Cultural Appropriation

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

I've heard it asked, what is cultural appropriation? Greg Gutfeld, on The Five, on the Fox News Network, once asked if taking something from someone else's culture shouldn't be taken as a compliment?

Well it might be if one doesn't acknowledge where it comes from, or worse, makes fun of the cultural source. That's why black face is forbidden.

One form of cultural appropriation that I thought of that happily hasn't happened yet, at least so far, is the appropriation of yarmulkes. Yarmulkes are Jewish skull caps, worn on the top back of one's head to show reverence to God, usually in a temple, though Orthodox Jews wear some form of them all the time. This artifact is very holy to Jews and my cultural appropriation fear is that one day, some American stylist will desecrate it by making a fancy one by putting a cross and an American flag on it and call it an "American Yarmulke".

Another form of cultural appropriation would be the constant attempts to turn Christian culture into American Culture, insisting that America is a "Christian country". I'm sorry, but as a non-Christian American, I disagree. Still, Christmas is legally an American holiday and more than one person has insisted that I should celebrate it.

That's why we have a First Amendment that forbids Christian prayers in our public schools, the Decalogue on public buildings, and many other forms of Christian appropriation.

One form of Christian appropriation the surprised and really angers me is that Cross in a public park, part of an honor for World War One veterans, which the Supreme Court allowed!

Even before and the Nazis invaded and after they left, the very Christian Catholic country of Poland was not too happy with its Jewish population. That's why many Jews, like my grandfather, left and came to America, where he was free to be a Jew or any religion he wanted. When WW! came, he served and is "honored" by this memorial with the cross on it, which is like putting a Polish flag on his headstone!

The Right To Life Question

RIGHT TO LIFE?

Right to life is one of those modern questions of good versus good. Sure, I want to save a life, but can I go into somebody else’s body to do it?

Let’s say you can. That goes beyond forcing a woman to bare a child for nine months.

About now, and a lot of other times, the local authorities beg people to donate blood. Why beg? If this is to save lives, it should be mandatory, at least once a year. As I once said in a letter to Anne Landers, it’s easy. Just answer a few questions, give a drop to sample, roll up your sleeve as the technician sticks a needle in your arm, then play couch potato and lay on a comfy couch and watch a movie or the ball game for an hour.

I should know. At one time in my life, I didn’t know what else I could give to justify my existence, so I gave enough blood to become a member of the New York/New Jersey Red Cross Five Gallon Club.

Then there’s the freshly dead. They can offer so much to the living, just by giving body parts they obviously don’t need anymore, but under the law today, medical authorities have to beg you to sign a donor card while you’re alive or beg your newly grieving family afterward and hope they care more about the living than your dead body.

Again, why should authorities have to ask? Shouldn’t anybody needing a heart or liver to survive count for more than the wholeness of your dead body?!?!

Finally, it is possible to donate certain body parts while living like a kidney or a lobe of your liver. Shouldn’t we mandate this at least once in your life? Of course, it wouldn’t be easy, but if we can mandate that a woman bear her child for nine months, we should be able to mandate that you lie senseless on an operating table for an hour of your life.

Why Haven't I Killed Myself?

A few months ago, I wrote this to my psychiatrist, Dr. Lauer, and to my then psychotherapist, Dr. Holden. I don't remember their response, but I'll pass it on as soon as I ask them again.

Dear Dr Lauer,

This is for you too, but please pass this on to Dr Holden. When will he be listed here so I don't need you as a go between? It's amazing the things you think of at 5:30 AM. I'm up this early because of back pain caused by falling off my kitchen stool and an ongoing invasion of fruit flies. For the pain, I'm taking 400 mg of Advil PM or Ibuprofen every six to twelve hours. For the fruit flies, I just cleaned my place some more and I'll have an exterminator Friday.  Being this time of night, I had one of those thoughts like, my life has been so terrible, why haven't I drowned myself in booze, pills or some other form of self-medicating? The problem, as I see it, is that I still have hope, but is that hope really rational? As I look back at my life, I graduated high school in 1975, and then it took me TEN YEARS to get a degree in ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!!I I then spent the next thirty years trying to start a career that never really happened, despite some occasional fits and starts.

One of the best things that happened to me in this time was that, in 1994, I had a nervous collapse consisting of a massive case of chronic depression, which eventually got me into something called the Skylight Center, a club house for people with mental disabilities, which got me into Special Tees, which worked, for a while.  Also, I got a great new psychotherapist, Ms. Christine Murphy, who diagnosed me as autistic. I had a great time with her for about twenty- five years. What a shame she couldn't last. I'm now sixty- two. I'm still looking to start a career when most people my age are looking to retire. I'm still as financially dependent on my mother as any child, even now, six years after her passing. So, is my hope completely irrational? Wouldn't be more sensible to dive into a bottle of booze or pills and somehow kill myself?

National Health

        I was watching Bill Maher a couple of days ago. He was talking about what we should do about health coverage. The Dems want Medicaid for all, like Europe. Should we?

        He then went into a tirade about how the whole question could be moot if we would just watch what we put into our mouths better. He came out with a picture of people watching the launch of Apollo 11, fifty years ago. Look how slim they all looked! He showed us an old picture of the circus Fat Man. “Now he’s just fat!”

True! At 250 pounds, I could have been that circus Fat Man!

And do you remember New Jersey Governor Chris Christie before his weight loss surgery? Even I was astounded!  Although he was good natured enough to have joined into the jokes, he could have been that circus Fat Man easily! 

It’s not only eating that gets to me. Smoking drives me crazy. While we’re so concerned about drug abuse and spend so much money on drug abuse and treatment, do we ever think to count tobacco as a form of drug abuse? If a person were to go into a drug abuse treatment center, could he get treatment for smoking tobacco? Yet it’s one of the world’s most popular and most addictive forms of drug abuse, perhaps more so than alcohol!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get the headlines because it’s not as dramatic. Nobody falls over and dies from a tobacco overdose and few people steal or commit crimes for tobacco money, but, while you may have one member of your family who died from narcotics or some other drug, I bet half your family died twenty years earlier than they had to because of complications of tobacco use. Perhaps you will.

I go into a drug store, a shop designed to make you healthier, and right next to the smoking cessation products are the cigarettes! It makes me think of a cartoon I saw.

A man buys a cup of lemonade from a kid’s lemonade stand with a sign that reads, “Lemonade, 5¢”. He then crawls a block to another child’s stand with the sign, “Lemonade antidote, $1000”.

Point being, we could greatly reduce medical costs if we just did four thinks.

Quit smoking, tobacco, pot, or anything besides plain old fresh air.

Watch what you put in your mouth and try to lose weight, if you need to.

Watch what you drink, and join AA, if you must.

Get a bit more exercise, which can be as simple as walking an extra few blocks, or even feet, and, maybe, buy a bike and use it occasionally. My bike has been sitting in the closet for a while. I think I’ll use it to get over to Five Guys for lunch. Just kidding

The End Of Mad Magazine

One thing I'm going to miss is Mad Magazine. Perhaps you've heard, While Mad will officially continue publication, they won't be publishing anything new except once or twice a year on holidays and special occasions, like Life Magazine and a few others.

        One of my favorites is Mad's Chinese Menu: chinese menu parody | I like to make copies of this menu and when I go into shops that have other merchant's pamphlets, I add one of these.

As a stamp collector, I also loved their stamp collecting parody book, Mad's Talking Stamps. Check out these out takes: Mad's Talking Stamps | Stamp Bears. I would love to make my own version of that book!

Unfortunately, I just knew it had to die when it was adopted by DC Comics, the same company that makes Batman & Superman and started to accept ads. How could it possibly continue to parody corporate America when it was accepting ads from them? It certainly wouldn't, quite literally, give us the middle finger (again), any more than Archie Bunker, in that reproduction of that All In The Family episode, would say the word, nigger, out loud, as Archie originally did.  

Pre-Feminism TV

             I remember a song from the sixties, "The Everyday Housewife, Who Gave Up the Good Life, For Me". 

            Nice sentiment, but how many women would demand that the husband, as a condition of marriage, give up his job and any kind of financial independence and become totally financially dependent on her for the rest of his life, no matter how important he thought his job was or how he enjoyed his job?

            I’ve seen too many shows starring Lucy Ball that was all about some plot of her trying to get money out of Ricky, played by Desi Arnez, or later Mr. Mooney, played by Gale Gordon.       

           There was always Ricky’s reframe, “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!”

Ricky never had to ‘splain’ anything to Lucy. Husbands of the time never did. They were the “heads” of the household. Even in their production company name, Desilu, his name comes first, though she starred and brought in the money and he soon resigned.

I recently saw one episode of I Love Lucy, where she and Ethel tried to start a business based on her great cooking. It would be cooking. Women and wives were supposed to be great cooks. She failed, of course. She was supposed to fail. She was required to fail. Wives were not supposed to be good in business. They were supposed to be housewives.

I don’t blame Lucy Ball and her producers for making shows like that. She was a woman of her time, but I am a man of mine and I don’t care to watch such things anymore.

"Irrational Hope?" or "Why Haven't I Killed Myself a Long Time Ago?"

It's amazing the things you think of at 5:30 AM. I'm up this early because of back pain and an ongoing invasion of fruit flies. For the pain, I'm taking 400 mg of Advil PM or Ibuprofen every six to twelve hours. For the fruit flies, I just cleaned my place some more and I'll have an exterminator Friday.

Being this time of night, I had one of those thoughts like, my life has been so terrible, why haven't I drowned myself in booze, pills or some other self medication? The problem, as I see it, is that I still have hope, but is that hope really rational?

As I look back at my life, I graduated high school in 1975, and then it took me TEN YEARS to get a degree in ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!!

I then spent the next thirty years trying to start a career that never really happened, despite some occasional fits and starts.

One of the best things that happened to me in this time was that, in 1994, I had a nervous break down consisting of a massive case of chronic depression, which eventually got me into something called the Skylight Center, a club house for people with mental disabilities, which got me into Special Tees, which worked, for a while.

 Also, I got a great new psychotherapist, Ms Christine Murphy, who diagnosed me as autistic. I had a great time with her for about twenty five years. What a shame she couldn't last.

I'm now sixty two. I'm still looking to start a career when most people my age are looking to retire. I'm still as financially dependent on my mother as any child, even now, six years after her passing.

So, is my hope completely irrational? Wouldn't be more sensible to dive into a bottle of booze or pills and somehow kill myself?