Random PBS-inspired thoughts.
I'm watching PBS and eating leftover Chinese food right now, and they
were talking about some museum that was interacting with an Indian Tribe
somewhere, and the tribe was explaining that it was disrespectful to
display an (American Indian) pipe assembled; that it was more appropriate
for it to be stored disassembled, because when assembled it indicated
immediate (ceremonial) use.
And so i was thinking, how depressing would it be to go to a museum and
see something you recognize as special or sacred treated with such
ignorance? Life a Christian crucifix hung sideways?
And then i was thinking... Chinese and Japanese people have probably
had spoons for a long time. So it seems like it isn't that they use chop
sticks out of necessity (gee, we just can't figure out any better way to
get food into our mouths) as much as this choice has to do with
demostrating that one can eat food in a way that demonstrates care and
dexterity. In otherwords, "Sure we could spear our food with a pointy
stick" ("point-ed stick" as Eric Idle says), "but we are so much above
that brutish behavior! We use TWO pointy sticks, pinch the food, and carry
it two our mouths!"
And now there's this NOVA special on about Ankara, a region in
Madahascar, and the lemurs and crodiles and other seemingly-strange
animals that live there. (I mean, they are supposed to seem strange to
the viewer, but they probably seem pretty normal to themselves...) Eeep!
Now they are showing some weird animal called an "I-i" who looks just a
lot like Yoda... It eats termites and ants inside trees. I wonder if Yoda
can hear really well?
So anyway this scientist traps and tranqs a lemur and he measures all
of these things about the lemur (size, blood, etc.) while it's lying there
with it's tongue lolling around out of its mouth, and then they release
it. And i think, "What if every night that i go to sleep, some Alien
entity kidnaps my consciousness and does all these strange things to it to
see how *i'm* evolving or different than said Alien, and my dreams are
some sort of twisted recollection of the Alien attempt to understand my
waking life?"
Which seems like a pretty boring view of what dreams are... i'd much
rather think of them as a more "self-directed" experience in a different
world.
Freya (the German Shepherd) is sitting next to me (on her big
papa-san (why are they called this? Because papa-san sits in the papa-san
chair because he's like... Mister Big Man in the Japanese House? Weird...)
cushion and the noises the baby crocodiles make wake her up and she's
looking at them on the TV.
KLRU (PBS) used to show Monty Python on TV late at night on
Saturdays. What the hell happened? I suppose i have it on DVD, and i
don't need them to entertain my homebody-self on a Saturday night. I miss
Doctor Who.
Lemurs are matriarchal, vegetarian (unless they can find any good
veggie stuff) and our ancestors. Oh, and the hair color pattern on the
males' head looks like male pattern balding. Bizzare. (" Uhh... why no,
i'm not some aging, balding monkey man , i'm a young monkey man who wants
to harken back to our shared lemur, matriarchal heritage.... is that OK
with you M'am?")
I'm going to stop writing now -- this is starting to seem weird, even
to me.
OK, one last thing... isn't ignoble for PBS to use a (Fatboy Slim?)
song that just repeats "Funk Soul Brother" over and over again to try to
appeal to the latest generation?
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