Virgil

Heathen Chinee, My Aunt Fanny

It seems that every time you turn around, Chinese history gets more and more impressive. Paper, ink, gunpowder, opium, steamed pork buns; they did it first and they did it best, including, apparently, sailing around the entire world in the early 1400's, and mapping both the North and South American coastlines in voyages led by major naval badass (and eunuch)Zheng He.

Even if it's true, it doesn't put them in the hemisphere before the Vikings (1000 A.D.), and of course there were millions of perfectly civilized folks already living here, but it certainly makes a sizeable dent in the bragging rights of reknowned Genovese drunkard and slave trader Christopher Columbus.

It's strange that they left no trace, unless of course they weren't into the whole "Kill and enslave the natives" form of global exploration, which has, in the ensuing centuries, so ably captured hearts, minds, and precious natural resources the wide world over.

Green Ham And Eggs

Memo to my Jewish and Muslim brethren: you're missing out on all the fun!

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, Taiwanese scientists have announced that they have bred pigs which glow green in the dark.
And it's not just skin deep; no sir, that green, glowy goodness is built in, from the organs out.

GodDAMN, that sounds delicious.

Everybody's Special (Especially Me)

Hyperexceptionalism.
I'm not sure what it is, or if I just made it up.
But it sprang into my mind all of a sudden, as fully formed as Athena leaping from Zeus' knotted brow, when I read this article in the NYTimes about a category of children known as "Indigoes", who represent the next stage in evolution, and who will, apparently, save humanity from itself through their elevated self-confidence, uncontrollable energy, and unwillingness to listen to anyone but themselves.

I read through the aricle, trying to figure out what distinguishes them from ordinary hyperactive, precocious kids with deranged lunatics for parents. But as near as I can figure it, it's just parents believing what most parents believe; that their children are special.

Now, granted, most parents don't try to create a brand new sociological phenomenon out of it, but we're living in special times, and special times call for special people, or at least people who think they're special, or at least more special than everyone else.

Witness this article about a pregnant woman who tried to argue that she could use the carpool lane because her fetus counts as another person. Now, the obvious, Solomonic response would be to charge her double admission to any event she attends, but that would be missing the point she's really making, which is that the rules don't apply to her.

Maybe they don't. Maybe the rules only apply to someone who thinks of society as something we're all involved in, to some extent. Maybe there are special, exceptional people for whom humanity is just a faceless mass in a crosswalk, and these exceptional people are in the car behind ours, honking like rabid donkeys because we won't run the pedestrians down and get out of their way.

After all, they're in an exceptional hurry.

WTFWJD?

A lot of folks don't like hippies. I don't have a whole lot of use for them myself, but I've never felt the need to put them in a special category of annoyance seperate from punks, metalheads, goths, hoodrats, rudeboys, beatniks, neocons, gangstas, b-boys, bikers, or anyone, really, who's subsumed their entire individuality to a prefabricated set of beliefs or behaviours, right down to a strict dress code.

Sure the hippies were silly, and naive, and many of them were extremely hypocritical, but so are we all, from time to time--especially you, sir, in the back. You're an awful liar. Yes, you are.

But I've always been mystified by the conservative Christian antipathy toward hippies since, in many respects, the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth was basically a tough, smart hippy; bearded, long-haired, sandaled, preaching love, living communally, and now, in a bit of news that's sure to set Pat Robertson's head a-burstin', we find that the Son of Man may have had a more than nodding acquaintance with the Evil Weed, which some call Marijuana.

If true, it would go a long way toward explaining why the Gospels are at such variance with each other; sometimes you just spaaaace out on the details, man.