A True Hero

      Young people seem to need heroes.  Unfortunately many of the people they place on a pedestal boggles a rational mind.  This article features a truly heroic woman.  I’m drawing a contrast between an authentic hero and the women considered popular today. I’ll get to boys like Justina Beaverpup and Snoopy Dog-knot another time.

            Forgive me if I get the names wrong, but I hear far too much about Girlie Googoo, Madumbo, Kim Carcrashagain, and Miley Sorryass.  I don’t know anything about these people except what hits the TV news, but these women are heroes to 12 years old kids.  Sadly, even older kids with arrested maturity find these women fascinating and even iconic. As I said, it’s mind boggling.  

            Why the accolades?  Most are only famous for being famous and are devoid of authentic talent.  Some are famous for twerking – a term I only recently heard on a news program. Evidently twerking is a mating display that simulates sexual intercourse.  It reminds me of the voodoo zombie dances in Haiti combined with the behavior of a howler monkey in heat.   

            To be effective, the seductive ritual of twerking must be performed with the tongue fully extended, indicating unbridled enthusiasm.  When Miley Sorryass tried this, she looked about as sexy as a prisoner in Auschwitz with dysentery.

            Speaking of Nazi prison camps, this leads me to my subject - a woman who actually deserves to be an icon. History has authentic female heroes that we never hear about.  I want to write about a real hero named Irena Sendler.  

Irena Sendler

            Irena Sendler was a Polish Roman Catholic nurse and social worker.  During World War II she was involved in the underground resistance in German occupied Warsaw.  Her group was named Zegota.  She was head of the Jewish children’s section and rescued 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from the holocaust and almost certain death.

            Irena knew that the punishment for her activities was torture and death.  She had a special permit that allowed her to enter the Warsaw Ghetto as a nurse to check for signs of typhus.  She and about 30 volunteers, mostly women, used the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions in order to save numerous babies and young children.  Most of the parents of these kids were killed by the Nazis.

            She smuggled babies out of the ghetto by hiding them in the bottom of a tool box she carried.  She sometimes put them in boxes and disguised them as packages. Larger kids were hidden in a burlap sack that she put in the back of her truck.

            She trained her dog to bark when passing in and out of the ghetto to cover the sounds of a baby crying and to keep the guards away from her truck.  But despite her surreptitious tactics, Irena was caught and tortured.  The Nazi’s broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.  She was sentenced to death, but her group, Zegota, bribed the German guards as Irena was on her way to her execution.  She then went into hiding, but kept up her work for Jewish children.

            Irena died in 2008 in Warsaw, Poland at the age of 98.  She had saved the lives of roughly 2500 children.  Compare this woman’s life and contributions to the gyrating mannequins worshiped by our culture. 

            Irena was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, but wasn’t chosen.  Instead, the award went to Al Gore for his slide show on Global Warming - a slide show based on a hoax, as we now know. Along with Gore, that “prestigious” award was given to Barack Obama for doing nothing more than being a community organizer, and Yasser Arafat for his "magnificent" contribution to peace in the Middle East. 

            Irena Sendler was a true hero and a woman who deserves recognition and admiration for her heroic deeds.  Considering the progeny of the children saved by this lady, there must be thousands alive today because of her courage. This lady defines the word "hero."

 

Immortality is Just around the Corner

     Hang on, boys and girls; eternal life is right around the corner.  Raymond Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, author, and futurist, believes that it’s just a matter of time before we become increasingly non-biological to the point where the non-biological part dominates our biological part.  In other words, we will soon be more machine than flesh and blood. As machines, we can be repaired, parts replaced, upgraded, and re-programmed.  Immortality is within our grasp. But there’s more.

            Kurzweil and others see a time when your entire brain can be downloaded onto a computer.  Just think…you may have the potential to become a computer.  How do we know it hasn’t already happened?  I’m suspicious.  I have a love-hate relationship with my computer and I’m convinced it’s female. 

            My computer takes awhile to warm up and I have to push the right buttons to get it started.  If I type in the wrong thing, it shuts down.  Even if it doesn’t shut down, pushing the wrong key gets me an emphatic and blatant warning, reminding me that I’m a clumsy moron. 

            Operating a female computer is like negotiating a minefield, but if you do everything right, it’s a great partnership.  She, uh… I mean “it” will even correct my spelling and fill me in on gossip.  So far it hasn’t told me to take out the garbage. I have a wife for that.

            I’ve learned not to be “heavy-handed” with my computer, but rather to be patient, gentle, and understanding. The “understanding” part is actually the hardest part, because I can’t possibly understand what makes my computer tick.  Sigmund Freud, after years of study, concluded that even he didn’t understand women.  Again, more reason to assume that my computer is female.  It has a woman’s memory.  Every mistake I’ve ever made is retained somewhere on its hard drive.

            Kurzweil says that soon scientists will be treating biology and the brain as software.  Think of the ramifications of downloading your brain onto a computer. You become the computer.  Someday you may be carried around in a laptop.  If you’re lucky, you could travel to distant lands, sit in on business meetings, take the cruise you’ve always hoped for, or rest comfortably on a gorgeous woman’s lap. However, if you’re unlucky and hit a glitch, you might be recycled into a tin can.

            We are already at a point where we have artificial parts.  I have an artificial knee that walks by itself and talks to me.  I once had a sinus lift where ground-up bovine bone (cow bone) was surgically implanted in my jaw to support a molar implant.  It took hours of therapy to break me of the impulse to eat alfalfa and juicy grass, but the oral surgeon assured me that I wouldn’t lactate.  Unfortunately, I don’t see any evidence that they used bone powder from a bull, doggone it.

            Functioning prosthetics of all kinds are being developed, so transferring the contents of our brain onto a computer may be the next step, according to Kurzweil. I wonder if the day will come when they can mount a computerized head on a human-like torso, creating a robotic you or me.  I don’t think it would take a lot of ram, gigabytes, mini-bytes, maxi-bytes, nibbles or chomps for the brain capacity of some of our political leaders and the voters who put them in office, but that’s another story.

            Since having a biological body would obviously defeat the purpose of eternal life, it’s more reasonable to expect that my “computer brain” would be sitting on a desk while one of my great grandchildren would be playing computer games on me or digging into my memory and posting all my misdeeds on Facebook.

            Not much is known about this new “immortality” technology, but at first glance I think I’d rather check out the old fashioned way and leave eternal life to my Creator. 

What Makes You Laugh?

     An older gentleman, that is to say, a “senior citizen,” was pulled over by a frantic highway patrol officer.  Apprehensively he asked the cop what he had done wrong.  The cop was obviously very upset and said, “Don’t you know that your wife fell out of the car five miles back?”  The old guy seemed relieved and said, “Thank heavens.  I thought I was going deaf.” 

            That joke obviously plays on stereotypes and seems a little misogynistic.  My wife doesn’t think it’s funny, but humor comes in all forms.

            There’s the self-deprecating humor of Rodney Dangerfield - “I was such an ugly kid that when I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.”  This kind of humor works well, because it is not offensive.  The comic is making fun of himself.  You can laugh at him with impunity. 

            Consider the girl who brought her goldfish to the vet and frantically explained that her pet fish had epilepsy.  The vet looked at the fish swimming happily in the bowl and said, “He looks normal to me.”  The girl said, “Well, duh, I haven’t taken him out of the water yet.”  We like to laugh at stupidity in others.  This is where you find all the “blond” jokes.

            If you analyze a joke you can begin to understand why some hit your “funny bone” while others fall flat.  And not everyone finds the same humor funny. Most comics today rely less on creativity and more on profanity and shock.  If you read the humor of some of the great comedians from the past, you will find that some had very creative minds and didn’t need to be crude. 

            Aristotle said, “The secret to humor is surprise.”  A "paraprosdokian" is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for dramatic effect.    For example, “I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.”

            Some humor is complex and creative, requiring thought.  Profanity and bathroom humor is simplistic and usually devoid of true creativity.  I admire the creativity of comics like Jonathan Winters and others, who can spontaneously create humor out of thin air. 

            Laughter has probably been with us since human beings first noticed they were naked.  I’ve blogged on humor and how the brain processes it many moons ago, but by way of review, I’d like to go over it again for new readers.  This may only interest me because I taught psychology a long, long time ago - shortly before Freud discovered sex.  But, who knows, you may find this process interesting too. 

Here’s how the brain works when you laugh at a joke. In less than a half-second an electrical wave moves through the higher brain functions of the cerebral cortex, which is the part of the brain associated with higher cognitive functions.

We all know about the “right brain – left brain” stuff.  In the case of humor, the left hemisphere analyzes the words and the structure of a joke or humorous event.  Then the right hemisphere “gets” it, so to speak.

The right hemisphere appears to be involved in the interpretation of emotional material presented linguistically and when it “gets it” the process accelerates.  The right hemisphere actually determines if something is funny or not.

The visual sensory area of the occipital lobe creates images. The limbic or “emotional” system provides pleasure or happiness and the motor systems make you smile or laugh.  Kind of a chain reaction.  Simple, eh? 

Personally, I think the Corpus Callosum plays a major role.  That’s the thick band of nerve fibers that connect the left and right hemispheres of the Cerebrum, facilitating communications between the hemispheres. Incidentally, early music training helps develop this connection. 

All you really need to know is that humor engages the whole brain. Consequently creativity is enhanced, intelligence is exercised, and the brain is firing on all cylinders. So laugh and get smarter.   

But if you don’t enjoy humor, take the advice of W. C. Fields - “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”

Gender Surrender

       My last blog introduced “anachronistic displacement” as a psychological condition where a person feels uncomfortable in the world he or she inhabits, feeling that they belong in a different time period.  I try to avoid controversial social and political issues, but, due to the fact that I suffer from this displacement affliction, I can’t always keep my mouth shut or my computer keyboard quiet.

            California has the well deserved reputation of being the “land of the fruits and nuts.”  Many sane people are fleeing the state, but many of us have roots too deeply planted with family and friends to join those who have managed to escape the asylum. Most of my readers are outside of California or outside of the U.S.  They must laugh at the California side-show.  For you “non-Californian” readers, here’s a keyhole peek at the latest news from the mental institution called “California.”

            Our illustrious “re-Governor,” Jerry Brown, aka “Governor Moonbeam,” recently signed a bill into law that will allow school children, who are confused over their sexual identity, to use the bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities of whichever sex they identify with at the time.  Birth gender doesn’t count.  Physical appendages don’t matter.  It’s how a kid perceives himself or herself.  This law has been described by opponents as “gender insanity,” but it fits comfortably in our national psychosis.

             I’ve always wondered if Governor Brown wasn’t a little confused over where he fit on the “male scale.”

            AB1266 applies to grades K through 12 and passed both the California Senate and Assembly by wide margins.  It goes into effect January first.  The fact that so many legislators voted for this is very discouraging, but it proves that the inmates really do run the asylum.  As usual, parents are not a consideration with these people.  After all, the government is the parent.

            The term “transgender” has to do with self-identity, not necessarily a physical change in sex.  If a boy feels that he is a girl trapped in a boy’s body, he can now use the girl’s bathroom or join the girls in their shower room.  The same works for a girl, who may think she’s really a boy when she first discovers hair under her arms. 

            The way I understand it, boys cannot be forbidden to join the girl’s volleyball team and girls can join the boy’s wrestling team. Picture that. All of this is to make sure that a “transgender” kid - if there is one - is not made uncomfortable or “bullied.”  Does that make sense to you?  Wouldn’t that increase bullying?

            I was a high school teacher for several years back in the ‘70s.  It doesn’t take much for me to extrapolate to 21^st century schools and how unisex bathrooms will be utilized by teenagers with raging hormones.          

            The loons who run California don’t seem to care that the vast majority of young girls will feel “uncomfortable” when boys use their bathroom or change clothes with them in the girl’s locker room.  Most teenage boys would feel the same way, although there may be exceptions.  Look for miraculous conversions of teenage boys to transgender status when the girl’s soccer team hits the showers or when it’s “open season” in the bathrooms.

            When you thought things couldn’t get more insane in our country, California continues its march as the vanguard of our national degeneration, foisted on us by societal deconstructionists.

           I have a solution.  I think politicians should be required to pass an IQ test to qualify for public office.  In addition, political candidates should be evaluated by a qualified and unbiased psychiatrist to weed out the mentally ill.  Sadly, California is the petri dish for social experimentation by intellectually and morally vacuous politicians.

          Law should not trump common sense and logic. The insanity of confusing kids as early as kindergarten by blurring the gender lines is over the top – even for California.  Parents and grandparents have good reasons to be concerned with this latest law. 

       

Anachronisms

     An “anachronism” can be loosely defined as anything out of its proper historical timeframe. My wife prides herself on her ability to find anachronisms in movies and she’s good at it.  Movies are full of these things.  For example, in the movie, “L.A. Confidential”, Gayle noticed the plastic mustard and ketchup squeeze bottles on a restaurant table. These plastic bottles weren’t available until much later than the time period depicted in the movie. Most folks wouldn’t have noticed that.  I didn’t.

            There’s the famous anachronism of Kirk Douglas wearing a watch in the movie, “Spartacus.” Many folks remember that one. Although that may be more of a mistake, in a general sense it could qualify. Another one was a film in which a commercial airliner can be seen high in the sky as cowboys fight valiantly against wild Indians back in the old west.  I can’t remember the movie off hand.  Both of these are more editing oversights than true anachronisms. 

            Maybe the most profound and controversial anachronism is in the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, “The Last Supper.”  You will see oranges on the table with other fruit, but there were no oranges in Israel back when Jesus sat at the table. Oranges were available in Italy during the 15th century, so Leonardo was familiar with them, but they weren’t available to the disciples in the 1st century.

            The painting also shows the disciples eating what appears to be eel, which the Jews of the time would not eat. Some have speculated that da Vinci was playing a trick on the Catholic Church with these depictions, but no one knows for certain.

            Picture Paul Revere riding a motorcycle, Abe Lincoln watching that famous play on TV, or George Washington cutting down a cherry tree with a chain saw.  Advertisers frequently use anachronisms like this. Old Ben Franklin is always trying to sell us something.

            I think part of the genius of Mel Gibson was his use of Aramaic and Latin in “The Passion of the Christ.” The use of English would have been anachronistic and would have lessened the authentic feel of the film.  That was a brilliant touch.

            Some people suffer from an actual psychological condition called “anachronistic displacement.”  This is an obsession or dysfunctional belief that the person “belongs” in another time period and feels out of place in the world he or she inhabits.  I didn’t make this up.  I would guess that this condition is most prevalent in senior citizens.  The old Ronnie Milsap song, “Lost in the ‘50s,” puts “anachronistic displacement” to music. I like that song and I think I may have that dreaded condition.

            These days patriotism, religious belief, and traditional family values seem to be considered anachronisms by the more “enlightened” in our postmodern culture.  If you stand and take off your hat when the flag passes, open the door for a woman, and avoid profanity around women and children, you might be afflicted with “anachronistic displacement.”  But don’t worry.  This malady is not contagious and takes at least five decades for symptoms to appear, however there is no known cure and the condition seems to get worse with age.

            If your discomfort becomes unbearable there are some steps that can be taken to temporarily minimize symptoms: learn how to text, wear tight short pants and a girly helmet while riding a bicycle, always carry a plastic bottle of imported water, only drink Starbucks coffee, listen to rap crap and twitch around, drive while chatting on a cell phone, and never talk about the good old days. 

            If that doesn’t work, just give up and watch old black and white movies. That’s what Gayle does, while I frantically search for my high school block sweater.