Mairzy Doats

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been lazy.  In fact, I've been so lazy that I couldn't even think of a good excuse not to post and just had to come right out and admit to my slothfulness.

But then the indolent ooze in my skull bubbled up a flashback about those thrilling days of yesteryear, and I got stirred up enough to want to let everyone in on it.

It's a song called, "Mairzy Doats," and it was a hit when it came out in 1944.  According to Wikipedia, the song made the pop charts several times, and was  a number one sheet-music seller with sales of over 450,000 within the first three weeks of release.

"Mairzy Doats" will do absolutely nothing for you except rattle around in your skull for an indeterminate period after you first hear it.

This link is to one of the original recordings of "Mairzy Doats," by the Merry Macs.  The lyrics are translatable and at some point in the song are sung in ordinary English.

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This Just In......

It's been a while since I posted--there are so many words floating around that I didn't feel up to increasing the mess--but I became entranced by headlines on today's Google news feed that I felt I just had to repeat a few of them here.

1.  Arizona woman, 92, shot, killed son who tried putting her in assisted living, cops say--Fox News

2.  A church put Jesus, Mary and Joseph in ‘ICE detention’ to protest Trump’s immigration policies--Washington Post

3.  After fish pedicure, woman loses her toenails--CNN

4.  Did Something Massive Smash Into Uranus?--Gizmodo

Remarks:

1.  I guess that'll teach him a lesson.

2.  No comment.

3.  What happened to the fish?

4.  Oh, I hope not.

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Praise God?

Earlier this week I went to church and had some car work done in one fell swoop.

It’s not that the church has a mechanic on duty, but that the car dealer has a chapel on the premises.

The dealer is Harrold Ford, in Sacramento.  The chapel is in the new car showroom and consists of a customer waiting area in which sits an altar of a large-screen television.  And on the screen was Jimmy Swaggart.

So much to say about Jimmy Swaggart.  Octogenarian, musician, evangelist, cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley.  Owns and operates the SonLife Broadcasting Network over which his televangelism is broadcast nonstop internationally.  Based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he operates Jimmy Swaggart Ministries and the Family Worship Center, the latter a nondenominational Pentecostal church that can seat 15,500 worshippers (read contributors).  He had a zipper problem in the late 1980s and was caught twice with prostitutes but has rebounded and today his net worth is probably somewhere in seven figures, anybody’s guess.

I watch Jimmy Swaggart at home sometimes.  The standout professionalism of his musicians impresses me, and I am intrigued by the draw of religious fervor.  Captivated would be a better word than intrigued. I guess it’s the skeptic in me, but I just don’t get it. 

The religious service in the Ford showroom was pure Swaggart.  The crowd in the Family Worship Center was mostly middle-aged, a mixture of whites and blacks. They clapped. They raised their hands toward the heaven they believe in.  Tears streamed down the faces of some.  They sang, swayed, and some periodically let out a loud “hallelujah” or “praise God.”

Swaggart played the piano, his fingers gliding easily over the keys.  He sang, his rich baritone telling a favorite hymn.  He is without a doubt a fine musician.  A small band accompanied him, and backup singers provided vocals.  A choir sang and swayed behind him. The music wasn’t modern Christian rock but reminiscent of old-time spirituals.  Off to one side of the screen a tote board showed how many millions of dollars had been collected during the current drive and how many millions to go to reach the goal.  Through it all, Swaggart would occasionally get up from the piano to prowl the stage proclaiming “Amen!” and “Praise God!”

And he sells Bibles.  During breaks in televised services and on other programs he hounds people to buy any one of several editions of the Bible, including a special edition just for women.

I may watch this at home, but at home I’m a volunteer, and I change the channel after ten or fifteen minutes; here I was part of a captive audience. There was a lot of praising God on the screen, but none from the customers:  We were trapped.  The man next to me went and asked a salesman if we could have a different channel selected and was told no; the channel could not be changed.  So we were trapped for a short time, but employees were trapped for the entire day.

I went looking for somewhere else to sit.  The service manager saw me and asked what I wanted.  When I told him, he said there was seating in the sales room.  “Yeah,” I answered, “and so is nonstop Jimmy Swaggart.”  I was not in my best mood.

I went back to the chapel.  Most seats had emptied out.  Customers were standing outside by the entrance or seated on the steps.  I went to the reception area.  No one was working there, so I took a chair at an empty desk.

And there I saw it—a pen left on the desk, a pen with the inscription “Bayside Church.”  The Bayside Church is a megachurch near Sacramento and has an average weekly attendance of 11,000.  The Bayside Church has also spawned smaller versions of itself in and around Sacramento, so I suppose you could get a franchise and open your own Bayside Church.

Any link here?  Any connection between Jimmy Swaggart Ministries and the Bayside Church?  Are megachurches conspiring to unite and take over a Ford dealer?  The whole company?  Could this have happened already?

I was thinking dark thoughts when I got the word that my car was ready.  I had left it for an inspection of the rear suspension.  The inspection took well over an hour and turned up no problems; the dealer didn’t charge me for the work.  Maybe my growling to the service manager about “nonstop Jimmy Swaggart” paid off.   Regardless, I was in no mood to Praise God.

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A Legend of Confidence

Today I became a Legend of Confidence.

I went out and bought deodorant.  The deodorant is called Swagger.

Today being Mother’s Day, I thought I’d give the Mom of the house a treat by turning myself into a sweet-smelling guy.

When I got home I looked at the container and read the brag on the back:

“Swagger transforms unfresh men into legends of confidence.”

So, that’s me.

From now on, all communications from here will bear under my signature the inscription “A Legend of Confidence.”

And should I forget to include the inscription, I am confident that my readers will fill in the blanks.

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Just Another Road Trip

My car is 85 years old, and I’ve got 113,000 miles on me.  It could be that I’ve got those numbers in the wrong slots, but never mind—we’re both rust-buckets waiting to be pushed off the road.

Last week I went on a road trip.  Three days long.

Day 1:  Sacramento to Petaluma. Sightseeing stops along the way turned a two-hour drive into a six-hour excursion.  Major stop—Lagunitas Brewing Company, where I bought a souvenir cap but held off on drinking any beer until I stopped for the night. At Petaluma I stayed at the Coast Guard training base, in the guest lodging operated by the service’s MWR (Morale, Well-being, and Recreation) unit.  Reduced price lodging there is one of the perks of military retirement.  (In times past I’d seen MWR to stand for Morale, Welfare, and Recreation; could be that the Coast Guard is averse to the word Welfare.)

Day 2:  Loop tour through the hills of West Marin then along the coast to Point Reyes National Seashore, returning to Petaluma after a picnic lunch at the Marin French Cheese Company (established 1865).  Scenery a lush green with patches of fog—cooling and relaxing.

Day 3:  Petaluma back to Sacramento, the long way, via Clear Lake, a route I hadn’t driven in years.  The twisting, turning route crosses the Coast Range, and, coming out of the mountains, the lush green vegetation was all behind me.  The usual long, brown summer had arrived in the Sacramento Valley, and it was only the first week of May.

It was a good trip.  I enjoyed it, but I’ve always enjoyed road trips, even years ago with four miniature humans in the back seats providing entertainment of various qualities.

For me it was just another road trip, but a trip brought on by restlessness and the belief that, even at my age, if I can drive in the craziness of Sacramento traffic, why shucks, I can drive anywhere.

But it was a chancy thing to do, and I got away with it.  I didn’t hear any horns blaring, no squealing of skidding tires, no crumpling of sheet metal.  No newspaper article headlined “Elderly Driver Plows into Crowd; Kills Everyone in Sight.”

So I’ll probably do it again.

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Bring Back the Good Old Impeachments

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted on this blog.  Basically, I’ve been up to my fetlocks in other projects, but a persistent voice in my skull nags me:  Write something, even if it’s wrong.

So—I’m longing for the presidential trials of years gone by, the good old impeachments.  Clinton-Lewinsky was simple, just two people in starring roles.  Nixon and the Watergate break-in was a little more complicated than Bill and Monica, but still “Paranoia and the Plumbers” was easy to follow. 

But Trump et al.  Every day there’s a new name, a new angle, a new lie:  Oh, what a tangled web we weave!

The whole thing could make a good board game.  Maybe with a working title such as “Chaos,” and the object of the game being to avoid meltdown.  Something like that.

But just suppose Trump isn’t removed from office and we’ve got to endure more of this turmoil?  Then we could have a different board game.

It could be called SAPS, for “Shaft the American PeopleS”:  The theme:  Players match wits against the Trumpster as he grows wealthier at the expense of the American taxpayer.

So I'm finished writing something, and now I’m going to leave the room and go down the hall to where the relaxing beverages are kept.

I deserve one.  We all do.

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A Musical Interlude Showing That the Blogger Is Easy to Please

In the late afternoon I treat myself to a musical interlude via YouTube videos. This is sort of a warmup (or meltdown?) to that time when I amble down the hall to the place in the house where the relaxing beverages are kept.

On YouTube, I listen to just about any kind of music so long as it has a melody and is devoid of spectacle that some people today are fascinated with.  One of my current favorites is l'Orchestre de Christophe Demerson performing two catchy, popular tunes.  The vocals are in French and English.

One song is “Paloma Blanca,” often called “Una Paloma Blanca” (literally “One White Dove”)—a song about freedom.  It was written by George Baker and released‎ in 1975.

That number is followed on the same video by “Comment ça va”—for which I could find no guaranteed universal translation.  It generally means "How are you doing?" or "How is it going?"  The song provides the answer: “comme ci, comme ci, comme ca”—"so, so” in English. According to Wikipedia, the song started out as a 1983 pop piece by a Dutch boy band The Shorts.  It was originally written in English by Dutch composer Eddy de Heer; that was followed by a Dutch version which was written by Jack Jersey.

All that aside, Demerson and his band are playing for a dance-hall group of nicely dressed pre-geriatrics who seem to be doing a sort of low-impact disco shuffle.  My favorites in the crowd are a couple of men near the stage who perform a somewhat synchronized pirouette and a short red-haired woman who is totally into it; she’s not seen until the camera locks onto her toward the end of the video.

Just keep in mind when you watch this video that, hey, I’m easy to please.

The link to this entertainment is here.  The video lasts seven minutes and has just under 6 million views.

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My Lack of Will Power: A Report in the Stream of Unconsciousness

Listen I’ve been on this horrible I suppose I should say horrific because that’s the word everyone else is using these days because they can’t bring themselves to say or write horrible but take it from me it’s a horrible guilt trip about sugar and sugar has become an item of interest ever since medical science declared I have diabetes which really doesn’t bother me too much because I rarely eat dessert with a meal and I don’t spend money on candy bars or cellophane-wrapped grab-and-go fat tablets and if I want something sweet I like bakery pastries which are expensive and not always convenient so I don’t eat a lot of sugar anyway that is until a month ago at Christmas the next-door neighbor gave us some Ghirardelli chocolates and the guys across the street treated us to a box of chocolate-covered mints that were totally addictive like totally addictive and two weeks later I mentioned to the woman who lives next door to the guys across the street that the mints were great and I didn’t have but a few left and she said oh hers were gone days ago and so therefore I decided I would enjoy the goodies and not worry about the complications of diabetes because with senile-onset diabetes I’ll be dead before I could go blind or my feet fall off so it really shouldn’t be a problem except for the sugar high which pours thoughts and words through my skull like a torrent so fast that I can hardly wait to sign off and go up to the neighborhood donut shop for a chocolate-covered custard-filled thingy.

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Nothing to Say, But I’ll Say It Anyway

I haven’t posted in several weeks because I’ve had nothing to say.

But two items in this week’s news are worth mentioning.

One, another proposal is being floated to divide California.  This one would sever interior California from coastal California.  The interior part of the state is largely rural, while the coast is heavily urban.  Read as follows:  rural equals Republican; urban equals Democrat.  Would there be Dust Bowl era signs at the urbanish borders saying “Opies [Old Progressives] Go Home”?

Two, the state department of transportation is beginning to favor building traffic roundabouts over planting stop signs at intersections.  If this goes far enough, I see it as a giant piece of symbolism.  No longer will America be a stop-and-go nation but one that that is more circuitous, more circumspect.

More later, when I still have nothing to say.

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