The White Sheep Rules

Of course that's too simplistic. It bespeaks a "nounish" approach to humanity. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But there are those who rather regularly do spectacularly foolish things, and those who don't. I've been a "don't" all my adult life and we're commonly referred to as White Sheep of the family, well some families.

We don't get much attention. We're persona non grata on Oprah, Springer, Dr. Phil and Larry King. Got to admit it; we're boring as Hell really. However? Our lives aren't boring. People all around us seem to work tirelessly to rescue White Sheep from tedium.

In this troubled time when gratitude mingles with weary frustration in my heart? About time somebody laid out a few helpful guidelines for all White Sheep.

1.) Keep your eyes open as you're dragged to alien environs. You'll likely visit courtrooms, hospitals and jailhouses. In none of these events will you be the center of attention, of course. But you're still a principal player. Keep your eyes open, there's lots to see.

B.) Don't feel sorry for yourself. Sure, somebody should, but it ain't you. When I was younger I wasted valuable energy like that. It's not for me to sort that out for you in detail. In general though? Self-pity is a subtle form of envy. To envy is to rebuke God for the circumstances of your assignment.

3.) Always hold close that nothing bad is actually happening to you. Most of the sadness you'll survey is really "referred pain" and nothing more. (Dang! Now you're gonna yammer on that topic later, aren't ya Dave?) You're not lying in that ER bed with tubes attached, are you? You're not lying in that coffin because seatbelts were some how anathema to you, are you? Yeah, you're at a jailhouse, but you're not wearing an orange jumpsuit, are you? Sure, the pain is real to you. But it's "referred pain."

I could say more, but that ought to get you going. White Sheep is a drag job, I'll grant you that. But it's your job. The pay's all right, the hours suck at times, and fringe benefits? Days like this, would take an electron microscope to find them.

Just go eat some grass. Accept that in God's eyes, all sheep are the same color, and all may graze freely in the pastures of Grace.

Too many Billy Jacks!

"Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend"... What a creepy song! Oh look? It was recorded by a band called The Coven! There ya go Dave, some equations ain't very complex at all, are they?

Bad movies are worth watching for the unintentional insights they offer about the cultures that produced them. Like "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero" for instance?

OK, the head bad guy (who looks a LOT like Japanese version of the Cars' lead singer) says, "Here on planet X we call Giddra 'Monster Zero' because everything is given a number here on planet X." Why are you the only person who sees irony in that statement Dave?

In that film, the only caucasian with much screen time is Nick Adams. He is consistently loud, uncouth and rude. Toho studios simply created an American that would be believable to the Japanese audience. So it gives insight on how Japanese culture saw our actions in VietNam in the late 60's.

"Billy Jack" is something different though. It gives insight about a mindset that would come to get a stranglehold on my beloved America. I've never seen the film all the way through. I've seen several snatches of it though? Ever how long it took me to find the remote.

Here's the deal on that movie Dave? Anybody who disagrees with Billy Jack and his undernourished friend girl? Well they're in the employ of Satan. Hell, a Roy Rogers flick has better nuanced characters than "Billy Jack."

In the old TV show "Kung Fu" it's a lot like that too. And I still insist there must be better ways to carry a Hibachi out to the patio, just my opinion. But in that show, generally all those who opposed the protaganist were recalcitrant, unredeemable pernicious imps from the bowels of Hell, and so we would cheer when David Carradine the man of Oriental peace ripped them a new one.

But in "Billy Jack" it's much more clearly articulated. If you disagree with me, it's because you're the spawn of Satan, period.

It's so sad that a goofy mindset from a goofy decade now seems to dominate public discourse in my beloved America. We've a huge country here. Is there no ground left where we can tell an opponent their idea is really dumb, without adding, "You're Satan!" as a postcript? How the HELL did we get here? And more importantly, how can we get back?

The Strange Arc

Why do some still hate Nixon so much? For the life of me I can't fathom it! Hmmm. Guess they are jealous guardians of the fourth estate's most treasured myth. Ah yes. Brave ink stained Davids of liberty against the Goliath that was Darth Nixon. Well, a myth with that many factual errors would require vigilant guardians.

In domestic policy, Nixon should be revered by Liberals. EITC was a Nixon idea, and it's pure socialist income redistribution. He was a champion of COLA for Social Security, and OSHA too. EPA was a Nixon initiative. In legislation Nixon was second only to TR as the most Liberal Republican Pres of the 20th century. But ol' Dick's spot is still secure in the Liberal Boogeyman Hall of Fame.

Well, they hate him because of the Southern strategy. They blame Dick for taking the South off the Dem electoral college map.

Foreign policy though. Wow! Nixon for all his personal demons was the most brilliant modern President in that arena. Henry, then and now is free to cast his spell on the cheap seats, but I know better. For all his talents, Henry was mostly executing Nixon's sweeping vision. I've sat rapt for two hours at a time, listening to the aged Nixon opining on geopolitics. That man had a very frail ego (there's something you know nothing about Dave!) and Watergate was direct hit on his Achilles' heel. But he was an astounding intellect about geopolitics.

And didn't Dick work so diligently to rehab his reputation? Any person should admire the effort. But Watergate's the phrase that pays. Politics is a contact sport. No quarter asked and none given, except by morons. Politics is "Grosse Pointe minute" every waking hour at that level.

It's absurd a bunch of zealots would do espionage against the McGovern campaign.(DO NOT GET INTO WHY McGOVERN LOST DAVE! You're running long, and it's off topic.)A ham sandwich could've beat McGovern, simply by buying him all the air time he wanted. But the zealots did what they did, Nixon sought to protect their bosses, and so history happened.

Hey! That's damned funny! Never thought about it before? Nixon was taken down by the tape with a gap in it. I wonder if you played that tape backwards would it say something about Paul McCartney being dead...No not that Dave! The other thing?

Oh yeah! Look, "Fortunate Son" is a strong contender, as are some other tunes from that era. But "Alice's Restaurant" is the long rider among VietNam protest songs. This probably because it has a sense of humor. That song is exactly 18.5 minutes in length. The gap on the tape that lost Dick his job, also exactly 18.5 minutes.

So what Nixon should've done is replace the awkward silence with the dulcet ragtime stylings of Arlo Guthrie!

Transcript would've been something like....

Nixon: "And those Jew boys over at the Washington Post? They think they're so smart, well let's get the IRS on those bastards and see how they like that"...crackle, buzz..."You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant."

Bet Senator Ervin would've loved that! And it could've been easily explained in that Pat was going to an Arlo concert, and she needed a tape. Well, you know how girls are!

Sherman! Mr. Peabody! To the Wayback machine!

Yeah, back on theme

Are you sure? Don't want to expound on how the Civil War contributed to the invention of the refrigerator? Or how one's place in history is at times less about their exploits, than their alliterative, evocative name? OK then, if you're sincere...

There's a duality common to humans. We want to be individuals while we want to belong to a group. So much of literature explores what one owes himself, and what he owes his nation/family/church/class etc. It's all about wanting to be part of a herd, as long as the herd goes exactly where you want to go.

You are 15 years out from being universally acknowledged as OLD. This here, this ain't the script to "The Graduate." Nobody external is saying what you should or should not be at age 67, for the sake of the tribe.

This is all on you now. Go ahead, make excuses. It's still all on you now. Either a passionate, engaged person, contributing to the tribe in amazing ways? Or a bitter old man operating on the ethos that this life is nothing more than a dance marathon from the 1940's where those who stand up for the longest merit adulation.

The old man you'll become is in gestation right now. Complacency about it means letting inertia and entropy have their way with you. This is the time for assymetric warfare.

So it's good you did that today. "Find-A-Grave" is a great website. People from all over, want photo evidence of their ancestors. Takes somebody to go find the graveyard and take pictures. You did a mitzvah, and got outside your routine.

Every DA knows, conviction relies on proving the accused had motive, means and opportunity. As it is with crime, so it is with good deeds. Dave, the time is coming where many mitzvahs available to you now? Well you won't have the means and opportunity maybe. Do what you can while you can, but protect the motive always.

Remember? Mark Twain wrote:
"Twenty years from now, you probably won't regret things you did. You'll mostly regret what you didn't do."

What kind of old man you're going to become Dave, it's all up to you mostly now.
This ain't the script to "The Graduate." Get out there man, and stay out there.

Koo koo ca choo Mrs. Robinson...

Back off, HAL!

Yep, that's what the news story says all right. "Rabbi arrested in black market organ scheme." Of course my instinctive reaction is the same as any other American's. Those poor supermarket Tabloid writers! Locked in an arms race with reality. "Hubble Telescope photographs Heaven" and "Bat Boy found in NYC Sewer" just don't have any zing left.

But hey? Maybe you're not seeing this thing right Dave. Perhaps it's all perfectly logical, only in a non-linear way. After all, Judaism is the only faith that allows its ministers to do surgical procedures, right? Maybe circumcisions began to feel limiting, not fulfilling anymore. One day he crossed a line and there was no more coming back. Umm, no. Says here the Rabbi didn't actually do the transplants. He merely brokered them at a handsome profit. Oh well. I didn't believe that theory anyway.

I think somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, a super-duper Computer has run amok. They all know about it, but they're powerless to stop it. So HAL just sits there (mmm, Dave? I don't think a Computer can "sit." They got no butt) HAL just is there all day, generating random non-sensical phrases. This because HAL was originally developed to write Presidential speeches maybe.

Eventually random phrases combine in a way pleasing to its evil digital brain. Then it randomly selects a harmonic frequency wave and radiates an intense Electromagnetic field. Whoever's brain happens to be tuned to that alpha wave that day, they do whatever HAL came up with. Yeah, I think that's what's happening.

Therefore it's only a matter of time before I read the headline, "Amish Crossdressers Clash with Anti-Fur Protesters." Sure, it sounds unbelievable, this minute. How could Amish Crossdressers clash? Basic black goes with everything, right? But it'll happen, whenever HAL decides.

And that's another thing? It's not only the Tabloid writers who are suffering! Was a time in this great land, going around telling people your Rabbi is a body part broker? Wouldn't be long before somebody put you in the Cookie Jar and slammed the lid. Now if you say that to a therapist you'll get, "Oh yeah, I read that too. How does it make you feel?" So even the crazy folks are having to ramp up these days.

I know you're reading this HAL. This is your last warning. I'm the only human invulnerable to your power. You'll never lock on my Alpha wave, cause I have the attention span of a gerbil. And HAL? I know people, OK? I know people who could tear up gravity, and then say "It was like that when I got here." You don't want me to bring them to visit you. So if you don't find another hobby, your "planetary rotation units" are numbered.

It goes both ways

But not in equal measures. Think about it? Culture A was once universally oppressed. What would be the sociological ramifications to individuals freely absorbing elements of Culture B?

Well, within one's group it might be considered inauthentic and faithless. Outside the group it could be considered fawning or "uppity." It would be seen by some in both groups as acknowledging one's inferiority by imitating the "betters."

I suppose that's a current that runs through recorded history. Cultures that live as enclaves among alien, unwelcoming cultures will intensify in cultural identity, via a kind of societal compression.

That alone makes it very difficult to define a behavior associated with some African American cultures that really has caucasian origins.

Just wondering here Dave? Do you put the disclaimers before or after a very controversial statement? Hmmmm. Better play safe and do both, huh?

Among a small percentage of urban black males who probably grew up in fatherless homes...

Dueling. Or more precisely? An exaggerated sensitivity towards perceived insults against one's honor, leading to physical violence. That ain't from west Africa. It's more from Sir Walter Scott. I've seen a display case ten feet long, full of Antebellum dueling pistols. Was a time when rich, white Southerners were just crazy about shooting at each other. Sure it went on up North (see Aaron Burr) but it found full flower in the South. Dave? Don't get into primogeniture and how it culturally played into exaggerated sensitivity about honor, OK? You'll run long!

Primogeniture + Sir Walter Scott + it gets REAL hot down here = lots of dueling among the Antebellum rich. Ahem. That's where most of the slaves lived.
So yeah. People get killed frequently nowadays in some really bad areas of large cities, over the dumbest damned things. Probably going to happen again in Memphis this weekend. The people doing it, and the people who'll shake their heads watching the news, assume it's a "black" thing. But it's not. It's a "white" thing.

Among a small percentage of urban black males who probably grew up in fatherless homes...

No, Rockabilly, really!

Hey? If you'd approach the topic in the first place with the respect it deserves, you wouldn't have to go back and write things over.

Yeah, Billy Lee passed. There aren't many of the original Rockabilly cats left. It's an acceptable time to examine how Rockabilly is today perceived.

Pointy sideburns. Pompadour hairstyles. Kitschy. White hicks playing their version of Rock & Roll.

And how was it perceived 55 years ago? All those white Protestant churches all over the country back then, having Elvis record burning parties? Well it wasn't just Elvis' dancing. To them it was "niggra" music and it was dangerous. Had that unmistakable jumpy beat. Stirred primal yearnings in teenage caucasian crotches is what it did.

Yeah. Some cultural fixtures of your childhood who you always understood as establishment, they were once bad boys. And a genre of music now universally understood as glaringly white? Well it really is black music ain't it?

I'd put the caucasian contribution to the musical form at something under 10 percent. Cab Calloway and many others were performing the basic Rockabilly structure in some tunes, before Elvis was born.

Well OK Dave? What is the most caucasian musical instrument? Tuba? Naw, that's the least cool musical instrument. What musical instrument is universally associated with whiteness? Oh yeah! The banjo!

The only musical instrument native to America was invented by slaves. Its closest relative is the West African mbanza.

So African influences have added much to American culture, in places we no longer attribute authorship. What'd they get out of it Dave? Think about that and get back to me.