Category: Humor

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Tragedy in Pole Dancing Class

I was just about to leave my office for the evening and head to the Twisted Wench Daiquiri Lounge for an evening libation when I heard their voices.

“I can’t believe you did that to me!”

“I didn’t do anything to you. You did it yourself!”

“Ladies, please,” a male voice interjected. “Wench won’t like it if you are screaming at each other. Let’s just talk to her about the situation.”

Agincourt? Sir Agincourt Finsbury-Pikestaff? Was that the voice of my trusted, loyal operator of the Satellite Virgin Training Academy on the Moon? I wasn’t expecting him, and it seemed he was bringing a problem to me. Usually his assistant, Teri the Boopster, handled routine matters. This must be serious!

I opened the door to my office just as they approached. Yes, there was Agincourt. I couldn’t help but smile to see him. He’s my brother, you understand, and I adore him even if he does quaff a few too many pints now and again.

“Agi!” I exclaimed, holding my arms out for the requisite hug. Instead of the big squeeze he normally gives me, he stopped and gave me an exasperated look. I was startled, to say the least. “What seems to be the problem?” I asked, eyeing the two trainees accompanying him.

One, a tall, slim blonde, clearly had been wearing her long hair in a ponytail. That ponytail no longer looked very neat, though. It certainly wasn’t a look we encouraged out Virgins to display. Great hanks of hair stuck out at odd angles from her head, and red streaks that looked for all the world like claw marks decorated one of her cheeks.

The other, a small brunette, had high color in her cheeks and a bloody nose. A bruise on one of her upper arms was darkening before my eyes.

Agincourt was talking.

“It seems that there was a bit of an accident during the zero-G pole dance exercise,” Agincourt began. He was clearly upset and more than a bit aggravated with his two charges.

Before he could continue the brunette interrupted. “Accident! It was no accident! She pushed me!”

“I was spotting you, not pushing you!” retorted the blonde.

“Ladies, it seems we might need to calm down before we discuss it further.” One thing I had learned in my year of operating the Virgin Training School was that angry Virgins needed to be coddled and soothed. Only after tempers cooled would I be able to make sense of the situation.

I led them into my office. They were grumbling and snarling at each other. I sighed. My daiquiri and the Twisted Wench were looking like a fond dream at this point.

“Wenchy, dear, I am so very sorry to bring this situation to you,” Agincourt said as I brewed a tisane loaded with herbs of comfort and calming properties.

“Hand me that small box of valerian root?” I asked Agincourt. He passed it to me. As I added a large dose of it to the mixture, he started to tell me about the situation.

“Not yet,” I said. Let’s give the girls some tea and let’s us have something a little stronger, shall we?”

He grinned at me. “You know me well,” he chuckled. I was glad he could smile. I was beginning to wonder if this dispute wasn’t taking its toll on him. I poured us both a healthy serving of a lovely, smooth Irish Cream. We took our first sips as the kettle whistled. I poured the water over my herbal recipe and carried the pot to the conversation area of my office. One trainee sat on each sofa, glowering at the other across the gorgeous marquetry inlay of my antique Italian coffee table.

Agincourt again began to speak, but I shushed him. I poured the herbal concoction for the trainees, setting one cup before each of them.

“Drink,” I ordered.

I had them empty one cup and start on another before I let them speak. The silence was difficult at first, but finally the warm drink and its herbal contents did the trick and the two young women began to calm down. I could tell by their slower breathing and the way they sipped slowly at their second cups that my concoction was working.

“Now,” I said. “I would like to hear first from Sir Agincourt. After he tells what he understands the situation to be, you each will have a chance to add to his explanation or correct it as you see fit.” The trainees nodded.

Agincourt cleared his throat. “As you know, the trainees practice the pole dance in zero-G on the Moon. Cyndi has appointed several of the more advanced trainees as assistant instructors.”

“That’s me,” the blonde broke in.

I shot her a warning look. “Sir Agi first, then you will have a chance,” I murmured. She settled back into her plushly upholstered cushions.

“Yes, well, erm…” Agincourt took another sip of his Irish Cream. Finding a bit of determination from somewhere within his glass, he continued. “After demonstrating the move she was teaching, the assistant instructor allowed the student trainee to attempt the move. Unfortunately, the trainee wasn’t quite properly balanced …”

“I was perfectly balanced! She pushed me!” the brunette declared hotly.

“I most certainly did not,” the blonde assistant stated emphatically. “I was spotting you and attempting to adjust your balance and you fell.”

“I fell, all right! I fell right on my nose. If it swells up and no one will offer camels for me, all this training will be for nothing!” She glared across the table at her erstwhile instructor.

“Unfortunately,” Agincourt continued, “After the fall I’m afraid the two got into a bit of a fight.”

I shook my head in disbelief, wondering if “Deportment” would be yet another class we would have to add to the curriculum.

“Why in the world would a fight have ensued?” I asked. I looked at the petite brunette, who I expect swung the first claw.

“Because she pushed me!”

“I did not!”

“Ladies, ladies. Please. Agincourt, were there any witnesses?”

My gallant brother looked uncomfortable. “Well, erm, yes.”

I waited.

“I was filming the class at the time. I was the one who separated them, and then, of course, got them down here to the school for you to deal with as Head Mistress. Have you any Guinness?”

The subject change was meant to distract me from the fact that a male had been watching my Virgins in training. It was meant to distract me from the fact that my brother had been watching them.

“Oh, Agi, what will I do with you?” I sighed. Both Virgins had fallen asleep by this time. Good. The valerian root worked.

Agi and I watched the video. Here it is. Tell me if you believe the trainee was pushed, or if she fell. Then, in the comments, tell me what I should do about Agi, and recommend to me suitable disciplinary measures for the fighting Virgins.

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Perspectives on War

I was talking recently with a couple of friends who have experience in military and foreign relations. As sometimes happens with us, the discussion turned to politics.

The question was asked, “What do you think about Russia and China conducting joint military training?”

One friend, who has a military background, dismissed the exercises as “showing off.”

“So you don’t think they can amass the power to oppose the US in world military matters?” I asked.

“I think the trainings were a desperation move,” my other friend responded. This friend has worked with the American diplomatic corps in international locations for years.

“Why do you say that?”

“China and Russia consider themselves decision makers along with US on international levels, but in recent years, they have found themselves out the picture and being ignored. They are trying to drawn some attention hoping the world will remember their presences.”

“As though the world doesn’t remember that they are both serious nuclear powers?” I was skeptical.

“They hope, among other things, that if they make a display of comradeship and display their combined military might, other countries will look to them with more respect,” said my diplomatic friend.

“They can only do so much, though,” agreed my military friend. “In the end, they know and everyone knows that we could crush them and their entire military in less than 24 hours.”

“Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically. “Like we crushed Iraq.”

“No war has ever been won faster than Iraq,” declared my military friend.

“What about the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War?”

“No. We won the war in less than eight hours and then we invaded to take out the remaining resistance. It took time to cover the land and actually get to Baghdad, but by then the war had been won.”

“What do you mean, eight hours? Eight hours from when we got to Baghdad, or eight hours from when we crossed the Kuwait border initially?”

“By military definition, a war is won when one side destroys the enemy’s military and renders it unable to fight. That only took us less than eight hours with airstrikes, before we ever crossed the border,” my military friend explained.

I repeated one of my initial questions. “Could we cripple the combined military of Russia and China as quickly, without nuclear reprisal?”

“Easily,” my military friend asserted. My diplomat friend agreed with a nod.

“Without inviting a nuclear attack from them?” I was very skeptical.

“There is no assurance that we could avoid nuclear missiles getting into our territories,” said my diplomat friend. “Desperation may lead the losing countries to try using their nuclear power, and they might get missiles through before we could destroy them.”

My military friend added, “But we have jets that have never been used in any war, sophisticated weapons…”

“Do you really believe that we are 100% capable of taking out any nuclear warhead directed at the US or its allies?” I demanded. No matter what the technology might be, error-prone humans create the equipment, program it, and operate it.

“Nothing is one hundred percent assured,” agreed my diplomat friend.

“Do you think any country would actually use nuclear weapons?”

“Yes,” asserted my military friend without hesitation. “Any Muslim country that obtains nuclear weapons will use them against us.”

I was still skeptical, but thoughtful. “I prefer to think that the lessons of Japan and even of Chernobyl would cause leaders not to use them, but if the nuclear arsenal of a country got into the hands of fanatics, I don’t think we would be able to judge what might happen. Fanatics just don’t think like we do.”

“Consider, too, that the world population is increasing and there are not enough natural resources to satisfy everyone. It won’t be long before the countries of the world will be fighting over resources as basic to sustaining life as water.” My diplomat friend has already been at the negotiating table on matters of resources and the environment.

“That is definitely true,” I agreed. “But if nuclear weapons are used, then the land affected by them becomes uninhabitable, and resources like water that pass through contaminated lands will be unusable.”

“Right, but some countries may see themselves as having no choice but to destroy more powerful countries just so they can survive. They believe the historically powerful countries are dominating the world and they need to be taken out. For instance, that is what many Muslims believe. They think the only way for Islam and their way of life to survive is if there is no powerful Western influence over their government or their culture.” My military friend feels strongly about this, in case that fact escaped anyone.

“There are plenty of countries that resent our interference in their policies. Venezuela is one. Obviously the Muslim world thinks that of any non-Muslim power. China has been careful to prevent foreign influence and accused England of causing their population to become addicted to opium in the 19th century in an effort to control them,” my diplomat friend pointed out.

“No country appreciates the interference of outside forces,” I agreed, “unless they see that country as an ally that has been invited for a particular purpose – like Kuwait during the Gulf War.”

“The bottom line,” declared my military friend, grinning, “is that we need to destroy the rest of the world sooner rather than later if we want to stay in the driver’s seat.”

“Now you’re thinking clearly!” I laughed.

“Right,” said my diplomat friend. “Instead of annexing the rest of the world, we should just annihilate those other countries. We should learn from the mistakes Rome made.”

“Not to mention the Soviet Union,” I added. “Ancient Greece, ancient Persia, Hitler, Napoleon – all made the same mistake of trying to conquer the world when they should have just destroyed it.”

“Finally you two are talking like people who know what they are talking about,” my military friend chuckled.

What’s disconcerting is that I’m not sure he wasn’t just a little bit serious.

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Hey There, Delilah


He logged into his instant messenger program. There she was! Her name glowed in his contact list as online and available, although the little clock icon to the left of her name indicated she was idle. She’d not used her computer in 47 minutes, it told him. He decided to try, anyway.

“Hey there, Delilah.”

He was rewarded less than a minute later with her reply.

“Hi.”

“What’s it like in New York City tonight?”

“Loud,” she replied. “Where are you?”

“A thousand miles away from you. I’m in Nashville. I have that audition tomorrow.”

“Where are you staying?”

“My cousin Bill is putting me up for the night. I’ll go back to Paducah tomorrow after the audition, unless they offer me a job on the spot.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

“What are you doing?”

“Studying. There’s a lot of reading for this philosophy class I’m taking.”

“I saw you were idle when I signed in and I wondered if you’d wandered away from your computer. Will you turn on your webcam? I want to see you.”

“My hair’s in a ponytail and I don’t have makeup on.”

“You know I don’t care about that. It’s you I want to see, not your makeup.”

“You have to turn on yours, too, then.”

“I don’t have on any makeup, either, and I’m sitting here in a plain white t-shirt.” He knew she would giggle at that. She obligingly laughed at all his jokes, no matter how pitiful they were.

They each clicked the icons for their webcams and waited for the obligatory permissions.

“Hi there,” smiled Delilah.

“You are so pretty.”

“No, I’m not. I look awful. You look wonderful, though.”

“Yes, you are pretty. I don’t care what you say. You’re beautiful and bright and gorgeous and pretty and brilliant and cute…”

Delilah laughed. “I’m not feeling too bright or brilliant. This philosophy class is kicking my butt.”

“You are and you know it. Times Square can’t shine as bright as you. Get used to it.”

“Whatever.”

“You know it’s true.”

“They say college gets easier as you go along, but I think with this class it’s gotten harder. Or maybe my IQ has dropped significantly.”

“Even the philosophy professors at Columbia are bound to be impressed by your superior intellect.”

She sighed. “I wish. It seemed easier when you were at Berklee.”

Neither said anything for a moment, drinking in the visions of each other through the poor light and shadowy webcams on their laptops.

“If I was there I’d just be distracting you from your philosophy assignment.”

“I like that kind of distraction. I miss you. You’re so far away.”

“No, I’m not. I’m right here.”

“I can’t touch you. My bed’s too big these days. I can’t reach out and find you any more.”

“Don’t worry about the distance. It’s only temporary. We have cell phones and laptops. I’m right here, always right here. If you get lonely, call. Or send me an instant message.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I wrote you a song.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Let me send it to you. It’ll take a few minutes for the file transfer.”

“Play it for me while I download it, then.”

“Okay.” He picked up his guitar after transmitting the file. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Here. I’ll make the call.” A telephone rang on his computer.

He accepted the call. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“Yes!”

“You have to pay attention, now.”

“Play the song!” she laughed. “I’m never going to be more ready!”

He played and sang softly to her, amazed at how shy he felt doing it. As grainy and terrible as the webcam picture of her was, though, he saw the tears sliding down her cheeks.

“I miss your voice so much,” she said.

“Listen to the song when you miss me,” he answered. “Just close your eyes, and pretend we’re sitting together in the loft and I’m singing and playing and you’re reading philosophy and we’re together.”

“You’ll have to send me more songs, then. And don’t make them perfect. I want to hear you say ‘shit’ when you screw up the chords or the words.”

He laughed. “You don’t like perfection?”

“I like you.”

“You’re saying I’m not perfect?” Melodramatically he pantomined committing hari kiri. “How can you do this to me?”

“Goof.”

“You love me.”

“Yeah, I do.” She gave him a languid wink.

“I think I’m going to have to get another job,” she said, changing the subject.

“Why?”

“Starbuck’s keeps cutting my hours. If I can’t work, I can’t get paid. If I can’t get paid, I can’t keep the lights on.”

“I should have stayed there. Then I could have helped with the expenses.”

“No, you needed to go back home after graduation. You weren’t getting paid enough to stay here. New York’s expensive, remember?”

“I could have gone to more auditions there. I could have busked in the subway. Hell, I could have gone to work at the Starbuck’s across the street from yours.”

“Oh, sweetheart. No. Our parents would have written us both off for sure.”

“I’m going to start making money with my music, Delilah. I will. I could have done it there. And when I do it, we’ll have plenty of money.”

“Most musicians don’t make tons of money. You know that.”

“I will, though. I’m going to make money with my guitar and with my voice. I’ll make enough to send you to graduate school if you want. I’ll make so much money we’ll have our own plane to fly us back and forth. We can be in New York during the week and on weekends we’ll go to wherever my gig is, or maybe to our Swiss chalet.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“Yes, I’m dreaming. But someday I will make that much money. I promise.”

“I love the song, sweetheart.”

“You love it? Really?” He was pleased. “There’s more I have to say, you know. That song didn’t say it all.”

“Oh?”

“Every love song I write I write for you. I write them to you.”

“You take my breath away.”

“Then I’ll have to stop writing you songs.”

“No!”

“I can’t have you turning blue because of what I write.”

“I want to gasp for air, “ she laughed, “so you’ll give me mouth-to-mouth!”

“You can’t listen to them unless I’m right there with you, then.”

“Then you’d better come soon.”

“I can, you know. I can get there soon. I should come and audition there. I never should have left.”

“You’re going to do so well on this audition that you’ll make a life in Nashville.”

“Maybe. But even so, there are a million ways to get to you. I’ll fly or drive. Maybe next month.”

“If you have the money.”

“I’ll walk to you if I have to.”

“You will not.”

“I will. Would you know I love you if I walked all the way from Kentucky to New York?”

“I’d know you were crazy, and so would all our friends,” she laughed.

“They have no idea how crazy I am about you. I love you, Delilah.”

“I love you, too.”

“Do you think any of them have ever felt this way?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how many of them would walk a thousand miles for each other.”

“Hey, that sounds like a song!” He started strumming the opening beat of The Proclaimers’ song, ‘(I’m Gonna Be) Five Hundred Miles.’ “And if I haver / Yeah I know I’m gonna be /I’m gonna be the man /Who’s havering to you…” He interrupted himself. “Hey, Miss English Major, what does ‘haver’ mean, anyway?”

Delilah laughed again. “It’s a Scottish term. It means you’re talking foolishly, which you are.”

“You’re so smart.”

“I love you. And if you keep havering and you walk a thousand miles, our friends will definitely all laugh at you.”

“Let them laugh. We’ll laugh at them and they will never know why. I love you more than I can ever express, no matter how many songs I write.”

“You make my heart swell and melt and swell and melt all over again.”

“My world is different without you in it. I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. I wish I was out of school. I wish it was three years from now when we knew where we were going to be and we were working and living and together….”

“We will be together. We will.”

“I need to get back to this stupid book.”

“It’s not stupid. It’s philosophy. Philosophy can’t be stupid.”

“It’s stupid, or I’m too dense to get it. It has to be one or the other.”

He was reluctant to cut the connection. “Be good, study hard. Two more years and you’ll be through with school and nothing will keep us apart.”

“I miss you.”

“Don’t miss me. Study. Work. These two years will pass quickly. By the time you graduate summa cum laude I’ll be famous. I’ll be famous because of you.”

“Because of me?” she echoed.

“You’re my muse. It’ll be because of you. I feel another song coming on. Another love song for you.”

“I want to hear it when it’s done.”

“You will. And I’ll be there as soon as I can figure out how to get there. I promise.”

“Break a leg on the audition tomorrow.”

“You say that to actors, not musicians.”

“Good luck, then.”

“Goodbye, love.”

“Goodbye, love.”

She cut the connection.

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The Clintons on Torture

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.433323&w=425&h=350&fv=videoId%3D103505]

For the record, here’s Bill Clinton on the issue, from the transcript of the September 24, 2006 edition of Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: What did you think when Colin Powell said, “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism”?

MR. CLINTON: I think he was referring to the, the questions that have been raised about the original evidence, which plagues him and in which he was, I think, unwittingly complicit. I don’t think—I think it’s pretty clear, based on what all the people that worked for him have said. I think he was most worried about the question of torture and the conduct of the prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And of course, he weighed in in this debate about the extent to which the CIA or others could engage in conduct which clearly violates the Geneva Convention.

Now, we—as you and I talk, and we hear that they’ve reached an agreement, the senators and the White House, and I hope they have. But Colin pointed out that, you know, we’ve got soldiers all over the world. If we get a reputation for torturing people, the following bad things are going to happen: We’re as likely going to get bad information is good, just for people to just quit getting beat on; two, we’re likely to create two or three or five enemies for every one we break; and three, we make our own soldiers much more vulnerable to conduct which violates the Geneva Convention. That is, we can’t expect our friends, much less our enemies, to accept the fact that because we’re the good guys, we get to have a different standard of conduct. And most people think the definition of a good guy is someone who voluntarily observes a different standard of conduct, not someone who claims the right to do things others can’t do.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you outlaw waterboarding and sleep deprivation, loud music, all those kinds of tactics?

MR. CLINTON: Well, I—here’s what I would do. I would figure out what the, what the generally accepted definitions of the Geneva Convention are, and I would honor them. I would also talk to people who do this kind of work about what is generally most effective, and they will—they’re almost always not advocate of torture, and I wouldn’t do anything that would put our own people at risk.

Now, the thing that drives—that, that gives the president’s position a little edge is that every one of us can imagine the following scenario: We get lucky, we get the number three guy in al-Qaeda, and we know there’s a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. Don’t we have the right and the responsibility to beat it out of him? But keep in mind, in 99 percent of the interrogations, you don’t know those things.

Now, it happens like even in the military regulations, in a case like that, they do have the power to use extreme force because there is an imminent threat to the United States, and then to live with the consequences. The president—they could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon or could guarantee the submission of that sort of thing ex post facto to the intelligence court, just like we do now with wire taps.

So I, I don’t think that hard case justifies the sweeping authority for waterboarding and all the other stuff that, that was sought in this legislation. And I think, you know, if that circumstance comes up—we all know what we’d do to keep our country from going through another 9/11 if we could. But to—but to claim in advance the right to do this whenever someone takes a notion to engage in conduct that plainly violates the Geneva Convention, that, I think, is a mistake.

Thanks, Bill. Now, that having been said, I think “Geneva Convention” is too much to have to remember when we’re talking about Safewords.

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How “Star Wars” is Like Jesus

starwars_anewhope_12.jpg

“My English Teacher is ruining Star Wars,” Jack moaned the other morning.

“What? How is that possible?” I was twirling my hair into Princess Leia rolls on either side of my head in the bathroom mirror.

“Archetypes. Only she says ‘arc-types.’ I think English class is nothing more than a conspiracy to ruin every good book ever written, and now it’s being extended to movies, too.” My 10th grade progeny was glum, very glum.

“Give me some examples of how Star Wars can be ruined just by talking about it,” I said reasonably. “I mean, we talk about Star Wars all the time and it’s never ruined it at all.”

“Yeah, but when we talk about it we don’t get the story wrong, and we don’t compare every character to Jesus.”

“Compare every character to Jesus!” I echoed. “I can see the similarity in Obi Wan…”

“No, Mom. According to a substitute teacher we had the other day, every character in Star Wars is like Jesus.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Really. She pointed out the ‘arc-type’ then she talked about it for awhile then she compared it to Jesus. I swear.”

“Fine. How is Han Solo like Jesus?” I demanded, imagining that roguish grin. I have always loved pirates. I have known pirates, and Jesus was no pirate.

“You know how when Luke is making the Death Star trench run? Han swoops in and saves him from evil, just like Jesus would do.”

“Huh?”

“Darth Vader. Evil. The evil archetype. Han saves him, just like Jesus…”

“Oh. Ok. So, how is Darth Vader like Jesus?” I’m sending my kid to an Episcopal school so he can learn THIS? I thought. Mentally I shook myself.

“He dies to save Luke from the Emperor and from the Dark Side, just like Jesus died to save us from all of our sins.” Jack said the last part of that sentence in his best televangelist voice.

“Well, then, the Emperor. How is Palpatine like Jesus?”

“We’re just talking about Episode IV, A New Hope. Palpatine isn’t in that one. It’s Vader all the way.”

“He’s not?” I was surprised, and thought on it. “Who else is like Jesus?”

“Don’t even get me started on friggin’ Skywalker. Whiny bi…”

“Jack,” I cautioned him. “Don’t swear all the damn time.”

“Sorry.” Somehow he didn’t convince me.

“What archetype is Luke?” Aha, I thought to myself. Let’s see how much attention he’s paying in class.

“Luke is several archetypes. First, he’s the Hero. He’s The Young Man From the Provinces. The pupil in The Pupil-Mentor Relationship, the son in The Father-Son relationship”

“Wait a minute. Back up. The Young Man From the Provinces is an archetype?”

“I kid you not.”

“Why can’t you just say he’s the naive young person, or the initiate?”

“Oh, he’s also The Initiate.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The Young Man From the Provinces is the character who is taken away from home and raised by strangers, but returns triumphant to wrest the throne from the usurper. The Initiate is a young hero or heroine who has to go through training and ceremony, and usually wears white.”

“Hmmm. Both Luke and Leia wear white, although I think Leia is already initiated, seeing as how she’s already a Senator and all.”

“Yeah, but she’s also an Initiate, and she’s also in The Platonic Ideal, with, well, Guess Who.”

“Luke. Her brother.”

“But we don’t yet know they’re twins. It’s Mrs. Tyler jumping ahead again. We don’t know of any family relationship. And oddly enough, we’re reading Oedipus Rex in History.”

I laughed. “Jack, I am your mother.”

“Uh huh. And there’s an archetype relationship of Mentor and Pupil.”

“Luke and Obi Wan, as well as Vader and Obi Wan.”

“Right.”

“There’s The Devil Figure, or Jesus, if you will.”

“What? Jesus is the Devil? What is this?”

“Vader is the Devil figure, and as I explained earlier, Vader is also Jesus. Therefore, Jesus is the Devil.”

“I can see how Vader is maybe a Jesus figure once he appears after his death there at the end of Return of the Jedi, but how is he Jesus in A New Hope?”

“Oh, we’re talking at the end of Return of the Jedi. She totally ruined the movies for anyone who hasn’t seen it.”

“Someone hasn’t seen Star Wars? Inconceivable.”

“You’d be surprised. More than half my class has never seen the original trilogy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. What other archetypes is Vader?”

“Well, in The Father-Son relationship archetype…”

“No! We had no idea about that relationship until the second movie! She really did ruin it.”

“She sure did. She said that Like Han, he’s The Apparently Evil Figure with an Ultimately Good Heart. Oh, and he’s also the wayward son in The Father-Son Relationship with Obi Wan Kenobi. And in a way, he’s The Scapegoat, because Emperor Palpatine is really the Evil One and Vader is just trying to please, or to save his love, or is hopeless until he finds hope in Luke, although Obi Wan is kind of a Scapegoat in that he lets Vader kill him so the others can get away.” Jack peered at me. “You do see the Jesus parallel there, don’t you?”

“Yes, I see.” I was taking it all in. My mind was racing.

“And Han is also the archetype of The Outcast, and he has the archetype of The Friendly Beast, Chewbacca, as his sidekick.”

“How is Chewie like Jesus?”

“He’s always willing to put himself in harm’s way for someone else he believes to be more important than he is.”

“That person being The Lovable Outcast.”

“Exactly. Which makes Han and Chewie the archetypal Hunting Group of Companions.”

“What, Like Beowulf and his men or something?”

“Yes. There are other Hunting Groups of Companions in Star Wars, too.”

“The Jawas. The Tusken Raiders.”

“Not the Tusken Raiders. They’re just the Evil Beasts. Grendels, if you want to use the Beowulf analogy. Luke, Leia, Han, the Droids, Chewie, and Obi Wan make a Hunting Group of Companions, too.”

“That makes sense. But how are they like Jesus?”

“Duh! The disciples!”

I grimaced. Dopey me.

“And then there are the Loyal Retainers.”

“Chewie again?”

“Sort of. Really, though, R2-D2 and C3PO are the Loyal Retainers, especially R2. He’s the one who summons help, and who always comes to the rescue.”

“And he’s like Jesus because…?”

“He summons help and ultimately comes to the rescue. Like Jesus summoned help and ultimately came to the rescue in the sense that he provided a path to everlasting life. Do I have to spell this out for you, Mom?”

“No, no. Pray, continue.”

Then there is the Archetype of the Creatures of Nightmare. The Evil Beasts. Those are the patrons at the Mos Eisley Cantina, or the Tusken Raiders.”

“Creatures of Nightmare? At the cantina?”

“Yeah. Because they’re so bizarre, surreal. And then there is the archetype of The Star-Crossed Lovers. Han and Leia, obviously, Like Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And Greedo did too shoot first.”

“Not in the original movie, he didn’t. In the remake, sure, but not in the first version of the movie.”

“Whatever. Leia is the archetype of The Damsel in Distress. She even wears the flowing robes and has the long, virginal hair, like the Virgin Mary.”

“Not like Jesus?”

He rolled his eyes. “She’s a girl, Mom.”

I cleared my throat. “Right. How silly of me.”

“And there’s the archetype of the soft-spoken, sensible Earth Mother.”

“Princess Leia Organa is no Earth Mother! Well, maybe with the long flowing hair in the third movie, in the scene in the Ewok village.”

“Not Leia. Beru.”

“Luke’s aunt?”

“Yes. And no, she’s not like Jesus.” His eyes and his tone warned me not to go there, despite my temptation to do so.

“There are symbolic archetypes, too,” he informed me.

I waited. Jack was on a roll. I knew he’d go on without my prodding.

“Light versus Dark, Heaven versus Hell, Life Versus Death. You see these in the struggle between Jedi and Sith, the Empire and the Rebellion, the serene light blue of Obi Wan’s lightsaber against the angry dark red of Darth Vader’s lightsaber, the lush natural form of Yavin 4 against the mechanized construct of the Death Star.”

I nodded.

“Then there’s the symbolic archetype of Innate Wisdom that doesn’t speak much contrasted with the Educated Stupidity of constant chatter: again, in R2-D2 and C3PO.”

“I can see that one.”

“And there is Supernatural Intervention. That’s another archetype.”

“The Force, you mean?”

No, The Force is the archetype of The Magic Weapon. Supernatural Intervention is when Luke is in the channel on the Death Star and he hears Obi wan tell him to use The Force, and he hits the target using the Magic Weapon rather than more conventional means.”

“So how is Luke like Jesus?”

“He saves the galaxy. I really do have to spell it all out for you, don’t I?”

“No, no.”

“I mean, Luke’s probably bigger than Jesus, who just saved one species on one planet.”

“Stop right there, kid. You have no idea of the flap John Lennon started with a similar statement.”

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A Modest Proposal for CBS’s “Kid Nation”

Here’s a modest proposal: as soon as our little tykes are weaned, let’s put them in the desert with a bunch of bigger kids and see if anyone, say, drinks bleach on accident. Or dies. Won’t that be amusing? Maybe the kids will gang up into warring factions in a struggle for dominance and kill each other! Won’t that be neat? And if we put it on prime time TV we can all watch!

I really, really wanted to pitch this idea to CBS. I thought it would make an excellent reality TV show. I’m such a fan of TV that I can live happily without one, but I have an entrepreneurial streak a mile wide and after I saw my son reading Lord of the Flies a couple of weeks ago I thought to myself, “Hey! What an idea!”

I got all dressed up in my best lawyer outfit, high heels and makeup and perfectly coiffed hair and all, and grabbed the morning paper as I headed out the door, ready to make a few calls and set up a time to meet with the network executives. I just knew they’d clamor for me to hurry on over with my idea.

My contact lenses aren’t the bifocal type so I had to wait until I got to the office and found my reading glasses before I could peruse the morning tabloids, though. Once I perched them on the tip of my nose, there it was, to my bleak dismay. Over a half-eaten croissant and a cup of cooling Starbuck’s (a candy bar in a cup is still a candy bar), I saw that my brilliant idea had not only been stolen by some Hollywood thought-thief but that CBS had already filmed my idea! Kid Nation was already in the can and had attracted its first threatened lawsuit!

There is still hope for me. The lawsuit has not yet been filed. Bereft of my opportunity for reality show fame, I’m sure I can muster the necessary outrage for filing suit on behalf of these kids. I have represented kids for almost 20 years, after all – what’s one more suit on their behalf? And this one will give me great pleasure, because not only will it be against the tormentors of my clients, it will be against the people who publicly and obviously disregarded their best interests.

Did you get that line? “Publicly and obviously disregarded their best interests” – wow, I’m in lawyer mode! Hmmm… what other equally spurious arguments can I come up with to bring this case to dubious justice? Oh! I know! I’ll demand that the press help me investigate how CBS could manage to get the parents of 40 kids between the ages of 8 and 15 to agree to send them to a ghost town for nearly six weeks during the school year with no adult supervision and no classes! I’ll file documents requesting information on how much the children (or their families) were paid for the kids’ participation in this show ($5,000.00 is the figure CBS claims), and then I’ll demand to see documents showing how New Mexico’s and the federal government’s child labor laws were complied with, what with no adults to take care of these kids.

Man, I’m on a roll now! I can hear CBS crying foul in my mind’s ear. I’m just another money-grubbing lawyer trying to get a huge settlement out of the deep pockets of the TV network.

Those eight-year-olds knew what they were getting into, the corporate lawyers will insist. It will be very hard to refute because we all know what brilliant negotiators fourth-graders are. “Because I said so” just won’t work with all of them, you know.

When I point out that only one of the kids was 15, and that a dozen of them were aged 10 and under, I’m sure the network will flick away my objections with a disinterested wave of its manicured hand. Younger children probably won’t be as mean as the ones in that famous book by Sir William Golding. In fact, I’m sure that recent news reports that kids aged seven to nine maliciously killed a six-year-old were grossly exaggerated. After all, those kids were in Canada, were not on a reality TV show, and had not been promised prizes like iPods for their participation.

CBS is likely to claim that there were tons of adults around all the time, and that like on any reality TV show they were quick to get medical attention for the bleach-drinking kids. That won’t daunt me in the least, though, because I’ll claim that had those kids been properly supervised they wouldn’t have been drinking bleach in the first place. And when they argue that the 11 year old whose face was burned by cooking grease was doing the same thing 11 year olds do at home every day, I’ll taunt them with “Yeah, well, those 11 year olds are cooking with grease under adult supervision!”

It won’t endear me to the network, but maybe I can win another non-meritorious lawsuit and win a pile of money doing it. I need to maintain the pseudo-integrity of my profession, after all.

And maybe as an extra added bonus, I can get some parents to wake up and realize that unsupervised preteens can get seriously hurt, and even (gasp) die if their parents don’t protect them.

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Sports Topics

I just HAVE to maintain some semblance of intelligence, no matter what the conversational topic.

I don’t do sports. I think the whole thing is silly in the extreme – from the rabid behavior of fans to the outrageous salaries to the ridiculous amount of press professional (and notorious college) athletes get.

In fact, I SO don’t do sports that I was completely lost in conversations around the dinner table of my former in-laws. Out of desperation, as a young bride, I asked Skip’s best friend, Rory, for something – anything – universally intelligent and acceptable to say to appear as though I could hold my own in any conversation about sports.

“Laimbeer sucks,” he said.

Armed with this new knowledge, I went to the next dinner at my in-laws’ home. Inevitably, the topic turned to sports.

“Laimbeer sucks,” I offered in a lull in the conversation.

Mom-in-law spewed her wine across the table. Dad-in-law guffawed. Skip looked at me admiringly. I preened.

My stock phrase became the stuff of family legend.

Now, this was about 20 years ago, and I understand that “Laimbeer” has long since retired. So my question to you is, what do I now say when I want to look intelligent during sports conversations?

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Catholicism – WOW!

Jack, my 15 year old son, and I were watching Dogma the other day. You know, the Kevin Smith classic where George Carlin, as Cardinal Glick, rolls out a kinder, gentler Catholicism and its new front man, “Buddy Christ.” Naturally it made me think about other changes the Catholic Church has made recently. I initiated yet another theological conversation with my favorite Scion.

“Did you hear, Jack? Limbo’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone? What happened to it?”

“The Vatican abolished it.”

“Abolished it? Just like that? How? I mean, I thought it was, like, dogma!”

“It says in this article that ‘Limbo has never been defined as church dogma and is not mentioned in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states simply that unbaptized infants are entrusted to God’s mercy.’ So I guess Limbo was just policy.”

“So how does the Church have the authority to abolish Limbo? That would seem to be under the jurisdiction of God to do.”

“Well, according to the articles I read, it seems that the Church was really just wrong about Limbo existing in the first place. It never really was there.”

“I thought the Church was infallible.”

“The Pope is infallible. The Church, well, like the Muse and the Apostle say here in Dogma, there was the silent consent to the slave trade, and the Church’s platform of non-involvement during the Holocaust. Protestants were condemned to Hell until the 1960’s when the Church made an exception to heresy. And there’s the whole usury thing, too. Mistakes have been made.”

“Other than the unbaptized babies, who was in Limbo?”

“Um, I think anyone who would have gone to Heaven but wasn’t baptized. You know, the people who qualified except for the technicalities. Pre-Christian Jews. Pagans. Good Buddhists.”

“Does that mean that if I live a good life and do right, but don’t go to Church or anything, that I still go to Heaven?”

I rolled my eyes. “The notion was that only those who didn’t get the chance to know about Christianity would go to Limbo. It wasn’t fair to send them to Hell since they didn’t know, but they can’t get to Heaven except through Christian beliefs. So you have to toe the line.”

“Okay, so, now that Limbo doesn’t exist, and apparently never did, what happened to the souls the Chruch thought were warehoused there?”

I checked the article I had seen on the internet. “Hmmm. I’m not sure, and evidently the Church isn’t, either. It says here that ‘the carefully worded document from the Vatican’s International Theological Commission stops short of certainty in this regard, arguing only that there are “serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope,” rather than “sure knowledge.”‘ That really doesn’t say much, now does it?”

“So what about all the souls in Limbo?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they can go to Heaven now. And the good news is that from now on there’s no waiting. Unbaptized babies who die can go straight to heaven.”

“Man, I bet the people who had to spend all that time there are pissed about that.”

“Why?”

“It’s like doing time. Paying dues. They had to do their time in Limbo with no hope of ever getting out, and now the new guys get to go straight to Heaven. They get a free ride, without the Guantanamo-like experience the old guys had.”

“Guantanamo?”

“Yeah. You know, those guys in Guantanamo have no idea when or if they’ll ever get out. So if we have another war and suddenly they are freed and the new POWs we get are repatriated without the wait as soon as the President announces ‘Mission Accomplished’ – and are designated POWs without the ‘enemy combatant’ BS – the Guantanamo guys will be pissed off.”

“I hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms.”

“And Mom, what if the Church is wrong about this, too? They abolish Limbo but God still won’t let the innocents into Heaven since they weren’t baptized? I mean, what if the policy really isn’t changed and the Church didn’t get the right memo?”

“Well, son, I guess those souls will have to go somewhere. I just don’t know where.”

“You know, the government still has a lot of empty FEMA trailers… I bet souls don’t take up too much room.”

“How many souls do you think would fit in a single trailer?”

“I don’t know. Is it anything like how many angels fit on the head of a pin? I mean, they aren’t, like, substantial or anything.”

“Hmmm. And I suppose they won’t exactly eat a lot, either. Jack, I think you’re on to something.”

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London (Mis)Adventures

It’s Monday, and here we are in London.

Whose bright idea was it to take an overnight flight, anyway? What idiot thought we could sleep on the plane? In COACH no less? By the way, in case anyone is curious, those seats in coach in even the largest of airplanes are meant for people who are smaller than I am. A five-year-old might be able to sleep in them. When Jack was 10 we flew to Ireland in the back of a plane. I suppose five years is enough to make the memory fade. I do recall that after that trip I swore I’d never again fly across any body of water wider than the Mississippi River in steerage class. Like labor pains though, the memory must have faded. When business class seats weren’t available, I didn’t postpone the trip until summer. No, I bravely (read: foolishly) decided that the agony of sleeping sitting up wasn’t all that bad and we could fly in the main cabin of the plane.

On the trip to and from Ireland in 2002, my ten-year-old son slept in my lap for the most part. He sprawled across his seat and my own. No, I did not get a wink of sleep heading either direction. But at 15 Jack was unlikely to want to cuddle with Mommy on a long flight, so I figured the comfort level would be better. For someone with an IQ as high as the experts claim mine is, sometimes I can be downright DUMB.

Jack folded his long, skinny 15-year-old body in half and put his head down on the tray table, and slept for about four hours. Jealously, covetously, I glared at him the entire time. What evil gods have played such a trick on me that I am not only wider but rounder than I used to be? I’m not that big, really. I’m downright short, when it comes to that. But the circumference thing (not to mention the fact that I’m old and I just don’t bend that way anymore) made it impossible for me to mimic the origami of my son’s body. I leaned my seat back as far as it would go. I dozed. I awoke within 15 minutes, my head lolling steeply to one side and the muscles in my neck screaming for relief. In the interest of keeping with the laws of physics, I allowed my head to loll steeply to the other side. Equal and opposite reactions should have nullified the screaming muscles, right? Wrong. It meant that the muscles on the other side of my neck kicked up a major ruckus within the next 15 minutes.

This went on for a couple of hours as my resentment escalated toward my peacefully sleeping offspring in the next seat. Then I gave up and watched Walk the Line. I listened to my iPod. I tracked the plane’s progress across the Atlantic. I watched Dreamgirls. I finished my book. I wrote in my journal. I listened to the man seated next to me snored. I wished someone tall, dark, handsome, and accommodating was sitting next to me so I could put my head on his shoulder and sleep. Yes, I was fantasizing.

We arrived Saturday morning and fell gratefully into our beds in our hotel room by noon. I slept a couple of hours then started trying to wake Jack. I thought we could go to Piccadilly and wander around. Jack loves Times Square in NYC, so I thought he’d feel comfortable there for his first night in port.

I couldn’t wake him. This child of mine, who selfishly slept most of the way across The Pond, refused to rouse himself no matter how I begged, pleaded, threatened, or bribed him. “Can’t we just get room service, Mom?” I’m so glad we traveled 4500 miles to eat in bed.

So Sunday dawned early. The UK went on Summer Time (The equivalent of Daylight Savings) while we slept, so we were an hour late getting started. We made our way to Victoria Station where we met our bus tour and climbed aboard the double-decker. Two stops later was the Hard Rock Cafe, so we were forced to disembark.

I guess I should explain that compulsion. You see, Jack has an uncle who lives in Southeast Asia. Ever since Jack was a very little guy, his uncle Matt has made sure Jack has Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts from every place Matt’s been. Jakarta, Taipei, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Manila, Bangkok… the list goes on. It also means that now Jack has to hit the Hard Rock whenever we travel. It’s a requirement. We might as well set it early in the itinerary because if we don’t Jack will agitate about it until we get there. Even if we go to Memphis, which is just two hours away from home, we can’t leave without stopping by the Hard Rock on Beale Street. London was the site of the original Hard Rock Cafe, so we make sure to see the guitars Eric Clapton and Roger Daltry donated to start the collection. It feels like a pilgrimage every time we go to one of these restaurants, but this one, the original one, felt like arriving in Mecca itself.

So we ate and bought a couple of t-shirts and a pin then climbed back aboard the tour bus to see the rest of the main sights without debarking. “We’ll come back and see the real sights tomorrow,” we agreed. Upon arriving back at the hotel after the day on the bus, we both took a nap. A couple of hours later I was once again trying to rouse my son and failing miserably. Finally, I gave up. At midnight Jack woke up and was ready to go. I laughed at him. “Go to sleep,” I said. He did. Can any creature sleep more than a teenage boy?

Now Day Three of our trip has unfolded as the day in which Murphy’s Law has reared its ugly Irish mug and interfered with us. I woke with a migraine and had to take a shot of Imitrex to banish it. I also had to nap a bit after taking the shot to make sure it worked. I wasn’t able to go anywhere until I did. What did Jack do while I was recovering?

Guess.

Uh-huh.

He slept.

At noon I roused him and we headed to the Tower of London. It’s the one place Jack knows he wants to see other than the British Museum. While we waited for the bus, we went into a Starbucks near St. Paul’s Cathedral to get nourishment. Outside again at the bus stop, Jack looked at me strangely. “Mom, I don’t feel so good,” he said.

He sat on the sidewalk against a wall. His face was ghastly white and dark circles appeared under his eyes.

“I’m going to get sick,” he said.

Hoping his nausea would pass with a little nourishment, I encouraged him to eat the cinnamon roll and drink the white mocha he got at Starbucks. We boarded the bus headed for the Tower and had a wonderful conversation with a gentleman Londoner about politics, imperialist world dominion (both British and American), terrorism, and tourism, then received an admonishment not to miss the Crown Jewels at the Tower. I love talking with natives!

Once off the bus, Jack’s nausea had not dissipated. He threw away what remained of his coffee. We found a bottle of water and a quiet corner where we sat for about an hour hoping his nausea would pass. He finally asked if we could please get a cab back to the hotel. I felt terrible for him. As often as I get migraines, I know what it’s like to have wonderfully exciting plans interrupted by headaches and nausea. What was touchingly sweet was how he kept apologizing for feeling bad. I do the same thing whenever my migraines interfere with plans I have with someone, so I know where he got the notion that he had to. He didn’t have to apologize to me, though. If anyone can empathize with how powerless he felt over his traitorous body his mother can.

Thankfully we found a cab very quickly and are at this moment back in our hotel room where Jack is (guess what) sleeping peacefully. If he feels better later we’ll try for Piccadilly Circus again. For now, I’ll just watch him sleep. I won’t try to rouse him. Not yet, anyway.

There’s a Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly. Evidently, I’m not the only one in the world who sells Virgins. I can’t wait to see the selection! I hope it’s better than the one I went to in Orlando a couple of years ago. Despite the name, all that Virgin Megastore had to offer were books and music. What a disappointing bait and switch operation!

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