Terrible Analogies

I’ve been living with a secret, one so dark and heavy it weighs me down with guilt, shortens my step, and drains me of my otherwise radiant charm.  It haunts me, daring me to go one more day before letting loose to the world this dreadful unknown.  

But I can’t bear the burden any longer.  My trembling, creaking bones can no longer carry the weight of this ill-gotten fortune.  I must share the origin of my blog title…

As a child I grew up with comic books.  For several years I even worked in a comic book shop.  My favorite series was one that holds the record for longest running english independent comic…Cerebus.  Originally a parody of Conan The Barbarian, it quickly evolved into a tale of politics, finance, religion, and ethics.  In the 300 monthly black and white issues that this story spanned Cerebus, an earth pig born, was a warrior, Prime Minister, the Pope, a witness to God, and finally serving as His vessel and doing His bidding before succumbing to a sad, uncelebrated fate Cerebus has foreseen and knows is ultimately unavoidable.

And this brings me back to my original point.  The title of my blog, Terrible Analogies, comes from an issue of Cerebus.  In it, Cerebus the Pope is rejected by the only woman he ever loved.  Having shed his papal garb and holding his old blade he stands at a pivotal crossroads; continue with his mad plan to bankrupt the city-state of Iest, or slink back to his old ways of living by the sword.  

If you’ve never read independent comics when they truly were independent, then I implore you to read the history of this series.  It’s a quick read, but well worth your time.  Check out some of the amazing cover art as well.  And after having reviewed this information you find yourself wishing to dive into this series, you can purchase the phonebook encyclopedia novels that covers the entire run of Cerebus.

So there you have it.  Terrible Analogies owes its title to Dave Sim and his amazing body of work.  

My love for this series knows no bounds…  

Tent?  Check.
Sleeping bag?  Check.
Air mattress?  Check.
Bottled water?  Check.
Flask of Jack Daniels Whiskey?  Double check.

The jeep is packed with the necessary essentials for a night of desert indulgence and questionable personal habits.  Deep in the middle of the Anza Borrego desert, completely sheltered from glaring city lights, where one feels so small against the grand scale of the universe, we’ll light a small fire, cook some steaks, and feel absolutely overwhelmed and insignificant beneath the incredible vastness of time and space.

It’s amazing how absolutely beautiful and intimidating the night sky can be when you’ve spent nearly your entire night life drowning in lights.  When one is raised beneath a curtain of light pollution canceling out the stars one can’t help but feel a certain sense of awe standing under a completely unobstructed nighttime sky, with the Milky Way stretching across the heavens and shooting stars streaking towards the distant horizon.  It’s a wonderment bordering on a sort of reverence.

Of course, it could all just be the whiskey talking here….

WARNING: A wall of text follows, but is well worth the read…

This blog post *was* going to be one of condescending opinions and twisted distortions of what I interpret to be reality…but that was before I downloaded a copy of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox Movie and came to a deeper understanding what the eccentric Dr. Bronner, the man behind the soap, was all about.

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Bonner’s Magic Soap, it’s a product that has more than a dozen uses, one of them being soap, and it comes packaged in a wrapping containing nearly 3000 words that calls attention to what Dr. Bronner considered “The Moral ABCs”, which are guidelines for living a prosperous, positive life.

To quote generously from Dr. Bonner’s Magic Soapbox Movie:

“Emanuel H. Bronner was a master soapmaker from Heilbronn, Germany.  He immigrated to the U.S. in 1929 and began touring the country, lecturing on a plan to unite mankind under an “All-One-God-Faith.”  He called this plan “The Moral ABC.”  In 1947 he was committed to a mental hospital in Elgin, Illinois.  He escaped to California where he began making an all-natural peppermint soap.  To each bottle he attached a copy of “The Moral ABC.”  Today his heirs sell over 4.5 million bottles of “Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap” a year.”

With this condensed, direct opening we’re given a window into the sloped, erratic world of Emanuel H. Bronner (1908-1997) and the people whose lives he’s touched.

To make a long story stuffy, Dr. Emanuel H. Bronner was obsessed with selling a message of hope to the world.  Dr. Bronner’s mother and father died at the hands of the Germans while in concentration camps during World War II.  Through subversive means he managed to escape to America.  Obsessed with a message that we’re all children under the same God and that we should care for each other, he talked to whomever would listen.  While in college he would speak in a booming voice that echoed throughout the hallways where he argued his points and theories, full of fire and brimstone, in a voice that would crack with the shock of intense belief and devotion.  His fervent dedication to “The Moral ABCs” and the manner in which he delivered his thoughts was interpreted by some to be a public nuisance.  The police were called.  Unsure what they had on their hands they brought Dr. Bronner to a mental institution where he was forced to undergo six months of shock treatments (which he blamed for his blindness during his last thirty years of life).  He eventually escaped and made his way to California where, with money he won in Las Vegas, he started up a soap company.  Through this company he extolled the virtues of “The Moral ABCs”, “without which no one could survive free.”

Pearls of wisdom from Dr. Bronner’s Moral ABCs include:

“To keep my health, to do my work, to love, to live!  To see to it that I give and grow and give and give!”

“The intensity of a man’s emotions is a greater driving force than the sum total of his education, his money, or the size of his brain.”

“What I am at this moment is the result of past constructive action!  But all future generations depend on what I do with it at this moment!”

I think he and Tyler Durden would have a lot in common.  I wonder if Chuck Palhniuk modeled Tyler Durden, in part,  after Dr. Bronner?

Today Dr. Bronner’s company is still going strong.  Dr. Bonner’s Magic Soap Company believes in fair wages, fair living standards, and everything is produced naturally and is non-toxic to the environment.

In their own words: “We take care of our employees with generous salaries and benefits (no-deductible PPO health insurance and a great profit sharing/retirement plan that we fully fund), we cap executive pay at five times the lowest-paid position, and we give all profits not needed for business development to support progressive charities and causes.”  In recent years the company has given away over 70% of its net profit.  All of the Bronners have capped their salaries so that they make no more than fives times that of the lowest paid, fully vested employee.

Again, this was going to be a quick post about the fact that I live just a few miles away from Dr. Bronner’s warehouse (see the final two pics below) where they manufacture and distribute what I assumed to be a “hippy” product.  But after downloading and watching the documentary movie about their company and the good they do for the community, the less I wanted to poke fun at their product and the more I wanted to praise them for their generosity and humanism.

I wonder if they give tours of their plant?  I’d love just a five minute run through their building and take a few pictures.  Who knows, even get a chance to talk to Ralph Bronner for a minute?  I’m sure he’s a busy man, but to share a moment of his time would be amazing.

To get a better understanding of where I’m coming from when I speak of Dr. Bronner and his company, download the online version of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox Movie.  The portable version is only $3, and is well worth the time it takes to watch.  I found it fascinating enough to want to purchase the DVD version.

Located in San Marcos, CA

Misspelled sign on the "botteling room" door. Yet another charming hallmark of this company...

The entire caption read "Missiles are absolutely anti-social". Who can disagree?

The institution where Dr. Bronner was held for six months

One of the many interesting characters Ralph Bronner talks to in Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox Movie

Karin and I swung by the warehouse this afternoon. This is the front of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Company as it looks today. It was very windy, and tree bark littered the parking lot.

Another picture we took. Signs warning of dire consequences to trespassers abound.

Stayed home sick today.  Funny, I got a flu shot this year but still came down with a bug.  I did still manage to log in and slog through a few hours worth of work before I finally had enough.  I eventually shut down the computers, grabbed a few random books off of the shelves, and retreated to the comfort of the couch.  Flipping through my copy of Who’s Who In Hell (which can now be found free online, but a physical copy is much easier to thumb through) I spotted the following passage:

You’ll note the typo in e-mail #2.  I’m sure the author meant “phase” and not “phrase”.  Also, the formatting is off on this entry, with the bullet point to #3 aligned to the right instead of the left.  This is a massive tome of a book clocking in at an encyclopedic 1,237 pages, and errors like these are bound to slip through, but I still blame the editor.  It’s his/her job to catch these things, and they dropped the ball.

If you do manage to make your way over to the online version of WWIH, a few interesting and/or amusing passages can be found under the subjects of “Logic“, “Freemason” (which describes admittance to the group and their secret handshake), and “How To Obtain A Wife“.

On January 20th, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.  Not only will Barack recite his full name during the ceremony, he will also invoke the name of God, keeping in line with tradition dating back to George Washington.  Nearly every single American President has mention or alluded to God in their inaugural addresess.

Dan Barker, an atheist and co-founder of Freedom From Religion, takes exception to this tradition.  So much so that he’s teamed up with Michael Newdow, another wet towel who in the past took exception to the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and filed a lawsuit seeking the elimination of the word “God” from the oath of office.

There’s a wrinkle to this:  The word “God” is not mentioned in the official oath the president takes at his inauguration.  The entire official oath reads:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

But as stated above, since the official oath contains no reference to God, why is Dan Barker so intent on protecting us from His name?  If Barack wants to lay his hand on the bible and mention God, why should we stop him?  Heck, if he wants to petition Allah, give thanks to Krishna, or praise the grey spot of mold slowly pulsating underneath his refrigerator, why should we care?  I mean, we the American people elected him in a fair and free election.   If he wants to tack on a “so help me, God” to the end of his oath, why should anybody get bent out of shape?

Dan and his ilk simply wants control.  He wants to censor what we’re exposed to, narrow our field of vision, and dull our critical thinking.  Like it or not this country was founded on jeudo-christian ethics, and its served us well thus far.  The Golden Rule is a good thing.  The lessons taught in the Bible are a good thing.  This is coming from a blogger who doesn’t practice, but does believe that there’s a higher power out there.  If you want to be an atheist, fine, but don’t forget the fact that the vast majority of people in this country believe in some sort of afterlife, and that something out there holds sway over our souls.

Dan, please don’t try to censor what we hear.  Don’t think that we need “protection” from the world and its varying opinions and ideas.  We can understand where people are coming from.  We can respect the opinions and beliefs of others.  Please give us the benefit of a doubt and believe that we’re not going to start dancing a jig around a church waving live rattlesnakes in the air, donning Nikes and looking skyward for the closest NEO asteroid, or naively slapping down our life savings on the first collection plate that passes underneath our noses just because somebody solicits the name of their favorite deity.

Slow down Dan, take a breath, and relax.  If a majority of the American people are not offended by the word “God” than why should you be?  America is about choice.  It’s purpose is not to coddle you, and it doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be offended by differing viewpoints.  You choose to be an atheist.  Barack chooses to mention God at what will be the most important time in his life.  So what?  Man up and deal with it.