Terrible Analogies

The wife and I recently made the commitment and jumped from standard DVD over to Blu-ray.  This transition has had the unfortunate downside of turning me into a drooling, blithering idiot incapable of suppressing the involuntary tick in my left eye whenever I overhear the mere whisper of the word “blue” or “ray”, or any combination thereof.  

But I’ll be darned if I’m not completely in love with this technology.  The amazing picture that Blu-ray provides on our 1080p flat screen.  The uncompressed HD sound.  When you pop in a Blu-ray version of a movie like The Transformers it’s like seeing that movie for the first time.  You know that feeling of reeling in a twelve-foot hammerhead on a 50lb test line, or finally topping out on that 5.14 freeclimb in Joshua Tree that you’ve been working on all summer?  Well….if not, trust me, that’s how you’ll feel when watching your first demo-quality Blu-ray movie.  It’s like finding religion, obtaining nirvana, or discovering a really bitchin’ Chinese restaurant that doesn’t serve that crappy, rancid-tasting beef.  Your heart races, you tremble and sweat, and your pants suddenly seem to fit just a little bit tighter…

Seriously, if you haven’t made the jump to Blu-ray you only have yourself to blame.  It’s a huge leap from standard DVD, and once you experience Blu on a decent system you’ll be a slave to it just like me.

One of us…One of us…One of us…

The Virgin Mary seems to make many appearances in various forms, somehow projecting a mystical aura more powerful than Adam Sandler and Ricardo Montalban in their Fantasy Island/SNL prime combined.  But instead of projecting her ethereal image into the heavens above for all to see, or simply haunting a middle-class duplex like a Poltergeist movie gone bad, she instead seems to prefer making her presence known through unimpressive water stains and burnt toast.

These dubious techniques leave much to be desired by the masses expecting a rock ‘n roll laser light show live at buddakan spectacular of miracles and visions.  Instead we’re left to believe in the everlasting love found in the hereafter via signs found in tree stumps and fence posts.

Appearing in the toast of a cheese sandwich, the Virgin Mary gives a shout out to her homies.

The Virgin Mary appears under a freeway underpass.  The faithful turned out in droves swinging bibles and rocking their faith.

Appearing as a blob of chocolate, the Virgin Mary apparently has a place in her heart for candy makers.

Looking prettier than Val Kilmer before he got hit repeatedly about the head and shoulders with an ugly stick, Mary glistens with prismatic rainbow hues in the windows of an office complex.

Tree stump Mary.  I know, I know…I’m rolling my eyes as hard as I can.  Can you feel it?

The Virgin Mary wields supernatural powers, revealing herself to the world in the form of a pretzel.

The Virgin Mary appears in the form of a fence post….comeon, what the heck?  Should I continue wasting my time with this blog post?

Apparently up to date with modern technology, the Virgin Mary appears in an MRI scan.

Imagine the shock and awe of the gardener who discovered the Virgin Mary hiding inside the rotting husk of the next door neighbor’s tree…

Mary appearing on a wicked skipping stone.

Mary, with apparently nothing else to do, appears as a scorch on the bottom of a pizza pan.

Don’t get me wrong.  If you believe that the mother of Jesus Christ has nothing better to do than reveal herself in the crust of your child’s PB&J, then hey, more power to you.  Me, I’d like to think that there is a higher power, but that power has better things to do than show itself to a bunch of fervent faithful in the form of a broken tree branch.  I’d also like to think that it has more insight and intelligence than to frak with us in such a way.

If you do believe in this stuff, then I don’t mean to belittle your faith.  How can I argue faith to a  true believer?  You continue to believe in your cheese sandwich apparitions.  I’ll continue to simply believe that there’s “something” bigger than us out there, and perhaps one day we’ll meet.

I miss the days where one could order pet hamsters, seahorses, and monkeys via the mail.  In the 60′s all you apparently had to do was send your hard-earned cash to an anonymous post office box, and luck willing your pet monkey / seahorse / hamster would arrive alive, albeit possibly slightly confused and dehydrated, at your front door.  

Plus you could raise it on a diet of lollipops!

I can imagine a kid innocently ordering one of these mail order monkeys.  It silently arrives in the dead of night without his parents knowledge in a worn and dented a shoebox labeled “Fragile!  Live freight!”.  Secreting this half-dead simian into his bedroom he revives it with a steady diet of soda and lollipops.  Awakened in the middle of the night by a half-crazed, disoriented, hyperactive spider monkey gnawing and clawing at his exposed face this panicking kid, blinded by blood pouring into his now lidless his eyes, tears through the house screaming in agony, followed closely by a sugar-enraged monkey hellbent on getting his primate ass back to the rain forest and the familiarity of trees and open sky.

It’s a shame we can’t order monkeys by mail anymore…

John Timothy Keehan (aka Count Dante) (1939 – 1975)

Ex-hairdresser turned martial arts master, arsonist, terrorist, and war chief.  The self-proclaimed “Deadliest Man Alive”, if you didn’t agree with him he would just as likely plant blasting caps in your place of business as punch you in the face.  A sensei to some, a criminal to others.  And to the people who read comic books as a kid he’ll always be the karate man with the ‘fro…

I was introduced to the writings of Richard Brautigan through a friend while in high school.  His name was Daniel and he collected snakes.  Daniel had long blond hair which he wore in a ponytail, he wore flannel shirts which were popular at the time, and he walked with an assumed limp because he enjoyed the attention it brought.  

One afternoon he asked me if I had ever read the book Trout Fishing In America, which I hadn’t, and I told him so.  The next day while eating lunch on the grass behind the lockers Daniel came up to me and tossed a book into my lap, knocking my sandwich out of my hands.  ”Read this,” he said to me as he slowly turned and limped away, which I’m positive he did for dramatic effect.

It was this copy, published in 1973, the pages tanned the color of tea, that he dropped into my life.  

Inside, the book read:  ”GLASS/HANDLE WITH CARE/SPECIAL HANDLING/GLASS/DON’T SPILL/THIS SIDE UP/HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HE WAS AN ANGEL”

I haven’t spoken to Daniel in over twenty years.  If you’re out there Daniel, I want to thank you for turning me on to authors I would have never been exposed to if you weren’t around.