said it twice, I said, 'He's got one leg shorter than the other.' He said, 'What do you wanna do with it, eat it or dance with it?'
I said, 'Forget the chicken, give me a lobster,' and he brought me this lobster. I said, 'Just a minute, he's only got one claw.' He said, 'Well he's been in a fight.' I said, 'Well give me the winner.'

A man goes to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist says: 'What's the problem?' The man says, 'I think I'm becoming a kleptomaniac.' The psychiatrist says, 'Here, take these tablets and if you're no better in a week, bring me a colour TV.'

[Drum roll … ]
Tommy Cooper: And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for.
Audience: [Applause]
Tommy Cooper: Good night!
[Cymbal crash]

Good night, Tommy.

O'Reilly Goes to Harlem

If no one else will ask the question — and it would be hard to find anyone living outside the mental wards of the broadcast media who will — you can count on CNN and its rival networks.

CNN co-host Kiran Chetry and CNN contributor Roland Martin, in a segment on Tuesday’s "American Morning," discussed comments on race Fox News host Bill O’Reilly had recently made on his radio show, and the question you might expect came up: "Is this going to be one of those Don Imus moments?"

Yes, that's about what I'd expect, all right, in an age when a heap big percentage of so-called news coverage consists of trying to catch public figures saying anything that might be construed as offensive or controversial, and then creating the controversy.

If you are lucky enough to have avoided hearing of the latest proto-Don Imus moment, you should immediately click away from this posting. Otherwise, let us see what we can make of it.

Still here? All right. To refresh your memory, here is what O'Reilly is quoted as saying after visiting a Sylvia's, a Harlem "soul food" restaurant, with race racketeer Al Sharpton:

I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea." They were ordering and having fun, and it wasn't any kind of craziness at all.

Depending on the context, this bizarre pronouncement could have had some point; standing in splendid isolation, it sounds like a stoned teenager's text message. Starting to think more for themselves? Meaning, ignoring demagogues like Reverend Shakedown and "Tawana Al"?

But if that was the implication, why had he just gone swanning up in Harlem with Al? And would even the most crass rapper "scream" for iced tea in the manner described? What else would people be doing in a restaurant besides ordering, and having fun or trying to? Who has ever accused black-owned restaurants of craziness or being a moral danger to society?

O'Reilly's remark is so dim you couldn't cut through it with a searchlight, but that didn't stop CNN's Kiran Chetry from trying to turn it into the Story of the Millennium. Talking with Martin, she said:

So, he went on to say, "I think that black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves, getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and people trying to lead them into a race-based culture." He says that all of this was taken out of context, and that he didn't have a racial intent. Do you buy that?

Either Ms. Chetry heard something O'Reilly said that wasn't quoted, or she was misquoting him to make it sound more inflammatory.

Martin actually made the only intelligent (if less than articulate) observation in the whole discussion: "Well, first of all, I mean, you can make a dumb comment and not have a racial intent. I mean, you can have a racial intent or ignorance intent. And so, my problem is this notion that somehow African-Americans are ‘starting’ to think for themselves, as if we haven't been thinking beforehand."

Too bad he didn't let it go at that. He might have made a good impression. Instead, he carried on in a poor imitation of English about stereotypes, and Condoleeza Rice, and how black corporate heads have more power than rappers.

But if, as it appears, this incident was a veiled discussion about black popular culture, then all of that is irrelevant. First, stereotypes are not the same as ignorant prejudice. Stereotypes are general impressions that people form from experience. As long as you keep in mind that there are individual exceptions, stereotypes can be valid if based on fair-minded observation. Having a general picture of how people in a subculture tend to behave is reasonable, and pretending that norms in all groups are the same is unreasonable. Stereotypes are wrong only if you automatically assume that every member of a group personifies them.

And if the subject is black popular culture, than Condi Rice and the black corner-office executives have nothing to do with it. They do not influence the people who listen to rap music. Yes, a media company like Time Warner has some responsibility in shaping public tastes, but they are going to record and promote what they think will sell, regardless of the race of the person at the top of the pyramid.

Most Americans (not only whites) would agree, I think, that a decadent and irresponsible popular culture has taken on too much of the vibe and standards of the underclass, and that our common life has become more crude as a result. If that's what O'Reilly thinks, he needs to say so, and not hide behind patronizing compliments on the table manners at Sylvia's.

Cookbook published; Women, minorities hardest hit

Churchill said that a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. New York Times writers, whose brains were freeze-dried in 1972, not only can't change their minds but can't change anyone else's either, so numbingly dull is their prose. As for changing the subject, the impersonal is always political, and the politics are always the same sophomoric leftism.

New York City is to the United States as St. Louis is to Tierra del Fuego. Mention a currently playing Western film and most of us think of, well, the West. Not the Times, though. It's not going to change the damn subject just because it's a different subject.

A.O. Scott's Times review of 3:10 to Yuma leads off:

Russell Crowe, who wears the black hat in “3:10 to Yuma,” is a native of New Zealand. Christian Bale, the good guy, was born in Wales. Lou Dobbs and other commentators who have lately been sounding the alarm about outsourcing, immigration and the globalization of the labor market may want to take note. The hero and the villain in a cowboy movie: are we going to stand by and let foreigners steal these jobs? Are no Americans willing to do them?

There is simply nothing like a New York Times review that, like Mr. Scott's, sees beyond the obvious to connect with the true social and political issues.

"Get me Merkin." "Hello, Merkin here." "Merkin, it's 'Sulz' Pinchburger. I just read your cookbook review and it's no go." "No! What's the matter with it?" "Too right wing. Who do you think you're writing for, the freaking Post?" "But Sulz, it's about — " "I know what the frick it's about. Cooking with chili peppers. Quit jerking around." "But Sulz — " "Six o'clock today. Better be on board by then." Click.

Merkin sighs. "A.O., I wonder if I could borrow your template."

Chili peppers ripening in the New Mexico sun. Native Americans toiled here centuries ago until the Spanish invaders under Capitan El Dorado Bush wiped them out by selling them blankets impregnated with global warming. That was before the thieving Spanish evolved into gentle, pastoral Mexicans dreaming of Aztlan — no match for American agri-business interests who took over the chili growing concession in a CIA-led revolution.

Today's New Yorkers and other urban sophisticates are all too ignorant of the tragic history of the spicy plant used in recipes such as those in Chili Chili Nice and Easy, just issued by Random Publishers. (Chili con Carnage would be a better title.) What seems like a tasty condiment that pays tribute to the proud and noble tribes that once held this land in trust for Nature is in fact an insult to their memory. Nothing has changed since the U.S. Army gave Cochise a one-way ticket to the reservation. White settlers stole the Native Americans' sports team nicknames, then stole their chili pepper farms.

Take the first, seemingly innocent recipe, Free-Range Rattlesnake with Chili-Remonstro Sauce …

Advice to Indian cattle: Smile, look natural

"Indian cattle have to show police their photo ID cards"
— Headline, Toronto Star




Hair: Brown; Eyes: Brown; Height: 6'1"
Weight: 1,377 lb.
Religion: Declines to answer
Status: Sacred (India); Non-sacred (outside India)
Member since: 2007

But what if they insist on wearing the niqab when photographed?

Getting over the blues

Despite my profound ignorance of HTML, I've been fiddling with the template of Reflecting Light.

It is with no small hesitation that I have changed the look of a world-renowned, historic institution. This design evolution (or, if you prefer, somewhat more intelligent design) was prompted by the First Law of Blogdom: Do not be boring.

The previous livery seemed to me over-saturated with blue, and characterized by a shortage of contrast. Well, I am now emerging from my Blue Period. In this redesign I tried quite a few colors and combinations, some very quiet, others an Elton John's nightmare. This is my temporary final vision, and wants living with for a while to determine whether further tweaking is called for.

Meanwhile, feel free to comment. This is only a survey and will take only a few minutes of your time. No salesman will call.

If you dote on quantification, you can rate it on a scale of 1 ("You've taken a reprehensible blog and made it worse") to 10 ("Can't take my eyes off it"). Have at it, vox populi.

Neither a waver nor a drowner be

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him
his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

— Stevie Smith
"Not Waving But Drowning" 

As far as I can determine, I am still alive, but have certainly been too far out all my life. Not waving, not drowning, just being an outsider. Not a capitalized Outsider — that would make me part of a special group. I've been outside the Outsiders.

Every now and again, I fantasize about being Accepted. Part of the Inner Circle, a Peer Group, the Invisible Government. At such times, bursting through the reality barrier, I envision myself on the cusp of being admitted to the ultimate sanctum sanctorum of this world: an exclusive club on Pall Mall in London.

My London digs. (In my dreams.)

My Sponsor is ready to put me up for membership. He assures the Members that I am a sound fellow.

"I say." "Hear, hear." "That's the spirit." "Sounds like one of us, old boy."

Sponsor: "Can trace his ancestry back to when his forebears emerged from the sea onto land."

"Should hope so." "Very good, that." "I trust that was English land, or at least one of the colonies." "But which side in the Wars of the Roses?" "Oh, come along, Reg, if I've said it once I've said it a dozen times, we need to let bygones be bygones." "Mmm, a bit new on the scene, I should say, but one mustn't be an old fuddy-duddy."

Sponsor: "Mr. Darby is known as a Traditional Conservative."

"Quite." "Quite." "Quite." "Quite." "Quite."

I can feel it. I'm almost in. A sound fellow at last.

Sponsor: "Another of his ancestors was elected to the Royal Academy of Bison Art for a drawing he did in the cave at Altamira."

"What? Altamira? That's in Spain, man." "Really, Sir Giles, it was 25,000 years ago." "Yes, old boy, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." "Couldn't agree more, Sir Giles. Never had any time for the Spaniards. Steal the cream from your coffee."

"Where is his hunting estate?"

My Sponsor: "Lord Swallow, old boy, he says he doesn't like hunting."

Dead silence, punctuated only by a discreet cough. Finally Sir Quincy Fleet-Mothkin manages to mutter, "I say." Getting no response, he adds, "I say."

My Sponsor: "He doesn't enjoy shooting animals."

"How extraordinary!" "Doesn't enjoy shooting?" "Jolly odd, what!" "Well I'm, what do the young people say, gobsmacked." "You are having us on a bit, old boy?"

I can see where this is going. Or rather, isn't. Yes, still too far out. Not waving. Not drowning. But not shooting animals for sport, either. That's how it is.

The Flying Fox

This is a small, "back-of-the-book" ad from an aeronautical magazine of 1949. (The faint secondary image in print-through from the other side of the page.)

So?

It's interesting as a tiny window into another time and place. What can we deduce from this?

1. At least for minor "name recognition" ads in postwar England, the basics of typesetting (as we think of them now) weren't considered very important. None of the lines are centered, even in relation to one another. Kerning, to make letters of different sizes appear to be evenly spaced, never crossed the typographer's mind.

2. On the other hand, the Flying Fox logo is delightful: a quasi-geometric, post-Art Deco fantasy. This was a decade before corporations started going in for meaninglessly abstract logos that were the equivalent of Bauhaus architecture, untouched by human hands. The Flying Fox, as befits a steel manufacturer's symbol, is dignified but symbolizes motion (because the company's products were used mainly in aircraft?) and induces that mythological tingle we feel when kinds of animal are combined, as in a centaur or sphinx.

3. These "electric steels" (I'm not up enough on steel technology to tell you what that means) were made in Sheffield, where "The Full Monty" was set in a post-industrial wasteland. But, obviously, in 1949 the city still had a reason for being: they made things there.

4. The company had very likely been founded, probably in the 19th century, by one S. Fox. His descendants had been bought out by a bigger firm, United Steel Companies.

Googling "Flying Fox Electric Steels" or "S. Fox & Co." yields no useful results. I wonder if anyone in Sheffield today remembers them. United Steel Companies is listed on the site of the Durham Mining Museum; apparently it mined its own coal for its steelworks. It was nationalized in 1947 under Britain's Socialist government, although the board doesn't seem to have changed much from that of 1940, and as we have seen, it was still running adverts in shameless capitalist fashion.

As a note on the bizarre socio-political status of Britain at the time, it can be seen that this government-owned corporation was still headed by a baronet -- the bottom rung of the English artistocracy, but still, an aristo. Nor had the proletariat seen off the Right Honourable W.S. Morrison, M.C., K.C., M.P. from his director's chair.

The director lists for 1940 and 1947 show where captains of industry lived. J. Henderson was at home at 44 Campden Hill Gate, London, W.8. I can place that: it's in Kensington, still a tony district, and I've been to a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research in the Campden Hill Library. Residences of other board members offer the flavour of Old England: The Manor House, Tittensor, Stoke-on-Trent; High Rogerscale, Lorton, Cockermouth, Cumberland; 4b Fredericks Place, Old Jewry, London, E.C.2 (I bet "Old Jewry" has since passed out of use); Chetwode Priory, Buckinghamshire.

So it was, in the day of the Flying Fox.

Blogger's block 2: 60 to zero in 10 seconds

All right now. This is getting serious.

Reflecting Light has been up for one year now and I have nothing to say before sentence is pronounced, or even mispronounced if cliché is not your native language. The highwayman has pointed his pistol at me and ordered me to hand over all my volubles. What's yours is yours and what's mine is mime, leaving me speechless.

I have truly made de grade, and been made degraded. Is anything lower for a blogger than posting about being blocked? It's like a first novelist turning out 100,000 words about How I Suffered as an Adolescent.

Sleep won't come, except to my readers. My dry wit has run wet. I need to be told, every hour on the hour, that it happens to all bloggers. I need to be told comfortingly, "There, there." But as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there, there.

The problem is not that I no longer imagine anybody cares what I have to say about anything. It's that I no longer care what I have to say. I read a news story and know with a crushing certainty that someone else has already commented on it, and better than I could.

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside, immobile with the blogger's blues again?

If nothing else, I hope I have at least left you in suspense as I suspend misjudgment until the next posting.

Blogger's block

Time for a new posting.

Trouble is, besides a heavy work schedule and some medical issues, I'm suffering from blogger's block. (No, that is not a medical problem. Probably.)

Fellow bloggers, how many of you will admit to that complaint?

My last posting was boring past belief. If you have not yet read it, be sure not to.

Everything I can think of to say at the moment is obvious, hackneyed, or repeats something I've already written. And while I admit to few principles, my intention is to post only when an idea visits my brain that might be worth passing onto readers.

That could be days, or it might be later today — I never know when lightning, or at least a 12-volt current, will strike.

Check out the sites on the sidebar. You can always find something interesting there.

The five unwritten rules for blogging success

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5.

Loaves and Fishes ride to your left; Walk on Water Pavilion to your right; wear your gas mask

Let's agree that the incipient war in the Middle East is not funny.

But this may be:

Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel (February 2006) reports, "The ministry of tourism in Israel recently approved plans to set aside 125 acres to become a Holy Land theme park on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee."

Just at the moment, I cannot well envision Dad turning to Mom and saying, "Say, hon, why don't we give the kids a treat and take them to HolyLandland for the holidays?"

But my precognition doesn't have to work overtime to foresee the New York Times headline: "Tourists at HolyLandland Complain of Noise from Missile Strikes, Long Lines for First Aid." Editorial: "Stop the Cycle of Violence: Both Sides (But Especially Israel) Must Show Restraint in the Theme Park War."

This is not investment advice. Read the prospectus carefully before sending money.

The currency of the past

Coenwulf, King of Mercia, feeling spent

Everything that has survived more or less unchanged from the past is a time machine.

Sometimes the "time trip" can be quite spectacular. In Rome, in the Church of Santa Prassede, you can walk into a small room called the Chapel of St. Zeno. In the chapel you are surrounded on all sides, and the ceiling, by mosaics from the ninth century; other than some unobtrusive lighting, everything is as it was.

But the fascination of objects from the past doesn't depend on size. Pictured above are the front and back (or obverse and reverse, if you're of an academic mind) of a coin that was minted in 805-810 during the reign of Coenwulf, whom The Telegraph describes as "the King of Mercia, East Anglia and Kent, the most powerful ruler in Britain at the time and a significant figure in the gradual unification of England."

Besides the £357,832 that the British Museum shelled out to acquire the coin, it's impressive for being remarkably well preserved, which is possibly down to its high gold content. Here, too, is a tiny peep-hole into a long-ago age. The Western Roman empire had ended centuries previously, yet its memory or traditions lingered in wild-and-woolly Britain: King Coenwulf might not have been recognized names like Virgil or Plutarch, but he knew how to style himself like an emperor on the coin of his realm.

And how about that inscription on the back — DE VICO LVNDONIAE ("from the trading place of London"). Would anyone who handled the coin soon after it was made have imagined that 1,200 years later, it would be an object of wonder in a settlement still called London, and still quite the trading place, buying and selling commodities and equities from the entire world?

We have no idea, of course, by what mischance the coin was lost. The universe seems to run a mysterious lottery that determines if an object created for purposes practical or transcendental arrives at the far shores of time or vanishes without trace on the journey. More often than not, it re-emerges from lost time by accident, like the Venus de Milo, which was found in pieces by a farmer on the Aegean island of Melos, who hid it in his barn until the Turkish ruling authorities got ahold of it.

Every now and then, someone makes an effort to ensure the survival of an article that would otherwise return to the uncreated. The Egyptians of antiquity went to incredible trouble to see that the bodies of their royalty were proof against decay; they had occult knowledge or intuitions of immortality, but confused eternity with perpetual existence in time.

John Aubrey (remembered today as the author of Brief Lives) was walking through Newgate Street in 17th century London where he found the head of a statue that had recently been mostly destroyed in the Great Fire. Aubrey salvaged the what was left as a fragment of history. He wrote, "How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am put them down!"

Archeologists excavate known ruins, but are unlikely to turn up artifacts outside of their "digs" whose existence is unsuspected. More likely these days than disinterested scholarship is the self-interested quest for profit. (It's not clear from the Telegraph story whether the man who found Coenwulf's coin using a metal detector was deliberately searching for valuables he could sell, but many amateur artifact hunters do just that.) Still, if the net result is that something of historical interest is brought to light rather than continuing to be unseen, we should hardly begrudge them the financial fruits of their labors.

Why does nature retain intact some goods from centuries or millennia past, while the personalities who lived in that time vanish, in most cases the very memory of their existence obliterated? Are mere material objects of more account in the great scheme of things than reasoning, feeling human beings? Or is it the other way around: Does everything material dissolve, quickly or slowly, but certainly eventually, while Spirit — incapable of being permanently imprisoned in matter — continue through countless forms and then beyond form?