With God on Their Side

It seems that members of all religions call on God (or G-D), when there is a need to reinforce their beliefs. In doing so, at times, there may be a conflict between the words from their higher authority, and the rules for whomever they either work for are doing business with.

PROBLEM ONE:

Kim Davis is a Democrat who last fall was first elected clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, and has been on the job since January. She makes $80,000 a year in a county where one-fourth of the residents live in poverty. Mrs. Davis worked 27 years for her mother, who held the same position for 37 years, and Mrs. Davis’s son Nathan now works as a deputy clerk.

In June, when the Supreme Court recognized the legality of gay marriage, Davis refused to issue licenses to gay couples, saying it goes against her Apostolic Christian faith, which she converted to four years ago. Even when she received a court order to issue such licenses, she refused, and was sentenced to serve time in jail. Mrs. Davis is familiar with marriage licenses since she has been married four times, including twice to the same man. She was released from jail on September 8, but it was not known whether she would allow five deputy clerks to issue licenses to gay couples. The sixth deputy, Nathan, will have to decide whether or not he believe in the court, his mother, or a greater power.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:

(1) Do the job you were elected to do, i.e. issuing marriage licenses to all within the law, (2) take an extended leave, (3) find another job with the county that doesn’t challenge the tenets of your faith, (4) retire, (5) resign, (6) change your religion, or (7) run for a higher office. Many of her faith at rallies carried wooden crosses and signs reading “Kim Davis for President.”

PROBLEM TWO:

ExpressJet operates scheduled flights to more than 180 cities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas as a regional carrier for American, Delta and United Airlines. There’s a Flight Attendant description and duties on its website, that includes making passengers feel comfortable and providing beverage and snack services.

Charee Stanley, a recently converted Muslim flight attendant based in Detroit, was suspended because she refused to serve alcohol to passengers, citing her religious beliefs.

While the Qur’an forbids the use of alcohol, it doesn’t specifically state that an individual can’t serve such beverages. The holy book was written in the 7^th century CE, before there were any full-service airlines. Apparently Ms. Stanley had worked out an accommodation with other flight attendants regarding serving alcoholic beverages. An attorney for the Council of American Islamic Relations Michigan (CAIR) notified the airline, while Ms. Stanley filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission. “I don’t think that I should have to choose between practicing my religion properly or earning a living, they are both important.”

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: (1) Convert to Catholicism where drinking is not only legal but on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s an acceptable tradition, (2) get a position with another transportation company where alcoholic beverages are not served, such as on a Greyhound bus, (3) read the job description before you apply for any position, or (4) stay at your present job, but practicing spilling all alcoholic drinks on your passenger’s laps. You may get promoted and become a pilot, and there is a dire need for non-alcoholic pilots.

PROBLEM THREE:

The religious beliefs of many ultra-orthodox Jews, prohibits a male from touching a woman who is not a family member, regardless of how religious she may be. Accordingly, when an ultra-orthodox man travels to Israel by air, it would be an unpardonable shanda (sin) for him to sit next to any woman other than his wife or his female offspring.

Far too many flights from the USA to Israel have been delayed because an ultra-orthodox male demanded a seat that had been bought and was sat upon by a woman that was not his own. Some ultra-religious men complain loudly to attendants, and/or refuse to sit down until they get their way. In some instances, the flight would be delayed to the inconvenience of all passengers not dressed in black.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: (1) Let the ultra-religious buy an entire section of a scheduled airline flight to the Holy Land, and have it roped off, or (2) better yet, have them start their own airline with strictly kosher seating arrangements. They could reverently name their airline, “God’s Orthodox Daveners, “ who are those who pray religiously.

Queen for a Day, Or For Forever

I was impressed by the royal coverage in today’s San Jose Mercury News. No, it wasn’t on either Prince William, Princess Catherine, nor their adorable children, Prince George or Princess Charlotte, nor on William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth. However, there were other queens mentioned.

On page A6, it was reported that Sister Roma accused Facebook of not recognizing that as a drag queen, Sister Roma is the name she prefers,  and not her legal name,  Michael Williams.  She is quoted as saying, “My name is Roma. How dare Facebook say that’s not authentic and take away 30 years of existence with one click.”  A protest is scheduled at Facebook headquarters  in June, and thus far more than 400 people had signed up. The reporter of this story was Queenie Wong.

Does anyone remember Jack Bailey?

A King-Pin Was Arrested

In an unrelated story on page A11, police raided a pizza restaurant, who had discovered that they served pizzas with or without pepperoni during the day, and cocaine at night. The restaurant, The Cucino a Modo Mio (I Cook It My Way), was located in the New York borough of Queens.

A Royal Pain

On May 6, I received a request from GoDaddy, my domain name provider, that I check to be sure that all four of my domain’s contact information was current. They all were, and I confirmed that in a return email.

On May 8, I received an email notifying me that one my sites was expiring, and could easily be renewed for $75 for a year, but I needed to do so my May 12.

This didn’t jibe with the earlier notification, so I called my domain provider, who has a non-800 phone number. I spoke with Lou, and after explaining the situation to him, he said it was a scammer. He also said that there are many such scammers out there preying on the naïve ones. They go to domain listings in public records, find ones to prey upon, and send them a phony billing, in the hope that the recipient will hit the “Secure Online Payment” icon.

This is the first time this scam has been directed at me, so I asked Lou for a suggestion to prevent this from happening again. He told me that his company can make all my domain registrations private and protect me from all such abusive intrusions.  Ah, but there’s a price to pay of $8 per year per domain. He quickly figured out that to protect all four domains until they expire, would only cost me $37.12, and added that he has fifty domains protected for a mere $400 a year.

Although this whole episode was a royal pain, Lou was a prince of a guy to make the offer, however I said that I’ll protect my kingdom on my own.

Quick on the Draw

Although they all have their sights set on being the GOP’s presidential nominee, at the recent National Rifle Association gathering in Nashville, some of the contenders have begun aiming their verbal shots on another target — Hillary Rodham Clinton. They, of the slow moving, plodding elephant-symbol herd, along with many left-leaning feminists, truly believe that Hillary will proclaim herself to be the self-anointed one for the Democratic Party, whose symbol is of a braying ass.

This NRA shindig took place on Friday, April 10^th, two days before Hillary made her formal announcement to run. This was two hundred eighty two (282) days before the Iowa Caucus takes place on January 18, 2016, and five hundred seventy seven (577) days before the November 8, 2016 general election for a new king or queen.

The GOP candidates were acting their all-American parts to win the support of the primarily non-liberal members of the Irrational Rifle Association (The IRA). They kept to the same script as they ranted and raved, with Jeb of the Bush royalty decrying, "the liberal, progressive worldview of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, and all of the other people who want to take the guns out of the hands of the good guys."

Long-shot Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, said, "The reality is the 2016 campaign is going to be between elitism and populism. Hillary Clinton has already made it clear she'll be on the side of elitism."

Former Texas governor Rick Perry, frantically waved his arms about while loudly criticizing” our failed foreign policy.”

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, focused in on his audience, when talking about those running the government. “The president has wielded human tragedy in an attempt to subvert our rights," said Rubio. "The sins of the evil do not justify restricting the rights of the good."

Poor old Hillary, who will have reached the wizened age sixty-nine on election day, will have her own shot at would-be GOP opponents after her Sunday’s proclamation. She is already looking more presidential than the GOP contenders, but what are the odds that there be any Democratic challengers to her throne?

Does it really matter who the next person will be to mismanage our country, and are you strong enough mentally to withstand nineteen months of pre-election narishkeyt — nonsense?

KISS, More Than a Rock Band

There’s a KISS expression that writers should keep in mind when trying to get their words understood by their reading audience. The four letters stand for, “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” The comma is placed where it is to indicate that the writer should write for the correct level for his or her audience, not to impress anyone with their command of the language.

What’s Your Point?

You may have had the misfortune of trying to endure someone trying to impress you, or to verbally lord over you, with his or her language proficiency. They do so by stuffing their conversation with verbiage they have accumulated, but have never had an opportunity to use. You can excuse yourself by using any of several false pretenses, including, “I suddenly have a splitting headache, and wonder what brought it on.  Please excuse me, I need to get some fresh air.”

This allows you to walk outside and away from the bore, or boor. However, you must be sure that you can endure whatever weather awaits you outside. I just got off the phone with a friend in Detroit who told me that the wind chill factor was 20 below.

“Let Me Make Myself Perfectly Clear”

Richard Milhous Nixon used that expression whenever he believed that he was misunderstood (or caught lying), and Milhous wanted to defend or change his thinking or actions.

That expression is also the antithesis displayed in two recent examples of people expressing themselves in a muddled way.

When a newspaper reporter asked a woman what she thought about a recent, covered-up police scandal, she was quoted as saying, “It’s been an oligarchy sustained by obfuscation. After this debacle, who wouldn’t dismiss Kensington as a tony, dystopic enclave?” She continued,  “This egregious absence of oversight has made us the punch line.” Perhaps her quote furthers that impression.

Write it Right

While I have a decent command of the English language, I continue to learn as I read. I have a three-inch by five-inch spiral notebook that I started perhaps forty years ago, and whenever I find a word I don’t understand, I look it up and then write it down in my notebook alphabetically. I just looked and counted sixty-five such words, but that was only words that began with the letter “A.”

In the latest issue of The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, a book was reviewed and the reviewer not only tried to impress the audience with his command of the English language, but also disagreed with any point the book’s author had made that was different from the reviewer’s.

You may have known and understood all of the following words, however, I confess that I did not know them all, and wonder if other readers did.

The words included, among others,  “hagiography,” “eponymous,” “mythopoeic,” “arcana,” and “hegemony.”

Those of you who know them all, please put them in one sentence that makes sense, and send your entry to us. for a possible prize. A prestigious, punctilious, prescient, perfervid, pragmatic, perspicacious panel will carefully review all entries.

There are still sixty-six “P” letter words that I have defined in my spiral book that I haven’t used. I’ll try to use some of them in my next post.

A Super Day, To Get Away

Just went to Google and typed in the words “Super Bowl 2015,” and there were “About 209,000,000 results in 0.21 seconds.”

This year’s Super Bowl XLIX is noted in Roman numerals once again, to show even the most cynical of critics, the importance of this special event. Does anyone, except a Latin major, know what that translates to in the Arabic numerals we use to designate most everything? I told my wife that I weighed CLXV this morning, the exact weight I was at in high school. She just frowned.

Wikipedia devotes fourteen, ready-to-print pages of coverage, including forty-three listed references, more than those found in many doctoral dissertations.

The game will be broadcast on NBC-TV in the States, and in at least sixty other countries including such football hot spots as Macedonia, Albania, Moldova and Bulgaria, along with the Arab world.

If you hurry, you may be able to catch a flight and make it to the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona where the game will be played. There are even some last-minute seats available at the bargain price of $8,700.

NBC is charging $4.5 million for one 30-second commercial, a price that’s up $500,000 from the record set for last year’s game. The projected television audience should exceed last year’s 112.3 million viewers, however I won’t be one of them.

Sunday’s weather forecast for here in Santa Cruz is for sunny skies and a high of 73, so we will either be walking on the beach or biking during the pre-game narishkeyt (nonsense). When the game begins, we will easily find a good seat at a local movie theatre, followed by a great meal in a nearly empty restaurant. It will be one that doesn’t have four, huge television sets mounted on all of its walls.  It won’t even have one.

In case you are wondering, this is Super Bowl 49. However, such a designation sounds too mundane for such an important cultural event, and who would pay $8,700 for a ticket to attend?