S. Hamley Bildebrandt
“Morningstar is my hot stewardess.”A More Fitting Home
Since my largely unnoticed return to the blogosphere, I’ve discovered I take the most pleasure in my List of Awesome posts. They’re relevant enough to my life as a lover of both awesomeness and absurdity, but distant enough from my life for me to be able to write them consistently no matter what good or bad befalls me in the real-life-osphere (as the kids call the non-blog world these days). I decided the List of Awesome posts need their own home, so I started a separate blog just to house them. I’m pleased to announce the inception of A Compendium of Awesome Things. Check it out. There have been a few changes made here and there to some earlier posts, which I explain here. It’s more or less what I’ve been sporadically doing on this blog, but hopefully with a much greater level of consistency. I’m confident this will be the case. I’m already working on a multiple part series on espresso, which should be posted shortly.
List of Awesome, Part III: The Bhutan Edition
What’s so awesome about Bhutan? Better question: What’s not awesome about Bhutan? Even better question: What (or who)* is Bhutan?
Starting with the third question. Bhutan is a remote kingdom in the Himalayas, wedged uncomfortably between China to the North, India to the South, and Shangri La (though no one’s sure exactly where). Bhutan is a tiny country populated mostly by ethnic Bhutanese with a considerable Yeti population** in the bigger cities and a few thousand Sherpa in the mountains.*** Bhutan has a total population of less than a million people and is known for pretty much nothing. And that’s exactly how they like it. We’re pretty sure. No one’s sure enough about how to get there to actually ask them.
Now the second question. What’s not awesome about Bhutan? Not much. For starters, its name (pronounced boo-ton) sounds pretty close to button, and that’s just cute. Far less superficially, Bhutan is already doing pretty well in the awesomeness department by being a Himalayan civilization. People who manage to survive – in the Himalayas – and actually build stuff and create a functioning society take on a mythical status approaching that of the aforementioned Shangri La. Even more impressive is the fact that Bhutan is the only absolute monarchy left of the great, old Himalayan kingdoms and one of the only left in the world as a whole. It truly is a kingdom lost in time. They didn’t even have the Internet until a few years ago, which brings me to the next and most important reason Bhutan is truly awesome. In fact, this reason’s going to get its own paragraph.
Bam! Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure GNH, or Gross National Happiness. It’s true. Look it up. The King of Bhutan has made it a policy to increase the Gross National Happiness of Bhutan with sweeping government programs. We have no way to know for sure what this involves because, as I said before, it’s not exactly the easiest thing to find Bhutan.**** Presumably GNH programs involve government-subsidized marshmallows, free pony rides, water slides in every backyard, and ice cream sundaes for breakfast. What we do know for sure is that part of the GNH program is the introduction of the Internet to Bhutan, thus why the last reason led into this one.
Finally, there’s the Bhutanese flag. It pretty much sums up the magic and whimsy of this Little Himalayan Kingdom-that-Could. I mean look at it. If that’s not the cutest dragon you’ve ever seen on a national flag, I just don’t know what is. And what is he holding anyway? Pomegranates? Apples? Rocks? Steamed buns? I like to think those are government-subsidized marshmallows. And our little friend Button the dragon here is holding them out to us as a token of his friendship and the friendship of all the Bhutanese people. Let us eat the Marshmallow of Happiness with him and savour the awesomeness that is Bhutan.
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*or when? Bhutan is pretty much the Brigadoon of the Himalayas. It’s a valid question.
**Not a real creature, though it sounds like one.
***A real ethnic group, though it sounds like a mythical creature.
**** Legend says one can only find Bhutan if they already know how to get there. Others say Bhutan reveals itself only to those it wants to find it. Others say the king made a dark bargain long ago with Forces he scarcely understood to keep Bhutan safe from invasion, but as a price his land was cursed with eternal, supernatural seclusion. Yet others say the altitude and weather patterns of the Himalayas make it difficult to reach Bhutan by plane or train, and that the Bhutanese government has direct control over the tourist industry and intentionally places caps on the number of people able to visit their idyllic kingdom so as not to tarnish its natural beauty and rustic charm. But, let’s face it, that’s a bit far-fetched.
List of Awesome, Part II
“This time, it’s serial serious.”
A very long while ago, I began what was intended to be an ongoing series in tribute to something many studies conducted at prestigious universities have proven to the highest standards of scientific scrutiny: the fact that people love awesome. Sadly, as is often the case in life, I lost my way. But as the prodigal son, I have returned to the father’s home of blogging and even as I type he is killing the fatted calf of this blog post for me — and for you, dear reader — to feast upon. So come, allow him to place the signet ring of stretched metaphor on your finger and help yourself to a heaping portion of blog meat.
If you haven’t read the first post in the series yet. Read it here. It’s a good’ne. Which brings me to our first awesome item:
1) Antiquated British contractions
I’m a self-confessed Anglophile. I don’t know why. Perhaps I feel an affinity with the Mother Country because of shared heritage — namely pastiness, freckles and bitter, self-deprecating humour. Oh, and the way I spell humour. That too. Of the many things I love about England, their propensity for mashing the unlikeliest of words into a cumbersome contraction is very high on the list. Observe the following:
Ha’penny – Pronounced haypny, this is a contraction of half penny, which only sort of sounds similar. How they got there, I don’t know. Why anyone needs half a penny, I’m even less sure of. But the byzantine monetary system of the UK is an awesome thing for another post. As for the word byzantine, that’s already been covered here.
Ne’er/e’er/heav’n – These words are often (of’n?) featured in love poems and songs, apparently written by someone in a big hurry. Like the txtspk of the Elizabethan era, it’s how moody teenagers in Shakespeare’s day expressed things like ttyl and rotfl.
’twasn’t/’tweren’t – The fabled double contractions have baffled and intrigued linguists for generations. A curiosity to modern English speakers, I consider double contractions a challenge. How many apostrophes can I fit into one contraction? Ha’b'thday as a contraction of half birthday, for example. ‘twon’te’erbe for “It won’t ever be.” Or how about I’mno’sos’rethat’sag’d'dea for “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
It might sound stupid. It might, rather than making communication easier, make it more difficult; but that’s the beauty of English. Our forebears wove absurdity into the very fabric of our language. And that’s awesome. ‘Strewth.
2) Microwave Ovens
The Future has, in many ways, been disappointing so far. Sure, in many ways we’ve far exceeded the hopes and expectations of past generations. The ability and popularity of mobile devices is largely an unforeseen phenomenon, for example. But in many more ways, we’ve been unable to live up to the Utopian dreams of yesteryear, when the silver screen was aglow with images of flying cars, floating cities, robots and spaceships. There is one item, however, that I feel has entirely lived up to the hype of the Future and even exceeded it: the microwave oven.
Microwave ovens might not make food well, but the manner in which they make it is very futuristic. If we traveled back in time and told people that one day, not too far from now, we’ll be able to place uncooked food in a metal box, press a button and, harnessing the power of invisible waves, be able to cook an entire meal in minutes; they’d never believe us. I hardly believe us. Even the fact that microwaves give off that otherworldly glow and emit a droning sci fi hum as they cook feels too futuristic to be true. And that’s awesome.
Still not convinced? Try calling microwave ovens “Photon Ovens” or “Instant Food Preparation Units” for a week and see how you feel then.
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I was hoping to have more time to finish this post, but alas! ‘Twill’vet’wait (It will have to wait)! Hopefully there will be more awesome to come. Soon. Until then, in the words of Ulrich Zwingli, “Peace out!”
Pads, i and otherwise
Need a reason to get on board the iPad bandwagon? Check this out: http://www.apple.com/ipad/apps-for-ipad/#elements
Need a reason to get on board the far-less-popular periodic table of the elements bandwagon? Check this out: http://www.apple.com/ipad/apps-for-ipad/#elements
Both bandwagons are filled with thick-rimmed glasses-wearing tech-savvy twenty-somethings, but one throws cooler parties than the other. The answer to “Which one?” depends on your answer to another question: How do you feel about Dungeons and Dragons?
P.S. – I’m down with the whole lower-case-”i”-before-an existing-word-as-a-name-for-a-product trend Apple is so fond of. Sure, it’ll probably sound really stupid in retrospect when we all tell our children about our iPods and iPhones and what not, but that’s what growing old is all about: sounding stupid to our kids. That and being able to blame all of our eccentricities on “the War.” Fortunately, thanks to our public school systems, our children and grandchildren will be too stupid to know there was no such War in our lifetimes. So, I am cool with the lower case “i.” The iPad, however: not cool. There’s another pad I can think of that women regularly carry around in their bags, and I doubt anyone wants to confuse it with an electronic devise in conversation. Perhaps a non-menstrual affiliation would alleviate just a small measure of the chuckling our progeny will inevitably respond with when we tell them what we used to carry in our pockets, bags and purses respectively. Then again, maybe not. But we can always blame it on the War.
Whither Bloggery?
If you’re reading this post, you can probably tell that I have come back to the blogging world. I was in the midst of writing a comeback post, with all the blog equivalents of bells and whistles, but I’m afraid the post quickly descended into chaos and incoherence. I’ll let the excerpt below speak for itself:
About one Earth year ago, I took a sabbatical from blogging. I’d like to report that I spent that time living a mendicant lifestyle, wandering from monastery to monastery across the cold steppes and linden forests of Old Europe, while occasionally hiring out my services as a snark hunter. I’d like to, but I can’t. No, my friends. I spent the past year in a location so familiar and mundane, it’s hardly worth mentioning. In fact, I won’t. For the remainder of this post and, Lord willing, all posts from now on, I’ll just refer to this place under the pseudonym of “France’s Biddy.” (It’s well known that France has but one biddy. It’s been that way from time immemorial. No one really knows who made the rule, but everyone follows it to. the. letter. Because they’re French, and as soon as anything is canonized as the Gaulishest of traditions, they will all defend it to the death, which creates a bit of a problem because surrendering is among the Gaulishest of the traditions, putting them in a bit of a catch-22.) So I spent this year with France’s Biddy, who’s a terrible conversationalist, but a pretty good cook. She made three meals a day like clockwork, and I never missed a one, unless I was on a snark hunt.
Not a shred of it was even true! So, needless to say, I scrapped it. But ’twasn’t all for naught. For one, it provided me with the opportunity to use an archaic double contraction. Secondly, it taught me an important lesson: Perhaps simplicity is best.
So here goes: I’m blogging again.
The End
Yet more bookstore magic!
We have a wonderful teacher here at IHOP–KC named Terri Terry. It is her real name. When she first moved here we started carrying one of her books at the bookstore. As soon as we discovered her name on the cover, it quickly became a cause of great amusement – and great curiosity – for the staff. One day she came by the store and so we finally asked her if Terri Terry is her real name. She told us it is. We asked her if it was her birth name. She responded, “Of course not! Who would do that to their child? I married into it.” I asked her if she had any reservations marrying a man with her first name for his last name. She said, “Of course I did, but when he asked me to marry him I said to myself, ‘Hey, you might not get another chance, so go for it.’” And that about sums up Terri Terry.
Fast forward three years. I was working a shift in the bookstore with my friend Amanda. We were unpacking a box of the same book that introduced us to Terri Terry and sparked our curiosity years back. We noticed that her name was written “Terri L. Terry”. My friend Amanda asked me what I thought the ‘L’ stands for. I jokingly said, “Terri Larry Terry!” and chuckled to myself at the thought of so ridiculous a monicker. We both commented on how unbelievable that would be and we vowed to ask her when we saw her again.
The very next day, Mrs. Terry herself paid the store a visit. I was not there in person, but Amanda was, and she shared with me the following account:
When Amanda saw Terri she asked her what her middle name was. Terry responded, “It’s Lawrence. My parents wanted a boy, whom they were going to name Lawrence. So they kept it as my middle name.”
Amanda kept quiet, weighing the implications of this new information when Terri said, on her own, “So my name is Terri Larry Terry.”
Score.
It never even occurred to me that bookstore magic was at work until I talked with Christine about it, but it fits the pattern. I love bookstore magic.
MacGuffins
I’m about to type a sentence you probably never thought you would read or hear. You probably never even thought to think you’d never read or hear it. I certainly never thought to think I wouldn’t type or say it. Here goes: I’m all about the MacGuffins. Can’t get enough of ‘em.
If you don’t know what a MacGuffin is, allow me to tell you. If you do, feel free to skip down a few paragraphs (I’ll tell you right now, the MacGuffin in this blog post is the MacGuffin). The MacGuffin is a plot device used in film, TV and literature. It is the object that sets a plotline in motion. It is almost always a physical item that is greatly sought after by the characters in a story. It is the force that drives them, the common thread that binds them and, depending on the kind of story, the instrument that makes or breaks them. MacGuffins have been around probably as long as stories have been told, but it was Alfred Hitchcock who popularized the term and took the use of MacGuffins to whole new heights. According to Hitchcock, a MacGuffin is an essentially meaningless item. It serves but one purpose: to give the characters in the story a reason to act. Once they act, the story takes over and the MacGuffin takes backseat. The item does not, therefore, have to contain any intrinsic value apart from convenience. It requires no back story, no justification, no deeper meaning. The thief in a story, Hitchcock said, is always after jewels. Spies are always after documents. No more need be understood or explored.
It is the inherent meaninglessness of the MacGuffin that inspired its name, which is, appropriately, inherently meaningless. Apparently it was Hitchcock’s friend, a man named Angus McPhail, who coined the term MacGuffin. When asked what a MacGuffin was, he used to tell a story that went like this:
There were two men on a train from London to Scotland. The first man noticed a bizarre package in the luggage rack above the other man.
“What have you got there?” asked the first man, indicating the package.
“Oh,” replied the second man, “That’s a MacGuffin.”
“What’s a MacGuffin?” asked the second man, confused.
“It’s a contraption used to trap lions in the Scottish highlands,’ the second man said.
“But,” came the first man, “there aren’t any lions in the Scottish highlands.”
“Oh, well then I guess that’s no MacGuffin!”
Film is especially full of MacGuffins, and I’ve noticed recently how many of my favourite films and TV shows revolve around them. Every episode of Duck Tales features a MacGuffin. All four Indiana Jones films are pretty heavy on the MacGuffin action. So much about what I consider adventurous, romantic and exciting is defined by the types of films that feature an irresistable object. There is something so thrilling for me about the idea of trotting the globe, braving countless dangers in search of some elusive, mysterious treasure. It’s simultaneously a tragic and a heroic act. One outcome is the finding of the object which brings untold riches and possibly fame, but fails to satisfy the emptiness it embodies in the heart of our hero. The other outcome involves the hero failing to find the item and always feeling the sting of the “what if?”, but he finds out a lot about himself in the process and is therefore greatly enriched. Hitchcock might have considered the MacGuffin a shallow expedient, but it becomes a mirror for all the characters’ actions and struggles.
So I thought I would make a list of ten of my favourite MacGuffins. This is by no means a definitive list, and it’s subject to change or addendum, but here it is nonetheless.
10. Leeloo in The Fifth Element
A nice twist on the traditional MacGuffin. The elusive fifth element is said to be the key to unlimited power; the perfect weapon. It turns out it is actually a she. It’s also the only proof I have that Milla Jovavich can be anything but obnoxious. “Multipass.” That’s all I have to say.
9. The plant in WALL-E
Deeply symbolic of rebirth springing from barrenness; about direction being found in a directionless world; about Man returning to his original mandate to cultivate the earth. A symbol of WALL-E’s ability to grow and change beyond what is possible and for EVE to transcend her own directive in submission to a higher one. A simple, beautiful olive branch for this futuristic Noah’s ark story.
8. Princess Peach in the Super Mario franchise
What Peach, and the entire Mario franchise may lack in substance it makes up for in staying power. The story may never change; the story may never be a real story, but it never fails to capture the imagination and to earn the loyalty of successive generations. I can think of few things more iconic in the last twenty-five years than Mario and his quest for Peach.
7. The Green Destiny in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
This is one of my favourite films of all time. This is the movie that made me fall in love with movies. Tragic heroes, star-crossed lovers all in search of a legendary sword and the greatness it endows to the one who holds it. Aesthetically, the sword has a subtly ethereal, almost elvish quality to it. In its first appearance in the film it quietly sings a soft, metallic song when struck, like a siren beckoning all who hear it to come and claim it as their own. And like a siren, it dashes its pursuers against the rocks. As the warriors in this film clash and move closer to their respective fates, it becomes clearer that the sword is not what they seek at all, but love, identity, rest and absolution. Ang Lee deftly turns the pulp fiction source material into subtle, tragic beauty.
6. The Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Monty Python’s Holy Grail and far too many films and stories to bother listing
The mother of all MacGuffins. I list the Holy Grail this low on the list for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s a victim of its own fame. The Holy Grail has become so synonymous with sought for treasures, that it has taken on that second meaning. “It’s the Holy Grail of professional competitive taxidermy,” is something you might hear. As a result, it’s lost a lot of its original meaning. Our culture is so saturated with its presence, it’s difficult to sift through the legend and gaze upon the mystery of the Grail with the same wonderment and awe of a Knight Templar or a Nazi hating adventurer. Secondly, even if one can see through the ubiquitous hype of the grail, it is, at the end of the day, a cup. A cup Jesus may have drunk from, but a cup nonetheless. Of all the holy relics one could search for, the Lord’s cup is not even close to being the coolest. Nevertheless, it is iconic, steeped in religious lore and medieval mysticism. That makes it one sweet MacGuffin.
5. The Maltese Falcon in The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon has its origins with the mysterious Knights of St. John, or the Knights of Malta – monks, warriors, secret society. They went to Jerusalem during the Crusades to protect pilgrims from ambush. They remained to build a hospital and their own private army. When the Crusades ended, they left the Holy Land with mountains of gold, or so the legend says, and they built their own secretive kingdom on the island of Malta. The King of Spain, it is said, required only one thing in exchange for allowing them to remain on Malta: a single falcon sent to him every year. As a token of their gratitude, instead of sending him a simple bird, the knights carved a falcon from solid gold and adorned it with the finest of their jewels. They sent one of their own commanders to guard the falcon on the voyage to Spain. But en route, the boat was attacked by pirates. They killed all on board, including the knight, and disappeared. The falcon was never seen or heard from again…or was it?
Let me also mention this: Humphrey Bogart. Enough said.
4. The Dead Man’s Chest in the eponymous Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest
Most people I know did not like Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I liked it a lot. It wasn’t a perfect film, but what it got right it nailed. Davey Jones’ tragic love story is what fairy tales and pirate stories such as this are all about. The mystery of the Dead Man’s chest, the power it holds, the lengths heroes and villains alike are willing to go through to get it, the act they must be willing to commit to get what they desire – all of it is classic bedtime story adventure.
3. The One Ring in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
Obligatory on any MacGuffin tribute, Sauron’s ring is nearly as compelling a MacGuffin as could be imagined. Forged by the Dark Lord, he poured all his power, all his malice into it, giving it a life of its own. With it, he would be far more powerful than he ever was. Without it, he is nothing more than a flickering shadow of his former greatness. Any who bears this Ring is granted the power of its maker, but at a cost. Its living, breathing malice consumes the bearer, twisting them into an abomination as dark as Sauron himself. A terrifying symbol of man’s love of darkness and the corruption of desire, it is literally Wagnerian in its scope. Tolkien borrowed heavily from Germanic myth and Wagner’s brilliant, 18 hour long Ring of the Nibelung opera featuring a cruel dwarf who forges a Ring that endows its bearer with unlimited power on the condition that they forsake love eternally.
The One Ring is nearly as tragic an object as was ever forged, but Tolkien outdid himself with the next items.
2. The Silmarils in The Silmarillion
The Silmarils are the center of the most tragic tale in Tolkien’s expansive world. The Silmarils are jewels of incomparable beauty, forged by an elf named Feanor who was consumed with lust for his own creation. As the centuries and millennia unfold, successive generations of elves and men commit acts of unspeakable darkness in order to possess these jewels. They are the focal point and the narrative vehicle for the slow moral demise of both elves and men. Far more tragic than the One Ring because the jewels were originally created in purity but were corrupted by their maker’s lust, they drag down generations of people into darkness and murder and they do not end in triumph for the cause of good. The Silmarils meet an end as shameful and pathetic as the races of men and elves they corrupted. By far, the most heart breaking and sorrowful moral tale Tolkien wrote.
1. The Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark
But nothing tops the Ark of the Covenant. Built under divine command, the Ark contains the original Ten Commandments, Moses’ staff, and manna bread from heaven. It is also the throne of God on this earth; the dwelling of his power, the place where his glory dwells, the seat the God of the Universe sits on to pronounce judgment and mercy. As long as the army of Israel carried it before them, they were invincible against all attacks of their enemies. The Ark of the Covenant is the ultimate weapon, gifted to Israel by God himself. The Knights Templar, the original creepy secret agents, searched for it on Solomon’s mount, secret cults claim to hold it in their compounds in Europe, even real life Indiana Jones style adventurers like Ron Wyatt have risked life and limb to find it in rubble and caves beneath the Old City of Jerusalem. Throw in a story about Hitler trying to claim it as his own to take over the world and slaughter the very people who crafted the ark in the first place and you’ve got yourself the MacGuffinest MacGuffin cinema has ever known.
Where was this post going?
I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. If I did, my first one would go something like, “I will post on my blog with ruthless efficiency and read my friends’ blogs with extreme prejudice.” But I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. If I did, I wouldn’t keep them. I lose interest too quickly. You could probably tell I was losing interest in that one as I wrote it. I had to use expressions that I gleaned from action movies like “ruthless efficiency” and “extreme prejudice” just to keep myself interested. I’m not even sure it made any sense. See? Already this has not gone well. If I got in the habit of making New Year’s Resolutions, it wouldn’t be long before I abandoned real resolutions altogether and started making ones involving python hunting and sky roasting (If you don’t know what either of those are, rest assured I will blog about them in future, but since that sounded too much like a resolution, don’t count on it).
As you can see, the key ingredient I lack in making resolutions is, well, resolve. And I’m okay with that. If Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto taught me anything, it’s that resolve is a terrible thing that newly woken giants are filled with. I am not a giant, newly woken or otherwise. And if you doubt the authority of the good Admiral Yamamoto, you should know that his given name in Japanese, 五十六, means 5-10-6. That’s right. His given name is a number. I don’t know if he was part man, part machine. I don’t know if he was a robot sent back from the future to aid his emperor in the conquest of the world. Any way you slice it, you don’t want to cross him. So I trust the man.
It’s not that I have no resolve. I’ve got plenty when it matters, but to pretend that I’m going to do all the little things I never bothered to do before just because I feel like I’ve wasted a year of my life every December the 31st is silly. And for fear of futuristic robot reprisal, I’ll have no part in it.
Byzantium
The Byzantine Empire has become an object of fascination for me in the past few months. This is new for me. The Eastern Roman Empire never captured my imagination in the past. I remember learning about it in high school and feeling an emotion bordering on offense. Byzantium was to me a betrayal of the glory, majesty and continuity of classical Rome. It was offensive to me that Constantine would have the gall to uproot the empire from its eponymous capital and stick it in a patchwork city on the edge of the known world and still call it Rome at the end of the day. Byzantium stood for the fall of antiquity in all of its splendour and the dawn of the Middle Ages in all of their mediocrity. Twelve years later the very things that offended me about Byzantium, the qualities which set it apart from classical Rome, are the very things that draw me to it. It’s true that the Eastern Empire lacked the clarity and order of its predecessor in Old Rome, but it is the ambiguity of Byzantium that makes it so fascinating. Before, I interpreted the ambiguity of Byzantium as a sign of its weakness as an empire and culture. In some ways it is true that Byzantium never equaled Rome-that-was in its unrivaled power, its ruthless efficiency or the clarity of its presence throughout the known world; but in other ways Byzantium’s ambiguity suggests not weakness but rather a subtle and rich layering of hundreds of cultural, religious, military and social forces at work within its hallowed walls. It is also a tribute to the strength and majesty of New Rome that it managed to keep these walls unbreached for one thousand years, far longer than Old Rome, in a world far less certain and orderly than the one in years gone by. It is the fault of Byzantium that there was no Pax Byzantina, but it is also the strength of Byzantium that it stood in the absence of that peace, a testament not to the abandonment of the glory of Old Rome, but to the continuity of its splendour. And besides, at least for me, Byzantium has a mysterious quality that Rome has always lacked. Even the name Constantinople is a far more evocative name than Rome.
As I said, it is the complexity and subtlety of Constantinople that draws me to it. It’s like an endless maze of contradiction. We even get the English adjective byzantine, meaning needlessly complicated, from this very city. The first set of contradictions lies within the names the Byzantine Empire has been given. For starters, Byzantium. The Byzantine Empire was not Byzantium at all. That city had long since fallen and faded into obscurity by the time Constantine drew his spear across the sands on the shores of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, marking the boundaries of his new capital. Byzantine is an artificial construction introduced by historians to keep the events of western Rome separate from eastern Rome. The name Constantine gave the city was Nova Roma, New Rome, and it was by the name Romans that the people of his city were known until its collapse over a thousand years later. But his own people did not even call his city Nova Roma, but Constantinople, the City of Constantine.
Which brings me to the second set of contradictions: language and culture. It is true that the citizens of Constantinople called themselves Romans, as did everyone around them, but they were not Roman. They were Greek. They spoke Greek, they read and wrote Greek. Their theology and philosophy both reflected Greek esotericism rather than Roman pragmatism. The city of Rome did not even belong to their empire for the majority of its history. Yet it was the Roman imperial line of the Augusti that the Constantinopolitans preserved, along with Roman law. In a way their Greekness was the death of Rome, yet their very existence was the preservation of Rome.
Perhaps the biggest area of contradiction in Constantinople was in the area of religion. Constantine I made his empire enough of a paradox by transplanting the capital of Rome to a city far away from Rome itself, but even bigger than that was replacing the traditional religion of Rome with Christianity and still calling it Roman. The Christianity that Constantinople developed was itself a further contradiction. On the one hand, Constantine I, and the empire he recreated, saved Christianity time and again from internal and external disasters – internally, heresies like Arianism, monophysitism and Nestorianism; externally, invasion and forced conversion to Islam by Saracens and Turks. Without the Byzantine Empire there would be no finalized canon of scripture and no formulated doctrine of the Trinity. Let’s face it, without the Byzantine Empire, there might not be any Christianity at all. The near-invincible walls of Constantinople were time and again the only things stopping the Islamic hordes from marching across Europe and putting an end to the faith of the Apostles. On the other hand, Constantine’s empire is responsible for some of the greatest perversions of Christianity ever to infect the faith. The empire may have crushed the old heresies of Arianism, monophysitism and Nestorianism, but it also gave birth to them. It was by an Arian bishop that Constantine I himself was baptized. The Byzantine emperors wore their crown in the name of Christ and, as Constantine’s vision demanded, conquered in the sign of the Cross, but they were more murderous, rapacious, hedonistic and cruel than their pagan Roman predecessors. And this, to me, is the most fascinating, and tragic, quality of Constantinople.
The Byzantine Empire is the perfect glimpse at what God’s Kingdom here on earth would look like without Christ. That’s precisely what it was. When Constantine traded the Unconquered Sun for the Cross of Christ, he knew what he was doing. He was inextricably joining religion and politics so that a challenge to his imperial authority became a challenge to God Himself. The emperor, therefore, was not just God’s instrument on this earth but his vice-regent; the protector of state, yes, but more importantly, the protector of the Church. Just as there is one body of Christ on this earth, there could be only one empire and one emperor. The Byzantine Empire became, then, the Kingdom of God, and oddly enough, it lasted almost exactly one thousand years – a millennial kingdom. But this kingdom, far from bringing the peace, righteousness and justice it promised; it brought only plotting, murder, betrayal, perversion and infighting. Constantine’s Empire set itself up to be everything Christ’s future reign will be, and failed to achieve all of it. There is no clearer proof on this earth that man cannot establish God’s kingdom in its fullest, political form, without Christ on the throne. And that, if nothing else, makes the Byzantine Empire fascinating.
Old Mook Bob
I had my students do a writing exercise based on a great book called “Eunoia” in which the author wrote five chapters, each dedicated to one of the five vowels, and each chapter including words that only have the vowel to which the chapter is dedicated (all the words in chapter A, for example, only have A’s in them, like salad, palm, mark, etc.). The remarkable thing is that each chapter actually tells a story, and quite well at that. So I had my students prepare a list of words that only contain the vowel of their choice and then we spent a half hour writing short, four sentence stories, myself included. If some of my kids give me permission I will post their stories. Some of them are remarkably clever. Some are poignant; some hilarious. Many better than my own effort, which I will include below as (hopefully) but a taste of better things to come. And if anyone is nerdy enough, I recommend giving the exercise a try. It’s a lot of fun.
I decided to go with O.
Old mook Bob works on books from morn to morn. Bob looks for good books on cooks, crooks or rooks (no books on mooks). Bob’s job grows old; old Bob grows cold. Mooks don’t morph or grow – Bob knows -from womb to tomb, from work to dorm. Old mook Bob drops down; drowns, lost on rows of posh town lofts – wombs for mook tots; tombs for old mooks. Bob sobs, grows to know songs of old told of cold tolls for old mooks. Bob stops, drops, morphs from mook to womb for worms.
This one’s for you, Deuce McAllister
I went to a Chiefs game this past Sunday. Most people reading this know me well enough. Undoubtedly some do not. There may even be a guy reading this wondering how googling “liquid nitrogen +cat food” got him here. To that gentleman: welcome. For all of you: allow me to explain that I hate sports. Hate them. Actually, that’s not very accurate. If I hated them I would make an effort to destroy them or to make it difficult for others to enjoy them. More accurately I’m apathetic about them. But what I feel is such an intense level of apathy, I was initially tempted to call it “hate” because it qualifies as a passion, which apathy rarely does. So I’m almost an apathetic zealot when it comes to sports (or a zealous apathete, the latter not being a real word even though it should be). So for me to attend a sports game is very strange indeed. Even stranger is that this is my third sports game in the past year (fourth in my entire life). So allow me to share with you a few observations from the game.
1) Not only am I not into sports, I’m not very American. Football is the most watched sporting event in the United States and I know nothing about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than one entire game and even that was last year’s Superbowl. There’s this whole culture that goes along with football. It’s way more than a sport. There’s a language unique to football; there are rituals; there are costumes. It’s very involved and honestly very fascinating to watch. The very fact that I think more about the intriguing social and cultural aspects of the game of football than I do about the actual football game betrays my nerdiness and could potentially get the snot beaten out of me should I ever decide to attend another game. But even more than being an interesting sub-culture, it’s an integral part of my culture, meaning American culture. When I went to this game (and the MLB game earlier in the year) I felt like I was seeing a part of America – the classic America of cars, Budweiser, country music, even apple pie, purple mountains and amber waves of grain – that I have spent most of my life shunning. I’m still glad I don’t take part in this aspect of American culture, but there’s a beauty to it that I’ve grown to appreciate.
2) Stealth bombers are awesome. Amazing. Just about the coolest things ever.
I love the future. In particular, I love living in the future. Stealth bombers are about the most futuristic things ever. First of all – let us not take this for granted – they’re radar proof. It’s cool enough that we use invisible waves to detect flying ships that the naked eye cannot see, but that we developed a flying ship that can evade the invisible waves all sounds like nonsense. Plus stealth bombers don’t even look like they should fly. They hardly have anything you could call a wing on them. But I digress. Allow me to put these observations into context.
The national anthem was being sung at the beginning of the game. When they got to the part where everybody remembers the words and starts singing again – “and the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air!” they let off a bunch of fireworks into the sky. As our eyes followed them upward we saw drifting toward us a giant black triangle, floating slowly and silently across the sky, blocking out the sun with a colour so black it almost looked like it was sucking in light. It was the silence that impressed me, and what gave it an alien mother ship feeling. I’ve been to an air show. I’ve had jets fly over my head before. They’re ear-splittingly, painfully loud. The stealth bomber was almost perfectly silent until it went directly overhead and even then it was little more than a dull roar, hardly observable above the crowd. It was majestic, terrifying, otherwordly and exciting all at once. I felt like a very excited ten-year-old boy.
3) There was the obligatory group of 30-something, male, drunk fans sitting right in front of us. The one was already drunk when the game started. He immediately found the only Saints fan anywhere near us and proceeded to harshly and gratuitously verbally assault her and her team. At first he seemed good humoured enough. He was at least laughing and not saying anything too harsh, but as the day went on (and the alcohol consumption increased), he and his friends decided to go on a Saints fan witch hunt. First they questioned my friends and myself suspiciously because we weren’t wearing Chiefs’ colours. Then they began to berate and blame everyone around them for the Chiefs losing because none of us were good enough fans. After all, every time you say you don’t believe, a fairy dies and the Chiefs lose a game.
The best part of our neighbours with bacchanalian propensities was the eloquent discourse one of them gave his friend on the legitimacy of using “the F-bomb” on Sundays. “Why does it bother everyone?” he asked with slurred tongue. “This isn’t an [expletive deleted]-ing family event!” I couldn’t help looking back at the two cute ten-year-old girls directly behind us as he said this with half a smile and half a frown. “I mean, I know how to behave. I hold my tongue five days of the week. Why can’t I use the f-bomb one day a week if I want to!” he said with faulty math and a satisfied smile, apparently proud of his own closing argument. His estimable friend agreed heartily with his treatise on the proper, hebdomadal use of the aforementioned F-bomb, as one might expect him to.
With four minutes left on the clock in the fourth quarter the latter friend began his own tirade against all those around him for not cheering enough. He even treated us to a rousing speech, “Come on! We’re Chiefs fans! It’s our job – our duty – to cheer for them! If they don’t win it’s our fault! So let’s do what we came here to do! It’s not their fault if they lose. It’s yours – for not cheering hard enough.” Other people were already leaving the stadium because there was little chance the Chiefs would catch up in four minutes. He yelled, took his friend’s advice and indulged himself in a healthy sprinkling of the F-word directed at all who walked by, calling them quitters. With two minutes on the clock, he walked out of the stadium with his friends, apparently forgetting his prior speech, this time blaming the loss on the Chiefs.
4) Speaking of drinking, there was an awful lot of it. A disturbing amount. It wasn’t even the amount that shocked me as much as the method in which people drank. What is considered acceptable drinking at a football game would never be acceptable anywhere else. For example, we pulled into the stadium parking lot at around 11:45 and the tailgaters had already been drinking for hours. On a Sunday morning. I can think of nowhere else where it is acceptable to be drunk at 9:00am on a Sunday. And inside you have families with kids sitting next to people purchasing beer from a man who walks by with an armful of them. Again, I can think of nowhere else where people can sit on private property with underage people sitting next to them and purchase alcohol without any real way to gauge how old the purchaser is. In New Jersey where I’m from, you can’t even enter the floor of an Atlantic City casino if you’re under 21 just because they serve alcohol on the floor, but you could go to a football game and get wasted if you wanted and probably not have to produce a single form of ID.
5) They’ve got some pretty cool names in football. My favourite: Deuce McAllister. Either he’s a football player from the 1920s somehow brought forward in time or he was cryogenically frozen and thawed out with hilarious (and dramatic) consequences like Mel Gibson in Forever Young; or he’s a character from a film noir detective movie somehow brought to life with equally hilarious (and dramatic) consequences. Either way, some movie magic is clearly at work. God bless you, Deuce McAllister, and may you find your way home soon.
[Editor's note: As a follow up to this post I googled "liquid nitrogen +cat food". Apparently they have a lot to do with each other. Fascinating.]
Prayer Request
I would like to solicit the prayers of all who read this. Is it dire? No, but I need some things to change – both circumstantially and internally. I’m not in the place I should be. I’d go into more detail but I’m typing this one finger at a time from an iPhone so it would take an hour. I’m not even sure I’d want to in this medium. All who read this are free to ask me personally about this if they so desire. Again, it’s not dire. I just figure I can use the resources available to me (namely you) to get some help.
Thanks.
The Magic of the Bookstore?
I was telling my coworker about one of my heroes and easily one of the manliest men ever, Bear Grylls, while working at the store this evening. Bear Grylls is a former special forces officer, a survival expert, a TV star on Discovery and an Englishman. I looked him up on Wikipedia as we were talking where I found out that Bear Grylls sponsored and participated in the highest altitude formal dinner party, held in a hot air balloon at 25,000 feet. I took the opportunity to do what any red blooded American would do: make fun of the British, complete with fake, posh English accent and phrases such as “capital idea, my good man.” Because seriously, who else would come up with such an idea? High altitude dinner party. Pfft!
At this exact moment a customer who was standing in the corner, within earshot but out of view, poked her head out and said, “I’m from London.”
I immediately and semi-faux-nervously told her I love the Brits and that they do everything in style (including the thing I just strongly implied was stupid). She seemed amused. Perhaps it’s just the sort of uncouthe behaviour she expects from Americans. In any case she pursued the matter no further. Eventually she left the store without further incident.
Americans 1; Red Coats 0.
Clearly I have learned nothing.
But this got me thinking. First there were the two German speakers in the store the day I spoke German. Then there was the girl with the bloody face the day I conversed about blood. Now it’s an Englishwoman the one time I tease the English. Is there some kind of magic in the bookstore that makes the very kind of people appear about whom I speak? If so, how can I use this toward my advantage?
So I propose an experiment. Each shift for a week I will talk about a different type of person and see if they appear out of nowhere: a pretty girl with a kitten, an Authorized Space Agent (real job), a traveler from the future who brings tidings of hope, and Bear Grylls.
I hope it works.
The Election
I have attempted to write about the election for almost a year but I’ve never felt comfortable diving into the ugly realm of politics, especially because I come across like a Bolshevik revolutionary compared to my fellow IHOPers. So here’s all I’ll say on the matter:
The redemptive plans of the Almighty Lord of the universe are not foiled by a junior senator from Illinois nor are they dependent upon an aging senator and a hockey mom.
I trust Him.
Blood
I was working at the bookstore on Saturday. There was a large summit this weekend (which is just another way of saying a small conference, which is just another way of saying more work) and so many of the bookstore staff were asked to come in over the weekend and help work the floor at the store. Occasionally this involved asking customers if they needed any help. Mostly it involved talking idly with each other. During one of these conversations with a particular coworker of mine, one more inclined to indulge my verbal wanderings and less inclined to understand them, the topic of blood came up. I started telling the aforementioned coworker about bleeding to death: how long it takes, how to stop it, the colour of blood. We probably talked about blood and bleeding to death for about five minutes. You know. Like you do…
My friend and coworker Ben was working a register. Near the end of our blood conversation he looked up and very casually said, “Watch out, Matthias.” But he said it so nonchalantly that it sounded more like a general admonition for life as a whole instead of an appeal for an immediate course of action that I did not immediately heed his words, though but a moment later I had good reason to be glad he offered them.
Just then I heard somebody behind me say, “Excuse me.” My fellow conversationalist and I turned around to see a girl standing there with her face covered in blood. Every inch of her face. Covered and caked in blood.
Now, before I go on, allow me to flash back a few hours to a prior conversation. At the start of this post I alluded to the fact that my conversation partner in this story is a person more inclined to indulge my verbal wanderings and less inclined to understand them. By this I mean that this person is a kind person with the rare and admirable gift of listening. She thoroughly enjoys asking questions and hearing the answers to them, which works out because I enjoy answering questions. I discovered quickly, however, when talking to this person that she almost completely lacks an ability to understand my sense of humour. I delight in saying absurd and over the top statements and passing them off as fact, not because I want to fool people but because I want people to enjoy how absurd I’m being along with me. But if I can’t get them to do that, I’m just as happy to see how often I can mislead them with the crap I make up. It even becomes a game to see how outrageous something I say can be and still be accepted at face value. My intention is never to deceive. Again, I’d prefer it if everyone was in on the absurdity of the situation with me. Even if they’re not, I tell them almost immediately after I say something that I’m not serious. But, I own, I thrive on the initial reaction: namely, befuddlement. In short, this girl never knows how to tell if I’m serious and I exploit this habitually. So, earlier in the day, she, another friend or two and I were discussing this very fact. I asked the girl if she had a hard time understanding me. She admitted she hardly knows when to tell if I’m serious and it’s left her quite at a loss.
Now let’s return to the original thread of our tale. My coworker and I stood on the floor at the bookstore when the girl with the face covered in blood begged our pardon. We turned to look at her and she walked between us just as any other person would have who wasn’t drenched in their own body fluid. For whatever reason, or a combination of reasons, not the least of which being Ben’s warning, I did not react to this at all. I acted as if I was moving aside for a normal customer, and I looked at the girl only casually. It was at this moment that I discovered the blood that covered her face was in fact an excellent makeup job. Even knowing it was not real, it was still a disturbing sight. The girl’s mother explained they were participating in some Halloween event or something and they walked out the door. I still did not react for reasons still unknown. The same is not true of my coworker.
She looked at me with wide eyes and jaw dropped and exlaimed, “Did you see that??” I paused for a moment, looking at Ben, who, for reasons of his own, did not seem to react to the bloody girl who just left the store, and the other cashier who seemed not to notice anything at all, and I saw a golden opportunity to test the limits of my coworker’s credulity.
“I’m sorry, what?” I replied to my shocked coworker.
“The girl who just walked through here? Did you see that?? Isn’t that weird? We were just talking about bleeding to death!”
“I’m confused,” I replied.
“Oh, you’re not going to fool me. You saw her, didn’t you, Ben?”
Ben, looking up from his computer, replied with convincing ignorance. “Saw what?”
“Guys, knock it off! ______,” she said, addressing the other cashier, “did you see that girl covered in blood?”
The other cashier, returning from her own world, who actually had not seen anything due to what I hope was a wonderful daydream, replied, “What?”
My coworker grew even more flustered. “Seriously! Don’t mess with me.”
“No really,” the second cashier replied, “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.” She honestly didn’t.
Just then another coworker walks up behind us from the other part of the room. “You saw the girl covered in blood just walk by didn’t you?” The newcomer looked even more confused, not actually having been present and admitted she did not.
“Maybe I did just imagine it,” my coworker claimed, doubting her own sanity.
Eventually I admitted I was screwing with her. The best part of it is, as far as I can tell, Ben was pretending to be oblivious for reasons of his own, the second cashier was actually oblivious and the final coworker wasn’t present for the event in question. All of it worked together marvelously to befuddle my co-conversationalist; one of work’s great pleasures.
