Luddite Adventures

I have to have a phone. But if I have to have one, I want one that does not beep, whistle, ullulate, squeek like a cicada or play the opening bars of any piece of popular classical music.

I have the (mis)fortune to live near a string of antique and junk shops. I argue that I needed a real phone. I had a nasty cheapie plastic touchtone that was getting extremely difficult lately. Horrid piece of junk, the buttons would only work one time in three. When you picked up the receiver you had to push the clicker down several times to get the buttons to work. I needed a new one so I looked in the phone store for something I could afford and that would not offend my sensibilities too much.

And those two criteria proved far beyond the capacities of the electonics manufacturers of our times. You should have seen the confused look on the poor young fellow's face when I asked for a rotary dial phone. Bit like the time I scoured Toronto shops for a clock you have to wind up. (Imagine the fun I had trying to explain the notion of 'winding a clock' to some of the semi-literate savages they keep behind counters in posh Bloor street shops.)

"You know," I said to the poor blighter, "like your grandmother used to have...in the olden days..." just then his shirt pocked started playing the opening bars of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and we both were looking confused.

The poor kid tried to make me get a cell phone. Just think about that for a second. I'll type it again...

He. Tried. To. Make

Me.

get a

cellphone.

It's OK, I'm sure he's fine now, after a bit of rest in a darkened room.

I have long thought that today's cell phones were designed by people who grew up wanting to be Captain Kirk. Come on! Don't those things look EXACTLY like a communicator? You can even get one with a speaker so you don't have to hold it up to your ear, but can hold it in front of you like Kirk did...you know it's true. Nokia's even got a line of phones/blackberries that they call "Communicators."

Anyway, the upshot was that once again, I found what I wanted in a junk shop.

(I hate to imagine what are the larger implications of that fact.)

I brought it home today and am very pleased. Now my 1936 Underwood typewriter has something to keep it company. It has been such a long time since I used a rotary dial telephone that I had forgotten how nice it was.

In fact, much nicer than I remembered. When I was a kid, the R.D. phones were the late model plastic ones and the quality of construction of most mechanical devices was sailing downhill on a rocket-powered bobsled.

This phone is metal, weighs around six pounds so I'll know just what to swing when the burglar breaks in to steal all my expensive electronics. The action of the dial has a lovely smooth machined feel to it that you can't find in these terrible times of i-pods and other horrible little tweaking and beeping plastic boxes.

And yes. It works. It has been adapted to have one of those standard phone jack thingies and I just plugged it in. The only problem I have is that after such a long time since I used a rotary dial phone, without realizing it, I have memorized most of the phone numbers I use not from a string of digits but from the pattern of the key pad.

* ~ * ~ *

It's not even that I hate the modern world so much. I use CD's and telephones. I have a blog after all!

I just argue that the aesthetics are all wrong. I don't think I ever wanted to live on the set of a late '60' science fiction show and if they were to give it a moment's thought, neither would anyone else.

I mean, really, which seems more homey to you? Where would you rather wake up tomorrow morning?



or

Lenten Penances for Bibliophiles

Fr. _____ and I were discussing appropriate Lenten penitential practices. I thought Fr.'s definition of the kind of book one can legitimately buy during Lent, particularly helpful, ie: the sort of book one would need if one were aware of its existence.

We share a kind of mystical mind about bookbuying. There are books that are simply meant for you, and that are waiting in bookshops for you to come and retrieve them. The small matter of cash exchanging hands is beside the point. Of the little rectangular bits of coloured paper, there will always be more sooner or later, if one only waits long enough. Of that book, there is only the one, since it is (usually) at least 50 years out of print and you may never see it again.

It's a game really. God spends His free evenings placing these books, like easter eggs in the garden, onto the shelves of bookshops for us and watches chuckling indulgently as we blunder about hunting for them.

___

Fr. Underscore wrote:

What I am doing for Lent is walking briskly to Abelard and back every day, no matter how cold it is while saying the Jesus prayer. That much I have determined I can keep up, I think. What I am not sure about is going to Abelard and not making at least a token purchase.

Hilary wrote:

Not entirely convinced that daily book-shopping is a legitimate Lenten penance for such as we. I suppose taking a daily three mile walk in the freezing cold could qualify though.

Mine is much simpler. Go to Mass every day and do not give up the practise of the Faith or lapse into despair.

Fr. U wrote:

What I'm trying to decide is whether occasionally buying a book (only of course when it is something one has long wanted or needed or would have wanted or needed had one only known about it) might not be justifiable. I find for long nasty walks one should have some kind of temporal goal in mind, as well.

...

P.S. Maybe it's okay to get a book if one doesn't stop off at Second Cup for a latte?

As I was walking back from getting Ashed this morning, I was re-thinking my criticism of Father Underscore's pentitential plan. It was about -13 C. this morning and the fifteen minutes it takes to get from there back to the comfort of my eremetical stylos, was quite enough for me!

I am sure that God will understand the necessity of stopping off for a latte on the way home.

Time to Waste; Books to Procrastinate

Some of the books I still intend to write before I die, barring premature senility, blindness or a miraculous and permanent resurgence of monsticism in the Church, include:


The Granola Gourmet:
Hippie Cuisine for Embittered 40-Something postmoderns

Remember the brown bread, eggs and rice of your carefree, shoe-free childhood? Pining for mom's homemade yogurt? The perfect gift book for the perpetually angry Gen-exer schlepping in a dead end office job far far from the tarpaper treehouse cabin of his Hornby Island homeland.

Bonus! ~ order now and get a free CD featuring the crashing of the waves on the beach at Tribune Bay accompanied by the soothing chants of the yoga retreatants at Deerhearts meditation sanctuary. ~ 40 years of exploring the energy of the heart ray. Pefect for those long Toronto February streetcar commutes. Order now!

Saving String

If you lived in England during the war and were a housewife, you saved string, and butcher paper and all sorts of little household oddments that were difficult to get because of rationing.

Also, if someone had a birthday or there was a wedding coming up, everyone saved the sugar rations for the cake and the clothing coupoons for the trousseau.

If you were raised by people who were raised in England at this time, you save and re-use string, Christmas and birthday wrapping paper, elastics, tin foil, plastic vegetable bags, twist-ties and any number of little household oddments because, you know, they might be hard to get soon...

My mother likes to tell the story of when she first arrived in Canada. The boat that brought them over from Liverpool arrived on the St. Lawrence at Quebec City. Her first words upon seeing it were, "Where's the bomb damage?" She had been told it was a World War, after all and had never seen a city that wasn't smashed to pancakes.

She said she was very puzzled when her first school chum said, "let's go to the store and buy some candy." She replied, horrified, "I can't take your rations!"

She said she would never forget the time she saw a kid scoffing an entire bar of chocolate by himself. If you got chocolate in Manchester, you cut it up into the smallest fragments possible and gave it out to as many people as you could manage. Otherwise you would be thorougly pounded.

She always maintains that kids would be nicer if there were rationing.

I save string.

Julie Burchill, bisexual Marxist on Media Dhimmis

"...It's a long hard struggle trying to make bleeding-heart liberals see sense. Especially when you live in a country where a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it."

Martyrs

This was posted to a list by a friend who receives a lot of first-hand information from people living behind the lines of "Islamism". It was written by a man who presumably survived his experience. Bahman Aghai Diba PhD International Law
Persian Journal, 10 February 2006

It speaks for itself:

The old man had a calm face. He kept smiling mildly and looked around with appreciation. I had not met him before and this was the first time (and the last time) that he was walking with "us". I mean with our group of prisoners in the notorious Evin prison of Iran. It was one of good days that the prison administer had let our group to work as construction workers in a remote section of the prison. The old man that was walking with us that day was "Ke-shish (Christian Clergy ) Dibaji".

He was a Christian priest and his crime was changing his religion from Islam to Christianity. Dibaji had not only changed his religion, but as a clergy, he had tried to invite others to his religion. He had worked in places like north and west of Iran and even he had made travels to Afghanistan for preaching.

He was not one of my cellmates, and I noticed him because he was walking as person who was very satisfied and content. He was telling things slowly to himself that I could not understand at first. Later I came to know that he was reciting Christian hymns in Farsi and English. I asked him "why are you so joyful?" He said I am praying to God that has made this beautiful day possible for me. Look around you isn't it beautiful? The flowers, the sight of mountains and the huge trees are around us, and I am in the company of nice people. I am thankful to God.

Of course, I did not care about his Christianity, as I did not care about my Islam. However, in the middle of terrible conditions that existed there, and our lives were under the control of the Assdollah Lajevardi, the Butcher of Evin and his blood thirsty assistant (Karbelai, the administrative head of Evin who was called "Pishva" like Fuehrer) it was interesting for me that a person can have such a spirit. I felt that his feelings were respectful and he was spreading a positive wave.

That day I had my only serious quarrel with another fellow prisoner. The fellow prisoner was pretending that he was very Islamic and this new guy (Dibaji) was Najes (religiously unclean). I knew the protesting prisoner very well. He was a person that his personal life was only the story of drinking alcoholic beverages, cheating his wife and so on. I was famous among the prisoners as a calm person, but that day attacked the prisoner who pretended to be very Islamic and I told him that if he did not shut up, I would report all of his past actions to the prison authorities. He was so shocked from my reaction and we never talked with each other for several years.

Dibaji and I were both under heavy sentences and we waiting for a court that we knew it would not be fair. He was accused of "Ertedad", or changing religion from Islam to something else. The sentence for such a "crime", as far as men were concerned, was execution. As for the women, according to the religious rulings, the concerned female should be kept in prison and tortured five times a day, on the daily prayer times, until such time that she gives up her new religion and returns to Islam.

Dibaji was released from prison after a while, but it did not take much time that they found his body in the forests near Tehran. He was clearly tortured and murdered.

I think he was one of the first persons that were killed according to the program of the Serial Murders orchestrated by the Iranian intelligence officials.

Sense of Humour from the Dark Side

So, am I losing it? Or do the quotes in this article strike anyone else as hysterically funny?

Y'see, Australia has just legalised RU-486 the human pesticide.

Here's the reaction from some of the ladies in the government:

"Pregnancy is not safe. A whole lot of things about women's reproductive health are very dangerous, in fact."

"The death rate from this particular drug is much less, for example, than (from) Viagra," she said.

Tearful Liberal senator Judith Troeth hailed the result as "a victory for common sense ... for the nation's daughters and granddaughters".

OK, err...what daughters and granddaughters? The ones you aborted or the ones who died taking the drug?

Choice

So, picture this scenario:

Your boss calls you up and offers you a choice of three things you can do:

1) Single-handedly picket the Paris mosques wearing a sign that has a picture of Mohammed with a bomb turban.

2) Get shoved feet first through a wood chipper.

3) Write a response to the CCCB's pastoral letter on the government's embryo research regulations.

hmmmmm


toughie...

Simple on How to Talk to Oriental Desert Savages

c.1957
In a brief series of columns, Mr. Simple visits with General Sir Frederick Nidgett, who after an illustrious civil service career has been dispatched to darkest Araby to engage the might of the Empire with the Imam of Todi, whose effective armed forces consist of 35 Syrian-trained (in those days it meant ludicriously badly trained) Todi Scouts, equipped with muzzle-loading arquebuses. Todi is situated on the other side of the Great Jebel Snakhbar, a desert of formidable proportions riddled with savages.

Nidgett of Arabia

I have just seen a copy of a leaflet prepared by Capt. J.Birdbath, of the Psychological Warfare Branch of Gen. Nidgett's headquarters. Seven million copies have already been dropped on the territory of the Imam of Todi.

Capt. Birdbath, a noted lecturer and Arabist in civil life, believes he has found the answer to criticisms that our propaganda is out of date and that we have lost touch with the Arabs of today.

A rough translation reads:

"Sons of the Desert! Hearken to the voice of Gen. Sir Frederick Nidgett, G.C.V.O., T.D. Terror of the Universe, before whom the waves of the sea retire and the stars of heaven bow down! Though he come with an irresistible host, attended by powerful dijinns, Nidgett is your friend!

The accursed Imam of Todi, grown old in evil, has betrayed you, and is even now preparing to hand over his dominions to the demons of Iblis, in return for a futher supply of houris and false oil-share certificates.

Drive out the infidel Imam and welcome Nidgett with wine and corn, with ivory and ebony and cedarwood, with gold and porphyry and with feasting and dancing and joyful shouts. And remember to hand in your flintlocks to the nearest Field Security Section.

Fear not the magic birds which bring these messages. Like the giant Roc of Socotra, which carried Sinbad of old, they are now in the service of the wise enchanter Nidgett. If you heed his words, they will do you no manner of harm. Tremble and obey."

* ~ * ~ *

In a later colum, Mr. Simple happily reports that the Imam had fled to the Jebel Snakhbar during the night and taken refuge in the remote fastnesses of the Bojd.

Gen. Nidgett declared "Operation Backache" a "Cracking good show!"

Espana Antigua

He really does look like Robert DeNiro, don't you think?

Jordi Savall

Unanimously recognized as one of the most important performers of ancient music at the present time, Jordi Savall is amply one of the most multi-faceted musical personalities of his generation: viol player, conductor and creator of an unmistakable style, his concert, pedagogical and research activities place him among the main architects of the present process of revaluation of historical music. With his essential contribution to Alain Corneau’s film Tous les matins du monde (which has been awarded with Seven Cesars, including soundtrack and recently re-issued by Alia Vox), he has shown that ancient music is not necessarily elitist or for minorities and that it can interest an increasingly younger and wider audience. He has made also the soundtracks of the films Jeanne la Pucelle (1993) by Jacques Rivette, El pájaro de la felicidad (1993) by Pilar Miró and Marquise (1997) by Vera Belmont.

Jordi Savall was born in Igualada (Barcelona) in 1941. His musical career started when he was 6 years old: musical experience, practice and training from the heart of his home town children’s choir and musical and cello education that he finishes in the “Conservatori Superior de Música de Barcelona” in 1965. From 1968, he completes his training in the “Schola Cantorum Basiliensis” (Switzerland) where he succeeds his master, August Wenzinger, in 1973. A pioneer eager for new horizons, he soon realises the importance of ancient music.