Mr. Carlin on germs and disease (play through headphones if you’re at work and you share a desk with some easily-offended Karen-type):
Obviously I’m not in total agreement here, but it’s fun watching an artist at the top of his game. Carlin’s language had such music, such rhythm to it. He’s an icon of comedy, but I don’t think he gets his due as a prose-poet.
As for me this morning? Feeling better! As I’ve said, this cold has been proceeding in exactly the same fashion that my colds normally go, and if not for COVID I’d never have thought much about this particular cold beyond its annoyance level. I’ve now reached the point where I’m sneezing a lot less and my throat is significantly less sore. I’m still waiting for the stuffiness upstairs to abate to the point where I can smell things*, but I imagine that’s in the offing soon. Whereas my sleep the night before last was interrupted frequently by sneezing and coughing, my sleep last night was much more fitful, and it was only interrupted a couple times, and those were by a dog making his “Excuse me, I need to go outside and pee now” noises. (The Dee-oh-gee had a rough day yesterday, but more on that another time. He’s doing OK, though, for a doggo who is about to turn ten years old.)
So, to sum up: Feeling better, not a hundred percent, but definitely on the mend. I suspect that by Thursday I’ll be feeling quite normal. Meanwhile, I’m going to keep on imagining my vaxxed-and-boosted immune system working its way through my bloodstream and escorting freshly-dead COVID virus molecules directly into my colon.
(And a promise to you, readers: barring something significant happening down there at some point in the future, this is the last time I shall ever mention my colon in this space. A writer has limits.)
*On my sense of smell: I know that loss of scent and taste were major symptoms of COVID’s original variants, but that is apparently much less the case with the current versions of this damned thing. Also, when I get colds I always lose my sense of smell for a day or two, pretty much because I’m pretty stuffed up. I can still taste food and beverages, though with the scent component out of play, eating is a lot less enjoyable.
A learned hatred in service of a small god
I, like many others, am disturbed and horrified by the attack on author Salman Rushdie that took place at the Chautauqua Institution, a place I’ve been to a few times, which is just an hour’s drive away on the lovely shores of Lake Chautauqua. Hatred and religious extremism no know boundaries and can flourish anywhere, though this wasn’t a local hatred; from what I can tell, some guy checked where Rushdie was going to be, went there, and attacked.
I haven’t read any of Rushdie’s novels, but I’ve read a few of his essays and other pieces over the years. He has always struck me as a nuanced thinker and a fine writer, and that he could be attacked in this way is appalling…as is, quite frankly, the entire “fatwa” placed on him in the first place. The whole concept of blasphemy has always struck me as deeply, deeply weird. I have never been able to wrap my head around the idea of God–a being so vast and powerful as to be able to create the entire Universe–nevertheless being apparently so thin-skinned as to be offendable by anything some being says, thinks, writes, or does down here on Earth. It just doesn’t make sense to me, and I can’t understand why anybody would even want to believe in a God like that in the first place. It seems to me we should ask more of our supreme beings.
There’s a cartoon online that sums up this point in pithy fashion. I tend to agree. If you think blasphemy is even possible, and that it’s something that needs to be enforced in God’s name here on earth, something is wrong with both your religion, for its small and limiting view of God, and with you, for having chosen that religion.
One final thing strikes me about this whole affair: the fatwa against Rushdie was pronounced by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, 43 years ago. The man who drove a few hundred miles to execute the fatwa yesterday is 24 years old. He was taught this hatred. He was taught it, and he took it into his heart willingly.
Many people tend to think that such religious extremism is bound to die out just by a kind of atrophy. And maybe it will, in some inevitable course. But it’s clear that this will be a very long process, and in the meantime, there are plenty of self-minted extremists rising to do evil in the name of their small-minded God who commands it.