Pastor Jones Thinks This Rant Is About Him

[from 9/15/10]

Last week I went on honeymoon with Anitra “Kisser Ichiban” Freeman. I say this like I had a choice, like I could have gone with Lady Gaga, or maybe Larry King. Anyway, I enjoyed it, which meant I couldn’t enjoy it.

I need rant material! How can I be happy if I’m too happy to rant?

After we got back, things picked up a bit. The Pastor Terry Jones was threatening to burn a bunch of Qurans (spelling optional). I could envision an entire column consisting of paragraphs beginning, “How stupid is Pastor Terry Jones? He is so stupid that... “

A taste: Pastor Jones is so stupid he hates a book he’s never read. Pastor Jones is so stupid he closes his eyes when he drives through a Muslim neighborhood. Pastor Jones is so stupid, every morning he burns his pancakes, because he prefers toast.

By the way, the word pastor comes from the Latin expression for “he leads us to pasture.” Some pasture it is, that’s warmed by bonfires of burning books. “Hey! We need more pitchforks over here!” “Is that sulfur I smell? How pastoral!” We were going to let him burn books on the grounds that we have freedom of speech in this country. Free to write books, free to read books, free to give books away, and with all that freedom Pastor Jones is so stupid he would rather burn books.

Meanwhile, a 23 year-old in Texas sparked debate on this very issue of free speech by skateboarding up alongside another would-be Quran-burner and snatching his Quran from him. Did he violate the Quran burner’s right of free speech, by depriving him of his fuel?

I’m reminded of the law in Seattle that prohibits taking, say, cut flowers from a dumpster behind a florist, because, the legislative reasoning went, they aren’t yours. As I recall, when the law was applied to an actual dumpster-flower thief, the judge fined the miserable thief one dollar, and then ordered the florist to pay all the court costs, because the judge said it was frivolous to go to court over a “theft” of something rejected and tossed away.

There are those who say that when they throw anything in the trash, it’s still theirs. A former acquaintance, when he had to get rid of a TV, smashed it before tossing it in the alley. “This way,” he said, “at least if they steal my TV, they won’t get any use out of it.”

The trouble with applying this extended ownership theory is that if you can extend your ownership forward past the point at which you have thrown a thing away, that opens up prior claims on the same property. In this case the former acquaintance had actually retrieved that very TV from someone else’s trash, so by his own theory, his TV was not actually his, and therefore it was not within his rights to smash it.

The way I see it, if there’s such a thing at all of violating someone’s freedom of speech, there has to be such a thing as violating someone’s freedom of speech in a frivolous and inconsequential manner. And specifically, that thing would be, snatching a Quran away from someone who was only going to burn it.  

Exercises to Facilitate Auto-Entertainment

1. Pastor Jones doesn’t read Arabic. Outline the pilot episode of the sitcom based on that fact. Hint: Jones buys what he thinks are 500 Qurans for a BBQ, but his happy-go-lucky Arab neighbor “Ahmed” can see they are actually Arabic New Testaments. As Ahmed debates whether to tell him, comedy unfolds.

2. Since 1999, we haven’t had freedom of speech. We’ve had free speech zones. Where should we put the free Quran-burning zones?

3. Take two pieces of paper. On one, list all the rights we’ve been denied because “we’re at war” and “it’s a post 9-11 world”. Feel sad, don’t you? OK, now on the other one, write “meh can burnz Qu-ranz, LOL!” Feel better?

Chopsticks

There is a side of homelessness that is rarely talked about. Social service workers almost never mention it. The homeless themselves will often look away when the subject is broached, unwilling to contemplate the pain that lies within. Even we here at the Real Change have avoided discussing it, for it is such a sensitive issue, one which could easily lead to misunderstanding in our readers if not addressed carefully.

Homelessness, as we all know by now, is generally a symptom of poverty, and thus is experienced in conjunction with poverty's other symptoms. And one of the worst, besides not being able to afford a place to live, is no money to... well... you know... have... f-u-n.

As I sit here in the Real Change office typing these words into this computer I am thinking about all the fun things I could be doing with my life savings of three dollars. Ha! - no I'm not, I'm lying, I'm staring at the screen in a vegetative state, barely tapping each letter out with one finger of my right hand, my chin resting in my left, thinking over

and over of chopsticks.

Chopsticks, or How Bored Am I?...

I want the radio

to play "Blue Suede Shoes"

so I can sing along to it

I consider eating the flowers

on the desk in front of me

just to see if it makes any

difference in my life

in twelve hours or so.

Meanwhile I plan to

go through the thesaurus

looking for all the words

close to meaning "bored"

write them down and then

hide the paper from myself

go look for it find it hide

it go look for it find

it hide it go look for it

until I finally lose it

then I'm going to

write down all the words

I can remember

then I am going to

go back to the thesaurus

and for every one

I missed I am going to punish myself

- bad wes! bad wes! -

Then I am going to feel sorry for myself

- poor wes! poor wes! -

and offer me a piece of pie to make up.

And I'll scream

where have I been

keeping that pie

why haven't I told me about it.

Then I'll start over

but this time I'll use chopsticks.

All of which then calls to mind a conversation with another of our Real Change editors the other day, I'll call her Ruth-A-Fox, who spoke to me of Poetic License. Immediately I had to remind her that I have one. Thus may I steal her ideas with impunity, as I may steal from any and all who cross my path...

No but really what *is* this Poetic License business? Where do I go to get registered? Is it only good during poetry season? If I have one can I claim anything I write as poetry, including the above? Can I write poems in prose zones, without being ticketed?

Taking a guess I'll say yes to that last, and vice versa. Once you are registered (see your local soul) it's always poetry season, wherever you go.