Category Archives: Silly but fun

Serendipity:

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The Saga of a Gal Sort of Named Sue, and … well, … Company

This is a story about consonance, not assonance, but certainly contains more than a trace of dissonance.  It’s a sort of fractured and sad love story.  The characters are, well characters, and no effort has been made, with respect to the nature of their names, to protect the innocent, so we are neither admitting nor denying that they involve real people or real situations, at least deliberately.  But nature being what it is, …who knows?

Well, … maybe the Shadow, … but who else?

Anyway ….

Sue was a lucky girl.  At least for a while.  Good things fell in her pretty lap without her ever having to do anything to earn them, anything at all.  Some said “serendipitous” was her middle name.  It wasn’t.  “Serendipity” was her first name but, for some reason, she preferred to use Sue, which was, in point of fact, her middle name.  Interesting.

Everything about Sue was pretty too.  Not beautiful, not cute, just pretty.  But so much prettiness tended to dazzle, and it wasn’t as threatening as beautiful, although perhaps not as perky as cute.  Being perfectly pretty helped, well, let’s call her “Sue” (since she prefers that name), it helped Sue with everything: with her grades, with her roles in all kinds of organizations, with her teachers (none of whom ever even considered hitting on her), with her family and relatives, with whatever job she decided she wanted, although, to be fair, she never sought anything beyond her capabilities, and she gave every job she ever had her all.  That was Sue.

At least until she inadvertently met “Melancholy Mike” during her senior year in college.  Sometimes destiny sucks.  Or is that fate.  Or perhaps, karma.

Mike wasn’t really melancholy at all, he just had terrible luck at everything he tried despite seemingly having all the physical and mental assets for which any male could hope.  Although he was fast and had great hand and eye coordination, he somehow always had “bad luck” accidents, and, truth be told, he was easily distracted, which is probably why it seemed so hard for him to keep his “eye on the ball”, in every sense.  So, … rather than being a first string varsity sports star, he tended to be a junior varsity backup, but not with awesome promise, without awesome potential .  Same was true with academics, and work, and, as we’ll see, with personal relationships.

Initially, everyone Melancholy Mike met wanted to be his friend and, if it involved a female, and well, some males too, a bit more than just a friend.  To say that Melancholy Mike was not empathic was a massive understatement, so he didn’t pick up on how others felt about him and, all too soon, those who’d initially been drawn to him became, at best, cross with him.  Too many stupid little things just seemed to go wrong around him.  He tended to trip quite a lot, and to spill things, and to blurt things out he’d have been better off keeping to himself.  And all too soon, those who’d initially found him fascinating but had then become being cross saw their feelings devolve towards disdain, and quickly thereafter, to avoidance, and then to generation of nasty, untruthful rumors (which is how he acquired the moniker “melancholy”).  That was especially true among those who’d originally found him irresistible but, with respect to whom, he’d “failed to catch the pass”, if you get the drift.  They’d be embarrassed at first, feeling foolish, then his lack of any reaction towards their obviously miffed feelings, made them feel belittled and ignored, even though he was just being oblivious and, had he caught on, might frequently have reacted in a very positive manner.  Thus, over time, by his senior year in college, Melancholy Mike had become singularly unpopular.

While Melancholy Mike was “usually” oblivious, that was not the case when he met Sue.  They bumped into each other, literally, in a park by a pretty flowing river, where flowers of diverse species bloomed and shade trees abounded.  Sue had gone there to study and Melancholy Mike, well, frankly, he’d not been paying attention where he was going and had gotten lost.  They’d really bumped into each other, as I indicated, literally, but figuratively and physically as well.  Melancholy Mike had tripped over Sue and hit his nose on a large rock and was bleeding profusely.  Sue, who was always nice, sought to stem the bleeding and, of course, succeeded in doing so.  But in the midst of that endeavor, she glanced into his eyes, and became lost there, and when Melancholy Mike, who was in a bit of a daze, looked at her face, he figured perhaps he’d been hurt worse than he’d thought, worse than usual, and …. 

Well, as somewhat polar opposites, the attraction had been as intense as it was immediate, but then, all too soon, perhaps a few weeks later, it seemed as if a thick glob of sticky and sickly sweet molasses had engulfed them, sort of like amber sometimes engulfs insects.  The figurative ambient mess kept making them keep figuratively colliding, first to one side and then to the other, but still clinging.  Yuck, what an awful metaphor, or was that a simile, but anyway, it was unfortunately all too accurate.

Having never learned to cope with failure, Sue refused to admit its possibility,  She stuck by Melancholy Mike, literally, figuratively, physically and every which way, and he rubbed off on her (given that her attention was focused on him).  It had to be, to avoid constant disasters, and people started to avoid her as well but, she was so entranced with Melancholy Mike that she didn’t notice, at least not until it was too late to do anything about it, and thus, she was not only stuck to Melancholy Mike, but also stuck with him.

During a tumultuous courtship, as Sue too became ostracized from her old friends and acquaintances, and even her family, their relationship became stronger instead of weaker.  A phenomenon common when parents disapprove of a child’s choice in romantic partner.  Thus they married on a spontaneous whim, without her family’s approval (his was ecstatic) and started on a life somewhat lacking in the bliss they’d expected.  As might be expected, after turmoil overwhelmed ecstasy, they first separated, to sort of sort things out, give each other a bit of space, and then, at Sue’s insistence and to her family’s profound joy, they got divorced, but then, inexplicably, got back together, got engaged, which they hadn’t done before they were initially married (purportedly the second marriage would involve a long engagement), but then, impulsively, they eloped again (they had no one to invite to their weddings anyway, neither the first, nor the second, nor the ….; but that’s another story).  Well, maybe it’s really part of the same story but the repetitive nature of the telling becomes tedious, soooo ….

After their second wedding, hoping it would help them bond, they quickly had two kids, the first, a cute daughter with an amazing voice whom they named “Melony” (but her nickname, among her friends, friends she never dared bring home, was “Melody”); and then, eighteen months later, a son whom they named Anthony but called Tony.  Tony was, from the very first, even as an infant, pretty much a loner, a kid who preferred comic books, Anime and video games to interaction with other humans.  Tony also refrained from bringing friends home (but that was because he hadn’t any).  In a futile quest to build unity, the family tried acquiring pets, but they tended to run away all too soon, or to die, although Melony suspected that they may have committed suicide. 

Their house was not awful, in fact, if you liked oddities, you might have found it fascinating, in a sort of poor couple’s Adams’ Family, well, not mansion, but a hell of a nice triple wide mobile home, with an aboveground pool outside, and next to it, a third-hand Jacuzzi that worked intermittently, on and off (but off involved squirting tepid water full of rust).  And their home was set on a quarter acre, but next to a junk yard.  Melancholy Mike liked the spot because he loved the junk, and Sue hated the spot because she hated the junk, but she loved Melancholy Mike, at least then, sooo.  Well, perhaps geography explained why they had such a hard time staying together, even for the kids’ sake, although the kids would have been happier, had they stayed apart, especially the times when Melony could live with Sue, and Tony with Melancholy Mike.

As soon as Melony turned eighteen, she left home and joined a travelling troupe of purported actors, and at one of their gigs, in Rye, New York, an inebriated talent scout spotted her singing, and, sobering up quickly, he introduced himself and eventually, talked her into leaving the group.  He fell in love with her and financed music lessons and introduced her to the right people, and got her a contract with a decent recording label, and she climbed the stairway to success, but dropped Joe off on the first rung (Joe, well Joseph H. Riddle II, it should just have been Junior, was the talent scout’s name).

Joe became so despondent when he was so suddenly and completely dumped that he sought out Melony’s parents, and, after interacting with them briefly, for about a week, he realized why Melony was as she was, and decided he was better off without her, and returned to his own family from whom he’d been estranged while he explored his artistic roots.  And his family, a very wealthy and prominent family, took their prodigal son back, but he had to accompany them to religious services at least three times a week.  They were thrice born fundamentalists, who are much more stringent in their puritanical traditions than the merely born-again (whom they disdained even more than they disdained the heathen and the heretic).  But anyway, once again, that’s another story.  Suffice it to say that their family strictures explain why Joe had left in the first place, to pursue a career indirectly involving the arts.  Until, of course, he crashed into the Melony hurricane.

So, to wrap things up.  Melony became hugely successful as a heavy metal singer with Goth overtones set in a hodgepodge of sort of country music styles.  Sue finally divorced Melancholy Mike, permanently, and became a nun in a European religious order where, to the extent possible under the circumstances, she regained a good bit of her serendipitous nature (a lot of good that did in a convent though).  Melancholy Mike kept screwing things up but Tony’s jobs at the local Burger King, where he became a deputy assistant manager and counter boy, but with a night gig as a stock man (boy was too insulting for forty year old man) in a videogame warehouse, his dream job, kept them in stale burgers and hot dogs and pork and beans and cheap beer, which was fine with them. 

And, they all lived, if not happily, well … at least ever after.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

What’s in a Name, … Anyway?

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Sucleforth Winslow hated his name.  Where the hell did his parents come up with the name Sucleforth anyway?  He’d googled it and had come up with absolutely nothing, which, apparently, had been his parents’ goal.  His nickname, of course … sucked!!!!  And it had gotten him into quite a few physical altercations.  If that’s what his parents had hoped for, that he’d grow up tough, why hadn’t they at least named him “Sue”?  But he guessed that, in today’s “trans is awesome” world, that wouldn’t have worked.  Apparently his parents had foreseen the writing on the wall and acted accordingly.

He’d tried reversing his name, Winslow Sucleforth forth was not great, but it was quite a bit better.  And he’d run with it for a while, several times, but then his parents would introduce themselves as Albert and Agnes Winslow and questions would arise and answers would be given and things would be worse than ever.

Sucleforth refused to ever do any drugs as he firmly believed, and his parents did not deign to deny, that drugs of some sort, or perhaps many sorts, had quite a bit to do with their decision to gift him with a name so utterly unique.  And worse, they expected him to pass it on to his descendants, so that, eventually, there might be a Sucleforth VIII, who put away wives willy nilly, assuming, that with his name, he’d ever be able to acquire any.

His parents were first generation “woke”.  That meant that they engaged in number of somewhat uncomfortable practices, at least to Sucleforth, but obviously, not to them.  They’d both agreed, prior to starting their lives together (they refused to marry, making Sucleforth a bastard), that his father would be a cuckold, but not just any cuckold, as variety was imperative in everything.  So his mother engaged in serial coupling and group coupling with a huge variety of partners, in both gender, orientation, and race, always in front of her submissive husband, who was required to clean any resulting messes.  Notwithstanding her very active sexual life, his mother did not procreate, except in his case, abortion being very, very important to her.  So, she always tried her best to become pregnant, their being no other way to constantly demonstrate her dedication to abortion as a guiding life principle.

His father, on the other hand, having been born a Caucasian male of the protestant variant pejoratively referred to as a Wasp, had to be perpetually punished for sins perpetrated on other races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, nationalities, species, plants, etc., and thus could not engage in any activities that provided fulfillment or satisfaction, not even masochism, which made his wife’s duties a bit complex with respect to assuring that his punishment, on behalf of his race and his religion, etc., was adequate.  But she’d proved up to the task, regardless of the effort required.

The Winslows were well off, having sued their parents for permanent and perpetual support, but has arranged things so that Sucleforth was financially completely dependant on them, without any possibility of ever getting access to their wealth, not even on their demise, their fortune having been pledged in trust to a gazillion unusual causes, many political (to assure the election of woke candidates), but also designed to assure the ever increasing variety of woke entertainment, woke education, woke anything.  They really were very, very woke.  And Sucleforth pitiful periodic stipend would only continue if he procreated with someone from a different race, a different nationality, a different religion, well, someone totally different, and provided a new “Sucleforth”.  Unfortunately, based on his experience with his parents’ “lifestyle”, the idea of a relationship terrified him. 

He really did not need much of a stipend as his parents insisted that he live at home, in his room, which was supplied with every videogame console and every videogame possible that being planned as his access to education.  Athletics were absolutely forbidden but he was expected to attend woke rallies and protests and riots regularly, that was a given, no exceptions tolerated.  And he was also expected to become a connoisseur of drugs at a very early age, the only area where he’d successfully rebelled.  But then again, notwithstanding the irony, his parents expected that he’d turn out rebellious.  As had they.  But not in a way that in any manner threatened their lifestyle.

Sooo, Sucleforth, for some reason, blamed his odd life on his name, for some reason believing that, if he could just somehow discard it, everything would be a bit more, well, bland and normal.  He knew he had a legal right to change his name, but unfortunately, all the lawyers and judges and social workers and bureaucrats he’s ever been able to contact shared his parents’ perspectives, so he was stuck, at least so far.

But he wasn’t getting any younger, and the world, at least the world to which he was allowed access, was not as comforting as a young boy of thirty-seven might hope it would be.

If only he’d had a name like “Schicklgruber”!!!
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

What Was a Schmuck Anyway?

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“Peter the Pretty Good”, as a sobriquet, had not really altogether worked out well.  It didn’t help that his Jewish subjects, an important minority, referred to him as a “nebbish”, whatever that was.  But he couldn’t really get angry with them.  He found Jewish women irascibly irresistible.  It was well known that they were the most talented in the amatory arts, the most flexible, in every sense.  And recognizing that, Jewish men were unusually understanding.  And “pretty good” was not the worst possible suffix.  It could have been “Peter the Petty”, or “Peter the Petulant”, or any other in a long series of adjectives that for some reason, needed to start with a “P”.  That was a family tradition.  Of course, “Peter the Pithy” might have had a bit of flair.

His cousin, “Peter the Great” had it made, made in the shade it was said, whatever that meant.  And he ruled a whole empire, not merely a county.

But Peter’s county was as prosperous as it was peaceful (not very in either case), and he fancied that someday, if it became prosperous enough, perhaps he could be promoted by the Patriarch to Grand Count, instead of merely Count Peter.  That was pretty much the height of Peter’s aspirations, except of course, with respect to Jewish women.  Unfortunately, those with whom he sought intimacy insisted that he be circumcised first, and he found that distasteful, and they claimed that his member was distasteful to them, so long as it remained uncut.  What a quandary.

His cousin evidently did not share that problem, but then, he did not share Peter’s affinity for sabras, as the Jewish women in his county referred to themselves.  His cousin was too caught up with conquests and with modernizing and civilizing his court.  His whole damned country actually, which unfortunately for Peter, included his county.

Peter was more of an orientalist than his cousin, who was apparently besotted with all things European for some reason, and with navies.  Peter’s family had actually gotten on quite well with the Golden horde, although by Peter’s time, the Horde was more akin to a brass horde, or perhaps even a brass plated horde.  But his cousin had pretty much replaced the Horde as suzerain.

Still, his cousin was stuck with Shiksahs to play with.  Although he could actually play with them rather than merely long for them, as Peter was forced to do with the sabras, the sabras who loved to flirt with and tease him, but who then would always bring up the issue of the Moil.  Yuck!!  What a profession!!!

And what was a “schmuck” anyway?
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

“Livermore”

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Jason Livermore wondered how his family had acquired its last name, its family name. 

His research into the matter had found a place by that name in California, in the United States.  Some sort of wine country.  He wondered whether it had been named after a long forgotten relative.  Evidently the name was derived from old English, “Leuuremer”, or some such thing and it was old before the Conqueror invaded in 1066.  Perhaps there’d been a Leuuremer fighting against him at the Battle of Hastings, on the losing side unfortunately.  Evidently the name had been important in the area near the ancient Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.  But still, that did not explain the meaning of “livermore”, although it may have had something to do with lakes and reeds, rather than with “liver”“.  Jason hoped that was the case.

At least in his case, “liver” was not among those things he enjoyed ingesting, although he was, of course, happy that his own liver apparently functioned well.  No liver spots, at least not yet, and he had a fine digestion without problems, even when he partook a bit too much of food or drink.

When he broke his family name into two components, “liver” and “more”, he wondered at what “Livermore” implied in a modern sense, and wondering that, for some reason, put him in mind of ravens, ravens of the type quoted by Edgar Allen Poe.  He recalled that goose livers were a delicacy, one to which he did not subscribe despising liver as a comestible in all its variants, and wondered whether or not the livers of ravens were all that different from those of geese.

He’d sometimes thought of changing his family name.  His given name was fine, he liked it.  But then again, he also liked the sound of the combination of Jason and Livermore, if not its implication.  It sounded aristocratic to him and he did, in fact, perceive of himself as something of an aristocrat, if only for onomatopoeic reasons.  Reasons that may not have made sense to anyone else but which, to him, resonated.

He had no children, nor a wife for that matter.  But he might, someday.  And he sometimes wondered if his lack of success in serious amatory adventures might not have something to do with his last name.  Perhaps “Mrs. Livermore” was not quite as palatable a sobriquet as most women whom he might desire would enjoy porting.  And he was a bit picky, not just any woman would do.  Unfortunately for him, perhaps none that he might pick would reciprocate, or at least, had reciprocated to date, at least not for long.

Jason wondered how his own father had dealt with the issue.  After all, he’d had a wife, Jason’s mother, at least for a while, at least long enough to beget him and to sort of raise him for a while.  He wondered whether or not it might prove wise to raise the issue with her during one of their infrequent visits together.  For some reason, she’d settled in Budapest, alone, after the demise of her marriage to his father when Jason had just turned thirteen.  It had been off to boarding schools then, albeit not prestigious boarding schools, or not all that prestigious, but adequate if a bit lonely as neither his father nor his mother visited him there with any frequency, and he’d all too frequently spent holidays during those formative years pretty much alone, well, with the exception of faculty and staff, and other sort of discarded students, none of whom ever really became friends, at least not real friends, more like polite, superficial acquaintances with whom he had to interact.

But his mother had not changed her name when his father had divorced her so, apparently, the name was not the determinant factor in the failure of their marriage.

He’d no siblings, or aunts or uncles or, of course, cousins.  Just pater and mater and him, each living alone in their own spheres, rarely interacting and, since he’d turned thirteen, never interacting concurrently.  He lived in London and his father in Paris, well there and in Geneva, and in Rome, and sometimes in Madrid.  Not that he was wealthy and had homes in each of those cities, but he tended to move quite a bit, all too frequently having to do with creditors, or unhappy investors, and every once in a while, with furious husbands.  Jason did not take after his father though, or for that matter his mother.

Jason was just Jason; Jason Livermore.

Perhaps he’d get a raven as a pet.  He’d never had a pet and ravens were, he understood, reputed to sometimes acquire the gift of tongues.  It would be interesting to have something, if not someone, with whom to talk.  Something perhaps, on some occasion, to quote.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

An Interview with Yaʿaqov ben Yosef, the Nazarene; the Son of Mary and …

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[Interview through impenetrable rails in purportedly pearly gates, somewhere outside of time and space]

Interviewer (me): 

Sooo, is it “άκωβος” now, or “Iacobus”?  I’m not sure what they speak in there.  For some reason a lot of people over the years assumed it was Greek and then, Latin, but perhaps its Aramaic, or Hebrew, or perhaps Enochian.  Enochian makes the most sense, but no one understands it where I’m from. You know, there are a lot of strange, maybe even weird rumors about you down below, and definitely weird rumors in the deepest of basements.  Thanks for granting me this exclusive interview to clear things up.  It is exclusive, … right?  I mean, you haven’t really done this before have you.  Given all the stuff written over the years back home, it’s a bit confusing where they got their material. 

Here’s a list of questions, I assume you’ll be able to read them.

יעקב, James, or Jacob, or Santiago, or ….:

Okay, well, not exactly in any order, I have no recollection of ever having granted interviews before, actually, I’d never heard of the concept until you showed up, but I did know quite a few people back in Yerushalayim, and even more people apparently claim to have known me.  Maybe they did, I didn’t really keep records.  You can call me יעקב (Yaʿaqov), but if you can’t pronounce that, then James will do, although I’m sort of partial to “Santiago” although, for the life of me, I can’t fathom how the Spanish got “Santiago” out of Yaʿaqov, or for that matter, where “James” came from.  Is “Yaʿaqov” really that confusing for you English speakers?  It must have had something to do with an ancestor of one of those clowns who worked at the entry desk at Ellis Island.

Don’t look so surprised, we get a lot of news up here, well, at least sometimes.  When the airwaves aren’t clogged up with incessant prayers.

Still, … I can’t really read the list of questions you gave me, I never learned to read in English, we didn’t have it back then, my family only spoke Aramaic most of the time, and we read Hebrew, and understood Greek, and even some Latin.  But I only really read Hebrew.  And anyway, I’m not Joe Biden you know.  I don’t need to have someone prepare cheat sheets for my interviews.

So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just rattle off what we up here refer to as a stream of consciousness, sort of anticipating what I think you probably want to know.  You know, to share with those down there.  Actually, according to my brother, we were expecting a bunch of you up here a while ago.  Maybe you can enlighten as to why the hold up.

Anyway …

During my lifetime I was sometimes referred to as “James (יעקב, Yaʿaqov) the Just”, to which I invariably replied, “just James please”.  Well, in your language.  In mine, at the time, it was “Yaʿaqov”.  But after I’d journeyed beyond the veil, “James the Just” seems to have stuck, … As well as exaggerated rumors concerning my hygiene, or lack thereof, (for the purported sake of piety).  Neither really made sense.  I had to submerge myself in water not infrequently, in conjunction with ritual cleansing required by my Hebrew religious rituals, although it’s true that I rarely cut my hair.  Most of us Jews didn’t, at the time, and never my facial fair, which after a certain length stopped growing of its own volition.  Damned Hegesippus didn’t know anything about the real me, he just made stuff up.  Yeah; I know it was him!  Damned rumor mongering gentile!  And please, don’t think I’m using inappropriate verbiage. “Damned” is exactly the correct adjective when I use it, … especially up here.

It’s not true that I never drank either.  My brother Yeshua, as you know, insisted that we drink in his remembrance, but even as a child, who in Palestine would ever permit their children to drink our water without being treated with wine to avoid disease?  I was a confirmed bachelor though, that part is accurate; Miriam of nearby Magdala was the only woman I was ever drawn to, but she only had eyes, or anything else, for my brother, the prophet, or rabbi, or whatever.  That was for the best anyway.

Bishop?  Me?  We had no priests even, let alone bishops.  We were communists for Heaven’s sake.  Yeshua had made it perfectly clear how he felt about that, although that creep, Saul, seems to have befuddled Simon on that and other points while the two of them were carousing in the Imperial capital.  That damned Saul (and as you know, I mean it literally) perverted everything he touched.  Money, money, money, but it worked.  Simon should have stayed home. 

As for my skydiving off of the Temple roof, well, I can’t really recall doing that but I understand that I was stoned around that time, so, who’s to say.  I understand that being “stoned” has several different connotations nowadays though.

Oh!!!  And yes, Miriam was our mother!!!

Anyway, that’s about it for this interview.  Hope I clarified a few misconceptions, and obviously, I do have a sense of humor.

Interviewer (me): 

Wow!  You pegged the questions, although the answers are a bit unexpected.

You know, lots of us expected your brother to return an awfully long time ago, and to take us up with him.  Any idea where he is now?  A lot of people would like to know.  The delay really caused a lot of confusion, and then, a lot of us sort of lost faith.  But the “Adventists” are great at rationalization, even if not great at math, but even they’re starting to look a bit put off.

יעקב, James, or Jacob, or Santiago, or ….:

Hmmm, well, errr, … time doesn’t really run here, at all, so maybe Yeshua just sort of got carried away, the angels tend to put him to sleep with all those constant hymns and harping, and Dad’s preaching is pretty drawn out.  His Dad I mean.  Mine was Yosef.

But I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by and asked after him.  If I see him that is.  This place has no dimensions or space, so things can get confusing.

Interviewer (me): 

Ahhhh!  Hmmm, well, I guess that’s it then.  But, well, could I ask a huge favor?  Would you please give your brother my regards, and his Dad too, and my mom, please let her now I really miss her, and my grandparents, and ….

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Supercilious Sally

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Supercilious Sally is a proud member of the “woke” generation; those morally enlightened and superior intellectuals so willing to sacrifice their time to show others just how evil and mean spirited they are. 

In honor of her non-white brethren, she spends inordinate amounts of time in tanning parlors, and wears expensive designer-ripped jeans and African-style jewelry and sandals.  And she permed her hair too.  She’s a frequent Vegan, but not religious about it, sometimes a great piece of meat really hits the spot, especially if no one is looking, and lobster and crab and shrimp, yummm.

Speaking of religion, she’s not religious, although she is spiritual, … well, … in her own way.    Religion, after all, is a scam, unless it’s way-out, alien oriented religion, then, as long as it’s not Scientology, it’s fine.  Her’s is the inverse “white-man’s-burden”, teaching white men how horrible they are is her primary calling, especially her “white, male-chauvinist” dad from whom she and her mother, his ex-wife, have to extract the money they require to fund their work, teaching others how much further they needed to go to attain enlightenment, and to fund their lifestyles of course.  Okay, they need to extract as much money as possible from him, he doesn’t deserve what he earns anyway, no matter how long and hard he works.  They have much more meaningful uses for his income.  And they really, really need it.  When you want something enough, it’s the same as a need.  And she is kind to her dad, on his birthdays she’s taken to telling him that despite all his faults, she doesn’t hate him.  Not really.  Not all the time.

She does not refer to herself as supercilious, just “Sammy” (she did not like “Sally”, it was way too Caucasian).  It was her mirror which coined that silly “supercilious” sobriquet, and it was only adopted by those around her who were not among the enlightened.  She tells everyone to just call her “Sammy”, for some reason, believing it implies that she’s part black.  She may be right as far as her heart and soul are concerned.  But there are those who just call her “Silly Sally”, something she hates, and she hates them, albeit in a sort benevolent manner, at least in a manner of speaking.

She’s a busy young woman with all her rallies and protests and all, especially those that might get a tiny bit out of control, with a bit of rioting and justified looting, perhaps even a bit of arson, and if some of those white-male-chauvinist small business owners get injured, well, it’s their own damned fault for not having seen the light; for not having grasped the urgency of admitting their moral and ethical inferiority.  Damned money grubbers!  She’s proud not to be among the employed which gives her time for her non-credit, self-improvement classes and social media policing and censoring activities, activities for which she receives a stipend of sorts from generous and enlightened Democratic Party supporters, especially those affiliated with the wonderful Clinton Foundation and the enlightened George Soros. 

She’s sort of sexually promiscuous, when she can find someone woke enough and still capable of performing oral sex for hours on end, an activity she proudly disdains.  She’s usually not into intercourse, she will not contribute to over-population, in fact, she’s a proud abortion veteran having undergone procedures five times already (and she’s not yet twenty-three).  She’s not one of those fake activists who only talk about things, she’s an active participant in the prochoice movement.  If not for her need to engage in abortion generating activities, she’d be a lesbian with a black girlfriend, or better yet, “trans”.  She’s a trans-activist too.

She’s at odds with her mother for not having engaged in more productive interracial, extramarital sexual activities, ones where she might have been born black and perhaps even seemingly poor, not too poor, but poor enough to be able to hold it over other people’s heads at rallies.  And to qualify for minority set asides and affirmative action programs.  Perhaps she’ll find an interactive videogame into which she can subsume herself as the virtual personality she wishes she was, that she imagines she is, that she does all she can to appear to be, but without the related unpleasantness; and as long as it doesn’t take too much effort.

She loves the new trends in entertainment where the new norms require that the cast and characters be totally integrated, racially, religiously, sexually and morally; hopefully sometime soon, society will reflect Hollywood’s new paradigms.  And she’s all for removing all that inconvenient history.  She read somewhere that someone, George something or other, had a character in one of his novels who claimed that “if you can control the past, you can control the present and the future”, so she’s among those who demands that history be changed to suit their whims of the moment, after all, to her and her friends, history should be dynamic rather than static.  And creative history is best of all.

They’re the “woke”, and proud of it!
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Something to Mess with as Easter Week once again Makes an Appearance

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Sooo, ….  Most of our quotidian numerical systems today are premised on Arabic numerals with10 as the base, hence we start at 0, go through 9 and then start over with zero preceded by one, etc. 

The base 60 system used by the Babylonians, the one we use to tell time, and for angles and circles, etc., was much more sophisticated because, while ten is divisible by 1, 2, 5 and 10 (and perhaps 0), 60 is divisible by each of those, plus, 3, 4, 6 and all of their multiples. 

Most computer language is premised on an “on” and “off” binary concept using symbols of “0”s and “1”s. 

Is monotheistic religion, religion based on platonic models, premised on base “infinity”, with only one, all-encompassing number, making it equivalent to monist panentheism? 

Something to mess with, mentally, as Easter week once again makes an appearance.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Chaotic Symmetry and Me

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Is boredom the mother of speculation and hence, the harbinger of discovery?

Take this morning. 

A nice enough morning in the beautiful central range of the Colombian Andes, over seven thousand feet high, surrounded by snow-clad peaks, but spring reigning, seemingly eternal, the chill softened by nearby volcanically heated thermal springs.  Still, that enchanted backdrop being the norm, a jaded sense seems to permeate my dawning day and, seeking to alleviate incipient boredom, I begin to speculate on the relationship between chaos and entropy. 

Chaos is a concept that fascinates me, but in its theoretical aspect where everything is still possible and entropy is yet pre-nascent, rather than in the sense where nothing makes sense, like politics today, or journalism, or television series on which more and more of us tend to unthinkingly and unquestioningly binge, thereby rendering ourselves absolutely malleable to those who, like Sauron, seek to rule us all.

Nope, no binging for me today, at least not on the refuse marketed to “entertain” and indoctrinate us by the so-called entertainment industry.  This morning, I’ll speculate, hypothesize and fantasize all on my own.  I’ll speculate on the nature of chaos and order, anarchism and symmetry.

Here goes nothing, or perhaps, … a very fascinating something:

It seems as if perhaps eternity, in a closed sense (somewhat of an oxymoron, I know), is the journey from chaos through entropy, perhaps, back into a single singularity and thus, back into inchoate chaos, the only perfect state of chaos where everything is still a possibility and nothing is more probable than anything else.

As much as I admire, perhaps even love the concept of chaos for its almost infinite possibilities, I am, in my personal life drawn to its opposites, order and symmetry.  Hard to reconcile but we humans tend towards the complicated, albeit in a simplistic manner.  Go figure.

Symmetry, at least to me, is a ritual where, by aligning things as close to perfectly as I can, I give free reign to quantic phenomena, to quantic possibilities, but not over the smallest spaces possible, but rather, without regard to time or space, which become mere illusions.  Order, on the other hand, in its absolute sense, implies the total loss of freedom, perhaps as close to the concept of hell to which a libertarian can come (I perceive of myself as a socialist-libertarian, which to traditional chaos-loving anarchists is an irresolvable contradiction).

Is it possible that “sense” is the ultimate product of “nonsense”, the way matter and energy were at some point the product of a parentless singularity?

You know, … the human mind is a fascinating place in which to spend an otherwise boring day.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Spheres, a senryū of sorts in e minor flat

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Spheres:  an infinity of angles,
endless possibilities,
perhaps even cyclic gateways, …

everywhere else then back again.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Nature of Responses to the Question “Why”?

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The answer to the most fundamental of questions, “why”, may be very enlightening concerning a person’s fundamental cognitive programming.  Among the diverse potential responses, two are very brief, precise and telling.  They are “why not” and “because.  Seemingly similar, they are introspectively very different, one is passive, “why not”, shifting the burden of response and leaving all possibilities open, and the other is active and aggressive, “because”, an exclamation point implied, shutting off debate.

Of course, the answer may be a long, complex and complicated discourse, also enlightening, but making it almost impossible to summarize the diverse parts of the cognitive spectrum on which it may fall, and, again of course, the lengths, complexities and natures of possible responses are almost infinite, say infinity divided by ten, for arguments sake.

“Why”?

“I don’t know”.  And “I don’t know is frequently, perhaps, the most honest answer but one most people are not secure enough to consider.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.