A Ballad of Jasper and Sherman

So this is a story that I started writing a year or so ago and never did finish. It’s pretty long and all in couplets so you may get tired of reading it I imagine. But it’s a Day After Valentines present from an impoverished school-aged chap and you gotta take what you can get out of those types. Also, am not really sure that this is a ballad as am not really sure what makes a ballad a ballad and I don’t really feel like looking it up. As I typed that I knew that I would look it up just to satisfy my curiosity, but I’m not going to change regardless of what I find. Doesn’t look like it’s a proper ballad. Hope you like it. I’m not saying you have to like it but… I spent 1.5 years writing it, not eating or sleeping once through the whole time. I’ve lost 125 lbs, 13 teeth, most of my hair, and a parrot named Jimmy during this ordeal.

 

Jasper was a girl with a heart that was gold,

Although she wasn’t one to always do as was told.

She was born into the Church of Coriander Most Holy,

As everyone was from Indonesia to Mali.

Leaves of cilantro were the Eucharist meal;

Partaking of it was a very big deal.

As the path to salvation, people suffered the taste,

The deadliest sin, to let it become waste.

To make it to Heaven, there was one other way,

To the Church you must tithe great amounts of your pay.

Jasper’s standing was good in that church of the herb,

But hers was a willfulness she just couldn’t curb.

One day she said, “I just don’t think it’s so great.”

And at this the Church elders grew quite irate.

“The truth is,” she said, “it makes me quite ill,

Might we not try something different like basil or dill?”

“Basil? Dill?” credit the elders in incredulous tone,

And so Jasper was expelled and now all alone.

Most girls would be lost having been shunned from their world,

But Jasper was tough and her resolve she unfurled.

She gave it some thought, then knew what she’d do,

She’d make her own religion, one that was true.

One where a man was measured by deeds,

Not by his fondness for munching on weeds.

East and West, traveling far and near,

Jasper shared her gospel with all who could hear.

But everyone believed in cilantro’s sanctity

And abused her with the familiar cry of “heresy!”

She preached with her whole heart and never any less,

But still she was met with little success.

She preached at the park, the fair, and the zoo

In the sun, in the rain, in the university too.

 

While walking to class to learn how solids sublime,

Sherman heard a voice asking for a bit of his time.

Never in his life had he heard a voice so pleasant

It was sweeter to him than the meat of a pheasant.

How could people assent to make produce their master

Rather than giving their heart to a girl named Jasper?

“I’m not that religious, but could you tell me instead,

More about books you have recently read?”

They found that their tastes were in happy accord,

And talking for hours, did not become bored.

Both thought their meeting was highly auspicious,

It didn’t much matter who was or wasn’t religious,

Because no religion invented could ever impart,

The feelings of friendship they had from the start.

He’d come to see her, and sit silent observer,

As she preached to bypassers with her usual fervor.

He brought her foods, removed the cilantro from them,

Left not a stalk, nor a leaf, not even a stem.

Sherman wanted desperately to help his friend with her cause,

But every opportunity seemed to slip through his paws.

He was bumbling and clumsy rather than clever and deft.

Sherman wasn’t good for anything; of use, bereft.

Before helping others he’d have to become his own man,

Or so he’d gathered from a book by Ayn Rand.

Sherman said they’d be friends forever and one day,

And then set off on his own, with only minor delay.

He knew not exactly what he wanted to find,

Just something to give his life weight in the wind.

But he never came back, Jasper heard he had died.

A body washed ashore, brought in by the tide.

Life is so fragile and friends can go in a blink,

And forever is never as long as we think.

 

One day Jasper came home and she thought she was dreaming,

Because there was her friend, and at her he was beaming.

“I wanted to surprise you when you opened the door,

So I’ve been standing here smiling since a quarter to four.”

Something was different about her friend who’d been errant,

He was somehow more wispy and a little transparent.

“I thought you were dead,” was all she could manage.

“Well that’s true, but if you’ll remember my pledge,

I told you we’d be friends forever and one day,

And I wasn’t about to let dying get in the way.

Actually, I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I took a wrong turn,

And traveling by floating took me sometime to learn.”

“So you came back for me? I’m your business unfinished?”

“No I’m just stopping by to make sure I was missed,

But I can see that I wasn’t, so I guess I’ll be leaving.”

Jasper just glared, and Sherman said he was kidding.

“I knew that I would just miss you too much

If I spent an eternity without keeping in touch,

And I thought that I could use my supernatural power

To increase your happiness every minute and hour

(and occasionally float in while you’re taking a shower.)”

They were best friends, as they’d been in the past,

Some things were weird, but they got used to them fast.

He’d kiss her goodnight and her thanks dripped with sarcasm

Just as her cheek dripped with green ectoplasm.

To help his Jasper is what Sherman wanted the most,

He took full advantage of being a ghost.

He helped where he could at her curbside services,

He had non-believers trembling at his spiritual disturbances.

As Sherman tried to help Jasper reach her potential,

The growth of her church seemed to be exponential.

But about her success, she felt some misgiving,

Was it for the right reasons that people were joining?

She explained to her flock, they’d been somewhat mislead,

The things they had witnessed were just her friend who was dead.

She expected the worst, to be run out in disgrace,

But to her surprise, everyone stayed in one place.

“We forgive you your tricks, because your intentions were good,

Plus it’s after our nap so we’re in a nice mood.

It wounds us much deeper that you think us so dim,

We figured it out when we heard you talking to him.”

“The thing is,” one said, “We know the truth when we see it,

And it has little to do with a theatrical spirit.”

 

What happens next, can’t for certain be said,

It hasn’t yet happened, so it can’t yet be read.

But wherever one goes, you’ll find the other beside,

It’s said that their stories are inextricably tied.

Promises of friendship forever, made often enough

Are broken when keeping them starts to get tough.

Other times it would seem that the promise is simply forgot

But take heart from this tale, that it’s probably not.

To Jasper and Sherman, we salute with this ink,

Who show forever is ever as long as we think.

 

 

to my charlene who is my friend forever and one day.

 

Hummingbirds, Big Fans, Do Best To Resurrect Nelly

Yes friends, that’s right, long after the rest of the world stopped listening to him, it seems that hummingbirds are still taking Nelly’s exhortations to heart.

So the Anna’s hummingbird, the male when it wants to attract a girl Anna’s hummingbird will fly up really high and then swoop down and makes a little CHIRP noise. I always thought this was a sound that it vocalized like any other bird song, but the good people over at Cal say otherwise. I guess I won’t make you read the article, the secret, it turns out is in the tail feathers – the rectrices if I’ve learned anything in class.

if you watch this at around 45 seconds in, you can see what I’m talking about

Oh man, this poor girl on American Idol gave up singing at a Red Sox game (I guess they were playing against the D-Rays because I think the auditions are in Miami) and she didn’t even make it to Hollywood. That’s really sad. They called her precocious, which may have been a valid observation, but it did not seem to fit with the criticisms that they proffered. Yes, I am sort of watching American Idol, it’s really just on in the background as I was trying to blog.

Ok so back to the hummingbird, I guess these specialized tail feathers, at speeds of 40 mph, act kind of like the blade of grass whistle thing to produce a loud, female attracting sound. Perhaps this is where I’ve gone wrong, no rectrices…

oh crap it’s 9:00

EDIT

In case it wasn’t clear the connection with Nelly is this

A Brief Digression

The newest addition to the Los Angeles Zoo is a blind harbor seal named Alfred. His new accommodations come furnished with 4 lady harbor seals, so aside from being blind, he doesn’t have it so bad.

I was going to put in a little video of Britney Spears and spawn enjoying a day at the zoo, but I was just so sickened by how creepy it is that someone would follow and videotape them all day – apparently there are many such videos on youtube – that I decided against it.

So I guess there isn’t really that much to say about this event and it wasn’t really in keeping with the stated aims of this blog. I’m just kind of passing the time while doing traffic school online. But this may be an appropriate time to propose to my readership a trip to the zoo. Visiting Alfred is optional, he won’t know whether we visit him or not (as is blind) but it is very possible that if he proves to not be a popular and profitable pinniped, he might find himself in the doghouse. The wild doghouse. That wasn’t very funny, but you try making a joke with a blind seal as your material. I don’t know what I’m doing. Traffic school sucks.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Looooove Rudy

Perhaps it’s a bit premature to call a Hillary v Rudy G general election, BUT, if it does come to that, I think it’s safe to say that the choice will not only be clear, it will be easy. In a year in which the issues have never been less important, we the voting public must turn to other factors in deciding who to vote for.

CONVICTION

That is going to be the key word in this election. And in this key area, Hillary comes up sorely lacking.

Case in Point

alternate sides??? did FDR alternate sides between the Axis and the Allies? Did Seth Cohen alternate sides between Anna from Pittsburgh and Summer?? Superficially it may have seemed like he did as he was dating Anna for a couple of months, BUT if you’ll recall from Episode 17 of Season 1 of the OC, he says, “It’s always been you Summer. It’s always been you.” So there you have it, you simply cannot achieve any measure of greatness by “alternating sides”.

Giuliani, now there’s a man with conviction.

For those of you who have not heard the the tale, While campaigning in Florida, the basket of a state in which all his eggs have been placed, he REFUSED, repeatedly, appeals to sign a Green Bay Packers hat (because they’re playing against the New York Giants). This friends, is the stuff that great men are made of. Fortitude, conviction, the courage to stand up for what one believes in, regardless of the personal cost. These are the traits that make up the constitution of the great men in history. I think it is significant to note that not a single man who might be listed among the greats has ever, as a part of his constitution, counted any number of ovaries.

Another Day Another Suicide Bomber *Yawn

That’s really how I feel now. I pay almost no attention to these reports of suicide bombs going off somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq because I feel like there’s one just about every day. This is a pretty horrific situation to be in, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this kind of sentiment. It’s kind of amazing to think that this is reality for so many thousands of people, maybe millions of people. I’m pretty sure that some of it is religiously motivated and others are politically motivated, but I begin to wonder if some people aren’t just blowing themselves up because they really have nothing better to do. I mean like it’s somehow become en vogue to be a suicide bomber. I think I’ve actually heard that there’s a certain amount of prestige that goes to the bomber and  his/her family. I guess in Afghanistan the targets are usually NATO or Afghani soldiers, but the majority of the victims are innocent civilian passersby. How do these people justify the suffering of so many? I feel like most revolutionaries, even the most brutal sort, believe themselves to be patriots working towards the good of the country, but when you’re killing thousands of innocent people, how do you justify it? This leads me then to wonder if they are, even in their own minds, consciously and conscientiously killing for their own minority interests, to serve themselves rather than their society.

If You Would Like To Be Reincarnated, Please Fill Out the Following Forms…

 

China’s so much fun because they have such great policies (see previous post). But this one is the best ever I should think. They’ve imposed a bar on Tibetan monks being reincarnated without the express written consent of Major League Baseball. I’ve actually been giving some thought to exploring Buddhism lately, and maybe simply for humanitarian reasons, I should be offended, but really I’m just amused. Maybe that’s all you can be about something as ridiculous as this.  Before I laugh too much though, maybe this really will have some serious repercussions for Buddhists, especially the Tibetan monks. Oh, I was going to say that even in this country you get some kind of arcane religious rites being regulated by the government, and I was going to use the example of the Native Americans and their peyote, but I guess the government lets them use it in their religious ceremonies. Read for yourself here. Shows what I know.

China Is a Godless Nation Bound For Hell – but be nice because they’re going to own us someday

 

This is just what the Catholic Church has been waiting for, proof that China’s Godlessness is bringing down the society. See, it’s all in here. The One Child Policy is creating a generation of socially inept hoodlums. This is what happens when you use something other than the rhythm method to control the population.

But you know, I think I read a  Newsweek article a few years ago about how the population of many of the countries in Europe is on the decline, or rather, the population is not reproducing at a sustainable rate, and this included Ireland. Now, I’m somewhat reluctant to credit that to the rhythm method or a general decrease in sex in those countries so there might be a whole lot of sinning going on in Europe – maybe even as we speak, how titillating.

As a kind of sidenote, I think China might be running low on girls due to the One Child Policy. I think this was predicted when they first implemented the policy but it’s fun to think that if there is a severe shortage of girls, Chinese men may be forced to embark on a rather different sort of sin track.

Iron Mike Fights Back On Evolution

So I guess Mike Huckabee doesn’t believe in the theory of evolution. This isn’t really surprising I guess, but it is a little bit strange. I mean, I kind of take it for granted that people believe in evolution, that’s just how it goes, but really I guess a lot of people don’t believe in it. I have a classmate who’s a bio major who doesn’t believe in evolution and I couldn’t believe it when she said that. She also was considering voting for Giuliani until I told her that I think he’s a social liberal who supports civil unions and such.

I will admit that I have not fully investigated the science behind evolution, but what I understand of it, the mechanism of natural selection, makes sense to me. The thing that I do not know the science of, and I’m not sure is well understood by anyone the origin of life on the earth. But I am interested in the possibility of a random arrangements of molecules given some kind of impetus which set them to self replication, and then these self replicating molecules aggregating to form a bacteria, and then these bacteria aggregating to create a slime mold or something and then that slime mold crawling out onto the land to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. That’s not meant as a criticism of Roberts or anything, I just felt like saying it.

I Think I’ll Color My Pedophile Sea Green…

This is kind of a, well I was going to call it a cute thing, but it’s really not. I guess in fact that such a thing even exists is a really sad commentary on our society. I’d like to think that this is just weird and paranoid “For safety’s sake a child and an adult should never be in a closed room together” initially sounded paranoid. I mean, I feel like there’s a lot of adults that I would not have felt uncomfortable being in a closed room with when I if twas a kid. But then, I’m not really sure that that situation ever really came up. I mean, maybe that is kind of an awkward situation that should be avoided, but that just feels so abhorrent to me, that we have to be suspicious of such situations.

But then, I feel like I should revisit the phrase I wrote at the beginning of the entry. When I said it was a sad commentary on our society. Certainly, it is a monstrous problem for our society, but then I imagine this has been a problem for societies since the Catholic Church enforced celibacy of the priests. I wonder what kids did before coloring books. Oh… right…

Huckabee on Mormonism: “SATANIC CULT!”

Mike Huckabee did not say that Mormonism is a satanic cult. He actually said that he did not want to comment on how he feels about Mormonism.

“I don’t think it’s relevant to the presidency. I really don’t,” he said. “You know, I get all these questions about somebody else’s religion. I only want to address the ones about my own, and I think some of those get a little bit almost unfortunately laborious because, you know, we ought to be talking about education and health care and energy independence and all these other things.”

I think that it might be proper to not wish to speak on other people’s religious beliefs because they are personal and don’t really have any bearing on anyone else. But then, Huckabee does talk about how his religion is central to who he is not just as a candidate, but as a person and religion to me is a pretty adversarial thing in that if you really believe that your faith is the correct one, then you must absolutely believe that another person’s is false; unless you believe in some kind of religion which allows for the validity of different faiths. From my church going experience, Christianity – or at least the Lutheran brand that I experienced – is not such a religion. There’s only one path to salvation, through Jesus Christ, and anything else is just wrong and the followers of those religions go to Hell. This is incidentally exactly the point that lead to me not wanting to have anything further to do with Christianity.

I guess the point is that for a man who makes Christianity such a focal point of his life and his campaign, it seems like he should be able to say that he believes that his Christian Baptist faith is the true faith and that he rejects all others as being false. He could allow for the possibility that he could be wrong in that assessment, but that’s what he believes. I think that would be a rather more courageous, if very very ill advised thing to do.