H.R. Jakes's Blog
January 24, 2020
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Book Murdering, Magic, and Female Orgasm
I recently read an article about someone named Alex who has been dubbed “Book Murderer.”[1] Truth is, of course, this man is not a book murderer, per se, but rather merely a book mutilator. Book murderers burn books, while book mutilators are those who do what Alex does: he cuts the big books in half to make the more portable, easier to take on the road.
Alex stands in a long and distinguished line of book mutilators. Though we don’t know their names, in the middle ages there were probably thousands of such people holed up in monasteries, many of them head librarians. All of them were religious and thought that by mutilating a book, for example shaving away the words written on its parchment with a razor—thus is the English word “eraser” etymologically related to “razor”—they could repurpose the vellum. It is not quite the same thing as merely cutting a book in half to make it more portable, but it is nonetheless mutilation for a practical reason.
[image error] Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (5C AD palimpsest).[2]
Now, you may be thinking that, though at least as harmful to trees as the making of any paper book is, this process of book halving may not be that bad, provided the parts of the book are both kept safely together on the shelf. And perhaps you’d be right. It is rather much like the magic trick that in 1809 a certain magician named Torrini is said to have performed for Pope Pius VII when he reportedly sawed a woman in half. Though we have no firm record of that event save a mention of it by Jean Robert-Houdin, who describes it in his memoirs, we do know that P. T. Selbit offered such a performance in London over a century later. In each case the women’s two halves were reassembled, and she became one again, even though she purportedly had been sawed in half. That same year (1921), another magician named Horace Goldin[3] did the same trick in America, improving it somewhat. Of course, the women weren’t really sawed in half, but that’s off the topic: the point is that they were kept together, as the two parts of Alex’s books no doubt are meant to be.
[image error] Horace Goldin (ca. 1874-1939)[4]
Goldin himself, whose surname before emigrating was Goldstein, enjoyed a remarkably interesting life. He would seem to have garnered his penchant for magic from a gypsy performer in his hometown of Vilnius. His family migrated to Tennessee when he was 16. By the turn of the century, Goldin found himself to be a rising Vaudevillian performer and, though he had many setbacks, within twenty years he would or so become one of the most famous magicians in the world, and he was known especially for his trick of cutting a woman in half.
The town from which he hailed, Vilnius, was then part of Russia. It is now the capital of Lithuania and is said to be one of the most beautiful towns in Europe, though it is not visited as often as other beautiful cities. The reason, of course, is because Lithuania was once a part of the Soviet bloc countries that are only now starting to be visited by tourists more regularly. To speed up the tourism trade, Vilnius (pronounced in Lithuanian as if rhyming with illness) has launched one of the most provocative advertising campaigns of all time, one based on a woman’s orgasm. (They recently seem to have extended it, probably in the name of inclusiveness, to include that of men, as well.) Their basic advertising slogan is this: “Vilnius: The G-spot of Europe. Nobody knows where it is, but when you find it, it’s amazing.” Time will tell if there will be an uptick in visits, but admittedly this advertising campaign is catchier than, “Visit Vilnius, the City that Rhymes with Illness,” or the more cumbersome, “Come to Vilnius, the Birthplace of Horace Goldin, One of the First Magicians to Saw a Woman in Half.”
[image error] A screenshot of a screenshot of one of the advertising campaign posters.[5] Even at such a remove the message comes through clearly enough, for in her ecstasy the woman is grasping the sheet precisely where Vilnius is located.
What’s the point? If you’re going to split anything in half—a person or a book or anything else that belongs together—remember to put them back. Oh, and this, too: if you magically mutilate something or someone publicly, be aware that you are drawing a lot of attention to yourself. And in that case if your native city is associated with orgasm, chances are that eventually everyone will find out.
[1]
https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/book-murderer-social-media-uproar-cutting-long-novels/story?id=68426215&cid=clicksource_4380645_17_film_strip_icymi_hed
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest#/media/File:Codex_ephremi.jpg
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Goldin
[4]
Image courtesy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Goldin#/media/File:Horace_Goldin_magician.png.
[5]
Image from https://news.yahoo.com/lithuania-capital-launches-provocative-g-spot-tourism-ads-154157272.html
January 18, 2020
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: If You’re Living Life Well…
In a parking lot I ran into someone the other day and we chatted about the issue of what one might call quality of life. He was a bon vivant, an acquaintance, not a friend exactly, who was telling me, even admonishing me that at my age I should be enjoying a high quality of life. He told me that I should join his country club and play golf. He also said that he had a certain favorite spa where he regularly has his chest hair removed. He was recommending it to me.
[image error]
Now I just had my chest hair removed, and it was rather
painful, not something I would like to repeat. My removal was not at a spa or a
country club but at the cardiologist, where a nurse took a dry razor and shaved
my hair away. No shaving cream, nothing,
just a rhythmical “rip, rip, rip,” and voila, no chest hair. But pain? Yes,
and the pain lingers even now, two weeks after the fact.
I did not tell him, however, that I like my chest hair just where it is. Rather, I merely listened, taking mental notes, as writers are wont to do, and wondering if this fellow couldn’t make for a good character in a book.
[image error]
Of course, I could hardly fail to contrast this experience with two things. First, I thought of a candle that has been in the news recently: it is supposedly scented like a woman’s private parts.[1] On the one hand, this fellow’s instruction to grasp for the highlife seemed to me rather like that candle: it may smell a certain way, but it is in fact a deception. The candle is obviously not a woman’s privy parts and its smell is likely to be but a poor imitation; (I here admit that I haven’t smelled it, but I have smelled strawberry-scented candles that don’t smell like strawberries). But even if it does have an authentic odor, it would likely be a bit embarrassing to have it burning, especially when someone shows up at your door who can recognize its imitative scent. Not easy to explain, I imagine. I mean if it were scented like hot cocoa, the neighbor might say, “Making cocoa?” and you could respond, “No, I just got a cocoa scented candle for Christmas,” or the like, and no one would bat an eye. But the other candle would be, well, harder to explain.
The second thing that I contrasted this fellow’s quality-of-life advice was with the situation of a dear friend who is going through the decline of his mother. She now resides in a nursing home where he visits her daily for rather lengthy stays, and loves on her, hugs her, arranges her affairs, and cares for her as best he can and as much as time permits. She herself has, one could say, a rather poor quality of life, as she is in a wheelchair now and is also showing signs of dementia. But her quality of life, however poor, is made better, much better, because of his sustained care and love.
[image error]
And my friend, the caregiver? My friend has a very high
quality of life, in my opinion. Why? Well, it’s no doubt because of something
that he and I were talking about the other day: we agreed that if you’re living
life correctly, if you’re living life well, you’re probably looking after the
needs of others over and above your own needs. Love, you see, has a sacrificial
quality to it, which of course is what Christmas is all about, and, in an even deeper
way, Easter, as well.
So, I leave you with this thought: if you’re living life well, if we are living life well, we are probably caring for others around us much of the time, trying to give them as high a quality of life as possible. And that, in turn, paradoxically, will smell better than any cocoa- or strawberry- (or otherwise-) scented candle and in fact give us a high quality of life, one surely less painful that having one’s chest hair plucked or rhythmically shaved.
[1] https://shop.goop.com/shop/products/this-smells-like-my-vagina-candle?country=USA
December 25, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Christmas and X-rays
I don’t know if it’s an everyday event for Northumbria University and the Bowes Museum to X-ray painted wooden panels of the beheading of John the Baptist. The panel itself is a bit different than most of renditions of John the Baptist being beheaded, for in it he has not yet be decapitated but depicted as piously praying to God. This is, for many people, Christian or otherwise, a sad scene, one emblematic of a highwater mark of humankind’s barbarous incivility toward one another. It evokes Herod’s mockery of that religious figure, the triviality with which human life is often treated, and the rapidity with which evil designs can be carried out.
[image error]
Yet by that X-ray the experts at the Bowes Museum together
with those at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne revealed that
beneath this painted version of that tale is a much older painted version of
another event: the nativity.[1] Now this, too, is rather unremarkable: the
notion of painting or even writing over useful
material is not new and in fact happened quite frequently in the Middle Ages. Manuscripts so reused are known as
palimpsests. And here we have, courtesy
of the X-ray machine, the equivalent in painting.
[image error]
But there is, perhaps, something remarkable about this after
all. Something to think about. A few months
ago a friend and I were talking, and he said he couldn’t believe in God because
the church has done so many cruel things throughout history. Quite cogently he rattled
off an entirely correct list. My only response
to him was to agree that these things did happen, but then to suggest that perhaps
one should look beyond the abuses of religion to the source of inspiration
himself. In other words, perhaps it is better to look to possibilities inherent
in the underlying message and the ultimate bearer of that message rather than
the those who are patently evil or even mere latter-day screwups, like me, who
manage to obfuscate, in one way or another, by their own bad behavior the beauty
of the message. We all make mistakes,
some more than others. No one’s perfect,
and, to put it more honestly, many throughout history, like Herod, have been intentionally
evil. And often in the name of religion.
But lurking beneath the sadness of history, just as beneath the
sad message of this painting’s visible scene, is another story, the truest essence
of which is often covered over and forgotten. It’s one of hope, pathos, mirth,
and joy. Birth, not death, redemption,
not condemnation, love, not hate. That’s
the nativity in a nutshell, and I think I will just leave it at that. Merry Christmas, my friends, especially if
you’re that particular friend with whom I had that conversation! I hope that this nutty blog can be like a
Northumbrian X-ray for you this Christmas day!
[image error]
[1]
See: https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/news/nativity/. The story has been carried in various news
media outlets. For example, cf. https://www.foxnews.com/science/in-christmas-miracle-hidden-nativity-scene-found-beneath-medieval-painting.
December 2, 2019
Common Place Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Death
No, it’s not Halloween, when a blog on death would make more
sense. Rather, it’s Advent season. Not
the time to think about death. For the religious, and maybe even some secular
folks, perhaps it’s a time to think about birth. Not new birth, but just birth—the
birth of a child in Bethlehem. But death, no, not that. Unless it’s the
anniversary of someone’s death, someone very special to you—your brother, your
best friend, maybe your dad or your mom. Then you think about death this time
of year, and even more so on Christmas Day, for if you celebrate Christmas even
in the most pedestrian, secular way, you still are likely to have certain associations
of that missing person with the holiday, certain memories emblazoned into your
mind. And recalling them can hurt a lot,
not because you necessarily have a bad or negative association with the holiday
and the person, but actually for the opposite reason, because you have a sweet
memory. And they are no longer here to share anything with you, not a memory,
not a meal, not even a smile.
How can there be any merry making now on Christmas, in the
shadow of such a cutting loss, such pain to the soul? The answer can only be found in the deeper
meaning of the holiday. In the book the
Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan comments at one point about the White Witch
not understanding the “Deeper Magic.”
That Deeper Magic is what I am referring to here, and it begins with the
birth of a child in Bethlehem. It’s a strange
story, but not because stories about miraculous births are strange by nature,
and relatively common in mythology, but because of what the implications of
this particularly strange story are. Those implications are redemption and life.
[image error]
A professor of mine at college once said to me when he was
standing in a stairwell—you see, it’s very simple, pal: either there is a God
or there is not. Christmas’ deeper magic
suggests there is, and more than that it even suggests that that God cares a
great deal, to put it mildly. And that
he detests death as much as we do, and that He and He alone can redeem
something as vile as death and, for us in this dark world and wide, for now at
least give us hope. That’s the beginning of the tale of the Deeper Magic, a
tale that opens in a manger in a stable in a tiny town called Bethlehem. If you’re
that friend of mine, perhaps far away, for whom I have written this blog on
this dark day, please know that the Deeper Magic gives me hope—and it should
give you hope, too. And may it begin for you now, this very advent season.
November 17, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: My Greek Barber, Jimmy
It is a strange thing to be in Greece and there to get your
hair cut. I might have simply stopped
with Greece. Of course, it is strange even simply to be in Greece. My dear childhood friend, John, recently
texted me, “You sure do a lot of interesting travel.” Which explains the
opening statement: it is a strange thing to be in Greece. Not that it’s a bad thing, just a strange
thing; I mean it is a bit strange for most Americans, or should I say Texans,
among whom I, a Philly boy, dwell, and whom I now consider my tribe.
But let me get back to the strangeness of not Greece but, from my point of view, the haircut. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. The barber, “Jimmy,” (probably Yakoumis, in transliterated Greek) was fine, even more than fine. He paid a great deal of attention to every stroke of his comb, every snip of his scissors and did not doubt me when I told him (the truth) that I am allergic to most perfumed products. He even went to a great deal of trouble to ensure that my hair was combed in the direction that it naturally falls. The elder Jimmy of Jimmy’s Barber Shop should be proud. I liked (the younger) Jimmy very much. While we chatted a bit, he told me that he planned to get a sense of America by visiting his cousin in San Francisco. I told him that San Francisco is a great town, with exquisite cuisine and marvelous views, but it might not be the city most typical of American culture. We left it at that.
Unlike being at the dentist where the conversation is
necessarily one-sided—I hate it when
a dentist asks more than an “yes-or-no” question, and indeed rhetorical
“n’est-ce pas?” questions are the best in the dentist’s office—a conversation
with the barber can, of course, involve more give-and-take. So, when it came to politics, which word I am
here using in a rather loose sense, give-and-take was certainly in order. Of course, with a president as active on
Twitter as the current one, one expects some kind of political dimension to a
conversation about the United States to come up. But what shocked me, in a good
way, was Jimmy’s patriotism. Greek
patriotism, and that from a rather young man: Jimmy is probably all of 28 years
old, give or take a year.
“Do you love your country?” he asked me. I was a bit shocked by the question. Now
before you can ask, “How can one be ‘a bit’ shocked?” let me explain. The stove of my Airbnb had a short that
produced a mild shock if your hands should be wet when you used it. That’s “a
bit” shocking. So were my thoughts about Jimmy’s question.
“Yes,” I said. “And I especially love Texas.”
“You know, if someone here says they love their country,
their called a fascist,” he replied.
“How odd,” I said, trying not to move, lest he should nip a
piece of my ear by accident with his clipper.
“No, seriously,” he added. “No one here loves Greece like
you say you love America, or at least Texas.”
“You do, I think.”
“Yes, I do,” Jimmy said.
“You guys taught us everything,” I said, wittingly leaving
the Romans out of it for a moment, albeit we owe the Romans a great debt, too.
He finished his clippings, and I gave him a sizeable tip.
The haircut was nice. I mean, I don’t look any younger, but at least I don’t
look any older. But what was great about
it was Jimmy himself. We admired each
other’s cultures, and we correctly, I think, traced them both back to the Greek
idea of eleutheria, “freedom.” For the Athenians, the inhabitants of the
city where I am as I write this, eleutheria
was everything. It was what made them
different from the other Greek city states.
So was parrhesia, or freedom of
speech. Again, freedom was the central
idea.
I suppose the point of this blog is that. A young Greek barber knows it. An aging Texan philologist from Philadelphia
does, too. I pray our countries—Jimmy’s and mine—never forget it, for once it’s
lost, it’s damn hard to recover. That’s
where the Texan comes out: “damn.” Someone from Philly might have preferred a
stronger expletive starting with the same fricative sound as Philadelphia.
October 20, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: The Essence of Forgiveness
So, a good friend of mine asked me to write about the essence
of forgiveness. It’s interesting that
he asked me for its essence. Had he just
asked me to write something on forgiveness, that would have been pretty
easy. I might have said that it is
simply a necessity, that people cannot function in society well if they don’t
forgive. And I could have cited an
abundance of examples. People who hold
grudges—i.e. they don’t forgive—have to carry those grudges around with
them. Hold enough of them—hold enough of
anything, and it will weigh you down.
[image error]
Or maybe grudges are the opposite of heavy things. Maybe they are more like helium balloons. One or two, even three or four tied around your wrist are annoyances but won’t substantially change your interactions. I mean, people will notice, of course, that you have balloon strings tied to your wrists and helium balloons annoyingly bobbing over your head, just as they notice that you hold grudges, but they won’t think much about it. Well, yes, they might think you’re a little weird, as an adult, to be bringing helium balloons with you every where you go, as if you were a little kid. But, given how weird the world is nowadays, they probably won’t say much about it. They’ll just think what they think when they see you got a henna tattoo or died your hair pink and green—they’ll think, “whatever,” and the generous ones will add “floats your boat.”
[image error]
But as you keep adding to your collection of those balloons—well, that will make getting in and out of an elevator really challenging. And you can forget going through a revolving door at the entrance to a fancy hotel. You’ll have too many balloons for that. And people will notice because you are always talking about your grudges—er, balloons—because they are, frankly, noticeable. So, in the end, you’ll be what the ancient Greeks called an idiotes, someone so independent of everyone else, so much an “individual” that they become an idiot. And if you continue adding balloons, eventually you’ll be swept up in a wind and even though, at first, you’ll enjoy looking down on everyone—something you’ve probably been doing anyhow for quite a while already—you’ll eventually be transported somewhere you really don’t want to go. The only way back down to earth will be to let go of your balloons, one at a time. But the true idiot won’t do that. He’d rather cling to them and float around above other human beings than let even one of them go, even if that were the only way back.
But that is not the essence of forgiveness. That is simply
what happens to you if you hold grudges and refuse to forgive. The essence
of forgiveness is—and I have one friend who will most certainly not want to read
this—is the same as the essence of love: it is sacrifice. It’s not quite the same kind of sacrifice
that love demands, but it’s similar.
Love demands putting the other person first, caring for that person’s
needs first, taking second place, even third, fourth or fifth, as
appropriate. The kind of sacrifice that
forgiveness demands is even greater. It
demands that you surrender. And you must
surrender something that is the greatest sacrifice of all those that you could
possibly make: your pride. That includes your sense of soaring above the other
person, buoyed up on your fistful of balloons, so you can look down on them and
say, “See, I was right, and you were wrong!” Yep, you have to sacrifice
your burning desire to “win the argument,” the rush of satisfaction you think
you will have (but you won’t) once you’ve “won” the argument. Yes, that’s pride.
So that’s the essence of forgiveness, as far as I can see, from the human point of view: sacrificing your pride. From the divine point of view, it is quite another kind of sacrifice. But I leave that aside, for blood-red Good Friday is still many a Friday away from these chill-grey October days.
[image error]
October 3, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: When One Notices Grammar
Your life can really be wrecked by having good grammar. How? There are only three ways, not ten, like last week’s blog. So, this blog will be shorter.
The
people who will correct you when you’re engaging in Umgangschprache. Not that
they know what Umgangschprache
is. Of course not, because they’ve spent
all their time refining their English grammar, not learning German. They are
like people who brush their teeth so often that they have receding gums. Or people who comb their hair so much that it’s
perfectly kempt but their hair is naturally (too) thin owing to the repetitions
of combing. Or, worse. Those people who have perfectly groomed dogs that look
just like them. And, by the way, the people are perfectly groomed, too. And
they walk their dogs in the park and the dog’s leash and collar and sometimes
even little doggy-jacket are color-coordinated with that of their perfectly
groomed master. You get the idea. These people are like fetish people. Toe
fetish people, who crave sucking on your toes.
Not that there is no room in the world for such people—I just don’t want
them sucking my toes, that’s all. Fortunately, politically correct people (who
are by now horrified, if they are still reading) have supplanted a lot of the
Annoyers, because they are actually more
annoying than the Annoyers. And you can
thank God for the PC folks, if you’re a grammar Annoyer, to do which (i.e.
thanking God) is probably not PC.
The Grammar Observers. Okay, say you’re lucky enough not to be an Annoyer. There is also the category
of Grammar Observer. These are what you might call grammar voyeurs. They are
like people with voracious sexual appetites who have decided to take holy
orders, and now have to suppress their desires.
On the surface of this, it sounds innocent enough. But these are really
people who notice bad grammar and simply stuff the urge to correct it deep, deep
down in their souls. They are deeply troubled individuals. It’s not that they
want to suck your toes, exactly, but they would love at least to see what your
foot looks like without a shoe, or even better, without a sock. Not that they
would suck it or even touch it; but they would want to, really, really want to.
Okay, that’s weird, but that’s these people. They are deeply suppressed, and
most of them wind up in therapy at some point.
The Grammar Whizzes. This one is less likely to wreck your life per
se than the first two, but it can. These people are better than your computer
at grammar. More to the point: they are better than their own computers. They
actually hate grammar/spell check—they turn it off because it is too often
wrong. (And, just so you know, the grammar/spell check feature is only wrong once
per 100,000 words, on average.) But that is simply “too often” for the Whizzes.
When they find an “error” in the grammar/spell check, they actually write a letter
to Microsoft. If there are any “errors” in the response—and I put quote marks around
the word because they are not necessarily errors per se—they circle them and
sent the letter back to the writer of the letter. That’s their favorite thing in the world to do. These
folks are weird. Forget the toes. Forget
the socks. Forget the analogy. These Whizzes have some kind of power grab fetish,
and they use grammar to get their jollies.
So how can noticing other people’s grammar ruin your
life? If you’re in category one to
three, you need some help. You need therapeutically to write a grammatically incorrect
sentence. You need to listen to country
music and try to like it—for there are many infelicitous moments, grammatically
speaking, in country music. Probably purposefully so, by the way, but
infelicitous, nonetheless.
So, what’s the deal? Speak bad, lighten up, relax. The computer
will fix you’re grammare. Works for me.
October 1, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Top Ten Difficult Moments When Traveling
What is the worst thing that can happen to you when you are
traveling? As I am traveling a lot these
days, I decided to make a Lettermanesque list of the top ten bad things that
can happen to you when you’re traveling. You can decide for yourself if I am
right.
10. You packed too
much. Yes, that’s right, even for the
seasoned traveler, there is at tendency to overpack. I am in Romania as I write this, and when my
wife saw how little I was taking she said, “No way. That’s not enough.” But,
for the first time in my married life, she was wrong. I did pack enough, barely. Okay, so she was
pretty close to right.
9. You can discover that you used someone else’s toothbrush
by accident. Now some of you are thinking this should be number one. But it is
not. Why? This rarely happens, but I have had it happen. And it is gross, but not as bad as number 8.
8. You lose your passport, and you didn’t bother to make a xerox
or photograph of it. Hassle city in either case. Sorry!
7. Some son-of-a-bugger cuts in line while you’re patiently
waiting to get into a museum, or board a plane, or even just check out of the
grocery store. Yep, that’s a pisser. There’s
no point in complaining. They will pretend to know no English.
6. Your luggage gets lost. Really lost. Like it’s five to eight
days lost, and you’re now in another city, and it’s still lost. Good news/bad
news. You just bought a new wardrobe—that’s the good news. Bad news: you skipped the $12 trip insurance that
covered lost luggage. Crud.
5. Your glasses break. Yep, that happened to me on this trip.
So you go to get new ones. But, because you’re in Wales, they don’t allow you
to get them without a “valid” (=within one year) prescription. But your exam was a year and 2 weeks
ago. “Sorry, not ‘valid’.” Ugh!
So you call your ophthalmologist and convince him to change the date. He
does so, but it will now cost you a really expensive gift that you will have to
bring all the way from Wales for him. Still, things could be worse. Try number 4.
4. Strike. Yes, strike.
The Europeans (especially the Italians?) seem to love to have strikes. And
somehow they time them for when you need to travel. So the busses and trains both
shut down. Seriously? You kiddin’ me?
3. Your kid falls off a skateboard and knocks out her front
teeth. Yep, that happened to me when I was in Africa. With my wife. My poor eldest
daughter had to handle everything. There’s a special place in Heaven for her.
There definitely is.
2. You wind up in a TB ward because you broke a few ribs falling
when you got out of the shower. In Ukraine. You just can’t make this stuff up. So, when you get home you have to be tested
for TB. Yikes!
1. You simply have no toilet paper at a very, very
inopportune moment. You’re already in a men’s or women’s room that is hygienically
unacceptable—no toilet seat; yep, none. And you really need to be in that
bathroom because you were apparently not used to the water or the food or
something… well you can do the math. And only after you’ve taken care of your
emergency—for it was an emergency—do you
realize that the dispenser has nothing to dispense. So you use your teeth or a
nail clipper or a match or something to rend your underwear into pieces to use
as “substitute toilet paper” and then you go commando the rest of the day. You can see why this one is at the top of the
list. I am glad to say that it has only happened
to me once.
Thanks for reading. Sorry to close with the grossest one, but it is number 1 for a reason. And you can see why I did not put any pictures in the blog. No need. The images dance off the page.
Bon voyage. Gute
Reisen! Happy travels!
September 22, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: How to Get Grandchildren
These days, I meet more and more people who are desperate
for grandchildren. Yesterday, here in
Rome, I sat at a coffee bar and spoke with a woman about my age, who was so looking
forward to her first grandchild. But she
couldn’t conceive of a way to get this grandchild, even though her son, who I
think she said was 29 years old, had been married five years, and her daughter of
27 years had been living with her boyfriend (in his wealthy parents’ home) for five
years. She wondered what she could do to
promote one of them getting pregnant.
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Now of course, my first thought was, “Why, when I am sitting
at a coffee bar in Rome, innocently drinking a cappuccino, do people always ask
me weird questions like, ‘How do I get my kids to have unprotected sex?’” I
think it’s some kind of strange ambiance that I must have that screams, “Go
ahead, ask me a deeply personal question—I don’t care how weird it is.”
So she did, and I wish I had thought then of what I thought
of subsequently. Instead of giving her a straight answer, I just commiserated,
saying, “You know, people are having fewer and fewer kids these days. They’re
so expensive!” Or something stupid like that.
But what should I have said? That’s
what I will tell you now.
“Plan A”: use reverse psychology. Pretend you hate the idea
of grandchildren. Say things like the
world is “overcrowded” and “needs fewer people anyway.” If you’re like most
parents, you’ll always be “wrong” so, de facto, you will be wrong about this.
This alone should do the trick. Your
child will immediately find his or her significant other, copulate without
protection and, if you’re lucky, conceive.
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But what if your kid is not subject to reverse psychology. That is to say, they’re the one in twenty-five who actually respect their parents, though of course they can’t ever tell you that; that is Regulation Number 41 of the “Offspring Code.” So that won’t work with them. In that case, discard the reverse psychology ploy and go to “Plan B”: find out what kind of contraceptive they are using and deliberately sabotage it. I recommend doing this alone—don’t tell your spouse, if you have one, and don’t tell your in-laws.
The exception to that last piece of advice, though, would be that you know your in-laws have also been complaining about the same thing and there’s a chance that they’re creepy enough to go along with you in this plan. This would be more likely to work if your child, like that of the woman at the bar, happens to live with the in-laws. Then, it is a simple matter. When the young couple is out of the house, show up for “tea” and, with the in-laws, break and enter into your child’s and his or her other significant other’s love next and poke holes in their condoms. This is easily done with a simple pin. “Ninety-nine percent effective” is dramatically reduced to “ten percent effective” with a mere pin prick.
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Third, let’s say they don’t use condoms or you are afraid to
break and enter. Plan “C” is to use guilt.
Now the effectiveness of guilt depends on two things: 1) how far you’re
willing to go with it and 2) how subject your child is to it. But, you’ll be glad
to know, it’s really more number 1 than number 2. Now the easy-to-say but far-less-effective
type of guilt goes like this, “You know, Sarah’s daughter, Emily, has two
babies already, and they’re soooo cute!”
That will not
work. Your daughter has probably secretly despised Emily anyway since
childhood. You made them play together
just because you enjoyed spending time with Sarah, and Emily was a little
brat. Somehow you never noticed. Your daughter
is more likely to turn this into your own guilt trip than hers.
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No, the kind of guilt we’re talking about here involves, like a good Greek tragedy, the evocation of pathos. “I am old now, and I may not live much longer. But I don’t need ever to see grandchildren to be fulfilled. Anyway, I would probably be a bad influence on them.” This will only work, by the way, if you will not be a bad influence. Those of you who are bad influences will need to modify the rollout somewhat. Yet this should do the trick, if you present it correctly.
But some children are resistant, even to “Plan C.” Which brings us to “Plan D.” It is the
creepiest of all and makes tampering with the birth control seem like child’s
play. “Plan D” is a modification of “Plan C,” and involves two things: part 1,
lying and getting away with it, and part 2, a miracle.
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Part 1 is the harder of the two: you have to create a disease that you don’t really have that is or could be terminal. Then you reapply a modified version of “Plan C”: “I know, given my diagnosis, that I may not live to see grandchildren, but I am content with that. I just want what is best for you guys. The exact timing of when you start your family is way more important than whether some old,” [and here you fill in “lady” or “man” as appropriate], “lives to see it.” And you have to sound like you mean it, for it to work.
Then the easy part, part 2: the “miracle.” A few years later, you simply say that you
went to the doctor and there’s no trace of that incurable disease. Everyone is happy,
everyone wins! They probably even throw
a party for you. And you just sit there grinning
through the whole affair, for it worked: you got grandchildren. And because you
were so ill, they even named the first baby after you. Congratulations!
And that’s how to get grandchildren.
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September 19, 2019
Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Hiatus
My Dear Reader,
Roughly 2000 years ago, the poet Juvenal wrote, “It is
difficult not to write satire.” He
wasn’t the pioneer of that genre, for it existed a relatively long time before
he wrote that oft-quoted dictum. But a
truer line, I think, was never written that could be applied to the age in which
that poet lived or in which we ourselves live.
But I won’t be writing satire or anything for a little while.
Why? Not because it is difficult or not difficult or difficult not to write
satire but because I am writing something else and shall be while I am
traveling. If it is published, you shall be the first to know.
Greetings from Lviv, Barcelona, Rome and… we shall see.
Thanks for your patience,
H. R. Jakes
