Inedible Ink

Pity the lonely Orchid.

Sure, it sounds convenient, you’d never have to seduce yourself, or buy yourself dinner and you’d certainly never buy yourself flowers. And it sounds safe, I mean, if you’re an orchid, you’re already blind, and a little pollen on the floor isn’t going to look too suspicious. It even sounds kind of exciting to have an “active” and “agile” partner.

It would be lonely, though, to be an orchid, even this agile Chinese orchid.

Orchid Has “Active” Sex With Itself — A Flower First?
Scott Norris
for National Geographic News
June 21, 2006

An agile Chinese orchid performs a floral version of sexual intercourse—with itself.

Researchers say an extension of the male flower part, or anther, turns an upside-down loop to deliver spermlike pollen spores directly into the female cavity.

Elsewhere on Inedible Ink: Animal welfare activists against masturbation

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? It sounds like an instructive tidbit; ‘don’t dawdle around expecting manna to fall from the skies, get yourself a job, go be of value to others’. I rather like it. It’s enouraging, memorable, sensible and pithy.
Barna group research conducted in 2000 showed 75% of Americans incorrectly identifying this saying as biblical truth. Trouble is, this was not mined from the depths of Proverbs or plucked out of the trees in Genesis. This is a direct quote from Benjamin Franklin. Ol’ Ben liked religions about like he liked women, that is to say that he greatly admired a good number of them and was neither exclusive nor particularly dedicated.

Research from The Barna Group
The statements for which there were the greatest percentages of people who held positions conflicting with the Bible were claiming that the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves (53% strongly agreed, 22% agreed somewhat); that the Holy Spirit is not a real entity but is just a symbol of God’s presence or power (41% agreed strongly, and 20% agreed somewhat); and that Satan is not a real being but is just a symbol of evil (40% agreed strongly and 18% agreed somewhat).

No, the biblical truth about helping in exchange for heavenly rewards is a bit harder to take than ‘help yourself’:

Matt. 19:21 Jesus saith to him: If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me. 22 And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad: for he had great possessions.

What are your great posessions? I can tell you that I am still firmly attached to mine.

In college, the freshman English Composition prof. encouraged us to write a descriptive essay, “Make it richly detailed.” he’d said. I wrote at considerable length of a hotel room on the Greek island of Korfu.

The room was painted a garish pink, the floors, which I suspected of being painted annually with a mop, were not flat but ran rather steeply toward the front door, the walls were neither flat, nor square nor plumb, the bed sagged, not at the middle, but at the feet, so a night’s turning in bed could easily land you on the floor at the foot of the bed, the late morning sunlight from the window was whiter and brighter than it would have been had the sun itself been sitting in the garden outside the window, the pile of dirty laundry spilling from a backpack had soaked up considerable quantities of Ouzo, the anise-rich liquor hung like a fog, someone had recently stepped on a huge fresh fig which left a juicy smear and smelled sweeter than a thousand flowers on the pink floor, the cracks and stains in the ceiling paint formed a map of some unknown but still insanly crowded place, my toothbrush rested soaking in a glass of Retsina, pine resin wine, on a bedside table achieving the dual results of cleaning the toothbrush and making the wine palatable, the Norwegians in the neighboring cabana seemed to be burning weed by the bushelbasket, or so the invading sticky-sweet smell seemed to suggest, the clopping and snuffling sounds of a donkey straining to pull a farm cart up the impossibly steep path just outside the door were drowned out by a Vespa scooter’s high pitched complaints about that same hill…

And so on it went for a few more description saturated double-spaced pages that never made it to breakfast. I had never before intended to write something good for the sake of the writing, and I felt in my heart I had done it well.

I was not so much as graded for this effort, I was referred to the college’s counselling services, presumably as a drunk. Professor had obviously never spent even one night at the Pink Palace on Corfu.

I wrote a short essay in a high school social studies test about the cold war nuclear weapons doctrine of M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction)

My premise was that no one ever intended to launch a nuke, rather, the U.S. policy of building a stockpile of warheads they would never use was intended to force the U.S.S.R. to build its own stockpile of warheads they would never use. The building of so many expensive and complicated weapons systems would stress the U.S. economy, which would respond by becoming stronger, and stress the Soviet economy, which would crumble under the burden.

This was called implausible foolishness by the teacher and graded harshly.

For a Junior High homework assignment I wrote a non-rhyming “poem”. The instructions were to look at something in a different way and write about it. I put down a few lines about how nice it would be to be dead. It would be, I presumed at that time, quieter.

There was a frantic call home from the teacher that night who was very relieved to hear that I was not yet dead, but she considered me a suicide risk all the same.

I was not suicidal, nor especially sullen, at least not for a young teenager, and I was quite surprised that anyone was taking poetry homework seriously.

In preparation to deploy to Iraq, the 3/4 is training for the specific tasks and challenges ahead. Notice the fake Iraqi village behind the Marines photographed.

A demonstration of search procedure:

From op29online.com

Lance Cpl. Michael S. Cifuentes3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment

Third Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, rolled into their third week of Mojave Viper, a month long training evolution combining the Revised-Combined Arms Training Exercise and Security and Stability Operations training.

At company levels, the battalion began SASO training Aug. 7, at the Combat Center’s Range 215, a military operations in urban terrain facility known as Wadi Al Sahara. Prior to any live runs in the mock Iraqi city, the Marines and sailors of the battalion attended classes given by Tactical Training Exercise Control Group instructors.

From the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGATE:

The rest of the article about Joe Rosenthal is very well done.

JOE ROSENTHAL: 1911-2006 / Photo was his fame — his pride ‘My Marines’ / The image of flag going up on Iwo Jima was extraordinary
Retired Chronicle photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won the Pulitzer Prize and international acclaim for his soul-stirring picture of the World War II flag-raising on Iwo Jima, died Sunday in Novato.

This photo doesn’t work for me the way it worked for my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. They look at this and see courage, tenacity and victory.

Without discounting the actual bravery of the men photographed one bit, I look at this photo and see six Marines pretending to strain under the weight of a flagpole which I don’t imagine weighed all that much. I see a somewhat staged event and some posing.
It is also my understanding that this particular flag raising is not the spontaneous result of the capture of Mount Suribachi, but is the result of a Marine Battalion Commander saying something like “Get a bigger flag up there.”

The Marine on the far left is Ira Hayes, the subject of The Ballad of Ira Hayes which has been performed notably by both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Ira died drunk in a ditch on the Gila River Indian Reservation Community not too far from where I sit right now.

Rest in peace, Joe. Say ‘Hello’ to Ira.

The parable of the good Samaritan doesn’t go into detail about how the Samaritan knew that the traveler waylaid by thieves needed his help. It doesn’t offer any assurance that the Samaritan was not also a patsy, a sucker, a victim.

Today, I came upon a couple in my church parking lot. They claimed to need gas to get where they were going.

To the Christian, these things should be pretty simple, help the needy and judge not, lest ye be judged.

But what if you judge they’re not really needy?

I saw the hood up on this old model Buick when I pulled in, “Guy needs a jump start.” I thought. It would make sense to be standing in the sun with the hood up if your battery’s dead. Batteries die in the heat.

The man approached me when I got out of my own car, he had not taken two steps before I was quite certain he was going to lie to me.

He asked me to come and help, he asked me to talk to the lady. I knew he didn’t ask for a specific kind of help for a reason. I knew he wanted me to see the pregnant lady for a reason. I knew he wanted cash.

She told me a story about being “kinda” out of gas. I knew this was meant to make the situation sound urgent without actually requiring gas to be delivered to the car.

These people were out to take advantage of the charity of strangers, and I was angered by it.

He said that the nearby convenience store did not sell gas. This was said to reinforce the idea that cash would help, but actual gas would just be messy.

I knew they were lying. Being out of gas does not get resolved by lifting the hood, ever. That’s a welcome mat to a pity party. (Liar.)

The lady had to ask for help as if the man didn’t know he was out of gas. (Liar.)

The car was parked in a church parking lot to troll for generous trusting souls, or folks who wouldn’t leave you stranded, at least not with that statue of St. Mary looking on, whichever came along first. (Liars.)

I fumed. Why don’t they just ask for what they need? “What do you suggest I do?” To be honest with you, I was furious. It is not my job to punish strangers in parking lots, but I do a little volunteering at it sometimes.

She cocked her head and he said “Excuse?”

“What are you suggesting?” My tone, I’m afraid, was accusatory. (You lie.)

The story was repeated with fresh details. “Gilbert, we’re going to Gilbert,” Liars pick this kind of detail out of the blue sky, you can tell by the way the eyes search the sky for hints while they’re fabricating.

His eyes found a good one in that sky, he said: “We have another church meeting to get to before long.” (Pants on fire.) I was supposed to sympathize with this self-proclaimed church-meeting-attendee. (Liar.)

“What do you want?” I asked. I knew what I wanted, I wanted to hear a little truth pass those lips.

Something else I wanted: I wanted the right thing to do to be obvious, easy, and not require trust in strangers or God’s mysterious ways. I wanted the right thing to hinge firmly on my personal judgement of other people. I really wanted the right thing to involve foul language, name-calling, and a raised voice because I was entirely prepared to do that justice. I was not prepared to trust and be humble.

“I think you want me to give you cash.” I’m sure they thought I was retarded to have taken so long to reach this conclusion. My faith is developmentally delayed, but the rest of me is not retarded.
“The Good Lawd bless you, yes.”

I was able to be obedient to the tune of five bucks, and I’m still fuming mad about it.

I’ve not read Potatoes Not Prozac beyond the title, but that’s enough to make me wonder if maybe the central ideas in The South Beach Diet (which include skipping potatoes) aren’t the nutraceutical equivalent of going off your anti depressants.  Just wondering.

Who says I don’t believe in evolution? The inky homepage has moved up in the evolutionary bloggy ecosphere of TTLB into Slithering Reptile territory.

To the uninitiated, this means I have the same kind of traffic as the dark side of the moon, but that’s more traffic than I used to have around here.

Slithering Reptiles run from the 4,952nd most popular to the 6,892nd most popular. If you’re running for class president, that’d make for really long odds, but I prefer to think of the vast sea of planktonic blogs who are all tied for last place at around 50,000th place. I feel better about myself that way.